In pondering the mindset of these people, I was reminded of a very different submission on hn yesterday [1]. Quote:
"Avoid, at all costs, arriving at a scenario where the ground-up rewrite starts to look attractive"
Seems to me that in their narrow, reckless arrogance they're doing something similar to the mechanisms of government. This is all broken and people who built it were idiots. Lets just scrap it and built it again with a modern stack.
Chesterton's fence, metacognitive ability, overconfidence effect, those who do not learn from history, etc.
I think rewrites are popular in part because during rewrite it is possible to drop features, either voluntarily or because of deadlines, while it would probably never fly to drop feature from working, existing implementation.
Also your theory doesn't hold up for cases when you rewrite your own code. I've rewritten my old code hundreds of time because I was "idiot" in a sense that it was unmaintainable with new changed requirements.
Thanks for the link on 18F in the feds. Didn't realize how much they had put up on Github and other areas [1]. analytics.usa.gov [2] is also pretty cool. Apparently its Jekyll, Sass, React and d3 from their Github.
343,025 first time users in the last 30 minutes, with GSA Advantage, USPS Tracking Results, NIST, CEAC Visa Status Check, and Federal Student Aid being some of the biggest sources. Had no idea this was available.
This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software! (login.gov is a good example of craft you don't generally see in commercial enterprise software, let alone government software)
According to that tweet they were apparently “far left” because they also worked on Direct File, which sought to cut out the middleman (TurboTax et al.) and let Americans file taxes directly. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, unless you're in bed with Intuit, this seems pretty hard to argue against!
"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his new role as acting director."
Nothing of this makes sense in that all these actions don't seem to make life easier or better for citizens in particular or the world in general.
Everything about it makes perfect sense because pesky things like consumer protection and occupational safety cut into the profits of the owning class.
A significant part of the animosity towards the EU and Trump's threat of tariffs is its consumer protection and preventing US companies, especially US tech companies, from doing whatever the hell they want.
A major difference between the US and EU is what the TikTok nonsense proved: the US is happy for a US company, aligned to Trump's authority, to track, influence and commodify its users at will; whereas the EU doesn't want any company to have that power regardless of location.
Do you think Trump understands how tarifs work exactly? Or is it just something he learned other countries are afraid of but he has no idea that American importers and their customers are gonna pay them (and he shares this misunderstanding with more than half of the population)?
While this is true in principle, it's worth adding the caveat that EU countries have also been pushing for backdoors to encrypted communications in order to expand law enforcement access. Of course while this contradicts the stance on privacy the EU put forward with the GDPR (which sneakily redefined the right to privacy and control of your personal data as an indelible human right btw).
But in case anyone thinks this is a dunk on the EU: this is still not as invasive as the US law enforcement's powers of warrantless surveillance which have repeatedly blown up the EU-US frameworks for data sharing (Privacy Shield and its other iterations, which Mr Schrems seems to have personally made a sport of shooting down faster than they get implemented). It's also not entirely contradictory as the focus here is on protecting the rights of people against corporations while still providing means for the state to violate those rights when necessary (similarly to how the state can violate your right to free movement through incarceration or your right to bodily autonomy by shooting you, neither of which seem to upset the people who'd think this one is a gotcha).
Considering the EU's main function is being a transnational economic region (if you ignore all the fluff about shared values and history and instead follow the definition of "a system's function is what it does"), it's absolutely true that the EU is remarkably restrictive on what corporations can do compared to the US - even before Trump.
EDIT: The two sibling comments prove my point: while EU member states have been pushing for legislation like providing backdoors to encrypted communication, this is neither unique to the EU nor a contradiction and the US already has far wider reaching measures in place.
Consider for example the Switzerland-based CIA and BND (Germany) shell company that distributed backdoored encryption to hostile nations which Germany backed out of when the CIA defended distributing the same technology to friendlies without informing them or their intelligence agencies. Or literally any of the Snowden leaks, which described not only mass surveillance of US citizens but also espionage against US allies (infamously including wiretapping then-chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone) to a degree none of the EU member states have ever done anything comparable to - and which those mostly didn't act on because of the importance of maintaining good terms with the US. Or the post-9/11 legislation which not only allowed warrantless surveillance with gag orders (which is why "canaries" became popular in cryptography communities) but even literally killing or abducting and indefinitely incarcerating US citizens without a trial - not to mention torture.
You can criticize the EU for state overreach. You can't do so by using the US for grounds of moral superiority - not even moral equivalence. You can argue about different attitudes to free speech, gun ownership or the right to self-defense (e.g. castle doctrine), sure. All of these are valid grounds for debate. But the US government can (according to its own jurisdiction) legally do so many more things to both its own citizens and non-citizens both within and outside its borders that trying to use it for a libertarian "win" against the EU seems farcical at best.
The error is viewing the EU has a single entity with only one viewpoint on any subject.
Europol + most major euro police forces + a number of european deputees want to have access to backdoors to spy on citizens, other european deputees do not. The battle is here.
>The goal of Trump, Musk and co. is to make life better for the rich.
I mean that feels right. But, they have more money than they can spend. They can make their lives better by stopping being so greedy... it's not about better.
It's greed. It's the number on their total net worth, or some other bullshit number.
It's exactly like Musk paying others to play games to get him the best apparent player character. He pays others to earn money to make him look, to himself, like the best fascist-capitalist oligarch, or whatever he's going for.
In reality, their lust for boosting some vanity metric is most closely aligned with "make life worse for the poor". Because whilst they do pay some top employees well, the whole pyramid sits on the exploitation of many millions more poor people who, through their greed, the capitalists push down further into the bloody, stinking, fetid soup below.
Oh, and the capitalists rape the planet too... just to make sure no lining thing escapes the accretion zone of their self-destructive insecurity.
CFPB was responsible for trying to fine creative ways to control other companies, and by debanking others. This was Elizabeth Warren’s doing and a complete farce. As Zuckerberg said, Meta was brought in front of the CFPB by Warren and he was confused because Meta isn’t a bank.
I worked at Facebook when the Libra thing happened, and it was obviously meant to be a global bank that evades banking regulations by sprinkling crypto magic.
When it launched, employees were told that we'd soon be able to receive a portion of our salaries in Libra. Every practical feature of the system was effectively a Facebook bank account where the unit of currency was tied to a basket of major currencies. The rest was smoke and mirrors.
So yeah, Zuck feigning surprise about being dragged in front of CFPB was just an act (like most of what he does in public).
Care to provide an example? I was casually looking at applying, but I am on the conservative side as easily searchable on Google by voter registrations
18F might also be "far-left" cause it was created by Obama folks. I also wonder if it is also bad in his mind cause conflicts with taken over Digital Service.
Of course, it goes without saying that opposing same-sex marriage doesn't make one "far right". I mean, I know you knew that and are just ragebaiting – but I wanted it to be explicitly clear for others.
Thats the problem. "Far-left" is just a label thrown around by ideological people without hard arguments.
Core leftism is about wealth distribution and unbounded solidarity. Being only pro-LGBTQ imo does not make you a leftist and yet, look around in this thread, what is brought up to proove left leaning tendencies.
The labeling/propaganda unfortunately worked and we devolve into tribal identity politics. Thats why some people think we just passed a far-left decade.
The overreaction is absolutely crazy. In no way are they leftist. They are about as woke as any typical modern progressive company. A lot of my colleagues in both public and private sectors include their pronouns in their signatures. They choose to use inclusive language and policies.
There is a hit piece article not worth linking that calls out some of the devs who worked there. The comment section of that page is very hateful. As an American it’s shameful to see that level of hate for anything to do with policies of inclusiveness.
The company looks like they hire regular people of all types. A few of the adults are trans or identify as queer and they are acknowledged as equal coworkers. Fairly representative of the tech industry I’d say. What is so bad about that? They seem to write some excellent code and have a good company culture akin to a lot of SV tech companies.
Ironically, one of the founders of DOGE(nee USDS), Mikey Dickerson, was caught colluding with billionaire Reid Hoffman to spread misinformation ahead of a 2017 election in Alabama in favor of Democrats.
Being in bed with tax preparation companies is probably the main thing, but I also vaguely recall a statement by someone years ago (perhaps Grover Norquist or Dick Armey) that filing tax returns should be kept annoying simply for the sake of keeping people angry about taxes in general.
That's just plain stupid. Taxes are already annoying enough.
In New Zealand the government makes it really really simple to pay your taxes (automated tax returns for the majority). You can call our tax department on the phone and they answer and they are helpful and they don't seem to screw you. The idea is to make it simple for people and businesses to pay their taxes so that they pay. The IRD is run like a smart business.
Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about?
It's not taxes that are the problem per se it's fuckwits like Boris Johnson's cronies that think taxes are theirs to garnish and use any chance, even a global pandemic, to steal every dime they can lay their hands on.
>Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about?
No, but paying an exorbitant amount, but seeing few things being improved around you, but endless wars funded and cronies getting richer, and useless bureucracy enlarged and making your life or business more difficult, is.
Replacing the government with unaccountable middlemen is sort of their goal, isn't it? Think of the efficiency we could gain once we do away with all of that accountability nonsense...
I can't imagine many people agreeing with you here.
You need to be (a) able to walk and drive, (b) in driving distance to a post office and (c) able to work around the post office's opening hours and (d) willing to waste the time to drive/line up etc.
Or you can spend less than a minute to upload a photo of your passport.
Which is great until someone impersonates you by spoofing a photo of you that satisfies “liveness” detection. It’s a lot harder to AI up an animated image in person at a post office.
id.me is valued at $1.8bn and has more than 130m users and has "partnerships with 15 federal agencies, 40 agencies in 30 states and over 600 retailers".
Bit of a stretch to call them a low cost outsourcer. They seem pretty legitimate.
They are a private business in search of a problem that is unnecessary for federal and state agencies to rely on for idp and identity proofing services.
Pretty hilarious to think that a $1.8bn business is "searching for a problem".
And given the frosty working relationship between federal and state agencies I am sympathetic to the idea that a private company would be able to deliver a better solution.
Last year: a liquidity event for early investors and employees, none of which helps the ongoing business but instead lets the founders and C-suite buy a private island / holiday home / mobile home / home:
Loans get issued based on profit generation (or asset value), so no, it is not “to keep them afloat”. You can’t get a loan if your company is not doing well or too risky (that’s why startups raise equity - because they are still too risky for someone to lend them money).
A loan is a form of debt, which is one of the two main forms of capital - the other main one being equity. Debt is less expensive than equity, so companies prefer to issue to raise capital via debt than equity.
Its not just profit that is considered for a loan. Anything related to states is more stable and thus less risky. Or how would you evaluate state bonds by profit only? Elon knows what i am talking about.
Login.gov is the default idp for the Social Security Administration, supports 200+ federal agencies for identity, and IRS was in the works to onboard Login.gov before this new admin fuckery occurred. They handle over 10 million monthly active users and 40 million monthly sign-ins across nearly 50 agencies and states. Will it still happen? Who knows. id.me will likely IPO based off the ~$130-$150M ARR they have, some folks will get wealthy, and it'll still end up the equivalent of confirming your discount eligibility at Home Depot for veterans.
At this point, Elon is doing only damage while he thinks he cleans up. Someone will have to cleanup after the cleanup aka damage doen though, and it won't be pretty.
People depend on the state. Someone has to be the adult in the room. If your marriage fails what do you do with the kids? You abandon them because you don’t want to clean up?
It’s a statement on the fact that the children are being held hostage, and that this is how the pattern will be made to continue.
You have to decide whether you are ok with this pattern continuing. If it’s possible to do it without harming the children, then that is what must be done.
If it’s better to let this pattern continue, then thats also an ok choice. But at least the costs must be articulated and accepted. People can know what role they are playing in this relationship; the tradeoffs they found unacceptable.
I had a coworker who turned beet red when I put Musk and PayPal in the same sentence. You know that feeling when your parents didn’t yell and you wished they would? I was too afraid to ask for the full story.
His PR makes him sound like a founder but he was not.
“X.com was … founded by Ed Ho, Harris Fricker, Elon Musk, and Christopher Payne … It merged with competitor Confinity in 2000 and the merged company changed its name to PayPal in 2001.”[1]
I’m sure individual usage will vary, but I would call him a cofounder.
Confinity is the company that developed the PayPal website that survived that merger. Elon Musk was not on the Confinity side, he was trying to pivot his x.com bank into a PayPal clone and buy users ($30 per signup) faster than them until they merged to avoid running each other out of cash. The two startups were operating out of the same building at the time. After the merger, Musk was named CEO but ousted from the company just 5 months later, in part for being absent much of the time (including at the time of his firing), and in part because the PayPal engineers had circulated a petition to the board asking them to remove him. The board agreed.
Co-founder is just a marketing name and has no meaning in reality, actions do. Looking at this he provided in money which was likely to ruin his business by overspending it and greater minds prevailed in the end (I'm not saying paypal is a good thing or not). Why they made him CEO I cannot fathem but it has probably something to do with the bullying behaviour he is known for.
I've been named co-founder once but as soon as its usefulness ran out it got removed from the website (nothing else changed).
When did the political system stop being about making life better for the average person?
In Sweden we have gotten a paper from the tax office saying "we believe your taxes should be like this" and then you can change parts you disagree with (and risk punishment if you are wrong).
> When did the political system stop being about making life better for the average person?
In the US, when we elected mediocre actor Ronald Reagan, I think. His trickle-down economics nonsense turned out to be a just and early example of catering to the rich in broad daylight instead of behind closed doors. And the people, for the most part, bought it, so now we have legal scams like 401ks that the average citizen thinks are there to help them.
The point has always been to seize control of the money while removing all accountability and they are finally succeeding because liberals handed them the election over Gaza, which is no longer in even in our news cycle.
(Really) not saying it's a good idea, but if Swedes were required to fill in the paperwork, or even better/worse actually transfer the taxes (maybe including payroll), we would probably be more upset with how our taxpayer money is spent.
If you are politically motivated to minimize the tax burden, it makes sense to be skeptical of direct filing (even if you are not bribed by Intuit).
Isn’t it wonderful when they make rules stating you must pay taxes, then they make it so convoluted and obscure that you’re forced to spend extra money to file them?
DirectFile makes it such that anyone with a simple tax situation (some W-2s, some dependents, etc) can easily file their federal taxes online. Free. Straight to the IRS. My only gripe with DirectFile is that it doesn't yet cover more complex cases (but let's not have perfect be the enemy of good; it's probably good enough for 75% of citizens) and you still have to find a way to do state filings based on your state.
This fuckery will continue unabated for the rest of our lives until we collectively stop paying income taxes with the demand that a Constitutional amendment is put in place to force the government to be honest and helpful both around the procurement (just sending a dang bill) and government spending (expressly forbidding genocides, foreign coups, certain bailouts, etc) with real teeth in it.
Of course, right now it seems even the existing amendments are not safe. Our government is a non-functioning, dishonest imperial oligarchy, and we just keep paying our tithing out of fear, telling ourselves it's all going to schools and highways.
This is true, but it’s much harder to compete against a free government service and that’s not the only option. For example, how much does Intuit’s advertising budget on X have to go up for it to be worth the effort of a few hours? (Repeat for xAI contracts or fleet Tesla purchases)
I don’t know if there is any quid pro quo but that’s why we have ethics laws because otherwise you have to constantly ask whether something is good for the country or just the guy making the decision.
> It is really hard to keep track of their positions which I believe is intentional.
The reasons are unimportant. The important thing is that you trust Uncle Don and Uncle Elon, our grand leaders, who always have your best interests at heart.
> In December, however, Kelly and 28 House Republican colleagues wrote to President-elect Donald Trump to ask him to end the program: “We write to urge you to take immediate action, including but not limited to a day-one executive order, to end the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) unauthorized and wasteful Direct File pilot program. The program’s creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach, and its rollout and structural flaws have already come at a steep price.”
The argument (if you take it in the most charitable light) is that reducing barriers to paying taxes will make people less averse to paying taxes. So they fight any effort to bring sanity to the tax code or tax payment process.
So even taken charitably I think they are wrong. But I do believe it is simply just corrupt and malicious.
He got rid of 18F, a group within the Govt to improve usage of tech (and hopefully therefore efficiency), because of a tweet.
A tweet about IRS Direct File, a group that replicates the basic automatic taxation program of other advanced economies?
Over a fear that the Government would take over deciding what taxes people pay, despite a fact that such a program doesn’t necessarily block you from manually filing your own taxes (don’t know if the American implementation has that, but the UK one certainly allows you to override PAYE).
Yes HN commenters, this is the genius behind Government reform.
EDIT: Jesus Christ someone is going to convince him FedNow is a conspiracy and kill another basic system other countries have easily managed.
The circle of Elon, Thiel, Andersson, etc conceptually orbit Balaji. Balaji, The Network State author, explicitly advocates for a techno-libertarian exit because they perceive the US and especially "team blue" as getting in the way and slowing down their vision.
His ideas builds on Curtis Jarvis work, dark enlightenment. He is a close associate of Peter Thiel and JD Vance. Essentially they want to destroy the federal government, buy up assets and land, start their own micro countries where they can be King CEOs. Sounds like a joke but its not.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has deleted a group that was devoted solely to making the government more efficient. Makes perfect sense, in Trumpistan logic.
By your logic, having one small group would be most efficient. Which makes perfect sense, given the tiny size of the US government, in Trumpistan logic.
Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25.
Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical.
Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency.
The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status quo. If we’re serious about cutting waste in gov spending, let’s not turn away new minds.
The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.
- one decoded the Herculaneum Papyrii at the age of 20, winning the Vesuvius Challenge
- another built a startup funded by OpenAI
- one interned at SpaceX and got a Thiel Fellowship
If you take any individual startup its probability of success is very low. Most startups fail. There is a very extreme survivorship bias at work when people say startups work well or that particular tactics are why startups are great etc (pointing at a successful startup).
Startups as a whole produce a lot of innovation because there is this extreme Darwinian process where the vast majority fail and a few succeed but you have a huge amount of risk-taking in parallel in a very compressed time frame.
Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme. So by definition government is going to be slower-moving and more risk-averse. They are essentially paying to reduce the standard deviation of possible outcomes because they can’t afford the risk of the extreme negative tail.
>>Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme.
Im guessing they will eventually discover why bureaucracy even exists. That is to move slow enough to ensure big mistakes become impossible and provide stability for newer things to happen at their own pace.
Im guessing any chaos inside bureaucracy for as little as a decade could cause a lost century to a country. The cost of stabilising, course correcting, recovering and then going on upwards could take decades.
Since when do startups "work well"? Some startups work well, but famously >90% of them fail. Imagine if 9 out of every 10 fires was just left alone because the fire brigade was replaced by a startup, or if 9 out 10 bridges fell down within a few years. Startups are just one of many models of running things, but they are not appropriate for everything.
First, there's hardly any evidence that these are anywhere near "brilliant engineers" let alone 1%. Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. Some might be interesting, sure. But it's hardly relevant to operating in a complex organization.
But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged access to sensitive data to folks without any kind of oversight. It's a total mess.
It's hyperbolic to the n-th degree to call these "the best of nerds" as well.
Government employees are never elected. They are hired by the elected officials. In this case the general public in the US was aware of DOGE before the election and chose to vote for it.
I don't understand the "unelected" aspect - he funded Trump and Trump got elected. Trump said Elon would get to run a wrecking ball through the ship of state and the magas cheered. He derives his authority from Trump. A lot of people work at the white house and only one of them was elected.
Why is that? I would bet large sums of money that these guys will have a bright future ahead of them, much of it because of the goodwill they get from working for DOGE.
It all depends on how persistent the new american system is.
During the WW2 german occupation of France, there were some french people who opted to enthusiastically work to support the german side, and they certainly benefitted short term from the goodwill earned
At the end of the occupation, a lot of them were shot or hanged by the resistance
>I would bet large sums of money that these guys will have a bright future ahead of them, much of it because of the goodwill they get from working for DOGE.
When the shit inevitably hits the fan from the massive amount of orgs they are dismantling, Musk and the DOGE will be used as a political scapegoat by Trump, that's how politics work.
And then from that, taking responsibility has never been Musk strongest point either, he'll push back the blame further to DOGE workers.
Amazing that people sign up to be verified on Elon's tarpit and they funnily haven't heard anything about how Elon rewarded loyalty and perseverance there (hint: with a boot to the backside)
One of the dude literally solved a hundreds years problem and won a prize. He coded an AI to decipher an ancient manuscript AIUI. I certainly wouldn't look down on the achievement of that young programmer.
There is no such thing as "being smart". You can be arbitrarily good at some things, and arbitrarily bad at anything else. Even the greatest physicists can have laughably naive philosophical positions. Linus Paulding, one of the greatest minds in chemistry in history, was convinced that you can cure virtually any disease with a large enough dose of vitamin C. Expertise, even the extreme peak, in one field doesn't give you expertise of any kind in another field.
IQ is mostly BS. And even if it's not, it only measures the ability to learn, not the actual skills. What I wrote remains true: just because you have skills in one area (AI deciphering of hieroglyphics scroll), doesn't mean in any way whatsoever that you have skills for something entirely unrelated (administrative matters).
Ah yes, let's just make a sweeping generalization about 3 million people.
I've met plenty of people in the private sector who I could easily describe as "the worst kind of bureaucrats". You really don't know what you're talking about.
Even if that were true, it's far better than an unqualified, untrained, and unaccountable group who's only mission seems to be institutional destruction and theft.
As many issues as we have, I’d rather have somebody who understands the consequences of a security breach having access to sensitive information than someone who does not.
Think what you will about who came before or after, but everyone involved here should have experience or training in how to handle and secure sensitive information.
