While Weber is quite clear in stating that the sole justification of bureaucracy is its efficiency, he provides us with no clear-cut guide on how this standard of judgement is to be used. Indeed, the inventory of features of bureaucracy contains not one single item that is not arguable relative to its efficiency function. Long-range goals cannot be used definitively for calculating it because the impact of contingent factors multiplies with time and makes it increasingly difficult to assign a determinate value to the efficiency of a stably controlled segment of action. On the other hand, the use of short-term goals in judging efficiency may be in conflict with the ideal of economy itself. Not only do short-term goals change with time and compete with one another in indeterminate ways, but short-term results are of notoriously deceptive value because they can be easily manipulated to show whatever one wishes them to show.8 Clearly, what Weber had in mind when speaking about efficiency was not a formally independent criterion of judgement but an ideal that is fully attuned to practical interests as these emerge and are pursued in the context of every-day life.