Yves here. Satyajit Das takes a high-level, measured approach to DOGE, stressing an issue that is oddly underplayed in American debates: that it’s fundamentally wrong-headed to approach government using the same standards as for business, which is implicit in the DOGE project. Even so, he comes to a grim conclusion.
To confirm that if anything, Das is downplaying the severity of the US slide, please read this Fortune story ‘The Big Short’ investor who predicted the 2008 crash warns the market is ‘underestimating’ the economic impact of DOGE’s mass spending cuts (hat tip resilc). Representative bits:
[Danny] Moses argued investors are already beginning to see disruptions in consumer confidence—which last month saw its steepest drop in four years—and will continue to hear similar trends in upcoming earnings calls. These slowdowns have yet to be priced into the market, he said…
The tell-tale signs of the weakening economy will be seen in small businesses and “private contractors that are doing legitimate work services that are now being forced to make decisions on their business,” Moses said.
The government spent about $759 billion on contracts in fiscal 2023, an increase of about $33 billion from the year before, with about $171.5 billion going to small businesses, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Musk’s own companies receive at least $20 billion in government contracts.
DOGE’s mass cuts have already begun to jeopardize major contracts. Accenture chief executive Julie Spellman Sweet told investors Thursday its Federal Services business, representing 8% of global revenue, lost U.S. government contracts as part of DOGE’s review. The consultancy’s share price tumbled 7.3% following the announcement.The elimination of both federal jobs and contracts creates what Moses called an “unvirtuous cycle.” As more fired federal workers look for private sector jobs, they may find fewer opportunities because of shrinking revenue streams in government contracts.
By Satyajit Das, a former banker and author of numerous works on derivatives and several general titles: Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives (2006 and 2010), Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (2011), (2022). His latest book is on ecotourism and man’s relationship with wild animals – Wild Quests (2024). Jointly published with the New Indian Express Online
The acronym for the new US Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, was historically the chief magistrate of Venice or Genoa. The phonetic ‘dodgy’ is defined as dishonest, likely to fail, or causing problems or pain. DOGE’s plan to reduce waste is being run in imperial fashion by the multi-skilled super ‘genius’ Elon Musk and is likely to fail with significant collateral damage.
The government’s revenue and spending are around $5.5 trillion and $7 trillion, respectively. DOGE is targeting expenditure cuts of around $2 trillion. It claims to have cut $100 billion, although real savings may be only $2-$10 billion. Eliminating 25 percent of federal employees saves 1 percent and terminating USAID only 0.6 percent. Meaningful spending reductions require politically toxic cuts to defence, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, defence, and interest payments, constituting 75 percent of federal spending.
The cuts ignore the costs of DOGE actions. Cancelling contracts incur payment for completed work and penalties. Fired workers get termination payments. At around $1,00,000 per head, $7.5 billion is the cost of 75,000 employees taking deferred resignations against annual savings of $11.6 billion if they are not replaced—unlikely if they perform essential tasks.
The plan won’t reduce the budget deficit and debt. Extending tax cuts, eliminating taxes on social security, tips and overtime, and reinstating state and local tax deductions will reduce revenues by around $900 billion annually. Over the next decade, the deficit may rise from $2 trillion to $3.6 trillion due to rising payouts for social security, aged care, and health care. Where once five workers financially supported every retiree, there are now three, which will eventually be two.
DOGE’s corporate restructuring approach misunderstands the public sector’s challenges. Businesses focus on profit maximisation and shareholder returns, whereas the government must balance security, growth, living standards, justice, and values. Businesses operate within defined product-market structures, picking and choosing activities. In contrast, governments must manage in a complex environment shaped by domestic and foreign factors, many of which they don’t control or influence, requiring effective cooperation across constituencies and countries. Many state activities are driven by the absence or failure of market-based solutions.
Earnings and share prices provide a reasonable measure of the effects of business decisions. The success or failure of government choices is less quantifiable as the benefits of infrastructure, education, and welfare are complex and can take decades to become evident. DOGE’s education and research spending cuts risk undermining long-run US competitiveness. Businesses can avoid the broader impact of decisions to reduce workforce, shift production overseas, seek subsidies or minimise taxes. The state effectively deals with unemployment, income support, retraining, and social damage. There is no such safety net for government decisions. Government time horizons must, of necessity, be longer than those businesses follow.
