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But as he and Vivek Ramaswamy settle in at the still somewhat undefined Department of Government Efficiency (humorously referred to as “DOGE”)
Dude don’t even play around, it’s not even funny at all. Completely sauceless name.
humorously
Our current federal government is a construct of the Roosevelt New Deal era. And as the country grew, so did the government. But our country has done more than just grow over the last 100 years — it has also evolved, from an agrarian to an industrial to a technology and information economy. Critically, the government never changed with it.
So the fundamental structure of the federal government hasn’t changed since at least 1924, but also the current structure of the federal governments is the result of the New Deal which started in 1933. Math!
He’s missing two important aspects of bureaucratic reform. One, simply observing redundancies/overlaps/byzantine jurisdictions isn’t the same thing as creating a streamlined replacement. To make sure everything still works at least as well as it did before requires deep diving into the structure and a careful balancing game in the re-organization. And, surprise surprise, that process often reveals that, once you get past the generalized critiques, there actually are good reasons why seemingly similar functions on the surface need to be divvied up between different agencies, especially when there are conflict of interest issues.
Second, these “reforms” typically end up being a shuffling of the bureaucratic deck rather than actually streamlining anything. Great, you moved a function from the Army Corps of Engineers to DOT, but if it’s the same bureaucratic approval processes and checkboxes, there’s no efficiency gained. And often the shuffling just creates confusion in the bureaucracy as to where the responsible party is now which just makes things less efficient, not more.
Not to mention that a lot of what the USACE does is informed by their military engineering experience. The DOT doesn’t have that experience and would need to transfer people from the USACE to get it done, or collaborate with them for their experience. Way to make the government efficient, you just added another level of abstraction to the existing process.
Perfect example of “There’s a reason it’s structured that way.”
Yeah governments are actually surprisingly efficient given what they do. There’s not usually a lot of actual waste. It’s just that government is hard and expensive. Libertarian fuckwits like eLoN can’t stand it.
There are a few ways the government could actually be sped up. Automating and standardising tasks, eliminating arcane barriers (mostly designed to make the life of the poor and disabled as hard as possible) or improving documentation practices so that it is easier for different parts of the government to cooperate.
Unfortunately, all of these changes will only really improve the quality of government services rather than presenting an opportunity to cut them away. So they are out.
Yeah amazing how reducing means testing is never discussed as a way to make government more efficient.
Its not a department of government. Its a make work job for Ramaswamy and a key jangling operation for Musk
Today, just 2 percent of our population is in the industry, and it makes up about 5 percent of our gross domestic product. Even with that change, however, we still have a Department of Agriculture with 29 departments and over 100,000 employees.
That might be because the size of the agency has to do with the number and difficulty of the tasks that need to be done rather than the size of the private sector involved.
Back in 2018, then-President Trump tasked me, and the Office of Management and Budget that I led, with restructuring the federal bureaucracy.
And, of course, DOGE will have Musk, who is obviously a lot smarter than the guy leading the effort last time.
I actually agree. The only people dumber than musk are his fans.
While people at Tesla and SpaceX probably ask “how high” when Musk says jump
Dude is 1 step away from actually just calling Elon “m’lord”.
Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina
Oh dang the author is a former congressman
That might be because the size of the agency has to do with the number and difficulty of the tasks that need to be done rather than the size of the private sector involved.
Also because agriculture is a fucking strategic industry. People can’t eat shitty electric cars or reusable rockets. If the US “efficiencies” itself into a famine it would be an extremely funny tragedy, mostly because of the irony of “gommulism is when no food” arguments.
Dude is 1 step away from actually just calling Elon “m’lord”
He probably does behind closed doors
