I hear it regularly from people in the tech space — efficiency is everything. You hear it as the knee jerk response to any critique of capitalism or technology. Businesses are efficient, thus businesses are good. It is a truth that seems to have no logical argument-—you just can’t win the debaate. What I find most interesting is how often and blindly it is wielded, and just how many people refuse to question it, despite sufficient contrary evidence. With any experience working in large enterprises or even startup organizations where one comes up against the opposite of efficient quite often, yet people continue to believe.
Efficiency is the rallying cry for everything Doge is doing in the federal government right now. Conservatives love to shout uncritically that government should be run like a business, with endless throngs of mindless voters lined up to believe. When you grow up in rural America you believe this because you have no experience with how the government works, but once you gain any experience you see the efficiency argument for what it really is—-an ideological drilling machine. Take the demands to privatize the US Postal Service and make it profitable. This is something that is more about the abortion debate, as pills are being sent across state lines using the USPS, about limiting mail-in voting during elections, and the other long line of ideological conservative grievances. This isn’t about profit or efficiency, it is the opposite-—it is about control.
Another dimension of our society that you hear cries for efficiency and privatization is in the area of education. Schools are inefficient! They need to be run like a business and be more efficient. Well, not the schools of the wealthy, but the schools of everyone else. Schools operate under massive amounts of convservate austerity so that they appear to be inefficient and ineffective, so that they can be dismantled and privatized. There are deliberate reasons why classrooms have too many kids and school budgets are so tight-—it isn’t because we don’t have the money. Again it is about ideology and going after women and one of the most powerful unions in the country, while also getting to dictate the curriculum for what the majority of students learn. School efficiency is all about ideology and not about actually better school performance, or what our children need.
Inside of the echoes of the claims that businesses are efficient and government and educational institutions are not efficient is the stark reality that it is just not true. If you work within any enterprise organization you know this is so far from the truth. If you’ve experience calling into your bank or insurance provider you know that they aren’t efficient. Enterprises enjoy economies of scale and can dominate their respective sectors, but they are far from efficient vehicles that conservatives believe. However, enterprises are effectively drilling machines into our shared public spaces, the few things we’ve managed to socialize for the public good, and dismantling of government like what we see happening in this moment. Nothing is being made efficient right now. Elon Musk’s approach to business isn’t efficient. Trump is not a savvy businessman who knows how to make things efficient. It is all an illusion. It is just a cover for dismantling, privatizing, and rent seeking.