With limited accountability, corporate managers wield extensive power, controlling their organisations through threats (dismissal) or rewards (remuneration or promotion). Government actions require legislative body support and are restricted, at least in theory, by the separation of powers, restraints on executive or governmental action and international obligations. Governments cannot fire legislators and traditionally face significant barriers in rewarding or replacing public servants.
DOGE cannot lawfully change spending already legislated or alter executive spending authority without Congressional amendment to existing laws or passing new legislation. Implementation requires negotiations and engineering consensus with factions within one’s party and opposing politicians, supporters, funders, and the bureaucracy. Republican legislators are finding that DOGE actions are not universally popular with constituencies with the power to vote them out of office. Courts have already begun disallowing cancellation of contracts and terminations.
Execution of government decisions is complicated. Deep domain knowledge is a prerequisite. DOGE staff seemingly lack the necessary knowledge and understanding of the constitution and legislation, government accounting, and systems. The cuts in public sector employees may hamper the administration’s much-touted tariffs and deportation, which are labour-intensive and require extensive documentation.
The identified factors suggest few cost savings. The US government spending hit new highs in February 2025, underlining this. So, what are the US administration’s real objectives?
One interpretation is that DOGE’s actions are surrealist theatre or performance art, giving the appearance of achievement but really activities to please the President’s MAGA base. They distract from failures to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, reduce prices, boost economic activity, improve living standards, and increase wealth.
The other is more worrying. DOGE and Musk could be Trojan horses for dismembering government capabilities and decreasing regulatory constraints on business. Actions to date have significantly weakened bodies responsible for oversight and enforcing legislation. This would allow interests associated with the President to loot the nation. The Trump family and businesses have already sought to monetise their brand, for example, through investment and trading in cryptocurrencies. Continued business support suggests that DOGE’s cuts may be a precursor to privatising some public services. The relevant parallel is Russia in the 1990s when the West pressured an ineffective government to sell off state assets at bargain prices, benefitting some oligarchs.
Elon Musk purchased his role with $250 million in campaign contributions and enjoys extraordinary authority without being elected and having no Senate confirmation. Despite palpable conflicts of interest, he is well positioned to maintain and expand government contracts for his businesses, such as SpaceX and X. He may leverage access to confidential data and proprietary government software to advance his business interests in areas like AI and disadvantage competitors. Some DOGE measures have resulted in shutting down investigations of Musk-related businesses.
Without strong congressional resistance and an administration willing to ignore court orders, DOGE may indicate a deeper shift—the US becoming a powerful, wealthy, but failed state.
Consumer confidence has never been a good proxy for spending, because muppets. There’s several charts here, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-paradox-between-the-macroeconomy-and-household-sentiment/ that show how volatile consumer confidence can be, and yet spending has continued to rise pretty steadily.
When consumers are feeling down, they engage in retail therapy and when the economy is good, they spend because they see better days ahead. American muppets spend, full stop and they even managed to build the world’s second biggest economy i.e. China along the way. The retail sales numbers for March will only be out next month, but I would not be surprised if the numbers are flat or show a slight increase, after all consumers now have DOGE to blame for their surly mood, so they gotta spend.
Will DOGE change things? Maybe? But for everything else there’s VISA and Mastercard …..
AFAIK there’s no attempt to link consumer confidence with consumer wealth. If the bottom 50% are less confident, that won’t necessarily have that big an effect on consumer spending. If the bottom 50% are less confident, but half of the top 50% are more confident – you would see reduced consumer confidence, along with greater spending.
Thank you, Yves.
This paragraph resonates with me: “The other is more worrying. DOGE and Musk could be Trojan horses for dismembering government capabilities and decreasing regulatory constraints on business. Actions to date have significantly weakened bodies responsible for oversight and enforcing legislation. This would allow interests associated with the President to loot the nation. The Trump family and businesses have already sought to monetise their brand, for example, through investment and trading in cryptocurrencies. ”
Why? From where I’m typing near St Paul’s in the City of London, I have observed the following:
“Actions to date have significantly weakened bodies responsible for oversight and enforcing legislation. This would allow interests associated with the President to loot the nation.” CS: It’s happening in the UK. The interests are associated with the Blairites firmly in charge of Labour and include BlackRock, Oracle and United Health and will soon include US arms manufacturers and their proxies / consultants like Chertoff, Hodges, Petraeus and Stavridis.
Some of the money for rearmament (against Russia and a move supported by the Grauniad) may come from the end of free school meals for the needy. That’s a kite being flown in advance of the chancellor / minister of finance’s spring statement. A third of Britons, including children, live in poverty, a figure last seen a generation ago. Malnutrition and stunted growth are growing.
