Any society managed by a large and intrusive bureaucratic machinery is necessarily authoritarian...
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker: You know the term “authoritarian.” You think you know what it means.
An authoritarian dad, boss, or government says: my way or the highway. They are forever barking orders and see compliance as the answer to all human problems. There is no room for uncertainty, adaptation to time and place, or negotiation. It’s ruling by personal dictate while tolerating no dissent.
To be authoritarian is to be inhumane, to rule with arbitrary and capricious imposition. It can also mean to be ruled impersonally by a machine regardless of the cost.
Sounds like a conventional government bureaucracy, right? Indeed. Think of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Think of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy which are right now issuing edicts that will end in the ability of your washing machine to clean your clothes and your car to go the distance.
They have been doing this to us for many decades, with or without the permission of Congress or the president. The agencies have become literally out of control in the sense that no one can control them.