Elon Musk—via his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)—exposing and attempting to cut government waste is wonderful. However, it’d be even better if Elon focused more on striking closer to the root of the problem: the public’s economic ignorance from which all the disastrous, coercive, competition-immune, monopolistic government central planning, spending, and also warmongering grows. This is precisely what Ludwig von Mises did, and I like to call it the “Misesian formula” for prosperity. Mises devoted parts of his majestic treatise Human Action (1949) to the formula. In a section aptly titled “Economics and the Citizen,” Mises writes:
Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence….
All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of…economics. Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines…. Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories….
As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake….
…all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.
Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.
Since it’s real freedom and capitalism that lead to prosperity, explaining this to people is, per Mises, “the primary civic duty.”
Riding the wave of economic education, Javier Milei had been spearheading on his way to electoral triumph in Argentina, on November 8, 2023 Elon tweeted a Hayek meme writing: “Best economist ever.” A week later, on December 4, he tweeted, “Great book by Hayek” while linking to Hayek’s classic book The Road To Serfdom, and another meme quoting Hayek: “nothing could contribute more to the cure of humanity’s ills than to give people a better understanding of economics.” Elon is thus increasingly aware of the need to educate, but still far from having a Misesian ethos-understanding.
Mankind’s problems are overwhelmingly the result of the public’s economic ignorance which then, via democracy, manifests itself in the order-destroying bureaucracies. It is their ignorance—that of your neighbor, family members, and likely former self—that is near the root of the problem, not whatever homo sapiens people vote for. The very root of this economic ignorance, as significantly shown by founder of the “Austrian School of Economics,” Carl Menger, is the fact that money (and its vital emerging benefits like profit-loss calculation), trade, the division of labor, economic competition, etc. are—to borrow Adam Ferguson’s popular phrase—“indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.” Hardly anyone, and much less people of significant influence, likely including Elon, are aware of this.
One of my favorite little-known Libertarian books is Walter Block’s I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians, which contains over 80 autobiographical essays-interviews of leading libertarians/free marketeers like Walter himself, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Peter Boettke, etc., describing how they became libertarians/free marketeers. It is easy to see how many of them went from being ignorant big government, socialist myth-believers to champions of freedom and emerging civilization, by stumbling upon sound economics.
Mises (1881-1973) died long before the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and pro-capitalist reforms in China, thus he spent his lifetime fighting a losing intellectual battle, as socialist myths expanded their control of more countries. He writes:
From time to time I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and point policy in the right direction. I have always looked for evidence of a change in ideology. But I never actually deceived myself; my theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.
After WWI, he carried the same determination in his Atlas-like intellectual-educational efforts:
How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament…. Again and again I had met with situations from which rational deliberation found no means of escape; but then the unexpected intervened, and with it came salvation. I would not lose courage even now. I wanted to do everything an economist could do. I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true.
Mises again, in Human Action:
...in the field of social organization and economic policies. Here the best theories are useless if not supported by public opinion. They cannot work if not accepted by a majority of the people. Whatever the system of government may be, there cannot be any question of ruling a nation lastingly on the ground of doctrines at variance with public opinion. In the end the philosophy of the majority prevails. In the long run there cannot be any such thing as an unpopular system of government….
The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history….
…great men cannot succeed in adjusting social conditions to their plans if they do not convince public opinion.
The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.
Mises’s wisdom above predicts what is happening to Elon and his DOGE, and again highlights the need to “convince public opinion.” Although Elon has gained support from many, a large percentage of the economically-ignorant public is increasingly, fanatically against Elon’s efforts. Bolshevik-like, intellectually dangerous ideologues like Robert Reich have been constantly spewing anti-economics and violence-inducing class-warfare rhetoric. For example, on March 12, 2025, Reich wrote in Facebook:
Elon Musk is trying to steal the federal government — slashing public services, firing civil servants, and handing power to billionaires like himself. I salute the brave public servants who are resisting this coup.
This type of mindset by the economically ignorant masses have made Musk one of the most hated men in America, to be destroyed via lawfare and even physical violence. From January 29 to March 10, 2025, there have been 9 attacks on Tesla locations. On March 10, X/Twitter suffered a relatively massive outage which, at the time, Elon felt originated in Ukraine, showing the potential dangers of being against the interests of millions vested in neocon warfare. I would not be surprised if SpaceX and Tesla are already—or will eventually be—victims of internal sabotage. Statistically, as the anti-Elon dice keep getting rolled at an increasing rate, he will likely be brought down somehow. Besides, as Vincent Cook’s article “Is DOGE a Dog When It Comes to Real Federal Spending?” shows, there are too many legal obligations for DOGE to make significant cuts.
Elon is attacking the symptoms of economic ignorance, not the root causes like Mises did. With a more Misesian intellectual background and educational strategy, Javier Milei—similar to Ron Paul—managed to educate enough people to win the presidency of Argentina. In an interview with Ben Shapiro, Milei explained how the intellectual revolution grew from economic education:
This time young people were really educated. We would organize what we called the concerts. They were political rallies... At these rallies we had stands...with books. Minister Bullrich...said something brilliant, “you should pay more attention to what Milei is doing. It’s not normal for a politician to be talking to 20 or 30 thousand people about Hayek.” Young people started to evangelize at home with their parents and grandparents.
Mises wrote:
Liberalism is rationalistic. It maintains that it is possible to convince the immense majority… It has full confidence in man’s reason. It may be that this optimism is unfounded and that the liberals have erred. But then there is no hope left for mankind’s future.
In other words, we must believe that we can educate “the immense majority,” and thus act accordingly, even if it proves to be futile, otherwise “there is no hope left for mankind’s future.” Mises concludes Human Action:
The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.
