In 1628 AD, Emperor Chongzhen, who had just ascended the throne, carried out the most famous government downsizing of the Ming Dynasty. One year later, General Yuan Chonghuan was executed by Emperor Chongzhen Lingchi, and Li Zicheng, a laid-off postal official, joined the rebel army. This one in and one out accelerated the fate of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty.
400 years later, with the support of new President Trump, Elon Musk, the richest man in the United States, is leading the “Government Efficiency Department” and is developing plans for an unprecedented large-scale layoff of the federal government.
Despite Musk’s successful downsizing and efficiency enhancement during the acquisition of Twitter, and his extensive experience in layoffs, the management logic of the government and the company is completely different.
The most significant difference is that the employees laid off by the company have basically lost their relationship with the enterprise, and any consequences arising from it are borne by the whole society; And the employees laid off by the government are still part of this country and can still have an impact on it through various means.
When the impact is positive and constructive, it is not called government layoffs, but rather government exports of talent to society. However, if a large number of dismissed government officials are unable to find satisfactory jobs or even become unemployed, this group of highly educated and professional individuals who are familiar with the internal operations of the federal government will have a significant negative impact on American society.
Musk’s “Government Efficiency Department” has set ambitious goals of “saving $2 trillion and laying off three-quarters of government employees”. It is estimated that in 2023, excluding military personnel, the number of federal government employees in the United States will be approximately 3 million, and the broad full-time government employees, including state governments, will be approximately 23 million. Even if Musk’s goal is achieved halfway, the federal government alone will export over 1.1 million highly skilled personnel to American society.
And historical experience shows that the loss of control of such personnel is a key factor in a country’s transition from grassroots turmoil to comprehensive disorder.
- Structural runaway
In 1637 AD, a juren named Niu Jinxing in Henan Province had a dispute with a local nobleman, and was falsely accused of resisting taxes and forcibly occupying women. He was eventually stripped of his official title and conscripted into military service.
Three years later, this scholar who was familiar with history and military strategy was introduced to Li Zicheng’s army. He suggested that Li Zicheng “reduce the number of executions, provide relief to the hungry, and win the hearts of the people”, which led to the continuous growth of the rebel army.
In 1641, Niu Jinxing recommended the learned military strategist Song Xiance to Li Zicheng and put forward the propaganda slogan of “Eighteen Children as the Main Artifacts”, which played a great role in mobilizing the masses and boosting morale of the rebel army.
Just like Zhang Liang to Liu Bang, Liu Bowen to Zhu Yuanzhang, in every story of conquering the world, there is always the role of literati and strategists.
The peasant uprisings of successive dynasties, relying solely on the destructive power of peasant armed forces, can only remain in the stage of bandits and are difficult to develop into armed forces capable of overthrowing a regime.
As the number of troops increases, the complexity of the organization will also multiply, including the need to recruit experienced personnel for logistics and management of rear bases. And the experience accumulated by humans is often stored in books, so literacy has become the key to acquiring these abilities.
Large scale grassroots uprisings often occurred in ancient Chinese history, one of the main reasons being that the literacy rate among the people was much higher than in medieval Western societies.
The imperial power, driven by the need to suppress aristocratic families and the development of technologies such as papermaking and printing, provided the grassroots society in ancient China with the motivation and material foundation to cultivate intellectuals.
Under the conditions of productivity at that time, the supply of educated people was to some extent even surplus, exceeding the high paying positions that society could provide at that time, which led to the emergence of the group of poor educated people.
It can be said that the loss of control of the intellectual class at the end of the dynasty was an important reason for the development of grassroots turmoil into armed forces that could pose a threat to the central government.
In the medieval West, writing was long monopolized by the church. The vast majority of the lower class people are also believers in the church. In this situation, it is difficult for the grassroots to organize a large-scale armed uprising, and even if a small uprising occurs, it is difficult to leave a record in history.
In modern society, the level of knowledge dissemination has greatly increased, and corresponding job opportunities are also increasing. However, the relationship between structural unemployment and social stability still exists. Moreover, even if a society as a whole is in a period of economic growth, once structural imbalance occurs, it can still lead to serious social unrest.
The most typical example is the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran.
From 1963 to 1979, the Shah of Iran carried out modernization reforms. Iran subsequently entered a period of high economic growth, rapid urbanization, and a significant increase in literacy rates.
