Our Shape-Shifting Bureaucracies and Tulloch’s Razor

One of the attacks against Elon Musk and DOGE that is taking shape is that he’s not really finding yuuuge savings. Even the grand total of all the weirdo USAID grants doesn’t even amount to couch cushion change out of a $4 trillion federal budget.

The reason for this deflection is that the actual money isn’t the main point. Put it this way: back when John F. Kennedy launched USAID in 1961, it was widely thought that poverty in the Third World made it receptive ground for Communist revolution. So helping the Third World grow was a not unreasonable strategy for the Cold War. (Never mind for now whether USAID ever contributed significantly to “development” anywhere; we’ll save a discussion of Peter Bauer’s work some other time. But in two words: probably not. Or three words: probably the reverse.)

In any case, with the Cold War now long over, and with the rapid development in the Third World over the last 40 years due entirely to trade and open markets, just what is the rationale for USAID? To support gender surgery clinics in India?

The boosters of USAID tell us, with a straight face, that it is an indispensable tool of American “soft power.” I guess we should expect this kind of lame rationale from soft-headed leftists, who are really just trying to protect their slush funds.

This brought to mind an observation from the late economist Gordon Tullock, who was criminally overlooked for the Nobel Prize in economics, made way back in 1965 , and which I’m going to call “Tullock’s Razor”:

As an experiment, if one examines the original arguments for the establishment of almost any government bureau and compares these arguments with those that may be currently offered for the retention of this bureau, one is likely to find that a considerable shift has occurred in the specification of the objectives that the bureau is supposed to attain. The governmental bureau becomes the permanent fixture, with the objective continually changing.

In other words, killing off shape-shifting bureaucracies is the highest purpose for DOGE.

P.S. I’m looking forward to the part of the 2028 Democratic presidential campaign where the Dem nominee promises to hire 400,000 new federal bureaucrats.