The Efficient Private Sector

From Balloon Juice:

Business justify all sorts of things on “efficiency” grounds. Business class travel and corporate jets supposedly allow managers to be more rested and work on the go and so on, but really it is about comfort and prestige, not efficiency. Lavish retreats supposedly promotes better communication and teamwork, but really is mostly about getting a paid vacation. Expensive office space and furnishings are supposed to reassure clients and set a tone of quality, but really just make more enjoyable places to work. And, of course, outsized salaries for CEOs and other senior managers are supposed to be about attracting top talent, and yet are often divorced from any objective measure of performance.
The idea that the private sector is efficient and adept at cutting waste, fraud, and abuse is just one of the empty zombie concepts that VSPs mouth mindlessly. But actually demonstrating private sector efficiency turns out to be hard to accomplish, and if you actually look at the excesses of the private sector in terms of spending on luxuries and outsized senior compensation it should be pretty obvious that the claim of efficiency is largely an empty assertion.
Flournoy just came out of government. As Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, her salary as a Level III Executive Schedule was $165,300. I’m pretty willing to be she makes a heck of a lot more as a “senior adviser at Boston Consulting Group.” But BCG is, by definition, more efficient. Did she get smarter? Is she working harder now? She’s apparently generating more value added now, right? I know that is just a little gotcha, but it is the kind of thing that might make a person think a little… if they weren’t so wedded to conventional wisdom that is.

Exactly.  All things are inefficient, but they are inefficient in their own ways.  Government is often inefficient in the struggle to be equitable.  The private sector is often inefficient in the effort of being inequitable.