To understand DOGE it’s best to start with Reagan. Reagan reduced regulation massively, and where he couldn’t get rid of laws he and his successors just stopped regularly enforcing them. This took steam over time, so for example there was some anti-trust action up until George W. Bush. In fact without anti-trust actions there would be no Microsoft as we understand it. IBM had MS write the operating system for the IBM PC because they had been hit by anti-trust action repeatedly and wanted to avoid it. It’s not like IBM couldn’t write its own operating system
Gates himself engaged in repeated violations of anti-trust law, and most of it was allowed to slide, but eventually the Feds went after him. The case was going badly for him, but George Bush Jr. ordered it shut down.
Generally regulations do impose a cost, and in return the public receives a benefit. There’s also some benefit to corporations, because regulations increase trust. But as time goes by people assume companies are trustworthy, and regulations start seeming like pure cost.
Cut regulations, and you increase profits, it’s often that simple. The decay of trust which loses money takes decades and the profits are now.
Likewise when you cut government workers, the work usually still needs to be done. Contractors take over and they charge more, and usually do a shittier job, if not immediately, then after a while. Here in Toronto where I live, half the garbage collection was given to private enterprise. At first they were cheaper, but within ten years, why, they were more expensive than union work, though somehow the actual workers were getting paid less. Strange that.
Nor is the Federal bureaucracy in any significant way bloated:
The chart above is in absolute numbers, which means the size of the federal workforce, relative to population, has been declining. You wonder why you’re getting bad service? That, plus contractors, is why.
All of this, of course, doesn’t include the fact that Musk was under investigation by multiple agencies. This Grok (his own AI) generated list from February, amuses:
Before the election Musk said:
Billionaire Tesla and X boss Elon Musk suggested Monday that he will end up behind bars if Vice President Kamala Harris beats former President Donald Trump in next month’s election.
“If he loses, I’m f—ed,” Musk told Tucker Carlson of the Republican nominee in an interview broadcast on X.
“How long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?” the world’s richest man quipped. “Will I see my children? I don’t know.”
Perhaps more important is the larger picture of financial enforcement. Musk wants X to be an “everything app”, which includes making it a payment system and, in effect, a bank. Like Crypto-entrepreneurs and many others he wants the profits of a financial corporation without the oversight, including without the FDIC deposit insurance.
Tech bros have spent over 30 years staring at financial elites and seeing how rich they are, salivating for some of that easy money. Destruction of and intimidation of regulatory agencies is what is required to make it truly happen. Remember that Musk and other politically active tech-bros like Peter Thiel made their first bundle from PayPal.
Finance firms have been the most politically powerful special interest group since at least the 90s, but they are being replaced by politically connected tech firms: an industry they helped birth, and billionaires who would not exist without tax and financial law changes spear-headed by Wall Street.
DOGE’s purpose isn’t to cut costs. It’s to open up new profit profit opportunities, attack resisting parts of the deep state and to remove legal risk from breaking the law. That’s all. It’s why the second part of the government shut down entirely was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The idea, as always, is to end the reforms which ended with FDR’s New Deal and go back to the 1890s. Notice how obsessed Trump is with ending income tax and going to tariffs: that’s a 19th century political economy setup.
Welcome to the new Gilded Age, with even richer oligarchs.
NR
Pretty much spot-on, Ian. The only thing I’d argue with is the idea that erosion of trust in companies takes decades. That used to be true, but today it can happen much faster. Information about contaminated food, etc., can spread very quickly today. That’s why Trump and Musk are shutting down information about food recalls and the like. But it remains to be seen how much they can really stop the flow of information about listeria outbreaks and other things of that nature.
And of course, on the other side, we have all the pro-corporate propaganda in our culture and on social media, which as we’ve seen is very effective.
So the corporations may simply be betting that their propaganda can counter any information about the decline in quality and safety of their products that manages to get out. And given how fundamentally stupid a lot of people are these days, they may very well win that bet.
StewartM
I also think you’re leaving out a key element of why Musk wanted to get into the Federal Payments systems: social control.
What? Say something “nasty” about the Great Leader, or his minions? Or maybe not even grovel appropriately before the Great Leader? Expect a letter a few weeks later saying:
“There’s a problem with your student loan/your Medicare payment/Your Medicaid reimbursement/Your SS payment”. Or “You’be been selected for an audit” or “Your bank account is suspected of criminal activity and has been frozen.”
