Systemic Inefficiency Quotes

The prize for ultimate inefficiency goes to America. We have built in so many checks and balances that our 'leaders' are the most thoroughly hogtied of any on Earth.

If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.

When government programs fail, it is often because public officials are clueless about how human beings think and act.

It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

When we ask bureaucrats to identify who is responsible for fixing anything, they reassure us that there are 'procedures in place.'

Constitutional reform is exasperatingly slow.

WHO has become so corrupted, mismanaged and irrelevant that many public health leaders around the world are calling for it to be shut down

I find it very frustrating how much passing the buck there is in the criminal justice system when it comes to taking responsibility for outcomes.

We cannot accept the status quo of throwing more taxpayer money into a broke and broken system.

One of the things that happens that's challenging within the democratic process is that people say, 'Look at this failure, so we should totally change this whole thing.' And then you add in tons of bureaucratic process and checks and balances, and all of a sudden, it doesn't work that well.

By the 1970s, Western sanctions had hollowed out the Soviet economy. Ultimately, however, what brought down the Soviets was their inability to repair the catastrophic damage that began with the meeting of Igor Gouzenko and the RCMP.

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

I think we're paralyzed by the virtues of a combination of liberalism and bureaucracy. And Trump doesn't know any of that. All he knows, and he's like every other citizen, fed up with it.

Everyone knows about the substantive issues of concern, like federal health care, but very little is said about the process, the lack of accountability.

Divided government need not be dysfunctional government.

Stable markets, unstable world. Efficiency. Everybody hears about it. It's enough to make you want to be pro-inefficiency and pro-corruption.

Aging nations have arteries clogged with obsolete laws, slowing blood flow and preventing oxygen from reaching all parts of the body politic. Physicians call this arteriosclerosis; historians see decline of empire.