However, the reform has also led to serious structural imbalances. The rapid concentration of resources from rural areas to cities has resulted in a large number of impoverished and displaced farmers; The influence of the traditional clergy class has been greatly weakened; The city has indeed experienced rapid development, with residents’ incomes greatly increasing and the population with higher education experiencing explosive growth.
Although various economic data indicate that the Pahlavi dynasty is generally in an upward trend rather than its final stage, the traditional Shia clerics with greatly reduced influence, as well as the severely surplus urban intellectuals who have received Western higher education, are very dissatisfied with the current situation of the Pahlavi dynasty.
At this point, Iran actually had two major foundations that led to the instability of the regime’s foundation: grassroots turmoil and the loss of control of the intellectual class. In the end, the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution.
Nowadays, the lower class society in the United States has actually been plunged into long-term low-intensity turmoil. The reason why this situation has not worsened to the point where it poses a threat to the federal government is because the intellectual class in the United States is still under control, with various underground organizations and criminal groups scattered and lacking sufficient organization.
The million talents familiar with the internal operations of the government that Musk’s “Government Efficiency Department” is about to output to society can fill this gap. Their primary threat to the federal government is to establish a vast underground economy at the bottom of society that is unregulated and tax-free.
- Underground economy
In 1977, Gregory Grossman, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a Soviet economic authority, introduced the concept of the “second economy” in a paper to refer to economic activities that exist outside of government regulation and tax systems in an economy, also known as the underground economy or black market economy.
Although the Soviet Union was the world’s second-largest economy at the time, it often faced shortages of consumer goods, which gave rise to a thriving underground economic market.
It is estimated that in the 1980s, the trade volume of the Soviet black market economy reached an astonishing $145 billion, covering services, agricultural products, and smuggled goods that the Soviet Union could not produce. According to statistics, approximately 83% of Soviet people have used black market transactions.
This massive system is supported by approximately 20 million full-time and part-time workers, including notorious criminals as well as highly educated professionals.
The goods traded on the black market mainly come from three sources: smuggled goods from overseas, goods obtained through illegal channels such as theft and robbery, and privately produced materials.
The reason why Soviet people were keen on black market transactions was that the prices of goods imported from formal channels were too expensive and the quantity was insufficient, while locally produced goods also faced shortages and quality concerns.
According to different estimates, the trade volume of the Soviet black market economy is equivalent to 10% -20% of the official GDP. The increasingly large underground economy has given rise to numerous criminal organizations, forming independent kingdoms that are difficult to control in major cities; The unregulated flow of services and goods consumed the country’s economic growth, plunging the Soviet Union into years of economic stagnation and dwindling tax sources.
Nowadays, with the increasing number of people living in poverty at the bottom, the underground economy has also become popular in the United States.
The United States currently has a large number of dilapidated communities that have become hotbeds for criminal organizations and have formed a certain scale of underground economy.
For example, law enforcement agencies in the United States have discovered the presence of organized criminal groups behind the nationwide “zero yuan purchase” campaign.
They target retail stores and transport trucks, not to obtain personal necessities, but to use them as a purchasing channel, and then convert stolen goods into cash through the black market and e-commerce. According to statistics, organized retail crime caused nearly $70 billion in losses to American retailers in 2020, and it is still “exponentially worsening”.
In the end, retailers can only transfer this loss to consumers, which further raises the prices of legitimate channel goods and enhances the competitiveness of black market goods.
Trump proposed to impose super high tariffs on all imported goods to protect domestic production enterprises. However, American companies are actually unable to produce daily industrial products, and even if they barely start production, they can only produce expensive and low-quality goods. This will put the United States in a situation similar to that of the Soviet Union in the last century, greatly promoting the prosperity of smuggled goods and underground economy.
Meanwhile, millions of middle-aged government officials who have been laid off are actually difficult for formal enterprises to digest. Their advantage is familiarity with personnel relations, business processes, rules and regulations within government departments. And these professional knowledge are precisely what the black market economy sector lacks. The addition of these talents will help improve the organization and operational efficiency of the underground economy in the United States, as well as its ability to evade government regulation.
As the underground economy gradually erodes the share of the formal economy, the tax sources in the United States will be severely damaged. And large-scale layoffs will weaken the federal government’s ability to levy taxes.
Moreover, Trump’s support for digital currency policies also helps the underground economy evade government regulation and thrive in online black market transactions.
