Destroyer

Of

Government

Entities

In a prior lifetime, I had a job very similar to what Musk and the Musketeers are currently trying to accomplish. I was an operations analyst on the corporate staff of a highly decentralized, multinational conglomerate. Our operating divisions’ responsibility to corporate resided entirely within their annual profit plan. Regarding these operating divisions, my job was twofold. First, to establish that they were operating within the constraints of the profit plan. I was also responsible for finding ways to make the operations more efficient and effective.

Our team of analysts spent two to three weeks analyzing various operations systems. We then formulated changes to these systems and presented them to senior management. We had to sell these modifications to management, who usually accepted them because they improved efficiency and effectiveness. Management made the final decision, not the analysts.

DOGE, on the other hand, makes all the decisions, obviously without any analysis. I don’t care how good they are. You don’t walk into an operations center and in two hours determine that 4,500 people are not needed. They are not analysts. They are butchers.

In private business, profit is the measure of success. In the public sector, it is the size of the budget and the number of employees. In both cases, bigger is better. Businesses have competitors to keep them in check; governments do not. Because of this, they tend to get bigger. Periodically, they need to be trimmed back. This is not accomplished with wholesale, indiscriminate firings. When such terminations occurred at “X”, other social media companies filled the void. With government agencies, there are no alternatives. Needed Reductions In Force (RIF) must be done with care, not a chainsaw.