Bureaucracy: A beautiful Mix of Fraud and Laziness Posing as the Wheels that Run Society

A general theme I think I am coming to believe is the fact that people grow larger in proportion to their surroundings and older in reference to time, and that neither of these highly automatic, completely reactive/passive life facts have anything to do with, nor do they imply, any level of maturity. I usually entertain this thought while ranting to myself about the latest act I have witnessed exemplifying the general laziness of the human race at large. From the pick-up truck who almost ran me over while on my bike because they were, one, too lazy to put their blinker on and two, (and since they couldn't manager to use their blinker) definitely much too lazy to look over their left and right shoulders to check their blind spot, to the court clerk who can't help you, doesn't want to help you and, oh what the hell, doesn't even know why they picked up the phone to begin with, I find the general adult populace, at best, shoddy.

Living in Chicago the last couple years alone the city has seen exploration committees put together to investigate City Hall, the CTA and the Chicago USPS to name the big ones. The media loves to jump all over these having itself its own fraud witch hunt each time around. Though there is fraud uncovered in each investigation and that same fraud is usually, to some level, fact, I feel there is something deeper and far more sinister in the system than fraud alone. At least fraud denotes work being done. To engage in fraud it must take horrendous amounts of planning and creativity.

Inaction and laziness, on the other hand, causes far more trouble and slows progress more than any fraud probably could. Most cases of high corporate fraud, though fun to read about and empowering to uncover, really don't affect most individuals of society on a personal level at the end of the day. A million is embezzled here, a union is fraudulently looked more favorably upon there and the rest of us still go to work the next day. Fraud stories are flash fires in the news, forgotten the next day with the dawn of a new, more corrupt fraud. However, laziness is something us normal folk have to deal with on a daily basis. Laziness is not a flash fire and it doesn't last only as long as it isn't found out only to be torn out, reconstructed and renewed with a nice audit.

Fraud wants to leave the general public alone, it wants to go unseen, to only effect that which will never realize it. Laziness, on the other hand, stares you right in the face, beckoning you, no, challenging you, to just try and do something about it. Laziness is dealt with each day by most people yet nothing is ever said about it and the media could care less what its overall effect is, most likely out of sheer laziness.

This has actually become a real selling point for capitalism as we know it. Not that capitalism needs another plug in America, but when thought through, this issue of laziness and fraud really reveals the wonderful comforting side of capitalism (as opposed to the post-industrial, outsourcing side we're learning to deal with these days). The beautiful thing about capitalism in the context of a lazy, fraud stricken bureaucracy is the notion of competition.

An example of this would be what FedEx is to the USPS. Sure, most of us are going to use the USPS the majority of the time. It's cheaper (for now) and just more ingrained in our culture as the way one sends mail. However, we all know that once a letter is dropped into a mail box it could really mean anything and it assures nothing. The USPS has become low-risk. Not that there is a low risk one's mail won't make it to its final destination, but low risk as in, only low risk mail is sent via USPS (i.e. that letter to grandma). We hope these things get to their destination, but if they don't, whatever, another can always be sent if need be.

One irony about the USPS these days, however, is the fact that they've been steadily increasing their prices except they forgot one thing. In a capitalistic culture, if price goes up, quality had better follow. However, somewhere along the line in the USPS' price raising strategy they forgot to increase quality of service. So now we basically have the same old run-down system at $0.41 instead of $0.32. It's kind of like an old freezer. It keeps things relatively cold but over time it begins to use more an more electricity yet performs the same (or perhaps worse), so your electric bill is going up and you still can't keep two pork roasts in deep freeze at one time.

The short of it is, apparently, at some point the USPS got all excited when FedEx and UPS began charging the prices they were for service so the USPS decided it would raise its prices as well. Not matched by any means, but raised none-the-less. However, in the midst of all the excitement the USPS forgot to really look into it and failed to truly understand the difference in service, which logically lead to the price variance between the two in the first place. We all enjoy fuming at the USPS for raising prices while maintaining poor quality while we praise FedEx and UPS for their smiles and cool catch phrases, and it makes us happy to think that there is an entity out there that will guarantee quick and successful service, but at the same time, none of us are ready to pay $8.00 to send grandma a thank you. Conclusion: the USPS is needed as its existence maintains the position of the skapegoat, without which, we'd end up hating FedEx and UPS and pitting them against one another deciding one day that though delivery may be guaranteed, stamps are more fun.

Therefore, competition remains an intricate part of our society, and as we have seen with examples of FedEx and the USPS, competition still exists between two similar entities even when their quality levels are vastly different. People will always like service, but never high prices, they'll always like a helpful attitude, but also want a collectible. Until FedEx comes up with a stamp like product that surpasses the broad range of the USPS stamp, they'll never truly kill the beast.