Ron Paul Liberty Report

“Government Efficiency” Is An Oxymoron — Trump & Musk Should Know That Going In

Former President Trump announced that he will create a government efficiency commission led by Elon Musk. Let’s not forget that “government efficiency” is an oxymoron. Government can't rationally economize, like the rest of us. Its decisions are made politically, and not by profits and losses. We don’t voluntarily give our money to the government. It takes our money by force. So while government can never be “efficient," it can be, and should be, a lot smaller and less of a burden on us.

Duration:: 22m
Broadcast on:: 06 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

It's highly satisfied with saying we could sit back and say, oh good, the answer is there. Government will be efficient as soon as these two guys get together and that will of course depend on Trump becoming president. But at least the two are talking about a subject that's very important. But before we get into that, I was of course looking at the gold prices earlier this morning and there was a report out that hiring was way down and the numbers have been fudged and that was discovered a month ago and people are getting to the point where they don't believe the numbers part-time jobs and there was a question on the health of the economy and that was one of the reasons I suggested they were talking about lowering interest rates because certainly they usually deal interest rates only with a stock market, well a stock market is booming so they have to be cautious, there might be a bubble forming which I happen to believe is forming, but I think the response in the gold market to this announcement what happened sort of tells us a story about what the Fed has to put up with and what the politicians put up and what the investors have put up with and what the individual citizen has to put up with, and that is gold when I first heard about the numbers coming out, gold shot up pretty well, you know, it was up a significant amount but it didn't take long, a little bit of layers, somebody says well maybe maybe the Fed can't do this or that and the gold sinks real fast and weight a little bit and it's back up again, I think that so much reflects the fault, the fallacy of the Federal Reserve, they can't know what to do on a fast movement and the people don't know exactly what to do, but in a free market interest rates would go up and down but we wouldn't have to try to out guess the Fed, how can you out guess the Fed when they don't even know what they're doing, you know, it's a pretty tough task, but anyway, the stock market last I looked was still going up, I think it's a bubble, I think it will burst and I think there will be a lot of adjustments and I think our viewers have to consider what do they do, how do they protect themselves, no easy way, of course my number one way of protecting our country is advocate liberty and let the people take care of it, that's my goal, but that's not likely to happen next month or next week, but I think that what we have to do is really do our very best to solve the problems and protect ourselves, we know most viewers know about the second amendment, most of them know about being independent and caring themselves and saving their money, but one thing that is tough, in this day and age when the stock market is so high I say wow, you know, that looks pretty good, I guess I'm okay now, and gold is doing better but we don't know what to do, but I want to talk about what is offered by Birch Gold because they offer some information to explain how you can maybe move in one direction or the other, maybe less stocks and more gold and there's an IRA account that they can help you open up, but what you, if you're interested in this and haven't done anything about it, you can text Ron at 98, 98, 98 and get in touch with Birch Gold, that is Ron, 98, 98, 98 because they'll send you free material and an indication of what you might be interested in doing and that would be to get an IRA account where you can hold metals physically speaking. So that's one thing that we can do and I can guarantee you there'll be nothing perfect in anybody, you know, effort to protect against big government until we get rid of big government, but in the meantime we have to do the very best and that of course is a big issue and that of course if the net result is people waking up like they did doing COVID and move away from the government doing these things to us, that will be a benefit and that's what I think people should do is always move toward individual decisions and when it comes to investment that is the best thing to do. So once again that number of your interest is Ron, 98, 98, 98. Chris, now I want to talk a little bit about a subject that you have an interest in and that is the fact that the rumor is out. Trump is thinking about hiring Musk, their friends, their buddies, but of course Trump has to win. If you read the liberal news media it looks like Trump doesn't have a chance, it looks like Kamala because she's real quiet on what she believes in because nobody could vote for if they do. Anyway, they are talking about it and the reason Trump wants to work with Musk is efficiency. He's going to be in charge of getting government to be efficient and I think I have a suspicion Chris what you feel about that but over the years I've always mentioned that if you expect the government to be efficient you're kidding yourself what we have to do is reduce government to a minimum but in the meantime Chris what do you have to say about this move toward efficient government? Yeah Dr. Paul, it's an oxymoron. Government efficiency doesn't exist and fortunately can exist and there's many reasons why. Number one government steals everything that it takes in, it's revenue. Everybody else in society can do this. We can't do it, businesses can't do it unless they use the government to do it for themselves but on their own without the government they can't steal so they don't economize like we do. We take revenues in, income in, this is what we put out and we have profit and loss. Government doesn't worry about these things because it's like turning on the water faucet. They want more money, they're just going to come and steal it from us or print it or go into 35 trillion in debt. It's like a water faucet for them. They don't worry about where's the money going to come from. So you cannot rationally economize on their such a condition. Next government does not profitably allocate money. It allocates money politically. What is good for me politically? What will work politically? What will get votes? Not profitability, obviously. It was $6 trillion on Iraq profitable, maybe for the crony businesses