Red tape
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Redirect Red tape (or sometimes paperwork) is a derisive term for excessive regulations or rigid conformity to formal rules that are considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making. It is usually applied to government, but can also be applied to other organizations like corporations.
Red tape generally includes the filling out of unnecessary paperwork, obtaining of unnecessary licenses, having multiple people or committees approve a decision, and various low-level rules that make conducting affairs slower and/or more difficult.
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Origins
The origins of the term are obscure, but it alludes to the 17th and 18th century English practice of binding documents and official papers with red tape and were popularized in the writings of Thomas Carlyle protesting against official inertia. Other than the British government documents some in the Vatican were also traditionally bound in red cloth tape.
Another origin tale circulated is that all American Civil War veterans' records were bound in red tape, and the difficulty in accessing them led to the current use of the term, but there is evidence that the term was in use in its modern sense sometime before this.
Although grief over red tape is often seen as a right-wing conviction, Karl Marx wrote about the phenomenon of changing from one person in control of a complete task, to having multiple people each with specialties in specific tasks. He saw this occurring as society shifts from a Seigneurial system to a capitalist system. Although Marx drew different conclusions about this trend, it is often this abstraction among workers that is the source of red tape. This interpretation would explain why it is often perceived that the presence of red tape is increasing.
Red tape reduction
The "cutting of red tape" is a popular promise of politicians. A number of legislatures have pondered or passed Red Tape Reduction Acts including Ontario, California, and Missouri. The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party government even created a permanent Red Tape Commission that must review all new regulations. The process of reducing paperwork means collecting less information on forms, eliminating redundancies or double-checking safeguards, and laying off administrators.
Many object to government campaigns against red tape seeing them as covert programs of pro-corporate deregulation. Institutions like the British Trade Union Congress and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives consider red tape as being rules that protect the environment, watch over the worker safety and health, and prevent corruption. Supporters of efficiency in bureaucracy say that there is no connection between excessive rules and protection of specific interests, just nothing more than government stonewalling and excessive intrusion of non-elected officials in the way of those who are elected to change government policy.