Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) project has helped to shine a light on the workings of power in the 21st century Western world. Most notably, the $50 billion a year USAID budget has been shown to be supporting causes that are, to put it kindly, difficult to justify to the taxpayers that fund them. In the UK, I and other sleuths such as the irrepressible Charlotte Gill, have long tried to find where both public and private funds are used and with what effect on democratic politics. Although some of this funding is, at face value, a waste of money, the problems go deeper than that. Indeed, the only reason it’s not called ‘dodgy’ is that it is, shockingly, entirely legal.
In the few spare moments I have, I’ve been trawling through the data relating to contracts between the UK Government and 130,000 service providers agreed over the last 10 years or so. Mainly, this has been an attempt to develop tools for making sense of the vast amounts of data. But along the way, some things have caught my eye. There are many manifestly absurd projects that are amply-funded by increasingly hard-pressed taxpayers. I frequently point out that these funding relationships are clearly intended to sustain ideological agendas favoured by government. But there’s more to be said. Because we want a deeper understanding of how the Blob works – how it uses private money to leverage public funds and policy – and more pertinently, why it works.
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Very good.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that what we fundamentally need is for a very large number of voters to start rethinking what they believe the state should be doing, in the direction of it doing much less. Some think that, but others are asleep or think that it’s fine for the state to give money away for “causes” as long as they (the voter) thinks the causes are good.
The kind of democracy we have (representative – which is I think the only practical one for an evolved society such as ours) is brutal one because the state coerces money from people with threat of force and that money is necessarily not always spent on things that everyone approves of. When you think about it, it’s quite immoral. So the bar for what we get to steal money for should be very high. We’ve drifted into a mindset that assumes the state should be doing all sorts of stuff that it never used to.
Switzerland demonstrates the possibility of a highly evolved society having a considerable amount of direct democracy. Moreover, on most relevant metrics Switzerland is one of the most successful countries in the world. The more democracy, and the more decentralization, there is the better things will be.
I don’t know much about Switzerland. I know they make heavy use of referenda and have a federal structure with a lot of tax raising powers delegated to the cantons. Perhaps that system is part of their success, along with avoiding wars and having excellent human capital to start with which has not been significantly diluted over time (it’s quite hard to become a citizen I believe). But I am sure their state spaffs money on stuff that not everyone likes – but probably less than the UK.
Remember though, why is Switzerland the home of all the big globalist corporations, including the daddy….The IBS.
And includes Davos, home of the World Empire of Fascism.
Numbered bank accounts, that’s why the Davos Deviants like the place.
If we can get people to start thinking of taxation as outright theft rather than as “paying your fair share” that would be amazing progress.
But it will take a lot of deprogramming.
It is not quite theft as you do get some things in return, things that you want and need. But you are being forced to participate in a communal scheme that you don’t necessarily agree with, for things that you do not benefit from and that could easily just be paid for directly by people who value those things. I would start from “why do we need a state and a government” and go from there – but this tends to frighten people and steam comes out of their ears.
I’m all for more referenda. Decisions need to be taken away from politicians, for so many reasons. The more taken by referenda, the better.
Possibly, though they cost money and people will still vote to steal other people’s money. I would like to see what the state is allowed to spend money on severely limited, by a law that requires a supermajority to repeal.
I see it as theft.
When a mobster offers his “protection”, he no doubt claims to be providing a service. But it’s not as if there was a choice in the matter. First came the theft, then came the service.
If the fee and the service were optional, that of course would be a whole other matter.
Well it depends on the service.
The state does indeed provide services – genuinely useful ones. Mobsters don’t. Some useful services could be opted out of – those should not be provided by the state. Others I can’t see a practical way to exclude people from – law and order, national defence, planning of infrastructure networks. I think it’s OK to force people to pay for those. But that’s a tiny fraction of what the state currently does.
We should definitely take a zero sun approach here – list all the ‘services’ – and let people choose if they want to fund them with their money or not
How would you fund things like defence and law & order, network planning? Everyone benefits from those and it’s impossible to exclude people from doing so.
I was thinking more close to home initially,
eg would you like you local council to spend your money on a) emptying the bins or b) supporting drag artists lecturing in primary schools…. ummmm A pls, not B
I know it’s an idealistic thought and very unlikely, however somehow we need to bring voter (funder) input back into the equation
Well, I don’t want my local council to do either of those things. I suppose if they want they can collect bins, but I want to be able to opt out of that service and I want the bin collection service to be fully funded by the people that use it and not paid for through taxation. I don’t think education should be paid for through taxation either, other than possibly some kind of safety net for the very poor who cannot afford it.
