“Bureaucracies public and private appear--for whatever historical reasons--to be organized in such a way as to guarantee that a significant proportion of actors will not be able to perform their tasks as expected. It's in this sense that I've said one can fairly say that bureaucracies are utopian forms of organization. After all, is this not what we always say of utopians: that they have a naive faith in the perfectibility of human nature and refuse to deal with humans as they actually are? Which is, are we not also told, what leads them to set impossible standards and then blame the individuals for not living up to them?”
― The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
― The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
“The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote time when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations.”
― Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
― Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
“Hold on to your heart and life will give you wings.”
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“Young people in Europe and North America in particular, but increasingly throughout the world, are being psychologically prepared for useless jobs, trained in how to pretend to work, and then by various means shepherded into jobs that almost nobody really believes serve any meaningful purpose.”
― Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
― Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
“What we are witnessing is the rise of those forms of popular culture that office workers can produce and consume during the scattered, furtive shards of time they have at their disposal in workplaces where even when there’s nothing for them to do, they still can’t admit it openly.”
― Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
― Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
Arnold Kapinova’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Arnold Kapinova’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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