The neglected stuff

[Kiwigrunt]

We touched on the officer to enlisted ratio here, starting post 62.

Half the reason for excessive spending is probably the fact that many of these high ranking officers need to justify their existence by creating ‘stuff’ that doesn’t need to exist……….(the other half would be the officers themselves). We see a lot of that outside of the military as well, just replace Fuchs’ ‘armies’ with ‘bureaucracies’, and ‘huge bureaucracies’ with ‘self-expanding’:

Armies are huge bureaucracies. You need to shake them badly in order to keep the wastage in check.

And add this quote that someone recently posted (can’t remember who):

Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. (Oscar Wilde)

Question is, when caught in that spiral, who’s gonna do the shaking?

As davidbfpo says:

Our history shows I fear that this only occurs after a defeat and when some insiders realise change is needed, e.g. after Dunkirk.

And provided that those insiders can put the ‘common good’ above their egos and agendas (which may include greed).