“Bureaucracy” is a word that comes from the French, which I suppose means that moi has a greater understanding of it than most folks who have never lived in France. Literally, “bureau” means “desk.”  So “bureaucracy” is “rule by desk” in the same way that “democracy” is supposed to be “rule by the people” since “demos” in Greek is “people.” Problems already. There is considerable debate possible about how much representative government can even be a democracy.  I mean, do so-called “Public Servants” vote for what their constituencies want, or for what they really believe? Desks have no soul.  Here, we are on a little firmer ground, for bureacracies have not much in the way of souls, either. The word “bureau” itself originally meant the cheap green cloth used to cover the tops of desks.  More like the felt of blotters, the coarsely woven green dyed stuff is used to cover gaming tables and such.

The Brits use the word for this sort of cloth as a metaphor for “snooker” (the billiard table game with all of those confusing balls and rules). Read more on Bureaucracy, What It Is And Why I hate It…