Mild Peril

Happy #LetterboxdFriday! Time to post your #LastFourWatched 🍿

Vivek Ramaswamy's thought experiment for reducing the size of government on @lexfridman: "Day 1, anybody in the federal bureaucracy who's not elected, whose Social Security number ends in an odd number, you're out. [Day 2], of those who remain, if your Social Security starts in an even number, you're in, and if it starts with an odd number, you're out. That's a 75% reduction." "Now imagine that you could run that thought experiment at scale, but you had a metric for screening people who had the greatest competence, as well as the greatest commitment and knowledge of the Constitution. That would immediately raise not only the civic character of the United States... it would also stimulate the economy. The regulatory state is like a wet blanket on the economy." "One of the virtues of that thought experiment is you don't have a bunch of lawsuits you're dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination... [And] the reality is... on Day 3, not a thing will have changed for the ordinary American, other than their government being a lot smaller and more restrained, and spending a lot less money."