The Utopia of Rules
by David Graeber · first published 2015
71% recommend26% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Short, readable essays on how bureaucracy spread through public and corporate life, why it persists, and why promised technological futures never arrived; for readers wanting a critical, accessible take on red tape.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber ... traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice"--Jacket.
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…cost disease. It seems to explain rising costs, but I don't understand the mechanism, or what to do about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease And this book blew my mind: "The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy" by David Graeber http://amzn.to/2mi169U
on “The New York Times Is Eliminating Its Public Editor Role” ↗May I suggest you read "The Utopia of Rules" by David Graeber (may he rest in peace). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-the-ut... He argues that we've built a giant bureaucracy,…
on “Energy vs. Sovereign Bond Markets” ↗Graeber is brilliant and I highly recommend his book: The Utopia of Rules. Much of what we do falls into the pointless jobs category too. We write software to help people automate things that don't need to be done in the first place. Almost every piece of software we write…
on “Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs” ↗…good life. Nobody can afford to get involved in their community, or with local politics. Noam Chomsky has written a number of interesting articles about apathy and alienation. I highly recommend The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber. Not directly about apathy in society, but related.
on “How America's Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality” ↗…provision a new customer of a critical service? Sure. Here's your token. It expires in 2 days. -- Hat tip to Bill Joy, Jini, JXTA, etc for lifting the lease notion up the OSI stack. Hat tip to The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber for describing how organizational scars/scabs come to be. I'm not yet sure how, if ZeroTrust Networking extends this model, metaphor.
on “Permissionless innovation” ↗You're putting words in my mouth at this point so I don't know what else I can contribute to this discussion to move it forward. I share the same argument David Graeber was making in Utopia of Rules, you should give it a read.
on “Social Cooling (2017)” ↗…TLDR: Two kinds of work are doing and justifying. Those of us used to doing are really bad at, and demotivated by, the justifying. Sorry, I should have book marked it. -- Finally listening to Graeber's Utopia of Rules. It's kinda blowing my mind. Like a firestorm in my head. Graeber's The Democracy Project has even more radical, useful explanations. His distinction between "rational" (following the rules) and "reasonable"…
on “I've walked away from software development” ↗…best practices can percolate. To do list item: Maybe Everett's Diffusion of Innovations talks about this. I've been getting a lot out of David Graeber's books, most recently The Democracy Project and Utopia of Rules. They're the first description of workplace democracy (collaboration, empowerment) which matches my own experiences. Back then, I was just kinda winging it (eg "What would Drucker do?"), because I really…
on “The Toyota Production System (2013)” ↗…because then it degenerates in tyranny. People are too used to think that structure == hierarchy that we assume that the corollary is that hierarchy is needed to avoid tyranny. David Graeber in his "Utopia of Rules" [1] makes a good counterargument: if your goal is to avoid tyranny it's little difference to have it implicit or explicit. In the later case, you are just giving some moral justification for it -- you…
on “The Tyranny of Structurelessness (1972)” ↗…ideology has been deprecated. Please install upgrades. Unlike the mythical Freedom Markets™, actual functional open markets require regulation, begetting bureaucracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules https://www.amazon.com/Utopia-Rules-Technology-Stupidity-Bur... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/oliver-burkeman-co... http://boingboing.net/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-o... "Are…
on “Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit” ↗…their basic needs other ways, the police will squash these alternatives with violence. If you are actually interested in what Graeber has to say instead of making up strawman arguments, you can read "Utopia of Rules".
on “How basic income could fail in America” ↗Interesting theory about corporation style bureaucracy taking over public (governmental) functions, leading to increased costs, among other side effects: "The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy" by David Graeber http://amzn.to/2mi169U Same economist who wrote Debt. First theory for why public education has gotten so nutty. Like…
on “Some Thoughts on the Cost Disease” ↗The second essay in David Graeber's book "The Utopia of Rules," which I think is called something like "On Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit," has an interesting discussion on why the future you described (and, let's face it, were more or less "promised")…
on “Self-driving technology is going to change more than cars” ↗"government administrators creating more and more regulations" David Graeber makes the compelling case that corporations begat bureaucracy, which then metastasizes into government. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy http://a.co/ih4ixmv Comparing the medical loss ratios of public vs private, single payer systems like Medicare vs private guarantors, seems…
on “The rise (and rise) of the healthcare administrator” ↗…much more thorough synopsis than “debt has taken lots of different forms in different societies throughout history, including our own today.” By contrast, I found Graeber’s follow up collection “The Utopia of Rules” startlingly provocative and a super fun read - one of my favorite books. I think Graeber’s divergent writing style and argumentative form work better in the essay format.
on “Debt Worldwide Hits Record $86k per Person” ↗