On Efficiency And Destruction
Manic flurries of activity make people feel good. But slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
Arguably, efficiency is at the highest level of cultural awareness ever. The problem? People, as a whole, don't have a consistent definition of efficiency.
Suppose you have two tasks, A and B, with each taking three hours to complete. But you can do them both in four hours; it's hardly fair for someone to say you were 29% slower than you should have been at one task. The simple truth is that you completed A and B at a 40% increase in efficiency; claims to the contrary ignore the full picture.
Ideas of efficiency often fall into what Rory Sutherland calls the doorman fallacy: A strategy focusing solely on cost-saving for a single function, overlooking the value of other activities performed.
In other words, a company distills the doorman's job into merely opening a door. This means that the automation of the role to eliminate the doorkeeper is the peak efficiency move.
The robotic system provides for no function apart from opening the door. When an automated door opening system replaces the job, the doorman's other functions, such as greeting guests, helping with bags, and providing security, are lost. Sometimes, but not always, the doorkeeper can be automated away at no loss greater than the cost savings.
Tracking the results of eliminating the doorman's post is difficult. Unless consultants come in and analyze the consumer sentiment regarding the absence of personal touch and tie that harm of experience back to revenue, losses will be attributed to the "economy" or "competition."
Government projects are rarely at peak efficiency. However, most projects do not have a single objective so important that no other side impact matters. Hear me the hell out; Farm subsidies can feed hungry people.
I'm not saying the US should have farm subsidies. However, The idea behind agricultural subsidies is not without logic. Advocates of subsidies argue that as agriculture is highly susceptible to unpredictable factors like weather, subsidies to mitigate that could prevent farmers from continuing to produce crops even during bad years.
Advocates say subsidies are essential for safeguarding national food security and regulating consumer prices. Believing that a surplus year could drive down prices of goods, leaving farmers and those who eat food vulnerable to a multi-year cycle where farms earn so little in a good year they cannot plant enough for sustainable crops in a year plagued by unpredictable factors like weather, pests, and market fluctuations.
If the surplus crops are burned, they will not flood the market. The burned crops will not drive prices down and prevent farmers from planting enough to feed us all again the next year. From a strict efficiency perspective, farm subsidies are best achieved by burning surplus crops. Fire is cheaper than transportation, storage, and processing.
I'm not saying a civilized society should feed people. However, if that society has decided it is essential to its long-term interest to burn surplus food to maintain a healthy food supply during disruption, perhaps using that food to feed hungry people is an inefficiency worth tolerating.
Additional goals, such as maintaining shipping lanes, may be accomplished because surplus crops are given to the hungry. Shipping these surplus crops isn't necessarily the most efficient means of preserving shipping lanes. Yet, if surplus crops are to be purchased and given away already, peak efficiency for any single goal may create hidden costs for each objective.
Acting with a soda straw view creates the risk of damaging other objectives. Manic flurries of activity make people feel good. But slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.