Musk and Ramaswamy to Lead Non-Department Department
First there was the Department of Redundancy Department. Now for something completely different.
When I first saw the headline “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ in Trump administration,” my first reaction was to roll my eyes at the absurdity. My second was that it would take them four years to fill out the legally-required disclosure paperwork. It turns out, though, that there will be no actual Department.
That’s not at all clear from the CNN report with the aforementioned headline:
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.
The announcement of Ramaswamy and particularly Musk, who leads companies with existing, lucrative government contracts, raises immediate questions about potential conflicts of interest. It is not immediately clear how the department – which Trump said would “provide advice and guidance from outside of Government” – would operate, and whether a Congress even fully controlled by Republicans would have the appetite to approve such a massive overhaul of government spending and operations.
Trump had proposed the creation of a government efficiency commission as part of a slate of new economic plans that he unveiled in early September. At the time, he said Musk had agreed to lead it if he were to secure a return to the White House.
Trump’s statement Tuesday night quoted Musk as saying that “this will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”
Ramaswamy separately responded on X with a slogan he often used during his presidential campaign to call for the elimination of federal agencies, writing: “SHUT IT DOWN.”
On the campaign trail, Trump pointed to his proposed government efficiency commission as a way to reduce government spending. “As the first order of business, this commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” he said in September. “This will save trillions of dollars.”
Ramaswamy, who previously challenged Trump in the Republican presidential primary before endorsing him in January, made reducing waste in government spending a key policy platform for his campaign.
Last year, Ramaswamy – who had promised on the campaign trail to eliminate the FBI, the Department of Education and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would lay off thousands of federal workers in the process – released a white paper outlining a legal framework he said would allow the president to eliminate federal agencies of his choice.
Musk, for his part, said while supporting Trump on the campaign trail that he’d pitch a massive rollback of government regulations, of which he has long griped. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has also floated an assessment system that threatens layoffs to wasteful employees and proposed offering generous severance packages to laid-off government workers.
Musk first suggested Trump form a government efficiency commission and appoint him to it in an August conversation between the two hosted on X. Trump responded, “I’d love it.”
A few days later, Musk posted on X an image of himself at a podium labeled Department of Government Efficiency and D.O.G.E., the name of Musk’s favorite meme and cryptocurrency. “I am willing to serve,” he wrote.
The NYT report (“Trump Taps Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to Slash Government“) plays along:
How do you slash, cut, restructure and even dismantle parts of the federal government?
If you’re President-elect Donald J. Trump, you turn to two wealthy entrepreneurs: the spaceship-inventing, electric-car-building owner of a social media platform and a moneymaking former pharmaceutical executive who was once one of your presidential rivals.
Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency. It will be, he said, “the Manhattan Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government with major cuts and new efficiencies in bloated agencies in the federal bureaucracy by July 4, 2026.
“A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement. “I am confident they will succeed!”
The statement left unanswered all kinds of major questions about an initiative that is uncertain in seriousness but potentially vast in scope. For starters, the president-elect did not address the fact that no such department exists. And he did not elaborate on whether his two rich supporters would hire a staff for the new department, which he said is aimed in part at reducing the federal work force.
But then drops this deep in the piece:
Mr. Trump’s statement said only that this new department would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government,” suggesting that Mr. Musk will not take a formal role as a federal official.
Which makes sense. There’s essentially no legal* way for Musk to serve. The richest man in the world isn’t going to divest himself of his businesses or put them into a blind trust to run a department tasked with doing something he’s only interested in because the government is currently frustrating him in running said businesses.
WaPo (“Trump taps Musk, Ramaswamy to oversee ‘drastic’ changes to U.S. government“) gets it right:
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is appointing business executives Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new commission on cutting government spending and regulation, handing an enormous portfolio to the tech billionaire who gave political and financial support to his presidential bid.
In a statement, Trump said that his billionaire ally and his former Republican primary rival will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, an idea championed by Musk. Trump said the department would operate outside of government to drive “drastic change,” while partnering with the White House and its budget office to provide recommendations to slash regulations, cut staff and overhaul federal operations. Musk has adopted the nickname “DOGE” for the commission, a reference to a meme-based cryptocurrency he also touted.
There will be no Department. Musk is trolling us with DOGE** and Trump is going along with it.