I can’t speak to the second half of your comment, but it’s worth pointing out that 31 corresponds with a software engineer who received a BA/BS in four years after high school, started working and hit senior at 3-5 years (a lot of us). That gives a couple years of wiggle room to lead projects after that too.
The age is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the fact that the engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project were all qualified and legally hired and authorized to do what they did. This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right to the federal payment system and no legal authority to stop any payments congress has approved.
>This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right
DOGE and the Treasury Department are both part of the Executive Branch and derive powers from its head, aka the President.
This is essentially President Trump telling President Trump to hand President Trump the keys to the payment system so that President Trump can check WTF President Trump is spending money on.
They weren’t the only ones building it, for what it’s worth. They were well aware of that.
If you knew a country wanted to build a weapon to cripple your own country, and you had the necessary skills to build that weapon, would you feel come compulsion to try and build it first in order to protect your family and friends? To protect yourself?
If you look at the Manhattan project org chart and take people randomly at the top, they're all at least in their 40s. "There are young people on the project" is a thing but at the end of the day things like the Manhattan Project are downstream of the will of an entire behemoth (at least in theory attempting to represent the will of the people), balancing various interests and ethical or moral questions that are usually downstream of some experience.
They also have gone through the military chain of command...
I didn't see Musk's confirmation hearing. OMB's head needs to be Senat confirmed, Musk is giving OMB orders and took over their e-mail addresses. Where's the hearing? Where's the confirmation?
i feel that a lot of people are commenting without knowing a lot about the government. putting aside whether Trump is exceeding his statutory authority (he very well might be with this USAID stuff, he certainly has with his past XOs), you can have an executive branch position with access and managerial control without being confirmed. who confirms the White House Chief of Staff?
The default is that congress has to confirm _all officers_ in the executive branch, and it's only by delegation through law that you get other behavior. That's my understanding at least.
To my knowledge the Chief of Staff does not have the power to coerce other people to do things directly. Any "actual" coercion would have to go through someone like the President, right?
And my dumb thought is if DOGE is going around telling OMB and Treasury what to do (and seemingly is willing to call the US Marshalls on people who stand in their way) and the head of the OMB requires senate confirmation... well what are we doing here?
There's a bunch of nuance you can play at a micro level (for example, Musk messaging Trump to do a thing and Trump giving an OK), though in that case that's also newsworthy and important, because it properly associates who is responsible for what is going on!
Right now we have somebody who seems to be running rampant doing whatever he wants, and this lack of explicit association with the rest of the executive make it unclear who is actually calling the shots here. And if Trump isn't calling the shots... again, where's the confirmation?
the chief of staff clearly has managerial discretion over other executive staff? they also have top level security clearance and afaik none of that is in any law. ultimately all of these staff serve at the pleasure of the president.
The chief of staff can relay orders from the president to cabinet members and department heads, but cannot make decisions of this scope.
I don't really know how any of that is relevant, though. Musk is not Trump's chief of staff, and as far as we can tell, is not even employed by the federal government. He is not empowered to give (for example) orders to the head (confirmed or acting) of the OMB.
> The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.
Wheres the evidence of their brilliance? A few projects in GitHub isn’t impressive.
Seriously if they’re brilliant this is the perfect PR opportunity to highlight the highly talented people making a difference. But instead we have secrecy.
I suspect the real reason for these choices is they needed people who are young and naive, will not ask too many questions, easy to manipulate, and coerced to work long for little pay.
One of them transcribed an ancient Greek text from Vesuvius. So idiots buy into the idea this qualifies them to become unelected arbiters of THEIR OWN opinion of justice and decide who the Treasury pays or does not.
The post you're replying to has a link to a video in which one of the guys talks about how he decoded the Vesuvius scrolls. It's literally a PR video highlighting a highly talented young person.
Asking for people to prove the negative? I swear these posts are now being flooded by X types who only comment on these kinds of posts - and what a surprise, looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff, solely on politics - this level of reasoning used to be absent from here regardless of political inclination.
Wernher von Braun was a brilliant young engineer, one of the best minds of his generation. At age 25 he joined a patriotic party that was full of curiosity and creativity, disrupting the stale status quo of his home country.
For the next eight years he did groundbreaking work in developing rockets. In 1945 he and his youthful engineering team were actively recruited to continue their work for another country with great ambitions in space. A tremendous success for his personal career, even though the party he served fell a bit short of their goals.
He was clearly "the best of us nerds". Never mind that his genius was built on slave labor and oppression. He disrupted some governments, made good money and got to work on awesome rockets! That’s what counts in life.
I figure more 25 year old nerds who dismantle the US government ought to be bullied. Signed, a 25 year old nerd.
(While I'm at it, there's nothing special about age here. Plenty of 25 year olds are actually doing productive things for humanity. But many 40 year olds are doing it too. The difference is that they are competent and empathetic, not random guys who Elon happens to like.)
They may be smart, and may have won awards, but Musk's techno-thugs are not "the best of us". At best, they're misguided and have fallen for Musk's charisma. At worst, they're actively supporting and abetting the subversion of our democratic government.
Let us also consider just how badly this continues to paint tech and tech workers to the general public. To distrust technology such as all the AI hate we see online.
> At best, they're misguided and have fallen for Musk's charisma. At worst, they're actively supporting and abetting the subversion of our democratic government.
They can easily be both. They're definitely the latter
Those involved in the Manhattan Project who were young were doing scientific/technical work.
When dealing with organizing and managing a great number of people or resources, I have never seen a young inexperienced human performing adequately, even remotely.
Old age and presumed experience is not at all a guarantee that someone would be good in such roles, but from what I have seen, young age and the associated lack of relevant experience pretty much guarantees failure in such cases.
Government is not a startup just as pizza is not a vegetable, just as prison is not a vacation from a bad job. It’s more accurate and less toxic to compare molecular oxygen to carbon monoxide. False comparisons do more harm than good.
Inexperienced people imposing disruptions due to lack of experience is why young people may succeed at startups but fail at establishing companies. Likewise, government is not a startup and you really don’t want government to fail.
If they're helping overthrow democracy and the rule of law, they are not the best of us nerds.
Naming and shaming them is good. No one forced them to take this job. With the skills you list they could have done any number of good or neutral things instead.
Probably won't be interpreted as such but this is an honest question; I don't care about their age really but if they are so smart, why are they taking part of an illegal operation? Befehl ist befehl? That's not very smart is it? Or are they picked because they are young and gullible and easily manipulated yet brilliant in some other areas?
My understanding is this is DOGE getting some analysis software in place so they can find out where the money goes and start their cuts, which I understand there is an executive order for. And my understanding is that the executive does have the power to do that sort of audit.
I am also a non-American so yes, I would like to see your question answered too.
My understanding from online reading (... but we know how that goes ...) is that that executive order cannot be given without approval and that approval was not given. But would love to hear someone with more knowledge to chime in as all the left-ish to even moderate right media are shouting all of this is illegal and overstepping.
As a non-american, my feeling is that it’s just about who signs the order.
If Biden creates a new program by executive order and puts a non elected person in charge, republicans will cry. If Trump does the same, democrats will yell.
It’s just the polarisation of the debate that is higher than before.
> The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.
Their youth and technical ability isn't the problem. What are problems are their inexperience and recklessness and evident lack of awareness. Government and the administrative state are serious undertakings. Move Fast and Break Things is extraordinarily dangerous in this context.
All of those people you listed as examples were legally and duly appointed/hired for their roles and not given carte-blanche over agencies without oversight.
The “problem” with youth isn’t intelligence, it’s that early twenties you are at your most confidently ideological and you’re most willing to break things. I bet the average age of a terrorist is pretty low too.
The danger of the vision is the power of the vision, fix what’s broken in the bureaucracy, it’s not being fascist it’s just easier to ask forgiveness than permission!
Good grief, don’t identify me and the rest of HN with then. I don’t want to be “us” with people in government who make a virtue out of being unaccountable solely because they’re successful engineers.
It is legal to make a federal government employee’s name, role, and salary publicly accessible because taxpayer-funded positions fall under the scope of public interest and open-records laws, which promote transparency and accountability in the use of government funds. You can find this information on official databases like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, which routinely publishes data about federal employees’ salaries and positions, as well as on other government websites that provide access to public records.
I would be weary of nerds taking care of this nation after all I've seen in the tech industry. AirBNB, Uber, Juicero, WeWork, Theranos, Tesla, crypto...
Agreed. I used to scoff at the hate "techbros" received, but at this point the industry has done more than enough damage to deserve that derision. This is by far the biggest escalation, though.
The great thing about young people is that they haven't had much time to develop a moral compass. I'd say that makes them perfect for the roles they've been given
Young people tend to be more ideological and ready to fight for what they care. The older you get, the more problems you have (bills, health, children, etc) the less you care imho.
Putting a target on? They're dismantling the gears that make America run smoothly, and you say putting a target on? This is the point where people should start taking into consideration violent actions
No you’re supporting treasonous actions and you must be taught and discouraged from such actions that violate the will of the people in favor of expeditiousness. Your views are a danger to a stably growing society.
It's great that there are young, brilliant people in research and engineering and working for business ventures. It's also very cool you remember some who started out young in the past. Hasn't got much to do with the posted article though, as that is talking about the integrity of public policy versus actors personally beholden to unelected officials and their friends reaching into US-governance.
It does not matter. None of that has to do with the requirements of the job which, BTW, should have zero executive power and only make recommendations to Congress, the institution that has power of the purse.
Do you understand that this is just a constitutional crisis? I reckon musk ended up appointing kids because they also did not understand the political and ethical implications of all this.
They are all beneficiaries of affirmative action, for libertarians, in case you are wondering why these guys and not more competent or mercenary people, which are both abundant.
>>Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency.
As some one who just turned 40. This does make sense. Perhaps the biggest deal about aging especially in the downswing is the countdown to death keeps getting closer as you go. You do tend to care less about things around you.
Im beyond the point I would take offence on anything, but Im also beyond the point I would do something to impress somebody. There is no trying twice from here. Things either work with something/somebody or you move on to something/somebody that does/do.
I definitely was more tenacious as a young man, with projects and relationships. I'd move heavens to make something work. Now they have work or something new is sought. As an aging person I care more about less noise, bullshit and more stability. Guys like me are needed for continuity of life. Whereas younger men are needed to bring about big leap frog changes.
The world needs the young and old for both progress and sanity.
> The Privacy Act of 1974 generally, and the Internal Revenue
Code with respect to taxpayer information, make it unlawful for Secretary Bessent to
hand over access to the Bureau’s records on individuals to Elon Musk or other
members of DOGE.
You cant compare manhattan project, NASA to a bunch of good software techs ripping apart the government. The first two projects required high levels of intelligence and new concepts.
These guys are the modern equivalent of name any destructive revolutionary group looking for stuff they don't agree with.
I don't however refute that you can be a brilliant mind and active contributor at any age. Just that these guys aren't anywhere close to the same page as our greatest minds.
It’s good to read a comment of sanity amidst all this instinctual bellyaching whenever T or E do anything. But in particular when a formerly well respected publication writes a hit piece like this…
I used to scoff when people said “TDS” was a real thing, but having observed the same with Elon over the years and then listening to hours long talks between him and others, I realised “EDS” is clearly also a thing. And lo and behold: Listening to full long-form talks with Trump revealed a person wholly different to what media portrays.
And as a disclaimer, no I don’t agree with everything they do or say. But they’re not the monsters the monsters in the media machinery spin them up to be either.
The real monsters are those that purposefully trim and clip and stitch together falsehoods out of context, and then believe their own lies until they’re willing to throw other citizens under a figurative bus just because they work with or for “those people”.
Wow, just wow. There is no need to manipulate what Trump or Elon says or does to portray them as monsters. It is so plainly obvious I wonder what warped version of the world you see. Elon is clearly a Nazi. Trump clearly is an idiot and vindictive. One example: Trump order the release of water from two dams: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/03/climate/trump-california-wate... This is such an idiotic move. I don't see how it could be portrayed differently.
One thing CCP did masterfully is sending very young grads, who are newly admitted to the party, to go to different local communities and evaluate the outcome government project like poverty reduction there (because obviously Xi don’t trust local officials and party members). These young people have a lot of energy to make some impact, also too young to lie or corrupt. The result turned out to be actually effective.
There are quite some admiration for CCP from the american new right like moldbug and musk, It seems either they took a page from CCP, or happen to think alike.
Young people often are hopelessly ideological, in the same way a dogmatic religious person would be. Both are less corruptible than your average person.
As fresh graduate at your first job, I suppose you follow the instructions from your boss a bit more and still have faith in your boss and upper management, a bit more than a senior, more experienced employee. Just look at the military, it's quite easy to scream at 18 year old recruits and have them crawl in mud and being screamed insults at. Try the same with a 45 year old.
Enron was staff by young people hired fresh of school. It is easy to manipulate young people into a new set of values. Army knows that, monks know that etc. These likely believe Musk is second coming of god.
Exactly; it's not that the young ideological think-they-are-doing-the-right-thing are not serving a corrupt system (perhaps unwittingly). They are effective because the corruption they serve diligently comes from the central party and not from local considerations?
Corruptible is relative to the goal you're trying to achieve.
If you're the king of a nation, anyone trying to convince your knights to overthrow you is a corrupting force. But at the same time you could be a brutal ruler corrupted by power, and it is the knights that are trying to upturn the corrupt system.
>>Both are less corruptible than your average person.
I honestly believe, cheating is a primal trait. Age has little to do with it. In fact young cheats are likely to cheat with more enthusiasm and energy than elder cheats.
Safe enough to say, age has nothing to do with this.
It seems that when push comes to shove right now its the young people who are simply removing people who don't kowtow.
Of course it is easy to imagine that the people they are removing are those who made principled stands rather than the corrupt who keep their heads down. As in they are removing the people who thought their job was to serve the public rather than line their own pockets?
It is not clear if that is the effect the chiefs want or not.
Makes sense, I also imagine the incentives were different. These young grads had no incentive to lie while local gov officials had plenty.
The only one would be for the grads to take bribes from the local gov officials, but if the central government sent enough grads it would be too many to bribe.
Many high-ranking Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping (Chemical Engineering) and his predecessors like Hu Jintao (Hydraulic Engineering) and Jiang Zemin (Electrical Engineering), are trained engineers.
They also like economics and finance people. Premier Li Keqiang has a PhD in Economics from Peking University. Zhu Rongji, a former premier, had a strong economics and mathematics background.
I am not a fan of American techno-libertarianism nor the Chinese CCP but Europe needs more engineers and economists (from math heavy programs) in politics.
The idea that Xi is functionally illiterate beggars belief and is clearly false. It's not impossible his actual Chemical Engineering education was of low quality, but to say he is close to illiterate is actually silly.
Also have you seen the people coming out of majors these days (and by that I mean my own graduation class of ~2010)? Uni access expanded so much that just graduating doesn't mean that much anymore. Especially for career government officials who probably went straight into government from uni with no work experience.
Xi got into Tsinghua not due to intellectual ability, but due to his political connections with the CCP. This isn't the meritocratic or technocratic story one might have assumed to be the case reading the above comment. China is ultimately a poor country on a per-capita basis and essentially a failure when compared to countries with a similar culture and historical circumstance like Taiwan. It's only their massive size that leads people to the faulty conclusion that they have anything worth emulating.
Europe needs a Trump and an Elon more than engineers. They’ve become corrupted and lazy in their hundreds of years of nepotism. Italy, France, Germany, all shitwrecks not worth salvaging at this point.
Not a comment on your overall statement but I want to point out the irony of mentioning Trump and Musk in a positive light and nepotism in a negative one.
I am European and American and have lived on both continents. They’re both nice places but in different ways. We shouldn’t be speaking so coarsely to each other, if for nothing else than it’s simply bad rhetoric if you care to make a point. On the other hand at best we should choose kindness because civilization depends on it. Nations are just useful fictions but the facts that can never go away are the people that inhabit them. So I strongly urge anyone reading this to reconsider what kind of person they want to be before responding to rudeness with rudeness.
Remember Trump giving positions to all of his own family? That is textbook nepotism. It is hard to find that level of nepotism in any other western country.
Too young to have the experience to know what's a good idea and what's a bad idea. Too young to question what they're doing. Too young to push back when things are going wrong. Too young to have life experience and so are far easier to shape and indoctrinate.
Well I hope in the (very near) future we decide we want the executive branch to have less power, so as to protect ourselves from a unitary executive who goes rogue. Yes it may be less efficient, but more resilient.
This drive for uber efficiency can 1) make government more fragile (see toilet paper supply issues during the pandemic) and 2) be a slippery slope to dehumanization (see paper clip maximizing problem).
The problem is that we painted ourselves into a this corner long ago. Even if Congress wasn't generally paralyzed by bad-faith partisan fighting, the House and Senate are not equipped to do even a small fraction of what the executive branch does today.
If we removed much of the executive branch's power, it wouldn't be "less efficient". The government just wouldn't do anything.
Some people (current GOP) seems to think this would be a good thing.
Agreed. If government provides fewer services, companies can provide more services at a profit. Why have public (non-profit) education when you can have private (highly profitable) education? Who needs public (non-profit) health insurance when you can have private (highly profitable) health insurance?
There's probably some theory about power being like the conservation of energy, in that it doesn't get destroyed, just transformed or moved. Take power away from the government and that power doesn't just make people more free, it just goes somewhere else. Clearly the intent is to move that power from the government (which is at least nominally meant to protect citizens) to companies/the rich.
After seeing Bush in office, the sensible thing to do would have been to reduce presidential power. Nobody bothered. Then again after Trump. Biden didn't do a damn thing to reduce presidential power, knowing what happened and what could happen. Way too late. The judiciary and congress are now both subservient to the president.
Because they see themselves as Democrats and Republicans more than they see themselves as Members of Congress. The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.
If they see themselves first as Members of Congress, then they should try to seek more power for Congress, not for their parties.
Toilet paper supply issues were not an example of an efficiency problem, they were misinformation creating a demand shock.
Your average supermarket has limited shelf space and stocks to the level that it will reliably clear shelves before new supply turns up, or things spoil.
If a whole much of people just buy one extra pack that week, this can easily empty the shelves... Which then gets posted to social media to imply a supply problem, which then prompts people to increase their buying rate.
There's no solution to this other then education: there was no supply issue, and never was. Any "solution" would be concluding that a supermarket should devote an absurd amount of shelf space to toilet paper, just in case misinformation goes viral again.
From my understanding, toilet paper is produced for commercial and residential purposes. As people stopped going to the office (and restaurants and malls, etc), people stopped using commercial toilet paper and started using more residential toilet paper.
What I read at the time also said that it's very hard for a plant to shift from making commercial to residential toilet paper, that the margins are paper thin (pun intended) and so it would take a lot of time and money to retool.
That's the explanation for why they couldn't just "order more toilet paper" to refill the store shelves.
But that wasn't the cause of the problem: the cause of the problem was people thinking "oh I'm not sure about a shortage, better buy an extra pack" (I know we did) for just one week...and then someone posts an "empty store shelves!!!" image on social media...which in turn prompts another group of people to do the same at another store, and then the idiot-brigade scalpers get involved. There's still no actual shortage though! The amount of toilet paper being produced is the same, the consumption rate is the same, people have just changed their stockpiling preference and the rate at which they do is spreading faster then any conceivable supply chain adjustment. But the actual consumption rate hasn't changed at all.
The idiot-brigade scalpers are worth commenting on because IMO there's a second factor which usually turns up: it's kind of fun to "buy out the supermarket" of some good. Like there's a child-like glee of going "I'll totally buy all of it" but most people don't consider that you can do this for any one item in the supermarket for like, $300 on the spot. It's just there's no reason too - partly because it's the most expensive possible way to buy almost anything.
> There's still no actual shortage though! The amount of toilet paper being produced is the same, the consumption rate is the same, people have just changed their stockpiling preference
You seem to have entirely missed the point of the comment you’re replying to. The consumption rate of residential toilet paper increased. Have you seen actual commercial toilet paper and considered its texture and, more critically, the size and shape of the rolls? While it’s possible for someone to awkwardly wipe using a monster roll of commercial paper at home, the commercial roll is not really a desirable substitute for residential TP.
Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.
Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US?
With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago.
I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt itself. Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government. Accountability requires a true adversary/"outsider". Should that be DOGE, or its current implementation? Probably not. Should the adversarial concept of DOGE exist? I would enjoy seeing arguments against the concept. It seems like it's severely needed.
US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off our debt) has basically remained static since COVID. I agree that the US requires a serious debate about our fiscal priorities and the appropriate levels of spending and taxation, particularly with automatic social security cuts looming. But it is nowhere near an emergency and fiscal decisions are the responsibility of Congress, not the executive.
My point is that our debt only grows unsustainably in response to severe crises (the great financial crisis, COVID). Our deficit is otherwise sustainable during "normal" times as our economy grows alongside it. We of course should want our debt to GDP ratio to be declining during periods of peace and prosperity (and it is evidence of political malfeasance that we haven't seen that happen since the late 90s). But our current spending is not a crisis in it's own right.
Why should you care if the national debt goes up or down? Why is it bad if it goes up? Do you actually understand the underlying mechanics, or have you just built a lot of eloquent abstractions around the idea of “number go up is bad”?
Go high enough, interest payments consume the entire federal budget. There is no way out except revenue growth (infeasible without breakthrough productivity improvements), taxation, and printing money (equivalent to taxation). Before that point, other bad things happen such as creditors losing faith in the government, making debt more expensive and destabilizing the dollar's position as global reserve currency.
Over the last few decades, debt has continued to rise as a percentage of the federal budget, and appears that trend will continue without drastic action.
Barring massive political instability, nobody is ever going to lose confidence in the dollar, regardless of debt ratios. Japan has a debt ratio of over 300%, economists have been predicting a crash and capital flight for decades, but none of it has come to pass.
