Max Weber

r@raphaelbauer.com (Raphael Bauer) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 18:00:00 +0200

On 13 June 1918 a German professor stood up in Vienna before some three hundred officers of the Austro-Hungarian army and talked for an hour and a half about socialism¹². He had not taught a course for more than eighteen years and had returned to the lecture hall only that spring, for the summer semester at the University of Vienna³. The army’s office for defence against enemy propaganda had invited him, the officers were being trained to give their men patriotic instruction, and the Bolsheviks had held Russia for seven months¹. Max Weber did not tell them that socialism was wicked, and he did not tell them it was impossible. He told them to look at who was gaining as firms passed from their owners to salaried managers, to cities and to the state: “Die Diktatur des Beamten, nicht die des Arbeiters, ist es, die – vorläufig jedenfalls – im Vormarsch begriffen ist”⁴. What was on the march, for the time being at any rate, was the dictatorship of the official and not that of the worker.

The Ten-Centimetre Fork

r@raphaelbauer.com (Raphael Bauer) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 20:30:00 +0200

In Potsdam the length of a disposable fork is now a tax question. Since Thursday the city has charged 20 cents on every piece or set of disposable cutlery handed out with food. Section 2 of its official guide says the charge applies to cutlery “ab einer Länge von 10 cm” (from a length of ten centimetres). Section 18 of the same guide exempts small pieces “soweit sie höchstens 10 cm groß sind” (provided they measure ten centimetres at most)¹. A fork of exactly ten centimetres is taxed in one section and exempt in the other. The guide has an answer of sorts: it makes no claim to be complete, and “Änderungen in der Handhabung bleiben daher vorbehalten” (changes in how the rules are applied are therefore reserved).

Bureaucracy on The Prosperitist

Max Weber

The Ten-Centimetre Fork