And, of course, there’s the small issue of implementation
It is not clear how the effort will be funded or whether its recommendations will be approved, because federal spending is controlled by Congress and the White House. Still, Republicans are poised to control the House, Senate and White House, giving the GOP the opportunity to implement at least some of the commission’s proposals — potentially triggering major repercussions for the U.S. government and millions of federal workers.
[…]
Still, some analysts are doubtful much will materialize from the effort. Congress must approve any changes to federal appropriations, and it is not clear if the Musk commission will produce recommendations in time for action by the new GOP majorities. Trump’s statement said the commission’s work must be completed by “no later” than July 4, 2026 — not long before the next midterm elections.
Look, I’m a federal government employee (albeit in the Excepted Service rather than the Civil Service) and have a personal stake in all of this. I’m sure there’s legitimate waste that can be cut. Maybe some sort of outside commission is a more efficient way of finding it than the cumbersome process wherein the Executive agencies vie for funding in the President’s budget proposal and then the byzantine House and Senate committees fight over it. But the overwhelming share of the budget is mandatory spending on Social Security and other entitlement programs, interest on the national debt, and national defense:
Here it is by dollars:
There aren’t trillions—or even hundreds of billions—of dollars left.
I work for the Defense Department and there’s certainly an argument that $900 billion a year is too much given our relative standing in the world. But, aside from signaling that our support for Ukraine may diminish considerably, Trump’s rhetoric—and his nominees in the defense and foreign policy space—signal that, if anything, we’re going to be even more hawkish on China and Iran while increasing our support for Israel. That doesn’t comport with significant savings at DoD.
*Yes, I’m aware that Trump flouted all manner of disclosure and divestment rules, not to mention the Emoluments Clauses, throughout his first administration. I wrote about it numerous times. Unless Congress impeaches and removes a President, though, there’s no real way to enforce those norms. Lesser government officials are actually bound by the normal processes of the law.
**DOGEcoin’s value briefly surged after the announcement before falling back to earth. One can only speculate as to whether Musk capitalized on this.
Xlon’s own AI marked him as a spreader of misinformation
So, this generative AI bot, at least, is getting smarter.
So let me get this straight. The guy who overpaid for a Social Media platform and ran it int the ground, and is having issues with something called a Cyber Truck want’s to lead a government efficiency department?
@Rick DeMent: Yep. An emerald-mine heir who has never really invented anything, having purchased already-formed companies–one of which was a social media platform he almost immediately drove into the ground (and is reportedly considering merging with Truth Social)–is somehow going to improve government.
Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
Honestly, this could be a very smart way for Trump (or leaders in his administration) to give Ramaswamy and Musk the appearance of power to keep them out of their hair (or put them in places of real control).
And I agree entirely James, the idea of finding $2 trillion in waste is absurd to anyone with a passing understanding of the Federal Government and the budget itself. Additionally, there is a huge difference between “programs or grants I don’t like” and “waste.” Not to mention the “programs and grants I don’t like” are usually chump change when compared to the big-ticket items.
@James, @Dr. T, perhaps OTB can sponsor a Dept of Silly Proposals, where we can suggest ways for the government to be more efficient.
On the evergreen, attack on waste, fraud and abuse. I believe it was during the campaign season of 1964 that I first heard that a candidate, in that case Goldwater, was going to wring waste and fraud from the government. Since then I’ve heard it in every campaign.
Coming from trump it is particularly rich and enquiring minds want to know, why he didn’t do that the first time.
Sadly, this feature is why the notion of “cutting waste, fraud, and abuse” sells on the hustings. The number of people “with a passing understanding” is vanishingly small, maybe even in Congress.
It’s easy. Find 100 billion to cut, multiply it by a 20 year timeline, and bingo. The creeps can declare victory. Three years out no one will notice that the cut has been restored.
Here we go again – simultaneous chirping about federal spending and vows to choke off revenue via tax cuts. Musk and Vivek both know it is easier to manipulate a malignant narcissist president than it is to actually BE the president.
Aside from cutting taxes, most of Trump’s plans require a 9/11-like event to put in motion. It’s like being in 2000 and dreaming of fully-funded TSAs, Homeland Securities, and Patriot Acts, and then putting a 44 year old Fox anchor in charge of pulling it off.
@Matt Bernius:
there is a huge difference between “programs or grants I don’t like” and “waste.”