“Continued business support suggests that DOGE’s cuts may be a precursor to privatising some public services. The relevant parallel is Russia in the 1990s when the West pressured an ineffective government to sell off state assets at bargain prices, benefitting some oligarchs.” CS: In opposition and at events I attended, future ministers talked about having the private sector deliver public services and infrastructure and private sector employees sit on boards to oversee the delivery of education, health, public works, maintenance of defence equipment and even policing and be delegated to the management of schools, hospitals, civil public bodies and even security forces. The then shadow cabinet saw its job as ensuring that all levers are pulled in the same direction, not actually to oversee and deliver services, security etc.
One hopes Blighty based readers and those with family and friends in Blighty are paying attention. Let me repeat: Those of you able to leave the UK should do so.
The “good” billionaires who pull the Democrat strings will benefit from decreased oversight and regulation just as much as the “bad” ones calling the shots for Trump, which goes a long way to explaining the tepid Democrat response to all this.
Like Warren, Jayapal and the other faux congressional lefties who have abandoned all pretense pushing single payer despite the ongoing HC crisis. They take their orders not on the principle of what’s needed and popular like mobilizing and organizing a popular grassroots independent movement. Instead put all your focus on incrementalism and the fakery of highlighting the “bad actors” of the corrupt profit controlled health care system. As if the whole mess isn’t in need of a take down. That’s their role – dumb down expectations, not lift up and inspire.
Also, regarding your last sentence, there was a factoid in Harper’s recently that said there had been a ~25% decline in London billionaires in 2023 or 2024 because they had moved out. At the same time, there was a similar increase in the population of NYC billionaires.
We’ll take your tired and poor, your huddled masses, and your wretched refuse, no problem, but please keep the butthurt Blairite billionaires for yourselves. We have a surplus of those already.
Immigration to the US has been a mostly unacknowledged (at least until this past November, when immigrant neighborhoods in NYC and elsewhere saw a big shift towards Trump) vector of Right-ward politics for years now, but is a tendency that dare not speak its name in #McResistance circles. Capital flight and accompanying residency/citizenship from Latin America in places like Florida, and the preponderance of affluent people (in their native country, if not here) allowed/able to immigrate, has made for a very different portrait of immigrant political leanings. I saw it in my years teaching ESL to immigrant teenagers in Queens: declining numbers of undocumented students (at least prior to the most recent migrant waves) after 9/11, and greater relative affluence among the students in the following years. These students, presumably influenced by what they were hearing at home, were far more conservative about immigration than their middle class, US-born peers. Needless to say, Democrats, high on their own supply of “Coalition of the Ascendant” delusion during this period, were and are largely impervious to these realities.
And go where? The zeitgeist is that the greedy, immoral and self-centered can hack and claw their way to the top over the bodies of the honest and genuinly concerned pretty much everywhere in the ‘civilized’ world, and are admired and applauded for doing so as this is what is now the definition of ‘success’.
I left the UK in 1990 in disgust at the wreckage Thatcher had done to the country I loved but even here in New Zealand the rot has set in. The snake-oil salesman leader of a minor fervid right-wing party the handful of bodies of which are needed to give the numbers to maintain the ‘old-style’ Tory party here in power – the only distinction of which is that it knows the price of everything and the value of nothing – was fobbed off with ‘responsibiliy’ for school meals.
Wih true ignorance, incompetence and zeal to save a few dollars in the name of ‘efficiency’ he promptly destroyed the existing system whereby school meals were supplied at a local level by outfits staffed by people whose kids probably attended those same schools, in favour of a few big outfits offering lower tenders for the work. The result has been kids hit by exploding, overheated pottles of rice, over-cooked meals burning their mouths or undercooked and inedible. Meals have arrived hours late, contracts have been ‘filled’ by the supply of marmite sandwiches, entire consignments have been given to local pigs and one of the super-efficient providers of the new, improved service has already gone into receivership. Watching this oily purveyor of shallow doctrine try to smile at the press while eating one of these meals himself has been one of the few upsides of the entire sad saga.
New Zealand is, I think, still small, insular, introverted and incestuous enough to take a lesson from this scandal and expect more from its politicians than dogma and self-interest, but I fear the times are a’changing for the worst everywhere and the opportunities to escape it are increasingly limited.
Growing up in socialist Romania, the lunchbox was entirely the purview of the family. It is very true that the school time was shorter than my kids have been experienced here in the west, from 8:30 to 3:00, whereas I only had up to 5 classes per day, so 8 to 1.
