Some More News - Some More News: Should the Government Be Run "Like A Business"?

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

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Super cool. Hey, here's some cool news. You ever wonder what the hell happened to the country? That wasn't news, but not everything has to be news, you know? I guess what I'm actually asking is, what exactly is the disconnect that makes some people look at Donald Trump and think, yeah, that's the guy?

It's a weird question nine years too late. What I mean is, even more recently, why did some people, at one point at least, think that it was a good idea for Elon Musk to get involved with the government? Well, coincidentally, there's a beefy group of people in this country who think that the government should be more efficient.

Like a corporation, you see. One of the first things Donald Trump campaigned on, besides the racism, was that he'd run the country like a CEO, a racist one, presumably to make the country profitable and streamlined and racist. It's a similar promise behind bringing Musk on board in the first place.

There seems to be a very influential political philosophy around the idea that the government should be run like a business, isn't there? It's not the only reason people have gravitated toward Trump, but there is this fantasy that he's this stern daddy CEO type who will get things done, just like he got things done running his many successful businesses.

Don't look it up. That's the big promise. The reason Doge became a thing. Donald Trump will run the government like a business. And whether or not you believe he can do that, I think maybe it's past time someone dug into that philosophy. There's just a little flaw there

that it seems more people need to be aware of. A fly in the ointment, a thorn in the side, a dick in the souffle. It's just a tiny snag that I have to point out. Hey, the government isn't a damn business. Right. It's not a business. Did you know that? Businesses you see are completely different things.

I thought that was obvious, but I guess it's not. Because saying the government should be run like a business is just as arbitrary and incorrect as saying the government should be run like a school or the government should be run like a roller derby team. Although I wouldn't mind if we all got matching sexy uniforms. Governments are, at their most basic, an entity designed to maintain the well-being of a large group of people. We can and do argue over the best way to accomplish that, but I think we can agree that the purpose of a government is to keep a society running functionally while minimizing harm to its citizens. Ideally, it should allow freedom so long as that freedom doesn't endanger others. So for example, traffic laws. We all have the freedom to purchase a car. We get to even choose the color of that car. There's gray,

there's black, white, and I guess that's it for some reason. We also get to use that car, there's gray, there's black, white, and I guess that's it for some reason. We also get to use that car to go to whatever destination we want, even bowling, but we also have to use the roads designated for us. And in order to use those roads, we have to follow traffic laws so that everyone is on the same page.

In theory, we all pay toward making sure those roads are safe to drive on, and we all have to go get a test and a license to prove we can drive on those roads. The government has a department that provides the staff and facilities for us to do this. We have to pay toward those things in order for them to exist.

And of course, we can debate how much money they need to operate, and whether or not they are operating properly. Because of course, the DMV is famously in the 90s standup comedy sense, slow and inefficient. What's the deal with a DMV? Heck, I'm not gonna sit here on my custom ass pillow and pretend like I haven't been pissed off

with a government institution. We pay a lot of taxes and so it's annoying when the government doesn't work fast or well enough. You order something through the post office and have to wait weeks for it to arrive. I need that Darth Maul figurine today, not in three weeks, today. And then you look at Amazon

and how you can get something the day you ordered it. And you think, well, geez, why isn't the government that fast? I get it, I totally get the frustration. And so it's understandable that people gravitated toward a man who tapped into that anchor and proposed that he take over and run the government like a ruthless CEO.

What puzzles me, however, is that people chose this man. That's why I'm thrilled they agree with me. Trump's stakes are the world's greatest stakes, and I mean that in every sense of the word. And the Sharper Image is the only store where you can buy them. It's been said a lot already, but if you thought the government

should be run like a business, you probably would want to elect a guy who was successful in running businesses and didn't have six bankruptcies. But whatever, that's not the point. Even if we elected a really good and smart CEO, running businesses and didn't have six bankruptcies. But whatever. That's not the point. Even if we elected a really good and smart CEO, like, I don't know, a David Zaslav type, this idea still wouldn't work.

America or as it would be called, America Max, still isn't a business. Just isn't. I can't stress this enough. Even trying to hypothetically play this out becomes silly because saying what if America ran like a business is gibberish. It's like saying what if America ran like a car? What if America ran like a dog? What if America ran like your nose?

