Human nature is human nature. It is immutable. There are things we do well and things we don’t.
The nation’s Founding Fathers knew this and wrote their Constitution accordingly, which is why a federal government that remains within the Constitution’s confines is so incredibly small.
The Founders knew giving humans power—and the power to lord it over other humans—was a TERRIBLE idea, so they severely limited the government they created.
The Founders knew that humans drawn to lord government power over others were imbued with a toxic combination of some of the worst of human characteristics, so they severely limited their opportunities to do so.
Milton Friedman said, “Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?... And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.”
God bless Donald Trump and what he appears to be attempting to do to D.C., but I would LOVE to see his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attempt to shrink government rather than make it more efficient. Because you cannot make government more efficient. Because human nature.
Behold (yet again) my Wallet Rule:
You go out on Friday night with your wallet. You go out the following Friday night with my wallet. On which Friday night are you going to have more fun? Obviously, you will have more fun with my wallet because at the end of the evening, you care what your wallet looks like. My wallet? You don’t care quite so much.
Well, government is always using other peoples’ wallets, and Friday night never, ever ends, so you will NEVER get bureaucrats to mind our money in any way that is even remotely rational or reasonable.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the dual heads of the DOGE, are private-sector successes. Well, Musk is…sort of. His two biggest companies massively rely upon government subsidies (Tesla) and contracts (SpaceX).
It will be interesting to see what the DOGE specifically and the Trump administration generally do to fake energy subsides for things like electric vehicles and wind and solar fake power.
I’m sure both Musk and Ramaswamy know from their businesses that they can’t get their employees to be entirely efficient with their money. Musk and Ramaswamy are way more hands-on with their businesses than bureaucrats are with their bureaucracies. Because human nature.
The dream of government efficiency is a pipe dream. As in: You’re smoking a crack pipe.
Musk and Ramaswamy should petition Trump to rename and re-aim their assignment to the Agency to Reduce Government—ARG. As in “aargh,” which is what D.C. will be saying, to which Musk-Ramaswamy’s response should be: “Like that? Here’s some more reduction.”
The federal government in 2023 spent $6.1 trillion. The entirety of the U.S. economy in 2023 was $27.4 trillion. Get that? The federal government spent 22.2% of every penny every man, woman, and child combined created in the U.S. There are 300 million people in the U.S.
There are 23.7 million full-time and part-time federal employees, plus over 760,000 federal civilians, along with more than 560,000 contractors, each with their own raft of even more employees.
That’s disgusting. It doesn’t call for efficiency; it demands reduction.
Here’s a good top-line first rule:
If all fifty states have a “Department of X” or “Y Agency," the federal government shouldn’t have one.
To wit: All fifty states have a version of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), so the federal government shouldn’t have one.
Now we reach a semantic quibble were one desirous of picking nits: whether the following is “efficiency” or “reduction”? Either way, it should happen—a LOT:
Some federal agencies do a thing or two that matters (to go along with the avalanche of things that don’t). And often there are several other agencies ALSO doing the exact same thing or two that actually matters.
Pick one to do them and stop all the rest from doing those things.
And here’s where it gets even better. After the consolidations, we can begin the closings. MANY of the agencies actually doing a useful thing or two can be shuttered once those things are assigned elsewhere.
To wit: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC). You can’t mend it, so end it.
Idle bureaucrat hands are the Devil’s playground.
The FCC’s busybodies have so little of actual value to do that they constantly look to power-grab relevancy.
Net Neutrality: US Revives Controversial Web Rules Trump Worked to Quash
We have been engaged in this idiotic Net Neutrality back-and-forth since 2010. Barack Obama’s FCC grabbed, Trump’s FCC released, Biden’s FCC grabbed, Trump’s FCC will release….
What all of this idiocy has succeeded in establishing is that the FCC has zero authority to grab:
Court: FCC Can't Enforce Net Neutrality — January 15, 2014
Court Blocks Net Neutrality, Says ISPs Are Likely to Win Case Against FCC — August 5, 2024
There is something the FCC should have been doing all along: getting more wireless spectrum to the private sector.
The Government Giving the Left What They Want: More Terrible Policy: "The federal government is yet again acquiescing to the ridiculous anti-free market demands of the Left. We the People will yet again be forced to pay dearly for the resulting damage... We have looming before us a wireless spectrum crunch. Spectrum being the finite airwaves we use for all things wireless – from cell phones to car key fobs.”
More Internet and Access? We Need More Spectrum and Less Gov (February 20, 2019): "Too Much Government, Too Little Spectrum... (G)uess who controls a majority of the best spectrum, the spectrum most suitable for mobile broadband? It’s the federal government itself. Almost 60 percent of that spectrum is in federal hands."
5G and China: The Private Sector Needs More Licensed Spectrum, Please (February 14, 2022).
But the FCC has all along been too busy grabbing what it shouldn’t to have been doing what it should.
And then this happened. Because D.C.:
Congress Lets FCC's Spectrum Auction Authorization Lapse
Here’s a thought: Let’s not renew the FCC’s authority—or the FCC.
Dealing with spectrum is about the only useful thing the FCC does, and—shocker—it ain’t the only bureaucracy dealing with spectrum:
“Regulatory responsibility for the radio spectrum is divided between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).”
So Congress should authorize spectrum auction authority for the NTIA, and then Musk and Ramaswamy should shut down the FCC.
As in: end it. Don’t futilely attempt to mend it.
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