Bureaucrats Completely Incapable of Making Reasonable Trade-Offs

Most people have a very weird understanding of how others are supposed to behave. I was once a member of a standing negotiation team with Iran. Due to my many years of exposure to Middle Eastern countries, I was the one on the team that was supposed to bridge the intercultural divide. But soon I told my own team that the intercultural differences were much less relevant in this negotiation. Much more important was the fact that we talked to civil servants. And those were not very different from civil servants in Austria. They see risk where risk can barely be perceived and they are OK with massive exposures as long as they have the feeling that no liability will come their way personally. There are plenty of bureaucrats outside the normal civil service too. 

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