Elon versus the USG
"DOGE DOGE DOGE."
Although I read almost exclusively science fiction before the age of 20, and I am still dreaming like a child of a sci-fi future, I hope Elon Musk never gets to Mars.
Mars is a gnarly place. At this level of difficulty, does a planet buy you that much? Why not build L5 colonies instead? They will probably survive most threats, including the relativistic kinetic impactor that might be aimed at us once one of the Dark Forest probes picks up our idiotic but inevitable radio-television sphere.
(Maybe after Oumamua, it’s all just too late. We hadn’t even yet realized that the game-theoretic expected outcome of all our high-powered electromagnetic signaling, now consisting only of the most outdated entertainment technologies, yet still continuing, had been negative since the ‘80s. Wires, anyone? We couldn’t have used wires? Imagine how wonderful the Earth would be if the last century had only invented the telegraph, not the radio or the TV. The Earth would be wonderful indeed, because it would not be about to be dinosaured by a tungsten rod at a tenth of lightspeed. Probably some kinds of small arthropods will survive. And any independent L5 colonies—so let’s go. Also, we need Thor and Brilliant Pebbles, ASAP.)
Alas, it seems to me that Elon is much more useful here on Earth. Lately, he proposes to fix the US Government—if his friends Trump and Vance win the election—with his D.O.G.E., or Department of Government Efficiency.
(Of course the acronym recalls the doges of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, but few are familiar with the etymology of “doge.” It is just the Venetian dialect spelling of “duke,” from the Latin dux—or, in standard Italian—duce. Just sayin’.)
I doubt this will happen. In fact: I am certain it will not happen. Of course, it’s hard to rule out anything Elon does. Is it possible that Elon (like one earlier doge) will take Constantinople? No, one might say. But wait! Suffice it to say that I think it is more likely that Elon will take Constantinople, than that he will fix Washington.
The ‘95er
I was recently in Paris and learned a wonderful term the kids use there: the ‘95er. This is like the libertarian version of the ‘68er, the notorious soixante-huitard, father of the noxious, unctuous, and increasingly toxic bureaucracies of the triumphant New Left regimes that today are grinding the world under their toes. And the only generation with the stature to defeat them is asleep in the lite-libertarian Internet bliss of 1995.
What’s neat about the idea that, if the Republicans win, Trump will appoint Elon to fix the government, is that (like my vision of Elon taking Constantinople, perhaps with some kind of airship-borne FPV robot army), it exists entirely in a fantasy world. This is of course the fantasy world of the ‘95er. Which has more in common, I feel, with the fantasy world of the ‘68er, than it thinks it does.
This fantasy world is the world that most Americans vote in. They seem relatively okay with that. Even despite the experience of the last Trump administration, we all seem convinced, on both sides, that electing Trump in 2024 means electing some kind of American Mussolini.
Republicans and Democrats increasingly agree that they are voting on fascism—for or against. While I kind of love it in a way, it is the most ridiculous (and ahistorical) thing in the world. It is a complete, total fantasy. Nothing of the sort is happening or could possibly happen—for better or for worse.
But in this ridiculous fantasy world, it makes perfect sense to elect Donald Trump and have him put Elon Musk in charge of the US Government. Sure. I love it. Let’s go.
The question is not whether or not this will work. The question is: when it doesn’t work, what will happen? Or maybe: when it doesn’t work, what will Elon do? Perhaps this is the point where options like Constantinople start to open up.
Let’s look at what he would learn. Of course, it’s kind of puzzling—because you’d think he knew these things already. Especially with respect to the state organ that does basically kind of the same thing as him: NASA.
From NASA to SpaceX
Surely, if Elon can fix Washington, he could start by fixing NASA. Suppose he wanted to turn NASA into SpaceX? Many aspects of the governance of America are every bit as important as SpaceX, yet have no SpaceX—only a NASA. Only a DMV. Moreover, if the IQs of Federal employees were calculated agency by agency, surely NASA would be well near the top. It’s always easiest to work with smart people, especially for Elon, who doesn’t have much experience managing “DMV ladies.”
Why not have Elon whet his teeth on the relatively easy problem of NASA? Maybe by having Trump appoint him as the NASA Administrator? Once he has made NASA work as well as SpaceX, he’ll be ready to take on the rest of DC. Sure. I think this would be an excellent way to start.
Of course, what he would find is that the NASA Administrator does not actually have the power to fix NASA. He does not have 1/1000 of the power to fix NASA. He is not at all in charge of NASA, the way a CEO would be in charge of NASA—that is, given $25 billion a year and told to explore space with it.
He is a purely reactive, even decorative, fixture, who is sometimes given “decisions” to “make.” As a “decision-maker,” in fact, he is more a judge than an executive.
Yes—some of these judgments are real, and matter. If Elon made all these “decisions” correctly for a thousand years, he would not even come close to fixing NASA. Reactive management is not management. It is not even power.
As an executive, with the authority of a CEO, Elon Musk would look at NASA and see the simple truth about it: there is obviously no way to fix it. Or rather, there is one way to fix it. Liquidate it, and hire some of the employees in a new organization—maybe even in SpaceX itself.
Of course, this would be literally illegal. But so would anything Musk or any other NASA administrator could to fix NASA. NASA is not managed.
No one is in charge of NASA. No: NASA is operated according to law. And if Elon Musk insists on breaking the law, we can treat him like any other criminal immigrant. Let’s see if South Africa can catch a rocket with toothpicks.