And here on the rainy westcoast of the 51st state, it is my wife that does the lunchbox. If the lunches were like what I have seen served at a highschool in Versaille, where even teachers were joining in, I would consider it, but otherwise, no way.
It’s a long time since I lived in the UK, but looking from across the Channel it’s hard not to agree with your recommendation. However, the problem is that in my view the same fate will be coming to any European country you may care to name next. I may be too pessimistic (good at that!), but the question then is where to go.
And the Colonel’s comment resonates with me.
Surely the looting he sees happening on his side of the pond can be seen and disclosed on the American side. I’ll be looking.
TY
“Malnutrition and stunted growth are growing.”
In WWI, when recruiting and conscripting Tommies for the front, the military has realized with dismay the poor human stock on offer, given the high levels of malnurisment in the population at large. So, been there, done that. Now it is all eastern Europe to convince to do the actual fight against the evil ruskies.
I can see the middle management martinet reeves setting aside public funds for a statue of eric pickles outside the treasury.
After all, despite (ahem) political differences,it is his vision they are pursuing.
Further to my comment, in moderation, I forgot to mention that I was at a former manager’s retirement reception last Thursday and chatted to a senior Bank of England official, an academic from London Business School and a consultant from Deloitte / ex bankster. All report a sense of panic and outreach by ministers and Whitehall officials for something, anything that could get the economy going.
That something, anything is more neoliberalism. The business secretary wondered if any levers had not been pulled or insufficiently or incompetently.
Unions, academia and civil society have not been approached. They are neither wanted, nor needed. It’s only big finance and its professional advisers, ideally American, who matter.
Thanks. This worries me on so many levels. Firstly, my local Labour MP is, via supporting this nonsense, on a fast track to defeat in 2029.
Secondly, a collapsing economy means problems for dad’s company.
Thirdly, MMT etc shows you we need a government deficit not surplus.
Fourthly, if they’re taking advice from neoliberalism we really are up the creek.
Thank you, Terry.
I’m glad that you have piped up as I have been paying particular attention to your recent comments and have a soft spot for someone* from your neck of the woods. The special someone’s MP is Nadia Whittome.
I describe what is said and done. I don’t write about what I perceive, but will from now on as it suggests things are worse:
The UK has not recovered from 2008. The flickers of 2009 – 10 were soon extinguished by the coalition, although it did not help when Alistair Darling said Labour would cut more than the Tories in the 2010 campaign. Although covid was bad, one can now distinguish the impact of Brexit and covid. The former is worse.
Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff / organ grinder and protege and eyes and ears of Mandelson, ensured most, but not all, new candidates were Blairites, including my MP Laura Kyrke-Smith, true believers and people unlikely to rock the boat even as electoral disaster looms. There are a handful of exceptions who slipped through, including Miatta Fahnbulleh and Yuan Yang, both women and professional economists. The pair are not yet able to challenge the neoliberal orthodoxy and risk having the whip withdrawn.
There’s some noise from Norwich’s Clive Lewis, elected in 2015, but he won’t do anything to risk the whip being withdrawn. It’s the same with Nadia Whittome.
Why listen to neo-liberals? There’s a nasty and puritanical streak in Starmer’s Labour. It goes back to the days of Blair. The Blair party attracted characters like Liz Kendall, the Reeves and Leadbeater sisters, and thugs like Wes Streeting.
Please watch Kendall’s speech to the Commons with the sound down. It’s terrifying. She really is like that. Kendall and her husband live in a part of London where houses often sell for about £4m. Her husband is a financier. Since Kendall was elected in 2010, she has expensed bills worth £400k. Socialism for me, but not for thee.
One gets the impression that ministers know the UK is finished and the Labour party is heading for defeat in / by 2029. Why not court and sell to Wall Street, which pays better and has deeper investor pockets than the City, and feather one’s nest.
Thanks Colonel. It means a lot when someone as established as you likes my posts/anecdotes.
As you no doubt know from recent posts, I “came from nothing”, presented in Whitehall in 2009, published the top textbook in my field, then got “cancelled” because I and my immediate boss dared to go up against a mentor who was undoubtedly a genius but most definitely part of the system (despite his reputation as a “disruptor”).
These days? I’m barely keeping a household together, partly because I’m pretty ill myself. Every. Single. Thing. that Labour announce makes me angry. Ed Balls sometimes does a good job attacking a politician but FFS, his wife is part of govt and I knew what he was like at school, along with Ed Davies.
