Posts Tagged ‘efficiency’
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations”*…
… so we’d do well to stay focused on those in power– in government, to be sure; but increasingly also on the emerging oligarchs grabbing the reins.
Further, in a fashion, to yesterday’s post… there’s so much going on these days– threats to democracy and freedom and well-being coming from so many directions– that it’s all too easy to miss something important. Allison Stanger calls our attention to one such dynamic: just as, starting in the 17th century, the East India Company’s commercial success gradually justified new powers [see, e.g., here, here, and the almanac entry here), today’s AI firms seek to leverage technical prowess to assume public functions by default…
On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter granting the East India Company exclusive rights to conduct trade in the Indian Ocean region. The document was precise in its limitations: The company could establish trading posts, negotiate with local rulers, and defend its commercial interests. Nothing more.
Seventy-seven years later, the same company had acquired the right to mint currency on behalf of the British crown. By 1765, it controlled the tax collection (ruthlessly enforced by its own private army) for the Indian provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa—territories containing roughly 20 million people. What began as commercial efficiency had become imperial governance. The transformation was so gradual that few contemporaries even noticed sovereignty shifting in the region from local rule to corporation.
A similar pattern can be seen today with national governments and Big Tech—only this time, centuries of drift have been compressed into months. Where the East India Company deployed trading posts and private armies, today’s technology firms and specifically AI development companies use data pipelines, data centers, and algorithmic systems. The medium has changed; the mechanics of private power assuming public functions remain the same.
Consider the trajectory of Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Established in February 2025 with the stated goal of eliminating bureaucratic waste but an unstated aspiration to vacuum up new data to improve Musk’s companies, DOGE began with access to federal payment systems—ostensibly to identify inefficiencies. Within weeks, reports emerged that DOGE personnel had gained the ability to alter government databases, including Social Security records and contractor payments. The justification remained consistent: To deliver efficiency, one must first seize control.
The parallel extends beyond metaphor. Just as the East India Company’s commercial success gradually justified new powers, today’s AI firms seek to leverage technical prowess to assume public functions by default, implicitly assuming that the reallocation of power will serve human flourishing. Each efficiency gain becomes justification for the next transfer of authority, yet the costs of that automation go uncalculated.
What once took generations now takes quarters; the key difference is the ease with which private digital systems can be aligned with the politics of friends and enemies. Communications systems, financial networks, and governance mechanisms are no longer reshaped through military conquest but by software updates. Increasingly, those same systems are being weaponized against the very allies who helped build them.
From content moderation to infrastructure control to monetary governance, AI companies are taking on public operations. As AI becomes a more prominent feature of everyday life, already existing problems in our public life will proliferate exponentially. The transformation before us is likely to proceed through three variants—algorithmic capture of information systems, weaponization of critical infrastructure, and cryptocurrency’s escape from public accountability. Absent immediate intervention, democratic societies risk permanent subordination to unelected digital sovereigns…
[Stanger unpacks the three variants, with examples from Meta, Starlink, and the Trump organization’s World Liberty Financial…]
… The choice is still ours, but the time to act is now. Democracies can reclaim control over critical infrastructure—or continue outsourcing it to corporate entities that increasingly resemble the East India Company: efficient, unaccountable, and sovereign in all but name.
As American allies have discovered, platform dependency is a trap that snaps shut when you least expect it. The question facing democratic societies is whether they will escape this trap while they still can, or whether they will remain subject to the whims of unelected digital sovereigns.
Everything scientists most value—objectivity, truth-seeking, skepticism and transparency—is at stake. These digital sovereigns are no longer merely connecting the world—they are remaking it. Whether this transformation serves public values or corporate profits will decide not only the future of technology—but the fate of self-governance.
“The right to search for truth, implies a duty,” warned Albert Einstein. “One must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.” The true cost of “efficiency” may be democracy itself, which is currently at risk of becoming just another social atavism of the analog age…
“The AI Raj: How tech giants are recolonizing power,” from @allisonstanger.bsky.social in @thebulletin.org.
Oh, and how might all of this work out even if there are no reins?: “Longtime Investor Warns the AI Industry Is Set to Collapse for a Basic Financial Reason“: “Each big tech company needs a global monopoly in AI to sustain their success and market value. They are not all going to get one.”… meantime, the damage to society is done…
* James Madison
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As we take it back, we might recall that Battle of Gaugamela was fought on this date in 331 BCE. The forces of the Army of Macedon under Alexander the Great and the Persian Army under King Darius III met for the second time. Alexander and the Macedonians were victorious. The battle is considered the final blow to the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, resulting in its complete conquest by Alexander.
