OK, but the corollary to this is that there are a fair few people sitting around doing not a lot on the taxpayer's dime. That's the visible side-effect of organisational slack (as TFA points out: the secretary spends most of her day doing nothing).

There's been a lack of tolerance for that. We tend to feel that if our tax dollars are paying for someone, that someone had better be busy all day long. Politicians have made political capital from "cutting slack" in public services.

We need a cultural recognition that slack is good. And I doubt that's going to happen any time soon.