"If you want to turn someone into an anti-government laissez faire capitalist, send them to work for the Fed for a few years. If you want to turn someone into a communist, send them to work on Wall Street for a few years."

Someone who used to work in finance told me that once.

Humans are very, very bad at large scale organizational efficiency. I have never seen a very large organization that is not an absolute disaster in terms of waste. The relationship seems to be exponential as a function of organizational size.

There's an extra wrinkle with government though: I am not sure we want government to be too efficient. Government has a monopoly on force. Making it into a bureaucratic tar pit is one time tested way to restrain it and make sure it's subject to proper checks. The cost is high, but the cost of a runaway murderous regime is higher.