Is Business OVERregulated in the US?

Yeah i know

Sorry for the ramble, i just saw red for a minute, then had direah of the mouth...

as far as the 2007 comment, yeah they are idiots, as a matter of fact
i think they have to take a special class to get that dumb.

I have a good technique to force the hand of bureaucracy: a “denial-of-service attack”... on paper!

For most people, this is only worthwhile when "they" are screwing up your life in some major way. For sadists like me, it's part of routine communication with all forms of bureaucracy.

It's very simple (deceptively so): if/when they intrude on your life in some way, you immediately escalate the volume of communication as much as you possibly can: if they write to you, reply as desired, and add a copy of their initial correspondance to your reply.

If they write again, reply again, and add a copy of your first reply, and another copy of their initial communication.

If they write again, reply again, and add a copy of their last correspondance, and another copy of your last reply, and another copy of their first reply to your initial reply, and another copy of their initial communication.

If they write again, reply again, and add a copy of your previous reply, and another copy of their previous correspondance, and another copy of your reply to that, and another copy of their correspondance before that, and another copy of...

And, if you really want to mess them up, send the same replies (with multiple copies) to as many individual people as you can (especially if they are physically in the same office as each other), making sure to reference each of them in every piece of correspondance (i.e. write "CC:" underneath your letter, and list the name and title of EVERY recipient you send it to). I like to think of this as a sort of "distributed denial of service attack on paper". If the recipients are at different management levels, this really frightens the daylights out of them.

If they subsequently telephone you (and they probably will), say "Sorry, I can't communicate by phone... mail only. You know my address".

If they "invite" you to use an alternative electronic means of communication or interaction, either ignore it, or state you don't have the means to do so.

The reason this works is simple: the sheer volume of paper involved clogs up “the machine” and keeps clogging it up until whatever the problem is gets dealt with. Everytime someone writes to you, your "file" in their office suddenly expands by dozens or even hundreds of pages. And remember that they'll also have all your previous correspondance, as well as anything you subsequently send them, meaning they end up with copies, and copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies of copies, etc. And, even worse, when you reply to multiple people, there will then be multiple copies, and multiple copies of copies, and multiple copies of copies of copies, and multiple copies of copies of copies of copies, etc.

Aside for being a downright (severe) headache for anyone dealing with it, the effect of all that will be enormously destabilising to the system, especially if a smaller local office is involved; whatever the problem is will either be dealt with to get rid of you (and restore balance to the system) or it will be pushed “up the chain” from the local office to a regional or national one. (If that happens, then continue the process, but keep replying to everyone you previously replied to anyway, in addition to anyone new from "head office", even if they try to take themselves out of the 'line of fire' by telling you it's no longer their concern; after all, it's only polite to keep them informed about the progression of something they initiated in the first place ).

Tommy.