Today I had another awful day-long encounter with German railway company Deutsche Bahn. This is beyond ridiculous, beyond disastrous. This has become Third World infrastructure. Not because of years of neglect but because of years of piecemeal attempts to improve a rotten #infrastructure.

A patchwork of projects, measures, strategic decisions apparently switched right during implementation. What DB turned into this awful carrier is not the inability of its employees and its managers. They would, if they could.

It's more sinister. In administration, years of new rules and new guidances stacked on top inflate a bureaucracy to the point of utter immobility. What I didn't understand till today is that as you can "improve" and "repair" a bureaucracy to the point of collapse, the same holds true for infrastructure.

They "improved to the worse" the problems and necessities of a once functioning railway system to the point of its immobility, standstill, and in particular: irreparability.

In fact, we really should ask Russia to invade and destroy Germany so that—like after WWII—we can rebuild a new infrastructure that may have the chance to last another 60 years. This is no cynicism. When in multiple attempts to refurbish a system you end up screwing it beyond repair, the most sensible course of action is to start from scratch. Which is, obviously, not possible, and that's the point. You cannot improve the system, and any attempt to do so makes things worse.

In the meantime, DB personnel is complaining about the increase in violence and aggression from customers towards the employees (conductors, mostly). And DB reacts by hiring more security staff, more bouncers. Which is understandable but still: nuts.

The point is, nothing works, everything falls apart, and no travel plan survives the first boarding. Passengers cannot find information, cannot reach anyone capable or responsible, and in their frustration, hate, disgust, and anger lash out violently. But instead of fixing the issues—which, as we saw, is not possible—DB hires more muscle to restrain violent customers. Like ICE agents on their hunt for illegal migrants. And then we have right-wing fucks like the German AfD who blame "it" on "the migrants".

But migrants are not responsible for years of neglect. They are not responsible for the dirt, the shabby run-down stations no-one has time, money, or interest to repair and clean up. Rude customer behaviour in public, even from migrants, may add to the impression of decline, but singling out the migrants as the easiest picks is disingenuous and nasty. People pick on them because the real problems cannot be solved. By no-one.

And that's where constraints in infrastructure improvement can easily turn into lynch justice. A thriving infrastructure is not just a human right, it is a necessary precondition to uphold human rights. Eat this, Hume! Read some Kafka.