I could do that all day. What if America ran like a drop of piss? So for example, and because I already mentioned it, our mail system, what if Amazon did our mail for us? Well, first of all, the post office does a fundamentally different task than Amazon. mail system? What if Amazon did our mail for us? Well, first of all, the post office does a fundamentally different task than Amazon. That's actually why Amazon is faster. When you order something from their site, that order goes to a warehouse that already has

that thing you ordered in it. Their quote unquote employees pinch off their piss mid-stream into the communal piss bottle, then pack up the thing, it gets on a truck and wouldn't you know it, very often they rely on USPS to deliver it to the final destination. You see, Amazon doesn't always deliver to really rural areas. There's no profit in it. What I just described is completely different from the USPS.

Your mail doesn't come from one central warehouse, right? It comes from a variety of different places that all funnel to you. Privatizing that process means that a company would have to figure out how to make a profit from the simple act of mailing a letter between two people. So let's say your grandma mails you something for your birthday, nudes perhaps.

How would Amazon make money from that? Well, they'd have to charge granny more for postage to start. Currently, the USPS bases their stamp prices on simply staying afloat. They make more of a profit through first-class mail than stamps, but have raised prices due to a decreased demand as well as inflation.

They're not trying to make a lot of money. They're also not trying to zip your nannas nude across the country in only a few days. The efficient Amazon version of this would mean paying way more, lest they, I don't know, sell your data. Oh, hey, they could introduce a subscription model like Amazon Prime.

Of course, you might be familiar with another subscription model that exists. It's called the government. Congratulations on inventing taxes, a thing that Post Office isn't actually funded by, by the way, but maybe it should be. And so ultimately, what we're doing is reinvent, a thing that post office isn't actually funded by, by the way, but maybe it should be. And so ultimately, what we're doing is reinventing a thing that already exists, but is more expensive.

When you really start to think about it, it's nonsense. Nobody would want this, including Amazon. Amazon doesn't have post offices you can go to. They'd have to spend money building those. Unlike USPS, they don't guarantee delivery to nearly every address in the country. Even if your house is inaccessible by road, you can get a PO box.

They would have to completely change their business model, dump a bunch of money into it, and get nothing out of it. Except your grandma's hot nudes. I mean, everyone has your grandma's hot nudes. Not really that special. Anyway, that's probably the most obvious example, right? The post office does a service that seems similar to private companies like Amazon and UPS, but super isn't.

But what of a more abstract example? For example, Social Security. What if President David Zaslav ran Social Security like a business? I know, it sounds really exciting, but let's explore that. In fact, this isn't even a new idea. It's one of George W's when he first ran for president. He got sidetracked, but Bush continuously pitched

privatizing social security during his campaigns. While we didn't get the full details of his plan because it didn't happen, the core idea was for younger workers to invest a portion of their payroll in a separate privatized retirement account. Each year, they could put up to $1,000 in this account, which Bush promised would have a higher rate of return than Social Security. The idea here is that these accounts would invest in one of five index funds for them to choose from.

Essentially, this would allow workers to gamble some of their money on the market and call that social security. The kicker, however, is that upon retirement, workers would be forced to cash out enough to meet or exceed the poverty line. And they would have to pay the money they initially invested back to the government, plus interest and inflation.

In other words, under Bush's proposal, the government would basically say, "'Hey kid, instead of paying us that money "'for Social Security, why don't you spend it "'on the stock market?' "'Then they would ask for that money back "'and let workers keep whatever extra they made. "'This took all the financial responsibility

"'off the government and gave it all to the worker. "'Because if you couldn't pay that back, "'you don't get benefits at all. Hey, didn't something happen with the market back in the late 2000s? Some kind of crisis or craze that wiped out a lot of 401ks? Bazinga?

Was it Bazinga? See, here's the thing about social security. It's supposed to be a security. Just like how we're all guaranteed access to the post office, everyone who lives in this country who works and pays in is entitled to that support. It's not supposed to make any money for anyone. It's how we take care of everyone when they can't take care of themselves.

One in five Americans receive social security, either because they retired or because of a disability, or because the person they relied on died in a cool motorcycle accident. Tens of millions of disabled or older Americans avoid poverty because of social security. 40% of older Americans rely on social security to survive. So we just have to pay for it. Currently, we do that through payroll taxes, which mostly don't fluctuate with the market. We pay money from every paycheck, which goes to the benefits of the other people who need it. If you're paying that right now,

then someday other people will pay for your benefits and so on. Why, if you were a bit of an idiot, that would sound like a Ponzi scheme. Unlike a Ponzi scheme, social security is transparent and backed by the government, has no one at the top taking a cut and everyone actually gets what they expect to get.

