"Instead they taught him that government and bureaucracy are soulless machines."
I think that's a better lesson than how to "navigate the process towards getting permits" for a damn bookshelf.
- The 9 year old used his brain, his humanity and his creativity to make something nice for the community.
- We delegated power to a collection of mindless bureaucrats.
- Mindless bureaucrats caused problems for 9 year old.
Pretty accurate title.
There was nothing misleading about it, it accurately conveyed what happened. IMHO we're beyond the point where micro-debating the various ins and outs of these things is helpful. Yes they should have done what he/she suggested, but yes - NONE of this should be happening. It's tiring and ridiculous.
The future is going to be tricky, we need to move faster and more efficiently than this.
It's quite probable that the city official did not even know it was a nine-year-old kid's structure, since the family was on vacation:
from article> When we got home from vacation, there was a letter from the city
Restricting where on a property one can erect structures is common in building codes across the world. And as always with laws and codes, once you allow for exceptions, everyone and their uncle will go to court to get an exception too.
What I think the city should have done is invite the kid over to city hall and offer their assistance in navigating the process towards getting permits or whatever is needed to continue running the "library". That would be a helpful lesson to learn and probably yield a nice photo op for the mayor in the local newspaper - win win. Instead they taught him that government and bureaucracy are soulless machines.