And, if you are on the wrong side, it is very "effective" at ruining your life.
Most of us would take a bit less "effective" in order to avoid that, thanks.
Singaporean here. The government's mainly effective for tasks that are on a happy path. If your particular case falls through the cracks, it often takes phone calls, printing, postage, and weeks or months of waiting to get stuff done.
(Personal experience trying to get business stuff done not as a Private Limited company.)
That sounds like the happy path for dealing with the Canadian government. Well, except the months part.
"The tool is squeaky but it gets the job done" - you wouldn't expect the speaker to do anything about the squeaks. Squeaking is tolerable.
"The tool does the job but it's squeaky" - you would expect the speaker to do something about the squeaks. Doing the job isn't good enough.
Your comment is most easily read as not disapproving of authoritarian government when it is effective.
Not the best example of crowd wisdom.
Perhaps you should do the same for barrkel? I read your parent as a simple explanation to solveit why their comment may have been misconstrued by bsder -- a question solveit directly asked.
If someone produced an insulin pump that you implanted, worked perfectly for life, but killed 1 person in 1,000 randomly, people would be screaming for the head of the CEO of that company rather than calling it "effective".
Effective just means it achieves the intended outcome, it's not a value judgment on the goodness of that intention.
Have you compared it to others? Strained is the last word I'd use to qualify how effective it is...