It would only be a Ponzi scheme if we suddenly ended it and then like the president got all the money or something, you know, for efficiency. The problem, however, is that there's currently less money coming in than going out. This can be due to a variety of reasons, such as stagnated wage growth, income inequality,

and influx in retirement amongst the boomers and rising healthcare costs. I wonder why the billionaires saying it's a Ponzi scheme don't want you to know about that. The agency has been relying on a trust fund that was previously set up to anticipate the wave of retiring boomers. And that trust fund is due to go broke around 2034.

After that, it will rest completely on tax revenue, which will likely result in a reduction of benefits. Unless we just pay for it. Someone just has to pay for it. Perhaps the people and entities who can afford to the most. Or… If we invested the Social Security Trust Fund in the S&P, the balance of the Social Security Trust Fund today would be $15 trillion.

So I did the math. If you assume that the S&P 500 continues to grow at 10.5% a year, on average, there's ups and downs and sure there could be basically drawdowns and all these other sorts of things. But here's an important point. We could put about $500 billion in the trust fund today and it will not go bankrupt again. And it will continue to grow every year. And then all Americans have participation

in American enterprise. That's the All In podcast where they don't play poker for some reason, opining with comedian Andrew Schultz about how we should invest our social security money into the S&P. Cool, I'm sure they got it all figured out. You notice how he even admits there would be ups and downs?

Can't stress enough how stupid this would be. Social Security needs to be constantly paying out. It can't afford to have a down year, you know? But this is what we can look forward to if the Social Security Administration were turned into a business, something the GOP super wants to justify doing. It would be so much easier for the government if our Social Security worked like a retirement

or pension fund, where a private agency managed it for a fee of course. I get why these vapid money dildos think this is a good idea. To them, it allows every American to get in on investment capital, the thing they love so much. Here's the comedian guy basically saying just that. When you know at 22 that you could get this thing that's been compounding for 22 years, you could pay off some college loans,

you could put something down on a house, you could pay for trade school, whatever it is. I think you have a different energy towards America and its success. And then you have a lot less of these kids who are just like, America's this horrible place and capitalism is bad. Yeah, capitalism's bad when you're left behind.

When you're invested in capitalism, it's great, baby. Absolutely. See, it's simple. To solve social security, every American simply has to stop whining and become a hardcore investment dude with a podcast. That's essentially their plan here.

They love doing their little investment shit and can't believe that every American isn't also doing it. It's the same energy as your friend who thinks you just have to try cocaine. You'll love it. Seriously though, you will love it. Except, you know, most people don't have time to think about this investment garbage.

We just want to work, pay taxes, do cocaine, and know that when we retire, there will be support for us. We don't wanna be forced to track the stock market and creating that system will guarantee an unfair advantage for the wealthy. We know that because that's what happened when Chile privatized their retirement fund. They found that, wouldn't you know it, wealthier people had the resources to manage their investments, probably by hiring people to do that, while poor people couldn't keep up. Seriously, do you want your Social Security to be this thing you have to constantly manage

and keep track of like a hobby? You wanna have to check your Social Security money every day like that garden out back that just fucking refuses to grow? Do you think that it's a good idea for Social Security, the thing that was created in response to the Great Depression to be tied to the stock market in this way. What a very stupid idea.

Or we just pay for it. Perhaps we raise the cap to have higher income workers pay more into it. Or get it out of the corporations themselves or the rich people. Turns out that if you just taxed billionaires a little more, this social security problem would be immediately fixed. According to one estimate, just taxing Elon Musk alone

would get us 1 20th of the way there. I think he's proven that he doesn't need so much of that money. You know, what with the rockets and the explosions and the Nazi stuff and the robot stuff and the Nazi robot stuff. Anyway, let's take an ad break because we do need money desperately actually,

and then we'll explore this idea some more. What would the government look like if it were run like a business? Oh boy, let's find out. Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love. Those are two things it's hard to find when you're reading what's happening in the world these days. But fortunately, I no longer need to rely on the telly for information because of Ground News,

