Bureaucracy's Blind Rule

"Bureaucracy applies the mechanical model to this task. It provides machinery in which there is a high degree of division of labor, of specialization, of predictability, and of anonymity. It is of the essence of bureaucracy that it sets out to achieve a kind of justice by treating each individual as an anonymous and replaceable unit."

"In its ultimate development, bureaucracy is the rule of nobody and is therefore experienced as tyranny."


Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 33 (emphasis mine)