Trego's Mountain Ear

All else being equal, it seems likely that people would prefer too keep more of their cash and have the money they do spend get the best results possible.

When shopping, we try to get the best deal for our value, whatever that happens to mean for us. Some people will put more weight on items being ‘organic’ and ‘pesticide free’, while others will value ‘fair trade’ highly. So that “best value” will look different for different people. But, regardless, people generally try for efficiency in spending.

Should we apply the same principle to government? The problem there is that it’s no longer any of us as individuals at the grocery store, weighing what to purchase against the price and considering our priorities.

The what of ‘what to purchase?’ has been decided, not by any of us as individuals, but by the amalgamation known as government. And in that case, do we as individuals really value efficiency?

Efficiency is all well and good when it’s my money being spent on something I want. It’s less good when it’s on something I’d rather I not have in the first place. No matter how good the sale on orange trees is, planting them in my yard is still going to be a terrible idea. All else being equal, if I have to have orange trees planted in my yard in Trego, I might prefer fewer of them.

Do we actually want government efficiency? That depends on what it’s doing, doesn’t it?

If what the government is doing is generating regulations, well, how are we defining efficiency? Because if it’s text produced per hour, we have a problem. There are already more regulations than any of us have time to read.

Any conversation about improving government efficiency needs to start with consideration to what the role of government should be. What do we want it to be efficient at? Until then, inefficiency may be the only thing keeping us from drowning in reams of regulatory paperwork.

For accompanying thematic music- I’ll refer to Leslie Fish: “The Paper Sea”