Lainey Newman: The hidden risks of Trump’s anti-government agenda
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There are a lot of reasons to complain about current political, economic and social realities in the U.S. But there are also reasons to protect the systems in place that work, which are many.
One of the first things I noticed a couple years ago when I traveled to India, my grandfather’s homeland, is that no one follows traffic law. It’s not that traffic laws don’t exist on the books, though — drivers simply don’t follow them. On the streets of Mumbai and Delhi, it’s every man for himself. Lanes, lines and signs are disregarded. It’s normal, and expected, for cars and motorbikes to hit one another and move on.
When I mentioned this experience to a friend from the Dominican Republic, he reported a similar observation. “It’s a miracle,” he said, that in the U.S., everyone, in general, abides by traffic laws. “How would you even go about solving a problem like that?” he asked. The same could be asked if our country’s leadership uprooted the rules and norms we rely on.
In the U.S., we take for granted that our systems, though flawed, are functional and effective. It is an abnormality — and a reason to complain — when such systems don’t work. From the responsible collection of taxes to the protection of private property, from adherence to traffic law to accountable economic transactions, we subconsciously depend on the reliability of these systems hundreds of times every day.
When things don’t work, there are generally paths of recourse, often through the legal system. People may understandably disagree with the Supreme Court’s ideological bent, but on a more immediate level, if someone trespasses your property, you can take them to court. And a company cannot take your money without giving you the product you purchased because, if it did, you or the government could sue. It is not so in many places.
The functionality of these systems is not a forgone conclusion, and it is much harder to build and maintain effective systems than it is to destroy them. It takes a combination of enforcement mechanisms, deterrence pressure and collective buy-in to build working systems. When those are disregarded, what we risk is the failure of the systems on which societal order depends.
In this presidential election, we are faced with one candidate — former President Trump — who is willing to bend and break these systems for his own gain.
If the reality of “draining the swamp” is cutting federal employees and agencies, there will be no way to appeal the amount of your Social Security check if you believe it’s wrong. Or, if your employer is shorting your wages, the government won’t have the personnel or resources to rectify that. And with no employees, there will be no enforcement of housing standards, incentivizing developers to use shoddy materials and flout safety standards. The list goes on.
The same is true for products we buy. As Americans, we put faith in marketable goods because whether we are concretely aware of it or not, there are standards in place for what we buy. And if a product causes some unexpected harm, we are either consciously or subconsciously aware that there is be a path of recourse. This knowledge inspires confidence in the market and facilitates ease of economic transaction.
Take cars as an example. We expect the cars sold in the U.S. to have met certain government safety standards and that, if safety problems arise, companies take responsibility, recall the cars, and compensate consumers.
Well, in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, Trump has pledged to appoint Elon Musk to his administration if he wins. Musk feels U.S. government regulations have held his companies back. His role in the administration would be to slash such regulation.
Of course, Musk is not the only CEO who disdains government regulation. Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the infamous submersible company, felt similarly and flouted government regulation, which resulted in the faulty Titan submersible that exploded and killed all occupants in June 2023. Not quite as extreme, but Tesla was forced by the federal government to recall the majority of its newest model, the CyberTruck, five times due to safety concerns. These are just a couple examples, but they illustrate that even though regulation is annoying and burdensome, it is also often incredibly important.
It is true that there is much to be desired about the current state of affairs of U.S. government. But as a former professor of mine often said, “Don’t mistake the familiar for the inevitable.” We are familiar with generally functioning systems of government, but it does not have to be this way. And if we aren’t mindful, the systems on which we depend could fall apart.
Lainey Newman co-teaches a class on democratic breakdown at Harvard University. A lifelong Pittsburgh resident, she is the author of “Rust Belt Union Blues” and is a current JD candidate at Harvard Law School.