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Sup, brah? We are so back in that my back has been sewn to this chair. They won't let me leave. We were doing a little make believe about what the USPS and Social Security would look like if they operated like a business. You may have noticed that the postal service technically operates a bit like a business,

just one that doesn't try to make a profit for constant growth. So not really like a business. And so now it's worth noting that in order to see government entities being run like a business, we don't have to make believe. We can make truth because there are public goods and evils in this country that absolutely have been privatized. Now, is that the same as running

the government like a business? I'm not actually sure. Or rather, when people say the government should be run like a business, I don't know if they mean that we should privatize everything or run the government with the same goals as a business or with the same structure as a business. That's kind of why it's a stupid thing to say, but I have to assume that running the government like a business would be similar to when a government function is privatized. I also have to assume, in good faith, that the people who think this don't want the government to be run like a bad business. You know, like the time New York outsourced their payroll

to a group of contractors who did a fraud instead. Although probably the reason they did that fraud to begin with was because of a lack of oversight, which would have existed if they operated within the government instead of being a private company. Because as Doge is discovering, there's actually not that much fraud in our government, or rather that part of our government.

So let's just look at one case of privatization working big quotes correctly. Back in 2008, the city of Chicago sold off their 36,000 parking meters to a private company for a total of $1.2 billion. So now this private company is operating total of $1.2 billion. So now this private company is operating an essential part of this city like a business, right?

Right away, they needed to recoup their purchase. The point of a business after all is to make a profit. So naturally the first thing they did was jack up the price of parking in some areas to quadruple what it was. I mean, shucks, people still need to park, what are they gonna do, not park? This is the first thing that is guaranteed to happen

when a public service is sold off to a private company. Unlike the government, the company's main goal is to make money. We talked about this already with toll roads too. Another thing companies prioritize is asset protection, right? They want to make sure their product isn't being given away for free. In the case of Chicago, that meant that any time the city needed to do road work or closed off an area,

they would have to pay the company for any parking spaces they blocked. In 2012 alone, that came to $27 million in payments from the taxpayers, mind you. Because the city doesn't own those spaces anymore. They leased them for an amount that the company already has made back and then some. A company that, by the way, is partially owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, meaning that a portion of Chicago

is now owned by another country, I guess. Why, for that $1.2 billion, did I mention that they're locked into this deal for 75 years? Boy, what a bad deal. Can't stress enough that this is always going to be the result. It's hard to even blame the companies.

It's just literally what they do. They're like sharks with logos. Their core proposal and purpose is to minimize expenses and maximize profits. That means paying your employees as little as possible and charging your customers as much as possible. And so the more things we kick to a private company, the more often we will reduce good paying government jobs

and make everything cost more by design. By design, they are interested in defeating competition and prioritizing the people who bring them the most profit. Hey, remember that scene in that mustache movie where all the firefighters fight each other? People fighters? Go get them! There were 37 amateur fire brigades

and they all fought each other. It's the plan, Joe! Go get them boys! Woo! Give those fieryowery boys help! Yeah, that actually happened. In real life, it probably wasn't as cinematic, I'm guessing there were a lot fewer knife-throwing murderers, but I'm willing to be wrong about that specifically. Back in the 1800s, private fire gangs would race to burning buildings. Whoever got there

first was paid by whatever insurance company was responsible for the property. So naturally the various fire gangs sabotaged the competition, fought turf wars, and let buildings burn while they went all dead rabbits on each other in the street. Seems bad. Also still kind of exists. As you may recall, the reason LA fires were big business

for a few lucky private crews who were paid to protect rich people's houses or their very important malls. And this is a full spa treatment, mind you, where they coat your house and fire a Tardent goo. Great goo. Probably smells like lavender. In 2018, Kim Kardashian and her Hitler-loving ex

hired private firefighters to protect their mansion during a different wildfire. Kim even went on Ellen to defend the decision, assuring the lovable and not at all problematic host that their crew helped save the whole neighborhood. Except… oopsie? No? The mayor of Hidden Hills later told the New York Times that it was completely untrue and that Kim's private firefighters played no part in saving the neighborhood.

Public backlash led California to pass some regulations, such as keeping private firefighters off the same radio frequencies as emergency responders, prohibiting the use of lights and sirens, and requiring them to mark their vehicles as non-emergency. But one big issue those guardrails don't cover is water. Turns out, there isn't infinite water, despite what big ocean would have you believe. And yet, private crews are allowed to hook up to public hydrants, potentially depleting water

meant for public emergency responders. Just like the Chicago parking meters, when you privatize some parts of your government, you end up at odds with yourself. Like a city with groups of people who fight with each other. Some kind of warring groups in a movie about a city that starts with the word New in the northeast of America. The many saints of Newark!

