Greetings Humans! Hi There! How are you doing? How’s that old human thingy going for you? Yeah OK! Alright! Whatever works for you, right? Today I’d like to talk to you about the most bureaucratic world in the whole damn universe, a crappy little world called Urath G4646712 which is inconspicuously situated somewhere on the outskirts of the lesser Magellanic cloud. What we’re talking about here is a society that’s so frigging bureaucratic that it’s a miracle that they still survive! You could call that one of the great wonders of the known universe, although I have to say it’s not a particularly inspirational one. On Urath G4646712 you have to keep a tally of how many times you breathe a day and submit a daily report on the appropriate form to the area administrator. Luckily the inhabitants of this world have a very slow metabolism so they don’t breathe very often. Even so however a significant proportion of the population give up breathing every year because it’s simply too much too much trouble. The paperwork involved is what you might call ‘severely prohibitive’. That’s toxic bureaucracy for you. If you wanted an example…

You wouldn’t believe this world – you really wouldn’t. On this benighted bureaucrat-infested planet if you want to make a decision you have to apply to the central regulator six weeks in advance! How frigging mental is that? What’s more, small clouds of micro-drones regularly drop out of the sky on you unannounced to check up on you – citizens are required to stand still for up to four hours while the audit is being conducted. The insect auditor-bots even fly up your nose. Every last molecule in your body gets audited – there isn’t even a stray carbon atom that doesn’t get scrutinized from top to bottom. Sometimes on the odd occasion when the authorities have reason to be suspicious about irregularities (or if some official doesn’t like you) you are taken in to the central office for a complete review. This can take years and there is no recompense for loss of earnings. To engage in such a review is considered to be your patriotic duty. The review in this case is so thorough that it takes a small army of bureaucrats to conduct it. Bureaucrats are of course the one thing this world is not short on! Good sense perhaps, but not bureaucrats…

There are tower blocks a mile high full of the bastards dotted all over the surface of the planet. They even have giant floating office blocks in the oceans. Plus innumerable orbiting mega-offices in geostationary orbit. The actual administrative officers have all been miniaturized to the size of fleas for the sake of efficiency and cutting operating costs. Can you imagine that – an office block a mile high full of administrative executives the size of fleas all working away ceaselessly day and night each one of them on super-advanced CNS stimulant smart-drugs designed to help their microscopic brains work more effectively? If you say that you can imagine it then I’d have to call you out on it. I’d have to call you a liar. You can’t imagine that. No one can. You’d have to have been there, like I have. You’d have to have actually seen it with your own two eyes. OK so maybe it’s me that’s lying here. To be honest I’ve made all that up. I need to come clean – there’s no such world as Urath G4646712. I made it up. I made it up because I know how terribly fond you humans are of bureaucracy and I wanted to scare you. You know, a bit of an old cautionary tale…