Efficiency

Sometimes we permit ourselves to assume that everything we call by the same name has the same qualities of character. It is almost as if knowing one man whose name is John, we conclude that all men named John are like him. Consider for example, the word “efficiency.” Its various shades of definition all boil down to getting things done with the least expenditure of time, effort, energy, money, material, or whatever it takes to do whatever it is we want done. Seemingly one would scarcely feel the need ever to question the universal desirability of “efficiency.” And yet, under some circumstances, mere mechanical efficiency may completely ignore the higher human values. A juke box, for example, may be much more mechanically efficient in blaring out tired tunes than a boy practicing on the piano. It takes much effort to get a little music out of a boy who would rather be playing ball. But there are potential values in persisting with a boy, with which a juke box has nothing in common. When men travel, it may be more mechanically efficient to crowd them into cattle cars instead of comfortable coaches. But this is not “efficient” in terms of human dignity and comfort and self-respect. As a matter of mere mechanics, it may be more efficient to make all clothing in the same pattern, to build barracks instead of houses, to put men on a sort of human assembly line for all the services and attentions they need. It may be mechanically more efficient under some circumstances to sacrifice men in order to save money, machines, and materials. Also, we sometimes hear that dictatorships are more efficient than democracies. But let us not become worshippers of a word. Let us first face the question: efficient for whom and for what purpose and to what end⎯efficiency for making free men or merely for moving masses? If it isn’t efficient for man’s good, we want no part of it whether it carries the label of efficiency or not. Efficiency that does not move toward the happiness and development, toward the salvation and exaltation of mankind, is efficiency miscarried.