They drink our milkshake is the point. Because again, their priority is profit, not the common good. This of course creates a two-tiered system where the people who can pay more get more. If you're rich enough, insurance companies like this one called Chubb for some reason will hire a private fire crew just for you—your own special Chubb! One that the president of the California Professional Firefighters said he considers, quote, a liability. Chubb's in the way, get that chubby out of here. But at least it actually could be worse.

In places like Cave Creek, Arizona, there's no public fire department at all. Instead, the town contracts out to a company called Rural Metro, but it's not funded by taxes. You have to subscribe to it, like Netflix, but everything around you is burning to ash. So more like Quibi. In 2013, when one family's home was burning down, rural Metro showed up late,

sprayed a few hotspots and billed them $20,000. Then they sent letters to the rest of the neighborhood, encouraging everyone to consider subscribing. You know, like a fucking nightmare would go. By the way, the town this happened in, well, the closest rural Metro was 20 miles away. So that letter they gave everyone included the message, response times will vary on the back of it.

Absolutely wild. Over in Knoxville, Tennessee, rural Metro hit non-subscribers with a flat fee of $600 per call for emergency services. Unless of course, they sign up for the $425 a year subscription plan. It's nice of them to give discounts for surviving life-threatening situations.

They should do a punch card system. And in rural Oregon, it gets worse. Multiple private fire companies operate simultaneously. So even if you paid your private company, if 911 sends a different one accidentally, you will get hit with a bill from them too. What, dare I say, the fuck are we doing here? Hey, just have a fire department, guys.

Like a regular one with the trucks and the dogs and all the hunks with the hats, sell some calendars and have the government pay for the rest. If the town can't afford it, then have the federal government do it. It's pretty no, dare I say. It's extremely important for a functional society to have the ability to extinguish fires.

Fire, don't you know? Bad, except when it's cool. But if your country has subscription fire services, that country has failed you. Is this what people mean when they say the country should be run like a business? Because this sucks. Right now, as in currently, nearly a quarter of Americans have avoided calling an ambulance during a medical emergency because they couldn't afford it. People are making split-second cost-benefit analyses while literally dying because our healthcare system,

like our fire departments, is a predatory nightmare designed to extract maximum profit from human suffering. Is that working for us? Do we want more of that? Do we want more of this? ["Spring Day"] That's American Medical Response, a private ambulance service doing like a Robocop ad about how many lives they've saved. Oh man, 73 sick children per hour?

I'd buy that for a dollar! I don't know, it's just gross. AMR isn't the only, but by far the largest of these companies. You've seen them everywhere. They have 375 helicopters, 123 planes, and over 8,000 ambulances, and employ close to 37,000 people nationwide.

But it's an expensive business to run. A single ambulance can cost up to a million dollars to operate. And so naturally, the way the private companies offset this is by cutting costs. They buy cheaper vehicles, crappy gear, and underpay their employees. But it's not just the workers who suffer.

Customers hate this service as well. I mean, look at their Yelp reviews. There are countless stories of AMR having slow response times to emergencies. Atlanta, Buffalo, Jackson, Mississippi, Portland, the Goonies state, not the Stephen King one. In every case, they pointed to staffing issues. Mind you, there have been threats of strikes

with AMR employees over pay, because a private company is not going to want to pay people. That is their last resort. So instead of like, just paying them, AMR tried to argue, at least in Oregon, that the problem was that they were required to have two paramedics per ambulance. They wanted the law change to have only one instead, making their service much worse. Again, this is all instead of just paying for more people, because it's a company. Companies try to cut costs. They don't pay people enough.

They also, and this is pretty notable, go out of business. In 2016, New York experienced an emergency services hiccup when a private ambulance company, Transcare, declared bankruptcy. EMTs were showing up to rescue people, knowing that was their last shift before unemployment. That must have been fun for the people who needed help, probably, huh? Transcare's sudden closure left some New Yorkers scrambling to find new resources and EMT providers. And why?

