Imagine you walk into a modal Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The lighting is bad; the lines are long; the people are miserable. Some liber(tarian)-nuts might say, “See, that’s why driving should be free! No government licenses or registration. Let the market decide!” But most of us would react by saying, “It would be wonderful if we could make the DMV more ‘efficient.’”
And it would be. Our time is valuable. Inefficient bureaucracies waste that time. We should build bureaucracies that respect us by using our time efficiently.
But then, let’s say that someone suggests that the way to make the DMV more “efficient” is to slash 75% of its employees. (This is, of course, drawn from Vivek Ramaswamy’s truly ignorant proposal to cut 75% of government employees. “Ignorant,” because social security numbers were not always randomly assigned — before 2002, 71% were in states beginning with even numbers (including 0), 29% in states with odd numbers.) (Calculation here.) No one could believe that move would make the DMV more “efficient.” No one could believe that the motive of anyone proposing to cut a DMV’s staff by 75% is to make a DMV more efficient. The proposal to cut employment massively is simply a proposal to cut spending. Anyone who says anything differently either doesn’t speak English or believes they can bullshit you into believing anything…
