DOGE

Following on from my brilliant analysis of USAnian politics I feel inclined to write some words on DOGE and related matters; and Sabine's vaguely-related Science is in trouble and it worries me tips me over. Let's begin with her thesis; you should probably at least watch her graphs for context.

The exponential increase of people, money and papers in science is no evidence for an exponential increase in science being done, of course. Partly because if the proportion of scientists as a fraction of people is increasing, their average quality is inevitably going down, and as we all know the best produce a disproportionate amount of what is valuable. But also because - at least I assert this - science is increasingly a job, a career, and while the people doing it will undoubtedly be happy to discover wonderful new things it likely isn't their prime motivation; nor indeed is it the prime motivation of the people employing them. I may be falling victim to the hoary old trope of the Victorian gentleman-scientist motivated purely by curiosity; or I may not. Overall, on this model, there's probably a lot of decent science being done, but quietly, and not necessarily making Nurture. If so, then the vast reams of <stuff that isn't exactly junk, but is just low-quality career-science> isn't doing anyone any great harm.

From that, we move onto DOGE. There are two ways of looking at this, and I think most people are looking at the first and least interesting, which is saving money. And then immeadiately saying "it is pretty hard to save money". Which is true. Most science money, for example, goes on salaries; either of the scientists, or the admin and support staff; if you cut that you'll just have roving homeless packs of feral scientists doing drugs on the streets, which helps no-one. Similar hand-waves apply to social security or medical stuff.

The more interesting stuff is what kicked off Musk in the first place, as it inevitably must, to anyone actually trying to run a company: the vast reams of goverment gumpf that stand in the way of getting anything done. But rolling that back is hard work, our society has come to love it so much, so many people are beholden to so many special interests who want it continued. Perhaps if Musk could interest that nice Dominic Cummings he might get somewhere. So I wish him the best but fear for the worst.

Refs

* Climate chickenhawks.

* The energy transition will be much cheaper than you think.