Inefficiencies are often very precious.

Sir, Martin Flash in response to your editorial “Corporate France comes into focus” raises the question of “Is inefficiency a cost worth bearing?” May 17. I would dare to go much further, even stating that inefficiencies are in fact extremely valuable societal factors, that should be nourished and protected, of course in an efficient way. Think of it, if the world was really as efficient as it could be, what would there be left to do for the likes of me and you. And this by the way reminds me of another issue close to my heart and that I have not written to you previously about, I think.

We often see tables where they discriminate between occupations, like agriculture, manufacturing, services and so on, but when it comes to the unemployed they are usually bunched up into one and the same group. This is tragic, we urgently need to create new categories of unemployed so that we for instance can start recording those millions that more and more belong in special categories such as the “employed unemployed” (see Scandinavia) and also the gainfully unemployed. In a global world order disrupted by more efficient job allocation it is important for Universities and others to start giving courses on how to be and make a living being structurally unemployed, (Unemployed BA)and perhaps this is something that the French, with an intuitive efficiency, have been able to pick up.

On the other hand the French, with their savoir faire, might have just decided that the markets should not be trusted in its efficiency, and personally I think they have a point, especially when some few credit rating agencies have been ordered to substitute for so much of the market.