Agents, Not Employees
Instead of salaries, pay for quality-adjusted output. See what happens then.
Government Employees Are Working from Home. GOP Lawmakers and Elon Musk’s DOGE Plan to Change That
Civil servants enjoy extraordinary protections, including unusual rights to work remotely, gifted them by a pliant Administration.
This is a tremendous waste of money, though it’s just a teardrop in the ocean when compared to the size of the federal budget. (Isn’t everything?)
One suggestion is to move the agencies out of DC. That’s good for a number of reasons, including moving them closer to their clients. The Department of Agriculture should be somewhere in the heartland, for example.
Perhaps, the better, more efficient way is to change the compensation structure to outcomes. Instead of being paid for virtual time in the seat, the government could pay piecemeal for specific jobs. We could pay $x per software commit of deemed importance y, for example.
You don’t deliver? No worries. No income.
Of course, public sector unions will fight this intensely.
‘The report, obtained by National Review, details how 90 percent of federal employees telework while a paltry 6 percent work in person full time. Almost a third of federal employees work fully remote, and the average occupancy of major agency headquarters in Washington is 12 percent. Despite the low occupancy, the government spends over $8 billion annually on maintaining and leasing the buildings, and another $7.7 billion on energy to keep them running.
‘To remedy the situation, Ernst’s report recommends moving agencies out of D.C. and better tracking employees’ performance and workplace of choice to determine whether they should be allowed to telework. The report also proposes ending unnecessary leases and auctioning off unused office space.’
Growth by Regulation – an Oxymoron?
The UK Chancellor has lots of thoughts. There are agencies that rate ESG performance. They are unregulated currently. She thinks that regulating these agencies will give investors greater confidence in their output, enabling the world to get to her $40T forecast for ESG investing.
She believes that we need public regulation of private regulators of self-regulating companies.
Only then can we grow. Earlier, she says that the UK will be a “clean energy superpower.”
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
‘In the foreword to the response, the important interplay between economic growth and ESG regulation is underlined. “Growth is the number one mission of this government… With the global ESG market predicted to surpass US$40 trillion by 2030, investors and markets are making increasing use of ESG ratings to inform investment decisions and capital allocation. Bringing ESG ratings providers into regulation will boost investor confidence, reduce greenwashing, and address the lack of transparency highlighted in responses to the government’s consultation.”’
Musk and Ramaswamy Warn They're Compiling a “Naughty and Nice List”
This is a moderate hit piece arguing that, intentionally or not, DOGE has the potential to benefit insiders by cutting policies that benefit someone else’s insiders, urging transparency into DOGE’s investigation of the opaque workings of the civil service.
‘The two businessmen, tasked by President-elect Donald Trump with finding new ways to radically gut the federal bureaucracy, reportedly told a group of mostly Republican congressmen that they were compiling “a naughty and nice list” of lawmakers who did and did not embrace their new undertaking. They also listened and took notes as a string of sympathetic lawmakers floated proposals for Musk and Ramaswamy’s new “Department of Government Efficiency,” from scrutinizing the Department of Education to ending remote work for federal employees.’
People start to lose sense of what is improper if poor behavior isn’t sanctioned.
‘At least twelve officials who once worked at the facility took part in an orgy, and one man (a bargaining unit biomedical employee who has since resigned) bragged about having had sex with thirty-two different co-workers. At least two employees admitted to having sex at work. The location of the orgy has yet to be determined.
‘To make matters worse, the man and several women talked openly and unashamedly about their sordid rendezvous on an official VA online group forum used to communicate about facility operations and other official governmental business.’
Ernst Unveils Plan to Slash Federal Bureaucracy and End Telework Abuse
Bureaucrats take bubble baths just like everyone else. They just do it during working hours.
‘“For years, I have been tracking down bureaucrats relaxing in bubble baths, playing golf, getting arrested, and doing just about everything besides their job,” said Ernst. “It would almost be funny if it wasn’t happening on the taxpayers’ dime and at the expense of veterans, seniors, small business owners, and Americans in need of competent service from government agencies. Federal employees need to return to work, but if they don’t want to, I will make their wish come true.”’
