The newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE promises to make the U.S. government lean and effective. But champions of efficiency would do well to heed the warnings of 19th century British economist William Stanley Jevons: The more efficiently we do something, the more of it we tend to do.

Being put in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency. It only sounds like a Cabinet department. In reality, it’s a fancy name for yet another blue-ribbon commission to examine how to make government smaller,