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So Donald Trump has picked Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head up his widely touted Department of Government Effiiciency-DOGE -to tame the Federal bureaucratic Leviathan. One can only hope they have as much success as Argentine President Xavier Milei has had in slashing his country’s bureaucratic bloat.
Then there’s the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which has a husky-type dog as its logo.
Trump’s plans to possibly emulate Argentina’s Milei and Dogecoin’s cute little dog symbol aside, I think naming the new budget-slashing government agency DOGE has a not-so-hidden meeting.
Doge was the title given to the leader of the Venetian Republic, the great maritime and trading power of Western Europe’s Middle Ages and Renaissance. Venice’s swift and graceful galleys dominated Europe’s maritime trade and her warships ruled the Mediterranean for centuries. By the 1200s, Venice was the wealthiest city in Europe. By the early mid-1330s, the bustling port city may have been three times the size of London.1
Venice’s wealth and power were based on two factors: location and what was initially a high degree of economic freedom. Venice occupied the halfway point between Medieval and Renaissance Europe and the Middle East. First with the Eastern Roman Empire (aka the Byzantine Empire) and later with the huge Moslem Ottoman Empire, Venetian merchants profited tremendously by acting as the middlemen between East and West. This position allowed them to control the western end of the Silk Road and the lucrative trade in spices and other luxury goods that went along with that control.
Venetian domination of Western Europe’s luxury trade was cemented by the maritime city-state setting up trading colonies all across the Mediterranean and beyond. By the early 1100s, ten thousand Venetian citizens lived in Constantinople.2 The trading colony of Tanais on the Sea Azov at the northern end of the Black Sea dealt in Russian grain, Chinese silk, and slaves.
What created this far-flung maritime empire was a merit-based open oligarchy. Venetian merchants would originally form limited two-man partnerships called commendas. These were usually one-time-only trading ventures involving both an older and a younger man. The older merchant stayed behind in Venice to manage the partnership’s affairs and provide most of the capital while the younger man handled the actual trading venture himself.
If this first venture proved profitable, others would follow and a young merchant could look forward to a steady rise through the ranks of Venice’s trading aristocracy. This rise could finally include membership in the main governing bodies of the Venetian Republic, including the Council of Forty and the Ducal Council. A successful young merchant could even dream of becoming Doge.
Eventually, however, this openness to new blood fossilized as the upper tiers of Venice’s commercial aristocracy became increasingly jealous of their privileges and gradually pulled up the ladder of advancement behind them. Entry into the top ranks of the city-state’s ruling elite became very restrictive and membership ended up being mostly hereditary.
But what may have put the maritime powerhouse on the road to permanent decline was that starting in the early 14th century, the Venetian state began to nationalize trade.3 State-organized trading fleets began to monopolize the Republic’s commerce, and individuals still wanting to take part in overseas trade were hit by punishing taxes. The end result was that long-distance trade became the sole province of the most powerful nobles.
This economic and social rigidity led to the gradual loss of Venetian power until it was first challenged by other Italian city-states such as Genoa, and then supplanted by England and Holland in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. In 1797, Venice lost its independence and became part of the Austrian Empire. Today, the swarms of tourists that descend on Venice annually know little or nothing of the city’s former glory.
Musk and Ramaswamy undoubtedly already know where the title of DOGE came from. Whether Trump knew its original meaning before the two tech entrepreneurs came on the scene, I don’t know. But he certainly knows now, and he, along with the cohort of disrupters he’s planning to fill his administration with, will work relentlessly to return the USA to its free market roots and restore the risk-taking spirit of America and Venice in its prime.
Still, the trick is, even if Trump has a splendidly successful second term, how is he and his band of bomb throwers going to prevent America over the long term from sliding back into the same corrupt elitist trap and economic stagnation that sank the Republic of Venice?
Trump is planning to reintroduce Schedule F rules, which makes it easier to fire obstructive bureaucrats, something which he was beginning to implement at the end of his first term. But would making it simpler to fire government officials for merely four years hold up beyond the end of Trump's second term in 2028?
If Trump and his incoming demolition team are successful over the next four years, that would virtually guarantee another Republican president in the White House beyond 2028. Otherwise, the rot that nearly destroyed the USA and did destroy the Venetian Republic could warp American society once again.
Endnotes
Discussion (44)
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“. … how is he and his band of bomb throwers going to prevent America over the long term from sliding back into the same corrupt elitist trap and economic stagnation that sank the Republic of Venice?”
This administration’s work does not offer any guarantees to further administrations or citizens. I think it is a reminder that there are no new stories and that when we were given free will, we were also given the responsibility of choosing to remain free and resist temptation- like economic and power seductions - every day and every generation. We are meant to work; not just to be productive but to discern right from wrong and choose between difficult paths.
When a generation or 2 do not work or are allowed or encouraged not to work or try hard that magical intellectual and character muscle memory weakens. My personal current events obsession is the determination for many to remain really fat (or drug their way out of it,) instead of accepting that a lifetime of appropriate food choice, portion control and routine physical activity will (largely) avoid really fat.
Insert your own behavioural bugaboo - I’m in an airport so have surplus of choice - for evidence of the most basic poor or lazy choices. Americans (and the rest of the civilized world) have to make choices to prevent America from a return to corrupt practice. I pray that Trump et al are successful and there is a beginning to reestablishing America’s national character. They have been given clear notice that they will be fought hard and dirty every single day.
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I appreciate that you are willing and able to make a choice about this issue and abide by that choice as well as express your views on it. I support that effort towards healthier behavior of food indulgence. Part of that is your personal commitment and part is a benefit of the society in which we live that guarantees our exercise of free will. Of course, that last guarantee is subject to our ability to preserve that which our Founders bequeathed us.
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Yep.
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But much of this involves doctors. For some reason, inside the vaulted halls of our medical schools, nutrition is usually given less than one semester's worth of mention.
Physicians who were educated prior to 1985 or so fared a bit better than that. But even among this group, their clients had already been convinced by ads on TV, and by super markets whose aisles were dominated by processed and junk foods. So the doctor's sound advice to exercise more and eat in a healthy fashion fell on deaf ears.
These issues factor into how it is that these days we have a subset of our citizenry that is growing every day, who go to the doctors to get a prescription for Ozempic. This new drug is one touted for its excellence at being a quick fix for weight loss. (At least according to the word on the street.)
Diabetics in my family and small circle of friends have all had their doctors explain the wonders of the drug. But each one of them did some research on Ozempic. Critics view it as being a drug with some unexpected side effects. After all, it delays the digestive processes so that food you eat today will still be in your intestines a week from now. To them, that seemed like a recipe for risky consequences.
Someone like "Mr Science" Fauci would tell these people "We have no proof of any possibility of risks from this government agency approved remedy. And remember to get your latest COV booster while you take it."
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They never study the things they don't want to find out.
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