The social debate about a general reduction in bureaucracy, one of the major reform challenges of modern times, is gathering pace. The burden on citizens/companies to provide the state with services free of charge that those affected do not want, want differently or want more efficiently is increasing everywhere.
In general, the organization, control and execution of tasks that are necessary for the planning, implementation and control of processes can be described as administration. Bureaucracy as the rule of administration is the elevation of administration to the status of reason of state. This is not negative per se, so bureaucracy, if used correctly, can have many advantages and there are good reasons to formalize and standardize certain areas of life. However, if bureaucracy becomes overpowering, the advantages turn into disadvantages. How can this happen?
In principle, efficient administration requires in-depth knowledge of the underlying processes and their process dependencies, not to mention formalization options and formalization restrictions in the process areas. If this knowledge is inaccurate, incorrect or insufficiently cross-process, something is formalized incompletely and chaotically, which is worse than never having formalized it at all.
The flexibility of action is lost without being able to achieve certainty of action and a quick result. The supposed positive of bureaucracy turns into the worst possible negative of the real world. Complicated, inflexible, expensive, slow, ineffective and ultimately unwanted. The more complex the processes and process interrelationships, the more difficult an efficient bureaucracy becomes and the more likely it is to ultimately fail.
What exactly is the problem with the excessive bureaucracy of the EU and the nation states, in this case Germany? There is too much regulation, harassment and sanctions in the wrong places and without effective controls. Bureaucracy should always focus on the final objectives, the measurement of these objectives and the costs of measurement/implementation. If the goal of an administrative process is not achieved, achieved too slowly or with too little benefit, then this administrative process must be improved.
There is nothing wrong with an improvement process if the initial process has already achieved 80% of its effect. However, if the initial process remains stuck at 20-30%, the costs for all participants increase exponentially without an improvement process being able to sharpen the focus in a meaningful way. The gap to 100% is simply too big.
This is the core problem of German bureaucracy: it usually ends up with such low target achievement figures that it helps no one, paralyzes everyone and costs without providing a comparative competitive advantage for those subject to the bureaucracy. The worst of all possible worlds. Bureaucracy unilaterally makes the bureaucrats and their helpers happy and disturbs social harmony in the worst possible way.
This kind of bureaucracy is the sure path to ruin.
