the biggest loser

yesterday was the first time in my entire life that i've used "proper channels" to try and accomplish something in a bureaucracy. amazingly enough, it's also the first time i'll have succeeded. pretty big milestone, i think. just some unorthodox tactics* and direct human-to-human communication helped a lot, because it allowed the administrator in question to get a steady stream of highly relevant information in a short, convenient span of time. time, as it turns out, is really the biggest issue here.

i read somewhere that the most significant problem inherent to bureaucracies is their need to describe people, reductively, with numbers, because there's so much information required for each individual person's component of every decision a given bureaucracy will make. upon reading that, what struck me next was a little surprising: the sheer descriptive power of numbers is amazing! if a picture's worth a thousand words, how much more is a good set of numbers worth?

the government seems to quickly earn the ire of a large portion of the general public, because of all the administrative quicksand that remains in its systems. however, no one seems to suggest the idea that economics and statistics be given more priority in school. as a democracy, for our voters to make informed decisions without sacrificing an inordinate amount of their time, they must understand statistics and the principles of economic thought. otherwise, the only citizens that'll have a shot at becoming informed political participants will be those who make "becoming informed" their full-time occupation.

i have a dream: that one day, our government will decide to go on an information diet. and that at some later date, we can look around us at the rest of the world and say, hey, would you look at that. our government's the biggest loser.

*making an appointment with the principal's secretary, despite the fact that the principal is always up and about the school, ostensibly available for comments or concerns.