how to make doge sexy

I find it quite ironic that everyone loved Elon when he was making billions, and now half of America hates him for the most altruistic thing he's ever done. The federal government does waste extraordinary amounts of money and everyone knows it. So why does everyone hate the guy trying to fix it?

Because cutting doesn't feel good. It feels like taking. The bad PR framing writes itself — the richest man on the planet is so greedy he's taking away from the poor. Of course the reality couldn't be further from the truth, but hoping that the average Karen will understand economics is like hoping she'll understand calorie balance and cut back on burgers.

alignment

When DOGE kills a program, the people who depended on that program scream. Everyone else who benefits from the cuts can't feel those benefits immediately, so they shrug. Nobody cheers, because nobody gets anything. The savings vanish into the federal budget, an incomprehensible abstraction that no human can feel. This is the fundamental problem with government efficiency as a political project. You're asking people to tolerate disruption with no visible upside. Every dollar you cut has a constituency that will fight for it. Every dollar you save has no constituency at all, because it disappears into the void. Government spending actually went up 6% in DOGE's first year. DOGE failed because it solved a math problem without solving a PR problem — it wasn't sexy enough.

fix - bribe them!

I was thinking about how I'd structure this to actually make it exciting. And I think we should use the oldest trick in the playbook — bribe them!

If 50 cents of every dollar saved by DOGE went directly to the American people, DOGE would be the most popular political department ever and Americans would suddenly love Elon again.

My instinct is that DOGE should be the department responsible for building and implementing UBI. But they should start embarrassingly low - like $10 a month. Then they should publish a kill list of every department and program in the US, let American citizens vote on which ones to cut, and show exactly how much each cut would increase the UBI.

I liked this idea so much that I vibecoded a prototype - govzempic The mechanic is super simple - we realize that we don't need a department xyz so we cut it and 50% of spending on xyz goes to the UBI and the other 50% goes to paying off the national debt.

Govzempic shows people 3 super important things

• benefits of full libertarian government and cutting waste
• make UBI feel realistic
• shows the importance of economic growth

If we went full libertarian, implement UBI and bump economic growth to 10% annually, in 10 years the average household of 4 people would be getting $6.7k a month¹ — making work truly optional for the first time in history!