The True Power of Bureaucracy Is Not Action. It Is Silence.

How institutions avoid accountability by simply doing nothing. Their cruel superpower is shunning and allowing infinite delays to exhaust litigants into their own silence.

For most of my life, I misunderstood where institutional power comes from.

I assumed it came from legislation, budgets, regulations, prestige, or political influence. I believed that the greatest danger posed by bureaucracies was that they might occasionally reach the wrong decision—that prejudice, incompetence, or ideology might produce an unjust outcom…