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Inefficiency Quotes

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Inefficiency Quotes

“If your business is anything like our exemplar firm, or indeed like most companies we have worked with, the projects you have committed to complete represent over 100 percent of your carrying capacity. This can have surprising effects on the length of time each project takes to complete. For instance, imagine a project that will take a skilled software developer six months to complete. The lead time to completion if this person is working full-time on the project is six months. Divide this person’s time between four projects, however, and three-quarters of the time, each project is being ignored by the person. The lead time to completion of all four projects stretches to two years! Delays like this can be deadly in a world where speed matters.”

WorkBusinessManagementHuman ResourcesProject ManagementOrganizational CultureInefficiencyRoadmaps
Book:The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty
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“[Free trade agreements] are trade agreements that don't stick to trade…they colonize environmental labor, and consumer issues of grave concern (in terms of health safety, and livelihoods too) to many, many hundreds of millions of people - and they do that by subordinating consumer, environmental, and labor issues to the imperatives and the supremacy of international commerce. That is exactly the reverse of how democratic societies have progressed, because over the decades they've progressed by subordinating the profiteering priorities of companies to, say, higher environmental health standards; abolition of child labor; the right of workers to have fair worker standards…and it's this subordination of these three major categories that affect people's lives, labor, environment, the consumer, to the supremacy and domination of trade; where instead of trade getting on its knees and showing that it doesn't harm consumers - it doesn't deprive the important pharmaceuticals because of drug company monopolies, it doesn't damage the air and water and soil and food (environmentally), and it doesn't lacerate the rights of workers - no, it's just the opposite: it's workers and consumers and environments that have to kneel before this giant pedestal of commercial trade and prove that they are not, in a whole variety of ways, impeding international commerce…so this is the road to dictatorial devolution of democratic societies: because these trade agreements have the force of law, they've got enforcement teeth, and they bypass national courts, national regulatory agencies, in ways that really reflect a massive, silent, mega-corporate coup d'etat…that was pulled off in the mid-1990's.”

GovernmentPoliticsRichGeniusCapitalismIntelligentDemocraticCorruptionTerrorismBrilliantSocialismReformCommunismCorporationsProgressiveFascismDictatorTransparencyGoreFree TradeObamaInefficiencyProtectionismWashingtonLincolnGreen PartyBushJeffersonCorporatocracyCoup D EtatRalph NaderAnti Free TradeNader
Author:Ralph Nader
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“You know what they say. If at first you don't succeed, try the same thing again. Sometimes the effort is called persistence and is the mark of a strong will. Sometimes it's called perseveration and is a sign of immaturity. For an individual, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again in the same way and expecting different results. For a government, such behavior is called... policy.”

RepetitionGovernmentsInefficiency
Book:The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
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“We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a lack of" national efficiency," are less visible) less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated. We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination. And for this reason, even though our daily loss from this source is greater than from our waste of material things, the one has stirred us deeply, while the other has moved us but little.”

EnergyProgressWasteResourcesEfficiencyInefficiencyOptimizationHuman EffortHuman Waste
Book:The Principles of Scientific Management
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“Decentralization makes technology more complicated and further out of reach for basic users, rather than simpler and more accessible. While it’s possible to fix this by adding new layers that can speed things up, doing so makes the whole system more centralized, which defeats the purpose.”

InefficiencyCentralizationDecentralizationDistributed Systems
Book:Web3: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review
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“In basic microeconomics textbooks, even when welfare gets attention, it is in the domain of efficient outcomes. Redistribution through taxes is first introduced as a big ‘no go’ domain with concepts of deadweight loss. However, inefficiency out of market behaviour and market outcomes is plainly ignored and overlooked. Approximately, $600 million daily is needed to feed every extremely poor person, yet about $2.75 billion value of food is wasted every day, according to Food and Agriculture Organization. Consequently, 9 million people die every year from hunger while one-third of all food is wasted. This gross inefficiency in economic resources is not captured or discussed. According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, globally, per capita food supply increased from about 2,200 kcal per day in the early 1960s to more than 2,903 kcal per day by 2014. But under capitalism, the market allocates goods including even food to only those who can pay its price. It does not make a difference whether the willingness to pay is less than the price due to ‘preference’ or due to ‘poverty’. Yet, mainstream economics claims consumer sovereignty.”

