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> Well that's what I mean, "efficiency" is a term that doesn't mean anything in isolation, and because of that they can define it to mean whatever they want it

> Well that's what I mean, "efficiency" is a term that doesn't mean anything in isolation, and because of that they can define it to mean whatever they want it to mean and declare victory as a result. Efficiency does have a sensible definition in isolation: an efficient system is one in which there are no more Pareto improvements. From the government perspective, you could consider this in terms of the cost/service frontier, and actions which move the government towards that frontier improve efficiency. However, I do agree with your practical concern that 'efficiency' is being used without regard at all for the services being delivered. This seems particularly likely since the government is attempting to eliminate whole departments or agencies by executive order, implying it gives no value to said services.

tombert 2y ago
> Efficiency does have a sensible definition in isolation: an efficient system is one in which there are no more Pareto improvements. From the government perspective, you could consider this in terms of the cost/service frontier, and actions which move the government towards that frontier improve efficiency. I had to look up Pareto improvement, and I don't think that many systems exist where improvements are better in "every way" like the definition suggests. For example, most big tech companies will use something like Kubernetes (or an equivalent) to deploy multiple instances of a service and then load balance between them, even when none of them have reached full capacity. In one sense, this is "inefficient", in that we have computers sitting idle that could be doing work, but it's also efficient in another sense, which is to minimize downtime; if one of the computers or service crash, you won't experience much (or any) downtime because one of the replicas will handle requests. Someone could get rid of all the replicas and then claim victory in that they made things "more efficient" by reducing the cost, but that will come at the expense of possible downtime. Every system is different, and figuring out where on the spectrum you draw that line is rarely clear-cut, and there is almost always tradeoffs no matter what decision you make. Sometimes you can live with more downtime and it's better to cut the costs of the extra computers, sometimes downtime is not an option and you need a ton of redundancy. Humans are not computers, so it's not the best analogy in the world, but I think it still mostly holds; it looks like in a hand-wavey way they're just defining efficiency as "spending less money", but that really doesn't make any sense unless you can show that you're getting comparable results while spending less cash. I'm not saying that the government is perfect with spending money, obviously, and it's entirely possible that DOGE will find something that really should be eliminated. I'm just saying that it's rarely cut and dry, and it's very rare that cutting something is just a universal net improvement.
miltonlost 2y ago
Pareto Efficiency should not be the be-all-end-all (and only one subset of "efficiency", so your definition is only useful in isolation to Pareto Efficient). It only guarantees nothing is worse off, but that's only a relative comparison. A result of 99% of the wealth goes to 1 individual and 1% of the wealth is with everyone else is Pareto Efficient but not a good world! Efficiency can also be used amorally, e.g., Death Camps are an efficient way to kill undesirables!

tombert 2y ago

> Efficiency does have a sensible definition in isolation: an efficient system is one in which there are no more Pareto improvements. From the government perspective, you could consider this in terms of the cost/service frontier, and actions which move the government towards that frontier improve efficiency. I had to look up Pareto improvement, and I don't think that many systems exist where improvements are better in "every way" like the definition suggests. For example, most big tech companies will use something like Kubernetes (or an equivalent) to deploy multiple instances of a service and then load balance between them, even when none of them have reached full capacity. In one sense, this is "inefficient", in that we have computers sitting idle that could be doing work, but it's also efficient in another sense, which is to minimize downtime; if one of the computers or service crash, you won't experience much (or any) downtime because one of the replicas will handle requests. Someone could get rid of all the replicas and then claim victory in that they made things "more efficient" by reducing the cost, but that will come at the expense of possible downtime. Every system is different, and figuring out where on the spectrum you draw that line is rarely clear-cut, and there is almost always tradeoffs no matter what decision you make. Sometimes you can live with more downtime and it's better to cut the costs of the extra computers, sometimes downtime is not an option and you need a ton of redundancy. Humans are not computers, so it's not the best analogy in the world, but I think it still mostly holds; it looks like in a hand-wavey way they're just defining efficiency as "spending less money", but that really doesn't make any sense unless you can show that you're getting comparable results while spending less cash. I'm not saying that the government is perfect with spending money, obviously, and it's entirely possible that DOGE will find something that really should be eliminated. I'm just saying that it's rarely cut and dry, and it's very rare that cutting something is just a universal net improvement.

miltonlost 2y ago

Pareto Efficiency should not be the be-all-end-all (and only one subset of "efficiency", so your definition is only useful in isolation to Pareto Efficient). It only guarantees nothing is worse off, but that's only a relative comparison. A result of 99% of the wealth goes to 1 individual and 1% of the wealth is with everyone else is Pareto Efficient but not a good world! Efficiency can also be used amorally, e.g., Death Camps are an efficient way to kill undesirables!