📑 Why Elon Musk’s War on Bureaucracy Made Sense After I Lived in California (Even If His Politics Still Don’t)
A story about red tape, rockets, AI, and the weird paths frustration can lead brilliant people down
There comes a moment, if you live in California long enough and try to build or fix even small things (get a permit, connect a utility, remodel a bathroom, swap out a water heater), where something in your brain clicks. The hardest part isn’t wiring the new outlet or digging the hole. The hardest part is wrestling with layers of bureaucracy. Endless forms. Multiple agencies that don’t talk to each other. Processes that seem more about following “the procedure” than actually doing what you wanted to do.
You begin to see how good intentions (safety, zoning, community values) slowly calcify into rigid systems. Systems that resist change. Systems that reward process over productivity. Systems that ensure nothing gets done quickly.
That’s when you start to get why Elon’s obsession with efficiency isn’t just a tech-tycoon quirk. It feels, to someone who’s bumped into bureaucratic walls working on concrete, real-world stuff, like a survival instinct.
The California Permitting Gauntlet: A Micro-Course in Red Tape
Consider this: in places like Los Angeles, which is no stranger to big projects, the approval process for construction or remodeling is famously slow. One small home project can take weeks to months of permit reviews, plan checks, zoning reviews, fire-safety checks, geotech reports, environmental checks, all before a hammer or shovel touches dirt.
It is not rare to see a “simple” plan get stuck because one department lost a document, or a second review was triggered by a code update, or a zoning overlay complicated something that looked straightforward on the surface.
From the inside, it can feel less like a system built to support building, and more like one built to prevent change.
Over time (after form-after-form, delay-after-delay, hoop-after-hoop), you evolve a kind of allergy to unnecessary friction. Because friction doesn’t just waste time. It wastes hope, momentum, money, sometimes even ambition.
That kind of lived experience makes it easier to see why a person who builds rockets, factories, gigafactories, energy grids, AI labs (like Elon) might develop a near-obsessive allergy to inefficiency, red tape, and slow processes.
When you’re not just pushing bits on a screen, but pushing real objects (vehicles, rockets, batteries) through real bureaucracies that regulate every nail and wire, you learn something powerful: regulation plus complexity equals inertia.
Tech, AI, and the Dream of First-Principles Efficiency
But here’s where the story gets richer (and more relevant to the tech-obsessed part of me). Because the same instinct that pushes someone like Elon toward ruthless efficiency (yes, like the Spanish Inquisition, but with fewer robes and more AI dashboards) in manufacturing or engineering also resonates with the ideals behind artificial intelligence, automation, and “first-principles thinking.”
In a world where AI can identify inefficiencies, predict bottlenecks, and automate routine tasks, the bureaucratic delays and structural friction of traditional governance look, from a tech-soul’s perspective, like an anachronism.
Why should a simple remodel require half a dozen separate reviews, some redundant environmental forms, and wait times measured in months or quarters?
Why should building a rooftop solar panel or affordable housing project be delayed because of overlapping zoning overlays, shifting building codes, multiple departments, and manual sign-offs?
What if (in theory) we could build a system where regulations, safety, environmental, zoning, compliance, time-of-day, budget, and community impact were all handled through a kind of “smart stack”? A digital pipeline that uses AI to flag risks, route checks in parallel, automate approvals for low-risk projects, and track accountability.
In such a system, “efficiency” wouldn’t be just a billionaire’s fetish. It would be a humanist project, freeing up time, mental energy, money, and creativity. Making it easier for everyday people to build, create, repair, and improve.
That’s my silent hope, each time I get stuck in some permit queue.
But — Why the Political Contradiction Still Puzzles Me
So from that angle, Elon’s drive for speed, for cutting unnecessary friction, for question-everything pragmatism, makes sense. It feels rooted in the ground, in real construction sites, rockets, factories. It’s not just ideology. It’s experience.
And yet, and this is the part I still can’t fully wrap my head around, how does someone so committed to competence, first principles, and long-term thinking support someone like Donald Trump?
Whatever you think of Trump’s politics, stability, competence, or ability to actually build systems, the guy seems to thrive on chaos, spectacle, and grievance, not on discipline, stable institutions, or systematic competence.
