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ELON MUSK’S GOAL ISN’T EFFICIENCY — IT’S A LIQUIDATION SALE
 
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Meagan Day
April 5, 2025
Jacobin
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_ The Department of Government Efficiency isn’t bumbling through an
ill-advised reform effort. It’s deliberately sabotaging federal
agencies to make way for privatization. _

Elon Musk and President Javier Milei of Argentina at the Conservative
Political Action Conference outside Washington in February., Eric
Lee/The New York Times

 

Earlier this week, the _Economist _asked plaintively
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Elon Musk was fixing the federal government, as promised, or
destroying it. “This newspaper looked forward to what Mr Musk might
do with some hope,” it stated, but has watched with mounting concern
as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has “broken
laws with glee and callously destroyed careers,” as well as “made
false claims about waste and seized personal data protected by law.”

The article concludes that Musk has become so intoxicated with
authoritarian power and consumed by petty cultural and political
grievances that his otherwise good organizational sense has fallen by
the wayside — a genius’s tragic decline, dragging the federal
government down with him.

The _Economist _should give Musk a little more credit. If DOGE fails
at making the federal government more efficient, it’s instead
because Musk has a grander vision for it, one many at
the _Economist _might find agreeable: privatization.

All the smashing and breaking and outright ruining is not accidental.
It serves a higher purpose: breaking public institutions to make way
for private sector alternatives.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference in March, Musk was open about
this ambition
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saying the government should privatize “everything we possibly
can.”

The American right has long wanted to accomplish exactly this. In
George W. Bush–era conservative strategist
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Norquist’s famous poetic phrasing
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don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the
size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the
bathtub.” Of course, when public services are no longer reliable or
available, that doesn’t mean they’re no longer needed. It means
that control of their provision will revert to the private market,
where capitalists stand to profit from selling replacements for what
has been destroyed. (Norquist, for his part, is enthusiastic
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DOGE.)

Even minimal attention to Musk’s own statements
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privatization clarifies the issue. He’s not bumbling his way through
an ill-advised attempt at streamlining and fine-tuning government
agencies. Making public institutions work better would be
counterproductive to the ultimate goal of shifting their assets and
services to the private sector. The chaos is intentional. The weaker
federal agencies are, the easier they are to drown.

The Chain Saw Brotherhood

The image of Musk brandishing a chain saw
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Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February quickly
became emblematic of DOGE’s strategy of hacking away at federal
agencies. On closer scrutiny, it also offers a window into DOGE’s
fundamental philosophy and longer-term objective of advancing
privatization.

The man who gifted Musk the chain saw onstage was Argentine president
Javier Milei, who himself is so devoted to privatization that he’s
proposed turning organ donation
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“just another market” to be handled by “market mechanisms.”
Milei had previously performed the chain saw gesture many times
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self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” candidate and then, after
December 2023, as Argentina’s elected leader.

For Milei, the chain saw has an unambiguous meaning, representing a
disruptive strategy of punishing austerity and radical privatization.
After his election, Milei declared
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“Everything that can be in the hands of the private sector will be
in the hands of the private sector.” Within months, he moved to
privatize state-owned media outlets and energy companies while also
imposing brutal austerity measures on ordinary Argentines.

Milei has since dismantled over half of Argentina’s ministries,
created new pro-market agencies like the Ministry of Deregulation, and
fired tens of thousands of public employees. Sound familiar? His
government has collaborated with figures like Marcos Galperin,
whom _Boston Review _describes
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“the Elon Musk of Argentina,” while pursuing international
alliances with tech billionaires for lithium extraction and satellite
internet expansion. In January, Milei’s sale of IMPSA
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a national energy and technology company, to a US investment fund
marked his first formal privatization. He promises more privatizations
to come.

Donald Trump has declared Milei his “favorite president
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Musk and Milei, meanwhile, frequently post
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of admiration to each other on X. In April 2024, they met
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Tesla’s Texas facility, where they discussed their shared political
vision — and Argentina’s precious lithium reserves, which are
valuable for Tesla’s electric vehicle batteries. Beyond the CPAC
spectacle, they “have created a mutual amplification system
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Milei points to Musk’s support as validation while Musk points to
Argentina as proof that his approach works.”