Well, because a private equity firm called Patriarch Investors bought the company in 2003 and proceeded to strip it for parts like your uncle's abandoned Camaro. You know, the one your grandma posed on the hood of. Of course, a few years later, Patriarch was on the line for $42 million when a judge ruled that they needed to compensate

Transcare Corp for an unfair tainted process that ended in the EMS company's bankruptcy. Under Patriarch's ownership, Transcare racked up many health department violations, couldn't pay its bills, and this is my favorite part, had bed bugs in their Brooklyn dispatch center, like a dirt bag roommate. Guys, what are we doing here?

Even with insurance, the average out-of-pocket cost for an ambulance ride is anywhere from $450 to over $1,000. That's with insurance. Without insurance? Do you want to know? Do you really want to know that number? Is it good? We could keep going, obviously.

My God, we didn't even talk about the private prisons that lock up over 90,000 Americans. That's 8% of the incarcerated population farmed out to for-profit companies with fun and creative names like GeoGroup and CoreCivic. I think most people don't care because most people don't think they're going to jail. Although these days it seems like those odds have changed. But conceptually speaking, a private corporate prison is,

once again, Robocop shit. Their goal is to make money and they only make money if they have prisoners. That is a company whose sole function is to bet that there will be more crime. Every decision they make is in the interest of filling cells. Really think about that. Think about how, as Trump pushes ICE

to make more and more arrests, private prison companies are about to make billions. The inevitable result, of course, is that private prisons are overcrowded, understaffed, lead to longer sentences, and have higher levels of repeat offenders. They also cost more. So much for efficiency.

But anyway, we did an episode about all of that. We've done several episodes about what happens when a basic utility or function of the government is turned into a for-profit system. Some of these things we don't even bat an eye at anymore. Like why is our freaking water and electricity partially privatized? We need those things. To live!

Is handing them over to corporations making them cheap? No. There's no competition after all. So it's all the downsides of capitalism with no upsides. And so companies like Pacific Gas and Electric can choose to cut costs by not maintaining their equipment, in turn causing multiple wildfires that killed people, at one point pleading guilty to 80 counts of manslaughter

after burning down an entire town. And they're still in business making billions off of us. We here in California have no choice. We've been forced to support the pyromaniac company, the manslaughter company. But at least we can get some goo on our homes if we're rich enough. See, let's step back for a second

and talk about this philosophy. The government should run like a business. All right, well, here's a question. Don't businesses have competition? The promise of the free market is that The government should run like a business. All right, well, here's a question. Don't businesses have competition? The promise of the free market is that if a bunch of companies have to compete, then they will naturally try to be better

to their customers than their competitors. But privatizing doesn't do that. It's anti-free market because it gives these companies zero competition. That's why Chicago saw their parking meters double in price. It's why California's electric company regularly kills people with fire. It's why companies like Rural Metro

can bill you $20,000 for nearly nothing. Who's gonna stop them? So if the government was like a business, what is the free market there? Other countries? If we don't like our government, do we get to go patronize another country? If we don't like our government, do we get to go patronize another country? If I don't like the service here, can I go to Canada?

This goes back to how the phrase is fundamentally gibberish. If the government was run like a business, who are the customers? Is it the citizens? If so, why would we want that? Do we like having to deal with corporations all the time? Do we want to have to subscribe to live in the country? Or are we supposed to be the shareholders?

Like, when we sell weapons to Israel, do we all get a cut of the profits? What is the metaphor here? Why would we want the country to make a profit in the first place? To what end? Who pays that money? And who gets paid that money?

Seems like we'd be the ones paying. So how is that different from taxes? I don't mean to be rude, but this is just something that seems like a stupid thing that a stupid person would say. Ultimately, it's a meaningless phrase that sounds like it might be smart until you think about it a little harder.

But we're gonna keep giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. So after the break, we're gonna explore yet another interpretation of this very silly idea. Like if it were a horse but dead, we would be beating it. For fun. Hiya folks! If you are anything like me, mealtime stresses you out. You've got to plan, buy all the ingredients, cook the dang stuff, all while you're watching your image disappear from family photos due to changes in the space-time continuum a la Back to the Future. Ugh, my very existence could be at stake because of events unfolding in the past, so you know

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that America should be run like a business. And I guess one of the nicer interpretations you could make is that they aren't saying we should privatize everything, nor are they saying we should literally try to turn the country into a corporation. Perhaps they are simply saying that America should be efficient like a business, because businesses are efficient, which probably isn't even true, but we're being nice, so let's pretend and assume they are. So let's explore that, starting with the question, why are businesses, allegedly, efficient? Amazon, for instance, is likely seen

as one of the most efficient businesses, right? Like right now, I could order this speed adjustable pulsating vacuum pump for goat nipples and get it at my door in two days, just in time for poker night. So what makes Amazon so fast and efficient? Well, for one, they overwork their drivers. They've admitted to it.

