The beauty of efficiency is that everyone is for it. But much like the statement "I am for good things", it is equally vacuous.
Of course we all aspire ourselves and our institutions to do the same for less, but the hard question is how do we develop protocols, procedures and a culture that fosters that ... and the harder question is how do those changes modify the other goals of an institution. This latter point is often ignored, but it is vitally important, and maybe a different perspective on the process of "enshittification".
Let me highlight this perspective with a few examples.
Example 1: If we care about spending, the most "efficient" government is no government at all in all matters. But the goal of the government is not to be a revenue source or to ensure that taxation is exactly zero; its goal is to serve a function to a community of people[^1].
Example 2: If the entire purpose of a corporation is to make money, you leverage any opportunity to make a little bit more money, even at the expense of the object/process/service you are building. Best example is the addition of ads in all of services online.
However, this fundamentally shifts the incentives of the company. Once you admit a new revenue source, the goal is not to maximize the quality of what you are building, but something entirely distinct from your initial product --- the best example here is social media, which is becoming fettered by AI slop and low quality content in the hopes of boosting engagement for ads, a far cry from the original purpose of "connecting us all".
At the end, the service is more efficient, but it might no longer satisfy the need it was made for.
While this is all fine and good in a market economy where you have many firms competing, there are many situations (to be honest, most situations), where market forces are distorted and competition does not serve to correct the institutional mistake.
This is why the entire focus on efficiency can be destructive for government work; because the government is often the monopoly of a particular set of institutions, it needs alternative mechanisms for ensuring that the goals of institution are aligned with the stated goals of the agency. A sense of mission, metrics to aim for, strong leadership choices, renewal periods, ...
At the same time, it is why policies like DOGE fail so hard. Because even though the underlying idea is that the government is especially inefficient, it is probably as efficient or more than most private entities, because they are both run by people. People just think of the flashy side of Apple (rather than its mismanagement of the AI rollout) and think about DMV lines rather than the fastest immunization run from creation to shots in arms.
Of course the incentives in the public sector are different, but most people even in the private sector are not like Michael Douglas in "Wall Street" --- they are also doing a job for an income.
As a result, the word efficiency becomes much more political and ideological than it is initially intended. Much like "freedom"[^2], when used as a cliché, it becomes meaningless to the point of being harmful when trying to actually impart change in the institutions we care about.
[^1] Your mileage may vary depending on your own political leanings, but even if you are a hard core libertarian you believe that the protection of personal property and from foreign actors is an important task that government should do.
[^2] Freedom from everyone else, or freedom from want?