The history of the idea is quite interesting. It all start in the post-WWII period, right after the RAND Corporation was created to retain talent amid the US ar

The history of the idea is quite interesting. It all start in the post-WWII period, right after the RAND Corporation was created to retain talent amid the US armed forces demobilization. Shortly after, a bunch of government agencies were being created and there was no abstraction defined to impose constraints on how they should operate and be funded, after some initial success with RAND's economists' policy analysis during the Kennedy administration, it began to spread to newly formed agencies and thus the language of efficiency gained weight. Then the Chicago school comes in, eventually antitrust starts to be dismantled with arguments like "if they raise prices too much, then competitors will come and eat their lunch", yadda yadda, completely ignoring entry barriers and today due to the flexibility of the language you have actors using government ineptness as a basis to decrease or halt any public spending when it suits them. It's a powerful way of assessing resource allocation, but it can't be the only one.