The case for an efficiency tax

EFFICIENCY is at the heart of progress. Yet just as too much of a good thing (travel, say) can yield a bad (congestion), so excessive ease in transactions can generate costs, known in the jargon as a “facile externality”, such that less efficiency would actually be more efficient. In academic circles, especially Scandinavian ones, the notion is well established that innovations which eliminate too much hassle could do society harm.True to their cause, the high-minded theorists of facile externality go out of their way to make their ideas hard to understand. The effort required to master them has the happy effect of increasing their value, as intended. But it has also held them back from broad application. The good news is that this may at last be about to change.