EconomicsAltruismEquitySelf InterestInefficiencySelfish GeneNeoclassical EconomicsRedistribution
Book:Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World
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“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

FirstsUsedBusinessTechnologyMarketingOperationsTime ManagementEfficientEfficiencyManufacturingInformation TechnologyMotivational BusinessInefficiencyMagnifyingAutomationComputer TechnologyBusiness ManagementShelf LifeCommunication TechnologyLean ManufacturingDaily BusinessUse Of TechnologyFuel Efficiency
Book:The road ahead
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“Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.”

IfsHelpingLife IsFallSidesWickednessAvoidedRidgesInefficiency
Book:Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century
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“All the alleged key causes of SOE [State-Owned Enterprise] inefficiency - the principal-agent problem, the free-rider problem and the soft budget constraint - are, while real, not unique to state-owned enterprises. Large private-sector firms with dispersed ownership also suffer from the principal-agent problem and the free-rider problem. So, in these two areas, forms of ownership do matter, but the critical divide is not between state and private ownership - it is between concentrated and dispersed ownerships.”

TwoRealMatterStatesProblemFormSufferingCausesKeysUniqueAreasCriticalAgentsBudgetsFirmEnterpriseDividesOwnershipPrincipalConstraintsRidersPrivate SectorInefficiency
Author:Ha-Joon Chang
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“People say nice things to me -- like that I ought to run for president -- which tells me that they like me. But I have my own deadline for how long I should be in Washington. I think you can get accustomed to red tape and many unfair things that go on in government. Once you stop getting angry about inefficiencies, waste, and injustice, you ought to get out. That's my time limit.”

PeopleThinkingShouldLongGovernmentRunningPresidentMy OwnNiceGoes OnOughtLimitsWasteRedAngryInjusticeLike MeMy TimeTapeUnfairAccustomedDeadlineNice ThingsInefficiencyRed TapeTime Limit
Author:Elizabeth Holtzman
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“The rush to books and universities is like the rush to the public house. People want to drown their realization of the difficulties of living properly in this grotesque contemporary world, they want to forget their own deplorable inefficiency as artists in life.”

PeopleWorldWantBookArtistHouseForgetDifficultyUniversityIntelligenceContemporaryRealizationGrotesqueInefficiency
Book:The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point
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“I've never been satisfied with myself, ever. But I feel good about myself, because I'm truthful. I don't corrupt myself. I'm also a perfectionist. I'm very impatient. I've got energy and drive and I can't stand inefficiency in people. And I can't stand dumb people. Why surround yourself with people who are going to tie you down? I don't suffer fools.”

PeopleFeelsI CanSufferingEnergyFoolSatisfiedFeel GoodDumbTiesSurroundTruthfulImpatientPerfectionistSurround YourselfI Feel GoodInefficiencySurround Yourself With PeopleDumb People
Author:Jack LaLanne
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“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”

HardWould BeFormNationsSituationProgressPlansWonderfulTeamChangedCreatingIllusionMethodConfusionEmploymentTeamworkLater In LifeInefficiencyNew SituationsReorganizationProgress And ChangeDemoralizationIllusion Of Time
Author:Charlton Ogburn
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“[The healthcare bill is a] headlong rush into socialism....we will not stand for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid hijacking of our freedom and democracy so they can impose their socialist 'utopia' of higher taxes, restricted access, inferior quality, and deadly inefficiency on the best health care system in the world....You and the RNC are all that stand between the Democrats' scheme to take more of your hard-earned income to pay for this unsustainable, freedom destroying entitlement and an opportunity to work for real, truly bipartisan step-by-step solutions.”

WorldRealHardCareOpportunityPayQualityStepsDemocracyHigherTaxesSolutionsBillsDemocratAccessIncomeSocialismHealth CareDestroyingHealthcareSchemesSocialistInferiorsUtopiaEntitlementBipartisanInefficiencyHealth Care SystemHijacking
Author:Michael Steele
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“We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

HardWould BeFormSituationProgressWonderfulTeamCreatingIllusionMethodConfusionTeamworkEfficiencyTeam BuildingLater In LifeInefficiencyTeamwArbiterBuilding A TeamNew SituationsReorganizationDemoralization
Author:Charlton Ogburn
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“It is like using a smoke screen, the same thing for an individual. The topic here is Islam. If French politicians are no longer talking about Islam, they know they will have to talk about something else, which brings the spotlight on their inefficiency. They will have to talk about domestic social and economic issues and they will have to justify their foreign policy, which is obviously something they need to avoid at all costs.”

IfsKnowsNeedsIndividualSocialTalkingIssuesEconomicPolicyPoliticianCostIslamScreensSmokeJustifyForeign PolicyTopicsSpotlightInefficiencyEconomic Issues
Author:Tariq Ramadan
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