Trump’s Crypto-AI Czar Is a Longtime Critic of Tech Regulation
I think we should take self-promoting VCs at their word, said nobody until this other self-promoting VC.
Could there be conflicts of interest and winner-picking in government regulation? It’s hard to see if the regulation is sufficiently minimalist.
But Sacks is a creative guy. Let’s see how he goes. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
He screws it up and the response is a disastrous over-correction that is impossible to displace.
‘In a now-deleted post on X, Sacks said, “I’m all in favor of accelerating technological progress, but there is something unsettling about the way OpenAI explicitly declares its mission to be the creation of AGI.” AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to AI technology that can perform most tasks better than humans. Sacks did not respond to a request for comment on the post.
‘Sacks and Trump allies say that involvement in the industry is a prerequisite for understanding it, and that some perceptions of conflict of interest will be inevitable. “I think we should take people at their word,” said Shaun Maguire, an investor at the prestigious Sequoia Capital, which has backed both xAI and OpenAI. Sacks “won’t harm any competitors,” he said.’
DOGE, meet REGO. 32 years before Elon Musk, Al Gore did it
People who worked on Al Gore’s reinventing government proposal think it did a good job, CNN reports.
You see, you have to go along to get along. Work with the civil service.
The article lacks any sense of changing context, as if the civil service (and the world) of the late 80s is the same today.
‘Then, as now, the plan was to take a holistic look at government and recommend changes to improve how taxpayer dollars are spent, including by culling the federal workforce, cutting regulations and more.
‘REGO was not a completely original idea either. Ronald Reagan, for instance, had empaneled the Grace Commission, which sought advice on how to cut waste and government inefficiency from more than 160 corporate executives and issued a 47-volume set of recommendations.
‘The difference with REGO, according to Elaine Kamarck, is that Gore’s team was able to follow up on their recommendations and get multiple pieces of legislation passed into law.
‘Today, Kamarck is the founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. But back in 1993, she was running the REGO effort with Gore at the White House.
‘“We passed a lot of laws, we cut regulations, and we cut the workforce,” Kamarck told me of the effort, which started as a review process and morphed into a major effort that lasted throughout Clinton’s presidency.’
The second argument here makes a ton of sense. You need to make sure that your high-falutin’ PowerPoint gets translated into actual progress.
One risk with DOGE is that they McKinsey themselves with a strategy recommendation the implementation of which is so ham-fisted as to make things worse.
‘A unilateral pause won’t be as helpful as Musk and Ramaswamy seem to think. Many businesses, especially big businesses, have to certify their legal compliance to government agencies—most notably via financial reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where false certifications can trigger criminal penalties under Sarbanes-Oxley. Few will feel comfortable ignoring rules that are still on the books just because DOGE tells them they might someday be rescinded.
‘What’s more, you need smart bureaucrats to make sure that rescissions hold up in court. Under settled law, established way back in the Reagan administration, “an agency changing its course by rescinding a rule is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis for the change.” Compiling that analysis requires technical skills that agency bureaucrats will have and that DOGE will lack. Slashing the federal workforce will thus work at cross-purposes to deregulation.’
DOGE is a massive cultural change.
Even if they do fail, it may end up working in their favor. It may provide political capital for an even greater effort to tame the Leviathan. It will spread its cultural vibe into private enterprise.
‘It is easy to mock or minimize DOGE. Its name, the Department of Government Efficiency, reads like a Muskian stab at humor. It may be an impossible dream. Critics argue that the intention of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to cut federal spending by $2 trillion is unachievable because so much of the total is big-three entitlement spending—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—that’s set in political stone, with Donald Trump’s assent.
‘These predictions of falling short shouldn’t deter us from recognizing that the real significance of DOGE is overwhelmingly political. It is a needed reordering of how Americans think about the relationship between government and their own interests.’
Interesting comment from Vivek Ramaswamy at the Aspen Security Forum.
