Vitalik agrees with DOGE’s questioning of the use of U.S. government funds: Please follow the venture capital model and allow small mistakes to be exchanged for big opportunities

The government efficiency committee (DOGE) previously formed by Trump and Musk has raised many questions about the US government's use of funds, and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has also recently echoed DOGE's views. He believes that if the government only tries to avoid embarrassment on social media, it will miss out on greater development opportunities. Vitalik advocates that the government should adopt a venture capital (VC) model, willing to tolerate small-scale mistakes and focus on carefully evaluating large-scale projects.

The US government wastes a lot of unnecessary money

DOGE previously stated that the US government's use of funds is quite ridiculous, and listed some examples of the government's "absurd" use of funds, such as:

1. Purchasing $28 million in copyright for "green camouflage pattern" designs for the Afghan National Army's uniforms.
2. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent $5 million to help fashionable people quit smoking.
3. Spending $510,000 in public funds to study how heroin affects the sexual behavior of Japanese quails.
4. The NIH spent $3 million observing hamsters fighting.
5. Spending $170 million annually to maintain a mosquito facility.
6. Spending $1 million to print official documents that no one wants to read.
7. Spending $860,000 annually to pay for warehouse management fees to maintain some useless waste.
8. Spending $500,000 to build a pancake house?
9. Spending over $80 million to go door-to-door promoting the Super Bowl.

Don't just fear mistakes, focus on the potential of small-scale experiments

Vitalik pointed out that when the government uses funds, a small portion of the projects are magnified and criticized on social media due to mistakes. However, Vitalik believes that such mistakes only account for a very small proportion of the overall expenditure. If the government pursues "zero mistakes" too much, it will not only abandon many high-return innovation projects, but also allow truly inefficient and "superficial" projects to continue to exist without being reviewed.

Learn from the venture capital model to pursue high returns and avoid large projects becoming sunk costs

Vitalik advocates that the government should adopt a venture capital (VC) strategy for small public funding projects, which is to allow mistakes, with the goal of capturing opportunities with potential 1000-fold value. He gave the example that the venture capital world is full of "failed" investments, but only a few successful cases can have a huge impact. He believes that this model is also applicable to the management of public funds allocation.

Vitalik emphasizes that the government should focus its efforts on large-scale funding projects, such as national infrastructure or major policies, to avoid unnecessary resource waste and long-term sunk costs. For small-scale pilot projects, the government should accept a certain degree of failure risk and focus on stimulating innovation development.

(Trump nominates Musk and Ramaswamy to lead the "Government Efficiency Department DOGE" to reshape the government structure)