On DOGE's the Way of the Knife: "Elevate" - Part 14 of ...
I started these posts over five years ago, breaking apart the lyrics in the song Elevate - it seemed like it touched on every aspect of life and then jumped to the next thing.
The song has a lyric -
What don't kill me, gon' make me (gon' make)
Shoot for the stars, no safety (no safety)
We are now in the time of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). A temporary “government” agency with the self-proclaimed mission of “major reform”. DOGE is led by Elon Musk, a person who I have admired in different contexts before, whether it’s SpaceX, Tesla or the latest master plan.
Coming back to the title of this post, “The Way of the Knife” is a concept from the science fiction novel Dune, that professes - in order to go forward, you have to cut off your dependency on things of the past. Dune has had its own resurgence thanks to recent movies, and just like Frank Herbert, Dune’s author, Elon’s perspective on the real world is based on strongly held beliefs. A belief that the world’s resources are finite, a belief that labor is the ultimate scarce resource, a belief that underpopulation is a signal that the worst is about to come. Musk wants to remove the “safety” of layered regulations that in his view will only get more and more complex as time goes on without drastic efforts.
I understand where the impetus for DOGE comes from - the U.S. is in debt, the interest expense on this debt is one of the U.S.’s top five budget expenses, jumping from single digit to double digit percentages of the national budget. Every budget cycle, the question of - can we keep increasing the national debt is just as loud as all of the accompanying expenditures. In the view of DOGE, getting this debt down, and even making a deficit-free budget is the goal.
But where this all breaks down is the method of achieving these cuts. Congress controls the budget and should be the vehicle where these appropriations, cuts and changes are studied, recommended and executed. By having a temporary group of people make these decisions, Congressmen and Senators can feign ignorance and then if things don’t go well, it’s not their fault, it was those DOGE-guys who four months from now will not be around to provide answers.
On the backs of anyone else - a woman, a person of color, a person who does not have their own media company - something like DOGE would fall apart on its first real steps. From my view, both Trump and Musk believe budget disussions are a zero-sum game. It’s either now or never. We will either figure this out in this brief two year Republican-MAGA controlled everything, or the U.S. will be lost.
I do not agree. The damages these cuts will do will not be felt for years or decades. The loss of a regulation here, an enforcer there, a lack of preparedness for a foreseeable disaster will point back to the first half of 2025 when things changed.
For DOGE to be successful, it should have agreed-upon boundaries for what constitutes waste and fraud. It should approach the problem from the mindset that constructive government projects are indeed possible and then remove the steps that create conflict in getting there.
I write all this as a Tesla shareholder (well before Elon’s politics and Twitter era) and car owner, which I know has its own set of conflicts for the implicit support it gives to everything I wrote about above. This doesn’t touch on Musk’s position as a far right symbol, misguided views on DEI and too many other issues to get into here.
Living on the outskirts of DC, these discussions are more than abstract, they include friends who work for various agencies, friends who studied together, friends who have lost their jobs or careers are uncertain regardless of budget, it’s a question of who holds the power. We have elections to give our voice to our represented leaders. Musk has a talking point that says bureaucracy is not democracy, and yet he is acting as the ultimate bureaucrat, walking through countless agencies and expenditures making arbitrary decisions on what stays and what goes - making important decisions as a makeshift official rather than as an elected representative. He has taken this mandate from his adjacency to Trump, who is not seeking the spotlight in this area because cutting specific things is unpopular. Better to take credit for the effort as a whole and leave the details to someone who he will likely disavow before his term is over.
I would ask Musk to put on his sustainability hat for a moment - we agree that battery powered vehicles are the ultimate path forward for sustainable transportation. Did that begin by destroying a chunk of gas stations and then building better alternatives? No, we need to devote more resources to what works and give the regulations, agencies and contracts which have ceased to serve their purpose a chance to end gracefully and without undoing the good they were initially created to achieve.
What will I do with my own Musk-adjacent purchases and what other actions will I take? I’ll take my own advice and stop further contributions to those areas and find the maximum good I can do. I have written my representative and will continue to execute democracy the way we can, by voting and by actions.
“Sample letter to your congress person:
To the office of [Rep. Name] -
I am writing to share my concern about the role the newly created DOGE effort is having on federal regulations and employees. Although DOGE writings use the Presidential executive statement as a reason for their existence I find that the effort is infringing on Congress’ duties to pass a budget and have it enacted appropriately. There is no plan for what effects the cutting efforts will have after the temporary effort’s disbanding and what the transparency looks like in this timeframe. Congresspeople are abdicating their responsibility to this temporary effort and there is no accountability in place for their decisions.
Please do whatever is possible to stop the DOGE effort.
I understand where the impetus for DOGE comes from - the U.S. is in debt, the interest expense on this debt is one of the U.S.’s top five budget expenses, jumping from single digit to double digit percentages of the national budget. Every budget cycle, the question of - can we keep increasing the national debt is just as loud as all of the accompanying expenditures. In the view of DOGE, getting this debt down, and even making a deficit-free budget is the goal.
However, the method of addressing this budget disparities needs to be from Congress and a budget, not from a temporary group of unelected and unaccountable people.
Thank you.”
