Elon’s DOGE Is OK, But Mises Is Way Better
Elon Musk—via his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)—exposing and attempting to cut government waste is wonderful. However, it’d be even better if Elon focused more on striking closer to the root of the problem: the public’s economic ignorance from which all the disastrous, coercive, competition-immune, monopolistic government central planning, spending, and also warmongering grows. This is precisely what Ludwig von Mises did, and I like to call it the “Misesian formula” for prosperity. Mises devoted parts of his majestic treatise Human Action (1949) to the formula. In a section aptly titled “Economics and the Citizen,” Mises writes:
Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence….
All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of…economics. Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines…. Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories….
As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake….
…all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.
Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.
Since it’s real freedom and capitalism that lead to prosperity, explaining this to people is, per Mises, “the primary civic duty.”
Riding the wave of economic education, Javier Milei had been spearheading on his way to electoral triumph in Argentina, on November 8, 2023 Elon tweeted a Hayek meme writing: “Best economist ever.” A week later, on December 4, he tweeted, “Great book by Hayek” while linking to Hayek’s classic book The Road To Serfdom, and another meme quoting Hayek: “nothing could contribute more to the cure of humanity’s ills than to give people a better understanding of economics.” Elon is thus increasingly aware of the need to educate, but still far from having a Misesian ethos-understanding.
Mankind’s problems are overwhelmingly the result of the public’s economic ignorance which then, via democracy, manifests itself in the order-destroying bureaucracies. It is their ignorance—that of your neighbor, family members, and likely former self—that is near the root of the problem, not whatever homo sapiens people vote for. The very root of this economic ignorance, as significantly shown by founder of the “Austrian School of Economics,” Carl Menger, is the fact that money (and its vital
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
