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The Cult of Efficiency

3.17 of 5 stars 3.17 · rating details · 18 ratings · 2 reviews

We live in an age dominated by the cult of efficiency. Efficiency in the raging debate about public goods is often used as a code word to advance political agendas. When it is used correctly, efficiency is important—it must always be part of the conversation when resources are scarce and citizens and governments have important choices to make among competing priorities. Ev...more

Paperback, 312 pages

Published August 1st 2002 by House of Anansi Press

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The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye

The Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin

The Cult of Efficiency by Janice Gross Stein

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

CBC Massey Lectures

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Jul 13, 2009 Trevor rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, social-theory

This starts so well, holds so much promise – but never quite lives up to that promise.

Far too much time is spent on definitions and not nearly enough time on the implications of the ideas being defined. I thought that I might learn something very interesting when she started out discussing the differences between efficiency and effectiveness – that efficiency has no value judgements attached. And look, I know one can kill people efficiently – for isn’t that the ultimate horror of what was Nazi G...more This starts so well, holds so much promise – but never quite lives up to that promise.

Far too much time is spent on definitions and not nearly enough time on the implications of the ideas being defined. I thought that I might learn something very interesting when she started out discussing the differences between efficiency and effectiveness – that efficiency has no value judgements attached. And look, I know one can kill people efficiently – for isn’t that the ultimate horror of what was Nazi Germany? – but I was expecting more to be made from this and was left feeling very disappointed.

The problem was that a lot of this book was devoted to the idea that choice is the core value of our post-industrial society. This is one of my pet subjects (and pet hates, just quietly). Generally, I get to complain that choice has been confounded with freedom. But I can’t do that in this case. Choice is even more important than freedom now, it seems.

The line is: given that there ultimately are no real values in society it is very hard to discuss efficiency for its own sake and so therefore we need a dialogue about what we want to be efficient in. We need to do this so that we can decide how we are going to hold people accountable, as accountability is a key concept in efficiency and so is clearly also a general social good. The market’s the thing – as this is the best way of providing choice, efficiency and accountability.

Mmm …

My problem is that this rousing call on the benefits of free market blather failed to address any of the issues that ought to have stood in the way of such a glowing (and uncritical) endorsement. To take just one counter argument. In Australia we have freedom of information laws – these require governments to provide information on their programs and processes and thereby be accountable to tax payers when they spend tax payer dollars. But if the government enters into an arrangement with a private company to either provide all of a particular service (and then we get to hear all of that nonsense about ‘steering rather than rowing’ being the core virtue of governments) or enters into a Public Private Partnership (PPPs) – then the decisions about how governments spend our tax payer dollars is instantly hidden from us behind a cloak of ‘commercial in confidence’ contractual obligation and restrictions. So, rather than the ‘free market’ providing more accountability, it in fact is generally used to ensure the exact opposite. Governments of all persuasions do this, as governments have good reasons to want to avoid being held accountable – not least something called ‘an election’.

We create situations where it is impossible for citizens to see if PPPs actually are more cost effective, efficient or in any sense superior to state provided services and then allow governments to say things like, ‘providing airline (banking, telecommunications, postal, electricity, water, transport) services is not a government core business’ and then let them sell us out so they can avoid being held accountable, whatever else is the cost. And all this so as to perpetuate the great lie that it is all being done in our best interests so as to provide for the efficient and effective provision of services. It is enough to make you weep.

Not that any of this is mentioned in any of these lectures. No, this is a ringing endorsement of free markets where the only proviso is bound up with our need to somehow figure out how to have informed debates in society about how to decide what it is we want to be efficient in.

I was let down by these lectures – not least because they started with an instance from the lecturer’s own life about her coming into conflict with bureaucratic efficiency and its less than human face that I felt held much promise in a discussion of this nature – sadly, I was wrong. If all that can be said about efficiency is that it shouldn’t become an end in itself without reference to what people actually need – well, there is not a lot to learn here, is there?
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Jan 18, 2011 Kevin Keast rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book talks about the basic premise that Canada's public goods and services are currently judged by politicians and citizens based on cost-efficiency, rather than effectiveness. Its an important concept that has given me a new method for assessing how our government works, but since I'm not writing a sociology paper I would have preferred, like, the Coles Notes version.

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