Bureaucracy is a highly optimized and superiously efficient system. In theory, the speed with which a form is processed approaches infinity as the number of errors in it approaches zero. In practice however, a form can never travel faster than the speed of light, and can in turn only reach that speed when flawlessly filled out in triplicate, in the right colour and with all the I's and T's dotted and crossed respectively. A bureaucratic system only seems complex and inefficient when it comes into contact with reality, and with humans in particular. This has given rise to the theory that efficiency is in the eye of the beholder.
With apologies to Douglas Adams, because even though every word in the paragraph above seemed to stem from my own brain, I feel 97% certain that they're his.
