Oct 15, 2025–After spending an hour on the phone with an unnamed governmental agency, I came to a conclusion: bureaucracy’s only purpose is to preserve itself.
Our task this day was to let a certain state agency know that our retail business had closed years ago and to please stop sending us forms to report on.
Y’all know the drill. After many attempts at even finding a published phone number, we began our journey. On hold. For 30 minutes. Listening to Burt Bacharach, interrupted by “… your call is important to us… stay on line for the next available operator…”
What do you get when you fall in love…
Well, we finally got a nice young man on the phone who, after hearing our dilemma, really wanted to help. He basically told us, look, I could give you instructions on you how to do this, but it will be easier if we just work through the process together. Yes! At that point I would have crawled into his windowless van and rode to the river.
We set off on a 40-minute, 20 step, page by page process that involved secret codes, bypassing Error Screens, and repeating the last three steps… just… well… just because.
There was no way we could have figured out any of that on our own. No lay person could hope to get through the rat’s nests of rules, regulations, and regulators.
As we hung up, after giving him a rave review, it dawned on me… that’s the point. It is designed to be a rat’s nest. One state agency staffer actually admitted that to me years ago when I traveled to our state capital seeking help applying for funds for an education initiative.
Why is this process so obtuse, I asked in exasperation?
Mr. Phil, he said… if we made it easy, then just anyone could do it.
I now understand his reasoning. When these 4-letter state and federal agencies are created, their function is to regulate the function of vast industries, in order to keep citizens safe and healthy. We’ve all read Upton Sinclair.
But what inevitably happens in such a system is that the regulators soon realize their livelihood depends on continuing to regulate. They don’t want to succeed at making the workplace safe, our food pristine, our water and air clean and clear, or our reporting paperwork logical and understandable. Then they wouldn’t have a job. It’s not evil; it’s self-preservation. It’s built into the system.
Meanwhile, our quest for exiting the matrix goes on. We have been referred to another agency, whose return call we breathlessly await.
I’m already queuing up the hold music.
I’m out of those chains, those chains that bind you…