This is a theme that comes up frequently in testimonies about box-ticking operations and even more so in the corporate sector than in government
Box-tickers are a little similar to duct-tapers, in that they’re really about substituting one thing for another: though, in this case, box-tickers are about substituting appearances for results, rather than labor for capital. Either way, they’re still “employees who exist only or primarily to allow an organization to be able to claim it is doing something that, in fact, it is not doing.” The simple truth here is that it’s sometimes cheaper to act like you’re doing something than to actually do that thing and that sometimes you really can get away with it. To anti-statists, the existence of type 2s might seem like a great indictment of the hottest sexiest norwegian girl state – ‘look! It’s not even being effective with our stolen tax dollars!’, they’ll say. But, while it is an indictment (and a cause for hope – what can we get away with, then?) it isn’t a great one. After all, a number of these type 2s would just be enforced by public reputation if they weren’t being enforced by the state. Continue reading
