@johnzajac @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

Because in business, efficiency per se is used to refer to lowest cost without regard to actually creating a good product. The goal is to create a minimally acceptable product to create profit for shareholders.

But that's not the goal in government, despite the current/regressive fad. Many of us (people on Earth) have forgotten that the government's goal is to protect its citizens. From each other, penury, exploitation, external aggression, all that.

@johnzajac Efficiency can be good, but all too often it's a cover for an unsavory strategy.

Efficiency that's worth doing is exactly the stuff that local councils were invented for: a way to invest in central resource and specialization, to do the best job for the most people, on a service-focused not-for-profit basis.

Its also worth automating repetitive stuff, so people can do more.

But "the free market makes it cost-effective" is a lobbyist lie.

Efficiency in government is a lie told by people who want government to serve the smallest number of (rich) people possible and no one else.

You cannot have efficient government because eventually service efficiency always boils down to a triage process: who have you decided is hopeless/undeserving and therefore not worth serving?

But any government that does that is fascist and illegitimate. Government serves *all* the people, or it is radioactive poisonous garbage.

@EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

So, efficiency itself - as an outcome of good process - is not a bad thing. Obviously! Waste, especially in a warming world, is to be avoided.

It's efficiency as a primary *goal* - a particularly deranged symptom of capitalist, neoliberal ideology - that leads to the kind of collapsed services, enshittified businesses and hollowed out society we see today.

@johnzajac Cost efficiency is a bad thing.

Cost efficiency is why we're in this mess, on the whole and by and large.

('cost efficiency' = I want the largest possible pile of accounting tokens because that maximizes my relative advantage)

Gotta watch out for efficiency of outcomes, too; lots of people's preferred outcomes really do include consigning their neighbors to perdition.

Better to specify outcomes and reward effectiveness overtly, not implicitly.

@EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

@johnzajac
The most efficient hospital has one bed as you can guarantee 100% occupancy but its fuck all use to nearly every one else on the planet who requires that level of treatment.

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

"Specify outcomes and reward effectiveness" is precisely what I mean when I say efficiency as an additional benefit of good process is a good thing.

Cost efficiency and outcome (what I call service) efficiency are an example of designing for efficiency rather than for outcome or effectiveness.

TBH, it reminds me of when I used to consult with startups and I would ask "why this product?" and the founders would say "because we want to be billionaires".

@EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

So, efficiency itself - as an outcome of good process - is not a bad thing. Obviously! Waste, especially in a warming world, is to be avoided.

It's efficiency as a primary *goal* - a particularly deranged symptom of capitalist, neoliberal ideology - that leads to the kind of collapsed services, enshittified businesses and hollowed out society we see today.

@raymierussell

Which is why, of course, most Western hospitals ran out of ICU beds and ventilators in April 2020 and Jan 2022: cost and service efficiency fallacies that were pursued contra mission requirements.

Efficiency in government is a lie told by people who want government to serve the smallest number of (rich) people possible and no one else.

You cannot have efficient government because eventually service efficiency always boils down to a triage process: who have you decided is hopeless/undeserving and therefore not worth serving?

But any government that does that is fascist and illegitimate. Government serves *all* the people, or it is radioactive poisonous garbage.

@johnzajac "because we want to be billionaires" is exactly the problem, yeah. Which can only really be addressed by making being a billionaire impossible.

The problem with keeping "efficiency is good sometimes" around is that it's precisely the wedge that got used (from the formal process of enclosure forward, and which I could wish more people were aware of, because what is being called enshitification is digital enclosure) to get us here.

@EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

I'm not saying "efficiency is good sometimes", I'm saying "efficiency as an outgrowth of good process and appropriate use of resources is desireable", which seems like a small distinction but is a huge difference, practically.

In a service provider example, resultant efficiency gains can lead to better service to more people (in the instance of resource crunches) and help critical infra *avoid* triage situations.

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

But, the only way to "design" for this kind of efficiency is to design processes that have adequate resources (both material and human) applied to them and that have parts that can operate orthogonally.

So, really the *opposite* of "designing for efficiency", which is why systems designed for efficiency don't have resource buffers and often fail catastrophically when stressed, leading to extraordinary costs and obliterated efficiency "gains".

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@johnzajac @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

"efficiency" is a euphemism for unemploying workers. there is no way for an "efficient" government to be pro-labour.

@burnitdown @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

I'd go so far as to say "pro-person".

Efficiency in government is a lie told by people who want government to serve the smallest number of (rich) people possible and no one else.

You cannot have efficient government because eventually service efficiency always boils down to a triage process: who have you decided is hopeless/undeserving and therefore not worth serving?

But any government that does that is fascist and illegitimate. Government serves *all* the people, or it is radioactive poisonous garbage.

@DejahEntendu @johnzajac @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft The governments (all of them) goal is to protect the wealthy from the poor.

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

But all the rich people get richer, so there you have it.

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

I'm not saying "efficiency is good sometimes", I'm saying "efficiency as an outgrowth of good process and appropriate use of resources is desireable", which seems like a small distinction but is a huge difference, practically.

In a service provider example, resultant efficiency gains can lead to better service to more people (in the instance of resource crunches) and help critical infra *avoid* triage situations.

@cybervegan @johnzajac @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

Yes, that is what they are currently *doing*. That is not what we signed up for. (I will agree you can read that in the US's founding docs.)