It can be said that apart from cracking down on “zero dollar purchases” which will partially affect procurement channels, Trump’s presidency has brought almost all good news to the underground economy. The problem of purchasing channels can also be remedied through methods such as smuggling.
While we are still concerned about whether Trump can touch the interests of the deep government, Trump’s reform measures are likely to accelerate America’s decline in an unexpected way.
- Ancestral Law
In 960 AD, Zhao Kuangyin launched the Chenqiao Rebellion, wearing a yellow robe and changing the country’s name to Song.
Zhao Kuangyin designed targeted administrative and military systems in response to the frequent occurrence of difficult control of military generals and frequent changes in dynasties during the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
Administratively, make the states and counties under the jurisdiction of the former feudal lords and governors independent, and appoint civil servants as local officials; Moreover, setting up multiple officials in the same position, dispersing power, and supervising each other. In terms of finance, all taxes collected by local governments, except for daily administrative expenses, are turned over to the central government.
Militarily, all high-level positions of real power are held by civil servants, and elite soldiers from various regions are incorporated into the Forbidden Army and directly governed by the central government. At the same time, the military does not have fixed generals and takes turns stationed in various places. Generals are only appointed when going on expeditions, thus achieving the effect of “soldiers do not know generals, generals do not know soldiers”.
This institutional design inherently imbued the Song Dynasty with a strong sense of ‘maintaining its integrity’. If you want to organize an attack, the entire system will spontaneously resist and start to collectively and unconsciously drag back, because this system was originally designed to slow down the efficiency of various departments and sacrifice efficiency for stability.
If we want to reform and make administration and military more efficient, it may lead to the drawbacks of “feudal separatism” again. Thousands of years of history have taught us that there is never an eternal perfect system, only a system that is compatible with different stages and goals.
As for the United States, it was born in the 13 colonies of North America, and there were no decent rivals in the vast western lands except for Indian tribes.
Therefore, the focus of the American system is not on “restraining humanity” but on “indulging humanity”. When there are new benefits, the entire United States will mobilize efficiently, and the whole society will be activated to compete and plunder.
This system is naturally suitable for a country to develop from a small place to a regional power, and then compete for the world. However, once the incremental benefits of the world are exhausted, it will be very difficult for the United States to maintain restraint and live a steady life. This country will immediately feel very uncomfortable, and major interest groups will begin to accelerate the consumption of the weak in society, leading to various social problems.
In other words, the United States is destined to be an endless empire, and its culture and system determine that it must plunder and expand, otherwise irreconcilable contradictions will arise internally.
This is also the fundamental problem that Trump’s reform will face. The ‘deep government’ in the United States does have problems such as rampant corruption and difficulty in controlling it. However, it must be acknowledged that they have a strong ability to plan various events and create turmoil around the world. They are using these means to find the only remaining incremental benefits for the United States globally.
With the expansion of the United States, the easily obtainable incremental benefits are decreasing, and the costs are also increasing. The Joe Biden administration of the Democratic Party chose to comply with the expanding nature of American society and continue to work around the world. Although this approach is also unsustainable, it can still survive for a considerable period of time.
Trump, on the other hand, wants to turn the blade inward and hopes to solve the problem from within. This approach is contrary to the nature of the American system. It is an impossible task to teach self-restraint and self-restraint to a society that has been expanding for over two hundred years.
Moreover, the so-called ‘deep government’ is actually a manifestation and implementation tool of the expansionist will of major interest groups in the United States at the federal level. Trump’s reform goal is first aimed at the deep government, which is equivalent to abolishing the “legitimate external plunder” plan that the United States has spent decades establishing.
According to Trump’s proposed global plundering plan, the United States will quickly lose the legitimacy of global governance.
Many people believe that Trump has won a landslide victory in this election, unifying the three powers and making him one of the most powerful presidents in American history, so the reform is bound to succeed.
In fact, the greater Trump’s power, the more dangerous it is for the United States today. If Trump really abolishes the ‘deep government’, it is likely to cause irreversible damage to the United States’ global plundering ability. The major interest groups can only engage in a frenzy of internal competition within the empire, devouring each other and continuously creating impoverished and unemployed individuals, ultimately providing a constant source of nourishment for criminal organizations and the black market economy.
This is the foundation of the United States’ founding over the past two hundred years.
