Government by Engineers?

Or are they just another troubling elite?

Thanks to libertarian technology guru Curtis Yarvin for providing a window into the logic of the DOGE movement.

In his writings to explain why democracy is doomed and deserves replacement with a monarchy, he offers this balm to critics:

“The problem of choosing the ‘benevolent dictator,’ making sure he or she stays ‘benevolent,’ and replacing her or him with an equally benevolent successor, is not an impossible and unimaginable paradox,” Yarvin wrote. “It is an engineering problem.”

I don’t think so.

As I understand engineers, their job is generally to best achieve a goal set by others that often requires many definitions to guide their work. In this case, one might ask.

What is a dictator? Could he or she mandate the size of refrigerators citizens own or how the frequency of positions used in sexual relations? Or would their powers be more circumscribed?

And what is benevolent– maximizing current comfort for all or directing all resources to speed colonization of Mars?

And what’s a precise definition of equally?

There are a lot of tough questions there that aren’t to be decided by engineers asked to implement the project.

To this day, we don’t know what the DOGE goals were beyond provoking maximum media coverage for President Trump and Elon Musk, and creating painful disruption that could be misconstrued as meaningful change. But these are all mere tactics that don’t cohere as a strategy.

If the goal was actually to save our government money, all agree it has failed.

But perhaps the problem was a mirror of that afflicting the very government it was attempting to reform– having too many goals without clear priorities, ignoring the most basic of truths that you can’t simultaneously create something that is faster, cheaper and better.

Was the DOGE primary goal reducing the payroll, or rooting out DEI programs or perhaps creating a massive database that included everything – tax, employment, medical, travel– about everyone of us?

The irony here is that dissatisfaction with government largely reflects the difficulty of visible progress when seeking multiple goals – do we want an air traffic system with a lower payroll, greater safety, improved scheduling reliability operated in a way to maximize energy efficiency by a staff that reflects the diversity of our broader society? That’s not a question engineers can or should answer.

Our attempts to simultaneously do so many things well yield an outcome where no goals are achieved in a timely fashion, a point repeatedly made by critics of all political stripes. Our overpromising politicians regularly create top priorities — curing cancer, ending poverty or homelessness, reversing obesity – that are regularly pushed aside by newer ones perceived to be more urgent.

Setting priorities is an inevitably messy political project that is a prerequisite for putting the engineers to work. Unless and until that happens – and it doesn’t appear to currently be on the horizon– we’ll be diverted by the painful foolishness of DOGE-like projects.

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PS– I was put onto Yarvin’s influential political philosophy by pieces in the Post and WSJ this week. For the record, I’ve nothing against engineers, having fathered one who endlessly impresses me.