Bureaucracy and Physics

"Bureaucracy is like a pulley. If you have a box that's too heavy for you to lift, you hook it up to a pulley. This makes it possible for you to lift, but it doesn't give you 'free energy.' If you want to make it half as easy, you're going to pull twice as far. You sacrifice distance for force, so you get the same amount of energy to raise the box the same distance. This is generally a great idea, but there is a lot of cost involved. You need to buy the ropes, the pulley, find some way to attach the rope to the box, not to mention setting it up and making sure everything is working because if one part gives out the whole effort is wasted. It takes way more care and maintenance than just lifting a box yourself, so you wouldn't set up a pulley for every single system, but these costs are proportionally less if you have a ton of boxes to lift or have to lift a box you can't on your own. A pulley also provides a lot of middle class jobs so people will be happy. But I think I've left the analogy at that point."

I was very proud of this.