To the editor:

Efficiency — Doing more or with less? Cut waste. Make it better faster. The leading cry of many administrations. In the extreme, it’s dangerous and rigged to benefit a few while we and the future pay a deadly price. DODE performed a lobotomy on a patient who had a broken arm, celebrating destruction in the guise of efficiency with a century of repercussions in lost trust, productivity, safety and taxes.

.Efficiency apart from quality and sustainability is a bait and switch. Did the government firing thousands of people and rehiring some unqualified persons result in more accurate weather prediction and disaster assistance, improved public safety, better medical care, higher wages or any saving of time, money or trust in government? Nope.

Efficiency is often confused with faster – bigger – stronger. Fast food has tasty yet unpronounceable, unhealthy ingredients. Big Box Convenience stores eviscerated small town commerce and community connections. Nuclear weapons and the Nazi gas chambers were extremely efficient but they were indiscriminate and immoral.

So called “efficient technology” increases the use of energy, time, money, and resources. For example, consider those automated helplines that take forever. Consider the proliferation of plastic replacing many glass, cardboard and metal items. Wonderful but the environmental damage to the planet including our bodies accelerates. Better gas mileage resulted in more driving that erased any savings and created more pollution, greater congestion and higher repair costs. The true cost of efficiency is passed on to the future to be paid with exorbitant and often deadly interest with spillover in wasted materials, time and civility.

The more we rely on technology and machines to make life easier, the more we become the machines and the more the machines become us with no boundaries and no moral imperative to care for our fellow travelers. In the words of Simon and Garfunkle, “Slow down you move too fast. Got to make the morning last.”

William Richards

Walnut Grove