The puritanical streak in Labour that you mention worries me. “First they came for the …..” speech looms large.
Thank you, Terry.
I’m so sorry to hear about your health and hope and pray the impact of covid eases. I know two people suffering similarly. One migrated as the impact is officially recognised and treated where he came from. Family circumstances facilitated and even dictated an exit. The other is a single parent, has a daughter of school age and elderly parents, so is stuck here.
I know what you mean and can barely watch the news without getting angry.
You are right about Labour scapegoating people. They are aided and abetted by the media, especially the BBC. McSweeney is open about it and, last December, told the FT that Labour would not be outflanked from the right by Reform and even relished the prospect of fighting on Reform’s turf in 2029 and making common cause with Vance, Le Pen, Meloni and Alice Weidel, a quartet he sees as dominating the west by the end of the decade. This bit was not published as the FT does not want to burn bridges. A friend there, English, is married to someone of immigrant parentage and was horrified by what was said.
My family is not dissimilar, including our immigrant and religious backgrounds, education and even professional backgrounds.
>These days? I’m barely keeping a household together, partly because I’m pretty ill myself.
Solidarity Terry.
I too am UK based, and much appreciate your comments as well as those of the Colonel. Unfortunately I don’t have the wealth or career flexibility to escape this island. Very worried about the future. Did you see Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men? Looks like that future has already arrived.
Yeah although it is profoundly depressing it is one of my favourite films and I totally understand why people think we’re already in that timeline.
Thank you, both.
I will look for that film.
There’s an anti austerity demo in Whitehall tomorrow. You may be surprised how many of the City’s socialists will be there.
It is pretty bleak and nasty, from all the way back in 2006. I saw it at the time and was unnerved by how many of the worst scenes were also very familiar and reminiscent of current events. That’s probably even more the case today – I’d rather not think about it too much. I think the director saw some cause for hope at the personal and community level, but had none to offer for government or institutions.
The closing theme for the credits was something like “[expletive]s are still running the world” which gives you the general idea.
Somewhat related, but with an environmental twist, I can recommend this pretty dark short story by Gregory Benford: A Desperate Calculus.
And adding my thanks and gratitude to both you, Colonel, and Terry for contributing many years of erudite and at times poignant and/or blistering commentary to what was already The Best Commentariat (!). I, in contrast have been mostly lurking here since the BP/ Macondo fustercluck and only recently dipping my toe in due to being mostly bedridden in a rehab facility for the last two and a half years recovering from neck bone/ spinal cord repair (I’m hell-bent on being home well before Christmas tyvm). That, and writing is a real ‘tooth pulling’ process. Enough of me.
DOGE and DT’s favorite muppet Elmo Musk are DEFINITELY a Trojan Horse – even with enough popular and/ or govt (surface or deep) pushback to shut it down asap the ‘DOGEbags’ have already inflicted deadly wounds on this Western Hegemon of ours. And tragically there are many of us saying, “it’s about effing time. Bring it on!” without contemplating that they’re sawing off the tenuous limb on which they’re sitting. And Terry – please resist despair and and remember the WW2-era maxim “Illigitimi non carborundum!” (in Brooklyn-speak, “Don’t let da bastids grind ya down!”) I read with great interest your comments from long ago about your mostly positive experience with MAOI medications which were basically unobtainable once you left Australia. I was subjected to a string of SSRI antidepressants in the late ’90s and suffice it to say, Never again. I have since learned a bit of your professional and academic achievements which makes me humble to dare to walk among giants. Apologies to all if I’m gushing or ‘blowing smoke’. That mention of a “nasty and puritanical streak in Starmer’s Labour” immediately called to mind the largely Puritan beliefs of many ‘founders’ of this country – especially in New England”. Coinkydink? I guess what goes around, comes around…. Again, thank you both for your fine dialogue, and of course our ‘umble hostess for curating this excellent post and so much else! Top shelf stuff, this.
Many thanks to you and everyone expressing support and recounting their own experiences.
Re MAOI: back on it, which is definitely helping mental health. Interestingly I’m seeing the same specialist who I had to “grapple with” back in 2015 upon my return to UK to get it then, when he was for some mixture of an SSRI & TCA. He’s completely changed his tune now. Admitted that approach went nowhere and now is 100% on my side re MAOI and trying to get primary care to stop throwing sand into the machine regarding getting it!
Good luck with your own recovery!