Only to normies, not Republicans in general. Anything they don’t like qualifies as waste, if not outright criminal. It wasn’t just Trump and Vance who persistently called the legally-present Haitians in Springfield ‘illegal’.
Serious question: could Johnson just zero out the budgets for things Trump doesn’t like? You don’t necessarily have to actually dismantle the Dept of Ed, you could just leave it standing and not pay for it. Hey civil servants, you’re not fired, but you’re also not getting paid, oh? You quit? Ok that’s fine too.
Back in the 80s, Reagan formed the Grace Commission headed by R. Peter Grace formally called the Private Sector Survey on Cost Control (PSSCC). The focus was on eliminating waste and inefficiency in the federal government.
It was a failure.
Why? Because they didn’t focus on operations. They focused on programs the committee members didn’t like. That is what these two jomokes will do: recommend eliminating programs that billionaires don’t approve of.
OK, I guess it’s a way for Trump to pretend to pay back Musk for his support while keeping him from having any real power. And Musk can afford to fund his own “department”. But Ramaswamy? What did Ramaswamy do and who even cares what happens to Ramaswamy?
Keep in the back of your minds that for Republicans SS and entitlement programs ARE waste.
Ever seen the British comedy “Yes, Minister”?
It sounds a bit like Trump has re-invented the “Department of Administrative Affairs”.
Even from outside, but with the ear of the President, they can ask the eight most terrifying words to a government manager
“What are you spending your current budget on?”
I got transferred to DC in 2000. When the Bush people came in, the agency budget appointees, one a transfer from the Pentagon after 9/11, destroyed the managers who were giving the budget increase presentations with that question. Those managers went back, got the information, but more importantly, suddenly there were grassroot realignments and reorganizations as some stuff they didn’t want to try to defend.
Of course, by 2004, a new appointee was in charge of the agency and everything had settled back down with the Republicans defending the rice bowls they’d upset after Clintons time in office. But an outside group who keeps asking those questions could do a lot. With eventual budget cuts exposed.
A formal process will get mired down, but asking questions in public will get the career functionaries scurrying.
A recent “crisis” was the FDA ordering the recall of 80,000 lbs of butter for the sin of not having “Contains Milk” on the label. Safe to eat if you don’t have milk sensitivities, but must be recalled lest someone with milk allergies be confused by the mislabeling. Now what if a bureaucratic idiocy like that caused the idiots in the agency to fear an audit by the DOGE?
Look for rooting out “illegal immigrants” from Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare beneficiaries.
I dare say they’d find a few, but not enough to matter. Kind of like saving $2.50 on a $1,000 bill. But if they are determined, they can remove lots of actual citizens.
@JKB: Companies are required, by law, to disclose known allergens. They didn’t. And they are going to lose a crap-ton of money because of that stupid move. I’m betting they don’t make that mistake again, and I’d further wager that this will be cause for more careful proofreading of labels.
This is an example of exactly how labeling laws work. Better to have it happen on a bone-headed/obvious thing like butter, rather than undisclosed peanuts which CAN LITERALLY KILL SOMEONE.
@JKB: That’s weird because Clinton balanced the federal budget and ran a surplus after Bush ran up a deficit. Of course that was short-lived because another Bush came in and restored the standard high-debt spending that we have come to expect from Republicans.
Republicans: “Do as I say, not as I do”
@Jen: They don’t care if it literally kills someone, unless it happens to them personally – then it becomes an emergency.
Almost 1T in net interest….how much of that can be attributed to unnecessary tax cuts? Where are the guys forming the Department of Lost Revenue? Or Department of Lost Taxes. You know, The DOLTS….Musk and Vivek could help…acronym would be appropriate.
@Tony W: Oh, but boy they’ll whine about the wrongful death lawsuit that follows, won’t they?
I just spotted some redundancy that can be eliminated: two people to lead one department. Fire one. Pay me $1 jillion for providing such important advice.
Or – even better – pay them in crypto with Trump’s face on the coins.
@Jen: As a person with a 72-year history of food allergies, allow me to second your comment. Whenever I begin to think the allergy information consolidation on a food label is overkill, I remind myself of the times I’ve become sick from eating something I was allergic to even after having read the ingredients list on the package. Usually because of something added that’s composed of multiple ingredients itself. Back when I was younger, sublists on labels that are common now weren’t required.
