I suspect it is a pretty universal rule that, as any set of rules becomes more complex or more strict, the incentives to treat these rules as bullshit also increases and, at some point, becomes irresistible for most people and organizations. Treating rules as bullshit means attempting to appear to follow the rules while not attempting to following the rules.

One repeated pattern in the response to police violence is for other parts of the government–legislators especially, but also other levels of the police hierarchy, executives outside the police hierarchy, and so on–to attempt to solve a failure to follow rules by creating more rules. The simple futility of this should be obvious. If being against the rules were enough to stop the activity, the activity would have already stopped. Sometimes it looks as though there is some particular loophole that might be closed, but we shouldn’t underestimate the powers of determined people to simply invent loopholes through creative reinterpretation of language.

I think this approach is worse than futile. As the ruleset becomes more complicated, it becomes more difficult to tell if any particular action is in accord with it. The scope of any particular ambiguity is narrowed, but the number of ambiguities increases and it becomes more difficult to understand and keep track of them as they proliferate. As for ambiguities, so for loopholes. Beyond a certain point, both the ruleset and the argument that a particular action is in accord with it are sufficiently complex that, in practice, the issue can’t be resolved rationally. It may become a test of stamina: whoever is willing to continue into longer arguments for more obscure points wins. Or it may be determined by influence, resistance to influence, or more sophisticated manipulations of bureaucratic process. Some degree of this descent from rule-following into obfuscation and bureaucratic machination is probably inevitable whenever a sufficient number of people in an organization don’t want to follow the rules, although there are certainly factors that make the problem more or less severe.

We should also consider those people in the organization who would ordinarily make a good faith attempt to follow the rules. As rules become more complex, it becomes more difficult to do so. At some point, it will be practically impossible. Complexity eventually recruits everyone into the group of people who don’t want to follow the rules, or at minimum into the group of people who must choose to follow some rules and not others. Bullshit becomes an organizational norm, with some assumed agreement about which rules we actually follow and which rules we merely pretend to follow. Of course, it will be very difficult to have any honest discussions within the organization about which rules are in which category, and very difficult to tell good faith attempts at rule-following from obfuscatory bullshit.

I suspect that the way out of this trap requires, among other things, that the rules be made simpler and more permissive.