While I’m not a Trump supporter, I’m not a Trump hater either. With that said, Trump’s recent creation of the “Department of Government Efficiency” with the appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy is an interesting department that I question the objectives.
A common comparison between running a business and running a government is a critical error. Governments and businesses have very different responsibilities and incentives.
Businesses are responsible to their owners and shareholders, and their incentives are to maximize profits.
Governments are responsible to their citizens, and their incentives are to “secure” the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” for those citizens.
A key difference is that governments, by definition, unlike businesses hold a monopoly over violence, according to German scholar Max Weber in the late 19th century.
Illustration of the forced payment of taxes.
A government can force compliance at the point of a gun or threat of imprisonment for tax payments, law enforcement, etc.
A business, on the other hand, can not. Thankfully, business interactions are voluntary and not compulsory.
The voluntary nature of a business exchange can take advantage of value-added through efficiency in that exchange. Efficiency is an important driver towards maximizing profits for shareholders. The more efficient a business, the more profit it makes.
However, with the government, efficiency leads to abuse of the system. Americans’ success and experience with businesses lull us into the misconceived notion that we want our governments to be as efficient as our businesses. This desire is dangerous because of the monopoly that governments hold over force and violence.
The primary desire of the Constitution is not to be efficient but to be effective at protecting individuals against the abuses of government while still preserving the necessary functions of government. The checks and balances of a multi-tiered federal system, a democratic republic, and a three-branch government are not the model of efficiency.
The US Constitution establishes a federal system of government with three branches: executive, judicial, and legislative.
If a government function needs to be more like a business with more efficiency, perhaps we should not be asking how to make it more efficient but rather whether or not it should be a government function.
As James Madison points out in Federalist Number 51, an important mechanism in the Constitution is slowdown of “mob rule” to allow a “cooling effect” to tamp down citizens’ passions.
James Madison. Credit: Chester Harding, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The checks and balances of the Constitution are not efficient by design. Monarchies and dictatorships are efficient. Democracies, much less republics, are not, which is a good thing.
While Musk and Ramaswamy may have a goal to squash government waste, we should keep an eye on their endeavors to make sure that the efficiencies they seek are appropriate to the government, which wields a monopoly over force.