ChrisD(RJ) wrote:
>Why? What if people prefer to trade off efficiency for other perceived
>goods?
-They're softheaded then.
Come on-- this is an issue of how people feel a word is used and how it can be defined in the ideal. Yes, efficiency if defined as delivering whatever you want, only with less resources of natural and human investment, is always to be preferred.
But "efficiency" is often traded off against uncertainty in one's life due to the threat of layoffs, less caring communities because of the decline of perceived neighborhood markets in favor of giant impersonal retailers, and the list goes on.
There are many values people hold tied up in "inefficiency" and only if they feel they have the democratic power to get the advantages of productivity without losing the other perceived values will they define "efficiency" as an unalloyed good.
-- Nathan