Safe Space vs Free Space: Generational Shift in Universities
Yale students and faculty in 2015, particularly Erica Christakis who challenged administrative guidelines about Halloween costumes. Modern students increasingly prioritize emotional safety over intellectual freedom, marking a stark generational divide.
Bureaucratic Capture: How Universities Became Administrative Machines
University administrators, deans, and bureaucrats at elite institutions like Yale, Harvard, and Stanford who transformed educational institutions into self-serving organizations. These administrators prioritize their own salaries, offices, and comfort over teaching and research.
High Modernism: The Hubris of Top-Down State Planning
James C. Scott, political scientist and author of “Seeing Like a State,” identifies high modernism as the ideology driving state planners and bureaucrats. These officials believe their rational plans can engineer perfect societies through centralized control.
Monocultures and Fragility: Why Diversity Creates Resilience
James C. Scott uses examples from 19th century German forestry and Tanzanian forced communism to demonstrate how state planners create fragile monocultures. These bureaucrats prioritize efficiency and visual simplicity over resilient complexity.
Bureaucratic Inflation: Why Monopolized Sectors Experience Cost Disease
Middle-class Americans and citizens of bureaucratized societies who face exploding costs for housing, healthcare, and education while consumer goods become cheaper. Bureaucrats controlling these monopolized sectors extract increasing rents.
Quiet Quitting and Alienation: Worker Rebellion Against Bureaucracy
Workers globally who refuse to invest effort in bureaucratic organizations. Americans call it “quiet quitting,” while Chinese youth describe it as “tangping” (lying flat) or “bailan” (let it rot). These workers recognize their labor serves bureaucrats rather than meaningful purposes.
Parasitic Elite Networks: How Bureaucrats Protect Each Other
Administrative elites across institutions who form protective networks. These bureaucrats hire friends into management positions, creating cabals that prioritize maintaining privilege over organizational health or social benefit.
Forced Self-Education: The Silver Lining of Institutional Corruption
Individuals who recognize institutional corruption and respond by taking control of their own education. Rather than trusting teachers, parents, or authority figures revealed as bureaucrats, they think independently and explore diverse opinions.