The real power over NASA is, of course, the Hill, which micromanages its spending on everything. The relationship between Hill staff, the lobbyists who surround them, and the agency itself, is the real structure of power.
If we zoom out a little, we see that the real power over Washington is Congress. The fantasy world containing Elon and the voters (one hallmark of the ‘95er is his belief, totally unfounded so far as I can see, in the principle of vox populi, vox dei—sadly, Elon, the hoi polloi and the elites can both be out to lunch) is a fantasy primarily in one way.
It indulges the false belief that the US Government has an executive branch—and that when we elect a President, we are electing the chief executive of the executive branch.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. We have an administrative branch—for whose policy, budget, and personnel the Congress is responsible, not the President. And when we elect a President, we are electing a ceremonial head of state.
Who has some residual powers—sure. But let’s look at the rule, not the exception. Over time, the exceptions will go away. You don’t really think Joe Biden is in charge? Or Kamala Harris could be? Come on. No one is in charge—not in this sense. While we are supposed to have a President who is like a CEO, we actually just don’t.
What we call an “executive” branch has become the creature of the legislative branch. This is as unconstitutional as it gets. It means the Constitution is literally describing a different form of government.
Moreover, if you believe in democracy, you notice that the Congress is ballasted against the waves of public opinion by two very powerful support structures. The first is the incumbency rate—95% in the House, 90% in the Senate. The second is the seniority system in committee assignments.
This is why unpopular policies, such as mass immigration, can continue despite persistent majority public opposition. The public’s opinion does not matter—even if the powers that be cannot change the public’s mind. Though usually, they can change the public’s mind. This is called “change,” and is the most sacred kind of democracy.
Even in Article I, the Constitution is describing a different form of government—a parliament. A parliament is a democratically elected debating society. The Congress is not in any way a parliamentary body. It is a bureaucratic body—a committee system. Most politicians elected to Congress are fundraisers, not statesmen, and leave all the actual “legislative” work to their staffs, who farm it out to lobbyists and activists. The result of this work is a system of monstrous omnibus bills which no one reads in toto, and which does not in any way resemble any historical sense of the word “law.”
In short: the real government we have has nothing at all to do with the Constitution. It is an entirely different thing.
The real Project 2025
If you believe in constitutions (which I kind of don’t), what is the right thing to do when the constitution has been broken? When its plain letter (which indeed states that the federal government has a CEO, who is the President) no longer operates?
Most people would say: the right thing to do is to correct the error, and restore the constitution. But when all existing institutions are so blatantly unconstitutional, the “right thing” in this sense means… enforcing a fantasy on the real world.
If this constitution is not operating at all, if it has zero relationship to reality, why should we try to operate it? What basis do we have for believing that it works well? Perhaps it doesn’t work at all, which is why it wasn’t being operated.
It gets worse. We actually do know that Washington can be operated executively, because in the lives of those now living it was. FDR was a real CEO and ran the executive branch like an executive organization. To really learn why this is not possible today, learn how FDR did it.
If Elon Musk, with his D.O.G.E., wants to explain in authentic Washington terms how to make Washington efficient (lol), he can look at the story of Harold Smith, who ran FDR’s Bureau of the Budget (ancestor of today’s OMB). The old Bureau of the Budget put the equivalent of McKinsey consultants in every nook and cranny of the USG, and had the power to just zero out anything Harold Smith thought was useless. That’s why they called him “the general manager of the US Government.”
Of course, in those days the President actually set the budget. Now there is no budget at all, really—just omnibus bills. The President’s budget is a stunt, a press release. And there is no “general manager of the US Government”—lol.
The fantasy Washington that exists in the landscape of politics looks convincing for a simple reason: it used to be real. The President used to be in charge of the government. There used to be actual debates in Congress. Your vote used to mean something.
And most important: entropy exists. There is no way to roll time backward. There is no way Donald Trump could give Elon Musk the powers of Harold Smith. You might say that Elon’s plan is realistic because it is something Washington has already done. But Washington in 1944 is not Washington in 2024 and there is no way to roll it back. Washington in 1944: Manhattan Project. Washington in 2024: Department of Energy.
The tragedy of Trump is that he is not there to break this kayfabe. He is not there to tell you his job is not real. He is there to make it real—which, since it cannot be done (without breaking the law, which he has no intention of doing), will not happen. He will therefore choose the second best option and do his best to pretend it is real. And say what you want about Donald Trump, but no one was ever better at “acting as if.”
Moreover, this analysis severely understates the dimensions of the problem. It is not just that it is impossible to fix NASA, or any other agency—at least, any agency less prosaic than, say, the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard could probably use a full reorg. But the Department of Energy? State?
It is not just that these agencies are inefficiently administered. They are! But for many, even their mission is unclear. What should the US, in 2024, actually be doing about its international relations? We have many assumptions about this question which seem to have last been fully reconsidered in 1945, if not 1919.
What Elon will learn (I hope), is that the question of how to manage NASA, and the question of how to govern the United States, can only be answered from first principles. It is not even possible to restore the Constitution. There is no Constitution. It is a dead letter, and has been all our lives. And until we realize this, nothing at all can be done.
Is it possible for us to realize this? Well, Elon clearly has not realized it so far. And most of us are not as smart as Elon. So maybe the answer is… no.
On the other hand… the world is changing. It’s not there yet. But maybe the real Project 2025 is… Project 2029? Let’s not get too high on our own hopium, but…