Western governments today proclaim their commitment to ever-increasing economic efficiency, and the general public applauds this as a good and necessary thing. The simple fact is that 'economic efficiency' is perhaps the most successful deception ever perpetrated on Western nations, and especially on the better-educated amongst its peoples.

The key to the deception lies in the use of the word 'efficiency'. A more efficient motor car uses less petrol than a less efficient one. A more efficient bureaucracy achieves better outcomes with a smaller expenditure of time and money. Efficiency is obviously a Very Good Thing - or is it?

Consider what a maximally efficient society would be like. It would have the smallest number of the largest possible companies producing the maximum amount of goods for the lowest possible cost, to be sold at the highest possible price and return the largest possible profit. This would be done by retaining the smallest number of employees working the longest possible hours at the lowest possible wages and conditions. It would also require materials and services provided at the lowest possible cost by the smallest number of suppliers; the elimination of all additional costs and concerns such as waste disposal and environmental damage; along with minimal taxation, duties, and social obligations. In other words, it would be a society of slave labourers with no civil rights or personal lives working full-time for a small, wealthy elite who were free to do as they pleased.

Traditional, human-centred societies are, in fact, economically inefficient, in that they do not result in the maximum concentration of wealth; they spread the common wealth fairly evenly amongst the population, but allow energetic individuals to accumulate somewhat more than the average. They are socially efficient rather than economically so. The sort of world that 'maximum economic efficiency' must eventually create is where the so-called 'developed' nations are heading with the full support of their gullible and unthinking public, and is increasingly being imposed across the whole planet.

"Consider what a maximally efficient society would be like. It would have the smallest number of the largest possible companies producing the maximum amount of goods for the lowest possible cost, to be sold at the highest possible price and return the largest possible profit. This would be done by retaining the smallest number of employees working the longest possible hours at the lowest possible wages and conditions. It would also require materials and services provided at the lowest possible cost by the smallest number of suppliers; the elimination of all additional costs and concerns such as waste disposal and environmental damage; along with minimal taxation, duties, and social obligations."

You haven't said why you think that. How would you prove it?

Also, will you avoid being as efficient as you know how in answering it?

Beelzebub,

Having majored in economics, I find your definition of economic efficiency to contradict most of what I have learnt.

Economic efficiency improves when impediments to economic activity are removed, and the best "value" is achieved by both the businesses from their employees, and from the employees from business.

This would imply:

- Higher levels of productivity in business per hour worked,
- close to full employment of individuals in jobs that they are most productive,
- Jobs that provide the highest "value" to employees in the balance between pay and leisure,
- Sufficient infrastructure to enable production, where it is most economical,
- Businesses to be size appropriate for their function.

As the economy has become more efficient, small businesses have proliferated, and to bring more people into the work place, more flexible hours have become more common.

Shadow Minister; could this drive for efficiency be caused by the
difficulty in getting growth ?
In an era of low growth or indeed, contraction, is efficiency the only
option in sight?

Hasn't all of this efficiency got something with standard of living.
Standard of living means material things, there is no standard of living for the workers, they are too busy trying to earn enough to pay for the things that make for a better living standard. Why not be a little more socialistic in our approach to work and wealth management.
Rich companies are not satisfied with making a fortune here in AU they count up how much extra money they can make by going to a communist country and manufacture.
This will always be the case, we are in an enviornment of free trade, trade may be free but the playing field has got lumps in it.
Maybe a pull back is in order to protect our own..

> You haven't said why you think that.

Because this is the direction in which all 'economic restructuring' has moved for the past three decades.

> How would you prove it?

By observing what is happening in society.

> Also, will you avoid being as efficient as you know how in answering it?

Only if you can explain what this cheap shot actually means.

> impediments to economic activity are removed,

What are the impediments? Higher wages? Better working conditions? Developing local industries instead of going offshore?

> As the economy has become more efficient, small businesses have proliferated

If you actually talked to small business people instead of studying them at university, you'd find that most of them are struggling to survive in a slow, losing battle.

> and to bring more people into the work place, more flexible hours have become more common.

And most of those forced into 'more flexible hours' would much prefer a reliable, full-time job. You have the makings of an excellent economist. You have already divorced yourself from all human and real-world considerations.