Zohran Mamdani Wants to Reclaim Efficiency from the Right

https://jacobin.com/2026/02/zohran-mamdani-efficiency-nyc-budget/

by rbanffy • 5 months ago

8 4 5 months ago

jalapenos2• 5 months ago

The right has only ever had efficiency lip servicemen, no efficiency doers.

Once any right-winger gets in power they do the same thing lefists do - piss away billions of other peoples' money on their favourite things, as fast as they can, with impunity. They might call it some fuckwit name though like "A Big Beautiful Bill".

Oh and they keep all other forms of inefficiency too. Farm subsidies, tariffs, all the other dumb shit, that's well protected.

So not a difficult lift for Mamdami, despite socialism being basically a big middle finger to morals and reality.

robtherobber2• 5 months ago

You say... a lot there. And I struggle to understand the reasoning behind some of those claims. I won't go into details, but it should be said that regardless whether it leans - or is governed by a philosophy on the - left or right, administrations can be efficient, there's no question about that. I bring to everyone's attention the indisputable fact that administrations on this spectrum exist already (or have existed at one point in history) and some managed to be efficient.

I suppose a reasonable follow-up question would be 'how to measure efficiency?' or even 'what is efficiency?', in which case a trove of specialist literature exists for the curious-minded to arrive at various conclusions. Administrative efficiency cannot, and generally is not, seen in isolation - a number of factors need to be considered before determining what efficiency actually means since we're applying it to human societies and individuals. This inevitably goes well beyond economy, logistics, and even tangible reality (ex. budgeting rules will have to take into account economic reasoning but also whether it improves human life, or at least it maintains it at a decent quality, which is to say that we're moving into psycho-social and occasionally philosophical territory).

jalapenos2• 5 months ago

I say a lot? You took two long paragraphs to carefully say nothing.

Efficient means their value outputs are high relative to their inputs.

If they or their voters say homelessness is a problem, they don't burn billions on grifting "consultants" and produce no change, they spend a few millions and cut homelessness in half.

Zohran Mamdani Wants to Reclaim Efficiency from the Right

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