The popular podcaster Lex Fridman, whose political worldview I have critiqued before, recently said that everyone should be supporting Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). Friedman had watched an interview that Musk and his DOGE team gave on Fox News, in which they defended the agency’s work. Fridman found it “eye-opening” and said that “All Americans should be cheering them on and hoping they succeed in their mission to make government more efficient. This should not be a partisan issue.”

I suspect Musk’s Fox interview was partly damage control, since polls now show that over half the country thinks Musk is hurting America, which shows that the majority of people are not nearly as naive as Fridman about what Musk is actually doing. But let’s assume there are some people out there who still think the “Department of Government Efficiency” is a department of government efficiency. Or perhaps they watched the Fox interview and were swayed by Steve Davis, DOGE’s day-to-day head, who said that while many people complain about DOGE, when he asks “Which line of the cost savings do you disagree with?” it turns out “they can’t point to any.” Let us take Davis’s question seriously: how could anyone object to the agency’s cutting of “waste, fraud, and abuse” unless they wanted government to function badly?Musk himself says DOGE’s job is “tech support” for government agencies, replacing outdated computer systems, eliminating duplicative bureaucratic processes, and streamlining services. Joe Gebbia of Airbnb, another DOGE colleague, said in the Fox interview that the agency was actually trying to improve public services, saying “government can have an Apple store like experience” with “beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.” 

Fridman heard this and thought, essentially, what’s not to like? After all, plenty of parts of government do operate inefficiently. Musk and DOGE like to point out the absurd (true!) fact that the federal government processes nearly all of its retirement paperwork by hand in an old mine. If you only listened to Musk and Davis and Gebbia, you might get the impression that DOGE is bringing in leading experts from the business sector to improve the operations of federal bureaucracies. But that is not what is happening.

To understand that you’re being tricked, you start by following the DOGE leaders’ advice and heading to DOGE.gov to have a look at the “savings.” (People who encourage you to “do your own research” often don’t actually want you to take them up on it, because that’s when you discover they’re full of it.) I went on there and started clicking around, and noticed a few things. First, while DOGE claims to have canceled a lot of wasteful and pointless government contracts and leases, it’s often hard to evaluate for yourself what is actually being canceled, what it did, and whether it’s good or bad. But also, when you do figure it out, it often doesn’t actually look good! For instance, am I supposed to be happy that DOGE is canceling a bunch of leases for the Mine Safety and Health Administration? Are these leases unnecessary? How do I know? When I look into it further, I find that actually the MSHA was already under-resourced, and that Trump’s plan to increase mining means it’s the worst possible time to cut the resources for mine safety. Are cuts to this agency going to result in dead miners? I don’t know. Does Elon? Does Lex Fridman? (The Trump administration has also delayed new mine safety regulations meant to prevent black lung disease.)

Steve Davis asks what cuts people actually object to. Well, here’s one: I object to the cutting of food and medicine for some of the world’s poorest people, including in Afghanistan, a country we wrecked and left starving. Now Afghans are going to be left to face famine because of the Trump administration’s brutal cuts. As Elon Musk gleefully boasts about feeding USAID “into the wood chipper,” aid workers are terrified that millions of people may die as a result of aid cuts. How cruel, how psychopathic, do you have to be to celebrate something like this? By one count, 100 people around the world are dying per hour due to funding discontinuations. Save the Children cites specific cases of children dying that are directly attributable to the cuts. Surely any person with a basic moral compass has to object to cuts that literally result in impoverished people dying. 

Domestically, DOGE is no better. I have previously discussed Musk’s lies about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a vital public service that he is also waging war on. DOGE cuts increase the risk of foodborne illness, new disease outbreaks, crippling emergency responses, and all kinds of other disasters. Far from making government services function more like an Apple store, they will make our bureaucracies even more unresponsive, because they’ll be understaffed and underfunded. (Have you ever noticed that an Apple store has a ton of people working there? If you want Apple level services, you need Apple level staffing.) 

Their claims to have found fraud have themselves been a fraud, with the list of claimed savings full of outright hoaxes and entirely illusory benefits. DOGE’s difficulty in finding widespread fraud is probably in part because the government already has offices tasked with rooting out fraud. There’s plenty of that, but the Government Accountability Office is already on the case, leaving little extra for Musk’s office to do except make stuff up. (Although Trump has been firing inspectors general, so we’re going to actually have less oversight of government misconduct.) 

Fridman eventually deleted his foolishly naive post. Perhaps someone educated him on the actual work DOGE is doing, and the fact that Republicans do not actually want a government that functions like an Apple store. They want a government that doesn’t provide public services, that leaves corporations in charge of the country. The right has a very clear agenda and it is horrifying: it’s a Social Darwinist dystopia where the poor and disabled are left to their fates while plutocrats pillage the country’s wealth. It’s a brainless Spartan state where people are raised to pray, work, and go to war. As this horror is slowly built, we will hear a lot of propaganda about efficiency and liberty. Don’t be naive like Lex Fridman. See things for what they are, and do not be tricked into thinking the world’s richest man is on your side.