ELON MUSK and Vivek Ramaswamy are keen to whip the American government into shape. On November 14th their newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced it wants to hire “super-high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” to get to work on cost-cutting. It is easy to ridicule the enterprise. Mr Musk has talked of ripping $2trn out of the federal budget, an amount that, if done in one year, would exceed the government’s entire discretionary spending. Moreover, Donald Trump has given DOGE less than two years to get the job done. And the entity is a small advisory body, not an actual department, with a name inspired by a joke cryptocurrency.