Should and can one single value reign supreme in societies and consciousness? Or would this automatically denote excess and idolatry? Political scientist and leisure researcher Jacob Snyder analyses the ideology of the current moment and identifies its obsession with efficiency. He argues against efficiency's place as the supreme value in our personal lives and in our politics. While efficiency can be useful, an obsession with it leads us to forget the reasons why we needed it in the first place, turning conversation away from such reasons, such as democratic government or a fulfilling leisure time.
Efficiency, in both the political and personal realm, is often a tool of unwarranted destruction. In our contemporary culture, however, it is largely seen as the supreme value that excuses and explains different social structures and political choices. Instead of blindly accepting its dominant position, we should instead examine efficiency’s preeminence and what lies behind it. I argue here that efficiency is a destructive principle because it applies a blanket standard that, in our daily lives, harms different, more important aims; while in politics, it is used by those who harbor other, more sinister purposes. While efficiency is often positioned as the rational, moderate choice, there is a notably immoderate character to our contemporary obsession with it, and which can subordinate all other values to it. By rejecting efficiency as all-important, we can recover a sense of what matters in both our daily life and political organization.
Efficiency’s reign in the personal
Like many values that emerge from different sectors, such as the scientific or economic realms, efficiency has not remained in one tidy corner, but has spread to our personal lives. It is just as likely to be abused there as it is anywhere else. The standard of efficiency assumes that whatever the standard is applied to has a merely utilitarian function. This may be an appropriate standard for some aspects of our lives. For example, commuting to work, for most, is a largely utilitarian endeavor. But its utilitarian nature is part of what makes a work commute unpleasant. It is something to “get through,” “get over with,” or “endure.” Because there is nothing to direct us to the activity for its own sake, it is largely unenjoyable. As such, ways of making that activity more efficient are welcome.
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However, not everything in our lives should take this form. Some argue that the fullest life is the one that pushes away efficiency as much as possible. For Rousseau, utility is an enemy of happiness and was very likely also a sign of vanity. In his Reveries of a Solitary Walker, where he narrates what he deems the happiest moments of his life, he often fills his days with botany, but of an intentionally useless variety. He does not seek to identify previously unidentified plants or to discover novel medicinal qualities that would benefit himself or others. He admits that his “work” is largely redoing the work of others. To do botany in a “useful” manner would ruin his enjoyment, as the focus would be on the consequence of the activity, rather than the activity itself.
It is not just our work, or the route there, that abuses efficiency. The standard has invaded other aspects of our lives, especially when it concerns our related obsession with “self-improvement.” Our resolutions to be fitter, slimmer, and stronger suffer, in part, from this utilitarian concern for diet and exercise. Perhaps what is keeping us from exercise is that we treat it like work, with electronic trackers and optimized footwear to make our efforts as efficient and productive as possible. But just like the efficient route to work, exercise becomes miserable because of this strategic posture towards it.
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Thinkers from Aristotle to Tocqueville have long held that political regimes have tendencies inherent to them, and the downfall of a regime is often found in the overindulgence of those natural tendencies.
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We would perhaps see a better result by finding a physical activity that we enjoy—one that pushes away concerns for efficiency. Perhaps we find that in a competitive environment, or one that emphasizes an uncompetitive, but otherwise social, setting. Or, like Rousseau delighting in nature, we could simply “exercise” to enjoy the natural capabilities of our bodies. We are more likely to enjoy it precisely because its utilitarian aspects are absent, or at least hidden from us, and we are therefore more likely to stick with it. This makes it, ironically, more efficient. To be more fit, then, and better enjoy your fitness, borrow Elon Musk’s chainsaw and take it to your fitness tracker. Perhaps even that work commute could be made enjoyable by taking an inefficient and circuitous route through a park, or one that ensures that your favorite bakery is on the way. Inefficiency is often a symptom, if not a cause, of enjoyment.
What efficiency hides in politics
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the U.S. marks the heights that the worship of efficiency has reached. It has, amongst other cuts, terminated probationary employees from various federal agencies, including the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Probationary workers are the easiest to terminate, but the firings are hardly “efficient” otherwise. Probationary workers include those that recently received promotions, meaning that the best employees were among those fired. Furthermore, many of the positions were not even funded by the federal government. Though technically employees of federal agencies, their wages were paid by other institutions. Barring the possibility that receiving a service for free is somehow inefficient, these cuts were only efficient in the sense that it was the easiest way to deconstruct, as much as possible, government agencies. DOGE has set its sights on “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Only the first of those—waste—actually concerns efficiency. Might, therefore, a distrust in government (because of supposed fraud and abuse) be the real motivation behind all of this supposed concern for “efficiency”?
Skepticism of government, it is true, is a hallmark of liberal political societies. This skepticism is incorporated into liberal regimes in a variety of ways, such as the protection of rights like due process. However, thinkers from Aristotle to Tocqueville have long held that political regimes have tendencies inherent to them, and the downfall of a regime is often found in the overindulgence of those natural tendencies. For example, Aristotle thought that tyranny often arises from democratic leaders that are especially popular, and Tocqueville held that modern democracy had the potential to slide into “soft despotism.” An overindulgence in efficiency might, therefore, carry its own risks. Some level of distrust was important to early liberals like John Locke because of the dangers of absolute and arbitrary power. To prescribe absolute power would be to think that “men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by lions.” Yet, even that most famous partisan of liberalism was aware of the dangers of overindulging that distrust, arguing that “‘turbulent spirits’ that lay the ‘foundation for overturning the Constitution and Frame of any Just Government, are guilty of the greatest Crime, I think, a Man is capable of.”
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Just as the concern for “efficiency” in government can threaten the public good, the over-indulgence in efficiency in our personal lives corrupts our capacity for happiness.
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Even more sensitive to the abuses of distrust was Alexander Hamilton, who witnessed it in the debates over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. He is incisive on both its causes and its serious consequences: “It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust… and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.”
Hamilton suggests that once a liberal political society is established, the greatest danger is no longer government power becoming absolute and arbitrary. Instead, it is an indulgence in those sentiments of distrust that are stoked by the ambitious who take advantage of that distrust to satisfy their own tyrannical desires. In his case, he was speaking in favor of a focus on greater efficiency, but the times have changed; efficiency has now, I believe, become the catchword for precisely those distrusting “turbulent spirits” that seek to undermine government. In other words, tyranny will use distrust and a specious concern for liberty (in the guise of the moment) as a prop to undermine liberty. Rather than simply being vigilant against the power of government, true liberal citizens also need to be vigilant against distrust. In this moment, the trope of the inefficient government is distracting us from the true potential and challenges of democratic governmentality.
A mark of immoderation is the incapacity to satisfy desire. The immoderate sweet tooth is never satiated; there is always a desire for more. An immoderate desire for efficiency is no different. Just as the concern for “efficiency” in government can threaten the public good, the over-indulgence in efficiency in our personal lives corrupts our capacity for happiness. Thus, it is time we address our attachment to this concept more broadly, in so doing recovering the original intention behind both our personal decisions and our political systems, intentions that are more complex and rich than the simple desire for maximization.
28th May 2025
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