@JKB: But the approach in your example is hard work done on an agency-by-agency basis. While it may or may not save a significant part of the federal budget for the reasons Kathy mentions, it is theoretically an entirely valid (and, I hope, common) practice. But it is not going to cut billions out of the federal budget.
Elon on Rogan talking about “DOGE”
Best of all, people are already having fun with the idea. Of course, the bureaucrats will be upset since they may have to learn to be of use instead of a cog in the machine.
You start small and build momentum. Big cutting initiatives, inspire big opposition. The real value will be in having cutting a small but common practice when the deficit starts demanding big cuts. It will just be a matter of turning up the speed instead of turning around the inertia.
@Jen:
@just nutha:
Just about all allergies can kill people, although peanuts, bee venom, and shellfish seem to be the most likely to.
One reason people don’t take them seriously is that too many things cause mild allergic reactions now and then (and some of these may be mild forms of food poisoning). I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s gotten a rash of some kind after eating some new product or uncommon ingredient. And for most people that’s as far as it goes.
I single out peanuts, shellfish, and bee stings, because three are plenty of extreme cases where very little allergen was required to send a patient into anaphylactic shock. That’s why food labels these days sometimes state the product was made in a production line that also processes peanuts, nuts, dairy, soy, etc.
Production lines for processed foods are huge and very expensive. Most are used for several different products on a rotating schedule. The equipment is cleaned in between, but traces can remain. ergo the warning labels on what else the production line has contained. It is that serious.
@JKB:
Please come up with an answer that references James’ charts in his initial post.
There have been GOP promises to cut wasteful government spending since Reagan won in 1980. If it’s so easy and obvious, why didn’t it happen already?
All right, here is my idea. Let’s get rid of the TSA. Those long lines at airports are performance acts; I’m sure that a serious terrorist can find a thousand work arounds. To JKB’s point, I doubt that the butter recall cost the government money. Do you favor getting rid of food labeling laws?
It is possible that the Trump regime will weaken laws regulating securities or health claims by makers of drugs. Caveat emptor was the law for centuries. The nanny state should not prevent me from selling my hair loss preventative just because it doesn’t work or selling stock in my corporation making the aforementioned hair loss preventative.
Yeah, this is more marketing than anything.
However, civil service reform has been one of my soapboxes for well over a decade. The layers of bureaucracy, the poor manning decisions, and the impossibility of effecting even small changes in the system are the main reasons I left the civil service.
The thing Musk, Trump and others also don’t get is the number of federal employees has not significantly increased with the increases in bureaucracy and the increased responsibilities given to Executive departments. If anything, the civil service needs more employees, not less. All the functions that can be passed off to contractors have been at this point.
One of my frustrations in my civil service job was all the additional duties. I was nominally an intelligence analyst, but as a practical matter, I was also the security manager for a 1,200 person organization, responsible for maintaining the readiness reporting for my sub-organization, and responsible for a host of other tasks, mostly related to various compliance requirements. I spent at least half my time on these additional duties. I learned after I left that the organization was finally able to get a full-time security manager, but only by reallocating another job in the organization.
I’ve previously relayed my experience getting hired for that job – it was an entire year from the time I applied to when I actually started. 3-6 months is more typical, but we lost a lot of good people in the hiring process because they couldn’t afford to wait for months for a hiring decision and then the wickets to align for onboarding.
What we need is real reform, not the “fire everyone” method from Musk, not reflexively cutting funding, and not the reflexive opposition to any reforms common from the left.
@JohnSF: I had exactly the same flashback.
@JKB: That assumes either (a) waste and fraud is really a big piece of the spending or (b) “waste and fraud” are any programs I don’t like. I expect you and I will simply disagree on this, but, again consistent with Kathy‘s observation, I don’t believe waste and fraud are that significant of a percentage of spending and, frankly, you are not going to spot them with some other agency (sorry, “Commission”) swinging in from the outside. You are going to find them by having someone inside the program ask seriously, “what are we spending the money on.” What an outside Commission is going find are programs the outside Commission doesn’t like.
@Tony W:
The President doesn’t control the budget, Congress does. “Clinton” was able to balance the budget because he worked with a GoP Congress along with three significant benefits that ended in the early oughts and are never coming back:
– The military drawdown (Spending dropped by about 2% of GDP over Clinton’s term)
– Dotcom bubble tax revenue spike- which ended with the recession in 2001, a recession that would have happened regardless of who won in 2000.
