What about work?

Most of us now work for one kind of bureaucracy or another.  A "small business," by Commerce Department standards, is now—what—up to 1,000 employees?  Even "small" businesses have gotten big enough to be effectively vast.

You get hired by the Personnel Department.  If you’re applying for a job keeping track of the paper clips, be prepared to cite at least two years’ previous experience at it, or 32 equivalent credit hours at the college level.  If a bored clerk can’t easily match up the forms for your peg and their hole, how can you possibly be considered?

Suppose you get hired, and that you stick around for a few years; establish yourself in a position where you have a kind of name and a kind of say.  How is what you say ultimately weighted?  Is it the stunning originality and perspicacity of your ideas?  (Hint: is that what got you hired for the job?)  How much do inertia, and consensus-think, and for that matter its cousin non-think factor in?  (Hint: why do books like Up the Organization become best sellers?)