Section 3.3.3 Bureaucrats

Parliament could no longer handle all details of government, so a bureaucracy was established. Instead of passing a decree to declare whether each lot of cheese was fit for sale, Parliament passed a decree appointing a cheese inspector to make those decisions.

It soon became evident that selecting bureaucrats was not as simple as it first seemed. Parliament passed a decree making ∆˘ικστρα the first cheese inspector. After some months, merchants complained that ∆˘ικστρα was too strict and was rejecting perfectly good cheese. Parliament then replaced him by passing the decree 1375: Γωυδα is the new cheese inspector But ∆˘ικστρα did not pay close attention to what Parliament did, so he did not learn of this decree right away. There was a period of confusion in the cheese market when both ∆˘ικστρα and Γωυδα were inspecting cheese and making conflicting decisions. To prevent such confusion, the Paxons had to guarantee that a position could be held by at most one bureaucrat at any time. To do this, a president included as part of each decree the time and date when it was proposed.

A bureaucrat was appointed for a short term, so he could be replaced quickly— for example, if he left the island. Parliament would pass a decree to extend the bureaucrat’s term if he was doing a satisfactory job. A bureaucrat needed to tell time to determine if he currently held a post. Mechanical clocks were unknown on Paxos, but Paxons could tell time accurately to within 15 minutes by the position of the sun or the stars.13 If ∆˘ικστρα’s term began at 8:30, he would not start inspecting cheese until his celestial observations indicated that it was 8:45.