Running Efficiently

This is what happens when you put people who despise government in charge of governing. They sabotage the system, hollow it out from within, and then point to the wreckage as proof that it never worked in the first place.

It’s a familiar trick. Starve agencies of funding. Undermine expertise. Drive out career professionals. Replace competence with loyalty or chaos. Then stand back and declare, with a smirk, that government is inherently broken. It’s less an ideology than a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Expecting effective governance from anti-government zealots is like expecting someone to run a marathon after you’ve cut off their legs. The failure is guaranteed—and that’s the point. The dysfunction becomes the sales pitch.

This philosophy animates figures like Elon Musk and the DOGE-style mindset he champions: the belief that disruption is inherently virtuous, that institutions exist only to be smashed, and that complexity is a moral failing rather than a feature of modern society. In this worldview, anything that can’t be run like a social media platform or a startup is dismissed as obsolete.

But government isn’t a toy, and it isn’t a meme. It exists to do the unglamorous work markets won’t: protecting consumers, enforcing rules, providing stability, and serving people who don’t turn a profit. Breaking it on purpose doesn’t prove brilliance, it proves irresponsibility.