I had this same argument 20 years ago when I compared private industry’s efficiency to a Comcast call center. Four hours of hold for ‘you plug back in and out?’ and/or a disconnect.
Albeit I now work in government where we are culturally required to refer to people as ‘customers’. Though people are always shocked when they get a response from a human within a week’s time. The bar of expectations is low.
customers
For everyone who thinks “users” or “clients” is dehumanizing, it can in fact get worse. IMO “clients” isn’t even that bad as a way to differentiate people you are serving from those you are not serving, but I would never be able to accept calling the people I help “customers”. We are not doing business, this is a public service ffs.
Efficient at what and for whom? The whole concept is bullshit when applied to a social science like economics.
It’s not just (time now required for task)/(time previously required for task)? So if it normally costs 4 hours to get a jug of water, and we build pipes to make it cost 4 minutes, then it’s a 60x increase in efficiency.
Bias: manufacturing engineer
In capitalism, you become more efficient the closer you get to producing nothing while charging infinite dollars to everyone.
If you have to charge 1/60th or less per unit of water and the market size remains the same, your example is less efficient, even if the pipes were free.
From the short-sighted beady eyes of a soulless ghoul running a company whose sole service is to supply water: yes this would be inefficient if it costs more. From someone with just the tiniest imagination: with easier access to water, what else could we do for people?
Once upon a time this type of vision was common, business schools did a fantastic job turning everyone into idiots.
Capitalism; the people who want to provide water as cheaply as possible are out-competed by the people who want to make as much money as possible.
They do that because you are not the customer, your employer is.
That and there’s no incentive for the insurance companies to do good things. If given a choice of making more money or less money they choose more money every time.
Yup, a lot of nonsense could be resolved if I could switch providers on my own. There would still be a lot of nonsense though.
Efficiency is a thing that is measured in profit for the most part sadly. Not in how many customers are successfully served in a certain time span.
As i always say, it is efficient, just not for you
It really isn’t though. Even if you take corruption and siphoning off profits as the actual goal capitalism sabotages the goal of getting the maximum amount of money to siphon off all the time through short-sighted policies in much the same way overfishing and similar short-sighted ways of treating common goods does.
Much like the picture. Or maybe that’s the point. It’s the weekend, you can’t blame me if I don’t get it.
And still it’s not efficient if the goal is long term corporate profits (which is a shit goal but whatever), because the rich fuckers will steal from shareholders, too.
