What if we don't reconstruct an "efficient" economy?

I have ranted, sometimes nearly hysterically, against the primacy of efficiency.  As I wrote in this post a while ago, even as an undergrad, and definitely in graduate school, I had an intuitive understanding that there was something wrong with the pursuit of efficiency.  After all, if I had worshiped efficiency, I would have then stayed in engineering, which is about making "things" less inefficient.

Years have gone by.  Heck, it has been decades.  I have only become even more of a efficiency-hater.  Especially in the world of higher education, for which I often quote Leon Botstein:

No matter the outcome of such a conversation, a very important point is that we must make clear that the university will never be an efficient institution. A university is, by definition, inefficient. If one wants a great university, one has to put up with “wasted” time, unproductivity, seeming leisure.

However, whether it is in higher education, or by individuals who want to manically multitask, there is a huge worship at the feet of efficiency.  If only people would understand that efficiency is more satan than god!

The COVID-19 life is a context in which we could engage in discussions on efficiency.  Right?

Efficiency means getting the most “bang for your buck”, the most benefit for every pound spent. Any other course of action is wasteful, surely? But eliminating waste implies eliminating excess capacity, and we now see the consequences of that in health systems worldwide. Our obsession with efficiency, if it means failing to plan for a pandemic or a climate emergency, will cost lives.
Our priority should be resilience, not efficiency. We need to build resilient systems and economies that are explicitly designed to withstand worst-case scenarios – and have a fighting chance of coping with unforeseen disasters too.

Am reminded of an old joke about an auditor who viewed fire engines that the company had as wasted investment because they were rarely used!

If only we would use the coronavirus conditions to rethink efficiency!

Should we focus our energy on rebuilding an economy that was governed by the rules before COVID-19 brought activities to a halt?

What if, instead of going back to work full-time, we decided to work less, buy less, make less, and not fight to raise GDP at any cost?

What if?

Seriously, what if?  Why not think about prosperity without growth?

“Reversing consumerism’s financial and cultural dominance in public and private life is set to be one of the twenty-first century’s most gripping psychological dramas.”

What good is all the wealth when, for instance, four months into a lock down of sorts, and six months since the virus went, ahem, viral, we in the US are yet to develop enough testing capacity and PPE?  Does it not mean that all that wealth is inefficient, when we should have instead invested in "wasteful" resilience?

I suppose I will have lots more time to "waste" on such matters after I am laid off!