WEBVTT

00:00.240 --> 00:02.720
When he returns to the White House early next year,

00:03.180 --> 00:06.780
President-elect Donald Trump plans to appoint Elon Musk and Vivek Rama Swami

00:06.780 --> 00:10.260
to head a new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

00:10.520 --> 00:12.260
While not an official federal department,

00:12.540 --> 00:14.180
the administration's plans for DOGE

00:14.180 --> 00:16.860
are similar to the Grace Commission under Ronald Reagan

00:16.860 --> 00:20.640
and the Reinventing Government, or RIGO, initiative under Bill Clinton.

00:20.960 --> 00:23.400
The president will task Musk and Rama Swami's team

00:23.400 --> 00:25.560
with researching, developing, testing,

00:26.060 --> 00:28.600
and writing up actionable steps for Trump and his team

00:28.600 --> 00:31.640
to effectively cut government spending and federal regulations.

00:31.960 --> 00:33.060
In an op-ed last week,

00:33.660 --> 00:35.740
Musk and Rama Swami laid out some initial plans

00:35.740 --> 00:38.200
for tackling the bureaucratic behemoth in Washington.

00:38.720 --> 00:40.900
They appointed two recent Supreme Court rulings,

00:41.420 --> 00:43.780
West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency

00:44.260 --> 00:46.020
and Loper Bright v. Ramondo,

00:46.460 --> 00:47.540
in which the court ruled

00:47.540 --> 00:50.240
that federal agencies cannot impose regulations

00:50.240 --> 00:52.860
dealing with major economic or policy questions

00:52.860 --> 00:55.480
without specific congressional authorization

00:56.060 --> 00:58.900
and that courts are no longer required to defer

00:58.900 --> 01:01.700
to agencies' interpretations of their own authority.

01:02.440 --> 01:03.660
In citing these cases,

01:04.140 --> 01:07.140
the authors argue that a significant number of federal regulations

01:07.140 --> 01:09.540
currently on the books are technically illegal

01:10.060 --> 01:13.280
and therefore can and should be eliminated by executive order.

01:13.640 --> 01:16.320
The two also professed their plans to trim the federal workforce

01:16.320 --> 01:19.920
by requiring remote federal employees to return to the office

01:20.420 --> 01:23.580
and to move agencies out of D.C. to regions of the country

01:23.580 --> 01:25.080
more relevant to what they oversee.

01:25.540 --> 01:27.280
The article ends with calls to cut funding

01:27.280 --> 01:29.260
to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,

01:29.820 --> 01:32.020
to overall the federal government's procurement process,

01:32.860 --> 01:35.720
and to address the significant amount of waste, fraud, and abuse

01:35.720 --> 01:38.180
that taxpayers are forced to fund each year.

01:38.500 --> 01:39.860
Musk and Rama Swami's plan

01:39.860 --> 01:42.520
has gotten plenty of criticism and skepticism

01:42.520 --> 01:44.780
from libertarians and small government advocates,

01:45.380 --> 01:47.880
mostly because of its total reliance on politicians

01:47.880 --> 01:50.880
who have every institutional reason to decline the cuts.

01:50.880 --> 01:54.080
And last month I argued that even if Doge achieved everything

01:54.080 --> 01:55.200
it set out to achieve,

01:55.500 --> 01:57.560
it still would fall far short of what's needed

01:57.560 --> 01:59.740
to get the country off our current path

01:59.740 --> 02:01.700
to economic and societal destruction.

02:02.080 --> 02:04.060
While the vision laid out by the two Doge leaders

02:04.060 --> 02:06.340
in the Wall Street Journal is a bit more robust

02:06.340 --> 02:07.240
than I had expected,

02:07.820 --> 02:10.060
I still stand by everything I said in that piece.

02:10.380 --> 02:11.860
But there is a component of Doge

02:11.860 --> 02:13.660
and the broader movement behind it

02:13.660 --> 02:15.960
that many free marketers are too quick to dismiss

02:15.960 --> 02:18.540
or take for granted, the cultural component.

