POLITICS: The Nature of Efficiency

From the book "Introducing Public Policy:"

What the would-be reformers so often forget is that government operations are not inefficient because stupid people work there; they are inefficient because they have been designed by the legislature to reflect the competing interests of patronage, representativeness, and due process. Efficiency has to take its turn with these other factors. And no upstart executive from a hotshot corporation is going to push these other factors out of line— because they are just as much part of the agency’s legal mandate as efficiency.

(168).

Efficiency isn't everything. It isn't efficient to deliver mail in rural Montana at a cost to the consumer tantamount to the rest of the country even if its more expensive.

It would be efficient to throw criminals who have confessed in jail with no trial, but all that would do would be to incentivize police to work around due process.

When someone says a government policy is inefficient don't argue, it is. It is by design. The question when evaluating a public policy is "Are we prepared to deal with the consequences if we don't have it?" It is very, very rare that public services can be fair and efficient simultaneously.