Jaw

If we say “dig it out and smell it”, then of course the intense scent that the author is referring to has nothing to do with roses or jasmine. Honestly, if the Ministry of the Interior had not recently issued a document recommending the suspension of the appointment of the title “ham”, I personally and probably at least a few million others would never have known that in the apparatus that is diligently sharing our budget, there has existed and is existing such a huge number of “miraculous” titles. Ham - a title but not a title but… a title!

Why is it a title? It has a clear name, a proper “soldier”, an appointment decision, a position and a position allowance coefficient, and it goes up and down like everyone else - it is a title, even a glittering title, of course. So why say it is not a title? Oh, it is not in any regulations. Necessity is the mother of invention, it is the product of creativity in a situation where the expansion of the apparatus has reached a superhuman level. When all the positions in the official list have owners or have been “reserved”, the title “rank” cleverly appears. It is the smartest solution to solve the surplus (or maybe the demand) of the apparatus. Or in administrative terms, this is the optimization of the personnel policy.

Very vulgar but the sidewalk proverb in the 4.0 era has the saying "there are few seats but many butts". A seat is a privilege, a seat is also a reward, but a seat is also a piece of cake that everyone has the opportunity to stretch their tongue to touch the sweetness. Power lies in the person holding the power. When the source of "seats" in the "warehouse" is exhausted, people are forced to create "extra seats" to continue to "share" with the remaining people who have made great contributions. From that vivid and crowded reality, in a moment of inspiration, people created the word "ham". It is an impeccable variation. The miracle of miracles. There is "military rank", "academic rank", and there is also "office rank". Yes, why not! After the deputy office, there is "deputy office rank". A perfect horizontal projection. It is just a pity that this so-called "rank" has not yet taken root in the locality. If the locality also had titles like "deputy department head, deputy district chairman" and then spread to "village chief", our apparatus would hold even more records.

Appointments from a moment of inspiration, the legal basis is based on the side without legal documents and still leisurely for many years. Of course, no one is right, but no one is wrong. How talented! One bad day, the "function" has been named, if there is a function, then will there be any "benefits", "teeth" or title that has not been dragged out into public like the function? Knowing that will kill you immediately. Discovering all the titles in our apparatus must be thrilling and perhaps that is not a job for busy people because it can be very time-consuming. Just naming all the titles is probably enough to make us stop and catch our breath dozens of times. Under each ministry there are countless departments, under each department there are countless bureaus, under each bureau there are countless branches. Not to mention each ministry "carries" a series of subordinate units. From one research institute to another, each institute is a “fence”, a “hinge”, a “front line”, a “spearhead” of the ministry. Not important, but very important. If there is a institute, there must be a branch institute. If there is a “Department of Cultivation”, there must be a “Department of Plant Protection”, if there is a “Department of Livestock”, there must be a “Department of Veterinary Medicine” (one of hundreds of units under the Ministry of Agriculture). If you go a little deeper, it is not a waste of time to explore the greatness of the apparatus. For example, exploring inside the “Department of Cultivation” that I just mentioned as an example, under the director and many deputy directors, there will be a “Department Office”, “Department of Financial Planning”, “Department of Legal Inspection”, “Department of Food Crops”, “Department of Industrial Crops”, “Department of Agricultural Land Use”, “Department of Quality”, “Office of Plant Variety Protection”, “Southern Office”, “Testing Center…”. It is true that just reading and remembering the names makes you sweat. That shows how skillful our organizers are in the “field drawing” exercise. You should stop, if you recklessly rush into the expedition, for example into a certain “room”, you will continue to be conquered by the matrix of people and the miraculous “devotion” in there.

If we were to represent our apparatus in the form of a “directory tree” diagram, we would probably be dazzled by the overlapping layers. It is true that language has not kept up with the unlimited creative development in the breadth of the apparatus of the world’s superpowers. It was shocking and curious when last year, people heard the Head of the Central Organizing Committee name a department in which there were 19 people holding the “deputy department” title. I give up! We are not a military power, we are not an economic power, we are not a sports power… but when it comes to the strength of the administrative apparatus, we certainly have no worthy opponent on this planet. Our budget-paid apparatus is like a basket of broken silkworms while “there are few mulberry leaves and too many jackfruit leaves”. Furthermore, in a basket of silkworms, there are always those who refuse to spin silk and spin cocoons, which our ancestors called “lazy silkworms”. In the past, this type was criticized and despised a lot, but now it's different, "lazy silkworms" are becoming a specialty in drinking parties. "Lazy" also has a price. The only thing is, silkworms are invertebrates so it seems they don't have... jaws! In folklore, there is a ridiculous summary like this: "Everyone has a job but no one wants to work - No one wants to work but everyone has a salary - Everyone has a salary but no one's salary is enough to live - No one's salary is enough to live but everyone still lives". That's it, strange to the point of being bizarre. There is no such thing as living in poverty, those "who don't want to work but everyone has a salary" can still belong to the white luxury class of society, at least on the surface. It seems that there are no poor or near-poor households wandering around here. A friend of mine jokingly said that if there is a civil servant who is classified as a poor household, don't erase it but put it in the red book to preserve it as a rare and unexpected thing.

Granted, that is a satirical opinion, but if a system is one where people try every way to get into, and once they get in, they leisurely go to work every day with an umbrella to receive their salary and seek opportunities for advancement, then that is a degenerate system. Fortunately, perhaps we have not reached that serious level.