What’s not to like about a book with the title [amazon_link id=”1612193749″ target=”_blank” ]The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureacracy[/amazon_link]. This is a book of essays by Occup Wall Street activist and LSE anthropologist David Graeber, author of the tome [amazon_link id=”1612194192″ target=”_blank” ]Debt: The First 5000 Years[/amazon_link]. Well, various things. Just like his previous book, I enjoyed the read, strongly disagreed with some points and strongly agreed with others. That makes for quite good entertainment.

[amazon_image id=”B00MKZ0QZ2″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy[/amazon_image]

The book is a series of essays, ostensibly about bureaucracy, but really about the iniquities of neoliberal capitalism, which is not at all an arena of individual liberty but on the contrary a highly circumscribed system of exploitation. ‘Bureaucracy’ does service as a catch-all term for the set of rules through which the oligarchy in cahoots with the government restrict the options of the great mass of people.

There is certainly something in this portrayal of a society of rich people and large organisations able to act as they please while the great majority experience a highly regulated life. Think about wanting to open a small cafe or a two-person plumbing business, and the extent of certification and inspections that are needed. Or opening a bank account. Graeber writes that we spend hours entangled in paperwork to apply for licences or pay taxes or open accounts, and: “The paperwork we do exists in this sort of in between zone – ostensibly private, but in fact entirely shaped by a government that provides the legal framework, underpins the rules with its courts and all the elaborate mechanisms of enforcement that come with them but – crucially – works closely with the private concerns to ensure the results will guarantee a certain rate of provate profit.” All the more so in these days of outsourcing of state functions such as determining eligibility for benefits. There has been, he says, a gradual fusion of public and private power into “a single entity, rife with rules and regulations.”

So I think there is something in this. Matt Taibbi was onto the same point in [amazon_link id=”0385529961″ target=”_blank” ]Griftopia[/amazon_link] when he argued that all the people who seem crazy to support Tea Party policies actually do have an arbitrary and unfriendly government controlling their lives.

Where I strongly disagree with Graeber is in his analysis of how to respond. The good part of his argument is about experimenting with other kinds of association and collective organisation, not government but not for profit, perhaps idealistic but worth trying. However, he also writes: “Do not underestimate the importance of sheer physical violence,” drawing on the experience of protests like the 1999 Battle for Seattle riots against the WTO.

He also has a long excursion into technology, arguing that the pace of change peaked in the 1950s or 60s, and that current technological change is not delivering things people might actually want such as flying jet packs. The high hopes of the 1960s as manifested in Star Trek, say, have not materialized. No beaming up, no holodecks etc. Instead, technology has been diverted to military causes. Apart from the fact that the military have always influenced technological research, this is a fact-free essay. I’d want to see some kind of evidence, because if you look at things like either price declines (or how many hours of work are needed to purchase a unit of computer power, or light), or the character of post-1960s discoveries  (medical advances, compelling technologies such as mobile telephony) then there seems to me to be decent evidence for no slowdown. Why can’t computers think yet? Well, give them time. Economic historians like Paul David and David Landes have pointed out how long and variable and unpredictable are the lags between discoveries and their economic and social impact. The dreams and fears about electricity probably peaked more than 60 years before its use had become widespread.

Still, disagreements don’t really matter with a book like this. It’s enjoyable to read something thought provoking with lots of interesting material. I enjoyed the Star Trek riff (“The Federation is Leninism brought to its future absolute cosmic success… a happy conjuncture of material abundance and ideological conformity”) and the potted history of the German Postal system of the 19th century and its influence on future ideal societies, and his review of the third Batman movie and its political interpretation. This book is also less than half the length of [amazon_link id=”1612194192″ target=”_blank” ]Debt[/amazon_link], Bureaucracy having a shorter history I suppose. Although actually the one thing this isn’t really about is bureaucracy, but instead another Graeber take on power.