In Defense of "Inefficiency"

When automobile manufacturers struggle to squeeze as many miles per gallon as possible out of their car designs, any feature of the design that impedes the forward motion of the vehicle -- friction, or coefficient of drag -- is the enemy. The aim is to design a vehicle that uses every ounce of fuel to move the car forward as efficiently as possible.

And so it is in the world of finance. As historian Niall Ferguson reminds us in his recent book, The Ascent of Money, hard as it is to imagine, people didn't always have money. The invention of money went a long way toward reducing the friction -- the inefficiency -- in financial transactions. No longer did the farmer have to drag sacks of potatoes to the marketplace to trade for eggs and milk. Money was a medium of exchange that greatly reduced the financial "coefficient of drag."

Arguably, much that has happened in the financial world over the last 200 years can be seen as a continuation of the revolution in efficiency begun by money. Credit, for example, meant that you could go shopping for eggs and milk without even having the money. The farmer could promise to pay it at a later date, after the potato harvest. Nor did the farmer need to save up the surplus from many years of bumper crops before expanding the amount of land under cultivation. It was possible to get the land now, with credit, and pay for it over time, in part with the proceeds from newly cultivated acres.

Much more recently, financial markets have been all about efficiency. This is one way to understand the oft-cited distinction between the "real economy" and the "financial economy." Like point masses moving in frictionless, Newtonian vacuums, financial transactions are so far removed from the material entities that underlie them that transactions can occur with lightening speed, with nothing to slow them down. The creation of stock option markets means that you don't have to go to the trouble of actually buying a stock that you are going to be selling soon anyway. You can just promise to buy it and then sell it at a price and date specified by the option contract. And then you can trade the option rather than the underlying stock.

And bundling mortgages into securities reduces the time-consuming, unproductive friction involved in checking the credit-worthiness of each mortgage applicant. You can just let the mortgages of the many work to indemnify the occasional defaults of the few. Similarly, credit card interest rates of 20% or more eliminate the need for credit-card companies to spend time unproductively checking the credit of applicants. High interest rates more than cover the occasional deadbeat. Home equity lines of credit mean that homeowners can borrow a big pile of money (or have the potential to borrow a big pile of money), and have it at the ready, even when there is no pressing need. Instead of having to go through red tape to get a loan when your kitchen pipes burst, or your car engine dies, you can just write a check. And A.T.M.'s mean not having to fill out withdrawal forms and stand in bank lines.

Each of these developments has made it easier to do ones business without wasted time and energy -- without friction. Each has made economic transactions quicker and more efficient. And that's obviously good. But the current financial crisis suggests that maybe, there can be too much of a good thing. If loans weren't securitized, bankers might have taken the time to assess the credit-worthiness of each applicant. If homeowners had to apply for loans to improve their houses or buy new cars, instead of writing checks against home equity, they might have thought harder before making weighty financial commitments. If people actually had to go into a bank and stand in line to withdraw cash, they might spend a little less and save a little more. If credit card companies weren't allowed to charge outrageous interest, perhaps not everyone with a pulse would be offered credit cards. And if people had to pay with cash, rather than plastic, they might keep their hands in their pockets just a little bit longer. These are all cases in which a little friction to slow us down would have enabled both institutions and individuals to make better decisions. And in the case of individuals, there is the added bonus that using cash more and credit less would have made it apparent sooner just how much the "booming 90's" had left the middle class behind. Credit hid the ever-shrinking purchasing power of the middle class from view.

So perhaps now the time is right to stop worshipping the god of efficiency and bring a little friction back into our lives. One way to do this is to reintroduce transactions that are real transactions -- person-to-person and face-to-face. A second is to rekindle certain social norms that serve to slow us down. For example, no one goes bankrupt on purpose, but if bankruptcy became a little more of a disgrace and embarrassment and a little less of a financial strategy, people and firms might do more to forestall it. And if people thought about their homes less as investments and more as places to live, full of the friction of kids, dogs, friends, neighbors, and community organizations attached, there might be less speculation with an eye toward house flipping.