“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place”*…
The last U. S. election was fueled, in some large measure, by dissatisfaction with government bureaucracies. Indeed, public trust in government has been low– among Democrats and Republicans alike– for decades; there is a wide-spread constituency for reform.
The pending answer at the federal level is an Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy-led effort, DOGE, which their comments suggest will be an accelerationist application of “business principles” and slash-and-burn reduction.
But as Kevin Hawickhorst reminds us, there is another way, one that the U.S. has successfully pursued before– one that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water…
For the federal bureaucracy, the 1940s through the 1960s are a nostalgic time. The era saw one spectacular achievement after another: from winning World War II, to building the interstate highway system, to landing on the moon. At its high point, trust in the federal government reached almost 80% in the 1950’s, as opposed to only 20% today.
Trust in the federal government has plummeted alongside the federal government’s ability to accomplish anything – which is no coincidence. Although government competence has changed for many reasons, there is one forgotten reason: after the second World War, the government was competent because it taught its managers to be competent.
During World War II, the poor management in the federal government was keenly felt. Although federal management had never been especially good, it reached a boiling point when it began noticeably impeding the war effort. The Bureau of the Budget (now OMB) responded by creating a new management unit tasked with training federal managers.
They termed their newly-developed management approach work simplification, which held that implementation and policy went hand-in-hand, and therefore managers had to be trained to streamline procedure in order to achieve policy goals. Moreover, the Bureau of the Budget felt that this viewpoint could be systematically taught to federal managers of average competence, and developed a training program to do so.
During the war, the civilian agencies were incredibly short staffed due to the draft, so any procedural red tape or poor distribution of work created instant bottlenecks. Many of these bottlenecks directly impacted the war effort, as (for example) with slow approvals for important construction projects. The Bureau of the Budget therefore began an initiative to improve management around 1942.
They conducted user research with several agencies and eventually felt they had a management system that could scale, which they termed Work Simplification. They taught managers Work Simplification at training seminars, and also created guides and pamphlets to distribute across the government. I quote from one of their guides1 that sets out the problem, the audience, and their goal:
Thinking of this sort has been going on in the United States Bureau of the Budget for some time. It has culminated in the decision to make a concerted drive to capture the best available means for exposing and disposing of common management problems, set it forth in clear, simple language, and put it in the hands of those who can use it to best advantage. And who are they? They are the operating managers of government: middle management people and first line supervisors. […]
From the standpoint of the Bureau of the Budget, Work Simplification is a method of attacking the procedural problems of large organizations by equipping first line supervisors with the skill to analyze and improve procedures. It provides a way of tapping the great reservoir of unused practical knowledge represented by this group.
… Their management agenda developed a training program for the managers closest to the ground, rather than (as is common today) focusing on top leadership…
… Although Work Simplification was developed during World War II, it was still the common approach for training federal managers into the 1960s. These were the stodgy managers of the Eisenhower era who oversaw the building of the interstate highway system, or the administration of the GI bill.
This is not how the federal government approaches management today. It would be, obviously, unreasonable to claim that earlier success was entirely due to training managers differently. But it clearly contributed – their methods explicitly aimed to solve issues that today’s processes aggravate.
In particular, the Bureau of the Budget’s work almost remarkably anticipated current conversations on government efficiency. Reformers note that the bureaucracy piles up layers of procedure without ever rethinking them – process charting taught managers to reduce procedural burden. Reformers note that government IT piles up layers of software from different eras, with nobody understanding how it fits together – process charting taught managers the start-to-finish viewpoint. Reformers note that bureaucrats rarely consider what it’s like to actually apply for benefits – once again, a failure that process charting aimed to correct.
Process charting is clearly not a perfect solution to any of these issues. But it is proof that the government can train bureaucrats to tackle these issues head-on!
The overall lessons of Work Simplification are even more important. Work Simplification’s success did not last forever, but it did last for several decades. And it achieved its success because the Bureau of the Budget created free training for low-level managers, while nobody else particularly cared.
So would-be bureaucratic streamliners today – proponents of product management thinking, agile IT development, or what have you – might imitate Eisenhower’s bureaucrats. Above all, they should prove that their proposals are a rational method that can be systematically taught to low-level managers, in order to put their “great reservoir of unused practical knowledge” to use…
How the federal government taught its managers to cut red tape: “Eisenhower’s Bureaucrats,” from @KHawickhorst.
Via Jennifer Pahlka, whose own Recoding America (and her continuing work) are powerful contributions to this critically-important dialogue.
