It is like a parasite, but less fit to survive than those that inhabit animals and humans. Bureaucracy is like the ravenous filarial worms that kill the host outright, rather than flatworms that take what they need without depriving the host of too much resources. Unchecked bureaucracies tend to expand to the limits of resources a society can provide, then begins to cannibalize the very host till both the society and the bureaucracy are no more. Yet, structured and ordered means of social regulation is necessary to prevent a community from degenerating into tribal cannibalism. A well-functioning bureaucracy ought to function as a parasite that limits unchecked growth of certain human tendencies that are ultimately destructive to mankind in general; the parasite, in turn, need to be checked, so that it does not kill the very society from which it feeds.