[brightball]

Well, as the cost of fuel goes up people are incentivized to purchase more fuel efficient vehicles. When the supply isn't unlimited you have to be more careful about how it's used.

In my lifetime I've never seen a government program cut costs or gain efficiency. At the point something like that happens I'll be much more open to government programs. In the current environment both in terms of bloat and political hostility, it's really hard to see any benefit.

Rather than worry about throwing more tax money at the problem, why not focus on how much better things would be if the department was 10% more efficient?

[okreallywtf]

I'm not disagreeing about efficiencies, I'm saying the way to do it is actually do the work rather than simply slash the funding and assume that the correct efficiencies will be implemented. I think that is what is irresponsible.

Can you point to any specifics about what is inefficient? I'm not doubting that it is the case, but when you say you've never seen it is that because its never happened right in front of you or you've looked hard for it and it just isn't there? I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I think we all have a tendency to criticize things we don't understand as well as we would like to think and I try to resist that urge unless I actually know a lot of details. After being a developer for a few years, I'm a lot less likely to criticize some piece of software or code someone else has written until I actually analyze it myself and try to improve it, often times I find there are reasons for a lot of the corners that were cut or hacks that were implemented. Not always, but as often as not I can't actually improve something as much as I would have initially assumed.