A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.
Oppression is a dish best served at a distance. It is difficult to impose without some discomfort at close range- unless one possesses a truly sadistic nature. However, many find the misery of others permissible, if they can avoid that troubling sense of responsibility.
As the Milgram experiments demonstrated, "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." When the situation demands,"...a person comes to view themselves as the instrument for carrying out another person's wishes, and they therefore no longer see themselves as responsible for their actions."
Here lies the genius of an effective bureaucracy- by separating oppression into component parts, with each action itself not singularly heinous, individuals can work together to perform truly abominable deeds. A fetter of persecution is forged link by link; small actions of cruelty and indifference weld together a chain of oppression sturdy enough to bind anyone. Lives are destroyed, but no-one need feel culpable; the conscience of each participant in the crime remains ostensibly clean.
When one can raze the life and livelihood of others without the slightest compunction, the limits for decimation becomes unbounded; an effective bureaucracy facilitates and even encourages this. It is easier and more productive to eradicate rather than accommodate; no solutions need be devised, no answers need be sought. A unyielding imposition of rules under the guise of efficiency allows inhumanity to flourish, and with it, oppression is a forgone conclusion.
Thus, the "good" bureaucracy becomes the tool of unmitigated evil, and its work force become callous agents of malevolence; their humanity inhumed beneath the ruthless regulations that rule and ruin the lives of all.
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