Drugmakers have supplies ready to ship that are necessary to stop a potential pandemic. But W.H.O. regulations have slowed access.

For a very long time the west has been outpacing the rest of the world largely because of higher levels of trust. Sadly, the west is now adding soviet like bureaucracy — and with it eroding much of the creativity and productivity that helped make it!

In essence, Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill the time allotted to it. It states two things: firstly, that "an official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals"; and secondly, that "officials make (unnecessary) work for each other. "According to Parkinson, these two factors combine to increase the total amount of time dedicated to the same amount of work.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

• First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
• Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Sometimes in this job I have a kernel of a column idea that doesn’t pan out. But other times I begin looking into a topic and find a problem so massive that I can’t believe I’ve ever written about anything else. This latter experience happened as I looked into the growing bureaucratization of American life.

Recent data analyses reveal the disturbing decline in well-being of contemporary US physicians. This trend has captured the attention of not only affected physicians and researchers but also physicians’ patients and the general.