I imagine that a lot of Americans, even those that don't support Trump, might think that DOGE is a good idea. After all, some of us remember the Reagan years of hundred dollar toilet seats and hammers. You might even remember the Grace commission that Reagan setup to "drain the swamp". Yes, it's all been done before. Of course it never works. Here's why.
You've probably seen, or experienced for yourself, when a company is in financial difficulties and hires a new efficiency expert to get things back on track. But inevitably, all they really do is reduce services and fire people. That's what happened at the university where I used to work. They cut whole academic departments, raised tuition, and drastically cut other services. And that's exactly what Trump and Musk's DOGE is gearing up to do. Indeed, to a man like Musk, firing people and reducing services is what running a business is all about. But that's because rather than being efficiency experts, they actually know nothing about efficiency.
In fact, what these so-called efficiency experts end up doing is exactly the opposite of efficiency. If you want to get people to work smarter and be more productive, you need to create a workplace environment that inspires them to do so. Seeing your colleagues lose their jobs never inspires employees. It might scare them into looking like they are working harder, but they won't be working smarter, and they won't be more productive. To be truly productive, workers need job security, a clear path for advancement, and a sense of "what's in it for me". There is a big difference between "if I work hard and the company succeeds, I know I'll have a secure future for myself and my family", and "if I work hard and the company succeeds, the CEO is going to be able to buy another yacht".
And how exactly to we measure efficiency? A CEO might just be looking at the bottom line. We're in business to make money. Whatever it takes to make more money. Occasionally, you might have someone like Steve Jobs who probably cared about how many computers and iPhones they sold, more than the bottom line. But what about efficiency in government? Government is not in the business of selling a product, but rather providing services. So the true measure of government efficiency is measured by how many people were helped. The goal would be to help more people at a lower cost. But if you're cutting services, you're helping fewer people. This isn't efficiency, its abdication of responsibility.
So we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that DOGE is going to make government more efficient. Quite the opposite. They will be cutting services that Americans depend on, and creating a hostile work environment which will drive the best people elsewhere. And the money they save by firing people and reducing services will go right into tax cuts for billionaires. Trump doesn't care about making government more efficient any more than Reagan did. What they really care about is gutting the services that help less fortunate Americans, especially black or brown people, or women. Trump wants to break our government so he can then say the government is broken, blame it on the Democrats, and make himself a king.