Modern institutions, the way we know them above all in the Global North, in the so-called industrialized countries – meaning all state bodies, institutions, bureaucracy, all of these things – are historically fairly new; it only seems to us as if they had always been there. Yuval Noah Harari says that we as a species dominate the planet mainly because we’ve learned to cooperate like no other species. And for cooperation at a high level – meaning on a large scale – institutions and bureaucracy are crucial, because through them we outsource, or rather delegate, trust from the individual to the community, to an institution.
This construct, this system, has more or less worked so far. And of course the system has its advantages: when we think of modern medicine, for example, or of science, research or public services (Daseinsvorsorge), then the precondition for all of these things is, of course, that we have functioning institutions. At the same time, though, the socio-political conditions are changing – and that’s pushing established institutions to their limits.
That’s exactly what we’re experiencing now. I’ve lived through this once before, at the end of the 80s, when the GDR’s institutions and the GDR’s bureaucracy reached their limits, then broke and more or less disappeared. Large parts of them vanished back then and were taken over by something newer, something more robust. The majority rigidly professed their loyalty to socialism, even though everyone had long known that the whole thing was just being acted out. After the Wende – the fall of the Wall – 90% of SED members had suddenly vanished. And now I’m experiencing a similar creeping erosion of things, values and rules that we took for granted for a long time.
I think this comes, among other things, from the fact that a growing percentage of those who work in institutions, bureaucracy, hierarchies and agencies are abusing their discretion and no longer correcting the system. That means, for example, that in the so-called area of “subsidized further training” (geförderte Weiterbildung) – as it’s so nicely called in bureaucratic officialese – a whole lot of problems have now piled up, because the system is already stretched beyond its limits and more and more people there are simply looking the other way.
They simply say: “Okay, I’m inside the system here, I’m just the person carrying things out, I’m employed or a civil servant here, and my job is to make sure, within the system, that the people who no longer have a job get back into work, back to earning their daily bread.” Of course, that means the person who decides like this is shutting out reality, taking the easy way out and retreating behind the rules of bureaucracy – rules that were set up 40 or 50 years ago and simply don’t work anymore today. Because if you have a bit of common sense and a bit of interest, you can plainly see that there are fewer and fewer classic jobs, and that the era of “Bullshit Jobs”, of modern forced labour, is basically over.
The power of the state is, in the end, just the sum of individual people’s convenience. Every caseworker in a government office has discretion, a job description and an inner compass. If robots sat there, you wouldn’t need people. Today we’re living through the same life-lie around the classic job: everyone pretends that a permanent position is the only way, and that whoever can’t find a job is lazy and has only themselves to blame. Outdated industrial structures, missed digitalization and global crises are gradually dissolving the old dream of prosperity. Accusing the unemployed of laziness merely conceals the structural collapse of ossified institutions. Anyone in a government office who plays along with this outdated game and looks away shares the responsibility.
Now the question is: how far, up to what point, will this erosion continue? Until when will the system still more or less work – and when will it tip over? In other words: will there be a critical mass of people inside the systems who say: “Hey, I’m not going along with this anymore, I can see that it doesn’t work anymore – I can’t push people into jobs that don’t even exist”? This is aimed above all, specifically, at the Federal Employment Agency (Arbeitsagentur) and the Jobcenter, but all the institutions connected to them are just as affected – the whole further-training machine and industry. They, too, would have to recognize on an individual level that it simply doesn’t work anymore to forcefully push people into jobs, because these jobs just plain don’t exist in sufficient numbers anymore. Of course there are still some jobs, sure – but there aren’t enough anymore. That era is simply over.
What do you take away from this thought?
Thank you. Every answer fits – take it with you into your day. Would you like to share something yourself?
