I Wish Elon Musk had More Imagination

A short post.

Like everyone else, I keep reading about the Musk and DOGE and federal employee layoffs etc. I'm certainly not going to pretend the federal government is a hallmark of efficiency, but it's obvious that the best way to improve that isn't randomly firing people in every department.

Every time I read these things I find myself of course bemoaning the "sudden reduction in hours" that workers are experiencing, but also I can't help thinking what a stupid and boring use of time this is for Elon Musk. Here you have all the money in the world and the power of the US government at your disposal, and this is what you get up to? Firing random low-level employees? This is the best use of your time?

Come on man. Think of all the things you could be doing, even if you just wanted to goof around, even if you only cared about admiration for yourself.

• Radically change US industrial policy. Think about, more than half your wealth is an auto company. Instead of one-off bizarre advertisements with Trump, why not shape the entire policy? Surely you could imagine a better structure than arbitrary and ever-changing tariffs.
• Use AI to automate everyone's taxes. You'd be considered a hero! Don't you like admiration?
• Unify the entire federal beauracracy. Every citizen gets a single number they can call that routes them to anything, like 1-800-FED-HELP. Use LLM agents to handle most of the work.
• Solve the Israel/Palestine conflict through bribery. Buy an entire country for Gazans. Give everybody $100k as a starting bonus. Use creative accounting to show how you'd save money vs sending military aid to Israel.

These are all bad ideas but even these feel like a better use of time than chainsawing through jobs. Surely it feels more fun to be productive?