Zohran Mamdani Wants to Reclaim Efficiency from the Right(jacobin.com)
jacobin.com
Zohran Mamdani Wants to Reclaim Efficiency from the Right
https://jacobin.com/2026/02/zohran-mamdani-efficiency-nyc-budget/
4 comments
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).
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).
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.
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.
Allow me to reply to your points in that case.
> Efficient means their value outputs are high relative to their inputs.
To quote someone online, you've put together some meme-like oversimplified text "to carefully say nothing". Whilst not completely wrong, it is, at best, incomplete and certainly misleading.
Who says that that's what efficient means? You are using a very narrow definition of efficiency and then treating it as if it somehow fully explains how public administration operates. An input/output ratio is but one (valid) starting point, but in government it's not nearly enough on its own. Public administration is normally assessed across inputs, outputs, outcomes, quality, and equity/access, rarely just cost. To put it gently here, that would be silly, since governments are not factories producing a single priced commodity.
In terms of public admin, the whole fight is over what counts as "value," who gets it, over what time period, and under what constraints. Cutting a budget line can look "efficient" on paper while making outcomes worse six months later. Spending more upfront can look "inefficient" on paper while saving money and harm long term. That is exactly why this stuff is studied in detail and not reduced to one sentence.
As the article says, "government can and should work effectively and efficiently for the people it serves", so it's by no means a case of outputs and inputs. This definition of efficiency is rather divorced from reality; it's like saying "eating is not efficient, as it costs money". True, but also completely wrong way to look at things.
> The right has only ever had efficiency lip servicemen, no efficiency doers.
I very much favour a left-wing administration focused on real needs of the people rather than economic abstractions, but I believe that your claim too simplistic to warrant agreement. It can definitely be true (and often was, historically speaking), but it's just not a rule. Again, it depends how we define these.
> 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".
Different governments absolutely do waste money on favoured interests, but they do not waste it in the same ways, toward the same ends, or with the same social results. That's the whole spiel. Handing money to private contractors, subsidies, tax breaks, and politically protected industries while calling it discipline is one kind of inefficiency. Underfunding core services until they fail and then using that failure to justify privatisation is another. Pretending all of this is just "everyone pisses money away" identically on the right and on the left is really lazy.
Equating left and right in that sense is simply wrong and daft, to be honest. There are mountains of differences between these administrations and they're motivated by different reasons. Also, do please read the article, it already addresses some of your assumptions.
> Oh and they keep all other forms of inefficiency too. Farm subsidies, tariffs, all the other dumb shit, that's well protected.
Your examples actually undermine your own argument. Farm subsidies, tariffs, and protected sectors are exactly the kind of state intervention the right routinely defends when it benefits capital, domestic players, or strategic interests, so this idea that the right stands for some pure anti-state efficiency is obviously false. The issue was never "state vs no state", if that's somehow the point there; it's who that administration serves, what it funds, and how outcomes are measured in the interest of citizens, not numbers in a table. I think that this draws a fairly clear line between left and right.
> So not a difficult lift for Mamdami, despite socialism being basically a big middle finger to morals and reality.
Now that's just ideological throat-clearing that shouldn't really deserve answering. It doesn't explain anything, it doesn't even engage the question at hand. If you want to argue about whether a policy is efficient, argue the policy. Define the objective, define the metrics, define the time horizon, and compare outcomes. A "big middle finger to morals"? Surely there must be a misunderstanding somewhere, because that's a little hilarious and childish.
> Efficient means their value outputs are high relative to their inputs.
To quote someone online, you've put together some meme-like oversimplified text "to carefully say nothing". Whilst not completely wrong, it is, at best, incomplete and certainly misleading.
Who says that that's what efficient means? You are using a very narrow definition of efficiency and then treating it as if it somehow fully explains how public administration operates. An input/output ratio is but one (valid) starting point, but in government it's not nearly enough on its own. Public administration is normally assessed across inputs, outputs, outcomes, quality, and equity/access, rarely just cost. To put it gently here, that would be silly, since governments are not factories producing a single priced commodity.
In terms of public admin, the whole fight is over what counts as "value," who gets it, over what time period, and under what constraints. Cutting a budget line can look "efficient" on paper while making outcomes worse six months later. Spending more upfront can look "inefficient" on paper while saving money and harm long term. That is exactly why this stuff is studied in detail and not reduced to one sentence.
As the article says, "government can and should work effectively and efficiently for the people it serves", so it's by no means a case of outputs and inputs. This definition of efficiency is rather divorced from reality; it's like saying "eating is not efficient, as it costs money". True, but also completely wrong way to look at things.
> The right has only ever had efficiency lip servicemen, no efficiency doers.
I very much favour a left-wing administration focused on real needs of the people rather than economic abstractions, but I believe that your claim too simplistic to warrant agreement. It can definitely be true (and often was, historically speaking), but it's just not a rule. Again, it depends how we define these.
> 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".
Different governments absolutely do waste money on favoured interests, but they do not waste it in the same ways, toward the same ends, or with the same social results. That's the whole spiel. Handing money to private contractors, subsidies, tax breaks, and politically protected industries while calling it discipline is one kind of inefficiency. Underfunding core services until they fail and then using that failure to justify privatisation is another. Pretending all of this is just "everyone pisses money away" identically on the right and on the left is really lazy.
Equating left and right in that sense is simply wrong and daft, to be honest. There are mountains of differences between these administrations and they're motivated by different reasons. Also, do please read the article, it already addresses some of your assumptions.
> Oh and they keep all other forms of inefficiency too. Farm subsidies, tariffs, all the other dumb shit, that's well protected.
Your examples actually undermine your own argument. Farm subsidies, tariffs, and protected sectors are exactly the kind of state intervention the right routinely defends when it benefits capital, domestic players, or strategic interests, so this idea that the right stands for some pure anti-state efficiency is obviously false. The issue was never "state vs no state", if that's somehow the point there; it's who that administration serves, what it funds, and how outcomes are measured in the interest of citizens, not numbers in a table. I think that this draws a fairly clear line between left and right.
> So not a difficult lift for Mamdami, despite socialism being basically a big middle finger to morals and reality.
Now that's just ideological throat-clearing that shouldn't really deserve answering. It doesn't explain anything, it doesn't even engage the question at hand. If you want to argue about whether a policy is efficient, argue the policy. Define the objective, define the metrics, define the time horizon, and compare outcomes. A "big middle finger to morals"? Surely there must be a misunderstanding somewhere, because that's a little hilarious and childish.
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.