The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
David Graeber
Top 10 Best Quotes
“the ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
“Police are bureaucrats with weapons.”
“All rich countries now employ legions of functionaries whose primary function is to make poor people feel bad about themselves.”
“The Iron Law of Liberalism states that any market reform, any government initiative intended to reduce red tape and promote market forces will have the ultimate effect of increasing the total number of regulations, the total amount of paperwork, and the total number of bureaucrats the government employs.”
“Women everywhere are always expected to continually imagine what one situation or another would look like from a male point of view. Men are almost never expected to do the same for women. So deeply internalized is this pattern of behavior that many men react to any suggestion that they might do otherwise as if it were itself an act of violence.”
“Capitalism, he noted, is not something imposed on us by some outside force. It only exists because every day we wake up and continue to produce it. If we woke up one morning and all collectively decided to produce something else, then we wouldn’t have capitalism anymore.”
“What ultimately lies behind the appeal of bureaucracy is fear of play.”
“There was a time when academia was society’s refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical: it would seem society now has no place for them at all.”
“[Superheroes] aren’t fascists. They are just ordinary, decent, super-powerful people who inhabit a world in which fascism is the only political possibility.”
“It’s not just that some people get to break the rules—it’s that loyalty to the organization is to some degree measured by one’s willingness to pretend this isn’t happening.”
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Book Keywords:
bureaucracy, privilege, point-of-view, men, women