At the end of the day, the Japanese market is huge and people want access to it. Same thing goes for the US.
If the private market doesn’t want bonds, the central bank can purchase them. That’s not inflationary. What is inflationary is how the government then spends that money, but that’s true for any government spending, regardless of how it was financed. Either way, the debt ratios is literally meaningless.
I'm not an expert but I think I have a reasonable understanding of the situation. If the US debt to GDP ratio gets too high, purchasers of US Treasuries (bills, notes, and bonds) will lose confidence in the US government's ability to service that debt and demand a higher yield on US Treasuries at auction, which increases the cost of servicing the debt. At that point, the government has two choices; pay the higher yield which eventually results in fewer services/higher taxes and a contraction in the real economy, or to default on the debt which would result in very bad things happening (this is where I cop to ignorance on the scale and exact details of the badness). We should get ahead of that by reducing our services/raising taxes now so that we don't risk a loss of confidence that would restrict our ability to borrow in a time of crisis.
1. Nobody is losing confidence in the US over debt ratios. Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with financing their spending or capital flight. This is a myth that has been proven false.
2. If the private market doesn’t want to purchase bonds, the central bank can do it. Either way, there is never a need to default on debt owed in your sovereign currency. This will never happen. The risk here is inflation, but that risk is always present, regardless of how spending is financed.
"Since COVID" is a bad baseline, I would draw a parallel with someone who's condition "stayed stable since they entered the hospital a few days ago". It is too recent and the situation pre-COVID was quite bad. The US is the most indebted entity [0] in history. But it is not obviously the most productive; since that title may sit with China now. It is a precarious position.
Complaining about the “national debt” is the clearest sign that someone does not understand economics.
What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.
Do you think inflation is gonna happen? Again, literally not how it works. In fact, too low public spending means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation.
Infinite free money hacks is literally how fiat currencies work.
The government wants the economy to operate at close to full capacity, so it creates money and spends it into the private sector.
Eventually that money makes it to individuals, who want to save some of that money. There’s also foreign agents that might want to hold on to your currency, and trade happening that means some of your money leaves your country.
If the government maintains steady spending, this money supply slowly dwindles, which leads to a shrinking economy.
So governments issue debt to offset that dwindling money supply. The catch is that spending that doesn’t create real resources is inflationary, so you have to spend money on things that eventually earn you more money.
At the end of the day, that’s the idea of macro economics. Spend enough to get your economy growing, while making sure inflation doesn’t go up too much. Which is why people that complain about debt have no idea what they’re talking about.
The reason Trump won was because “the economy is doing great since Joe Biden”, meant the billionaires tripled their wealth as mega corporations went from less than a trillion market cap to more than 3 trillion, while me and millions others fixed salaries went up 5% if you were fortunate.
Biden governed far too much as a center-right President, I agree. Meanwhile Trump had those same billionaires with front row seats at his coronation. So the situation will continue to get much worse.
I don’t see how that’s relevant to the macro economics discussion, and I don’t see how Trumps tax cuts for billionaires are going to help you in any way.
1. I don't think you have a theory for how it works.
> means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation
2. People regularly come up with this theory that prices dropping is a terrible thing. An extraordinary claim for which I've never seen an argument I accepted and the evidence is as thin as a rake. Typically the countries that experience the horrors of deflation go on to be unusually wealthy and prosperous - I'd like to see more of it. But it is easy to see why the governments would believe deflation is bad that since they are typically enormous debtors and inflation favours debtors.
Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.
People who bring up this theory, bring the great depression as evidence, forgetting that the problem there was caused by the law forbidding to reduce salaries, which made prices going down equivalent to minimal wage going up, which of course leads to unemployment.
Given the confusion around, eg, the 2008 financial crisis I just flat out reject that there was 1 lesson in the 1930s that was so unambiguous that the debate is settled. It is a ridiculous claim. There was so much going on and so many people always pop up in a crisis trying to muddy the waters to get their preferred policy through. Look at the minimum wage debate - still unsettled despite what I would consider overwhelming evidence in theory and practice. And whatever anyone's personal beliefs, if that can't be settled there is no way at all that the inflation/deflation question has a firm answer from one event in the 1930s.
Especially given that "prices always up"="good" is counter-intuitive and I can't find anyone with a clear argument in favour of inflation. There is lots of gobbledegook and occasionally people who make arguments equivalent to holidays being bad because they reduce economic output. Which is an argument but not very persuasive, I'd prefer to optimise towards an end state where I get to live out a permanent comfortable holiday; even if the economic metrics go down. I like comfort.
Well if I want to talk about inflation we have things like the Nazis, Zimbabwe, a long list of collapses that countries never really recover from. But if we look up deflation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples
EU - Still to see the long term consequences, but it isn't obvious the deflation was the bad thing in the story.
Hong Kong - Jewel of Asia.
Ireland - Very high HDI and GDP ppp per capita.
Japan - Economic success story.
UK - Can't argue that they're a success! But their problems after WWI wasn't the deflation.
US - Some good some bad, lots to debate, but the latest episode (Great depression in the 1930s) set them up to conquer the world and establish the Not-An-Empire they have now. If that is a bad outcome I fear the good ones.
I'm not seeing the Zimbabwe equivalent. In fact it looks a lot like deflation is associated with - if not a precursor to - long term economic success and prosperity.
Is there an example where you can explain how the deflation actually led to economic success? The above feel like very distant correlations more than a result.
'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.
I'm not arguing that deflation leads to economic success. I'm arguing the evidence that it is bad is nonexistent. Although it has some interesting interactions with the tax system and government policies.
If you go through the arguments, inflation/deflation are both mostly neutral because people just adjust their expectations by whatever they think the rate will be. In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth. And by reversing that, deflation is usually positive but only because it suggests that the political leadership at the time was interested in honest market signals rather than seizing an opportunity to conduct handouts.
> 'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.
Inflation or deflation, by definition, doesn't impact how much someone can buy in real terms. Because wages and goods are theoretically changing at the same rate.
Deflation is bad because it’s literally your economy shrinking. It’s not prices dropping, it’s less spending across the board. Depending on your demographics you end up with huge unemployment numbers or a standard of living for the older generation that can’t be sustained by the new generation.
If you’re arguing a fringe point of view please make that clear up front. If I knew you think deflation is good I wouldn’t have ever replied.
And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.
> Deflation is bad because it’s literally your economy shrinking.
Well, this comment is off to a bad start. What about a very small economy of 1 widget that can be produced and sold for $2 per unit time, then a technological change that causes the equilibrium to move to 2x widgets for $1 apiece in over the same time? The real production of the economy has doubled, and experienced 50% price deflation. The same basic scenario can be developed at any economic size and complexity. No unemployment. No standard of living drop. Just people affording more stuff.
Deflation, in fact, is literally not the economy shrinking. It is a systemic reduction in prices.
> And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.
This is pretty typical of anti-deflation comments in my experience - what are you trying to say here? Countries manage to overwhelm themselves with high debts with inflationary monetary policy too; the problem - if there is one - is the borrowing of money. It is hard to end up in debt without borrowing money and investing it unproductively. That decision is independent of monetary policy.
And I didn't say Japan was an economic success because of deflation. There wasn't a "because".
> What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.
You're the one that has no idea what hes talking about.
Debt uncontrollably going up without something to balance it means exactly that. If the debt exceeds the GDP, which is where the US is clearly going, we are looking at a collapse of the US dollar and its global influence. Theres no telling what will happen after that because its unfathomable
This is also why the techbros are staging a coup on the US, so the US doesnt come for the billions when it goes bankrupts
Well, yes. Japan as a nation is a net creditor. Net creditor don't generally struggle when paying back their debts. The question of where the money will come from has an obvious answer. If the US was a net creditor then the story would be completely different.
Some people have a lot of unexpressed sadness and anger and fear from the pandemic (and housing crisis before that) and are projecting it on to indirectly or totally unrelated things.
>US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off our debt)
US debt as a percentage of GDP doesn't demonstrate the continued ability to pay off the debt, since the ability to pay off the debt is dependent on that debt's interest. The issue with the debt in the current environment is that it is going to start rolling over into higher interest rates. If the debt is structured to pay higher interest then that lessens the ability to pay off the debt even if the debt as a percentage of GDP stays the same.
there are distributional impacts from crowding out and potential long term effects on AS, never to mention that the inflation risks are very real… debt is likely already politically constraining the fed right now
You're upgrading from a crisis that impoverishes a bunch of people to ... a crisis that impoverishes everyone. Unclear what the improvement was. And potentially literally how you get Hitlers running the government, inflation is one of those effects that breeds political instability.
You said we - possibly there is a flaw in my grammer. How should I be referring to this "we"? Isn't the "I" to "We" transform applied to "you" still "you"? I thought "you" could be plural for groups.
I don't think going from "we" to "they" would be appropriate although in hindsight it might have been a better choice.
You’re describing the independent Inspectors General. That were summarily fired. Could they have had more power and independence? Sure. But there were real independent offices doing what you describe.
The problem is EM and DOGE are equating “fraud and waste” to “I think it’s wasteful”, which is a judgement the adversarial auditor should not be allowed to make.
We have it: three branches of government. But the political branch loyalty has been superseded by political party loyalty and it breaks the system.
What I think should happen is that the vast majority of legislators (Senators/Representatives) should be furious that the Executive branch is disregarding laws that they wrote themselves. And the justices should be furious that the Executive branch is disbeying their interpretation of the law.
Strange how the national debt increases much faster when the president is a Republican. Republicans love to run the debt up when they are in power and then use it as a weapon when they are not.
The Tax Foundation has a well-known conservative leaning mindset when they publicize data. They project the benefits for business and lower tax policy.
It is not a legit source for progressive tax policy.
The Congressional Budget Office has been the most reputable source for tax policy data. The current director was appointed by Trump 2019 and was retained through Biden's presidency.
The CBO is very wonky and so far as withstood partisan meddling by presidents.
No healthcare, no public research to today's extent, no military etc. etc. Yes when your government is doing nothing normally it doesn't cost that much.
In 1960 the top tax rate was 91%. In 1980 it was 70%. Reagan dropped it to 35% and it's stayed below 40% since. Then add in that corporations and the wealthy have moved away from having normal income that isn't taxed (loans backed by assets) and you've lost half the tax revenue that paid for cheap housing, nearly free healthcare and public college and you have a healthy society and middle class.
But then to screw the pooch even more, Bush printed 5 trillion for his wars and two tax cuts. Trump printed money for his tax cuts too. (these expenses were never in the annual budget - they just printed the money)
Tesla, one of the richest corporations in our country just reported 0% tax in three years.
Our national debt has nothing to do with the annual budget and expenses, including USAID and helping Ukraine.
While tax cuts do contribute to the national debt, it is not accurate to say the national debt is "100% of tax policy". Tax revenue as a % of GDP has been pretty stable for a long time.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
So what actually is driving the national debt higher? The never popular answer is entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) + interest, which is exasperated by an aging population. In fact, almost all future debt growth is driven by these programs. The rest of the budget is expected to balance out. Tax revenue is expected to increase, and discretionary spending is expected to fall as a % of GDP.
Also very predictable exenditures over time, which increase with an aging population with decreased firtility rates. Which have little to do with actual firtility but are just a measure of kids vs parent ratio, it might play a role though. Everyone always forgets that it is entirely predictable but nobody does something about it because it hurts.
Also doesn't help if you borrow against the money put in. The US is not alone in taking money from the baby's/old peoples fund unfortunately, same happened here but worse the money was just taken. Although it was mostly spend on education and construction so there is that at least.
The government "borrowed" from the SS fund. That's why it's endangered. The money was there and it should still be there.
The government also screwed the postal service by taking their profits (one of the few things in government that actually makes one) and then yells at them for not making enough income.
We need a flat corporate and billionaire tax that has no loopholes.
Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare, and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely uninterested in doing any of those things, and are in fact going to make them worse.
Indiscriminately firing federal workers whose salaries will collectively make up maybe one tenth of one percent of the budget is not at all about reducing debt, that's just the thin justification they are using the destroy any independence and competence within the government that might get in the way of their looting and corruption.
Anyone who thinks that Trump and Musk are serious about reducing the federal debt at this point aren't likely to be swayed by anything I say. But for anyone who genuinely believes that I hope you will look at what the national debt and deficit are right now, and then to check on them in a few years when both are dramatically worse. You will find that two of the most prominent bullshitters in the world are in fact bullshitting on this topic as well.
> Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare, and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely uninterested in doing any of those things
Easiest thing to do IMO is fund anyone that is over 18 that has paid into Social Security. Anyone younger - simple, reduce taxes to not include it. Phase that fucker out. Get rid of all but 10% of federal income tax.
Also, make all black budget projects that involve underground alien bases public and move it all private, so Elon and other people can just directly invest in those instead of coming out of our taxes through the DOD.
I am happy to cut government spending and increase government efficiency (obviously). I have so far not seen any evidence that DOGE is working is this direction. As I like to point out the marginal dollar spent on the IRS brings in ~$10 of revenue. If DOGE or Trump really cared about the deficit they would expand the IRS. They would take ease the burden of NEPA, but in the meantime increase the number of bureaucrats to make the process faster. They would reform the Paperwork Reduction Act. They would make it easier for government officials to handpick hires.
On the policy side they would push for port automation. They would get rid of the Jones act. They could standardize and simplify the tax code (& get rid of loopholes like stepped up basis)
Instead they are breaking random government websites, blocking & politicizing USAID (< 1% of budget), mass firing with seemingly no plan for running various orgs, trying to increase mass incarceration (?) and reinforcing captured markets (like TurboTax).
Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?
Aren't other countries adversarial enough?
I think these are made up concerns. By and large the US is dominant in the real world, and always will be given its size, location and cultural foundations. And that translates to being able to print and spent a large amount of money, which could be used to solve real world problems, such as:
- climate change and the need to transition energy, transportation over time with some urgency
- chronic housing shortage
- education costs
Instead they're focusing on fake problems and solutions that will make the real problems worse.
> Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?
Not really. There is a political strategy Republicans have engaged during this time known as "Two Santas" which can explain it:
First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans
control the White House they must spend money like a
drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far
and as fast as possible.
This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus
making people think that the GOP can produce a good
economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes
people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa
Clauses.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans
must scream about the national debt as loudly and
frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our
children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut
spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government,
crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around
the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending
money.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own
social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus
shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus
right in the face.[0]
He campaigned (first time) to reduce the national debt and instead exploded it by giving massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy.
You would have to cut entitlements if you're relying on cuts alone, and those require Congressional action to change. It's absolutely wild people actually believed Musk without spending a few minutes understanding the issue.
Certainly, building systems to search for and prevent fraud is a worthy goal. Solving for that is orthogonal to what is taking place (which is Musk and his loyal, inexperienced band of lackeys doing whatever they want without governance and oversight). Is all of USAID fraud? Does the executive branch have the authority to unilaterally shut the program? No, these are the actions of authoritarians.
Everything Musk and Trump have done have been virtue signaling, removing oversight and political independence, gutting consumer protections, and pissing off our allies.
A Russian puppet candidate could not do more damage to this country than what the Trump administration is doing right now.
Nothing being done fights the large causes of fraud/waste/abuse. Nothing being done helps the cost of housing or the cost of healthcare or college or fuel.
The so called successes of the tariff wars so far have been done at the expense of our long term credibility as a nation.
> Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government
US Government Accountability Office already existed to do this, without it being career suicide for those involved (at least until Trump began attempting to end it despite being nonpartisan)
Indeed. There's undoubtably fat to cut all across the board but anybody who decries government spending and waste and doesn't include the DOD as part of that is a hypocrite at best.
I didn't downvote you, but tell how you would like to downsize the military's mission 95%. No overseas bases? No Coast Guard? No R&D? Just looking at a big number and saying "cut it" is easy, saying what to cut is hard.
95% is overly aggressive, but that doesn't mean there's opportunities to trim fat.
Addressing the DOD's accounting failures is a first step -- famously admitted to by Don Rumsfeld:
Rumsfeld says, “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building. Because it's stored on dozens of different technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”
There's zero incentive to cut waste -- in fact the opposite. At the end of the fiscal year it's SOP to spend every last penny in the budget on anything they can, just to ensure their budget isn't cut.
Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US ~$6T and we got nothing to show for it.
There's got to be a reasonable center between "God bless the US Military" and "Shut it all down".
You are way underreacting to what’s going on here. This is not about saving money, or trying to cut waste or fraud. Elon Musk has been posting wild conspiracies on X to justify what he’s doing. But the actual changes are reactionary and political. Accountability is long gone if someone like Elon is in direct charge of what bills get paid. Fraud and waste will skyrocket in these conditions.
Tesla and SpaceX ran on government money. X is doing poorly enough that he’s suing former advertisers demanding that the courts force them buy ads.
He now has significant influence over all of those things. Official government communications are only being released on X, incentivizing people to use it. The next NASA contract is going to be awarded by people who know their boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss owes his political career to the owner of one of the bidders. Last quarter, a quarter of Tesla’s net income was unrealized Bitcoin profits – and he’s pushing the government to subsidize Bitcoin so it can get the kind of adoption it hasn’t been able to achieve on merit!
This is why government ethics rules exist, and why high-level officials have public confirmation hearings. Even if he was incredibly scrupulous about not making decisions based on his own interests, it reeks of corruption and provides many avenues for potential abuse (e.g. what if China threatened to seize his factories unless he helped them get a better deal?). The federal employees he’s attacked have annual training reminding them that they can’t accept gifts over $20/year – and really shouldn’t even then – with consequences up to going to jail for a long time.
Hold on there, Tesla has repeatedly shown an amazing ability to cut costs of their products while improving functionality/quality.
Yes Tesla benefits from credits caused by other companies not meeting co2 targets set by the government but that wouldn't have been enough to save them from three near bankruptcies. And yes, they are still quite a ways away from being a leader in overall quality and consistency but yhey are executing extremly well in their R&D compared to other US car companies only to be outdone by the Chinese, certainly not any US company.
As someone solidly on the left, this has really frustrated me to no end with the typical lefist sources I watch. In 2025 Facts really matter but all I see are facts being omitted to push a narrative (ie. Elon wasn't the founder of Tesla, Tesla/SpaceX is just alive because of the government subsidizes, Elon does not know anything about how to make a car/rocket).
They cite his bad behavior or screwups in reforming Twitter but unless you have followed everything that Elon has accomplished/failed at you are lying by omission. This is especially dangerous now because by dismissing him as dumber than he really is, you are setting him up for surprise successes because people let their guard down.
This is what I see on /r/fednews at how shocked they are over how fast he is moving at his slash and burn.
You would have known this had you followed the whole Twitter saga very closely, the early days of Tesla where they ousted the original CEO for deliberately lying to the board, and the three near bankruptcies of the company where Elon pulled out hail mary after hail mary to save the company.
You don't see the conflict of interest in one person both controlling how public funds are spent, and running private companies that may have those funds directed to benefit them?
When Elon runs his companies, he is beholden to shareholders to use the company's resources effectively to generate and maintain value.
Who is Elon beholden to when managing public funding and programs as an unelected non-official? Who will vote him out when he wasn't voted in? Who will revoke his confirmation when he was never confirmed?
> What is happening in DC (currently) has broad public support.
Things have been moving quite quickly, so this seems like a premature judgement. Can you cite a survey that shows that levels of support for disbanding USAID, for example; or taking over the treasury system; or "deleting" DirectFile?
> So why would "fraud and waste" skyrocket under him?
TSLA doubled in value in the month after the election, despite the financials of the company going down. The only reason for the increase in share price is because the market expects Musk to benefit from Trump's corruption, in the form of less oversight and more government subsidies.
That's a very valid argument. Both SpaceX and Tesla are quite capital efficient. Maybe another angle to consider is what's being optimized for? What outcomes would be considered successful for these federal agencies? That's probably going to tell us more about whether the austerity measures that seem likely result in more efficient use of resources to create successful outcomes.
One thing that seems worth think through more is whether the stated outcomes of those agencies is what's actually be optimized for, or whether those are suborned for personal gain by a few parties.
This is not correct. SpaceX is covered by ITAR and therefore cannot hire foreigners.
Of the approximately 70,000 Tesla employees in the US, fewer than 2,000 are H-1B workers. The rest are US citizens or permanent residents. Tesla's manufacturing is much more vertically integrated than other auto manufacturers, so they rely almost entirely on their US factories to produce the cars they sell in the US. Other auto makers tend to do more manufacturing overseas to save on labor/safety/environmental costs, then do final assembly in the US to avoid tariffs.
JFC, he named a quasi-governmental agency "DOGE"! He may as well have called it "The Department of Pump"
And his buddy the president is happily sending the currency and stock markets up and down with his every idiotic tariff announcement. I wonder if the top man at DOGE is on the list of people who Trump tips off?
Musk, Trump and half this administration are off-the-charts corrupt.
They mean that he will divert or protect payments and credits going to his own businesses or partners. His interest in capital efficiency exists to generate profit for himself, not as a blessing for other orgs he provides as a gift. He did it with Twitter/X after he became owner of its profits.
If treasury money is diverted to his private interests, that is waste and perhaps fraud. But to him it achieves the same end (personal profit) as capital efficiency of orgs under his own ownership, not just his control
Never appropriate. The actions are entirely unconstitutional. If the US decided to disband USAID it would have to be an act of congress, unelected friends of the president don’t come close to being able to make that call.
In a sensu stricto it's illegal, but practically and regrettably they are able to make that call, because though there are rules against it, unless the sergeant at arms of the senate goes out and handcuffs them, nobody is going to stop them. When the executive branch and the judiciary both decide to ignore the legislative branch, what is the legislative branch going to do?
