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President-elect Trump has selected Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency to be established by the incoming administration.

Here's to hoping that the Department of Government Efficiency finds a way to put some new wine into 4 million old bottles.

Every once in a while, someone wakes up to the fact that, as Ronald Reagan so eloquently put it, "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem."

Reagan's awakening was nothing new. Civil Service reform has been a topic of conversation for at least 100 years. Initially, it was intended to obviate the "spoils system," which rewarded applicants for federal positions for their loyalty instead of their merit.

In a very real sense, President-elect Trump's proposal to implement Schedule F of Project 2025 is a throwback to innumerable efforts to make peace between a political and professional bureaucracy.

Understandably, the desire to change the direction of the ship of state floats to the top of the national conversation because the electorate "has it up to here" when it comes to dealing with governmental regulations. The easy answer is to point out that the "emperor has no clothes."

That may be addressed, but certainly won't be resolved if the past is any prologue, by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

As inspired as the DOGE may be, as with any malady, the first step is to define the problem, and the problem in this case, is neither economics nor lack of loyalty to the administration. The problem is accountability.

The federal bureaucracy is 4 million people strong, consisting primarily of career public servants with about 4,000 political employees sprinkled on top. These political appointees generally serve at the pleasure of the President, but their reach down into the functional level of government is attenuated at best.

Every statute enacted by Congress needs to be implemented by the Executive Branch through regulations or some other form of guidance document. Every such document needs to be interpreted as it applies to a specific case.

There is a gargantuan process for developing regulations; for instance, there is invariably a difference of opinion over virtually every interpretation.

Illustratively, many such controversial interpretations arguably touch on the quality of the human environment (whatever that term means) and precipitate a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) impact statement. Environmental Impact Statements, by regulation, must contain a range of alternatives, including a "No Action" option.

NEPA statements are lengthy, expensive and extremely time-consuming to generate. Frequently, they are challenged in court, occasionally all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The whole process, at least as far as natural resource projects are concerned, is so weighty as to constitute a deterrent to project developers. In the case of mining, the regulatory process can add a dozen or more years to the timeline for opening a mine, even after the geological and economic investigation is complete.

At every step of the way, there is a bevy of bureaucrats who are making low-level policy decisions about the project. Generally, these decisions are masked behind the government's internal deliberation process. Essentially, someone says, "This is red," and the response is, "What shade of red is it?" followed by an endless debate to which the public is not invited.

This analysis is not limited to environmental issues, of course. Throughout the country, there are projects that may touch on aboriginal interests, precipitating an ongoing process of "tribal consultation" that has no beginning and no end.

Likewise, there are health and social service guidelines that must be accommodated for every project. And there are national security issues to be resolved. The list goes on and on. Virtually everyone agrees that the burden the administrative state places on almost everything in our lives is overwhelming and often of relatively little value.

This burden is not unique to the federal government either. In many cases, state governments magnify the cost and time for project development. Plus, local, municipal and county/borough concerns must be addressed.

The problem is not the regulations per se, and the problem is not just time and money. The problem is the individuals at every layer of the deck. From the placer mine in the bush to the Executive Office of the President, bureaucrat after bureaucrat must be satisfied that no desert pupfish will be disturbed by the pioneering of a road to a remote destination.

We wish the new DOGE well. We hope that, unlike its predecessors, it will find a way to make the government more efficient. But until the real problem is addressed, their diligence will result in just another dusty tome on the bookshelf of the Library of Congress, where all good ideas go to die.

The people who implement the regulations are totally unaccountable to anyone for their decisions. The civil service system, ostensibly, is based on merit, but when a government decision-maker does not have a dog in the fight, his or her decision is, by definition, arbitrary.

Perhaps, Mr. Musk, individual government workers should be fined for failing to find a way to say "yes."