By putting all those safety measures, what is it that you're destroying?

Maybe you're destroying.

There are a lot of things that cannot occur in the economy because people cannot go through the hurdle of all this regulation.

So what you kill is much more damaging than what you're trying to protect.

I'm Bethany McLean.

Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea?

And I'm Luigi Zengales.

We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.

And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.

First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? And most importantly,

what isn't? We ought to do better by the people that get left behind. I don't think we shouldn't

kill the capital system in the process. So if the audio is a little bit off, I need to apologize with my listeners because the desire

to produce timely episodes of capitalisans make me work even when I'm traveling.

At this point, it's almost impossible not to have heard of Doge.

It's the acronym for the brand new Department of Government Efficiency,

which is going to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswamy. Doge is also a play on the cryptocurrency

Dogecoin, I guess a favorite of Elon Musk? Clever. Hmm. The name also serves to obscure the fact

that Doge is not, in fact, a government agency. But for sure, its goals are

grandiose, streamlining government, something that has alluded pretty much everyone who has set out

to do it, including Ronald Reagan. Nor is Doge going for small. Musk spoke of cutting $2 trillion

from federal spending, which is about 30% of the annual figure, Trump has called Doge the Manhattan Project of

our time. In their op-ed, Maske Ramanswamy said that at every step, Doge would pursue three

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