Good luck Terry. I live not far from you in Broxtowe constituency. I was an LP member (off and on for 50 years) but my wife and I left when Starmer, the liar, possible MI5 agent and neo-liberal, took over. Our LP MP was essentially imposed as the constituency party’s preferred candidate was banned by the party officials. He has subsequently quit the LP along with 19 other Broxtowe councillors over disgust with the direction of the LP.
LP councillors and ordinary members have quit in large numbers. The LP is pretty much a shell. Starmerites are happy for ordinary members to quit. Who needs them? They are only troublesome, demanding party democracy and ‘radical’ policies. With the MSM behind you (for now) you don’t need canvassers.
I have had words with our Starmerite MP twice, about Gaza. She is a lawyer from London, seems clueless politically, and is a likely a careerist. Probably true of the majority of new LP MPs. They’ll crash and burn at the next election. Welcome our future Farage overlord!!!
As for the UK economy, it seems to me it has been running on fumes for years.
Unfortunately that is my impression too. I’m not British, but I’ve been following the Brits (safely from overseas) from before their Brexit suicide.
I did have some expectation that Stamer, etal, would be somewhat different from the Tories, but, alas, like the US’ Democrats, they are just marking time.
One way to “get the economy going.” is to pay less bills. One can improve their economic situation in one of two ways, spend less or make more. Perhaps, in a simplistic way, England could spend less (against Russia for example) to improve their economic and financial position.
Thank you. I don’t disagree.
With regard to Russia, Starmer and his cheerleaders see salvation, like Thatcher, in / from war / international affairs (e.g. Thatcher asking for the money back from Europe and handbagging the likes of Kohl).
Spending money on the US war machine, now being sold as military keynesianism, generates a favour to be cashed after the next election.
The UK has fiat Sterling. It needs to produce more. Investment in people would be the first thing on a reasonable to-do list, but Reason and common sense are no longer encouraged in fair Albion. It’s lucre 24/7.
Yep. We need to return to training people who do the basic stuff. Dad can’t retire because there is literally NOBODY who has the basic mathematics plus basic engineering/construction skills to take over…..
And even if there were, we have an economy that won’t allow them to be paid enough to reward them for these skills. So they do stuff like buy houses to rent out and be rentiers.
Jane Jacobs in her book Systems of Survival attempted to define the moral underpinnings of Business and Government. She believed that the Soviet Union wanted business to run like government, and the US wanted government to run like business. She felt that both options would lead to corruption and failure.
Differences in roles imply different moral bases to function. The following are the two sets of moral values she has come up with – noting this is not morality but a specialized subset – the morality of work.
(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival it should be a table, with each line contrasting with its corresponding line. For example, shun trading contrasts with shun force.)
Guardian Syndrome
Shun trading
Exert prowess
Be obedient and disciplined
Adhere to tradition
Respect hierarchy
Be loyal
Take vengeance
Deceive for the sake of the task
Make rich use of leisure
Be ostentatious
Dispense largesse
Be exclusive
Show fortitude
Be fatalistic
Treasure honor
Commercial Syndrome
Shun force
Compete
Be efficient
Be open to inventiveness and novelty
Use initiative and enterprise
Come to voluntary agreements
Respect contracts
Dissent for the sake of the task
Be industrious
Be thrifty
Invest for productive purposes
Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens
Promote comfort and convenience
Be optimistic
Be honest
This is not meant to be a new moral system of work, but a study of what currently exists but has become mixed up under modern capitalism and communism.
One of my favorite Jacobs books.
I submit Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast & Slow” as the sorting mechanism the Market State has applied to Jacobs contrasting value sets.
Our Super Brain Geniuses are all Fast, oblivious to systems and contemptuous of Slow, systems thinking in general. Their command of the social heuristics of language, power and dominance have allowed them to subvert all the systems on which their own success depends, looting them now right up to the breaking point. They are completely oblivious to what they’re doing, insulated by a deep, deep upholstery of wealth they’ve crumpled up uselessly around themselves.
The joke among the math psych community was always that Kahneman got the “Nobel” (note quotes) because Tversky died inconveniently.
Nobody in math psych rates Kahneman. His happiness stuff is pure unadulterated garbage that is so bad it “isn’t even wrong”. He clearly doesn’t understand the need for a cardinal scale. His work is awful and the thing he won the “Nobel” for – Prospect Theory – was cut to shreds very quickly including by various math psych researchers who presented at my unit in Sydney 2009-2015. Serious reearchers in his field tend to think he’s a joke.
NC has istself reported studies showing his “happiness distribution” doesn’t seem to hold anymore. Well duh. If it was trash to start with then of course it’ll break down.
