I'm not a huge fan of NPR's Planet Money, as some here may recall. But Wednesday before last, driving home from work (I work almost exclusively at home), I happened to hear a segment that interested me, less from what it said than from what suggested to me. (And then the next day this was reinforced by a story I'll talk about in my next diary--a story about a forthcoming UN report on massive environmental costs.) The subject was a contemporary efficiency expert, and with typical Planet Money lack of context, nothing at all was said about the long history industrial efficiency studies and practices, from the robotic authoritarianism of Turnerism Taylorism to the strikingly different bottom-up quality-centered philosophy of Edwards Deming, who was scathingly critical of efforts to over-control, the counter-productivity of which he demonstrated via fairly elementary, but elegantly deployed mathematics.
So, into this historical and conceptual void, floated the Planet Money story, "Do You Waste Time Walking To The Printer?" It's been over a week, and I didn't exactly recall this initial set-up, but it's a perfect foil:
Are you one of those people who pour the cream into the mug before the coffee, so you won't have to stir it? Or maybe you alphabetize your spice rack so you can find the nutmeg easily. If so, there's a job you might be good at: efficiency expert.
Now, I think it's perfectly logical to alphabetize your spice rack-though there could also be other more efficient ways to organize it-particularly if a few spots are easiest to reach, and a few spices get used a lot more than most of the others. But pouring cream into the mug before the coffee, so you don't have to stir it? Well, I drink my coffee black, but decades ago, when I did put cream and such into it, I would never have thought of having to stir it. Stirring in cream and honey or whatever was a pleasure, something I enjoyed-and in fact, still miss a bit. So that was the first discordant note the story struck. Efficiency, sure, but for what purpose?
In the middle of heated policy debates, projections of cost to industry and government fly thick and fast. If costs to citizens are mentioned, it's usually in their capacity as taxpayers, as though they weren't otherwise part of the economy. A couple examples from the global warming policy arena put this into sharp relief in a way that emphasizes the urgency of providing affordable health coverage to every American.
First, there's David Roberts' explanation (... with puppies!) of how the Congressional Budget Office undercounts the benefits of lower energy costs from efficiency. Their method counts the promotion of energy efficiency as a cost to the taxpayer, but not a savings to the ratepayer, as though you can make an absolute separation between people who pay taxes and people who pay utility bills.
That may make sense from the CBO's perspective, but not from the perspective of electricity-using members of the public trying to figure out whether new energy legislation benefits them.
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