The chain saw has rightly become symbolic of DOGE’s strategy of
aggressive cuts, but it’s also emblematic of the purpose behind the
strategy. Milei isn’t concerned with rationalizing government
operations; he fundamentally rejects the legitimacy of government
itself beyond serving as a minimal administrative apparatus for
private market operations. This ideological foundation is equally true
for Musk, whose DOGE disruptions are not misguided attempts at reform
but a deliberate assault on the very concept of public governance.

Chum in the Water

Unlike the _Economist, _the _Washington Post _appears wise
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DOGE’s raison d’être, asserting that the task force is “paving
the way for a new shift to the private sector,” and that its
“ultimate goal is to limit the scope of government and privatize
what is left.”

The paper points to less-discussed initiatives already underway. At
the DOGE-affiliated General Services Administration, for example,
officials are quietly orchestrating the sale
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hundreds of federal buildings to private companies — including the
Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development
headquarters — which would then lease the space back to the
government. Career staffers have expressed alarm that these properties
might be sold at steep discounts to Trump allies.

Meanwhile, DOGE has targeted the National Weather Service for
significant staff reductions, seemingly in line with Project 2025’s
vision of “fully commercializing” weather forecasting. The Federal
Aviation Administration is exploring the potential role of Starlink
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owned by Elon Musk, in contributing to weather forecasting — surely
a coincidence.

Beyond DOGE, the broader Trump administration has embraced
privatization with equal enthusiasm. Trump’s interior secretary is
working to open federal lands
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the West to private developers, while his treasury secretary
has explicitly vowed
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“reprivatize the economy.”

Per the _Post, _other privatization-oriented proposals are also
under serious consideration. The administration is entertaining a plan
to allocate $40 billion from the shuttered United States Agency for
International Development to private investors and companies. And the
far-right military contractor Erik Prince, who founded the mercenary
service formerly known as Blackwater and to whom the Trump
administration has strong ties
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has proposed turning over defense operations
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enforcement
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private security firms.

A chief economist at the financial services network RSM told
the _Post_, “It’s been clear from the first days of the
administration that one of their main longer-term objectives is
privatization of many government assets. They’ve been very clear
about their intent.”

For anyone tracking these developments closely, it’s evident that
the chain saw is not a tool to trim away excess. It’s a tool to
clear-cut public infrastructure to prepare the ground for corporate
control.

Be Like Wells Fargo

There is no more obvious example of the privatization push unfolding
than DOGE’s interference in the United States Postal Service
(USPS). In February, DOGE “partnered” with USPS to cut ten
thousand jobs and slash $3.5 billion from its operating costs.
Theoretically, these reforms are being pursued in the name of
efficiency. Critics, however, point out that cuts will make USPS less
efficient
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especially in rural areas where service is already stretched thin.

Separately, Elon Musk has been clear that he would like to see
USPS outright privatized
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What’s more likely — that DOGE’s USPS cuts are an attempt to
improve operations or to degrade them, eroding public support for the
service and paving the way for private alternatives?

Wells Fargo knows the answer. As _Jacobin _
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the banking giant, licking its chops, circulated an internal memo in
March that outlined a detailed plan for USPS privatization. Its
blueprint calls for initially splitting the agency in two: selling off
the profitable package and parcel components while leaving mail
delivery as a bare-bones taxpayer-funded entity. It admits that the
new private company would need to raise prices, and that the remaining
public portion of USPS would struggle to keep up deliveries. The
scenario would make it easier to overcome opposition from unions and
the public to achieve wholesale privatization.

The strategy is straightforward: break the public service badly enough
that privatization becomes the default solution. As sociologist Paul
Starr noted in his analysis of privatization strategies
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this approach exemplifies “privatization by attrition,” where
public services are deliberately pushed to deteriorate, encouraging
people to turn to private options, even as those newly commodified
services come with higher prices and worse performance
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The other privatization methods Starr identified — direct asset
transfers, outsourcing, and deregulation — are also being deployed
simultaneously across the federal government at DOGE’s insistence.

Trump recently suggested
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Musk’s term with DOGE may be coming to an end. Even so, the chain
saw is up and running. DOGE isn’t failing at making government more
efficient. It’s successfully sabotaging public institutions in order
to transfer them into private hands. Wells Fargo recognizes it. We
should too.

_Meagan Day is an associate editor and former staff writer
at Jacobin. She is the coauthor of Bigger than Bernie: How We Go
from the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism
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* Elon Musk
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* DOGE
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* privatization
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