Endless rules smother public servants' innovation and intelligence, turning them into bureaucratic windup toys. White employers are so terrified of being called racists that they won't confront failing black employees, and instead hide blacks away in unchallenging jobs. But Howard is not just complaining. He has a theory. We don't trust our judgment, or anyone else's, so we've made up rules and principles that let us evade responsibility.
Judges now believe that being ''neutral'' means letting even the most asinine case go before a jury.
Civil rights laws protect minorities from prejudice at the cost of barring employers from passing judgment on their workers. There he concentrated on bureaucracies, arguing that a maze of rules was making government workers inefficient and frustrated while other citizens grew puzzled and disgusted. He proposed that bureaucrats should be free to take more initiative, that the benefits of freedom were worth the risk of eccentricity and graft. Here he casts a wider net. This forces him to tell a bigger story, perhaps too big for a small book.