“Bureaucracy – unacceptable red tape or a useful organizational structure?”?

Answer 1

Anybody who says it's mostly useful is out of their mind. Unacceptable red tape all the way.
Look at its etymology, you find its meaning is "government of the desks" (bureau=desk, cracy=government). Well, why might that be? Maybe it's because of all the useless papers they pass back and forth and get nothing.
Just check out a recent case here in Argentina. An incredible icebreaker boat sank because a fire started inside it, and the fire couldn't be put out because the alarms weren't working properly. Just a few weeks later, a guy shows up on TV and openly says that he had gone up to the government to get them to install safety measures and the government "put it into action". They hired a group of people to hire a group of people to hire another group of people to meet with other groups of people to decide the financing of the safety measures. So where did all the money for safety measures go? Into the funding of new groups of people somehow not specialized in anything, into excessive meetings, and into the pockets of the easily corruptible bureaucracy.
Point number two, taxes and what is called here aduana (the paying of money for things coming into the country). Everybody knows the slow process of checking for documents, stamping, and fines for those with a minimal detail wrong in their documents. But where does all that money go? Into the pockets of the bureaucracy once more.
So that's my opinion. Bureaucracy is useless. The theoretical bureaucracy might have been intended for good purposes, but it can't be put into practice, at least not in many places I know of. I mean, the idea is fine, documents to organize a country, but think about technology advances nowadays. If all of bureaucracy were put into computers and not on memos and paper, then it would be reduced to a way more useful, faster, and less corruptible entity (not to mention the Amazon Rain Forest would be better off). So there you have it, bureaucracy might have been a good idea, but it can't be put into excellent and flawless practice (I know nothing's flawless but I'm jus talking about an approximate flawlessness), and for that, I think it's useless to bother with it.

See Douglas Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; the Vogons are an excellent example of negative aspects of bureaucracy.

Answer 2

A minimal amount is the latter; any more is the former.