Tech billionaires have run many facets of the economy as we know it into the ground — and now President-elect Donald Trump is putting them in charge of doing the same to the government, wrote Jason Linkins for The New Republic.
This comes amid mounting criticism of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as their "Department of Government Efficiency" initiative takes shape as a plan to slash government services and purge the federal workforce — and it comes as Trump is reportedly considering a scheme to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, a constitutionally-guaranteed service essential to basic American life.
"What Trump promises to do to the venerable post office would be the latest example of what has come to be known as 'enshittification' — a blunt and provocative term coined by Cory Doctorow and recently defined by the Macquarie Dictionary as 'the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking,'" wrote Linkins. "So it’s fitting that Trump is teaming up with techbro goons, in particular Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, on the next big enshittification project: ruining the federal government."
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What's important to understand, noted Linkins, is that contrary to public perception of a sluggish bureaucracy, "the civil service is a hive of innovation driven by brilliant, hard-working Americans," who do everything "from key medical and scientific research to pollution mitigation to chasing down tax cheats and protecting consumers to keeping our food and medicine safe."
And yet Trump views this entire structure as out to get him and is prepared, with the help of Musk and Ramswamy, to tear it out by the roots and replace it with an army of loyalists. Every government service people take for granted will suffer.
"Between the anarchy wrought by various Supreme Court rulings (notably Dobbs and the administrative state–decimating Loper Bright decision), the renewed potential for financial ruin in the form of government-endorsed crypto rug-pulls and the widespread rise of addictive sports gambling apps, a defanged federal government allowing financial predators and polluters a freer rein, and the coming loss of health care coverage as the GOP renews their war on the Affordable Care Act, the next few years are going to come with a substantial body count," Linkins wrote.
Ultimately we could be heading for a period of not just dysfunction but instability, he concluded.
"As the former CEO of United Healthcare might attest, it’s probably not the best idea to leave such a heavily armed populace so discontented and disconnected. In that way, we might come to learn the most important role that the administrative state plays in our daily lives: It helps keep the peace," he said.
