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ELON MUSK’S DOGE IS DUMB. IT COULD ALSO DO SERIOUS DAMAGE.  
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Casey Wetherbee
November 20, 2024
Jacobin
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_ Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is equal parts
asinine and dystopian. We can only hope that, by virtue of how
insufferable all involved are, DOGE’s relationship with the Trump
administration flames out spectacularly. _

Elon Musk jumps on the stage at Trump rally at the Butler Farm Show,
Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa., (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

 

Elon Musk’s surrogacy of Donald Trump’s campaign was largely
cringeworthy and humiliating, as was his self-proclaimed “first
buddy
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tour at Mar-a-Lago, which prompted
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to quip that he “can’t get rid of him.” Even so, Musk’s
participation in key meetings and planning sessions — which included
a call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, just weeks after
the _Wall Street Journal_ reported
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Musk had regular contact with Vladimir Putin since late 2022 —
reflects his worryingly powerful position within the incoming
administration.

One of Musk’s recent rewards for his service to the Trump campaign
was the unveiling
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of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on November 12. According to the Trump
transition team’s announcement, DOGE will aim to “dismantle
Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulation, cut wasteful
expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” To lead DOGE, Trump
taps Musk as well as biotech mogul and failed presidential candidate
Vivek Ramaswamy, who also joined Trump on the campaign trail as a
surrogate and sycophant.

As with many of Trump’s policy proposals, the details are vague and
contradictory. For example, DOGE “will provide advice and guidance
from outside of Government” and is clearly not a government
department, which would require an act of Congress to create. On its
face, DOGE’s position as an external advisory body makes it seem
totally toothless, relegating two feckless losers to the kids’ table
to get them out of Trump’s hair.

It’s hard to take this proposal seriously, but even the unserious
parts of it have adverse ramifications. Naming the “department”
after a ten-year-old meme is just one of a litany of pathetically
unfunny Elon Musk moments, but it has also had the likely-intended
impact of driving up the price of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin — of
which Musk may possess billions
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Given that Trump brazenly enriched himself from his own presidency,
this type of behavior is not only tacitly encouraged, but illustrative
of what the government can do for the ultrawealthy.

Dangerous Contradictions in DOGE’s “Efficiency” Mission

On the campaign trail, Musk arbitrarily declared
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he could easily identify and eliminate $2 trillion in wasteful
government spending, despite all discretionary spending in 2024 coming
out to only $1.6 trillion. It’s hard to believe that Musk put any
critical thought into this figure. If the government were to slash $2
trillion from the budget, it would be almost impossible to do so
without decimating Social Security and Medicare. To someone as
egotistical and contemptuous of working people as Musk, these social
costs may be worth it just to prove that he could do it.

As of November 19, the few posts on DOGE’s Twitter/X account
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verification despite its unofficial and nongovernmental affiliation,
exemplify a superficial and sensational approach to what constitutes
government inefficiency, such as government-funded research and the
amount of words in the US tax code.

Ironically, DOGE has the potential to put the Trump administration in
a tricky position — for example, Ramaswamy and Musk have indicated
an interest
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creating a mobile app for individuals to file their taxes. This
juvenile “solution” betrays a lack of familiarity with how tax
reform is carried out via legislation as well as the negotiation that
goes into decisions like these. Notably, a major part of why the US
tax system is so convoluted is because companies like Intuit
have lobbied
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years to keep the system complicated and expensive for taxpayers.

The fact that much of the inefficiency in the current system is due to
corporate overreach and monopoly might be a hard pill to swallow for
free-market evangelists like DOGE’s leaders. In a similar way, a
natural target of an organization like DOGE should be the bloated
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budget, which has received much-deserved scrutiny
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President Joe Biden’s unconditional support of Israel’s all-out
military campaign (and war crimes
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Gaza began just over a year ago.

The implicit contradiction in having two cochairs of a body dedicated
to combating waste and inefficiency is already laughable — not to
mention that Ramaswamy and Musk are unlikely to see eye to eye on
every issue. Ramaswamy has signaled
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interest in reforming the federal contracting process with an eye to
fraud and abuse of the system by entrenched players — such as Musk,
whose companies receive billions of dollars in federal contracts. It
is hard to tell how Ramaswamy, for whom slashing the government
apparatus was a major facet of his presidential campaign, will square
the circle when the same big-money interests that secured Trump’s
election are those that benefit from the status quo.

In this way, the best-case outcome of DOGE’s mandate is that it
provokes infighting among conservatives and corporate interests that
exploit the current system for their own gain. Realistically, however,
the conflicts of interest implicit in Musk and Ramaswamy’s
leadership of a government oversight body mean that it will only
benefit big business at the expense of workers and consumers.

In Musk’s case, his companies have been subject
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probes and enforcement actions from a range of government agencies due
to myriad financial and labor-related regulatory violations. Placing
Musk in charge of an oversight body, even if it is merely an advisory
position outside of government, is a prime example of regulatory
capture, allowing the regulators to be co-opted by those they
regulate. Or, as progressive watchdog Public Citizen stated
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a press release, “the ultimate corruption.”

The Milei Model

Musk and Ramaswamy’s admiration of Argentine president Javier Milei
offers us a glimpse into their ideal end state. Ramaswamy tweeted
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November 18: “A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government:
Milei-style cuts, on steroids.”

When Milei assumed office last year, he declared that conditions would
worsen before things would get better; Musk similarly warned
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DOGE’s recommendations may cause “temporary hardship.”
Meanwhile, in Argentina, Milei’s austerity measures have targeted
the country’s social safety net, causing
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poverty rate to skyrocket while only lowering taxes for the
country’s wealthiest citizens, a troubling outlook for a second
Trump administration if DOGE’s advice is ever implemented.

A second Trump term will undoubtedly see a multipronged attack on any
institution that seeks to constrain big business, and DOGE will lead
the charge. After all, in DOGE’s public call for collaborators, it
seeks “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries”; that’s
how they see themselves. We can only hope that, by virtue of how
evidently insufferable they are, DOGE’s relationship with the Trump
administration flames out spectacularly.

_Casey Wetherbee is a freelance writer based in Buenos Aires,
Argentina. He shares his long-form essays on his
Substack, Meanderings._

* Elon Musk
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* government
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* downsizing
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* MAGA
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