The Chainsaw Experiment
America’s shift away from Constitutional governance
Unlike businesses, which prioritize profitability and efficiency within well-defined scopes, governments must navigate conflicting interests across diverse constituencies while maintaining public accountability.
Modern governments operate at a level of complexity that far exceeds most private corporations. They manage vast service bureaucracies responsible for economic stability, social services, infrastructure, national defense, and regulatory oversight.
This complexity demands leaders with expertise in policy, economics, law, and public administration — skills not easily transferable from the private sector. While business management principles can offer insights, governance presents additional challenges, such as navigating political opposition, ensuring legal compliance, and upholding public trust.
The Constitution and its safeguards
The United States Constitution established an executive branch to carry out the will of the people as expressed through laws passed by Congress — which represents the people through their elected representatives and senators. To prevent overreach, the judiciary was designed as an independent body ensuring that laws align with constitutional principles.
Over more than two centuries, the executive branch evolved into an expansive bureaucracy designed to serve a growing and increasingly complex nation. As bureaucracies expand, they naturally accumulate institutional knowledge and expertise — but also generate inefficiencies and self-perpetuating inertia.
The Constitutional breakdown
Today, America finds itself in an unprecedented experiment where the foundational checks and balances of the Constitution are being ignored. The executive branch has assumed a dominant role, implementing policy largely by decree. A politically deadlocked Congress and a judiciary increasingly seen as partisan have lost the ability — or the will — to enforce constitutional norms.
One of the most alarming developments is the staffing of key administrative posts with political loyalists, whose primary qualification is fealty to the chief executive rather than competence in governance. This shift has transformed agencies designed to serve the public into tools of executive authority, eroding institutional expertise and undermining effective administration.
The chainsaw experiment
As part of this transformation, the chief executive has appointed — without congressional oversight — a billionaire technocrat with no government experience to oversee the restructuring of federal agencies. This technocrat’s metaphor of choice for this effort is a chainsaw.
This approach, borrowed from corporate restructuring playbooks, prioritizes rapid and ruthless cuts over careful reform. The assumption is that government should be treated like a failing company — stripped down, reorganized, and run with business efficiency.
However, government is not a business. Unlike a corporation, it does not exist to generate profit but to provide essential services and uphold constitutional principles. A company that fails can be liquidated or restructured; a failed government means a failed state.
NOTE: The fact that the government organization facing the most draconian cuts is the IRS — the primary revenue source of the government — throws into question the “business case”, true motivation, and intended beneficiaries of this “government efficiency” chainsaw.
What comes next?
America’s democratic experiment has endured through wars, economic crises, and social upheavals, thanks to its constitutional framework. But today, the fundamental structure of governance is at risk. When expertise is replaced by loyalty, when bureaucracies are slashed without regard for their functions, and when the rule of law bends to executive will, the future of democratic governance becomes uncertain.
Reform is necessary — bureaucracies should be efficient, responsive, and accountable. But reform must be undertaken with care, guided by constitutional principles rather than corporate metaphors. A government run by a chainsaw may find that it has cut away not just inefficiency, but the very foundation of democratic stability itself.
Further reading: Why DOGE is the Theranos of Cost-Cutting
