Whatever your idea of freedom is - libertarian, conservative, neoliberal, whatever it is - does it always align with efficiency? Is the most free policy always the most efficient, least destructive policy? For example: trial by jury forces us to let people go free who we know with high confidence are guilty of serious crimes. "Better that 10 guilty men go free than 1 innocent be condemned" isn't efficient at all. On utilitarian grounds one innocent man's suffering in prison is nothing next to another 10 victims being stabbed to death by the released guilty criminals. It seems that most of the rights and freedoms we hold deer no matter our political lean are at best on shaky utilitarian grounds. Freedom often creates harms and leaves opportunities unexplored. Tyranny, for all its faults, can be efficient. It's hard to see Russia developing as it did without the iron boot of the Soviets. What is freedom if it's not in opposition to efficiency to some extent?
sometimes efficiency is not the highest value. interesting that you would choose soviet russia as an example, as the russians were not only more efficient but certainly more free than in their centuries of serfdom to the romanovs. the american slaves were bred for efficiency, but developed means to express their creativity and are actually typecast as less than efficient. etc.
I've heard it said that the best and most efficient form of government is that of a benevolent dictatorship. I saw something that was close to that when I was in the former Yugoslavia at the time Josip Broz Tito was in power. Tito pulled Yugoslavia out of Stalin's sphere of influence and the general mood of the country was far brighter than neighboring Bulgaria and other Balkan countries who remained behind the Iron Curtain. While Yugoslavians under Tito did not have the freedoms currently enjoyed by Americans, the people certainly seemed happier and more festive under Tito's benevolent dictatorship.
An interesting proposition. I think it depends on the circumstance. For example, here in the USA, as much as he wants to, Biden can't just wave his flaccid magic wand and ban guns like that bimbo who runs New Zealand -- to the cheers of the tyrant lovers here in the US who said things like "see now that's how you run a government! Screw your freedom!"
Of course freedom isn't efficient. But then neither are humans. We're not robots. Nor should we act like it.
if the free market is efficient, please explain the constant drive to acquire competitors, to merge, for market dominance, for vertical integration, for wage and price agreements between erstwhile competitors. competition invites duplication of effort, industrial espionage, employee poaching etc. capitalisms is a drive not for efficiency, but for monopoly.
Freedom is naturally inefficient. It is supposed to be. The framers and founders took great pains to build inefficiency into the Constitution. Efficiency is the most destructive political process. Nothing is more efficient than a iron-fisted totalitarian dictatorship.
if windows95 was efficient it might be my favorite operating system? efficiency might not be my highest value.
Don't even start with the socialism thing. It has been proven to be inefficient every place it has been tried. It doesn't work. The key is competition.