David Pakman has been told by lawyers to expect that Trump will start a harassment campaign against independent liberal/left media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5aleKSQTyM&t=16s
Also–and I say this having come from the corporate world–I see what Musk is doing to be nothing less than what Wall Street did to companies like Boeing (and mine). Essentially, force older experienced workers out to be replaced by cheaper, younger kids who don’t know as much. Downsize the work force in total. Some observations:
1) Musk sees himself as the lone genius Ayn Rand hero. (Cue in the end of the Foundainhead movie):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-VEZpQNYWY
The old-timers will tell the Ayn Rand genius that what he/she wants isn’t wise, has been tried before and didn’t work, and so on. They will push back. That’s not tolerable to the lone genius!
The kids, not knowing as much, and being less secure in their jobs, won’t argue back but comply. The “efficiency” savings are illusory, as management is just deluding that say, 4 people are still doing the work that 15 once did just as well. In reality (and I say this from having witnessed it) vital things are being dropped and no longer done, and as everyone is wearing multiple expert “hats”, so to speak, you don’t really have any experts left, you just pretend that people who know only a fraction of what the experienced people who could focus on an area of specialization once knew.
2) While Musk may see himself as such a genius, he’s really suffering a massive Dunnig-Kruger case. Just like in his tenure with X, he shows no appreciation of technical talent and acts without stopping to ask questions (asking questions first is the true mark of an intelligent person). Just like Ayn Rand (from a review of Atlas Shrugged) a worker is just a worker without any skills or knowledge or talent worth mentioning and management consists of giving barking orders. This is where Anarcho-Capitalism greets fascism, given how they both worship the Fuehrer Prinzip.
3) With US corporations having been largely gutted of institutional knowledge, the US government was the last bastion. That is being destroyed as we speak. You’re right, the goal of this will not to be to “save money” but to provide private companies (and Musk!) opportunities to gouge the government just like defense and Pharma does while providing shitty products and service.
Lastly, when institutional knowledge is gone and the Dunning-Kruger idiots have full sway, expect a lot of unforced errors and utter disasters. It will happen domestically for sure (witness Trump’s ordering the resevoir drained to fight the LA wildfire, but it didn’t and couldn’t and only wiped out the irrigation source FARMERS WHO VOTED FOR HIM needed for their crops during the dry summer; plus he did it with no advance warning):
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/11/california-water-trump
But I, and you, should be most worried about foreign policy. There aren’t any more George Marshalls to push back against these stupid ideas, and the idiots have no sense of limits on their power. They really do see themselves as omnipotent. They’re certainly have eliminated anyone who might tell them otherwise to their face, no?
Joseph Wolz
A redux of the 1890s without having an escape valve (movement West) plus a LOT MORE GUNS doesn’t seem like a very forward thinking thing to do. Especially given that the US military has never been good against insurgencies.
someofparts
On the positive side, Canada will probably have an even greater chance to welcome many of the most skilled scientists and other workers with critical skills who will be fleeing the repressive regime and failed economy of your southern neighbor.
Arthur
I agree with Mr. Wolz. In the past there was an escape valve. Move. I am, of course, well aware that the major problem with that stratagy was usually there was somebody already in place. Obviously, that brought its own set of problems. But it was an escape valve. I often think what will happen when the southeast becomes unliveable and the MAGAs start to move north. Right now they believe that they share a bond with the MAGAs in, let’s say, southern Illinois. And right now they do. But when the good ole southern boys want to share what the northerners already have they’ll find that they are no more welcome then if they had moved to Times Square. Then the fun will start for real.
different clue
@StewartM,
The Dunning-Kruger crash-path Musk will put governance on suits the New Maganazi Revolutionaries just fine, thank you. Especially the White Power Christianazi Gilead wing of the New Maganazi Revolution.
Their plan is to hang partway back, and when America is as much of a pile of rubble that Musk and Trump can make it . . . to then swoop in and transform the wreckage into the New Gilead White Christian Republic of Shit Headistan. ( They probably won’t include the ” Shit Headistan” part.)