I think mobsters do offer a service. Protection. From other mobsters. And if they’re “good” mobsters they keep some sort of law and order.
Exactly the same as the nation state.
Sort of. They also offer to protect you from them – that’s really blackmail or extortion. I think nation states evolved to serve a genuine need and they are logical. They have just grown too large and like everything else that starts off with good intentions have become self serving. Whether or not you can wind them back completely is somewhat academic as we are unlikely to get anywhere close to that point – sadly. But getting a fair way down the road and making people think much harder about what it’s right to demand money with menaces for is maybe achievable.
I’m unsure about that. I do know, however, that Texas has eliminated income tax and local councils are only permitted to convene around 140 days per year, to cut down on bureaucratic waste and hasten decisions. How this works for the genuinely needy, I have no idea – but the opposite system in California is not working that well either. A balance between the two might be the answer.
It’s why the rich from California are moving to Texas, I read.
Now another conspiracy theory is coming into place — Pay per mile, what happened to road tax and when did it stop going into road maintenance FFS!
It hasn’t been Road Tax for a very long time, and I don’t think it was ever hypothecated even when it was supposedly for roads and road infrastructure.
Now it’s Car tax or Vehicle Excise Duty. As soon as you let Customs and Excise involved then you’re in trouble, they have powers that the police don’t as they work directly for the monarch I believe.
I remember reading a comment that the closest an Englishman came to the state before WWI was when he visited the Post Office to purchase a stamp. I rather like that description of a time before government thought it should try to control our lives, although perhaps the existence of income tax should be considered as well.
Unlike some, I don’t object to taxes on principle, just to how many there are and how much we pay for stuff the state has no business being involved in. What taxes were there before income tax? I have not given much thought to what the best way to raise money to pay for essential government services is.
Government of the Blob, by the Blob, for the Blob.
Funded by taxpayers. NIce money if you can get it.
Better not get myself started on charity gigs, as jobs for the boys and girls, although pains me to think a charity gig alongside Big Brother might be the most expedient means of ridding Britain of the Mad, Bad and Dangerous Minister for Energy Insecurity.
Thank you for another thought-provoking article.
2 Millipedes feeding from the trough. Both multi-millionaires from the system. I am sure the family has bought the requisite yacht in Monte Carlo
Government is legalised looting and plundering. That is all it really is.
Tax Wasted in Buckets of Billions
Here’s a thought to save any British DOGE a lot of time and effort.
Instead of asking every civil servant what they did last week, simply bin all legislation since 1990 and freeze recruitment for five years, merging departments as they shrink. Done.
‘According to a report by Thomson Reuters, since 1990, the UK has introduced approximately 52,741 laws….’
And everything has got so much better…..or not really……..
That was the rift between Musk and Ramaswamy. Musk is all about layoffs, cost cutting and being more efficient.
Ramaswamy wanted to revoke thousands of laws and regulations.
Ideally, you do both.
Didn’t Vivek the Pharma con man, who poisoned people to make his billions, want to flood the US with Indians on H1B visas? I guess as Gov of Ohio he can turn that state into another Gujarati.
Mr Musk will know this only too well and no doubt has a plan but the blob, as I am sure you will know as well, when asked to make cuts, cut front line services and keep all the administrative staff.
Front line staff are generally the youngsters so, by freezing recruitment, the senior administrative staff move on or retire and the admin is attended to by ever fewer employees who then have less time for endless meetings about the next meetings.
I fundamentally believe that charity has become an industry- over paid over funded by govt – I do not want govt choosing which charity I should fund. Secondly how much spending is never reviewed for what is actually delivered – I suspect that would be embarrassing
Since Comic Relief and Bob Geldoff
A joke in itself
I’ve had the misfortune to see some corporate charities close up, and it’s not pretty. They literally run like corporates, with similar sized spending… very little thought for efficiency
I challenge anyone to find a recipient of tax payer funds that could reasonably be considered to be on the freedom, free markets or liberty side of neutral. These beliefs are usually described by the left and their mouth pieces in the media as “right wing” but we all know how daft that is.
Is there any grant recipient which investigates the case for smaller government, less tax, more freedom from regulation. I doubt it.