Amazon puts the wellbeing of their employees behind their ability to deliver your package. Not making a judgment call on that terrible evil thing, I'm just pointing it out. They have a singular goal. All else comes after that goal, including things like their employees and their environmental impact.

Why do you think your watch battery will come in a giant box sometimes? They don't care. They just need it to arrive in time for your watch battery. Nor do they care about third party sellers, of course. Amazon keeps their prices down by buying in bulk and pushing out any competition, or rather absorbing and forcing their own rules on them.

Again, for a sinister corporation that wants to be fast and cheap and all encompassing, this is all in theory the way to do that. Is it moral? No, they don't need to be moral. They just need to be efficient. And most of all, in order for a company like Amazon to maintain this efficiency,

they need a singular person calling all the shots. A CEO, right? This guy named Andy Jassy. I don't know. Too much hair? He should have less hair. Fewer hairs. So, um, hey, what kind of government has no regard for the well-being of those under it

and favors culling the weak by forcing everyone to follow strict rules in order to efficiently carry out a singular goal? One that has just one individual in charge, unilaterally making all decisions without having to consult anyone or hold a vote. Oh right, that's a dictatorship. Companies, when applied to governments, are dictatorships.

When people are saying the country should be run like a business, they're actually saying that the country should be a dictatorship, either because they've been tricked into thinking that, or because they want to trick others into thinking it. Oh, oops, all fascists. Yeah, surprise Nazi stuff. I mean, if you've watched this show,

you probably saw it coming. It's like the syndicate in the X-Files. You think you're watching a fun little episode about Tony Shalhoub killing people with his shadow, and then bam, here comes X to do the brain suck. Yeah, dude called himself X, Elon would have loved him. And speaking of Nazis, let's speak about Nazis, because the Nazis loved privatizing stuff.

Steel, mining, railroads, banks, even social services. All of it got handed over to wealthy industrialists, as long as they licked the boots of the regime. The term reprivatization, our modern word for returning state assets to private hands, was literally invented by the Third Reich. Because again, privatization isn't about the free market, there are no competitors.

And in this case, it allowed the Nazis to focus the government on Nazi stuff while making sure the corporations played ball. Industrial leaders who didn't tow the party line were removed from their positions, demonstrating the regime's willingness to oust unaligned business figures, like Hugo Junkers, who said hard pass

to building murder planes and was placed under house arrest and had his company seized. He also allegedly mysteriously died after Nazi officers were seen at his home. Mystery solved, probably. So don't get me wrong, there are a lot of ingredients in a Nazi stew, and some of those ingredients

could be used to make other things, an aristocracy pie, oligarchy gumbo, just the worst monarchy figgy pudding. But privatization is one of those common ingredients, not just in Nazi Germany, but fascist Italy as well. And there's a clear reason that corporations can very easily gravitate toward fascism. It's the same reason the Nazi party was, at one point,

actually bailed out by German industrialists. To quote a speech that Hitler gave to these wealthy groups, private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy. The Nazis, after all, abolished labor unions. They gave corporations a single person to deal with instead of a democracy. The Nazis, after all, abolished labor unions. They gave corporations a single person to deal with instead of a democracy, and they did it fast. After being appointed chancellor, it only took six damn months for Hitler

to consolidate enough power to declare himself Fuhrer and arrest as many as 100,000 German citizens without trial. Oh, right, and then the Holocaust stuff. And yeah, I guess it was pretty efficient, it tends to be that way, when you completely ignore democracy and work toward a singular goal of eradication

and world domination. And so now let's circle back around to today, and to this guy. There it is. You might notice that Elon isn't the only tech billionaire that seems a bit fashy lately. Peter Thiel, that PayPal guy who bought the vice president, he once wrote in a 2009 blog post, quote, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. He of course meant his freedom to be a rich guy.

Thiel also initially envisioned PayPal as the first step towards a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution, the end of monetary sovereignty as it were. Because when you see democracy as an obstacle to wealth, every solution starts to look like a supervillain pitch. Like the time Teal backed the Seasteading Institute, a real plan to build floating libertarian islands in international waters where billionaires could live without government interference. Floating crypto kingdoms.

