The Department of Redundancy Department

Perhaps nothing epitomizes the whimsical depravity of the incoming Trump administration more than Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamay’s DOGE, a new government department that we are supposed to pretend mommy’s two smartest boys will use to create billions of dollars in efficiency through the raw power of cringey, outdated memes.

Irony abounds in Trumpland, and DOGE is no exception, as the department’s mission is not unique in the federal government. The GAO and OIG already carryout DOGE’s mission, congress has oversight over the bureaucracy, and even a lot of the bureaucracy exists to police “waste, fraud, and abuse;” collecting money from some people and sending it out to other people takes very little personnel. Making sure only the right people get the right amount of money is where bureaucracy comes to play.

I have very little experience with the feds, but I have spent a lot of my career as an accountant in and around state and local governments, and from that I can tell you that a lot of government inefficiency actually comes from unwillingness to spend money. Rundown machinery, outdated software, short-staffing all abound in government. Fear that somebody may get away with something lead to cumbersome over-regulations and impenetrable bureaucracy.

The largest source of government inefficiency is misaligned incentives which can’t be eliminated with simple budget cuts. In fact, defunding a program without decreasing scope and authority leads to slower government that exercises its power more arbitrarily—a less efficient government all around.

So why don’t we see the same inefficiencies in the private sector? It’s not that individuals subject to market forces are better decision makers or have some secret knowledge. If a business didn’t upgrade its software, eventually people would switch to a competitor and stop patronizing a place that is a pain in the ass to interact with. Conversely, if a competitor always has the state of the art technology even when there is no value add, people will seek out a lower cost competitor. Ideally, consumers can choose whether they prefer cheap or state of the art or sort of in between, and a given business will be constantly adjusting in search of new customers, or cease to exist if it cannot.

Why can’t we simply run the government like a business? The government by definition is sheltered from market competition, and, to the extent it isn’t, the incentives are often perverse. A given municipality will want rich people and not want poor people so the incentive is to make it convenient to be rich and difficult to be poor. A government, especially the federal government, cannot simply cease to exist the way a business can. Furthermore, “due process” is basically another word for inefficiency: shooting people who look kind of sus on sight is a lot more efficient than the court system.

Despite being well aware of the many ways that government does not work well, I remain a committed bleeding heart lib, because I believe it’s important for government to do specifically the tasks that markets tell us should not be done. It isn’t profitable to pay for healthcare for a person too sick to work or to provide health insurance for the elderly, or to keep a child safe from parental abuse, or spend too much time finding out exactly who committed a crime, but I want to live in a society where these things exist. And if our DOGE boys do not believe these functions are worth doing, they should make that case and not hide behind “waste and abuse.”

I also don’t think the cause is completely hopeless. Including everything of value “on book” isn’t something that naturally happens in the private sector either. Reflecting the true value of depreciating assets, research and development, depletion of natural resources and countless other things remain live controversies for the accounting profession.

In sum, shrinking the size of government requires shrinking the scope and authority of the government and has little to do with sending some rich boys with heavy conflict of interest to cut dollar amounts, and if you want to make government more efficient give more money to accountants like me.

To reiterate: these posts are all going to be rambling and unedited.