Bureaucracy Blog Debate

Efficiency in government and the bureaucracy is the most important goal in mind because the main point of having government and the bureaucracy is to ensure the public stays in control and is able to function, without major problems. If the systems are inefficient and do not perform the required function, then government would be pointless. Efficiency is not the only goal of the government, however. The government must also ensure its people are safe and to protect all of its citizens rights, but in order to do this the system must be efficient. The Daily Show clips explained how over 900,000 veterans are currently waiting in order to receive health benefits coming home from war and how almost the entire system was still being conducted using paper. This inefficiency causes the veterans who have served to protect our country to suffer without the benefits which they were promised. Since these people have risked their lives and fought for our country's freedom, they should not have to wait for their benefits they deserve because the system is inefficient. Efficiency of all government and bureaucratic agencies must be the first priority in order to function. However, even though the systems do take a long time in order to function and are not extremely efficient, a majority of the time they do work in the long run. The process for example of veterans receiving their benefits takes on average about a year, but they do end up getting their reward in the end.
 Weber wanted for a bureaucracy to work like a business where everyone is in charge of their own job and they all work their own task to get the job done. This would be the ideal way for any company or agency to work, but with mixed ideas from different parties and outside opinions, this is not how the bureaucracy in the United States works. Since the nature of government is competition between the parties, the republicans and democratics are constantly working to gain the most power and have the most influence in the way government runs. This constant conflict causes for the bureaucratic agencies to not function to their best ability. The obsession to try to gain control causes competition between the parties and the system does not run as an organized structure as Weber had envisioned. Therefore, the nature of the government does cause the bureaucracies to operate differently than Weber has expected.

There are positives and negatives to running the government like a business. If the government were like a business, everyone would have a specific role that they have to accomplish and it would cause the system to be much more efficient because it would model Weber's idea. Also, the productivity would increase if one person was working on a task rather than many people arguing on how to make it better. One negative result of the government being run like a business is many people who now are in the bureaucracy would lose their jobs, creating a higher unemployment rate throughout the country. Millions of jobs would be unnecessary if only one person had a specific role, so there would be fewer people needed to make decisions. If less people were hired however, then this would be less people the government has to pay for unnecessary jobs in the government. So, either way there are positives and negatives to making the bureaucracy run more like a business.