# Contested concept: efficiency

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: This masks a conflict between efficiency as 'profit-maximization' (reducing costs to increase shareholder value) and efficiency as 'human-resource-optimization' (reducing labor hours while maintaining output).
- **Canonical**: `/concept/efficiency` (data: `/concept/efficiency.json`)

## Senses in use
- **The ratio of technological capability to actual labor hours required for societal maintenance.** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **Operational lean-ness and cost reduction to maximize firm profit and market competitiveness.** — used in 2 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Corporations frequently engage in aggressive downsizing to reduce costs and increase perceived efficiency.](/claim/claim_20be40a885c0.md) _(sense: Operational lean-ness and cost reduction to maximize firm profit and market competitiveness.)_
- [Current technological capabilities are sufficient to support a 15-hour work week.](/claim/claim_38e63302a804.md) _(sense: The ratio of technological capability to actual labor hours required for societal maintenance.)_
- [Market competition is intended to eliminate economic inefficiencies, such as the employment of workers in redundant or unnecessary roles.](/claim/claim_595a6c693ebe.md) _(sense: Operational lean-ness and cost reduction to maximize firm profit and market competitiveness.)_
- [The social and political system of maintaining control through 'bullshit jobs' and work discipline is the primary reason why advanced econo…](/claim/claim_5cf68a44dcef.md) _(sense: The ratio of technological capability to actual labor hours required for societal maintenance.)_
- [Many modern employees who are contracted for 40 or 50 hours per week are only performing approximately 15 hours of actual, necessary work, …](/claim/claim_f00130e9d315.md) _(sense: The ratio of technological capability to actual labor hours required for societal maintenance.)_