My appeal to inefficiency may seem like a bit of quaint nostalgia -- a longing for George Baileys -- bankers who know us and care about us -- to come back into our lives and slow things down. It may seem far too modest a suggestion to right the financial ship. But it isn't modest at all. Consider this: every macroeconomic model I know about is predicated on the need for economic growth. There are only two ways for economies to grow: they can produce more output, or they can produce the same output with less input. Our ecological train wreck suggests that we can't just continue producing more output indefinitely; the planet won't sustain it. So that leaves us with reducing input, which is just a jargon-ish way of describing efficiency. But if the drive to ever-greater efficiency leads to financial wipe-outs like the one we're now experiencing, maybe the limitless pursuit of efficiency is a false god. If so, we need to start developing models of our economic future that do not depend on unending growth. Either that, or we need to start distinguishing the good kind of efficiency from the bad kind.

We'd all like a car that gets 100 miles to a gallon. The forces of friction and air resistance that slow us down are an expensive annoyance. But the thing is, when we're driving a car, we know where we're going and we're in control. Fast is good, though even here, a little bit of friction can forestall disaster when you encounter an icy road.

Life is not as predictable as driving. We don't always know where we're going. We're not always in control. Black ice is everywhere. A little something to slow us down in the uncertain world we inhabit may be a life saver.

Comments

[ObjectiveRealist]

We can easily see from the increased skew in wealth distribution in the eight or nine years since Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that the "efficiency" gains offered by Senator Phil Gramm were not beneficial to the majority of participants in the economy. I am very skeptical that these problems were the result of anybody pursuing actual efficiency. The movement of money did not reflect production. Moving money more rapidly does not indicate efficiency, moving it more accurately to better producers does. It's a thought-provoking post and a good read, but I disagree. The problem was never real efficiency, it was taking people on faith, giving them unaccountable power.

[Greg Stevenson]

Not all Industries technology strives for efficiency. It depends on your perspective. Inefficiency is at the core of weight loss. Lose more pounds in less time? Use inefficient machines. :-)

[USA1776]

Yes, I agree ... I am old schooling it now with a wonderful, yet inconvenient credit union. I can't really ATM much, so I take weekly amounts out of the bank. It is so early nineties but I love it. Plus I don't have to call Mumbai to get Citibank customer service anymore.

[BruceCohenPDX]

The mania for "efficiency" has left us in yet another hole: our entire economy, from supply chain to manufacturing processes is based on "just in time" methods. What this means in practice is that no part of the system stores more of what it needs than it can use before the next shipment comes in. That sounds great, because storage and inventory costs are lowered, and the entire system is more efficient. But what does it mean when there's a glitch that can't be covered by what's in stock? Say, when a hurricane hits a major city, or a flu epidemic reduces the available work force by 40% for several weeks? What happens is a cascade failure, as one location fails to ship what's needed down the line, and the dominoes are pushed over from that location to all the others that connect to it, or that connect to locations that connect to it. "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost ..."

[cdnbcn]

I think this is brilliant.

In my work, (restaurants) I analyze moments. Specifically how to build systems to maximize the probability of positive moments. The more positive moments my staff have, the happier they are. Happy staff are very easy to motivate, direct and lead. Furthermore, by introducing systems that connect my staff directly with my costs and profits, I have an entire staff that unconsciously think twice every time they're presented with a moment where they could waste some of my resources because it's easier. My theory's success is reflected in my numbers. I enjoy far lower labor and food costs than my competition. Furthermore my staff are happy to do it.

In your analysis I think I see the same theory applied. I can report that in my small scale experiment, by systemically introducing "friction" in the right place, (creating or increasing the possibility of positive social interactions) I have a successful business, but more importantly, I'm part of a supportive and tight knit community.

Anyways, loved the article.
Cheers!