No taxes. No regulations. Just you, your offshore server farm, and all your, I guess, slaves? There's also Curtis Yarvin, aka Menchus Moldbug, aka the Guy Fieri of fascist blogging. Yarvin believes democracy is a failed experiment and thinks we should replace it with something like a CEO monarchy, AKA a government run like a corporation

where the country is owned and managed by a single executive. Citizens are basically shareholders without voting rights and no big payouts. No elections, no messy legislatures, just a single CEO in charge, presumably until he dies and passes the country down to a spoiled heir.

Like a king, he calls this system a joint stock republic. Leave it to the tech industry to reinvent fascism like it's Uber shuttle. That's a bus Uber, you're thinking of a bus. Also, as a fun aside, Elon Musk consulted with Curtis Yarvin on his new America party, aka another reinvention of fascism. Download Nazi Maxx for one month free fasc pass!

See, here's the thing about the tech world. It's often one visionary and beloved figure lording over a campus of people working long hours to aid their every whim. Right? Mind you, it's not the only industry like this, the film industry, for example. Like, yeah, there are protections for workers if the film is big enough,

but a film set is very often about efficiency and exploiting labor at the service of a few individuals at the top. And sometimes those individuals use that power to do horrible things, like make blood rain. And yes, movies tend to be made very efficiently that way. You can't write a script through a democracy. There are industries where being a semi-dictatorship

is standard. But you don't see James Cameron saying that governments should be run like film sets, do you? That would be stupid and dangerous, much like the set of the Abyss. First decree, all Ed Harris' must be partially drowned. Just a little making of the abyss humor for all you Abyss DVD special features fans.

Point is, of course these dildos think it would be a great idea if the government were run like a business. Not only is that how they run things, but the resulting fascism would be good for their businesses. It's win-win so long as you don't factor the actual people into that equation. I don't know, it's weird to have to say this,

but maybe we shouldn't listen to billionaires when it comes to running a democracy. Maybe they don't have our best interests in mind. And here's the big kicker, the dramatic third act moment, like that tsunami scene that got completely cut from the theatrical release of the Abyss. Sorry, I just watched the DVD.

So in all this talk about the government being run like a business, this debate around whether or not the government is efficient enough, no one seems to be asking a very important question. Is the government supposed to be efficient? See, because I'd actually say no. No, it's not supposed to be efficient,

at least not above all else, but rather it's supposed to be effective. It's about producing a desired result for everyone. And yes, we want to do that as efficiently as possible, but not at the cost of it being ineffective. So for example, what if there was waste and fraud in social security? Sure, we should try to keep track of that

and correct it if we can, but also who cares? What's more important is that everyone who deserves social security benefits gets those benefits. But now in this blind quest for efficiency, trying to meet spending cut quotas, Doge actually booted completely eligible people from the system because when you're moving fast and breaking things, people get broken.

That's fine if you're, I guess, inventing an app that's actually the yellow pages, but like an app now. But it's not fine for the government. The government is slow, it's expensive by design. Democracy is inefficient by design, sometimes to the great frustration of everyone. It takes a while for laws to pass,

for decisions to get made, for people to be counted. Could it be faster? Probably. Seems like Congress could be kicked in the ass a bit. I'm sure there are ways to make the DMV go smoother. Oh, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe we should have a new type of ID we all have to get. You can't fly without it. It'll be like a passport or something, except you'll still need a passport for some reason. We'll workshop that. But until then, yeah, the DMV is gonna be a little slow because it's there for everyone equally. It shouldn't have fast passes.

It shouldn't be tiered. It's just a boring old DMV, not a business because a business is a very different thing. It's actually very obvious when you think about it. Probably didn't need to do a long video about it. Could have done this much more efficiently actually, but would it have been effective? Probably, yeah, probably could have been,

but well, you know, shut up about it. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] They're very long threads sewn in my back. So I've got like a lot of movement. It hurts. A lot, but like mobility is pretty good. And God said, let there be like and subscribe please. Thank you so much for watching. Leave a nice comment and check out our podcast

called Even More News. You can watch it on the channel twice a week or you can listen to it in your ears on the podcast apps twice a week. You can listen to this show, Some More News as a podcast if you prefer. We've got a patreon. You can listen to this show, Some More News, as a podcast if you prefer. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news. We've got merch that you can, oh my gosh, ah! And then God said, go watch something else. The episode's over.