‘"Part of what you have is an overgrown federal government that's doing things that were never supposed to be done by the federal government in the first place."
Paul Atkins Is the Anti-Gensler for the SEC
One criticism of Trump during the campaign was that nobody credible would want to work with him after they saw what happened in his first administration.
Having solid actors like Paul Atkins join is a wonderful refutation of this argument.
Never underestimate the patriotism of people like him. And see this as part of the overall improvement in the vibe.
Vibe election, indeed.
‘Mr. Atkins understands how the SEC’s layers of regulation discourage companies from going public. We hope another top target will be the proxy advisory duopoly, Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services, which are quasi-corporate overlords.
‘The next chair’s chief task will be returning the SEC to its original mission of investor protection. Mr. Atkins has long decried the agency’s habit of regulation by enforcement. Take Mr. Gensler’s punishment of crypto companies for not registering with the agency. Meantime, the SEC all too often fails to stop actual wrongdoing. See the FTX crypto fraud.’
DOGE’s Big Ideas Include Ending Remote Work and Daylight Saving Changes
This is a general overview of things they could do, but there are a couple of interesting comments.
I have no idea what Daylight Savings Time has to do with anything.
Also, is it an insider benefit if Musk and Ramaswamy move to avoid giving billions to companies because they’re not Tesla?
‘Musk and Ramaswamy are also focused on the Biden administration’s moves to distribute money from a $400 billion clean-energy lending program inside the Energy Department and manufacturing grants to companies such as Intel through legislation aimed at reviving U.S. chip production.
‘One clean-energy loan will help EV startup Rivian Automotive fund a plant in Georgia. Ramaswamy recently posted on X that the loan appeared to be a “political shot across the bow” at Musk and Tesla. Congress would have to change any tax credits companies and people are using to get subsidies for wind and solar power, battery production and electric vehicles. The Treasury Department could tighten some rules for the tax credits to make them harder to claim.’
The Hidden Costs of Capping Credit Card Interest Rates
Jared Dillian has started writing on economics and markets for Reason. Here’s his first piece.
He talks about the good intention of lowering credit card interest rates will lead to the unintended consequence of restricting access to credit for people at the lower end of the credit spectrum.
It’s basic economics.
Not to be conspiratorial, but what if it’s not unintended? What if this is an elitist move to punish the people at the bottom for … being at the bottom?
‘Interest rates are prices—the price of money—and all prices are signals. Capping credit card rates might sound like a win for consumers, but in practice, it's a lesson in unintended consequences. Policymakers must tread carefully, weighing the broader economic impacts before introducing well-intentioned but potentially devastating reforms.’
Bezos is a pragmatist.
Later in the interview, he talks about the fact that he has created more value for investors than almost anyone else on earth.
Hero.
‘He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation … If I can help him do that, I’m going to help him. Because we do have too much regulation in this country. This country is so set up to grow. By the way, all of our problems, all of our economic problems … these are real problems, real long-term problems. The way you get out of them is by outgrowing them.”
Every Bureaucrat Destroys 158 Jobs
‘An Auburn University study says every single regulator destroys fully 158 private sector jobs every year you keep him on the job.
‘With nearly 300,000 federal regulators, the shock is that we still have any jobs at all.’
Work With the Bureaucracy, Not Against It
US FDA Commissioner thinks that DOGE should work with the civil service.
The problem with this approach is capture.
Anyone within the civil service who wants to help can do so. Nobody is stopping them. But Musk and Ramaswamy are savvy enough to know that they need to come at this from the outside.
They also are both experts at playing the optics. This is as much a chance for them to make their names in public service as it is for them to accomplish meaningful objectives.
They want to be in a position to take credit for it if it goes well.
‘If the question isn’t whether improvement is needed, but rather how to make needed changes, a broad call for support from the workforce would be much more likely to succeed than castigating the workers who have chosen to serve the American public. Instead of suggesting “large-scale firings” and asserting that “if federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy would be well-served to inspire the workforce to work with them to become more efficient.’