I Tried to Be the Government. It Did Not Go Well.

Photographs by Jason Andrew

People look at you differently when you carry a Geiger counter. Or, at least, when you carry a Geiger counter and exclaim things like “Much less radiation here than you might expect!” But how else are you to know that the radiation in your food is at acceptable levels?

They have government inspectors for this, you might say. It is their job.

That was before Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency started hacking away at our bureaucracy. Before...