By way of context, a piece from Venkatesh Rao explicitly about “self-help” but very useful in this broader/more systemic context: “How to Fall Off of the Wagon.” (Per the diagram below, from that post, the approach suggested above is “clockwise”; the Musk/Ramaswamy m.o., “counterclockwise”… which will make clarifying sense after you’ve read the short essay. While I can’t attribute the significance that I draw from it [for the issue of reengineering the government bureaucracies that are not serving Americans as they should] to Rao, I’d note that the clockwise direction is green; the counterclockwise, red.)
* G. K. Chesterton, The Thing
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As we fix it instead of throwing it away, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his sixth State of the Union Address to the joint houses of Congress. Eisenhower focused on three themes: a vigilant regard for human liberty, a wise concern for human welfare, and a ceaseless effort for human progress. His speech addressed the threats posed by the Soviet Union (and communism more generally around the world); urged efficient, effective government (as the government’s duty to citizens); and raised the issue of civil rights, calling for the enactment of what later became the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson called Eisenhower’s speech “a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of the problems which confront our people.”
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”*…
Eliminating waste sounds like a reasonable goal. Why would we not want managers to strive for an ever-more-efficient use of resources? Yet as I will argue, an excessive focus on efficiency can produce startlingly negative effects, to the extent that superefficient businesses create the potential for social disorder. This happens because the rewards arising from efficiency get more and more unequal as that efficiency improves, creating a high degree of specialization and conferring an ever-growing market power on the most-efficient competitors. The resulting business environment is extremely risky, with high returns going to an increasingly limited number of companies and people—an outcome that is clearly unsustainable. The remedy, I believe, is for business, government, and education to focus more strongly on a less immediate source of competitive advantage: resilience. This may reduce the short-term gains from efficiency but will produce a more stable and equitable business environment in the long run…
Roger Martin‘s eloquent argument for a longer-term perspective and for robustness as a primary goal: “The High Price of Efficiency.”
[image above: source]
* Peter Drucker
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As we take the long view, we might recall that it was on this date in 2000 that Alan Greenspan was nominated for his fourth term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. An accolyte of Ayn Rand, he oversaw an “easy money” Fed that, many suggest, was a leading cause of the dotcom bubble (which began later that year) and the subprime mortgage crisis, (which led to the Great Recession, and which occurred within a year of his departure from the Fed).
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”*…
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.
– Richard Wilbur
Materialism holds the high ground these days in debates over that most ultimate of scientific questions: the nature of consciousness. When tackling the problem of mind and brain, many prominent researchers advocate for a universe fully reducible to matter. ‘Of course you are nothing but the activity of your neurons,’ they proclaim. That position seems reasonable and sober in light of neuroscience’s advances, with brilliant images of brains lighting up like Christmas trees while test subjects eat apples, watch movies or dream. And aren’t all the underlying physical laws already known?
From this seemly hard-nosed vantage, the problem of consciousness seems to be just one of wiring, as the American physicist Michio Kaku argued in The Future of the Mind (2014). In the very public version of the debate over consciousness, those who advocate that understanding the mind might require something other than a ‘nothing but matter’ position are often painted as victims of wishful thinking, imprecise reasoning or, worst of all, an adherence to a mystical ‘woo.’
It’s hard not to feel the intuitional weight of today’s metaphysical sobriety. Like Pickett’s Charge up the hill at Gettysburg, who wants to argue with the superior position of those armed with ever more precise fMRIs, EEGs and the other material artefacts of the materialist position? There is, however, a significant weakness hiding in the imposing-looking materialist redoubt. It is as simple as it is undeniable: after more than a century of profound explorations into the subatomic world, our best theory for how matter behaves still tells us very little about what matter is. Materialists appeal to physics to explain the mind, but in modern physics the particles that make up a brain remain, in many ways, as mysterious as consciousness itself…
The closer you look, the more the materialist explanation of consciousness (and physics) appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground: “Minding matter.”
Pair with the two parts of Tim Park‘s conversation with Riccardo Manzotti: “Am I the Apple?” and “The Mind in the Whirlwind.”
* Albert Einstein, riffing on his friend Kurt Gödel
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As we think about thinking, we might spare a thought for Frederick Winslow Taylor; he died on this date in 1915. An engineer and inventor (42 patents), he’s best remembered as the father of “Scientific Management,” the discipline rooted in efficiency studies and standardization. Quoth Peter Drucker:
Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor’s ‘scientific management’ rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since – even though he has been dead all of sixty years.
Taylor’s work encouraged many followers (including Frank “Cheaper by the Dozen” Gilbreth) and effectively spawned the field of management consulting. But Taylor practiced what he preached, and found time to become a champion tennis player as well: he won the first doubles tournament (1881) in U.S. National Championships, the precursor of the U.S. Open (with partner Clarence Clark).
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