To the editor:
About “Death by 1000 Pieces of Paper” by David Brooks (January 19th column):
It’s understandable why Brooks is frustrated with the regulations and the administrators charged with overseeing them. Obviously, not involving such administrators could reduce costs and make (some) people’s lives easier.
What he doesn’t consider is why these regulations were created in the first place, and why we need an administrator to oversee them. If left alone, employers will continue to hire people like them. Regulation and surveillance became necessary for women and people of color to enjoy fair rights in the workplace.
Similarly, without regulation and oversight, workplace conditions would likely be less safe for the people working there.
I know Mr. Brooks prefers carrots to sticks, but there’s a lot to be said for that. Hopefully, in another column, he will explain the carrots he recommends putting in place to achieve the social goals that regulation seeks to address.
lauri steel
Los Altos, California
To the editor:
David Brooks points to a clearly growing burden on our society: the bureaucratization of American life. Before we begin to repair the bureaucratic state, we need to identify why the bureaucratic state arose. Otherwise, you may run into resistance to change.
There are three possible causes. The first is the belief that many who receive government assistance do not deserve it. Consider the “welfare queen.” The solution was to first root out the “cheaters” and then build enough barriers to exclude all but the most determined.
Second, there is an increase in lawsuits to right personal injustices, and governments and corporations are beginning to fight back with “theatrical” actions to show courts that they care enough.
And third, there is a growing recognition that much of what was once thought of as “merit” is due to luck. The solutions were even more dramatic, including a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) pledge.
These have not resulted in truly effective solutions, leading to increasing frustration.
Richard McCann
Davis, California
To the editor:
David Brooks is working on Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts. If only some of the unnecessary bureaucracy was diverted to actually answering the phone (instead of a machine telling you, “Please listen carefully because the menu choices have changed”), more questions could be answered, and more questions would be answered. More situations could be resolved and public dissatisfaction would be much less. .
frank winkler
Middlebury, Vermont
To the editor:
As a university educator for many years, I have witnessed firsthand the administrative bloat described by David Brooks. A proliferation of extracurricular programs and initiatives. Training procedures for public safety, mental health awareness, and information privacy. Of course, the technology of the website and the army of technology needed to maintain it. Increasingly sophisticated performance evaluation. And through a complex hierarchy of assistant deans, advisors, and directors, the university’s staff nearly tripled, but its faculty grew little (and in many cases decreased). It’s no wonder that college tuition costs are soaring.
As Brooks rightly says, administrators create systems that require more administrators. They are wasting their efforts and wasting students’ money. It’s time to stop managerial overreach and get back to the basics of learning.
david southward
milwaukee
To the editor:
From David Brooks’ experience with airlines to the part about dealing with health insurance companies, I was nodding my head in agreement as I read this article. I would like to add one more huge time and mental drain for doctors. It’s called maintaining qualifications.
This forces doctors to jump through the most ridiculous and expensive hoops, even after years of treating patients. After 30 years of practicing medicine, I am now required to take quarterly online tests and meet compliance requirements that are unrelated to my practice.
This just gives doctors even more reason to quit, as if dealing with insurance companies wasn’t enough.
Janet Greer-Brambo
San Marcos, Texas
To the editor:
I found myself vehemently agreeing with this column until I got to the last paragraph.
David Brooks writes: “Trump’s populism is many things, but one of them is that working-class people are rebelling against the authorities, living lives full of freedom, creativity, and vitality. It’s a story about people who want to be.”
If so, please explain why Trump’s populism employs elaborate and detailed regulations to control women’s bodies, micromanage libraries to protect “parental choice,” and control speech on college campuses. please.
Unfortunately, both the far left and the far right want more bureaucracy to serve them.
david silverstone
west hartford, connecticut
To the editor:
David Brooks articulates the frustrations that fueled public discontent with government and, in some ways, fueled the MAGA movement.
As a nurse, I spend most of my day providing benefits to patients, primarily working with Medicare and pharmacy benefit programs. If you persist long enough, you can usually get approval. But the hope of these administrators seems to be that we will become discouraged and give up when we see the height of the hurdle and the time it will take to clear it.
That’s why conservatives are so interested in the case before the Supreme Court, which could overturn or limit Chevron’s principle that courts should defer to government agencies. The fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, is strangling us. Hopefully, this will give you some peace of mind.
Timothy J. Story
Carmel, Indiana
The author is an internist.
To the editor:
David Brooks makes some good points about the bureaucracy that creeps into our daily lives, citing, for example, the vast number of administrative staff that make the rules in the medical industry.
But I also think Mr. Brooks did a great job of cherry-picking examples of unnecessary and burdensome regulation, without touching on the many areas of everyday life where calls for more regulation are growing.
For example, Brooks does not mention the need for stricter gun laws to prevent the massacre of tens of thousands of Americans each year. And what if we reinstated the more than 100 environmental regulations that the Trump administration rolled back, including carbon emissions limits, drilling, and hazardous materials regulations? I hope Mr. Brooks agrees that these lifesaving rules aren’t all that unpleasant.
Finally, Brooks suggests that Donald Trump’s populism is, in part, about “working-class people rebelling against management” in search of freedom. But freedom comes with a certain price and responsibility.
Eric Murchison
Vienna, Virginia
To the editor:
David Brooks may be right about the prevalence of bureaucracy in America, but singling out MIT as part of the problem is a challenge to how our institutions function and, more importantly, who controls them. It shows a misunderstanding about what does the job.
Brooks said the ratio of faculty to non-teaching staff is 1:8, which is part of the data that is narrowly correct but broadly misleading. At MIT, a successful research and teaching enterprise requires much more than excellent faculty. When you add to the faculty professional scientists and instructors who support student teaching and research in the lab, as well as graduate students who are paid as teaching and research assistants, the ratio of academic staff to other staff on campus will be approximately 1. To 1.
And these “non-academic” staff are also primarily dedicated to supporting classrooms and laboratories, keeping advanced research machinery running, keeping spaces clean, and ensuring safety and security. . This is not the kind of bureaucracy Brooks decries. These are essential to running a first-class research organization whose breakthrough discoveries and innovations provide continuous service to the nation.
alfred ironside
cambridge, massachusetts
The author is Vice President for Communications at MIT