Observations on DOGE

Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is misnamed, misconceived, or purposely deceptive. Rather than rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, it is creating chaos and gratuitously ruining lives. Moreover, it seems not to be a government department in the conventional sense, and its constitutionality has been questioned.

DOGE (and, presumably, the president) confuses “efficient” with “cheap.” Efficiency is a measure of resources required to accomplish a task; it is not a measure of resources expended. For example, boiling a saucepan of water on top of the range is more efficient than boiling that water in the oven. The range-top technique is faster (uses less time) and uses less gas or electricity than the oven method, which heats the water less directly and wastes energy by needlessly heating air. Not heating the water at all uses fewer resources, but it fails to accomplish anything.

Of course, if Musk and his twerp minions believe that a particular governmental function has no value yet still uses resources, especially human ones, then firing people reduces spending without diminishing government utility. In this demented calculus, DOGE can be seen as increasing government efficiency. I suspect that Musk is reluctant to make this argument in the general case. Apparently, however, this logic led to the carnage DOGE visited upon USAID, a government agency many believe provided both humanitarian and diplomatic benefits to the United States, benefits seemingly imperceptible to Elon Musk.

Elon Musk wants you to believe that firing workers is making the government more efficient in the traditional sense. This, of course, would be true if the remaining workers could do the same amount of work in the same amount of time as before the firings. There is no reason to believe that this is true. Since DOGE has cut the government workforce with, as he has reminded us, a chainsaw, he has done so without any analysis of what the consequences of the cuts would be other than, at least in the short run, reducing labor costs. The cuts surely affect excellent workers as easily as deficient ones. However, if you believe that all government workers are useless drones, then firing one has the same benign effect as firing another. 

As it happens, labor costs are a relatively small part of the government budget, so that firings, even of substantial numbers of federal workers, will not greatly affect that budget. But apparent savings in the government’s labor costs lead to higher costs elsewhere—in unemployment benefits, in former employees being forced into jobs in which their contribution to the economy is reduced, and to damages to families and family budgets. If your wealth is billions and billions of dollars, as Musk’s is, your concern for the little guy may be somewhat less than compelling.

DOGE’s firings do no reflect scientific management, but a kind of right-wing religious fervor. In her March 12 “Letter from America,” Heather Cox Richardson suggests the nature of the Musk philosophy regarding the government:

In place of the system that has created relative stability for almost a century, Republicans under President Donald Trump and his sidekick billionaire Elon Musk are imposing a government that is based in the idea that a government that works to make people safe, prosperous, and healthy is simply ripping off wealthy people.

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!