- Elon Musk says a leaderboard of “dumb” government spending will expose waste — and he wants your two cents.
- Communications experts said it would gamify the conversation and probably get a lot of attention.
- Still, some also warned that it could oversimplify something that can be complicated.
Elon Musk wants to gamify the act of cutting government spending — and experts in communications and marketing say it’s a savvy strategy to get people to pay attention to a dry subject.
The Tesla CEO said this week that he planned to post a public “leaderboard for the most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”
“This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining,” Musk posted, along with a promise to let the public weigh in on specific cuts.
Musk would create the leaderboard as part of a new position in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration: head of a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, which would be charged with cutting federal spending.
Musk said all the activities of DOGE — which he’s been chosen to lead alongside the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and is named after a Musk-linked cryptocurrency — would be published online in the name of transparency.
While the effectiveness of Musk’s leaderboard remains to be seen, experts told Business Insider it showed his marketing savvy — even if it could also encourage “gotcha” moments that need more context.
The board promises entertainment, competition, and interactivity marketed to a group with skin in the game: the American public with an eye to their tax dollars.
And it would turn an often wonky exercise — government budgeting — into a participatory game of winners and losers. In the process, it would also probably give Musk a valuable prize: our attention.
