How Would Milton Friedman Do DOGE?
In a 1999 Hoover Institution interview, economist Milton Friedman was asked which federal agencies he would abolish. As host Peter Robinson rattled off the Cabinet list, Friedman gave a blunt verdict on most: “Abolish.” Departments of Agriculture and Commerce? “Abolish.” Education and Energy? “Abolish.” Housing and Urban Development? Gone. Labor? Gone. Transportation? Gone. Even Veterans Affairs, he argued, could eventually be eliminated (with veterans compensated in other ways).
By the end of this exercise, Friedman had effectively reduced 14 Cabinet departments down to about 4.5. The only agencies he’d clearly keep were those handling essential duties like defense, justice, foreign affairs, and treasury functions—the minimal state required to protect the nation and uphold the law.
Fast forward to 2025. The Trump administration too wants to slash federal agencies. The headline-grabbing effort is led by the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and directed by a large number of executive orders. In a few weeks, DOGE has been caught in a whirlwind of activity, with sweeping claims of slashing and cutting, though with little clarity on the forces driving these abrupt shifts.
To be sure, the DOGE team is raising the profile of the need to cut spending and claims it has “cut” billions of dollars in grants and interrupted payments for many contracts. Musk, like Friedman, has talked about the need to cut entire agencies. They have already started taking knives to a few of them. In fact, several of their targets have long been on libertarians’ abolish lists.
Yet I can’t shake the feeling that the administration may not be playing the long game. It isn’t because the cuts will be minuscule compared to what truly needs to be cut. Neither is it because the DOGE team is causing chaos. Any serious effort to cut down the size of government is bound to be chaotic because it throws a wrench into the usual functioning of government and pushes against the desires of many special interests.
My trepidation boils down to two things. First, for all the talk about cutting government waste and fraud, the DOGE-Trump team seems mostly animated by rooting out leftist culture politics and its practitioners in Washington. It feels that it is less about smaller government than it is about political transformation. While the two intersect, this strategy could fall short.
That’s in part—and this is my second point—because for those of us who care about permanently downsizing government and keeping it bound by constitutional rules to prevent the exercise of arbitrary power, DOGE is mixed. While there is a small probability the approach will succeed in reining in spending or the administrative state, it will be at the heavy cost of reinforcing the power of the executive branch and opening the door to the same abuse when the left is in power.
The probability may be higher, however, that they will fail to make a significant difference at all. If that is the case, we will be left with both a presidency on steroids and no meaningful reduction in government.
Friedman vs. DOGE
Throughout his career, Milton Friedman championed a government that does only what is strictly necessary to protect individual rights, leaving individual adults otherwise free to make their own choices. In his vision, the state should be limited, decentralized, predictable, and constrained by the rule of law—not an instrument for shaping culture, redistributing wealth, or “managing” the economy.
This philosophy of limited government, along with his training as an economist who understood the power of incentives and tradeoffs, shaped all of Friedman’s policy recommendations. First, he was clear about the fundamental role of the federal government, which he believed should be limited to “preserv[ing] the peace, defend[ing] the country, provid[ing] a mechanism whereby individuals can adjudicate their disputes, and protect[ing] individuals from being coerced by other individuals.” That explains why only 4.5 agencies survived Friedman’s scrutiny.
When asked questions about specific cuts, Friedman grounded his argument in economic reasoning, revealing the unseen costs of government actions that many people overlook. He would explain that nobody takes care of somebody else’s property as well as that person takes care of his own, suggesting why the private sector would deliver better services in areas where people have taken the role of government for granted. With the same ease, he would explain that public parks would be cleaner and safer under pr
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