02:18.540 --> 02:21.860
Anyone who understands that radical changes are necessary

02:21.860 --> 02:24.240
to fix our current national predicament

02:24.240 --> 02:26.760
also needs to understand how radical changes

02:26.760 --> 02:27.860
actually come about.

02:28.080 --> 02:30.400
As Robert Higgs detailed in his book on the subject,

02:31.260 --> 02:32.980
the biggest, most consequential changes

02:32.980 --> 02:35.300
to the American political and economic system

02:35.300 --> 02:37.480
have all taken place during a crisis.

02:37.900 --> 02:39.740
Generally, at any given time,

02:40.140 --> 02:43.280
the public is not in favor of big sweeping societal changes.

02:43.600 --> 02:44.840
Many may want them in theory,

02:45.300 --> 02:47.760
but when it's time to actually sit down and make the change,

02:47.760 --> 02:49.900
it's very hard to get enough people

02:49.900 --> 02:51.580
to accept their lives being upended

02:51.580 --> 02:53.240
for something they're only told

02:53.240 --> 02:55.220
will make them safer and more prosperous

02:55.220 --> 02:56.300
someday in the future.

02:56.620 --> 02:57.760
But in the depths of a crisis,

02:58.340 --> 02:59.880
when the status quo is bad enough,

03:00.380 --> 03:02.200
it's much easier to get enough of the public

03:02.200 --> 03:05.160
to passively or actively accept expansive changes

03:05.160 --> 03:06.900
to how our society operates.

03:07.300 --> 03:09.640
The strict speech controls and criminalization

03:09.640 --> 03:12.500
of political thought implemented under Woodrow Wilson

03:12.500 --> 03:15.420
were only really possible because of World War I.

03:15.420 --> 03:18.040
The government's devastating economic power grab

03:18.040 --> 03:19.300
under Hoover and FDR

03:19.680 --> 03:21.900
could only have happened during the Great Depression.

03:22.340 --> 03:22.860
More recently,

03:23.320 --> 03:24.680
it was only politically possible

03:24.680 --> 03:26.440
for the George W. Bush administration

03:26.880 --> 03:29.000
to eviscerate the public's right to privacy

03:29.440 --> 03:32.860
and launch a disastrous multi-trillion dollar war on terror

03:32.860 --> 03:35.100
because of the horrific attacks on 9-11.

03:35.560 --> 03:37.420
And the Fed was only able to get away

03:37.420 --> 03:39.780
with its recent historic level of money printing

03:39.780 --> 03:41.380
that fueled price inflation,

03:41.820 --> 03:43.060
made most Americans poorer,

03:43.060 --> 03:46.220
and generated much of the economic chaos we're dealing with

03:46.220 --> 03:49.440
because of the government lockdowns in response to COVID-19.

03:49.840 --> 03:51.780
Thanks to a number of ongoing government programs,

03:52.220 --> 03:54.560
it's not a question of if we will face another crisis,

03:54.840 --> 03:56.020
but which one and when.

03:56.640 --> 03:57.060
For instance,

03:58.100 --> 03:59.980
Washington's escalations against Russia

03:59.980 --> 04:02.020
could prompt a severe Russian response.

04:02.840 --> 04:05.460
What the American government has enabled Israel to do

04:05.460 --> 04:06.460
to the people of Gaza

04:06.460 --> 04:08.700
could lead to a major terrorist attack

04:08.700 --> 04:09.940
on an American city

04:09.940 --> 04:12.320
or the historic economic downturn

04:12.700 --> 04:14.220
that was made unavoidable

04:14.220 --> 04:17.100
by the Fed injecting a historic amount of cheap money

04:17.100 --> 04:18.040
into credit markets

04:18.460 --> 04:20.040
could suddenly materialize.

04:20.320 --> 04:21.340
These looming crises

04:21.340 --> 04:23.300
could provide the political establishment

04:23.300 --> 04:25.800
with their next opportunity to grab power

04:25.800 --> 04:28.300
they could not get away with grabbing in normal times.

