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To the Editor:
Re “Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts,” by David Brooks (column, Jan. 19):
I understand why Mr. Brooks is frustrated by regulations, and by the administrators charged with overseeing them. Clearly, not having such administrators involved could both lower costs and make (some) people’s lives easier.
What he doesn’t take into account is why those regulations were enacted in the first place, and why administrators are needed to oversee them. Left to their own devices, employers would probably still be hiring people who looked like them. It has taken regulation, and oversight, for women and people of color to have a fair shot in the workplace.
Similarly, absent regulation — and oversight — conditions in the workplace would arguably be less safe for those working there.
I know that Mr. Brooks prefers carrots to sticks, and there is a lot to be said for that. Hopefully another column will describe the carrots he recommends putting in place to achieve the social goals that regulations have sought to address.
Lauri Steel
Los Altos, Calif.
To the Editor:
David Brooks identifies a clear and growing burden on our society: the bureaucratization of American life. We need to identify why the bureaucratic state has arisen before setting off to fix it; otherwise we are likely to run into resistance to change.
I see three causes. The first is a belief that many who receive government aid are undeserving. Think “welfare queens.” The solution was first to root out the “cheaters” and then to throw up enough barriers to screen out all but the most determined.
The second is the rise of litigation to right personal injustices, setting off a counteroffensive of action “theater” to show courts that governments and corporations were sufficiently considerate.
And the third is a growing recognition that what was once considered “merit” is mostly luck. The solution has been yet more theater such as diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) pledges.
These have not led to truly effective solutions, which has in turn led to rising frustration.
Richard McCann
Davis, Calif.
To the Editor:
David Brooks is right on with “Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts”! If only a fraction of unnecessary bureaucrats were diverted to actually answering telephones (instead of machines that tell us to “listen carefully, as our menu options have changed”), then we might find more questions answered, more situations resolved and far less public frustration.
Frank Winkler
Middlebury, Vt.
To the Editor:
As a longtime college educator I have witnessed the administrative bloat described by David Brooks. The proliferation of extracurricular programs and initiatives; training procedures for public safety, mental health awareness and information privacy; course website technologies and the army of techs needed to sustain them; increasingly elaborate performance assessments; and byzantine hierarchies of assistant deans and advisers and directors have nearly tripled the university’s staff while adding little to (and in many cases diminishing) the faculty. It is no wonder that college tuition has skyrocketed.
As Mr. Brooks rightly says, administrators create systems that require more administrators. They are draining to work with and wasteful of students’ money. It is time we pulled the plug on managerial overreach and got back to the basics of learning.
David Southward
Milwaukee
To the Editor:
I was nodding in agreement while reading this article, from David Brooks’s experience with an airline to the part about dealing with his health insurer. I would like to add another huge time- and soul-draining task for physicians: something called maintenance of certification.
This requires physicians to jump through the most ridiculous and costly hoops even after years of treating patients. After 30 years of practicing medicine, I am now required to take an online test quarterly and fulfill compliance requirements that have nothing to do with the way I practice.
This just adds to the many reasons doctors are quitting — as if dealing with insurance companies was not enough.
Jeannette Greer-Brumbaugh
San Marcos, Texas
To the Editor:
I found myself in violent agreement with this column until I got to the last paragraph.
David Brooks writes: “Trump populism is about many things, but one of them is this: working-class people rebelling against administrators. It is about people who want to lead lives of freedom, creativity and vitality.”
If this is so, please explain why Trump populism embraces elaborate and detailed regulation of women’s control of their bodies, micromanagement of libraries to protect “parental choice” and control of speech on college campuses.
Unfortunately, both the far left and the far right want an increased bureaucracy as long as it answers to them.
David Silverstone
West Hartford, Conn.
To the Editor:
David Brooks enunciates the frustration that has fueled public dissatisfaction with government and, to some degree, has fueled the MAGA movement.
My nurse spends the majority of her day trying to obtain benefits for our patients, interfacing primarily with Medicare and pharmacy benefit programs. If we persist long enough, we can usually get approval. But the hope of these administrators seems to be that the height of the hurdles and the time it takes to clear them will discourage us so we give up.
This is why conservatives are so interested in the case before the Supreme Court that could overturn or limit the Chevron doctrine, which says courts should defer to government agencies. The fourth branch of government — bureaucracy — is strangling us. Hopefully, we will get some relief.
Timothy J. Story
Carmel, Ind.
The writer is an internist.
To the Editor:
David Brooks makes some good points about creeping bureaucracy in our everyday lives, citing, for example, the immense amount of administrative staff making rules in the health care industry.
But I also think Mr. Brooks has done a great job of cherry-picking his examples of unnecessary and burdensome regulation, while not mentioning many areas of everyday life that are screaming for more regulation.
For example, Mr. Brooks does not mention the need for better gun regulation that would help prevent the slaughter of tens of thousands of our citizens every year. And how about reinstating the more than 100 environmental rules that the Trump administration reversed, including those that pertain to carbon dioxide emission limits, drilling and toxic substances? I hope Mr. Brooks might agree that lifesaving rules such as these would not be too odious.
Finally, Mr. Brooks suggests that Donald Trump’s populism is, in part, about “working-class people rebelling against administrators” in pursuit of their freedom. But freedom comes with some costs and responsibility.
Eric Murchison
Vienna, Va.
To the Editor:
David Brooks may be right about the spread of bureaucracy in America, but citing M.I.T. as part of the problem shows a misunderstanding of how our institution works, and, more important, who does that work.
Mr. Brooks said the ratio of faculty to nonfaculty staff is 1 to 8, a slice of the data that is narrowly correct but broadly misleading. At M.I.T., the research and education enterprise requires far more to thrive than our outstanding faculty alone. When you add to the faculty the specialized scientists and instructors who help teach our students and conduct research in our labs — and graduate students whom we pay to serve as teaching and research assistants — the ratio of academic to other staff on our campus is nearly 1 to 1.
And those “nonacademic” staff are largely dedicated to supporting classrooms and labs as well — keeping sophisticated research machinery running, keeping the spaces clean, ensuring safety and security, and more. This is not bureaucracy in the way Mr. Brooks decries; these are the essentials of running a top-flight research organization where breakthrough discoveries and innovations provide continuous service to the nation.
Alfred Ironside
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer is vice president for communications at M.I.T.
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