To me, that’s a mismatch. It’s like seeing a brilliant engineer insist on using a shaky, half-broken tool not because it’s good, but because swinging it makes a loud noise that feels like change.
And yet, maybe that’s where the humanist and tech impulse and the political impulse meet, in a strange, uneasy alliance: desperation.
Because when the system around you feels permanently clogged, sluggish, reactive, and unresponsive, when every attempt to build or fix something gets mired in delay, the idea of “burn it down and start fresh” becomes seductive, even if you know it’s probably the wrong tool.
If you’ve ever waited six months or more for a permit, or watched a project stall because of one lost PDF, you start to get the appeal of demolition over repair, even if you’re an engineer at heart.
This doesn’t make the logic right. It just makes it comprehensible.
The Real Lesson? Systems Shape People, Not the Other Way Around
Here’s what I ultimately take away from all this, and why I think it matters for how we think about tech, AI, politics, and humanism:
People don’t gravitate toward certain political or ideological choices because those choices are abstractly “right.”
They often gravitate toward them because their lived reality breaks them. Because the system around them fails so often that breaking the system (even destructively) starts to feel like the only way forward.Frustration with inefficiency can be a powerful seed for change, but only if channeled into building better systems, not tearing everything down.
The engineer’s instinct is to debug, to refactor, to optimize. Not to smash. Even when the environment seems chaotic.Tech and AI hold real promise not just for “futuristic progress,” but for restoring human dignity, autonomy, and creativity.
If used to streamline permitting, regulatory compliance, and housing, automation can be deeply humanist (because it reduces friction, not people).But relying on charismatic disruption or chaotic “change agents” is risky when what you need is slow, steady, structural reform.
It’s the difference between building a bridge with a blueprint and bulldozing an old railroad track for a hope that something better will emerge.
What a Smart Bureaucracy Could Actually Look Like (Yes, That’s a Thing)
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that bureaucracy wasn’t a tragic comedy of errors. That it didn’t require six weeks, three duplicate forms, and a phone call to a fax machine to get your kitchen sink moved slightly to the left.
Let’s imagine what it could look like if AI, automation, and good design got their hands on the bones of modern governance.
Here’s a rough sketch of a “Smart Stack Bureaucracy” (not a utopia, just a system where getting things done doesn’t feel like a psychological endurance test):
🧠 1. AI-Assisted Intake
Instead of digging through obscure government websites written like robot Shakespeare, you describe your goal in plain English:
“I want to install solar panels on my roof in a residential zone.”
An AI system translates that into the required forms, checks eligibility based on address and zoning overlays, and pre-fills much of the paperwork with data already known.
🔁 2. Parallelized Approvals
Instead of routing your permit through a bureaucratic conga line (one department, then the next, then the next), the system runs parallel approvals.
If your project needs a fire code review, an energy compliance check, and a zoning sign-off, those all happen simultaneously.
🧩 3. Adaptive Risk Tiers
A small kitchen remodel? Low-risk, fast-track.
A three-story addition on a hillside in a fire zone? Higher risk, more scrutiny.
The system scales the intensity of review to the actual level of public risk involved, not to the department’s bandwidth or mood that month.
🧍♀️ 4. Human Oversight Where It Matters
Yes, there are still people involved. But humans focus where judgment is actually needed: exceptions, edge cases, ethics, and community impact. Routine stuff gets automated. Complex stuff gets expert attention.
📊 5. Transparent Timelines and Accountability
You see a clear estimate:
“Estimated permit approval: 14 days.”
If it slips, the system tells you why:
“Zoning review delayed due to additional wildfire setback assessment.”
Every delay has a reason. Every reviewer has a name. No more Schrödinger’s permit.
Why This Matters for More Than Just Permits
This isn’t just about building decks or wiring garages. It’s about trust in institutions. It’s about access to housing. It’s about whether the future is something you can build, or something that gets delayed indefinitely by broken systems.
Right now, broken bureaucracy disproportionately hurts people with fewer resources, less time, or less patience for Kafkaesque rituals. The friction isn't distributed evenly. It punishes the ambitious, the underrepresented, the risk-takers, the non-experts.
A better system wouldn’t just make Elon Musk slightly less angry. It would make everyday people more free to shape their environment. To build a home, start a business, install clean energy, repair what’s broken, and improve what’s possible.
And that, at the end of the day, is a deeply humanist project.
