Against Efficiency
I’ve been clarifying my distaste for efficiency. Obvious current event reasons, of course, but beyond all that, I don’t trust it as a core value. It’s narrow. It’s one of those very biased words that sounds all impartial but really is actually not at all.
Efficiency is a value based on the idea that the future is better than the present. That you want to get done with what you’re doing with as little time and energy as possible, so you can do something else. Finish this Model T so you can make another one, the whole day just tripping over yourself to get out the door.
Let me say it another way: efficiency makes sense if you’re doing something you don’t want to be doing. Maybe you’re cleaning the bathroom and you want to be efficient so you can get outside and ride your bike. Sweet. Makes sense. And of course there’s the efficiency of a well-built bike, that lets you go farther with less effort, and I agree there are times and places for this design goal. But it’s not a value I want to build a world on.
The idea that efficiency is a good thing is so assumed that it seems to go without saying. In all the criticism I’ve heard of the efficiency department, two things feel missing: one, that it’s a terrible acrynym. Like a dog riding a luge or something. Which may be the perfect image for America. And two, any critique of efficiency itself.
Efficiency in and of itself is not good. The Holocaust’s gas chambers were efficient. Clear cuts are efficient. Efficiency is always a tool towards a larger goal. It isn’t, on its own, a moral quality.
Another example: having an efficient gait so you can walk a long way is useful, but it isn’t a value. People who can walk efficiently might walk further in an hour, but that doesn’t make them morally better than hobblers and plodders.
So we have to ask: what does efficiency serve?
Fuel efficiency: that I can get behind. But the way delivery truck drivers hustle up to the door and back under the weight of efficiency’s judgment without smiling or pausing or getting to be a part of the neighborhood they visit? That’s not what I want humans to be.
What is lost when we’re efficient? Organic unfolding. Authentic unspooling of feelings. Wonder. Idiosyncraticness. Time spent meandering and daydreaming may be inefficient, but it’s deep and pleasurable and epiphany-rich. And as such, perhaps its efficiency isn’t measurable.
But back to the whole government spending/efficiency thing. Inefficiency is one of the great slurs of the modern world, which I of course take issue with, but beyond that, unless your goal is to siphon as much towards the wealthy as you can, as quickly as you can, government spending isn’t in and of itself inefficient. Money circulating among people is not inefficient; it’s abundant. Money spent on roads and fire departments and schools and health care isn’t inefficient; it’s called a functioning society. Funding scientific research isn’t inefficient; it’s progress. Paying someone to talk to suicidal vets isn’t inefficient; it’s human decency. I rest my rant.
I started this post a few weeks ago, before going to stay with my sister, who is both a deeply ethical and clear-thinking person, and extremely efficient. She is on time everywhere, her house is clean day after day, her laundry is done, and her systems are all mind-blowingly functional. She reads more than almost anyone I know. And all this with a adjunct teaching job, busy partner, three children under the age of eight, and a puppy with awls for teeth.
Embedding in her family, I see the beauty of efficiency. That is, as a tool, not as a god. It always serves another goal, and I want to know what that goal is. There’s efficiency that lets a mom get three little kids out the door without losing her shit and efficiency that makes billionaires bazillionaires. I think we should articulate the difference.
