The American right loves forms, paperwork and other bureaucracy

The American right spent generations lauding the "free enterprise" spirit of "cutting red tape," contrasting its private sector ethos with the stodgy, Stalinist ways of the USSR, where bureaucrats weaponize forms and other paperwork to oppress the citizenry.

But anyone who's dealt with the US private sector knows how much big business loves its forms, from the clickthrough agreements that sign your life away every time you turn around to the waivers you have to sign to rent a car, check into a hotel, or enroll your kid in gymnastics class (I took my family for belated flu shots at CVS last night and the paperwork took more than 30 minutes).

David Graeber's Utopia of Rules makes this point with savage force. So much of this fetishization of forms boils down to the libertarian love affair with the "contract" and the idea that the state's true legitimate purpose is enforcing contracts. The natural progression here is that if you have the bargaining power to force people to sign abusive contracts, then every time you do so, you are helping the market's invisible hand to sort the galty "job creators" from the "takers" and ensuring that the "takers" get their due in the form of shitty, confiscatory contracts. Note that taking steps to improve your bargaining position is only a valid course of action for the rich: if workers band together through collective bargaining, that is (for some reason) and illegitimate action that "distorts markets."

(Remember when Wells Fargo forged 2,000,000 Americans' signatures to open fake accounts, then argued that the fine-print over those forged signatures that waived the right to sue for fraud was enforceable?)

And no one loves abusive form-filling more than right-wing, "business friendly" governments, like the Trump administration, which made headlines recently by forcing a 5 year old Honduran girl to sign an English-language form waiving her asylum rights. Read the rest