That’s the intended future that non-Maganazi non-Shit Headistani Americans should be planning for, or planning against, or whatever.
StewartM
DC,
I have always argued against the survivalist mentality of ‘what to plan for for the upcoming ‘time of tribulation’ discussions here was misguided. Before civilization collapse and everyone becomes a hardscrabble farmer or similar, there will be some sort of authoritarian phase (or even totalitarian phase) where you and your likes will be the ‘enemy of the people’.
Nor will it take a massive government to achieve this. The Gestapo had only 6,500 agents in all of Germany. They didn’t need to keep the ‘enemy within’ under surveillance. Ordinary Germans (usually Nazi enthusiasts, or someone who wanted to cause mischief for you) were the informers. There will be a whole sleuth of MAGA faithful pointing you out by your posts on social media platforms, and here too, for disloyalty to the Great Leader. Punishment could range from warnings to keep your mouth shut, to threats of financial retaliation that I spoke of, all the way up to wrongful imprisonment and/or having you disappear and murdered by MAGA militia (former KKK and neo-Nazi types, no doubt).
Just recently, Trump’s DOJ is testing the waters by hinting prosecution of both a Congressman and Schumer with prosecution for saying nasty things about Musk or Trump:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-doj-threatens-dem-congressman-221559154.html
Recently, I’ve been enjoying (in a gallows humor way) re-runs of the 1960s TV show “Hogan’s Heroes”. Even though it’s obviously satire and farce, there is a kernel of reality in that show about the actual Third Reich. The rampant corruption within the Third Reich, the fact that everyone is watching his own back, that everyone puts his own survival above winning the war, the lies Germans told each other about the war effort and their chances of winning, and last but not least the lack of enthusiasm among many Germans. Remember, there were no fewer than 42 assassination attempts on Hitler’s life, most by Germans, and–remembering that Hitler only won 32.8 % of the vote in a free and fair election, and only 43.8 % in an election run by his own SA, less enthusiasm for the war among many Germans than their propaganda would have you believe. The suppression of dissent may give the impression of unified nation, but in reality the dissent and resentment just smolders under the surface.
Along those latter lines, the excellent Youtube Channel “WWII US Bombers” run by a person who works at an Air Force museum had a Youtube on information gleaned from German pilot POWs (captured in December 1944) who attacked US bomber formations on how the bombers could better mitigate such attacks. A commentator there described the conduct of POWs who would give their captors advice on how to defeat them “disgusting”, but I mentioned what I just mentioned, and moreover (given our current trajectory) I was thinking “if Canada and NATO and other countries invaded “Shit Headistan”, and I was asked for any information that would help them win, would I do it? MOST CERTAINLY YES! I would feel just like those cooperating German pilot POWs.
someofparts
I expect the US southwest to become uninhabitable, but the southeast will do better than you think. Sure, the lowlands and coastal areas may become impossible to live in, but areas around the Appalachians won’t. Atlanta is on a piedmont just beyond the foothills of the mountains and the altitude, frequent rainfall, and hardwood canopy mitigate the discomforts of a hot climate. It is delicious to sit on a porch here in the summer just after the sun goes down. Breezes kick up and fill the air with the green smells of plants cooling down after a day of baking in the sun. If people still had the sense to use architecture properly you would rarely even need to use air-conditioning.
different clue
At some point I can imagine that some Blue States and Blue Zones contiguously bordering Canada might petition Canada to admit them as Provinces of Canada.
If that happens, would Canada ever trust them? Would Canada even want them?
different clue
Here is an article I saw on Reddit just now, from The Hill, called: ” Trump‘s revolution will end badly for him and for America”
Is it hopium or is it just copium?
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/comments/1iv00m2/trumps_revolution_will_end_badly_for_him_and_for/
different clue
@StewartM,
Given that I’ve already been here for several years and written some comments, if what you say is true then I have already been tagged.
So “suddenly stopping writing” is not going to save me, under your scenario.
So I might as well keep writing comments.
Obviously, the analog meatspace avatar-sender which sends “me” here to type will ‘ go gray in place’ in the meatspace world when things begin to smell like what you describe. People have mistaken me for homeless, so I clearly know how to look homeless in meatspace. I also know how to look like a low-functioning dull-normal when I am not looking homeless.