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During the conversation on X between Musk and Trump, they floated the idea of Musk leading a 'government cutting commission' or basically a setup where Musk would come in and cut the fat from the government.
This idea fascinates me, and while I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons it may be terrible, I fear that financially the U.S. may need to do something dramatic like this in order to get the debt under control, etc etc. Also I, along with many other mottizens, am just pretty bearish on the efficacy of most government. Especially federal officials.
The question for me is - how would this work? Which areas do you think would get cut the most? (education was mentioned here specifically) Which areas are critical and should remain mostly untouched? (post office?)
On top of that, if this were to happen, what would be the primary blockers? Do you think Elon is the right man for the job without political connections? Are there ways in which the President can be prevented from firing large swathes of the federal admin? Potential disasters that could happen if critical employees are in fact fired?
I think any effort will be ultimately doomed by corruption and inertia, but this would be amazing, there are no elements of the government that should be untouched, and Elon would be the perfect person to lead it (were he not already such a lightning rod for criticism).
I highly, highly recommend the recent Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. It's a page turner.
I am also currently reading the book "Titan", a biography of J. D. Rockefeller.
Having consumed approximately 1200 pages of biography, I can tell you that both tycoons share a love for cutting waste and diving into small details of their operations. In the Musk biography, there's an anecdote about him going between stations at a factory. He finds a station where a machine appears to be operating slowly. He asks to make it go faster. Someone is found who can override the default settings. He turns it to max speed. It fails. Lowers the speed. Failure. Lowers the speed. Success. Now the station operates 3 times more efficiently.
Similarly, Rockefeller once saw that barrels were being sealed with 40 dots of epoxy. He says, try 38. They leak. Try 39. It works.
Musk succeeds because he pushes all the way to the point of failure and then pulls back. That's why was able to make a profitable electric car company when it was considered impossible and send rockets into space for 10% the prevailing cost.
How would Elon solve government waste if he were god-emperor? He wouldn't start by reducing headcount by 10%. He would eliminate entire departments then add back personnel as necessary. What would happen if we just erased the Department of Education? My guess? Nothing.
And yes, government waste is a huge and growing problem. Consider the Biden administrations effort to connect rural households to the internet. It's a $42 billion program and no households have been connected after 3 years. It might fail entirely. The CHIPS act, similar failure. We also recently spent $7.5 billion to build 7 electric charging stations.
These are deep failures in the government, driven by corruption and incompetency. We need to clean house. And to do so we need someone in charge who is unafraid to be unpopular.
Basically, we need this: https://old.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/15v90es/libertarian_javier_milei_shows_his_plan_to_reduce/
I won't say that my mouth didn't water a little bit at the thought, but eliminating dots of epoxy is one thing and eliminating people is another. If you lay off the entire department and it turns out that you still need them, how many are going to be willing to return? How many of the key people who actually get things done are going to be willing to return? That comes down to the motivations and alternatives available to those people, which is not really legible (in fact it's probably not even legible who these people are).
Removing unnecessary people is in fact the key to Elon's efficiency. In the biography, he is cruel to his staff and it seems to be effective. He is constantly firing key staff the moment they start to rest on their laurels. No one is irreplaceable.
Furthermore, his denial of praise seems to motivate people to perform at a level that would otherwise be impossible. It's the same sort of philosophy employed by Asian tiger moms and the band director from the movie "Whiplash". Never say good job.
At some place like the Department of Education, the cuts would be deep. People don't choose that job unless they are in it for an easy paycheck. But, deep in the bowels of the department, there are probably still some young people who would relish the chance for rapid advancement once the cruft has been removed.
The tiger-mom kid who was a violin virtuoso wound up quitting the instrument because of the pressure, which is one argument against a Whiplash-style approach.
Yeah, probably a bad idea to try this with your kids since replacement cost is high.
But enforcing it on everyone else, that’s fine?
I’m sympathetic to Elon’s management style, and I give it credit for a lot of his results, but I would be miserable working at SpaceX. Suddenly importing that culture to the nation’s largest employer would be a disaster. The civil service isn’t supposed to be populated by rockstar engineers doing the impossible. It’s not supposed to be high-risk, high-reward at all.
The government is rarely in the business of visionary promises, so the upside is capped. It doesn’t have long tails for compensation, so it’s not going to attract top talent. There’s not much room for out-of-the-box solutions, so the potential savings are mostly careful execution. There’s a case for handing that over to Jeff Bezos or the ghost of Sam Walton, but Elon Musk? Not my first pick.
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