"Adulting" Delusions

Libertarian economist and Great Man Milton Friedman quipped that he is "in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, whenever it's possible." It is a reflection of the natural state of government, which as I recently blogged is to make itself larger always and forever. Friedman’s aphorism came to mind when I pondered Trump's various tax cut proposals, including eliminating taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits. The rational me recoiled, preferring a simplification of the tax code and reduction or elimination of the thousands of special treatments, distortions, "loopholes," etc. But, once I realized that such a desire is pure fantasy, given that there are no incentives for politicians to support it and countless incentives for politicians to support tax favoritism, I knew that siding with Friedman's "any circumstances and… any excuse" position was the only path to getting any anti-government thing done.

This came to mind as I pondered a recent exchange, where I encountered a now-common attitude in the DOGE (Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency). Let's call that attitude political "adulting."

Yes, I can hear you cringe at the verbing of a noun, but roll with it for now, as I elaborate, and you will find that it’s sarcasm.

A friend who would know recently mentioned that Elon Musk is ruthless in his pursuit of efficiency. That X-formerly-Twitter is running just fine after cutting 80% of its staff validates the claim, as does this evolution of the Raptor rocket engine his space vehicles use.

I am particularly tickled by the latter, because I still see people (who personify “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”) whinge about supposed losses of technology from the Apollo Space Program era. As in, we can't build the Saturn V's F1 engines any more.

Why would we want to, when we can do better?

So, I look with optimism at Musk and his band of young geniuses trying to trim the beast.

The DOGE effort has shocked, shocked! many people in both speed and magnitude, and many people are reflexively recoiling from the "tear it down" mindset. The aforementioned exchange was with someone who derided Musk as,

an arrogant ignoramus who doesn't know how much he doesn't know,

and who

is trying to destroy the agencies and mechanisms themselves that can be a valuable tool for whichever administration is in office.

My response,

that tool has been misused for decades. I'm fine with smashing it,

was derided as

not constructive and immature. Fix the process, keep the tool for your own needs.

Spoken like a true statist and believer in the "Goo Goo" delusion. Every tool in the government’s toolbox has been and will continue to be misused, and we would be better off if there were far fewer of them.

But, today, I'll just focus on the "adulting" part.

All around me, Musk's critics who are not of the doom squad are unhappy that his approach is more sledgehammer than scalpel. Their argument is that some good programs are going to be cut, in a "baby with the bathwater" fashion, that rooting out the corrupt while leaving the good in place is more reasonable, more "adult."

To that, I respond.

• Beware of the nirvana fallacy. As with taxes, there is the ideal, and there is what's doable given the landscape, constraints, incentives, opposition, and inertia.

• Much that has been touted as "good" has not produced good results, because reality always wins out over utopian desires.

• The judicial branch will act as a "check-and-balance," stifling many cuts and drawing out the process. This is a double-edge sword, but that, too, is reality.

• The nation is $36T in debt, is spending nearly $2T a year more than it collects, Hauser's Law tells us that tax revenues will always return to an 18.5% of GDP median, and even a sledgehammer leveled at discretionary spending will only make a modest dent in spending. Given all this, who can possibly believe that a scalpel will accomplish anything?

• Trump has hit the Oval Office at full speed, taking aggressive action on multiple fronts. Given the GOP's razor thin margin in the House and the likelihood that he will lose that margin in the 2026 mid-terms (they never go well for the incumbent party), he probably recognizes that he has two years, not four, to move an agenda the Democrats consider anathema. Swiftness and surgical precision are not usually compatible.

We are told, "this is not how adults behave." Indeed, Trump's antics are often not those of a sober statesman. But it was him or Harris, and had Harris won, the nation's economic and cultural descent would have accelerated. Dance with the one who brung ya. Moreso, how well have those sober statesmen done? George W. Bush correctly called for Social Security reform and was roasted by his own party. Perhaps a wild man is the only real remedy.

I am prompted to recall a climactic moment from the movie Margin Call, which loosely dramatized the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the 2008 financial crisis. Jeremy Irons' character John Tuld, a pastiche of Wall Street CEOs John Thain (Merrill Lynch) and Richard Fuld (Lehman Brothers), reinforced his edict that the firm liquidate its portfolio of soon-to-be-worthless securities by screaming "this is it! I'm telling you this is it!"

I have this same feeling, today, regarding cost cutting and the balance of DOGE's mission.

If not now, when?

If not Trump and Musk, who?

We have a natural tendency, when looking to rebut viewpoints and positions with which we disagree, to stray beyond the matters themselves and into the personal. We are inclined to believe that ours is the more sober or moral position, even when that's just personal bias rather than based in evidence. That we are the adults and the others are the immature or the "NPCs" who mistake repeating what they've heard for original thought.

For decades, the “principled” people on the Right have been talking about excessive spending and fiscal irresponsibility. These “adults” are among the loudest complainers about Musk and Trump and DOGE on my social media feed, to which I say, “what’s your beef? Is it because the guy you don’t like is actually doing what you claim you wanted?”

There are moments in history that, if not seized, may not reoccur for a long time. That's my sense about DOGE. Here we have an alignment of the stars, an inflection point where the mind-boggling levels of waste, misuse, corruption, duplication, and worst of all apathy toward it all might finally be challenged in a meaningful fashion. To oppose it because it's "too much," because "TRUMP!!!," because "MUSK!!!," because one of your sacred cows might get gored, or because you think it can be done better is truly throwing the baby out with the bathwater. An imperfect good is a whole lot preferable to continued spiral toward inevitable doom.

A footnote: I’ve been seeing more and more people arguing against DOGE from a Chesterton’s Fence position, which can be summed up as “if you don’t know why something exists, don’t be so quick to tear it down.” I will rebut this misapplication of G.K. Chesterton’s parable on Sunday’s blog.

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Here’s a recent Scott Adams take. He’s much more “Trumpy” than me, but that’s mostly irrelevant - the points he hits are accurate.

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Here’s a clip from a Joe Rogan interview of former State Dept official Mike Benz about how USAID is, in his words, “the primary soft power projection organ of the blob.” That “blob” is our foreign policy establishment, and there’s a lot of dirty stuff going on via USAID. It’s one person’s opinion - I leave it to you to judge his words.