– A couple hundred billion a year in FICA surpluses, allocated to current year general revenues, with an IOW added to the “trust fund” ledger. It’s now the opposite situation, FICA revenue is way below spending, so the revenue flow is the opposite direction and the trust fund will be depleted in about a decade. IOW, demographics are a huge factor.
A lot of the time, actual efficiencies require investment. Investment in tooling, in education, maybe in hiring better people. At the very least, it usually requires some amount of time and studying. Does anyone think either of these folks will do this?
And either way, this is very much focusing on the wrong thing. You can’t cut 500 billion dollars from departments that only have a budget of 200 billion, or whatever. And in a lot of cases, you aren’t actually saving money across the country, you’re just distributing the costs differently, and in a lot of cases, increasing them.
@Andy:
FWIW, I am totally on board with smart civil service reforms–including making it easier to fire underperforming workers. The problem is that initiatives like this, or the schedule F, ain’t that.
DEAR GOD YES!!! YES!! INTO MY VEINS!!! The “do more with less” works just as poorly in civil service as is does in most private settings. And to your point, we bury people–especially front line workers–with “additional duties as required.”
This is also a huge issue. Being in a sector where people normally move between private and non-profit org and the government, the slowness of hiring (mixed with the move towards 2 to 4-year tours for almost all new positions) completely jams up initiatives.
As you can tell, I have strong feelings on all of this.
@Andy:
Reagan increased it,
Clinton cut it,
W increased it,
Obama cut it,
Trump increased it.
This recalls the recent Conservative election campaign:
“We shall have tax cuts! There shall be joy!”
“And how will you afford those tax cuts? What spending will you cut?”
“We shall fund them by efficiency and cutting waste!”
“Waste remaining after 15 years of your being in office, and a program of austerity, and you still couldn’t get it done? Bugger off, do you take us for fools?”
@Matt Bernius:
Do more with less was Boeing’s operating principle early in the 2000s, when they launched the 787 program. A big part of this principle involved outsourcing the design and manufacture of the new jet. Including moving most of the final assembly to the non-union plant in South Carolina (which began the acrimonious relationship with the machinist union in Washington).
While the 787 is a revolutionary design in many ways, it has had a ton of issues. It has sold well, but delays and compensation for operational issues cost the company a lot. I’ve no idea if the design has shown a profit.
Ah, but the $65+ billions in stock buybacks since then are literary priceless.
@Barry:
Presidents don’t decide the budget. I get that what you’re saying is a popular rhetorical point to make, but it’s ultimately incorrect regarding how federal budgets and spending actually work.
How did I miss this when he was on the campaign trail?
His vision of the future is stupid people, and terrorists with dirty bombs, and maybe a nuclear meltdown or two. What a stupid, stupid man.
I hate tech bros. And wannabe-tech bros.
Maybe he wants to cut the enforcement of CP/CSAM laws.
@Kathy: I was very lucky over the years because when I ate something that triggered anaphylaxis, I would vomit the offending food (along with 100% of the remaining contents of my stomach). I’ve never had esophageal and throat inflammation bad enough affect my windpipe. I have had respiratory arrest, though. Very frightening.
@JohnSF: That show taught me so much. I love it.
“Something must be done. This is something, therefore it must be done.”
Explains so much human behavior so succinctly.
Speaking from personal experience, Boeing’s acrimonious relations with the machinist union in Washington predates the move to South Carolina. And this entire century.
@just nutha: And I’ve worked in a frozen food plant where I’ve had my shift change cleaning job checked by USDA inspectors. Amazingly thorough. Much moreso than the inspections on fresh produce we sent to military exchanges when I was warehousing. And the army always got the freshest merchandise: inspected by me, inspected by my boss afterwards, and then by as many as 3 USDA people. Exhausting.
@Matt Bernius:
As do I. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any serious interest in the kinds of changes we would like.
@Jen: @just nutha: @Kathy: So, I fully believe that we ought to label food with appropriate labels. But it does seem silly to label a jar of peanuts—clearly labeled “Peanuts”—with an additional “Contains Peanuts” label. Similarly, is there really anyone with a milk allergy that doesn’t know where butter comes from?