One consequence of the Blair revolution was to set up these peo-left, globalist entities and fund them behind our backs. And 14 years of Tory government and a similar period before that in opposition saw no attempt by the Tories to stop this.
There could be many reasons for that. One, I think is the sheer scale of the enterprise. The sprawl of the state and the NGO complex it supports is so vast that I suspect anyone with half a mind to do something about it quickly decides “to he’ll with it, if you can’t beat them, join them” and hops right on the gravy train.
I suspect a whistle-blower would be immediately blackballed.
Whistleblowers in the UK are less popular than a rattlesnake in a lucky dip.
It’s interesting that what seems to be the majority of people who harp on about the needs of the people are all, in a sense, institutionalised. They command fat salaries, in quangos and organisations the BBC as well as charities They in turn are supported by likes of the Guardian and their tax dodging Cayman Island accounts. Not to mention the billionaires who are so numerous who virtue signal their way around the world in their private jets.
Yet they still have the plebs supporting them and voting for their political friends.
I think maybe we should convince President Trump and Elon Musk to take their British citizenship and come over to sort this bunch out.
I don’t trust anyone who proclaims to want to dedicate themselves to helping others. Literally no one.
As far as I’m concerned they are either deranged or deceitful.
One of the biggest recipients of all time of government largesse at great cost to the taxpayer (being almost the sole reason this person is as rich as he is) is….
Drum roll…
MR ELON REEVE MUSK
That people don’t see past the official line to see the true purposes of his DOGE program is … regrettable, to say the least.
But people do so long for white knights. Ah well…
Stay sane, everyone.
PS I pray that Musk’s very deep character flaws won’t cause us all great problems. As I have said and written many times, he is a very intelligent conman.
You maybe right. What exactly is his play though?
Self preservation?
Well, you don’t really explain.
Musk’s wealth is in TSLA (Tesla paper).
If the value of TSLA should crash he would be blown out of the water.
Think about it.
The idea of democratic oversight by the people is a nice one, but it’s not realistic.
The relationship between the population and the state isn’t so much of shareholder and board of directors as it is of a protection racket where the mobster has pretty much all the power and squeezes business owners for as much money as he thinks he can get away with.
In this instance, the “protected” business owner has exactly zero oversight over how the mob organisations spends the extorted money.
The only way to limit the power of the mob organisation, or the state if you will, is to limit the money it gets. Both of those is hard and ultimately quite dangerous, but the only option other than paying up and shutting up.
This is soft stealing, but stealing nevertheless. It’s like the corrupt medieval monks of old. Basically David Miliband got the job through bribery I think, The omniscient, master- meddler (Blair) encouraged the IRC to hire his man in exchange for bunging it billions of UK tax-payers’ hard-earned money, it seems to me. And this is happening with lots of NGOs and ‘charities’ across the board with similar promotions of self-interest. Perhaps some of these arrangements are genuine but the model is set up so no-one can oversee to ensure it is. No wonder we are skint. It’s the hidden aspect of this leeching which is so sinister and insidious.
Over 180,000 charities in the UK with many being sustained by govt grants (our money) – and now we find we are supporting ones from overseas too.
The govt spends over 150 billion a year of our money on grants (15% of all government expenditure). Around two-thirds is earmarked for legitimate (although probably not overseen properly) govt organisations but one-third goes to the voluntary sector including NGOs and charities. I read the Charity Commission comprises 30 people – so again there is no real democratic oversight of how this money is actually spent. The corrupt charity industrial complex ensures that democracy is undermined – on our dime.
No Charity should be funded though taxes. Charities should rely on public money given freely by the public, philanthropic donors or private businesses. Not taxpayers money. It’s not just central government that does this, I’m shocked what charities my local authority funds, through council taxes.
Absolutely – it should be made illegal
The BBC is the biggest beneficiary of this ‘benign’ sponsorship charity – proven to be not so benign in recent months/years.
This is the very crux of the problems we are facing today that is driving instability and destroying Western countries from within. This is only happening in rich western countries that heavily tax everything that moves and that can easily divert billions to these parasitic elite grifters who have found a way to make a very lucrative income while not having to actually work or produce anything. Most of these grifters are highly educated and have never worked a day in their lives. They form a revolving door between government and NGOs and fake charities that form an open checkbook to countries treasuries. They look after and reward themselves for loyalty and service. This is all funded with your tax money. What a scam, another one! We should have an Academy Awards for the gest scams of the year. They are getting so elaborate and creative.