04:28.620 --> 04:30.300
Much of the political class's propaganda

04:30.300 --> 04:32.400
is meant to prime the American public.

04:32.740 --> 04:33.880
So when these crises hit,

04:34.160 --> 04:36.300
their instinct is to look to the government for help

04:36.580 --> 04:38.940
and to hand over more control over their lives

04:38.940 --> 04:40.500
in the name of ending the crisis.

04:40.500 --> 04:43.560
But crises also present opportunities for improvement.

04:43.920 --> 04:46.180
Think of an alcoholic who wakes up after a bender

04:46.700 --> 04:49.340
only to realize he missed his daughter's high school graduation.

04:49.860 --> 04:51.060
The pain of that realization

04:51.060 --> 04:53.240
could drive the man to pick the bottle back up

04:53.240 --> 04:55.160
and sink deeper into his addiction.

04:55.780 --> 04:58.000
But it could also drive him to finally begin

04:58.000 --> 04:59.140
cleaning up his life.

04:59.380 --> 05:01.540
The same thing can happen on the societal level.

05:01.860 --> 05:02.640
It is unlikely

05:02.640 --> 05:04.580
that the Doge team will just draft up

05:04.580 --> 05:05.780
all the necessary cuts

05:05.780 --> 05:07.580
needed to fix our many national problems

05:08.040 --> 05:10.160
and that Donald Trump will simply implement them

05:10.160 --> 05:11.160
on some random day

05:11.160 --> 05:14.380
without facing serious and immediate political consequences.

05:15.240 --> 05:16.780
The more likely path out of our mess

05:16.780 --> 05:19.040
will resemble the alcoholic's path out of his.

05:19.420 --> 05:21.860
If a crisis hits and enough of the public understands

05:21.860 --> 05:23.520
that something the government did

05:23.520 --> 05:25.000
is to blame for it

05:25.000 --> 05:27.620
and that giving the same people who brought the crisis about

05:27.620 --> 05:30.520
even more power is the worst possible response.

05:31.180 --> 05:33.560
Comprehensive political and cultural solutions

05:33.560 --> 05:35.720
would not only be possible, but likely.

05:36.060 --> 05:38.400
This is why countering the political class's propaganda

05:38.400 --> 05:40.720
and getting more of the public to see the truth

05:40.720 --> 05:43.580
is a prerequisite for actually solving our issues.

05:43.900 --> 05:45.860
That can often feel like a hopeless endeavor.

05:46.600 --> 05:48.640
But look at how much excitement and energy

05:48.640 --> 05:50.100
there is right now about Doge.

05:50.860 --> 05:53.200
Musk and Ramaswamy are drawing a lot of attention

05:53.200 --> 05:55.740
as they hype people up about cutting government spending.

05:56.120 --> 05:58.000
They have embraced Ron Paul as an inspiration,

05:58.540 --> 06:00.260
ally and advisor for the project

06:00.260 --> 06:03.160
and their plan to start a podcast focused on their effort

06:03.160 --> 06:06.120
ensures that it will remain at the center of the public's attention

06:06.120 --> 06:07.540
throughout Doge's run.

06:07.540 --> 06:10.540
Is the level of public awareness about the causes and solutions

06:10.540 --> 06:13.160
to our problems anywhere close to where it needs to be

06:13.160 --> 06:16.160
to put us on a better path the next time government intervention blows up

06:16.160 --> 06:16.860
in all of our faces?

06:17.620 --> 06:17.760
No.

06:18.140 --> 06:20.000
But just as Trump's second victory demonstrated

06:20.000 --> 06:22.620
that the establishment's propaganda can be defeated,

06:23.520 --> 06:26.280
the enthusiasm for Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's

06:26.280 --> 06:27.700
Department of Government Efficiency

06:27.700 --> 06:30.380
means we are already closer than many of us thought.

06:31.060 --> 06:32.740
And that shouldn't be taken for granted.