@Andy: I was listening to The Daily podcast this morning and apparently Musk was outraged by the slowness of getting paperwork through various regulatory bureaucracies. And I suspect there is legitimate silliness and duplicate effort that could and should be streamlined. But “fire a third of the people who handle the paperwork” would almost certainly compound the problem he’s trying to solve.
@James Joyner: Is there really anyone with a milk allergy that doesn’t know where butter comes from?
Talk to the parent of a child who is lactose intolerant. Ask them how worried they are when they send them off to school not knowing if they’ll share a sandwich with a friend or a treat during recess because they don’t know or will get excited about sharing and forget. Then get back to us. We’ll wait.
@James Joyner: The problem then is writing the regulations. Saying “any product intended to be consumed must contain a list of any known allergens” is clear and straightforward. Adding “unless it’s obvious” makes it less so. Obvious is in the eye of the beholder. Sesame seeds are increasingly an identified allergen. For those of us who know what tahini paste is, it would seem just as dumb/obvious to add a warning that it contains sesame seeds, as tahini is ground sesame seeds. But to someone who is not as familiar, the warning is necessary.
@James Joyner:
@Jen:
What Jen said. And no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the people*.
I’ve seen some displays of ignorance of basic facts that are hard to believe. I mean adults who don’t know things most children learn in preschool.
Also, look up flat earthers.
*The popular expression, attributed to HL Mencken, specifies the American people. But, as I’m fond of saying, there are other countries in the world. I’ve met people from several countries, and I can say the expression applies to all people.
@Kathy: Yeah, that’s how we end up with headlines like this:
“How to change my vote” searches spike in states won by Donald Trump
“Did Joe Biden drop out” searches spike in key states on election day
Searches for “How to change my vote” spike morning of election day
I think we all underestimate how distracted/uninformed/checked out people can be.
@Jen:
I’ve some odd associating cognitive issues that plague me now and then. For example, I tend to confuse the names of Charlize Theron and Scarlett Johansson. No idea why. Sometimes I can’t recall one name if I hear the other. but I know they’re different women.
On outright ignorance of something, back in 1979 I didn’t quite understand who the Shah of Iran was and how he differed, or didn’t, from Ayatollah Khomeini (seriously).
Ignorance itself is not something to be ashamed of, except when one refuses to correct it as needed. But some things, like butter is made from milk, is so basic it’s hard to believe some people don’t know it.
@Just Another Ex-Republican: Grew up in Seattle. Familiar with LOTS of Boeing acrimonious relationships with large groups of its employees. Good study for free market capitalism boom/bust cycles.
@Not the IT Dept.: It’s not obvious that having a “Contains Milk” label on the butter packaging will deter folks from eating a sandwich made with said butter (unless the sandwich is made differently than I’m used to and includes the butter’s packaging).
@Jen: @Kathy: I don’t have any objection to adding a “Contains Milk” label to the butter, since the costs of doing so are minuscule and the benefit is potentially nonzero. Recalling a huge amount of butter for lacking the label, though, seems silly.
@Jen: Adminstrative classs Lefty snottiness aside, as a fellow who used to do venture financing I will observe that inventing or establishing/founding companies is not the difficult part. Growing a company operationally is, so the snideness is misplaced on those factors (whereas snideness about bungling Twitter would not be).
Musk until Twitter showed a genuine skill in efficiently growing businesses and post- creation sucessful innovation management. Having the hands on experience in such venture financing, that skill is really the hard part despite the tendency of thinly informed to fetishise the inventor or the founder.
None of this gives him any particular skill in making a bureaucracy efficient nor of late would one be particularly confident in his current managerial savoir-faire – as being rather spread too thin as the most generous reading if not trending to a howard hughes style degeneration.
@Kathy: Additionally, it’s not simple to any great degree. For example, allergic to walnuts, but not walnut oil, allergic to both peanuts and peanut oil unless the oil is ultra refined, allergic to lobster but not crayfish (same family), can eat canned tuna, but fresh tuna makes an allergic reaction, was able to eat mackerel in Korea, but eating it here makes an allergic reaction, can’t eat canned mackerel either way.
And the championship one: allergy testing reveals that I’m not allergic to trout or smelt. Guess what?
ETA: @James Joyner: “Recalling a huge amount of butter for lacking the label, though, seems silly.”
