# Bureaucracies remove the need for trust One big implicit point of a bureaucracy is to make individuals in the system fungible. [[Trust]] is an incredibly personal thing that exists between pairwise individuals. As a result, bureaucracies that fulfill the mandate to make individuals fungible cannot rely on trust. Instead of trust, Bureaucracies rely on legibility. [[Bureaucracies are human algorithms]] — the humans are just there to make sure processes are followed and the metrics are optimized. Anyone can look at whether the algorithm is being followed. Of course, there are no “platonic” bureaucracies so trust inevitably leaks in. However, the system’s perrogative is to remove load-bearing trust whenever it can. The fact that [[Research requires more trust than other disciplines]] is why research and bureaucracies create so much friction. Since bureaucracies rely on metrics and process in lieu of trust, research bureaucracies are especially warping because [[Research is especially susceptible to Goodhart’s Law]]. ### Related * [[Trust is hard to scale]] * [[The more trust an institution has, the less it needs formal process]]