A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were “relatively nonexistent” during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was,” Sahil Lavingia told NPR’s Juana Summers.
Lavingia was a successful software developer and the founder of Gumroad, a platform for online sales, when he joined DOGE in March. Lavingia said he had previously sought to work for the U.S. Digital Service, the technology unit that was renamed and restructured by the Trump administration. He told NPR that he just wanted to make government websites easier for citizens to use and didn’t really care which presidential administration he was working for, despite protests from his friends and family.
Worldview: governments bad, companies good. Why?
Because goverments don’t have skin in the game. Business people play with their own money, so don’t want to waste anything. Besides, if they do a bad job they’ll go bankrupt, whereas government agencies just get new funding no matter how bad a job they do.
I mean, there’s some logic to this line of reasoning, no doubt. But you could plead the reverse and there’s logic to that as well.
People working for government actually care about what they do, they have the public interest at heart, not just their own bankaccount. Government employees know that they’re using taxpayer money, and that they’ll be held accountable if they waste it. Business employees don’t give a shit about about their companies, particulary the very big multinational conglomerates, that we have so many of these days. Any money made only goes to the boss anyway, and he’s an asshole, or the shareholders, and so are they. Aslong as we get away with it, who gives a fuck what gets done with all the money.
But this worldview ‘governments bad, companies good’, is certainly dominant among DOGE folks and rarely questioned. The west had to have this worldview, or else the ideas of “communism can only ever fail no matter what exact shape or form it takes” and “capitalism is the only thing that works” crumble. Let’s be real here, the inefficiencies of capitalism are never ever questioned. Surely ads and marketing are for the benefit of all right. Spending tons to get everyone to smoke and drink sugarwater and alcohol, not by free choice but by clever manipulation. That shit is not inefficient in any way is it? Big pharma spending more money on marketing than on research is not inefficient in any way is it? No, quite the reverse, scientist getting government funds to do fundamental research, with no business agenda in mind, surely that would be inefficient. Companies just need to be companies and everything will be fine. Don’t think about it, just go with it. It’s our religion.
You don’t even need to argue based who cares more: businesses are allowed to fail, governments are not.
Except those too big to fail. Those are the ones that need to fail. No consequences for those people is one of the reason we are in this shit show.
Even in most corrupt countries, many government employees will still blow the whistle on corruption within the government.
I think American conservatives are a different case. The idea of ‘governments bad, companies good’ is a hold over from classical liberalism of skepticism on government and championing individualism, private property and free trade. Classical liberalism stemmed from when European countries practiced mercantilism from 17th-18th century. It was indeed stifling so capitalism and liberalism was born from that condition. However, as with most ideologies, the theory is never applied perfectly in practical reality. Now, there is too much emphasis on individualism, private property and free trade which unfortunately disenfranchised much of collective humanity.
The American conservative mindset is stuck in that time period as if we still practice mercantilism and absolute monarchies still exists (although Trump wants to go back to it and Americans are enabling him). But the main reason they want “little government” is so that they can have a blank cheque to be corrupt themselves without having to deal with government regulations on health and safety, financial and worker rights.