Our legislative branch is unable to even minimally fulfill its Constitutional duties.
We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them.
The Congressional budget process is fundamentally broken and increasingly nondemocratic - the leadership of both parties get "continuing resolutions" passed while they draft a mountainous "omnibus" bill that includes all their pork and graft, then they whip the members of the majority party to pass it without reading it.
The Congressional oversight committees are usually captured by the industries and/or agencies they oversee.
Congressional hearings are not used to inform Congress or the people; they're nakedly partisan acting gigs for committee members.
Congress has unconstitutionally delegated much of its authority to a bureaucracy run by the executive branch, intending to have it operate independently of the president. Now we have a president who is choosing to exercise his authority over the executive branch.
Of course, it is illegal and unconstitutional for the president to eliminate programs that are established by law. But remember the executive branch bureaucracy ONLY exists to allow the president to implement the laws passed by Congress. If the laws aren't explicit or delegate to an executive branch agency HOW they law/program will be implemented, then the president has enormous authority over how to implement it, and there is nothing Constitutionally wrong with that. So if the president says "we don't need 10000 people to implement CFR 1.2.3 section 4, we only need 10", and he can implement the law/program as passed by Congress with 10 people, then he's allowed to do that.
The big problem is that Congress MUST depend on the executive branch to, er, execute. Whatever is required to implement the law, that isn't specified in the law, is up to the executive branch, and the President is the head of that branch.
And all this BS about "classification" again only exists to enable the president to do his job. If the president says someone can have access to something, that is non-negotiable, as two USAID folks found out over the weekend. The bureaucracy has for decades used classification to make a currency out of secrets and to try to avoid oversight. Looks like that ride has ended.
So, America has been dovetailing towards being a monarchy because Congress won’t do their jobs, and it was inevitable that a President would eventually arrive who would wield that power? If nobody is willing to enforce the law, and the majority willingly hand the keys to the democracy to a single individual with dubious intentions, is it best to just accept this as the “natural order of things”? The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens. I preemptively left the country last year and won’t be back anytime soon, so as sad as I am to see this day, I’m also strategically working to insulate myself from as much of the fallout as I can.
Yep. When push comes to shove, I suspect more of them will side with the authoritarian since that's kind of the personality type that tends to get involved in these kinds of occupations.
The electoral college was created to prevent a majority from doing such things, but having the electoral college override the will of the people creates all sorts of problems (and possible tit-for-tat in future elections).
Well, it would have been pretty damn nice to see it “activate” when a candidate with 34 felonies and two impeachments won the election, but that didn’t happen, so any supposed utility is immaterial now. I disagree with the entire concept in principle and do believe that the democratic vote should choose the candidate (even now). I just don’t think most folks actually know what they bargained for.
What does it mean for it to be illegal? If they cast faithless votes, would those votes stand, but then they open themselves up for prosecution? or would the votes not stand at all.
Yeah, the one useful feature I ever thought it might have would be as a check against a crazy-unqualified demagogue, and since then I have seen it fail spectacularly, twice.
That was the original intent. It’s like a half way to a parliamentary system where the legislature elects a PM except here it is a separate one time use assembly.
The electoral college was created in the time before the Internet, computers, television, radio, telephone, telegraph, electricity, the automobile, the airplane, and the train. It was logistically impossible to have a national popular vote at the time. Even the gap between the election and inauguration was based on the time it would take a man on horseback to reach DC from the farthest point out in the country.
Go where you have friends, family, or some clear reason to be. The fact that you are open to suggestions implies this is an aimless/distracting way to waste years of your life. Perhaps you have the type of trouble you can't run away from ? I am speaking from experience and hoping you don't give up on the US assuming your roots are here. Take a long vacation abroad as an alternative.
>The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens
What generation was raised to respect those institutions? Because the boomers were against them and their policies, and Gen X was cynical about them...
Millennials, I'd argue. During the 90s, culture at large painted a picture of stability and progress, all made possible by democracy. See Francis Fukuyama's The End of History for the kind of tone that permeated the time.
As we Millenials have gotten older, we too have seen through the veil and realized the system isn't perfect. More importantly, perhaps, we've seen the wide range of ways people react to this imperfect system. Some have chosen to undermine its very foundations to get their way, leaving many to wonder what we're left with if -- to loosely quote Whose Line Is It Anyway -- the rules are made up and the points don't matter.
The late 70s through the 90s were kind of our last stable period (the 60s & early 70s were tumultuous with Viet Nam and Watergate, and the 30s & 40s were dominated by Depression and World War). That all starts to unravel with 9/11 and the response to it (starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost us $Trillions and didn't really help stabilize the region and ironically began the destabilization of the US).
Much as we like to kvetch about Clinton (and I've certainly done my share of it, and certainly much of the criticism has merit), if there was a "golden age" of America in recent memory, the Clinton era was it.
America is not moving toward a monarchy. The idea that no one is willing to enforce the law is not true. There have been many criminals that have just been removed from the country and many more are in the process of being removed. I'm not sure what "handing the keys to democracy" means, if this is about the United States then that country is a constitutional republic. I'm not sure what leaving the country served, if it makes you happy great, but there is so much hyperbole on the left. The funny thing is that people at the highest levels of the left that pushed insane hyperbole, clearly don't even believe their own nonsense about Trump and the administration, with their sheepish smiles.
As far as the article, Musk is a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it is a good idea to have an entity concern itself with improving the efficiency and reducing the bloat of the bureaucracy of the federal government and Musk is not a dummy, he is the richest person in the world and runs some quite high-profile companies. On the other hand, it is hard to deny Musk is a little bit of a buffoon: fighting with Asmongold on X over his clear lies about video games is sort of unbelievable, telling Americans to "F [themselves] in the FACE" if they don't want all high-skilled jobs in this country to go to H-1Bs, and various other sort of juvenile things. Having these kids that Musk has hired to run-around the federal government is probably not the best thing but I think this doomsday stuff is completely silly.
He also just pardoned a bunch of criminals who physically assaulted police, desecrated Congress, because… they were on his side? That’s simply unprecedented. I don’t need a “party leader” to tell me that’s wrong.
This concept (Congress failing) gets repeatedly stated in many contexts without sufficient pushback. It should be considered whether perhaps for organization so large its functioning quite reasonably. Much of the current outrage has been manufactured via a long game of propaganda since at least the Reagan era but probably longer.
> We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them
Which Congress authorized and funded.
Congress, historically, has made formal declarations of war only at the request of the President. No President has asked for one in decades nor are they required to make war.
They aren't the same thing at all. We've had Presidents ask for authorization without asking for a declaration since the 18th century - the Quasi War was the first I believe.
The precedent is well understood. The President may ask for authorization for any extended war and for a formal declaration, if desired. Then, and only then, will Congress act. Congress will not issue a declaration absent being asked by Commander of the military, for obvious reasons.
This idea that Congress is somehow not doing its job because it's not issuing a formal declaration that were not requested nor required, is simply nonsense.
Frankly, if requesting authorization was the same thing as requesting a declaration, then one could just as easily argue Congressional approval of funding for a war is a declaration.
A declaration of war or an authorization of force are both Congressional approvals for use of military force against an enemy of the state. I get that's inconvenient for your argument, but they're the same.
And the president doesn't have the authority to declare war on his or her own accord, full stop, because the constitution explicitly gives that right to Congress (and no other branch).
Any convoluted timelines around requests are immaterial to those facts.
If the president uses the military to attack an enemy of the state, without Congressional approval, that's outside of his or her authority.
Didn't the Supreme Court judge that the president can't be prosecuted for crimes relating to his official duties? The only recourse is impeachment, and that requires the cooperation of his own party. The president can also pardon all the rest of his associates as required.
And yet all of the inefficiency of Congress and the Courts is better than the alternative, which is dictatorship with no guardrails. We've seen what this looks like in many countries, and nothing you say, do, or own will be safe.
Right, the crusty 236 year old government is showing it’s age and has problems but has also resulted in an exceptionally successful country, so the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it, but instead, the voting populace just decided to burn it to ash; although, many are too politically ignorant to even understand the consequences of their decision.
> the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it
You can't, though. It's ossified too much. The constitution was always meant to be a living document, but now it's a sacred text for which new amendments are practically inconceivable.
It will take a long time to go through the courts, the courts may not care, and even if they do, you can usually appeal and drag your feet long enough that it doesn't matter. Oh, and bonus here, if you become president again you get another reset. It's illegal, but there's no recourse for action.
It's a DDoS on the legal system and he's got all three branches by the balls. The courts can intervene in some of the cases some of the time, but it won't intervene in all of the cases all of the time.
The only way forward here is if everybody in the federal government either does the same thing, or that they become so ineffective and unreliable at _their_ jobs that everything is slowed down enough for the courts to intervene.
... right up until they pretend they're not and never were when the political winds shift again. Though, maybe the winds no longer shift in these parts ...
He got just under 50% of the vote. He won by 1.5%, a tiny margin, fourth smallest since 1900. That does not sound like a mandate to me. I also suspect many people who voted for him did not specifically consider what he would actually do.
> I also suspect many people who voted for him did not specifically consider what he would actually do.
So far he has more or less adhered to the plans he and the rest of the crew that coalesced around his campaign over the summer and undoubtedly led to his election said they would do. I would argue that the campaign’s plans were the most accessible of any campaign so far - dozens of hours of discussion on podcasts and the like by him and potential cabinet members, and video addresses for specific policy plans on the agenda 47 website.
For example, Musk made it very clear that the intention with DOGE was to move fast and break things, saying (perhaps ignorantly) that if it turns out something was necessary, you just put it back.
You're saying they're doing the plan they said they would do, but Trump explicitly said he never heard of the plan they're now doing: "I have nothing to do with Project 2025.... That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it."
Judging by some of the surprised Pikachu responses from his voters I'm seeing, I think people took him at his word when he said he had nothing to do with it and never read it. Because he lied about his intentions to voters, you can't not say he has a mandate.
Why do you think it's illegal? USAID was established by an executive order by JFK, not by Congress; Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it specifically be USAID. Closing it and not replacing it with anything would be illegal, but closing it doesn't seem obviously illegal.
Edit: not only that, but they didn't close USAID entirely: they just closed the USAID headquarters, and installed Marco Rubio as the new head of USAID. While this may or may not be desirable, I don't see how this is actually illegal. The specific organization of USAID was established by executive order; this is one of the many consequences of the Republicans winning control of the executive branch of government.
> Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it specifically be USAID
That was true in 1961, but not in the 63 years since then. The Foreign Assistance Act has been amended many times with specific requirements since written for the by then already existing United States Agency for International Development[1]
Nothing in that bill says that USAID needs a specific headquarters to be open, or that it can't be run by Marco Rubio. How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run USAID illegal?
> How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run USAID illegal?
This framing seems disingenuous given the already far reaching effects of the frozen funding, the layoffs, the shut down of communications, the shuttered offices, and, apparently, giving non government employees unfettered access to its computer systems.
But yes, shutting down the USAID or trying to muddy the waters by saying it'll totally still exist, they'll just somehow run it out of the state department and not fund anything should indeed not be possible without an act of congress.
According to USC 6601 — which is the current law — the President literally has the power to abolish USAID entirely, and only has to submit a report about it to do it. [1] Saying that closing the HQ and assigning a Republican as the head of USAID is "illegal" or "should not be possible without an act of Congress" doesn't make sense. Congress already passed an act allowing the President to terminate USAID. Congress does not mandate that USAID exists forever, and does not prevent the President from terminating it or streamlining it.
I’m pretty sure it’s now 2025, which is more than 60 days after Oct 21, 1998. Therefore, the president does not have power to abolish USAID. Please try again.
Ah, my read of that was that as of October 21, 1998, the President would have to submit a report to close USAID (whereas previously the President did not have to submit a report). However, your reading makes more sense.
That's not correct. Acts of congress specifically created the agency after JFK's XO.
Regardless, the agency is a party to contracts which it is currently breaking. The actions of DOGE are causing the US to break contracts, which is illegal.
Interesting take. I think it applies to every agency? Shutter NASA, and any congressional act merely specifies an agency for aeronautics and space, not necessarily this exact one? As long as it’s eventually reconstituted, no foul.
I’m suspicious, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised we’ve hit the “one simple trick” era of governing.
No, NASA was specifically created by the "National Aeronautics and Space Act" [1], not by an executive order. USAID was created by executive order by JFK. [2]
The bill you link to specifically allows the President to abolish USAID: as it states,
Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. [1]
And here's the text of section 6601, which explains how to abolish USAID:
(a) Submission of plan and report
Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998, the President shall transmit to the appropriate congressional committees a reorganization plan and report regarding-
(1) the abolition of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the United States Information Agency, and the United States International Development Cooperation Agency in accordance with this chapter;
(2) with respect to the Agency for International Development, the consolidation and streamlining of the Agency and the transfer of certain functions of the Agency to the Department in accordance with section 6581 of this title;
(3) the termination of functions of each covered agency as may be necessary to effectuate the reorganization under this chapter, and the termination of the affairs of each agency abolished under this chapter;
(4) the transfer to the Department of the functions and personnel of each covered agency consistent with the provisions of this chapter; and
(5) the consolidation, reorganization, and streamlining of the Department in connection with the transfer of such functions and personnel in order to carry out such functions.
The President can abolish USAID, or can streamline it, or terminate functions within it, according to your own provided links, and only has to submit a report about it.
Fair enough; my initial read was that this meant that as of October 21, 1998 reports would be required (whereas previously they weren't), but honestly I think that was the wrong read and you're right.
That's even more clearly illegal. The Executive doesn't determine where money goes.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:
> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
This seems like a stretch. If I close Wal-Mart headquarters does Walmart still exist? For a little while, maybe. Warehouses will probably run on autopilot, people will still get paid for a bit, etc, but the company is walking dead. What they've done is effectively decapitate an agency without the consent of the legislature.
I mean you could impeach him again. But that's doesn't really do anything other than wave a finger at him and says "Naughty naughty".
Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected office again after being impeached a few times during his previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his impeachment to force him out of office and that requires a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress defending his actions that he would still be president. I mean he's already a convicted criminal.
That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he already proved that nothing can stop him.
Eh, they've already seen that with the balkans and eastern bloc countries in the 80-90s. You're gonna get a bunch of Orbàn-like small time dictators on every state that once on a while have to bow to the requests of a central-government more interested in its own political intrigues than governing anything.
US Doomers are expecting something similar to the Civil War movie in the next few years, the reality will be more similar to "The Lives Of Others".
It's worse to be a US citizen? Then why are so many people coming in the US and why are so many people upset about removing the ones that come here illegally? It seems like people should be happy the federal government is giving them free rides away from here if it is so bad ...
And I say that as a fellow US citizen that has born witness to the abuses of the current bureaucracy.
Good luck with that.
By flagrantly violating the laws and constitution they are doing more than dismantle the bureaucracy. They are removing the very protections that exist to protect you from the petty bureaucrats that you disdain. A government as large as ours cannot function without a bureaucracy, and there is no guarantee the current one's replacement will be as free from corruption, sycophancy, and pettiness as our current one (despite its flaws).
In fact there is ample evidence the new bureaucracy they are creating has just one goal - to do whatever their dear leader asks of them. Try to criticize Nazi rhetoric on X and see how long you last. Now imagine the apparatus of government with the same bent. Only when governments "ban" you they have ways of making you disappear.
You think yourself safe. But everyone is guilty of something. And under a government unrestrained by the rule of law there is nothing to protect you should someone in power take offense. And someone will take offense eventually. Maybe you cut some official's ex-wife's former roommate's cousin in traffic. Or maybe you just say something one day that contradicts what the dear leader says the next.
What does a mixed-truth Snopes article about a dumb law proposed in Tennessee have to do with anything? The law sounds dumb and I would be wary of anyone proposing or voting for such a law, but I’m not a citizen of Tennessee so ???
I likely disagree with a lot of your political opinions, but I want nothing bad to happen to you. If you were my coworker or we encountered each other in public, I would treat you with respect unless you disrespected me.
I see lots of changes to the extent that we will no longer “celebrate” or subsidize LGTBQ+ or DEI issues with public funds. That seems fair to me, I don’t expect public funds to be used to celebrate my lifestyle and sexual preferences. I think that flying an LGTBQ flag over an US Embassy in another country where the citizens overwhelmingly oppose such ideas, does not further any American interest. It just makes working with such countries more difficult.
I also don’t believe in equity in the sense of discriminating against people now for wrongs of the past. I believe strongly in equality and in merit based opportunity that is not in any way tied to immutable characteristics.
I do not see any action that the government has taken as endangering anyone. I would vocally oppose any policy that I thought would harm someone (except I don’t think ending a benefit is a harm in this context).
> I do not see any action that the government has taken as endangering anyone
I’m curious how you view the executive order that moves transgender women into men’s prisons. To me those prisoners are now in a danger they were not previously.
The solution to the problem is separate. The executive order could have included language about protecting prisoners from violence but it does not. Can you agree that the executive order increases the danger that person is in?
But female prisoners are now at less risk, because they're no longer being forcibly incarcerated with male prisoners, thanks to this executive order. In federal prisons at least.
It's a terrible opinion and free speech means people can call out harmful beliefs and behavior. Society is all about establishing social norms, so it's almost an obligation. You are free to be wrong and ostracized.
Most immediately, all the people and services directly impacted. Then second order effects like the continued collapse of rule of law and related operational aspects like the systematic stripping of cybersecurity layers. Magnified by all this happening in one of the largest countries in the world + with most other countries and their process/people. Ex: Halt of congressionally-approved funding of hospitals, schools, and cyber defense teams, and mass layoffs around the same.
It might be amusing when you are personally comfortable and do not consider the people and processes involved, but basic digging reveals this stuff. I happen to work with people like doctors, first-responders, cyber teams, military, scientists, etc whose communities are in a tailspin. It's quite vivid, and I am confused how this is even a question. The ability of people to get life-saving care is literally being removed as perishable supplies are running out and staff are working pro-bono.
A top misinformation tactic is asymmetric trolling: Ask a simple question to force the responder to spend all their time. It's hard to tell if your question is from naivete, privilege, apathy, a broken media diet, trolling, or what.
Thank you for taking time to write a response in good faith.
I was not trolling; I sincerely believe what I wrote.
I do not believe that anything the federal government does that is time sensitive (social security payments, etc) is being affected.
I believe that termination of programs will require Congressional action.
However I believe that there is a lot that the President is Constitutionally authorized to do, that will limit what agencies do and control how they do it, and that the courts will not be shy to step in if the administration even has the appearance of acting unconstitutionally.
I do not think that we are in any way at risk of dictatorship; I think we are quickly moving away from that since Biden left office.
I respect your opinion, but I disagree in good faith, and my disagreement is neither trolling nor uninformed parroting of social media; it’s informed by my understanding of the Constitution and the structure of government it created.
I hope I am right in my predictions and you are wrong, because I don’t want the outcome that you fear may happen.
You are already wrong - hospital care is impacted, schools are/were shutdown, etc. I think you should ask yourself why you are so wrong and unaware on such basic things, and why you do not value them as much as the people reliant on them.
Please name a school that was shut down as a direct result of any Trump administration executive order. I see lots of hyperbolic news articles speculating about such shutdowns, but I do not see any actual closure.
Also, you’re going to have to be more specific about what hospital care was affected and how it was affected.
If a hospital happens to have a research wing and processing a grant proposal for researchers associated with the hospital takes a little longer than usual, I hardly consider that a crisis.
If you've ever been involved in operating small businesses or NGOs, or even harder, making one, you understand how fragile things are for someone to abruptly rugpull on even a small number of pay periods:
The Head Start schools are pretty hard to miss as having been on blast in the media around notifying layoff notices, closures, etc being only paused last minute due to court orders
A lot of basic domestic + intl'l social programs & safety nets run on state + federal grants, and ironically, that is especially true of the Republican/MAGA preferences of non-gov religious, community chartered, etc independent charities & non-profits. A lot are on shoestring budgets - stressing these further is a terrible idea.
RE:Telework, core operational areas like cybersecurity, especially with the COVID flip 4 years ago, is now telework, and those contracts are canceled. Likewise, more qualified positions are often by special renewing appointments, so those are now failing to renew too. Most American families cannot handle multiple missing payperiods, and thus cannot afford to play chicken with the rich or apathetic on this: they're told they're fired, so even if they haven't resigned, they have to interview. With the purse strings coming into the control of those who the courts are disagreeing with, rent wins: that's part of the point. It's already hard to staff these positions given they're underpaid to beginwith, especially when regional, so this is another self-inflicted wound.
This stuff is not hard to search. Systems are more fragile then they may seem from a comfortable techie background in affluent and otherwise self-sufficient regions. I think it's a fair position to want the US to have little power in the international stage, not use its wealth to save lives, etc, and that's something to vote etc on. But rugpulling essential services in illegal ways and unilaterally breaking society is a different thing, and again, not seeing that is pretty terrible and worth calling out.
My 'deja vu' here is when COVID broke out, and while my extended network was working long hours in labs trying to sequence the virus... others were encouraging people to go to restaurants. I'm actually disinterested in the politics. I just want society to avoid breaking from stupid unforced errors. Pulling the cord on people and processes en masse sounds fun if you do not understand operations and sociopathic if you do.
Just remember how they "ostracized" you for being "wrong" now, keep silent when in enemy territory, and smile when you vote against them next election.
But I will not ostracize you for having a different opinion than me, nor will I downvote you, nor will I attempt to dox you, nor will I demand your posts be censored as “misinformation”, no matter how much I disagree.
I might screenshot something you say and make a meme out of it though :-) And you are free to do the same.
Giving up the power to do the one thing you are constitutionally permitted to do, just because it doesn’t work for one particularly teflon-coated individual, is incredibly short-sighted.
Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up on impeachment would cede even more power to the executive branch.
I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.
As the economy crashes, proletariat sentiments will change. If trump is unable to get a war going, or it doesn't develop how he expects, the economy will be the obvious narrative. And if they get trump out before midterms, his endorsement isn't the same thing.
> I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.
You're assuming that the founders were actually correct about a power rivalry between the branches producing a system of checks and balances between them.
As it turns out, when the whole team is rowing in the same direction, congress doesn't actually care that they've abdicated power or all responsibility to check the executive. Their personal comfort is not threatened by it, and this particular congress doesn't care about governing well.
Sure, the republic will be destroyed, but in the meantime, they'll extract a lot of value for their paymasters.
Congressmen that had a spine, and refused to do that all got primaried out.
Which is why the less Trumpy republicans should have supported the anti gerrymandering acts at the start of Bidens term. The primary problem only exists because of gerrymandering.
The Senate didn't find guilt last time. If they do find guilt, the office is stripped. I don't think it's happening anytime soon, but the failed impeachment doesn't really speak to the consequences of a successful one.
That's not true, most just relied on him being a former president at the time of impeachment.
McConnell:
> “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty…There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day… There is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict and disqualify former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen. ...The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.”
He'll wear an impeachment as a badge of honor. The rule of law is a mostly self-supporting system. When nearly the entire edifice of government stops being concerned with it, the system breaks irreparably. We're looking at nothing less than the fall of the Roman empire in speed run, in my opinion.
They'll 25th him before they consider impeachment. Right now Trump is just a useful idiot being puppeteered by the Silicon Valley elite. They got "Just Dance" Vance as VP, so they have a good backup.
All they would really need to do is take the existing Trump "speeches" and present them as the.word salad they are too prove him incapable of serving. That story would viewership so the media would be all over it 24-7. That's one reason Trump is rubber-stamping everything Elon says or does - he knows they have him by the balls.
Good luck with that. He is in for the next four years and will finish his term.
Impeachment and removing him from office means the dems will need to control congress. Which can’t happen until 2027. Then, those dems will need convince at least a double digit count of GOP senators to vote to remove him and not care about facing the wrath of the MAGA base…just to get him out a couple of years before term limits do?
I kinda imagine the next 4 years will work hard towards the singular goal of eliminating those. Or he might just ignore them with a whole lot more preparation than the badly organized insurrection of last time.
He wanted the national guard there. What you’re saying isn’t any better than someone parroting some Newsmax theory about depopulation. There’s no real substance behind your claim, just mischaracterizations and innuendo repeated ad nauseam so people view it as fact.
He did. But I think Republicans in general (and Trump in particular) are being incredibly disingenuous about the National Guard thing and trying to blame {not even calling it a riot anymore} Jan 6 on Pelosi.
Why wouldn't Pelosi want the National Guard there?
Putting a bunch of moderately trained military in a chaotic situation with angry civilians is a recipe for disaster.
And if they'd opened fire on the crowd? Do you really think Trump and the Republicans would have backed that use for force?
After how they treated the United States Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt for climbing through a broken window into the Speaker's lobby, after ignoring multiple orders to stop?
He's already floating the idea of a third term, and the house is considering a constitutional amendment that would allow it.
Of course, that'll be a moot point if he continues to just ignore the constitution as he has been so far this entire term, and the other two branches continue to just let him.
Do you understand how long and what it takes to ratify an amendment? There a reason why we haven’t done one in 33 years and that one took 202 years. The process is designed to be difficult, it’s much more than a simple majority and bang of a gavel.
We are still working on approving the equal rights amendment. That’s one that started 102 years ago, and we have been trying to get the 3/4 state’s agreement for it for only 53 years.
So no, I seriously doubt with a 50/50 divided electorate in this country that we will repeal the 22nd amendment in the less than 4 years that the US would have to do it before Trump could run again.
The democrats will have to convince enough voters that what they really want is to turn the entire country into California. I'm not sure that will be a winning strategy. Judging by the most recent DNC shenanigans, I don't think they learned very much from the last election.
Okay, another nitpick, but it's not because the majority is _conservative_, is it? If they truly voted from conservative principles, _some_ possible actions of the administration could offend them enough to impeach. It's probably more correct to say that it definitely isn't happening with a loyalist (MAGA) majority?
In the US, "conservative" is synonymous with "Republican" and "Republican" is (so far, at least) synonymous with "MAGA loyalist", so it's really splitting hairs to call out the alleged difference.
I thought one of those synonyms was going to be "spineless". It's amazing how many lines on the sand the fascist has crossed, but despite some Republican noise, in they end they vote to protect their job and its perks (like info about stock movements before they become public, amongst the many other forms of corruption) rather than to defend their principles. But then again, the Vichy Democrats are quiet too, they're too chickenshit to escalate and call out this enemy of the constitution.
I grew up in a "democracy" with rigged elections and decades of one president. From TV we thought "Oh, America is such a better place, the politicians are clean, the cops are honest and can't be bought...". Hah, fucking Hollywood fairytales.
Yep, you're right. When I was a kid during the Obama years, I was even proud of our country. Now I realize that it and the conservatives in it are basically no different to Putin and his followers in Russia, and the liberal opposition party is spineless and feckless at best, complicit at worst. We may well have an autocoup soon, if we haven't already. I hope to be able to leave this country before that point, but until then I can only attend protests, even though they seem ineffective at effecting change. I hate everything.
"Capture" is the basic theme of current US government. MAGA capture of the Republican party, for instance. Regulatory capture by by various industrial sectors.
I don’t think so. The Republican Party had some pretty consistent positions for the better part of the last century, until those got in the way during the Obama era. It’s not like it was perfect before but when it came to questions like “is the President above the law?” or “is Canada an ally?” you could predict how most of the party would side. Stuff like granting unappointed people control over multiple agencies, running roughshod over the national security process, trying to impound huge chunks of the budget, etc. wouldn’t have flown even in Trump’s first term before they finished purging non-loyalists from the party.
Dems should bring up articles of impeachment yet again. It will fail in the house and if it doesn't the senate won't convict. But that's really not the point right now. The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal" and make the republicans defend the behavior.
How exactly are Democrats going to do that considering they don't control the House or the Senate? All that's required to block impeachment is a simple majority to kill the resolution. The Republicans control a House majority and can schedule those kill votes whenever they want. They don't need to defend anything, they can just vote to kill the measure.
Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the midterms.
Democrats can’t force an impeachment, but they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day, every day.
Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just how authoritarian the US has become.
America is a democracy, and the Trump won the election, and the Republicans won the majority of elections in the House and the Senate, and by virtue of those elections they also control the Judiciary Committee by a wide margin which can block attempts at impeachment. Trump is not going to be impeached less than a month into his term for doing exactly the kind of things he said he was going to do during his campaign. The best bet for Democrats is to focus on winning the midterms. Impeachment is not a serious option.
A lot of politics is purely performative. I’d wager over 50% of presidential candidates in any given election know full well they have no chance of securing the nomination but run anyway to build up their profile for a cabinet position or a future run.
Making a noise today about impeachment would be similar. It would play into a strategy for winning the midterms. It’d generate more headlines about the blatant illegality occurring under our noses, it’d be a stick to beat rivals with come election season. No, there would be no hope of it actually resulting in an impeachment, but that would be beside the point.
He's following the Project 2025 playbook and during his campaign he specifically claimed he would not be implementing Project 2025.
Democrats were warning that he was lying about his intentions, and that he would in fact implement Project 2025, but that is not equivalent to him campaigning on Project 2025. I think this is an important distinction.
Not the point. The point is to signal (to stand against, to protest) that what the current wankers in charge are doing, shredding up what little decency was left in Washington, is not normal, is wrong, and moving the needle one more small notch towards fascism.
From afar, it's grotesque seeing what's happening over there. Perhaps you're too close to see it.
Yeah. Frankly driving a wedge between Trump and Elon would be the more effective political strategy, since it wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of them to spectacularly fall out, and Trump couldn't care less if DOGE exists or not as long as he's getting praise from the right quarters
It's inevitable that the two will break up, but it'll be after trump has used him to do all the deeply unpopular hacking apart of social safety nets that he wants to do. He's a useful idiot. A very rich useful idiot.
What a convenient scapegoat to have when we eventually feel the ruinous effects of these decisions. "I trusted ELLEN and he couldn't get the job done, THATS why I FIRED him"
>The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal"
They have been doing that. The issue is that people just look at it all and think "its all political theater"
The only way anything will change is if the ~200m americans who didn't vote actually start to realize that voting matters. Texas could turn blue if all the people in the liberal areas actually voted, which would basically win the election for Democrats.
Waste of time and really achieves nothing other than theatrics. I don't doubt they'll do it though. Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.
> Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.
They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't get legislation to the floor; they can't call investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers. All they can do is make a case against the ruling party. And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them not to be theatrical.
All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for the destruction they are bringing to the country and the world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other levers they can pull.
You really are deluded if you think these moves are for draining the swamp and to make the nation great again... that's the thinly veiled bullshit they're feeding you, and geez, people like you think they're clever and have got it figured out?!?
It's to consolidate power for the foreseeable future for a bunch of elites, so they can even more freely exploit people like you and make tons more money.
But hey, seems like people like to bend over and get MAGAed harder...
Remember you said this if/when it's your life on the line.
I have a feeling that, when that time comes, a lot of people will be changing their tune. "I always knew he'd fuck people over, I just didn't think I'd be one of them!"
I'm not convinced that the democrats (most of them anyway) are actually apposed to what is happening. Both parties seem to have largely the same goals just preferring to use different tactics in order to achieve them.
I love how "both sides are the same" continues to persist, even though Biden did absolutely none of what Trump has done these last two weeks, either in terms of method or outcome. They truly could not be more different and yet people like you are like theyrethesamepicture.jpg.
Lot's of speculation over the decades about what Gödel's Loophole was, but one wonders if it lies in this direction.
"Gödel told Morgenstern about the flaw in the constitution, which, he said, would allow the United States to legally become a fascist state." [1] Unfortunately Morgenstern never completely specified what this flaw was. As pointed out in the wikipedia article speculation is that "The loophole is that Article V's procedures can be applied to Article V itself. It can therefore be altered in a "downward" direction, making it easier to alter the article again in the future." But given how difficult it is to amend the constitution it doesn't seem like the problem lies there.
Not really. Right/Left labeling is silly in general so it's hard to explain in those terms, but Turkish military is and has been anything but Left. You could maybe call them reformist, secular authoritarians, in opposition of religious, populist authoritarians.
Interestingly after 50 years and 2.5 coups, the kind of people they pushed out are the ones running the country for the past 20 years and they're stronger than ever. I take it as a signal that the problem wasn't specific individuals and parties, but they were merely symptoms of deeper problems with the Turkish people.
There was a momentous coup in 1980 that clamped down on the left and nurtured the religious right, to counter communist influence. It was a Carter administration project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Theory
The left will throw them down even faster. I'm honestly baffled as to why any police bothered stopping January 6th - it predictably got them hated by the right, but they never got any thanks or appreciation from the left either, so it looks like a complete losing move to me.
When someone's in a highly politicised position where it's not obvious what the right call is, I'm baffled that they wouldn't take the route that aligns so heavily with their interests, yes. Much as I'm a fan of personal integrity, there's only so much shitting on my whole profession that I could take.
You're not usually meant to use force to prevent trespass outside of some very narrow circumstances. And whether someone is trespassing or is somewhere they have every right to be is very often unclear.
They got the Congressional Gold Medal award, and every time I heard Nancy Pelosi speaking of them, she sounded personally grateful.
Also, it was their job to keep Congress safe, and there are a lot of people that take their job and their honor seriously. Maybe they don't make the podcasts, but they are out there keeping our society safe.
America as 70s/80s Turkey, just have the military coup the civilian government every time it gets out of line. Not a super stable way to run a country!
This sounds very ignorant. The members of the military very much understand and remember their oath to the constitution and they are acting accordingly currently.
The rule of law is always contingent on the good will of the powerful. RIP USA. They are dismantling the country, not an abstract concept. Godspeed my American friends, I hope you live in a strong state, can get to one, or have a second nationality.
It doesn't take much for a successful coup. Really just the right amount of people to sit on their hands and think that maybe someone else will do something to stop it.
Think something should be illegal? It's probably in there somewhere. Want to do it anyway? It's probably allowed somewhere else. Want to know if you can or can't do something? Well, good luck figuring that out. With enough time spent in lines talking to civil service workers you can get an answer that may be correct. Or maybe not. Probably best to hire a lawyer at hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you whether you can or not. (The lawyer will say "no", because if he says "yes" and is wrong, now he's in trouble, and nobody wants that.)
The system has grown and changed and mutated, and now it's a behemoth that nobody really understands. It's such a mess that people are genuinely hopeful that an AI will ride in and help us all untangle all that we humans did.
And the people that we've put in charge of doing all of this are collectively the most unaccountable folks ever. They routinely skirt, side-step, or ignore the rule of law as they see fit, and they still enjoy a 90%+ re-election rate and an incredibly high barrier to entry for reformers.
I disagree. This is the outcome of someone who doesn't believe in the law acting accordingly. If there are no consequences, the law is immaterial. If the law is to remain intact, show up with force and enforce it. Checks and balances within the branches of federal government.
Look at the comments. It's only been two weeks, and people are already tired of members of Congress running to the media after Musk does something illegal. They want these members to force the police to arrest them on behalf of Musk.
I'm in agreement. These people are softer than tissue paper. Where's the energy South Korean representatives had when their President declared martial law?
You cannot practically imprison the richest man in the world. He'd end up running the place like a king, like El Chapo did. The only way forward is to exile him to Mars.
> Musk is a convenient fool for the trump administration.
Exactly this. And he doesn't even see it. There will be no "Elon dismisses Trump". Elon is not a natural born US citizen, Trump is. Trump wins, because if one has been paying attention, the people who put Trump in office don't like immigrants all that much.
The thing about Trump and Musk is that they both believed the other to be a convenient fool. It will definitely be interesting to see who lasts longer.
I'd bet on Musk as he has better connections among the Silicon Valley elite that are propping up this administration. Plus, the way that Trump is rubber-stamping everything Musk does as soon as he hears about it seems to suggest which one is actually in charge.
Time doesn't matter here. Elon can never hold the highest office nor the second highest. The best he can ever do is be their appointed henchman.
The MAGA mobs may only care about a few cherry picked bits from the Constitution, but the requirement of being a natural born citizen (usually meant as born on US soil with 2 US parents, but generally, either one is accepted) is definitely one of them. And he won't be getting meaningful support from anywhere along the other end of the scale anytime soon, so I left them out
You think the Trump administration is going to prosecute the wealthiest person on earth? Attention and wealth are the currencies of Trumpian politics, and I would be shocked to see Trump try to fight someone with such a massive ability to direct attention (via control over twitter and through having hundreds of billions of dollars).
If Trump can make money on it, he will put anyone in jail. Musk is such an easy target, Trump could take him down in a heartbeat , freeze his assets and put ownership of his companies in his control. And let me state this as clear as I can: this would all be perfectly legal “official acts”
> The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States with nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the United States Congress within the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its territories. It answers to the Capitol Police Board and is the only full-service federal law enforcement agency appointed by the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States.
"unless the sergeant at arms of the senate goes out and handcuffs them"
Capturing the courts is the first step in a fascist takeover. The Republican controlled legislature isn't going to send the sergeant at arms and arrest him.
There is nothing in the way now. "It could happen here."
Impeach. Subpoena. Then arrest if subpoena ignored. Pass laws (supermajority to bypass veto). Cut funding to executive office. Then go nuclear with things like amendment putting the armed forces under legislative control. Lots options. All require a united front.
Or, massive recalls across the country change the math. My point is that there are totally legal and constitutional options. Nobody need result to silliness.
The legislative branch can recall both the president and the judges, but it won't do that because it is happy with what they are doing.
Even a Democrat landslide in two years wouldn't change it, because almost all Democratic politicians are unwilling to cause a fuss (or they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing).
But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
> they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing
Knowing people in democratic politics, this isn’t true. The root of the problem is that they don’t understand or prioritize power.
They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose. Minority on the Supreme Court, house, senate, presidency.
Think about Obama’s first presidency. Sixty senators. What happens if they:
1. Make DC a state. That’s two senators. I don’t think they could get Puerto Rico.
2. Make Election Day a federal holiday. That spikes turnout, which benefits democrats (see: advantage in every major issue.)
That’s the type of thinking that gives and maintains power. But they don’t think that way until it’s panic time and already over.
> They have overwhelming support for every major issue
The problem is for a lot of these this only becomes apparent when pollsters remove all context and political baggage. For instance, ask people if they like Obamacare/ACA and results are mixed. But go down the line and ask about the constituent pieces of it all and you'll see positive support.
The Democrats have completely and utterly failed at packaging these things up with a message that resonates with the people. Instead they've allowed their opponents to demonize their stances. And that's how we wind up with people holding signs that say things like "Keep government out of Medicare"
1) They create an issue at Fox.
2) Sell it breathlessly
3) congress person brings it up in the legislature, points to news reports as proof
4) pass a new bill, or stall another
5) Refer to these actions on Fox, showing it as proof.
6) go to the polls after creating the arena you want to fight in.
Add in the internet and the media advertising incentives, and you have escalating sensationalism and extremism.
Post watergate, the Republican strategists decided to win at all costs. There is no messaging that is “nice”, and if dems are aggressive they get penalized for it. Because many people didn’t believe this was true. It was too outlandish.
I understand why things are the way they are. And the dems are pretty fucked now. Whining about it doesn't help though, and it won't get them out of this mess. But neither will just saying "we have better ideas".
They need to come up with a solution that'll actually work. Instead they seem to keep punching themselves in the face.
> Whining about it doesn't help though, and it won't get them out of this mess.
Are we sure? Them keeping quiet while fascists run rampage gives me the feeling of "not saying anything means you're consenting". A gruesome analogy that doesn't fit, because it's the nation getting raped (or since it's Trump, do we want to call it sexual assault), and it seems the Dems were supposed to be another guardian of the nation...
I didn't say they shouldn't do anything. I said that them whining about the situation won't help. To be honest I have no clue what they *should* do, as I said before it seems they're pretty well fucked for now. They could steal the GOP playbook and start a multi-decade effort to take over all media sources and influence people's internal metaphors. But that's going to take some time.
But I hope someone smarter than I figures out a better path.
There’s no solving a problem if theres no ability to look at it in the first place.
This is the other magic trick that happens in America that I can’t figure out fully.
I’ve had the chance to talk to people across stripes in America, including people with significant seniority. I’ve made this point in more refiner points for YEARS now, well before Trump.
It’s not a point that people like to acknowledge. Like here ! It’s a massive issue, one that deserves its own conversation, and it’s reduced to a “whining about it”.
Step up for gods sake.
Here! this is a simple way to move forward, this is how I started to resolve it - why does free speech matter? In layman’s terms, it matters because it’s in support of a market place of ideas. In that case is it ok if you have a market place which has a monopoly? What happens if it’s ok for say… junk food and cigarettes to be sold by the same people who certify it as healthy?
How do you address the issue of advertising incentives that drive part of the escalation in rhetoric.
What do you do to throw a spanner in the free money glitch? Here, and everywhere in the world that is learning to replicate this?
We’re originally meant to be on Hacker news. It’s become VC unicorn hopeful land. Asking these questions, and finding an interest in providing if it’s wrong, or right is part of the most basic flame wars we indulge in.
To be fair, the Democrats message extensively about things like the Affordable Care Act, but most people don't see those messages because the liberal media only wants to talk about migrant caravans, egg prices (sometimes), and immigrants committing crimes.
> They have overwhelming support for every major issue
Obviously not, or they wouldn’t have lost.
From a purely power-based standpoint, Obama probably should have pushed more in 2008. But that’s the only time he could have done it - even passing ACA got the Democrats severely punished in the 2010 Congressional elections.
That doesn't follow. It would be true if everyone voted on a correct and comprehensive understanding of the issues and where candidates actually stood on issues, but a massive proportion of the population just votes on vibes and is completely ignorant of actual policies or issues. Trump is objectively more responsible for the overturning of Roe v Wade than any other person, but ask a swing voter and it's pretty likely they won't know how Trump has anything to do with Roe v Wade and think he's pretty tolerant of abortion.
People don't vote on actual policy. They vote on vibes and other heuristics.
There isn't necessarily a contradiction there; Roe v. Wade was objectively a bad ruling. It was a wild reach to suggest that the US constitution implied anything about abortion; the question is basically whether or not it counts as murder and in the US that is supposed to be resolved by state legislators.
I'm in that camp, I'm extremely tolerant of abortion but the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was good jurisprudence. Probably not well advised, if they're going to burn political capital there are more important issues.
you may be undervaluing the effect of conservative billionaires owning every conceivable propaganda outlet and mashing on the fear, racism, and division buttons like they were going out of style.
The major issues [0] included things like the economy, foreign policy, violent crime and immigration. Which generally favour Trump & the right wing. I don't understand the lack of strategic empathy among some on the left for being realistic about what people are focusing on. The election was close to a coin flip, obviously the democrats didn't have a big advantage.
Climate change might not even be a major issue any more, people are cooling to it.
Having power for the purpose of having power isn't too meaningful. In democracies parties (already questionable concept) should ideally not worry about power, but worry about reaching useful goals.
It's hard to reach a useful goal without power to do so.
Also, think game-theoretically (or practically). If you don't dedicate at least some effort to gain and retain power, you will be displaced by those who do. The first priority of a pilot is to stay in the air, the second is flying in the right direction.