again that are attached to government but not for us, the American people, we were robbed $6 trillion gone. So government can't be efficient and this is actually on the flip side, a good thing. We don't want them to be efficient because freedom exists because of government efficiency, any efficiency, excuse me. Even if they were very efficient with those COVID jabs and those vaccine passports, we'd be slaves right now. Right this second, we'd be showing our papers everywhere we go if they were efficient and everything worked for them, but instead we're free in that respect because of their gross inefficiency and so that's the way it works now. As Dr. Paul said, while they cannot be efficient, they can be much smaller and that could be done by Trump and Musk and if they could do that and get their boots off our necks, that would be a breath of fresh air. You know and that is a job because perfection doesn't come in a package and you pick that over destruction but this effort to make the government more efficient, they might come up with 10 things to do and maybe one will be something that's correct and it would be beneficial, maybe a proper audit or something like that. You can support that but that's not exactly what happens. It never does happen and this effort to make government more efficient has been around for a long time. I can't remember being in cars over a couple of decades where they didn't offer a bill to make the government to prohibit waste, fraud and abuse. Yeah, that's government, waste, fraud and abuse, so just write a law or do it. Republicans and Democrats supported this and of course, I support getting rid of waste fraud and produce but you have to get rid of the government but to have a law introduce another group. I call this the spreading out of prior restraint. Prior restraint was set up mostly to go after people in the First Amendment rights on what they print and say. But under these circumstances, everything you do is inefficient in government so before we let you do it, we have to check it out. So if you're making a product, oh, prior restraint, you can't do that until you get the FDA to say this and some other agency and that's why it becomes a bureaucratic monster and the other thing that we have done over the years, and this sounds like a pretty good idea and to a degree it is and that is, you know, sort of reward a whistleblower. The people on the inside, they get sick of it all and they say, I'm coming clean. I can't stand this any longer. And many times, what happens is the whistleblower gets into more trouble than the people who are doing the damage and they can get into all kinds of trouble because, oh, he's releasing secret information, oh, you're going to tell us what the Fed is really doing and what they're saying, boy, you're in big trouble then. So if you had all that, so that is a shame that the whistleblowers actually get punished more than the people who are trying to help us. Yeah, very good, Dr. Paul. Yeah, I'd like to talk about the incentive structure of government agencies. Now before I say this, this doesn't mean that everybody that works for government is bad and whatever a lot of people are, but I have family members, extended family that are in a government. I love them very much. They're not bad people, but this is the incentive structure of a government. This is how it works. The incentive in your government department is to spend your entire budget because that way you can go and cry for an increase in your budget. You spend all your money. You need more. You know, and again, remember, they don't deal with profit and loss. And my entire life, government has never had enough money. They are always crying for more money. They spend trillions of dollars now and it's still not enough. They spend more than they take in, much, much more than they take in. Now here's another bad thing about the incentive in government. When they fail, even then they go and ask for more money. They want to reward. We need more money. Our budget isn't big enough. That's why we failed. So the incentive is built in for failure. Now again, this doesn't mean that everybody in government is bad as I say this. Now in your agency, if you don't spend your entire budget, the agency down the hall will and they're going to get a budget increase. Not you. You obviously don't need it. You didn't spend all your money. They did. They're going to get more. So that's how it works in government. Now this is all opposite of the real world that everybody else deals in. You know, we can't do any of this stuff. And in government, the bigger the budget, again, for the individual bureaucrat, the bigger that you're standing as a bureaucrat. I'm in charge of this Department of Health and this and that. We have a budget of $70 trillion. Now you, you know, regardless of that you're wasting it all, are a big shot and you're going to get promoted and maybe be vice president and everything else. So that's all of these things I just laid out is the reason why the government spending goes up and only up and never down and nobody even talks about it going down. It's because the incentive structure of government is so warped and bizarre that this is the reason why you need limited government. But you know, this is a lesson that people have to always learn the hard way. You know, on the books, there are some requirements for auditing the certain agencies and that doesn't seem to work very well, but it sounds good and you can't say, oh no, don't audit. You should or get rid of the agency that you're worrying about. But right now under these circumstances they will tell you that they keep an eye on these things, these are the politicians in the Congress, but that is not true. Like, you know, the subject I've dealt with for a long time, like the Federal Reserve. We don't know why they do and what they do and how much they're really doing, especially in the midst of a financial crisis, like if we go through about every decade or so. And also, likewise, where there's so much corruption because it enhances foreign entanglements and foreign wars is the DOD. And we've heard many stories, it wasn't just Afghanistan that we leave with our tail between our legs and leave a lot of money and buildings and weapons and everything else. And they don't even do an audit of the DOD. And the other thing that they need to do, if they were serious about it, it would help the bigger picture that we're talking about, and that is quit spending money you don't have. You can't steal enough money from the people, eventually you have to print the money and guess what? It gets out of control and there's no political will or political ability to shift that. So that's going to happen. So if you