As Donald Trump returns to the White House and DOGE is set loose, the baseline assumption must be that in nearly all spheres of human life, government is a worse option than private industry or human initiative.
When I was young and foolish, I believed every word in the newspaper and that the government was generally the solution, not the problem. But those days are long gone. It sometimes is hard to believe how inefficient, wasteful, and clueless governmental bodies can be. Yet, look no further than New Jersey, where weeks of SUV-sized drones nightly buzzing the landscape has barely interested local and federal government as to the source and purpose of these incursions. Is it a private action? Is it the U.S. government warming up for new surveillance methods? Is it a foreign entity preparing the ground for something nefarious? Nobody seems to know and those in local, state, and federal government don’t seem all that interested in finding out what’s going on.
All countries have their inefficiencies and failures of government. In Israel, while things are getting better than during the socialist days of the past, the government can still show incredible inefficiency. After receiving a grant from the U.S. and Canadian governments a decade back, it took my company six months before we received our first shekel. Part of the delay involved an old version of a certain form. My partner asked what the difference was between the old and new versions. He was told that the new version has the logo of the office to which the form must be returned. Everything else was unchanged, but they still would not accept the older version. Even after we received the money, 100,000 shekels were never given to us. The reason: at the very beginning of the grant, we had to submit a budget for all of the money. When it turned out that we traveled less than planned and did all patent work in-house, the Economics Ministry would simply not give us the money to use for salaries, chemicals or equipment. You said patents, and that money can only be drawn down for patent work. And this from “Startup Nation”…
Israelis buy huge amounts of goods from abroad. Amazon was smart when it partnered with the local postal service in insisting that packages be delivered directly to consumers. Other companies, like AliExpress, have their goods sent to pickup locations hopefully not too far from home. As the postal system closed around 90 percent of its branches, it arranged with local stores to be distribution centers for inbound packages. So when something is sent here, one receives notification to choose a pickup point. As some headphones were coming this week, I chose the local grocery store three minutes by foot from home. When the package arrived, I was surprised to see that it was at the main post office, around a 20 minute drive. We called to find out what happened and were stunned to learn that it was on purpose. “So many people are buying stuff right now from Amazon and AliExpress, we don’t have the manpower to send the packages out. So you need to come here and pick yours up.” In typical Israeli fashion, my brother-in-law, who works in a local garage, fixed the car of a friend who works for the postal system. The latter called a friend and in half an hour the package was delivered. In Israel and elsewhere, it’s called “protectsia.”
One sees how over the past four years the Department of Justice and FBI used their enormous power to go after the political foes of Joe Biden and the Democrats. The U.S. postal service and Amtrak wouldn’t know what profit means, even if it came up and bit them on the bottom. The Pentagon fails its annual audit and cannot account for billions of dollars. Other billions in weaponry was left in Afghanistan, and there is no person on Earth who can vouch for all the money and equipment sent to Ukraine.
Kamala Harris burning through over a billion dollars (of private money) in 100 days is appropriate for a person whose whole life has been in government, where there is no responsibility, accountability, or thought of saving money. When there is no hard stop on losses as people don't need to show profits or efficiency as a company must, governmental bodies—big and small—waste endlessly and perform horribly. Tony Fauci could admit that masks did not work and that the six-foot rule had no basis in science without any fear of being fired, facing a lawsuit, or being sent off into exile like Richard Nixon who did not show his face publicly for years after the shame of Watergate. His actions destroyed an untold number of businesses and made the lives of millions of Americans much worse. He will suffer no consequences for his brazen misrepresentations.
What Elon Musk did with Tesla—namely start with nothing and end up with amazing cars—DOGE must do with the U.S. government. One can always err, and if Team DOGE does err, let them err on a government that is too small rather than too big and inefficient. The government should be given tasks that it absolutely has to perform. Anything that can be privatized or given over to citizens or the states to do in place of the federal government should be handed off. One can see that individuals, private companies, and charitable organizations did more post-hurricane in North Carolina than did FEMA with its anti-Trump house and neighborhood skipping. Amtrak in private hands would either turn a profit, be broken up, or be shut down. Keeping a passenger railroad system around because we used to rely on trains before planes and interstates makes no sense if it is always losing money. Israel kept El-Al going, with losses, so as to have a way to fly people and goods into and out of the country at times like today, when European and American carriers will not fly here. El-Al today is private and is making a lot of money. I would be thrilled to hear that Private Amtrak is making billions and adding new lines.
Governmental bodies tend to keep growing and making new rules and regulations. The time has come to significantly trim the size and scope of the federal government. Individuals and states should be given first consideration and only when there is an absolute proven need for federal action, should the appropriate offices be given people, resources, and marching orders. I doubt that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy can get rid of 75 percent of all federal employees, as the former did when he bought Twitter. But the time has come to clip the federal behemoth and make it efficient and responsive to the people Enough of the FBI as a personal Stasi; let it return to its traditional job of being a pseudo-national police force. The same for the CIA, TSA, and all other federal agencies and departments: make them smaller, make them efficient, and make them serve the people and not their own petty agendas.