This *(political term) describes situations benefiting one's (or a few ones') short term and restricted interests.

In a more restricted sense (as used in the _(TUNES project) acronym), expedient implies that the expedient thing may be harmful or disastrous for the global long term welfare. We thus oppose this restricted expediency to real _(Utility).

Beware that this does not mean anyhow that all expedient things in the general sense are expedient in the restricted sense. Actually, most of the time, we have only a vague idea of what is really useful or harmful, so <em>in the limits of this knowledge</em>, expediency is the best approximation we have; if we do not have clear ideas about expediency either, we follow _(tradition)s and habits.

For example, mass murdering and concentration camps are expedient to dictatorial governments; racketeering, selling drugs or weapons are expedient to the mob; industrial monopoly is expedient to the owners of these monopolies and partners in a trust (a.k.a. the white-collar mob); wasting the Earth's natural resources may be expedient to those who exploit these; wasting human work is expedient to those who sell broken el cheapo products in a cheated market with unfair competition; but all these are extremely harmful to the world.