I agree, but we live in a litigious country. Silliness may not matter in a tort claim. IANAL, but maybe someone here who is can tell me I’m over reacting/overthinking this.
ETA#2: (This one puzzles the doctors.) Allergic to mushroom spores (have asthma during mushroom season), not allergic to mushrooms themselves. Several doctors over the years have told me that’s not supposed to happen. I dunno. I’ve always eaten mushrooms. (Italian family)
@Lounsbury: STOP starting your comments with sneering gibberish (e.g., “Adminstrative classs Lefty snottiness aside”).
I’ll let the entrepreneurs I’m friends with know that you believe inventing/establishing/founding companies is not the difficult part.
Clearly, Musk used to have some skills. But he does not come across as a particularly stable person anymore.
I’m not particularly concerned about the damage these two can do. There is no way all of these egos are going to be able to get anything done.
@James Joyner: I agree that it seems silly to recall all of that butter over a missing “contains milk” warning–but, if they don’t apply the same standard to everyone, the next (probably more serious) case could point to this and say, “well, you didn’t enforce the law there, why are you picking on us?”
I truly do understand that this feels over the top. I get that the headlines are on the funny-to-infuriating spectrum. But I also think that while this is easy to make fun of, the implications for more serious violations and consistent enforcement of what is, after all, actually required of food manufacturers, makes this necessary to follow through on.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I must confess I’d never heard of that much variation. I also can’t say I’m surprised. I may have said a time or three million that biology is messy.
The different reaction to tuna might be due to the way canned tuna is cooked vs how fresh tuna is. Allergens tend to be proteins, as I understand such things, and different cooking methods cause different changes to proteins. This is one reason cooking method affects how a dish tastes.
@James Joyner:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
@Jen:
I’ll go with litigious, even if everyone in the world and the GOP is aware that butter is made of milk. Depending on what the law says and how courts have ruled, even one case of severe allergy is good for a very expensive lawsuit. Perhaps recalling the batch was the cheaper option.
@Jen: I am sure you will indeed bother to bother people on an internet comment…
But it is reality, founding a company is not the hard part (I have myself founded several, grown several) – growing it is.
Almost all inventions are also a dime a dozen in the end – bringing something to growth is rather much harder to realise A simple fact that the death rate of early stage ventures (half are dead before they become toddler age, 80% plus do not make age ten – this being mere survival never mind growth ) shows as a statistic, a cold hard reality. The truly rare and hard part is growth. Not starting.
That you’re so invested in facile Left administrative class snottery as your comment on Musk was, and have such thin skin about comment, bon, modern American bourgeousie fragility is a quite peculiar thing. Why we try to avoid American hires nowadays.
@Kathy:
That would be my take. Additionally, I’m not clear that recalling it will mean that it must be destroyed. It may be that it merely needs to be relabeled. Butter has a decent shelf life. They ship it from Ireland to the Left Coast now.
@James Joyner:
I work in the satellite and cellular connectivity industry, and I can tell you there are a number of non-trivial BS compliance requirements and hoops that require a non-trivial amount of time and money to address. Obviously there are many requirements that are, by contrast, reasonable and legitimate. So there are legitimate complaints and legitimate areas for reform, but I agree that throwing the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that’s what Musk actually wants, is stupid. I think it’s the case that Musk is particularly upset about many of the requirements for SpaceX rocket launches, which seem particularly dumb and arbitrary.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
There’s this big decentralized customer we supply food to. The dietitians tend to reject produce based on how it looks*. There’s nothing wrong with it. I mean things like irregularly shaped carrots, apples with a bruise, etc. When that happens, we use it in food preparation.
So, sticks of butter in good condition that are recalled, can be sold for food prep, maybe at a discount. Or reprocessed into larger pieces for use in bakeries or restaurants.
*One in particular would return large batches of green beans because they were not all the same size.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Right, it’s possible that the vast majority of the recalled butter will not be destroyed. According to reports, the recall was announced for consumers who may have purchased it, based on lot ID provided with the recall. It’s then up to the consumers to risk using it or throw it away. And maybe the undistributed butter could be repackaged or repurposed as you and @Kathy pointed out.
But I’m afraid I’ve strayed from the announced roles for Musk and Ramaswamy.
@Kathy: Yeah. We had a customer who would refuse the entire shipment if all the tomatoes weren’t between 1 1/4 and 1 3/8 inches in diameter.