Part 5- Some Initial Thoughts about the Second Trump Presidency

In the previous part of this series, I wrote about how USA, and the West in general, have no worthwhile leverage over Russia in 2025. More relevantly, the majority of the western political and military leadership in addition to their other so-called “elites” exhibit a dangerous level of disconnect from reality. For example, they appear to be clueless about the serious and irreversible deindustrialization of their own countries. To make a long story short, these clowns are acting as if their wishful thinking and delusions are going to have an effect on rest of the world, which has mostly moved on. While Trump is not as delusional as most western “leaders”, he too is constrained by many old habits and beliefs prevalent in the West- which is a nice way of saying that Trump and his followers will have to keep performing a lot of mental gymnastics to keep pretending that the west-supported war in Ukraine was anything other than a completely avoidable and massive screwup. So far, Trump is at least trying to extricate USA out of that awful mess- which is a good sign, but it remains to be seen if he can do so without shattering the pernicious delusion of industrial and military superiority prevalent in the West, especially USA.

With that out of the way, let us focus on Trump’s ongoing attempts to tame the hostile federal bureaucracy- specifically on whether his administration will achieve anything worthwhile in that area. But before we go there, let us talk about why he was unable to deliver on many of his promises during his previous presidential term. Well.. the short answer is that his choice of personal to help run the first administration colluded with the federal bureaucracy to undermine and sabotage him at almost every step. This does not imply that every one of Trump’s ideas were great or even good, but that he was actively obstructed from doing almost everything he wanted to try. This is why , this time around, Trump has been so unwilling to negotiate with his own party. Trump rightly perceives the old guard of Republican party as traitors and has treated them accordingly. Notably, all of his supposedly controversial picks (Robert F Kennedy Jr, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel etc) have been appointed- something I had had predicted in another older post.

Now let us talk about DOGE, specifically the criticism of it being led by Elon Musk. While many democrats are busy claiming that giving such power to a non-elected person is unprecedented, even a cursory look at history shows otherwise. The most famous democrat president in the past hundred years, FDR, employed more than a few ultra-rich people from the private sector to help reform government departments during his time at president, but especially during his first term. Something similar occurred during WW2 and in its immediate aftermath. The question, then, is about the true purpose of DOGE and whether it can achieve any of its stated and unstated goals. The popular backstory for DOGE claims that it is about finding waste and fraud in government spending- of which there is plenty, but not near the levels many would assume. In my opinion, finding waste and fraud is a secondary goal of DOGE. The two real goals of DOGE are as follows: 1] Identify and get rid of bureaucrats who will try to oppose or sabotage the Trump administration or any serious policy changes and 2] Eliminate or severely reduce jobs and departments who are dragging down the system by pushing an ever increasing number of laws and rules- which generate even more employment opportunities for bureaucrats- while screwing over everyone else.

At this point, some readers might say that Trump, Elon Musk etc are doing all of this to make more money for themselves and their friends- and that is true. However, this is no different from Obama bailing out his banker friends with trillions in aftermath of 2008-2009 financial crisis, Bush43 diverting trillions to military industrial complex in aftermath of 9/11, Clinton diverting trillions to corporations.. you get the point. The real question is whether DOGE could benefit the median person more than it might hurt them. In my opinion, even though the motivations driving DOGE are selfish, it might actually have a net-positive effect on the quality of life for the median person. To illustrate my point, I will use a few examples that are easy to understand for most people- starting with cars and other automobiles. As many might have read over the past decade, the cost of cars, crossovers, trucks, SUVs etc has kept going up at rates which far exceed the “official” rates of inflation and wage growth- making them less affordable with each passing year. Some might blame the greed of car manufacturers and there is certainly a case to be made for excessive profit seeking by some of them- but that is not the major factor for the every increasing cost of new automobiles.

Consider that car manufacturers such as Toyota, Honda etc manufacture and sell many significantly cheaper and equally reliable automobile models in foreign markets. So why can’t we get those models in USA and some other western markets? Well.. it comes down to all sorts of peculiar self-made rules and standards implemented by agencies such as the EPA. NHTSA and others. These rules and standards penalize manufacturers whose vehicles don’t satisfy arbitrary and unrealistic standards of fuel efficiency and other features which are not based in reason. Even worse, their real-life effects run contrary to their supposed intentions. For example- the ludicrous “fuel efficiency” standards for small cars make it unprofitable to sell high-quality small cars in USA and make it far more profitable to sell bigger vehicles such as large crossovers, larger trucks and SUVs. These stupid regulations also make engines shorter-lived, less reliable and harder to repair. Notably, the vehicles sold in North America are not safer or better in any meaningful way than older models or newer models sold in countries with more old-fashioned regulations. To summarize, agencies such as the EPA, NHTSA etc of 2025 are no longer a net benefit for the median person.

An almost identical set of issues are seen in the area of residential, commercial and infrastructure construction. For example, in many parts of USA such as coastal California and Massachusetts, NYC metro area etc, the whole process of building new houses and condos is much longer and more expensive than other parts of USA- such as most parts of Texas and Florida. Moreover, many of these regulations make it far less profitable to build smaller and more affordable houses at the same time when existing housing stock is becoming increasingly unaffordable with each passing year. These dumb, ridiculous and highly counterproductive regulations also make it much harder to build nice multi-unit housing that are attractive to customers with real families and children. The situation for commercial real estate is even worse, especially for small and medium-sized business who are increasingly unable to afford the extortionate rents and leases in a growing list of cities. While some of this price rise is due to landlord greed, the lack of new construction and high cost of building in many cities is a major factor driving this unfortunate trend. The destruction of certain agencies within the federal and state governments could fix this problem- at least partially.

To be clear, I am not implying that DOGE will fix a lot of these problems quickly or cleanly. Nor do I claim that DOGE is an honest effort to fix anything to benefit the average person. Instead, it is my opinion that a whole set of downstream effects caused by DOGE (large-scale disruption of career bureaucrats) might unintentionally end up fixing many problems with government bureaucracy in USA. It is very likely that the process which leads to that new and better equilibrium will not be straightforward or pretty. But the current status quo is awful and cannot be reformed via normal methods or procedures- and a majority of people in this country understand that be to the case. In the next part of this series, I will go over a few more examples in areas such as education and healthcare where the disruption caused by DOGE might also unintentionally improve the situation for the average person.

What do you think? Comments?