> Why do we always measure burocracy as an "amount" (something of which there can be "less" or "more").
Because large bureaucracies only ever get modified in the aggregate.
You have a bureaucracy that imposes 500,000 rules. If you want to know which are worth it, you have to evaluate each of the rules individually, because some may be worth it and others not.
Really evaluating 500,000 separate rules would take a large staff multiple lifetimes, so you still have to decide whether the bureaucracy as a whole is doing net good or net harm in order to determine whether it should be suspended for the years it will take to evaluate all the rules.
But by the time you finish the evaluation, years have passed since you started and the facts on the ground may have changed, or new rules proposed, so the evaluations are stale before they're completed and you have to start over.
It leaves you with only the systemic question of whether large bureaucracies are a net positive force as an institution. The answer could reasonably be no.
But notice that the answer is also related to the size. Because if the bureaucracy is smaller, you can finish the evaluation sooner, possibly soon enough that the evaluation results are still relevant by the time you finish. Having fewer rules allows you to have better rules, because the fewer you have the more time and other resources you have to make sure each is doing more good than harm.