I found it almost impossible to read. However the System 1, System 2 distinction is, I believe, a very important one.
What astonished me about the reception of “Thinking Fast and Slow” was how so many of my friends (all engineers to a man) took away from it the wholly erroneous conclusion that System 2 is somehow “superior” to System 1.
No! The lesson is that one needs to understand when it is appropriate to use the one or the other. Attempting to use System 2 thinking for System 1 problems is a recipe for getting eaten …
Probably cause the author is a hack who knows how to write in a convincing way for people who are not in his field.
I know I expressed admiration for engineers recently but just like all experts, you can be fooled by so-called experts in other fields if you don’t know enough about their underlying assumptions etc. Hence why I can understand why an engineer can be taken in by him. They assumed his stuff was all rooted in basics like, you know, CARDINALITY. Nope, sorry.
Yep!
And using System 1 to plan a “geopolitical re-set” is a great way to initiate a “rapid, mid-air imperial disassembly!”
It’s an excellent book and if I recall correctly her definition of corruption was when an enterprise properly belonging to the sphere of the Guardian syndrome became infected with principles from the Commercial syndrome, or vice versa.
Of course this requires recognizing which aspects of human enterprise rightly belong to which syndrome: a clarity no end of political entrepreneurs have been busily clouding and obscuring for at least 45 years now with their insufferable premise that government ought to be run more like a business — which in Jacob’s framework is flagrantly calling for systemic corruption … 🤨
Vultures circling the struggling wildebeast, flailing and getting stuck deeper in the mud.
Musk and BlackRock are circling lower and lower.
DOGE is part of an upper class plot to destroy America and monopolize whatever surviving bits and pieces they value for themselves. It isn’t about “saving money”. It is about destroying American Civilization as we have known it to replace it with their various barbed-wire-enema dystopias on meth.
Perhaps DOGE should be viewed as one of the Upper Class’s weapons. They are using it as the asteroid to hit earth with. Democrats and liberals in general are the dinosaurs who will go extinct in this Extinction Of Civilization-level event. The three naziform groups ( Republicanazi-Maganazis/ Silicon Valley techbro nazis/ Gilead Christianazis) expect to be the three groups of little rat-like things competing to fill the space vacated by the extincted dinosaurs . . . . each plotting and scheming to become the New Megafauna dominating post-America’s post-Civilization future.
aye. its the leveraged buyout guys melded with everything the cia, et alia has been doing to other countries for 80 years, come home…as people like me have been warning about for(in my case) 30+ years.
it is a whole lot like russia in the 90’s.
see: The Jakarta Method for what comes when dissent/discontent/rebellion gets into the minds of too many americans.
i’ll be out here, armed, drinking beer with ducks(they sat around a fire with me the other night…bobbing heads and muttering…i broached the subject of training them up into a militia, but they balked(these are Muscovy ducks, no less))
They are labour-intensive and require extensive documentation to be done correctly. But the Trump government despises judicial oversight, so it won’t be done correctly. You already have police forces that rob people, now you can add shakedowns not to be deported. And citizenship may not be any shield if you are brown, look poor and don’t have money for lawyers on retainer. If you are enslaved in El Salvador, how are you going to get out? Won’t it be much easier to just pay up right now? Maybe follow the nice officers to an ATM?
Of course, once the principle has been established, it goes both ways. I read an article in English language business press in Russia in the 90ies. According to the article you could buy a subscription from the FSB, 10 thousand dollars a month and you got on call negotiation support to deal with the mob or local cops that claimed you had done something and tried to shake you down. Of course, whether you had done something or not didn’t matter either way, but that went unstated.
And the ports are going to present even better opportunities for graft then today.
“…DOGE may indicate a deeper shift…”
Rather than endorsing a business vs government binary, it might be worthwhile to consider an alternative framework.
Maybe we are witnessing an aggregate expansion of the state’s role as a promoter, supervisor, and owner of capital. Such a move is characterized by new forms of industrial policy, economic nationalism, as well as innovative trade/tariff decisions and the growing significance of state-capital hybrids including central banks, new sovereign wealth funds, and an expanded military-industrial complex.
State vs private ownership boundaries end up being no longer fixed and the expanded promotion of key privately-owned national champions internationally is accelerated through more aggressive acquisition of key resources and more effective statecraft from the standpoint of U.S. state geo-political interests (a more honest imperialism).
One of the key theoretical reasons the Left has failed over and over again is its continued impulse to view the state as an independent political form, largely separate from the economic sphere.