Right, and it's all rather obvious. The problem is better seen when, if you focus on staying in power, you have to spend all your resources on this goal, and you can't reach any other goal. Republican party in USA currently does rather little - they do dismantle government, but the more they do that, the harder it is to them to stay in power, so their resources are self-limiting.
> They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose.
The dems spent this last election cycle distancing, downplaying, and reversing each of these issues. Is it any wonder why they are losing? Rather than play to their strengths and party positions they endlessly and relentlessly try and shift right.
Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
The Kamala/Biden campaign took painstaking measures to try and quash every single one of these issues rather than centering it in the discussion. Instead, they wasted an entire campaign talking about how much Liz Cheney loves them.
Even now, Schumer is saying "let's just sit back and let people watch what's happening" rather than pressing his advantage and Jeffries is saying "It's not great, but God is in control".
Dems desperately hate their base. That's why they lose. They simply transparent in the fact that the only thing that matters is corporate campaign contributions.
> Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
On the contrary, abortion was one of the main issues the Democrats campaigned on. I live in California, and while I didn’t get presidential campaign ads for obvious reasons, down ballot Democrats campaigned hard on a pro-choice message, despite the fact that California is about the last place where pro-choice is under threat. (Gun control a little less, but I still saw it sometimes.)
The issue is that Democrats successfully passed a lot of pro-choice ballot measures in 2022 after Dobbs. In 2024 they couldn’t use this issue much, since the states with heavy abortion restrictions after 2022 are much less sympathetic to the pro-choice cause, particularly because Democrat party messaging has moved a long way from “safe, legal, and rare”. Also, Trump distanced himself from the pro-life cause during the 2024 election, even removing the strongest pro-life language from the Republican party platform.
Without the pro-choice vote that delivered the midterms, and combined with the general incompetence of the Kamala campaign, Democrats really had little to offer, especially since they’re associated with unpopular policies like DEI, open borders, trans advocacy, inflation, etc.
> How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.
On the contrary, they very much want to “control” guns out of existence. But they know during election season they have to tone down the rhetoric in the hopes that people forget everything they’ve said about guns during the last three years.
During these elections, Dems lost even the support of the precariate, the least wealthy who traditionally voted for left wing. No wonder actually, because they largely stopped to represent the the interests of these groups. When I see a black worker in a small grocery store wearing a MAGA hat, I understand that Dems have failed miserably. All the DEI boards did not represent interests of that guy.
1. Most US media (especially radio) being conservative allowed Republicans to define Democrats in their terms. Consequently, the "Democrats are all trans rights and DEI" was a Republican choice.
2. The Democrats certainly didn't make it hard for (1) to happen.
Yes, the Democratic party is terrible at avoiding dumb issue traps that are unpopular.
But the public dissemination of these positions is very conservative media driven.
Counterfactual: if progressive media had been as dominant as conservative media is, everyone would have spent the last 4 years hearing about government infrastructure spending and Project 2025.
In reality, you instead heard a relentless drumbeat of easily attackable Democratic positions, with nary a peep about Republican extremes.
So, yes, Democrat fault for having those positions in the first place. But the de facto situation is mostly created by conservative-dominated media being able to repeatedly broadcast those to an uninformed public.
>I do not believe US policy makers and thought leaders think FGM is a good thing in the US
This may not occur to you, you assume other people are like yourself. That they work in an office and perform a similar job as your own. Given that scenario, if the turnout of Democrats is lower than you expect, the only reasonable conclusion is that some bosses are less reasonable than your own, and ducking out for 40 minutes to go vote at 2pm just isn't allowed! And therefor if it was a federal holiday, their office jobs would just call it off for that whole day, they'd vote, and the Republicans would never win an election ever again.
However, the people who would vote for Democrats don't have such jobs. The jobs they have are menial, they are working all hours of the day and night, someone has to cover that shift on election day, and if somehow one or another of them does have an office job, there's no guarantee that it will be a paid holiday at that employer. My own employer ignores several federal holidays and instead gives us off days for Easter (Good Friday) and some other Christian holidays.
Your political opponents would hoof it through a warzone to cast their ballot. Having to vote early (or late, or apply for a mail-in) isn't why your numbers are down.
When you ask yourself why the Democratic Party doesn't in fact do things that you think would be obvious ways to further it's goals and purpose, over and over again, for generations, you might want to start pondering this concept:
Dems have not held power in the US since at least Reagan, Full Stop.
"51" senators (when at least two aren't even democrats and one routinely votes against the party for his literal coal lobbyist cronies) isn't Power.
The one time Democrats held some power for about FIFTY DAYS, we got the ACA. We could have gotten medicare for all but a "Democratic" senator refused. Medicare for all has been on and off the Democrat platform since before RFK got got.
That so many "liberals" and "leftists" insist the democratic party hasn't done anything despite fifty years of being explicitly voted away from the reigns of power is part of the problem.
Go look at the coalition FDR had if you want to know what it takes to push Progressive policy in the US system.
> But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.
Whether anyone with the relevant power chooses to punish these violations, is a different matter. The choice since January 2020 has been to repeatedly do nothing in the face of illegal action, but winning elections doesn't make criminal action magically non-criminal.
> No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.
Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?
The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
That's only the case in a pure direct democracy, which isn't what the US is.
There's a process for amending the constitution. If they want to amend the constitution, follow the process. Even if they only follow it once to change the constitutional requirements and reduce the threshold going forward.
We are (theoretically) a nation that is governed by laws, with equal protection for all under those laws. This creates stability and predictability, which encourages commerce and development.
When you go all Calvinball with government, you destroy that stability and predictability, and investment drops.
One team follows the rules, the other team doesn't care about rules and doesn't follow them. Guess which one struggles to achieve their goals.
This is the predictable outcome of the last 50 years of US politics, of the subversion of the rule of law and decency. The southern strategy, the 1994 Newt Gingrich legislative session, the failure of the supreme court to allow recounts in Bush V Gore, the teaparty, september 11th. All of it has only served to entrench and reward conservative opposition to the rule of law.
Also the Clinton administration where we were told repeatedly that the private actions of the president, and accusations of sexual misconduct have no bearing on their ability to be president. I’d also say the reaction to the Bush v. Gore election which solidified in the public consciousness the idea both of unreliable elections and that an election could be (and depending on what corner of the political world you were in, was) stolen. Decades of telling voters that if you don’t vote for one of the “lesser of two evils” you’re throwing away your vote. Decades of congress abdicating their responsibility to the executive branch to avoid the electoral consequences. Decades of cheering on executive fiat changing the rule of the land (see Net Neutrality) like it was a good thing (or at least like it is when one’s chosen team is enacting one’s preferred policies). Or happily going along with the president blatantly and openly refusing to enforce the laws as passed by congress (see federal enforcement of drug laws), again at least when one’s own team is the one doing the ignoring.
I used to think that people really just weren’t paying attention to the sort of precedents they’re setting when they do certain things. But the older I get, the more I’m convinced that it’s intentional. Take the dreaded “filibuster” that supposedly prevents congress from anything (except apparently banning Tik Tok). The filibuster in general, and its current form specifically are entirely products of congresses own rules. At any time, congress can decide by simple majority to change the rules of their proceedings and they could do anything from requiring that you actually get on the floor and speak instead of just declaring “filibuster” like some Magic: the Gathering spell. Or they could reduce the vote requirements to override a filibuster. Or they could abolish the thing completely and declare all their laws pass with a simple majority vote. So there must be some reason why they don’t do this, why it’s not the number one agenda item the moment the Democrats get any major it in congress. And the only logical conclusion is the current state of affairs benefits the congressional reps and that’s more important to them than the overall functioning of the system.
Even assuming every state would decide this direct question the same way as they did the Presidency this past election, a Constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states.
> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?
Ultimately it has to be, but not always in the moment. The bar to Constitutional amendment is high for a reason.
Honest question: would the margin have been sufficient if the outcome was reversed? Would you be understanding of their position if Republicans had the same feelings and ideas of resistance if roles were reversed?
32 is less than 38, regardless of the political valence.
On the grounds that I'm, y'know, human I will grant that I'd probably find myself filling in the details of where exactly the constitutional lines are drawn somewhat differently in line with my policy preferences, but the question wasn't whether this is within bounds of the Constitution, but whether we ought to (morally) consider the Constitution amended anyway because of the electoral victory. My answer to that will always be no - both because of the numbers and also because the election conflates a bunch of questions where ratification asks just the one question directly.
Illegal and unconstitutional executive overreach is what it is, regardless of party.
I don't really envision a Democratic administration making a similar illegal and unconstitutional flurry of bullshit, but if they did, I would absolutely call them out on it.
The requirements to amend the Constitution are clear: a 2/3 supermajority in each chamber of Congress, followed by 3/4 states ratifying it. Neither chamber comes close to clearing that bar, let alone the state margins.
So this discussion is pretty confusing to me, because the Trump administration objectively does not have the level of support you seem to think they do. Are you saying the incoming administration should get a little amendment as a treat? Are you just not aware of the procedure? Where’s the disconnect here?
The position of the devil's advocate is that the procedure is a little undemocratic - it prevents people to express their will, right? - and ought to be bent when it's really needed. Insert whatever justification here the interested side could plausibly produce.
And like many devil’s advocate positions, it doesn’t make sense. Like, how exactly does the procedure prevent people from expressing their will? If there were truly popular support for DOGE, they would be able to conjure up the required votes in Congress and amongst the states.
But they can’t, because that support doesn’t exist. You’re starting from the presupposition that this is “the people’s will”, but voter turnout was less than 2/3 and Trump only won a plurality of that. That’s not to say that he didn’t win, but you’re talking about whether we should amend the Constitution to satisfy less than a third of eligible voters.
Amendments require approval of 3/4 of states and there are still enough states to vote against. Also what amendment, specifically? That Trump can be president more times? Exert more power? Eliminate opposing political parties? Legislate pi to be 3?
Why go through all the trouble of amending the Constitution when you can just do whatever you want because nobody's going to stop you? Suppose Trump declared himself king tomorrow. Who with any power is going to push back? It doesn't matter if it's against the law if nobody cares about the law.
1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has plenty of shills to advocate for him.
2. 49.8% of the popular vote is enough to elect an executive, but not enough to overturn the constitution, which places clear limits on the power of that executive. The more radical the change, the larger the consensus that it requires. In order for the executive to legally receive this power, you need a supermajority of states.
But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
> 1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has plenty of shills to advocate for him.
Yes, but - if you want to review your arguments, it might be still useful.
> But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.
Maybe not legal - but effective it could be. As a recent example, Syria changed the people at power disregarding laws - cops and courts weren't enough to prevent it.
You're saying that elected officials may operate as kings ordained by the will of the people. But they were willed into office, not willed into supreme power.
There are still laws. But you make a case for "might is right"
The constitution and laws are for the people. If the people don't care for them then they're just meaningless bits of paper.
Frankly we haven't had any real rule of law for a long time, and that's finally filtered through to the general populace. The law has been selectively enforced for decades (the famous "three felonies a day"). Of course the people don't respect the law any more, why would they?
I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic.
This is true on all sides of course, folks who voted for Obama didn’t vote for drone strikes against US citizens either. Winning a presidential election does not mean four years of dictatorship and silencing of criticism.
FWIW, people thought that when Obama ran around saying “these extrajudicial drone strikes are illegal” they assumed that he would end them rather than do what he actually did - make them legal.
Power Wars by Charlie Savage covers this rhetorical zig zag.
We (supposedly) elected a king. He’s exempt from all rule of law save spineless congressmen.
Whether most of the people doing so were smart enough to understand it is a good question, but the fact is we put a Perón-like figure into office, and only age will likely make him leave.
I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic
Gee, I'm shocked, shocked, that a guy who stole large numbers of classified documents on his way out the door and stuffed them in unused bathrooms in his house(s) would fail to safeguard confidential taxpayer information.
You're right, it wasn't an election topic. Nobody who had any power cared to make it one, nobody who cared had the power... and nobody else was paying attention.
Obama didn't run on drone strikes, but everything Trump is doing has been a part of the Trumpist or Republican fringe platform for years. The Republicans have wanted to defund and destroy government ever since Grover Norquist said he wanted government to be small enough to drown in a bathtub. Purging academia of DEI and "woke," aggressive anti-immigration policies, tariffs, rule through executive order, none of it is new, all of it is established, boilerplate Trump-era Republican doctrine.
Trump ran on "draining the swamp." This is what "draining the swamp" means.
The only real exception to the norm seems to be Trump's sudden hard-on for invading Greenland and Canada.But even then you can look back at his infamous comments on not wanting immigration from "shithole countries" like Haiti versus places like Norway, or his comments on Mexico sending rapists over the border, and see how he might want to forcibly annex a few million white people to balance out the scales of white replacement or whatever racist paranoid shit goes on in his head.
I don't know. But let's please stop pretending no one who voted for Trump knew who he was or what he was about, or that what's happening now is not in effect what many Trump supporters wanted.
> But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?
Did people vote for this? I thought people were voting on the price of eggs. Trump dishonestly disavowed the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ghostbuster containment system of horrible policies when people started becoming aware of the horrors that were in there. Sure, Trump is releasing those demons on us now, but a lot of voters claimed to believe Trump's dishonest disavowals.
Trump wouldn't have won if he had been honest about what he would do. Voters didn't choose *this*.
For all the fetishization of the constitution popular media has led me to believe Americans engage in, when push comes to shove it doesn’t seem to be worth the paper it’s written on.
It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
It’s unconstitutional because the U.S. has separation of powers: the Congress passes laws and the President executes those laws. USAID was explicitly chartered by the Congress as an independent agency outside of the executive offices:
That means that the President can’t wipe it out as an independent agency unilaterally. He could go to the members of his party in the legislature and ask them to create a bill rechartering the agency but then it would get public debate and they’d have to own what they’re doing, so he took the path of daring anyone to enforce the law. It’s like hot-wiring your buddy’s car because you don’t want to ask if you can borrow it, except that it’s disrupting millions of lives.
That is totally hyperbolic. I think it is true that birth-right citizenship is part of the 14th amendment and the Trump administration will fail in this challenge. However, there is some debate about it among legal scholars, though, again, I think the weight of the evidence is in favor of birth-right citizenship,
However, disagreeing about the interpretation of the constitution when it is not actually that "plainly" clear, it has been supported by precedent is not the same as ignoring the constitution. In fact, it sets up a challenge for the Court to decide and it will almost certainly find in favor of this kind of citizenship.
Many presidents, including Obama, have put forth orders and supported legislation that was ultimately found to be unconstitutional; it does not mean they were running a monarchy or whatever the left is implying.
That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd. The 14th amendment was added to solve a specific problem, the disenfranchisement of slaves who had truly been born here without their say or that of their parents, for generations, and with the leave of the United States government when that was occurring. Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.
Besides all of that, there is the danger that if Democrats try to play the 14th card against him, Trump will declare the immigrants enemy combatants. At which point they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the United States at all, and he can do more than simply deport them. The left has been out-maneuvered at every step here, it's unlikely that this is the point at which they start winning.
Most of Europe and the world don’t have as wide ranging protections for free speech or bearing arms as we do, either. So using that as an argument is not relevant, regardless of any spiffy smart sounding Latin phrases.
The text of the 14th amendment follows:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
> For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.
"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could easily be read to exclude those who are born to people present unlawfully and/or in violation of their visa. I think it's pretty plausible that the Supreme Court might overturn Wong Kim Ark.
> Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?
Welcome to how it's always been for anyone who didn't have citizenship. The "enemy combatant" concept is some tinpot dictator bullshit, but at this point it's been well established in the US and supported by both sides of the aisle, the Dems wouldn't have a leg to stand on in campaigning against it. Talking about applying it to "lawful citizens" is purely circular logic - Trump will take the position that they aren't and were never lawful citizens.
The debates on the amendment make it clear that Congress believed the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals.
Indeed, one of the Senators (Cowan) against the amendment feared millions of invaders who settle as trespassers leading to a loss of control over immigration due to the amendment.
It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
> the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals
A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
> It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.
What Congress believed at the time is not binding on today's courts if they don't want it to be, as the history of interpretation of many other parts of the constitution shows.
> A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.
Deported using......jurisdiction?
You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
No, just deported. When the Navy shoots at Somali pirates they don't worry about jurisdiction. The left has been at pains to point out that illegal entry is not a crime and border patrol is not law enforcement, but that cuts both ways.
> You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?
If they do a medium-sized crime the US ignores it and just deports them, that much happens all the time already, no-one wants more people in prison.
If they do a big enough crime then I'm sure the US would find some way to charge them, but that's no different from what they do for full-on foreigners who never come anywhere near the US. E.g. if they kill a US citizen on US soil then the US would claim jurisdiction on that basis, even if the perpetrator stayed on the other side of the border the whole time.
The debate over the 14th amendment covered children of foreign countries.
> Mr. Cowan: I am really desirous to have a legal definition of “citizenship of the United States.” What does it mean? ... Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen? ... If the mere fact of being born in the country confers that right, then they will have it; and I think it will be mischievous. ...
> Mr. Conness: If my friend from Pennsylvania, who professes to know all about Gypsies and little about Chinese, knew as much of the Chinese and their habits as he professes to do of the Gypsies ... he would not be alarmed in our behalf because of the operation of the [proposed amendment] ... so far as it involves the Chinese and us. The proposition before us ... relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens.
It is very hard to look at the debates and argue it was just done for ex-slaves and has no other effect given they very clearly debate the effect.
> That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd.
But that's not true. Only their offspring gains US citizenship, not them.
The jus soil argument is an interesting solution to a problem that even the Founders recognized, which is the tendency for a democracy/republic to create a second, lower class of "not-quite citizens" (famously, Rome).
It means that even if your citizenship never gets worked out, your descendants will be handled.
Having it so extreme as to be "anyone born on the soil (except diplomat kids)" is a novelty. Not necessarily a bad one, but also not obviously what the 14th was attempting.
> Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.
It is extremely common in the Americas though. I think only Colombia and a few island countries don't have birthright citizenship here. I think it is a good concept for us, the US has historically been a nation of immigrants and our country has a culture that is shaped (and IMO strengthened) by people from all over the world.
The reason why it's common in the Americas has little to do with perceived virtues of immigration, but because they were colonized. Granting citizenship through jus sanguinis is not really possible in this case; granting it via principle of jus soli on the other hand legitimizes the conquest.
> It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.
If there are no existing laws to prevent this, then it probably is legal. Given the voluminous laws in existence, I would not be surprised if there was one out there which is relevant.
> If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th
While this might be a "strict letter of the law" kind of thing (again IANAL), violating the spirit of a law is still illegal. Disbursement schedules are a real thing, with real-world impact when they are not adhered to, and can cause very real problems.
That doesn't mean it's subject to the whims of the president. When Congress creates independent agencies, they lay out exactly how the president has oversight (usually by hiring and firing the director and/or board).
I remember you pushing this idea (that the independence of independent executive agencies are unconstitutional, or unaccountable, or similar) heavily in a thread a couple days ago. Where is it coming from? AFAIK virtually everyone on both sides has agreed that the independence of these agencies was a Really Good Thing for the last hundred years.
I argued that independent agencies are extra-constitutional, not clearly "un"constitutional, but very clearly not enumerated in the Constitution.
Given that, they've operated on a consensus model for so long, it's hard to say that the current admin is doing something illegal by changing (as long as the money is spent by end of fiscal year, due to impoundment laws). This may be a "constitutional crisis" in the parliamentary sense, but hardly in the American sense.
>virtually everyone on both sides has agreed
This is something I've talked about elsewhere, but the electorate that put Trump in office did it specifically in rejection of the Dem & GOP cooperation of the last several decades which led to the same things happening regardless of who was in charge.
From that perspective (and without saying anything about legality or wisdom, etc) Trump is doing exactly what the people who put him in office asked him to do.
I understand you're arguing this, I'm asking where this meme came from. Independent agencies have been around for more than a century and AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new. Whence came this idea? Is it something you personally invented that the rest of the right doesn't subscribe to, or are others advocating it, and if so could you refer me to what arguments they're using to justify it?
I haven't seen arguments that they're constitutionally unsavory, but I've seen arguments, that the President, as chief executive, does have almost CEO-like control over them. FDR did exert such control, in his case using it to expand the federal government, but he ran a fast-moving government.
So it's not like there isn't precedent for this, it's just that the consensus was as you said, the independent (some would say unelected) bureaucracy running things. But that was only ever a convention.
In most cases the law that created the agency spells out exactly what control the president has, and AFAIK presidents still have to follow the law like everyone else. Is there any real justification for this, beyond the general notion that FDR once got away with something similar so maybe Trump should too?
> AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new.
I don't think anyone's claiming that they're "unsavory" - just that they are creatures of the executive that were created by the executive and may be abolished by the executive as well.
And I don't think it's a new position either? The Ron Paul types have been complaining about them for literally decades.
In some constitutional democracies there is a court that sits above the apex court, and they rule on constitutional matters only. I feel this is is an effective check/balance, as it makes the interpretation of the constitution completely unambiguous.
IANAL, but my understanding is that that effectively is what SCOTUS does most of the time, i.e. very few issues make it to SCOTUS that aren't constitutional questions. In any case, there is not any higher court like you're describing.
you're talking about the US Supreme Court but it has been politicized over the years and leans to one party or the other instead of strictly interpreting the constitution. For example, many people believe it leans heavily to the right side these days.
The US Supreme Court is the original constitutional court. It invented the idea that courts can rule on the constitutionality of laws and governmental actions (in Marbury v. Madison, 1803).
Some more recent constitutions have established a separate court that only rules on constitutional issues, but the US doesn't have that.
Totally appropriate. Everytime congress would ask USAID for information on their spending or audit what they were doing, they would just ignore the requests and say they were apolitical. They're not apolitical. The state department is by definition political, and responsible for the US interests. Totally reasonable to roll it under the state department where they will have to answer questions and not refuse audits. It's not going away it's just going to be accountable to the public that pays its budget (the US taxpayer).
