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David Graeber: The Utopia of Rules (Paperback, 2016, Melville House) 4 stars

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is a …

The bureaucratization of daily life means the imposition of impersonal rules and regulations; impersonal rules and regulations, in turn, can only operate if they are backed up by the threat of force.

— The Utopia of Rules by 

this is a simple thing but kind of an a-ha for me. want to suggest as a pairing for anyone reading Seeing Like a State

replied to christa's status

and here, again:

"Bureaucracies, I've suggested, are not themselves forms of stupidity so much as they are ways of organizing stupidity—of managing relationships that are already characterized by extremely unequal structures of imagination, which exist because of the existence of structural violence."

and

"Police are bureaucrats with weapons."