The MAGA populist Right and DOGE have no such illusions.
For more detail see Alami and Dixon “The Spectre of State Capitalism.”
I’ve said this elsewhere. Donald Trump’s last business venture before entering politics was laundering money looted from the former USSR into anonymously held New York real estate.
He sees ineffective and corrupt government as a “business opportunity” learned from snapping up distressed post-NYC Fiscal Crisis Manhattan real estate at bargain prices during the Ed Koch regime, and using his Democratic Party connections to obtain friendly permits, inspections, and labor contracts.
This time he’s cutting-out the (Democrat) middle-man.
Is the US, a country that used to try to have a represenative government, the first to to voluntarily vote in an autocratic one. The future tsarina of the future tsesarevich went to Greenland on behalf of Tsar Trump and got repulsed. Will Greenland now get carpet bombed? It’s obvious that the Trump Administration is intent on implementing Project 25. Instead of Blinken, Sullivan, & Nuland, we have Miller, Bannon, and Musk. In a word, it seems the objective is to privatize government for the benfit of the ruling oligarchs. This basically recreates the plantation style economic system. The elite will have their big houses fully staffed. There will be a professional class to serve their needs. The rest, economic/\ly indebted wage serfs, will be kept in line by chosen enforcers. Consigliere Prince arrest the judges. If Musk’s little empire collapses due to cash flow, will the Federal Government bail him out? Meanwhile, in Nevada, throw the homeless in jail and put the food bank out of business.
when i was laid up for almost 7 years, waiting for a hip replacement from the best healthcare system in the world(tm), i had a lot of time to kill.
so i use the new(to me) intertubes machine to learn a lot about the world.
post 2002 iraq invasion, i said< "wtf?"…and delved in, intensely, into the american right.
read all the philosophes, back to burke and de maistre…and lurked in duckblinds in their chatrooms and fora…a comprehensive, if virtual, field study.
what i came away with was that yes…what the high level thinkers(sic) really want is not just to undo the new deal…lol, thats pansy talk…but to undo the Enlightenment, itself.
a return to 1200 AD, but with smart fones and streaming and door dash for the lords of the manor.
nothing i have seen since has ruffled that assessment in the least.
it may be largely unconscious…this desire for revaanchism and returning to a feudal order…but it is definitely there.
see archived logorrhea from mencius moldbug for confirmation.
this, from Alexander Pope, is in my head all the time, these days. from the Dunciad:
"In vain, in vain–the all-composing Hour
Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the Pow'r.
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rain-bows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
For public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries All."
I have yet to see any DOGE critic observe that it takes aim squarely at the creation of Keynes’ State Money, the stuff the economy runs on and saves for a rainy day, and amplified by banks, or decimated, depending on their animal spirits.
Das is stating the bleeding obvious to any understander of fiat monetary operations that currency issuer (Elon’s children have just discovered the “14 magic computers” that spend government money into existence as revealed to a “shocked” Ted Cruz) and currency user function differently. The cascade of private failures from small businesses upwards will be explosive if DOGE continues withdrawal of public spending. How can it be otherwise if previous public spending that flowed to the little people is withdrawn and replaced by lesser public amounts through social support systems?
Where Das turgidly says “DOGE’s corporate restructuring approach misunderstands the public sector’s challenges. Businesses focus on profit maximisation and shareholder returns, whereas the government must balance security, growth, living standards, justice, and values. Businesses operate within defined product-market structures, picking and choosing activities. In contrast, governments must manage in a complex environment shaped by domestic and foreign factors, many of which they don’t control or influence, requiring effective cooperation across constituencies and countries. Many state activities are driven by the absence or failure of market-based solutions.” could all be replaced by pointing out that currency issuer and currency user function under sensibilities of not needing a profit to survive and needing a profit to survive financially, respectively. Where markets fail the currency issuing state must pick up the former wage and salaried people or it all falls apart. Instead the normal practice of today is to help the owners of big capital first and all the rest as little as possible.
Saying “There is no such safety net for government decisions.” evidences a failure to appreciate that a currency issuing government needs no safety net as its financial security exists within its inherent currency issuing capacity. Government cost saving is a non-sequitur. Government only has spending and returns and not profits and losses.
It all ultimately depends on who controls the coercive power of enforcement.
Chomsky published Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy in 2006, glad that Das is catching up.
Should only be a few hundred years before it’s mainstream public opinion.
The fact is that the US has always been a country created by and for oligarchs.