What is your source for this? USAID has an inspector general like every other government agency. Inspector generals are independent of the agency and part of their function is to perform audits. Congress has the same powers with regard to USAID as it has with any other agency. It can investigate, subpoena, etc. The senate must confirm nominees to lead the agency. USAID is subject to the same laws like FOIA as any other agency.
What does it even mean to say that the state department is by definition political? There are political appointees, but the overwhelming majority of the state department is career foreign service or career civil service, which are apolitical. The same is true for USAID.
None of what you're saying makes any sense or has any relation to reality.
Do you disagree with what he says in the above video? They denied to be audited.
The US in USAID stands for United States. Can we not ask what they spend the money on?
USAID was not created by congress. It was created by executive order 10973 by JFK. It can be undone by executive order. It's function can be rolled into the state department.
That is factually incorrect. Congress did not codify USAID as an independent agency in 1998. It reaffirmed and clarified its role. The foreign affairs reform and restructuring act of 1998 left USAID a separately managed and operationally independent agency UNDER THE AUTHORITY of the secretary of state. Congress did not explicitly codify it as fully independent.
This stuff isn't hard to look up, but feel free to send an explicit link explaining why they can spend money and never have to answer any questions about what they are spending it on. Some of the alleged things that they spent the money on are ridiculous (not going to repeat them here).
Something is "constitutional" if nine unelected political operatives in black robes with lifetime appointments say it is.
This same court invented prisidential immunity out of thin air. They invented "history and tradition" doctrine out of thin air (and then selectively applied it). They invented "major questsions" doctrine to allow them to act as all three branches whenever they want to.
There is absolutely no opposition to any of this. There are only the perpetrators and the controlled opposition who are 100% complicit with what's going on.
Nobody is coming to save you and certainly not the courts.
we keep having side debates about 'appropriate', 'ethical', 'traditional', 'conventional', 'legal', 'moral', whatever, but the fact remains that you can do whatever you want, until someone else stops you.
No one is stopping the people at the top of the US Government from doing what they want. In fact, there is a whole apparatus in place, at this point, to protect their ability to continue to operate unchecked.
Irrespective of whether our system of checks and balances is working (it isn’t) it’s still worth pointing out exactly what rules and norms are being broken.
This is silly. USAID was established by executive order. While the president's drinking buddies aren't allowed to close it down, the president himself can do it on a whim. So if the president decided to shut it down because his hairdresser advised him to, it's up to him.
> The actions are entirely unconstitutional.
It would be bizarre if an executive agency could be established by executive order, but then couldn't be closed down by the executive without permission from Congress.
That's not how US government works, at least. Maybe that would work in a parliamentary system where the separation between the executive and legislative isn't so sharp.
edit: why is the level of discussion about anything Trump-related always so low? If you want to defend USAID, defend USAID. If you can't defend USAID, make an entirely specious process argument.
USAID as the specific agency was established by executive order, in response to legislation (the Foreign Assistance Act) passed by Congress requiring such an agency to exist, and other legislation that continues to fund its operation.
If the goal is reorganization then it could be argued that the president has the power to do so provided it still meets the requirements of the legislation passed by Congress.
If the goal is to simply delete the agency with no replacement and let the funding stop indefinitely, that is not so clearly within the president's power and has precedent against it.
That’s an absolutely absurd response. Even if your argument were correct (it isn’t) there is no executive order shutting down USAID. It isn’t “specious” to want actions like the shutting down of entire government agencies to be done legally.
The opposite happened. Congress said that an agency should manage aid, and then USAID was created by executive order. Trump could just create another agency.
Congress passed a law in 1998 itself to establish US AID, 37 years after the EO. The EO was made with authority that had been granted by another law.
That 1998 law does not permit the President to abolish it or name a different organization:
> Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5.
Congress explicitly forbade downsizing of US AID without prior consultation.
> Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated ... may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by ... the United States Agency for International Development ... without prior consultation ... with the appropriate congressional committees.
> (b) ... a reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to
> (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas ...
> (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024.
Based on some googling sounds like you're partially right, it was established as EO by JFK in 1961. But it was established as an agency via Congress in 1998. So the assertion that President can't dissolve USAID without Congress is in fact true. At least as of 1998.
> edit: why is the level of discussion about anything Trump-related always so low? If you want to defend USAID, defend USAID. If you can't defend USAID, make an entirely specious process argument.
Who is making specious arguments? Your comment was about process, while omitting congress’s role in that process, and people are responding accordingly.
Strict constitutionalists would call many of these programs unconstitutional.
This is a problem for the left and for neo-cons; they flouted the constitution for so long, that now that someone else (Trump) is doing it to them, the left/neocons don't really have a base that responds well to cries of "Unconstitutional!".
Constitution says nothing about barrel loading, smooth bore muskets. It says "arms". It's a fairly timeless umbrella term for "weapons or objects usable as such". The only people who have trouble understanding this are generally those who approve of the Machine gun registry being closed by having the federal expenditure to maintain it set to $0, and don't that as being an example of "infringement" of a Constitutionally granted right.
It also says “the right of the people” a phrase understood in every other part of the constitution and its amendments to refer to the individual citizenry. Notably, you don’t need to be a member of the press to exercise a right to free speech.
You said it! How long before a lot of small countries start leaving treaties like the Berne Convention? Why would they bother protecting other big countries copyrights when they're no longer getting support through programs like USAID and there's no longer any guarantee that the US will protect them in any way.
The first country to pull out has the chance to make like $100 billion by creating the next TikTok competitor that never takes down content for violating anyone's copyright. It'll be like Edison moving to Hollywood all over again! Let the gold rush begin!
You see the carrot vanishing... OK. But what about the stick?
The whole point of Trump's policy is 'we forgot the stick, let's use it again'. I see this true for international policy but you could probably extend that to that infamous DOGE: Fed agencies must be 'productive' (whatever that means), or else.
I don't think these fences are being torn down by inexperienced engineers by their own initiative. They have a mandate (or so they think), a direction, and maybe specific orders from much more experienced folks, AFAICT.
Most of the world's currency is backed by the currency they print? The USA has to spend a few cents to gain a hundred dollar bill, but any other country has to exchange a hundred dollars of actual goods and services (to the USA!). Losing this privilege would be devastating.
The economic power of the US is also largely due to its reputation for rule of law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5zaImTF92g) when contrasted with other regimes like the CCP. Once that image goes out the window, it becomes no more attractive to foreign investment than any other banana republic run by thugs.
From what I've read, the deficit looked like a huge problem and turned out to not be a problem from WWII to 2008. That's the situation most economists, finance leaders and regulators grew up in.
But, the demographic crisis means that moving forward our growth in entitlement spending for the growing population of seniors is far outpacing our growth in GDP from our slowing population of workers.
We can't tax or cut out way out of this. Elon's cuts are going to be performative at best. Real cuts would put tens of millions of seniors, vets and disabled people into destitution. Taxing the billionaires more would be nice. But, taxing them to zero would only paper over a few years of the problem.
The only way out I see is through massive investment to increase per-capita GDP long term. As a super duper liberal, I'm gung ho on "Bring manufacturing back!" in the form of
1. Re-prioritize trade schools and trade skills so we can actually perform high-skill work in factories if/when we build them.
2. Do everything we can to catch up with China making locally-built green energy tech dirt-cheap and highly effective.
3. Figure out how to incentivize the market to local build the interconnected web of advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to produce high tech goods fast and cheap.
I see the work of https://www.hadrian.co/ as an example of what I'm talking about. I'm starting to see some senators act like they need to stop talking about it and actually do something about it. But, the "best" I've heard from Trump is "Drill, baby. Drill!" and "Tariffs are magic."
If Trump laid out a plan for how to target tariffs surgically and use those proceeds to build up manufacturing, I'd be on board. But, he hasn't. Instead, he has made it clear his only plan is to create chaos, achieve performative concessions, and declare personal triumph while netting great harm for everyone in the end.
I agree with your numbers. If we're seeing this much resistance to cutting down mostly foreign-focused programs, would you really be making this comment if Elon/Trump were trying to cut social security, medicare/aid, etc?
I would be 10X as concerned and so would everyone else because mishandling those programs could absolutely wreck the lives of tens of millions of people.
My point is that a lot of people seem to be in an "ends justify the means" mindset here where it's OK to rubber-stamp over laws, security, any sort of requirements for competence, or even basic understanding of what's being destroyed because in the end, this is chaos is going to have such a tremendous impact.
But, it's not. It mathematically can't. Even if it all turns out amazing it will be a small dent in the problem it's claiming to solve.
So, in the end, all of this is actually just chaos for sake of chaos. In the process, a whole lot of real people will be hurt in real ways. It's not bad at the same scale that "Turn off Medicare until we understand how it works" would be. But, it's nonsensically destructive in exactly the same way.
Exactly my point. This is (one of the reasons) why Trump is cutting these small programs. People would really flip out if he cut social programs for Americans
I applaud the goal of rooting out the pork. But, "We have to do something. This is something." doesn't excuse how it's being done.
Turning off the entire flow of money is unnecessary, even counter-productive, to understanding how the money is flowing. Even if half of the money is waste, turning off the other half is causing tremendous real harm for no reason.
It is completely unnecessary and horrific to rubber stamp around national security protocol for something as incomprehensibly impactful as the federal payments system.
And, in the end, what are we going to get out of all of it? What I'm seeing out of Elon is propaganda about programs like "studying shrimp on treadmills" which was an microscopic piece of a very sensible study on marine safety and security. That's exactly the kind of work the government is supposed to be doing. But, if you frame it badly enough, you can destroy it for everyone and claim it as a victory.
Or we could repeal the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, that are largely responsible for the deficit exploding in the first place?
Yes and it is fine. That’s a scary number with zero context, but given the borrowing rate and the investments we’re making in future GDP, this is good borrowing!
it isn’t good when a group of people tries to destroy the entity that’s making those investments. These shitheads are basically corporate raiders coming in to tear things apart for personal gain.
Ironically, it is the “fiscally responsible”, “WhY nOt RuN gOvErNmEnT lIkE a BuSiNeSs” gang who want to destroy any fiscally responsible investment.
If they want to reduce spending meaningfully, they need to cut defense, social security, and Medicare. They won’t, because it’s political suicide.
This is like building a computer, getting it mostly done, and declaring it useless because it doesn’t turn on yet. Or complaining the Manhattan Project had produced zero nukes by early 1945.
It’s a decade long project, with phases and 50 different state governments doing the actual contracting. The Fed side is mostly funding and establishing the Tesla charger as the national standard - which required quite a bit of diplomacy to get all the car manufacturers onboard.
> There are currently 214 operational chargers in 12 states that have been funded through the law, with 24,800 projects underway across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.
I think it's the price per charger that's the important value here, and the original claim "billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations" is indeed provably false (even if you amend it to 243 or 214 EV charging stations). The money hasn't been spent yet.
The only potential problem here is that "we owe ourselves" simplifies things given that some individuals are owed much more than others, i.e. there's inequality. Other than that? The whole debt charade is just political groups weaponizing (and perpetuating) the lack of fairly basic macro-economic understanding in the population.
It's the elderly who are holding that debt and enslaving the youth and the unborn with that wicked scheme. Any and all national debts should be defaulted on. If you lended money to the government, knowing fully well that your interest is paid by oppressive taxes, then you don't deserve your money back.
Turns out that having a 100% guaranteed return is attractive to a lot of large-scale investors, even if the yields don't make the money machine go brrr.
This is one thing that worries me about the current administration. A lot of trust is built on the fact that the US gov't has never defaulted on a debt in its history. I feel like some people don't place enough weight into what that really means for both ourselves and the world.
It's institutions who are investing on behalf of their elderly clients (for example pension funds and such).
That 100% return is guaranteed by the whip that the government so willingly cracks over the backs of productive young people. Why would it be in the interest of the non-entitled to have a government which keeps swinging that whip? To guarantee the investments of the elderly who only have bottomless hate towards the young?
There is a reason why third world countries choose IMF funding even with the strings attached even though default is always an option. It turns out having credit is very valuable to stability and progress and therefore defaulting is a very bad thing.
The reason being that the ruling class benefits from selling out their subjects to financial vultures?
Being rich in a first world countries is very neat, even great. Being rich in a third world country is like thirteen levels above that. For you and for your family.
If a balanced budget led to a flat or negative GDP, reduced the USA’s power and influence globally, and/or lowered standards of living, then would it still be desirable? What exactly is the argument against a deficit besides that it might be giving some groups leverage over the USA, which is dubious?
The argument is that it inevitably gets you to a state like Argentina was in, where the government repeatedly defaults until eventually you're forced to crash the economy for years to escape the loop. I'd rather have a flat GDP than 95% annual inflation.
I hate threads like this because of all the misinformed debt hysteria.
People like to bring up places like Argentina and Venezuela, but their debts weren't denominated in their own currencies, so they had to collect dollars in order to repay debts in dollars. As a currency issuer, since we create dollars, we can never run out of them. Nor do we have to round up dollars and take them back from currency holders before we can repay a debt. Doing so just takes those dollars away from the non-government so that the issuer can zero out a ledger somewhere. The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason. The only way we could default on our debt is if we decide to. The only way to "pay off" the "debt" is to take all the dollars away from the non-government, which is _us_.
Respectfully, it's you who's been misinformed by viral but false monetary theories. It's true that the US government can't run out of dollars in the same way that you or I might run out of dollars. It's not true that the government has no fiscal constraints, or that taxes and spending are unrelated parameters.
> The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason.
Perhaps this is the best point to talk about, because the precise way in which it's untrue is very concrete. The US government doesn't choose how much interest it feels like paying; it sells securities which promise a specific payout schedule according to an auction-set interest rate. If investors want to buy at a high interest rate, there's no mechanism for the government to demand they accept a lower one.
I never said that we have no fiscal constraints, just that the common misconception is backwards. I also never said that the government chooses the rate. It chooses to pay interest when it chooses to sell securities.
I think the popular misunderstanding is more harmful than some of the misunderstandings you point out (which some people may indeed have) because it leads to people pushing austerity because of their monetarist dogma.
Nobody ever asks who's going to pay for stuff when it's so-called "defense" spending. But if we want health care or education then it's all apoplectic "debt, hyperinflation, enslavement of future generations, where's the money going to come from!?"
I’m not advocating for war but one thing this deficit pays for is being a military superpower, which is the main way our debt is “guaranteed”. As in, call in the debt at your own peril.
He's not advocating it. But it's simply the reality of the US as a superpower.
Just look at Panama this very week. They were threatened to be invaded if they didn't give up economic deals with China and go back to being a servant colony of the US.
The odds of citizens cashing in and demanding all their money at once is pretty slim. The odds of countries that hold US debt doing it are better. But there's a strong deterrent for countries doing that. And it's the reality that the US has no issue with invading, and they've done it countless times this past century to the applause of the voters.
US government debt doesn't exist as a line-of-credit agreement that someone could choose whether or not to "call in". It's primarily represented by Treasury bonds, securities which represent a promise by the US government to pay a specific amount of money at a specific point in time. It's true that the US can decide one day to default on these promises, but this doesn't have anything to do with military strength, nor can military strength mitigate the negative consequences for the (mostly domestic) investors.
To put it another way, the private sector gets an income of $1 trillion every 100 days. Now suppose you stop that income. What happens to the private sector?
Sometimes following rules leads to an unrecoverable state, and then you have no choice but to reboot. Compound interest leads to either stagnation and decline, or else to jubilee. It's an inherently unstable system that has felled many civilizations before ours. Debt grows exponentially while real economies saturate in an S-curve. Eventually something has to give.
Stop unaudited government spending? Ukraine says it’s received only about half of what the Biden admin said it gave it.
It's looking like this was at least larping as a 40+ billion dollar slush fund. There may have been some legitimate (useful) spending, and they will find out after auditing the system, but it also looks like there was lots of waste and once-removed (one degree of separation) self-dealing.
How exactly is this approach an improvement over the status quo? Elon is not auditing spending. He’s pursuing political grudges and generating chaos for its own sake. The outcome will not be less government waste and fraud.
If it's at some economic dominance peak is at the point at the top of an upward curve, when the acceleration has ended and the object reaches 0 velocity before coming back. It's a downward trajectory: public debt, failing infrastructure, failing manufacturing capabilities, failing leadership, failing rule of law, increased irrelevance on the world stage, and let's not get started with the culture.
If the dollar falls further from being the global reserve currency (something which both administrations did their best to ensure it will happen) that will be an even worse blow.
That there are people in bubbles believing it's all fine, or they never been better, is also a contributing factor to all this.
USD as reserve currency is a hen that lays golden eggs.
The US maintains monopoly on this free money cheat through goodwill driven manufactured consent, diplomacy, financial bullying and military might. Each subsequent tool being more heavy handed & less preferred than the last. Heavy handed tools while effective, break more than they fix. This prudence sustains Pax Americana.
In 2025 America, good will is at an all-time-low. Mechanisms for classical diplomacy are being actively dismantled by Elon-Trump. Financial bullying is now the cudgel of choice. Pax Americana is under threat.
Post-WW2 peace is among mankind's most remarkable civilizational achievements. It isn't self-evident and it definitely isn't the historic norm. How long until nations start questioning the deal ? How many decades of work is being dismantled within days ?
May be hyperbole, but the locks on Chesterton-Pandora's box are being opened. It might work out, but Elon's aggressiveness seems so unnecessary at a time when the American economy is doing exceedingly well.
Improbable is probably how a lot of citizens of countries have felt in the past before their savings lost their worth. I'd rather us not be risking it at all.
> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.
That may be true if you look at the US in isolation, they're much richer now compared to 1950, but they've never had a strong a contender as China is right now. The Soviets were matching them militarily back in the Cold War years but they were never close to surpass them economically, like China is now in the process of doing.
>> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.
In which parallel reality do you live? Some metrics:
- U.S. share of global GDP (nominal). 40% in 1960 to around 24% nowadays.
- Share of global exports from the peak of 17% in 1963, to around 8.5% today (China is 14%).
- Global R&D expending from the 1960 peak of 69% to 30% today with China closing the gap currently at 23%.
- Reserve currency status of the Dollar dropped from 71% to 59%.
- Share of outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 47% in 1960 vs 22% in 2022.
Even the strongest selling point of the american economy of being the largest consumer economy is strongly dependent on high levels of consumer debt as well as the ability to sustain gigantic trade deficits based on the global appetite for the dollar and US bonds.
And then we have some other points of concern: In 1950, manufacturing represented 28% of GDP, while FIRE was 10%. Today, manufacturing is 10%, and FIRE is 20%. FIRE’s dominance reflects financialization — prioritizing short-term profit through financial engineering over productive, long-term investment. It encourages Rent-Seeking vs Productive Activity, for example, in Finance, much of the sector’s growth comes from fees, interest, and speculative trading (e.g., derivatives, high-frequency trading) rather than financing innovation or infrastructure. In Real Estate Rising prices often reflect speculation rather than new construction or improved living standards. This leads to inequality amplification, FIRE disproportionately benefits high-income earners (e.g., Wall Street, landlords). The top 1% owns 53% of stocks and 40% of real estate wealth (Fed data), which exacerbates wealth gaps without broadly improving household economic security.
Real Estate alone now accounts for ~60% of corporate profits, something that create obvious systemic risks.
The US is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, but it is far from being as economically dominant as it was in the past, exactly the contrary of what you said.
I understand that after the gains we all had in the stock market in recent times, we might be tempted to consider this as a measure of the health of American Economy and considering market capitalizations, its global dominance. But that is a mistake. Stock Prices reflect investor sentiment, not fundamentals, they are driven by factors like speculation, liquidity and future expectations, not direct economic performance. Also, a handful of mega-cap companies dominate indexes, which introduces a lag that could mask broader economic issues. For example, the "Magnificent Seven" drove around 75% of the S&P 2023 gains, while small-cap stocks lagged. Also, tech and finance dominate markets, but they are not labor intensive, and thus they can't contribute as much to employment. Also, as the top 10% of the households own almost 90% of stocks, rising markets enrich the wealthy but don't reflect wage growth or living standards.
Also, a lot of the stock market exhuberance has been driven by things like stock buybacks, inflating share prices at the expense of investment and wages.
True that the US's share of global GDP is lower than it has been. But there are many other ways to measure its power (and dominance), so it is easy to argue about this between reasonable people.
Rather than make any specific point, I'd recommend acoup's detailed post about the US's overwhelming dominance across a huge swath of areas:
The US is still the most powerful economy in the world. No question about it.
What I was questioning was the argument from OP that it never have been as dominant since WWII. And no, the US has been way more powerful in the past, even if it is still the most powerful economy.
Agreed - it’s arguably as much a risk-on behavior as the excessive spending they’re warning about.
They are using a similar cut-first mentality to what has been done in the private sector, but in the govt there are more considerations than the direct economic impacts of the actions. In an ideal world the better route is likely to spend more time on analysis before making cuts and to try and reduce variance, but it’s fair to say that might impede the initiative entirely plus they are trying to act quickly before the opposition wakes up.
Young, inexperienced people have a hard time saying “no”. It’s even harder when working 120 hour weeks where you have less than 7 hours a day outside work (not even enough to get a full nights rest): https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doge-work-silicon-...
Sleep deprivation, stress and overwork, controlling the lives of participants, targeting at risk populations, etc. are cult programming techniques.
Closing USAID is idiotic from a foreign policy perspective. Gives China a huge opportunity to fill the void in countries and grow its global influence. It’s already done so in Africa due to US being so preoccupied with the “war on terror”.
