9 years ago
The Utopia of Rules, by David Graeber
The Imperial examination system is a clear example of the kind of bureaucracy David Graeber describes in his new book The Utopia of Rules, published by Melville House. Graeber, an anthropologist and political activist based at the London School of Economics, is a provocative critic of bureaucracy, which he believes to be stupid-making, hostile to outsiders, needlessly cruel, explicitly violent (he writes pithily that “Police are bureaucrats with weapons”), and in many ways hopelessly corrupt.
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The Utopia of Rules – David Graeber
David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules could have been the book that it’s afraid to be. His most lauded book, Debt, feared nothing. “Why should we assume a debt is something that needs to be repaid?” he asks before calmly calling into question a whole set of comfortably unexamined preconceptions... -
Please Fill In This Form In Triplicate Before You Read 'Utopia Of Rules'
In his latest book, The Utopia of Rules, Graeber laments that we have stopped analyzing this aspect of modern life, ceased producing satires and critiques of it like Catch-22 and The Castle. In the meantime, he argues, the US and other Western countries have become more engulfed than ever by rules. -
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber
At the start of this unusual and interesting book, David Graeber states what he calls the iron law of liberalism: any market reform, any government initiative intended to reduce red tape and promote market forces will have the ultimate effect of increasing the total number of regulations.
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