efficiency, a nonvalue that poses as the highest value. The word resets the conversation. It places why out of bounds, offering an endless how. Efficiency talk distracts us from thinking about purposes and hastens us instead toward a calculation regarding how quickly something is being done. Commercial medicine, for example, is efficient in extracting money from the sick. And that is how hospitals are judged by those who own them. Accepting profit as the goal, however, means forgetting about life and health.