establish a new commission, you know, under the executive branch for efficiency of government, those things aren't going to change very much because you have to change the whole structure of government. You can't have the principle of prior restraint, and then the prior restraint involves social media and everything else that they make and sell, you know, it just becomes a monstrosity. And this is the one reason why it's not too easy to become pessimistic that you're saying, oh, we're going to set up a commission, and we're going to introduce efficiency because I did it in my business. I can remember way back, probably Eisenhower years or something when I was just watching politics. They said, you know, the post office has never been a good example of the free market economy where they had to make the profit. So they would keep saying, well, what we need is a businessman running the post office, but they put one in that had business experience, but it doesn't work because that's not the atmosphere and Chris has already made it. It's profits and losses and paying dividends and paying off loans and knowing what interest rates are. And it can't happen when the governor's involved because the political system, the lobbyists, the special interests, become too powerful. And that's how cowtown to them is how people stay in office. That's their job. You know, I have to do what my supporters tell me, what my constituents tell me. So that they go along with it and it's endless and right now it's topping off. I think the efficiency of government is what we're dealing with because the efficiency of government is going to get worse and worse along with the debt and the financial problems we have and the runaway growth of our empire and also the internal chaos that's created by all these pro problems and programs and spending. And our cities are ending up in chaos, especially those that lean more left than right. And so this is coming to our climactic end, but Chris has done a good job explaining some of the fundamentals there and that's what has to be changed. The fundamentals have to be changed rather than saying another commission, what we need to do is we need to get rid of all that waste fraud and abuse. Who's for that? So it's the system that has to be changed. Fantastic, Dr. Paul, I will conclude now with my closing thoughts. They're going to be short and sweet. If there's the one thing that Trump and Musk must do is drastically reduce the size and burden of government. Government is a overwhelming burden on our country, period. Now where do you cut? Where do you slash? Where do you abolish? That's the easiest answer in the world. Go right for the empire. Bring every single US soldier home from around the world. They don't belong there and defend our nation only. We don't get involved in anybody else's business. And if you do that, then you don't have to go after all the people here that have become so dependent on government, social security and Medicare and this and that. We can't have it all. It's either empire or the people here are going to get big cuts. So spare the people here and leave the world alone, bring our troops home and that's how you start cutting and then we could worry about rebuilding here and getting people much less dependent here in America on our government. Very good. And most people believe that the group that's more likely to cause excessive spending and all this monstrosity that we have to put up with is left wing. They're conservatives. They want to spend more money whether it's in education, medicine or whatever. And there is no cost because they can just print the money. That nonsense. But I think the people, the group that gets away with more of a deception are the fiscal conservatives. Yes, there'll be some fiscal conservatives that will be very good. There'll be fiscal conservatives that will be a lot better than most of the Democrats. But at the same time, the fiscal conservatives think they have to lead the charge because there could be a coalition between constitutionalists as well as the libertarian leaning congressmen and do some of the things that we're talking about. But what happens is the fiscal conservatives, they have exceptions to the rules. Even if you have Republican conservative administrations and compare them to democratic administration, frequently the Democratic administration, maybe it's just lock or whatever, have less deficits than the Republicans have. But the fiscal conservatives where I think they really slip up is the fact that yes, they're willing to cut some, maybe some domestic welfare spending or medical care or something like that. What they don't ever want to cut, except for a few exceptions, is support for the empire, support for the military, because that's an attack on national security and it marches on. Democrats just like big government and Republicans tend to think you can't vote against a nickel of it, because we have to support the people that we promise we would support and if you look around. There are a lot of countries that depend on us for food, clothing and guns and that is a big problem, so a little more honesty about what's going on is necessary. And I think the opportunities here, Chris, I think there's an opportunity now because this situation isn't going to continue and the Fed is incapable of solving these problems, these committees to, all of a sudden, we have, we want efficiency in government. We want to deal with waste fraud and abuse and we're going to clean up this mess. No, you can't clean it up. It's just a system that doesn't work. It's been around for centuries, if not thousands of years, where the government has control and they put the burden on the people and one of the most important ways that they're able to do that is put the burden on the people is through the inflationary system, print the money and make the little people, the middle class and the poor, pay the high prices and suffer the consequences. And I can't imagine why we don't do a better job in selling our desires to promote liberty. Because I'm convinced if you have a more libertarian society, the freest societies, and we at one time was probably one of the best freest societies, it becomes wealthier and freer than any other system. Socialism, and welfareism, and communism, and authoritarianism, and showcasingism. They do not produce anything like, like what comes from a freest society. We want to make sure that people know and understand this and know the difference. Because it doesn't cost a whole lot to have our freedoms. Because right now it costs us the arm and leg to get a free lunch, which never arrives. I want to thank everybody for tuning in today. To the Liberty Report, please come back soon.