The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a cute name.  But let’s hope that the name does not actually reflect the goals of the organization.

DOGE is being set up as part of the new Trump administration.  It will be headed up by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

I believe Musk and Ramaswamy are both sincere in wanting to make America a better place, or I at least have little reason to doubt their sincerity.  They are both rich and don’t need the grief or the hate that is flung at them.

It is music to my ears when Musk suggests that federal spending should be cut by $2 trillion annually.  We don’t need the federal government to help with this or that.  We need less government in every facet of our lives.

Musk and Work at Home

Elon Musk, as a successful businessman, is somewhat old school when it comes to certain things.  He has made it clear that he believes workers should be in the office.  In other words, they should physically be at a workplace and not working remote.

This may be the case for his companies.  It probably is important in a lot of areas that people be together to collaborate.  You can really see where this is probably true when it comes to designing a Tesla or sending a rocket ship to Mars.

Musk has been pointing out that a large portion of federal employees work at home.  He insinuates that they should be reporting to an office.

I strongly disagree with Musk on this.  Working remotely often exposes the good workers and the bad workers.  It is much easier for a micromanager to look over people’s shoulders and make himself look busy while in an office setting.

The more productive people will tend to get even more done at home or in some kind of a remote setting if their job doesn’t involve a lot of collaboration.  They can work more with fewer interruptions.

There is another problem.  Having office space for everyone is more expensive.  If Elon Musk wants to convince Trump that all federal employees need to report to an office, then the government (i.e., the taxpayers) will have to pay for the additional office space.  Many employees will also seek higher compensation because of the time and expense of commuting.

Now, if Musk’s plan is to make life more miserable for federal employees, then maybe there is something to that.  But is that really the way to go about it?  If anything, you will drive away the more productive employees who will seek other work.

And if you are trying to reduce the number of federal employees, it shouldn’t be done on the basis of driving people away who don’t want to work in an office setting.  It should be done on the basis of whether the job should be a function of government.

Government Efficiency vs. Productivity

We shouldn’t confuse efficiency with productivity, especially when it comes to the government.  We also shouldn’t confuse these with competence.  There are probably areas where we really do want competence in government.  We want the person handling the nuclear missiles to be competent, as long as he isn’t evil.  Most people want the government to be competent in issuing passports and sending out Social Security checks.

In many areas, we really don’t want the government to be efficient.  We probably want efficiency in areas where it may actually be a legitimate function of the government, such as defending the nation and the court system.  Even here, we only want efficiency if these functions are there to serve us.

We really don’t want efficiency in most areas of government.  I don’t want a more efficient IRS.  I don’t want a more efficient Drug Enforcement Agency that will knock down even more doors in the middle of the night.  I don’t want an efficient NSA that will spy more effectively on all of us.

The term “efficiency” works for the DOGE acronym, but we really don’t want more government efficiency.  We want less government.

Cutting Budgets in a Non-Libertarian World

We need much less government in our lives.  This means drastically reduced regulations, which will get less pushback from the average American.  Some big companies that are favored by the government will want these regulations to stay, but most Americans can get on board with less government regulation.

We also need drastically reduced spending.  The over $6 trillion spent annually by Washington DC is a major drain on Americans.  Instead of worrying about whether people are working at home, worry about how much you’re paying them.  And you are often paying them to regulate us more and to spend even more money.

I think the only realistic way to make a dent in the annual spending is through attrition and through payoffs.  As people retire or quit, don’t replace them.

For jobs that should be eliminated now (which is many) and that don’t even require any kind of transition or shifting of duties, I think the answer is to pay these people off.  It shouldn’t be with a nice early retirement plan, as that would just burden us more in future.  It should be a payoff now or in the very near future.

For example, you could offer to pay an employee a one-year salary if they leave now.  They could even go find another job (not in the federal government) and get double pay.

I know some people will be mad at this.  Why should they get all of this extra pay if we don’t need their job anymore?  In the private sector, you would just get laid off and might not even get a severance.

The reason to do this is so that it actually happens.  If there are hundreds of thousands of government employees that we don’t need and can be let go, let’s do something about it.  If we just say that they should all be fired immediately with no compensation, then there will be too much resistance.  There will be lawsuits.  People in Congress won’t support it because they will be hearing from constituents.

I understand it is taxpayer money.  It is not a pure libertarian solution because you still have to keep stealing money in the future to pay off these people.  But I believe this is the only way to make it work and have a realistic chance of actually cutting budgets.

Of course, you can cut massive budget cuts outside of government salaries.  There are government contracts everywhere that cost a lot of money.  The military-industrial complex is an obvious one, but it is far from the only one.

I am not naïve in how Washington works.  If the Trump administration can manage to just stop the budget from growing for a few years, this would seem like a victory.  If Elon and Vivek can somehow manage to cut even 10% out of the federal budget, this would practically be a miracle.

We need major cuts in government spending.  We don’t need the government to be more efficient.