Not to mention that aiding developing countries - reduces chances of instability/conflicts/etc which otherwise end up costing much more. Plus it’s about access to raw materials (why do you think China cares about Africa?).
Idiotic no matter how you look at it.
HUD and FEMA alone are 2.5x larger than USAID's budget, so while I can't argue with the unsourced bit that it would be shocking, it's clear there is and was even more money being spent on Americans too.
Oh please enough with the hand wavy bs. Give some examples of how much we are “saving” and what is being cut, and what it will be spent on to “rebuild” America (whatever tf that means). Then we can be the judges of how shocking or not it is.
> fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
So you're saying they hired a bunch of undistinguished Berkeley drop-outs just because they're libertarians? A sort of affirmative action for libertarians?
This is actually curtis yarvin's RAGE (retire all government employees) concept.
Curtis Yarvin, an extreme right-wing tech person out of Silicon Valley and the person who JD Vance is a disciple of.
Their belief is that the U.S. government itself “must be deleted” and that what the country needs is not a president but a dictator, which is what a CEO of any successful corporation actually is. Yarvin said that the American people “must get over their ‘dictator phobia’” while Vance says we have to do things that make even conservatives “uncomfortable.”
Why yes, let's let a totalitarian state become a superpower and start dictating the international order. I'm sure Xi Jinping will prove to be just as cuddly as Winnie the Pooh; nothing to worry about here.
I bet you're from the USA, so this may be hard for you to understand given your context, but as someone from LATAM, let me tell you: China can try really hard to be evil - they will have a LOT of work to be worse than the US.
That's mainly because the USA's flaws have been covered in far more detail, and has also played a bigger role in Latin America. Once those countries start to deal with China more you may find your observations were biased.
You're right, but that's not the point.
Being afraid that another state will become the leading superpower and "dictate the international order" when your oligarchical country has been doing the same thing for the past 70~ years, and not in a "cuddly as Mickey Mouse" way, is HILARIOUS. The doublethink is off the charts! hahahaha.
America has been truly 'oligarchal' for approximately the past one month, whereas China has been a totalitarian state for the better part of a century.
Why not compare the Allies with the Axis next? The US was segregated, right, so... hey, same difference! /s
A surprising number of people don't seem to know the first thing about China. Hey, it might not help that China doesn't allow a fifth of the world to learn the history of China.
But let's talk again in four years. The way things are going in America, I may agree with you guys by then :(
You're arguing with folks who just want to be angry, not listen to facts or sage observations.
(it's not like the US is innocent; we have made a huge number of terrible mistakes attempting to maintain the Pax Americana. I fully acknowledge while being fairly sure that China could and would do far, far worse than the US)
This speculation that China could do far worse is totally unfounded given that they've had plenty of time to push buttons militarily that the US and the Soviet Union had already pushed with much less military power.
What democratic government did they overthrew? Because the ROC was no more democratic than the CCP... and Taiwan didn't have real election till the 1990.
If this kind of take is what I missed by never installing TikTok, I don't regret it.
Also, China did try it only a few decades ago. Murder, starvation, horrific torture, reeducation camps, brainwashed children denouncing their parents... impressively evil. Not that Tiananmen Square or Uyghur ethnic cleansing or kidnappings of expat dissidents are so much better.
Should we become a totalitarian state in order to compete with another? That feels like McCarthyism/Cold War/ “authoritarianism is fine as long as it isn’t communism” vibes.
I can see why one would think that; China is very successful in the world market (or, getting there) despite it not having a free market as such (although it has freed up a lot); despite, or is it because, it being a totalitarian state it is quickly catching up to the US, being the 2nd economy of the world; they still have like $10 trillion to go, but charts like https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070632/gross-domestic-p... predict China will overtake the US by 2030 at the current rate.
And there's nothing the US can do. Cutting government spending and starting trade wars with neighbours is not going to stop it. Building up a totalitarian state with deep government influence into businesses is not going to work and will be actively resisted, since Big Government is so against the principles of the current regime's voters - and China has been working on this for decades now. Free market won't work either, as it's already very free in the US itself - but the aggression of US companies in their sales practices, tax dodging, and privacy violations have caused their foreign customers like Europe to raise the defenses.
TL;DR, while I can see how totalitarianism can in theory create a strong economy, it isn't going to fly / work in the US.
Some people can't handle the idea that China has more people and are roughly as resource rich as the US, so if they work hard like we do they will naturally have the bigger economy.
That’s an interesting thought because I saw Trump, and many other elections, as a conservative reaction. A main complaint I see is people thinking the country is going backwards, rather than into uncharted territory.
In a just world, these kids will end up in jail for a long time, and Musk for the rest of his life. In a less just world, well, I don't want to get banned
I don't get how this could be a coup, Trump was duly elected, and he's delegated this power to Musk. It could certainly be bizarre and highly illegal, but to me, the essential piece of a coup is unseating the rightful leadership, and there's no element of that at present.
Judging from his last term, at some point Trump is likely to get tired of Musk, kick him out of the administration, declare he always thought Musk was a bad guy, and pretend like he never listened to him. If Musk tries to stay in after that, it could be a coup.
> A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from Spanish autogolpe) or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters.[1] The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.[2][3]
But which of those actually fits the present situation? Four years haven't passed. Congress is not dissolved. It's literally just a bunch of executive orders and firings within the executive branch, which, last time I checked Article II, is under the authority of the president.
I think “unlawfully assume extraordinary powers” may apply.
It’s certainly debatable, but shutting down agencies created and authorized by Congress and refusing to distribute funding legislated by Congress seems to be an overstep of executive power, and therefore an undermining of Congress’s power.
My main point was that ousting an incumbent or defying an election is not a requirement for something to be a coup, as the previous comment was suggesting. A legitimately elected official seizing more power than they are legally entitled to is a form of coup.
anyone can call anything anything, sure(is it a "coup" when I paint a good painting, or win a game of chess? https://www.thefreedictionary.com/coup), but the great-grandparent comment referred to a "bizarre and highly illegal" coup.
Separation of powers, checks and balances. The executive branch taking powers from the legislative branch with the judicial branch approving can be seen as a coup.
Trump cannot legally delegate his power to just anyone. Delegations of power are done through appointed positions that must be confirmed by the Senate.
It looks to me like this is the natural outcome of the executive branch deciding what mandates from congress it will uphold. I.E. deciding which laws to focus on enforcing and which one's to have lax/non-existent focus.
Until Congress grows a spine and starts legislating again, the executive will continue to run rampant.
I’m not sure how having Congress “start legislating again” would be effective if the executive branch can simply ignore that legislation under your interpretation.
Republican's STATED OBJECTIVE for decades has been obstructionism, entirely so they can go on the news and say "Look how ineffective the government is". Go look at how debates happened on the floor of congress 40 years ago. Go look at the AMOUNT of work done by a functioning congress. Compare it to how little republicans have done in congress since.
Then go ask republican voters and they will tell you that they explicitly prefer a congress that does nothing.
There's so many laws they're breaking it's hard to name them all and that's part of the point, flood the zone with misbehavior and it becomes difficult to track and react to it all. The President is not a little tyrant able to do whatever he wants with the Executive Branch just because he was elected, the idea that he is and should be is a bizarre new reading ideologically motivated to allow someone like Trump to tear anything they don't like to shreds and only keep the parts they want.
Hitler wasn't elected, he was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg. He then used the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest the opposition to his Enabling Act, guaranteeing it's passage and solidifying his hold on power.
I would use the term 'purge' for what's happened so far, along with 'seizure'. the coup would come after the purge, once musk has full control of the monetary system and the republican congressional leadership and the courts have made it clear they won't do anything to stop Trump.
Whether Trump was duly (?) elected is still up for debate, after all he's a convicted felon, an insurrectionist, there's investigations into voter fraud, and foreign interference / propaganda that helped get him elected again.
He can't just delegate power to an unelected civilian like this.
To invoke Godwin's law, Hitler was democratically elected, Austria democratically voted to join the Reich, the people of the UK voted in favor of leaving Europe. Just because it doesn't technically meet your definition of a coup, doesn't mean it's a hostile takeover of the country's government and systems. But if you'd rather argue semantics that's fine too. If this keeps up, the US government will shut down by March and people will die - or, more will, as there's a link between the plane crashes and the Trump admin's cutting down on already understaffed air control staff.
have you ever read the constitution, or thought about governance for even 5 minutes? do you have any understanding of the history of this country, or do we need to direct the nearest 1st grader to your location to explain it to you?
What do you think is going on exactly that there’s any remote chance that someone who isn’t a political appointee or employee of the government can be given the power to stop all payments to federal contractors or abolish Congressionally established agencies? The President doesn’t have those powers, much less Elon Musk.
While it's true that a perspective and opinion can be made by me, it's in no way tied to the reality of how the courts will view it, which is all that matters, which is why I want an informed perspective and opinion, from the domain of law. A good example for the value of people's opinions vs how something is interpreted is Roe vs Wade.
If you have an informed reference that helped you achieve such clarity, I'm very interested. Unfortunately, my armchair has a broken leg, so I'm unable to use it at the moment. And, search engines are completely failing me.
that's a little self-flagellatory. I don't think it takes a whole lot of legal education to recognize that what is happening is not legal.
most lawyers aren't constitutional scholars either. do you really think an expertise in personal injury law in Rhode Island makes one more qualified to recognize that an unelected billionaire shutting down organizations without any Congressional approval or appointment is illegal?
I'll add to the other good reply - in our constitutional system, branches are not allowed to delegate significant amounts of their power to other entities.
So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity.
The courts, for example, cannot give their judicial power to others.
Similarly, the president can't delegate significant executive authority to others.
Where are the limits of this?
It's usually about delegating significant amounts of power or functions that the constitution explicit calls out as being owned.
But the limits are not tested often, so not tons of cases.
In the case of agencies, the executive branch also has no power in the first place to either set up, or disband, agencies.
This is a power that congress owns.
They can't, per above, delegate it, even if they wanted to.
I asked ChatGPT and it said many other agencies were established by EOs (e.g. FEMA, NSA, NASA, EPA). Quote from ChatGPT: "Many agencies later received congressional authorization, but their initial formation or restructuring was often directed by executive orders."
So it seems like the last paragraph is incorrect.
It's not wrong, it just depends on what you consider an "agency".
If you mean "any organized entity that contains federal employees", by that definition, sure lots of "agencies" exist that are created by the different branches.
If you mean "something that can create binding regulations that interpret or implement law" - no, those have to be authorized by congress in some fashion. Even if they are run by the executive later, which is also somewhat muddy.
etc
Traditionally, they agencies are the things that have officers who are nominated by the president and approved by the senate, and have useful power as a result :)
I'll also point out - even the ones that are entirely created by other branches (executive, judicial) have to be funded by congress one way or the other.
This includes all the ones you listed.
They cannot legally spend money otherwise - ""no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law".
Sometimes they are created with a small, more general emergency appropriation or something, but again, if they want to spend money, that also requires them to be authorized and appropriated by congress.
Some of the more interesting questions that we have thankfully never had to answer for real (outside of blustering) is around various branches using their power to deliberately interfere with the basic functioning of other branches (except as authorized by the constitution, which, for example, says congress can set the jurisdiction of courts except for the supreme court. Where we've come close to it has mostly been around appropriations designed to force another branch to do or not do a certain thing. We may come a lot closer the next few years depending on what happens.
The constitutional limit is easy (none of them is more powerful than the other, and may not interfere with the basic sovereignty of each other), but the lines are not.
Sure, thanks for the explanation! I didn't mean to imply that this was intentionally misleading, just wanted to point out that a lot (most?) of people, including mainstream media, are using the term "government agency" with a meaning closer to your first definition. And with that in mind it's valid to say that the exec branch actually does have the power to create / disband agencies.
And even if we stick to the latter definition of the "agency" - it feels like there's a certain asymmetry here. Perhaps EOs can't be used to create a new agency, because that requires new funding to be approved by another branch. But what about disbanding an existing agency? That doesn't require approving new funding, right? So what stopping an EO to disband an agency?
So the thing about appropriations is - they actually have to spend them unless it says something else.
It's not like a budget. It's an order to spend money a certain way. That's why generally congress is said to have the power of the purse - they give the directions on how money is spent.
So appropriations come with directions, time frames, etc.
The executive branch must spend them as directed, and they must be applied to the specific purpose as directed.
This is also why you will sometimes find federal agencies or the military spending infinite money towards the end of the fiscal year, because they are just making sure they spent all the money they were supposed to. Again, sometimes the appropriation says "spend up to", etc. But whatever it says, they have to do it.
So if they say "you have to spend 1 billion on USAID", they must in fact, spend 1 billion on USAID.
Let's take the agencies that are specifically authorized or created by congress out of the picture - they literally can't disband these (and i don't believe they've tried yet). These are usually the things created or later authorized by bills that say something like "their shall be an office of the xyz" or something similar.
(I just picked a random one, the establishment language is fairly standard, the rest i have no opinion on :P)
Given it is created and provided for by law, it must be disbanded in the same manner - legislation that removes it.
So if we are sticking to the other ones - it basically comes down to whether an appropriations bill allows it in some fashion.
Does it say "1 billion must be spent on USAID" or does it say "1 billion must be spent on giving aid to ukraine" or does it say ....
That is what in practice, enables or prevents an EO from disbanding an agency that is not specifically provided for by congress.
At least, as far as money/etc goes. There may be other reasons they can or can't disband an agency.
For example, Congress has a congressional research service that provides it with information. It is basic to the functioning of congress (or just slightly above basic). Whether established by law or not, it's unlikely to be constitutional for the executive to disband an agency that another branch depends on, since they are supposed to be coequal branches.
This has rarely, if ever, been tested in practice though.
Even when different branches have hated each other with a passion in the past, the degree to which they would test the limits of constitutional power while pissing on each other was fairly restrained.
There are a few exceptions, but they are definitely the exception and not the rule.
Also keep in mind - while the president has some special powers, the general purpose of the executive branch is simple - to faithfully execute the laws. The only discretion in even doing that comes from the laws themselves and the constitution's description of the executive's discretion.
EO's (no matter who makes them) were not intended to be a path for the executive to do whatever it wants, and use power not granted to the executive
I say this not offering a view on the legality or not or wisdom or not, just trying to make sure i answer your question completely.
> So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity
But this is standard practice, no? The US system is rather unusual compared to Parliamentary systems in that Congress delegates precisely this power to the executive all the time.
It's muddy but the Executive isn't making laws it makes regulations constrained by and implementing the laws passed by Congress. It's all nominally rooted in some law the Congress passed and instead of just making those interpretations known when they sue you because you're using a financial instrument to defraud people there's a whole process of making it known how the Executive believe the old laws relate to new situations. Congress has neither the bandwidth nor the knowledge to keep abreast of every novel maneuver around the law so they say this type of thing is illegal and this agency is in charge of saying what type new things are.
A great example of that are with various toxins and pollutants, there's no system in which we can go through the whole process of making a new law every time we discover that some miracle chemical is giving people giga-cancer. Instead Congress tasks an agency full of experts to decide what safe levels of the giga-cancer causing chemical is and makes sure we only ingest slightly below the LD50 of that so we can statistically live.
Yeah, but it's a distinction without a difference because some of the "fill in the blanks" stuff Congress does is so vague that executive agencies in practice write plenty of new laws from scratch. It's not just adding specific items to lists.
And then there's also plenty of cases where the constitution is just ignored without consequence. The CDC unilaterally announced payments to landlords were suspended during COVID, something it had no power to do. It didn't cause much of a fuss.
Regulations are nowhere near that freeform, and they have extensive public review and commentary. The EPA was in court for years debating whether CO2 could be included under the Clean Air Act because they had to stay in the narrow lanes Congress created.
The CDC case seems to make the opposite point: they took a broad interpretation of the public health act, and it was rejected in the courts as exceeding what Congress had intended:
Right, of course, it was clearly illegal but during the key period the CDC got what it wanted anyway. There were apparently no repercussions for this behavior, is making a decision this latest struck down by the courts are valid justification under federal employment law of the terminating employees?
There is no such thing as DOGE. Any new “construct” and its directives need to be created and funded by Congress. Musk isn’t even legally an employee of the federal government.
The President can hire him and Congress could direct him to do what he’s doing, but that step has been skipped.
They renamed the US Digital Services agency to be DOGE. I don't know if they can rename a branch of government but that's how they are doing it. Musk has then gotten Trump to appoint members of his initial DOGE as representatives in each of the departments (Treasury, Commerce, etc) so they can have acting authority.
Trump's delegated Musk as a Special Government Operative and signed executive orders granting him and all his recommended employees security clearances w/o the requisite background checks that normally would be required.
So they are acting within the government, they are employees, and they've been granted special waivers by Trump to do all this craziness.
I think its going to come down more to the courts looking at whether these 'newly appointed employees' are breaking all kinds of laws passed by congress.
The power President Trump is lawfully exercising in the executive order to control the Executive Office of the President of the United States stems from the Reorganization Act of 1939 (via https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8248) which FDR had to get Congress to pass after his previous efforts to reorganize the executive branch during the Great Depression were deemed unconsititutional.
Critics at the time warned this Act would give the president too much power.
Gotta say I'm surprised. I thought for sure I'd get ratio'd by Muskovites, but it seems people have woken up and realize our democracy is literally at stake.
The only way we prevent the worst case scenario is to stand up to authoritarian power.
Keep shining the light on these bad actors. Let's send them home.
Trump is not king. Musk has no authority. DOGE is a hacker crew without a legal mandate.
They're accessing extremely sensitive government systems that do things like disburse trillions of dollars in federal funding and trying to shut down agencies like USAID. I highly doubt they have the right clearances for that. Additionally, congress controls the purse, not the executive branch. Even if DOGE was an above board agency approved by congress, withholding money that congress approved is incredibly illegal and may lead to a real constitutional crisis.
Giving their names is hardly doxxing them, especially since they are breaking the law. And if they are government employees, it would still be illegal to hack into sensitive databases, copy data to insecure devices, suspend payments to federal contractors, bar federal employees from their offices, and disband entire agencies.
If a presidential aide ordered USAID staffers to not go to work and physically locked them out, it would violate multiple federal laws and protections. Here’s why:
1. USAID Employees Have Legal Employment Protections
USAID employees—both civil servants and Foreign Service officers—are protected by federal employment laws. A presidential aide cannot simply tell them to stop working without a legal order, such as an official reorganization approved by Congress or a government shutdown following a funding lapse.
Under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, federal employees cannot be arbitrarily removed or prevented from performing their duties.
The Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341) prohibits government officials from unilaterally stopping agency operations without congressional authorization.
2. Locking USAID Buildings Would Violate Security & Property Laws
Physically locking the doors to prevent USAID employees from entering their offices would likely violate:
18 U.S.C. § 371 (Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government) if it were done to obstruct lawful government operations.
18 U.S.C. § 1361 (Willful injury of government property) if it involved unlawful restriction of access to a federal facility.
Federal Continuity Directives require that government agencies maintain essential functions even in emergencies.
3. Presidential Authority Has Limits
The President does not have unilateral authority to suspend an entire federal agency’s operations without following proper legal processes.
Only Congress can permanently dissolve an agency like USAID by repealing its statutory mandate.
Even if a president wanted to reorganize or defund USAID, they would need to work through legal channels—such as submitting a restructuring plan to Congress.
What Could Happen If Someone Tried This?
If an aide illegally ordered staffers to stop working and locked the doors, several things could happen:
Congressional & Legal Challenges – USAID officials or Congress could sue, arguing the action was unlawful.
Federal Court Intervention – A court could issue an injunction blocking the order.
Potential Criminal Charges – Any official involved in obstructing a federal agency’s work could face legal consequences.
Historical Precedents
Trump’s 2018-2019 Government Shutdown: While federal agencies, including USAID, were partially shut down due to funding lapses, career employees were still required to follow proper procedures.
Nixon’s Attempt to Defund Agencies: President Nixon tried to defund programs by impounding funds, but Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, limiting executive control over funding.
Bottom Line
Simply ordering USAID employees to stop working and locking the doors would be blatantly illegal and would likely lead to immediate legal challenges, congressional intervention, and possible criminal liability for those involved.
To pile on, the very data they have in their hands probably has very strict legal requirements for storing/moving and distributing. Failure to account for proper processes can be held against them.
It's only matter of time until one of these clowns starts "accidentally" touching data like the 2020 census individual response data.
To me, that's the red line: If they can touch that and suffer no consequence, then there is no law or process can exist to ensure accountability of the government.
I don’t have the legal background to assess the accuracy of this response. Assuming it came from ChatGPT, how did you go about validating its correctness (and its relevance to the unprecedented new state of affairs) before posting?
It is not really good faith to assume that somebody has posted a chatGPT response and doesn’t know what the thing spat out. Assuming they wrote it themselves, they assessed the accuracy of the response by looking up the numerous citations that they used.
It does not matter. If republican party voters cared about appropriateness, they would not picked up Trump and Musk. They picked them because they wanted to see maximal harm and they see lack of ethics/morals as strength.
If you are bleeding from the wound on your head it does not mean you need to cut off your legs. This is just weakening of state while covering it under this charade.
Inflation was because of pandemic and wars. Rest is absolute nonsense.
The Biden administration just had to make things easier for businesses after covid. They had a very easy job and couldn't even get that right.
Instead, The biggest oil pipeline in the US was shutdown on day one and increased regulations led to our current situation with inflation.
The democrats are also war mongers and want to have perpetual wars to line their pockets.
It's telling when there isn't one negative story about Biden/the democrats (especially when we found out they were colluding with big tech to suppress the speech of average citizens) in 4 years, and we immedialy get slop hit piece articles about Trump and Musk.
The young and incurious have been targeted, recruited, and brainwashed into this by tech moguls for just this reason. A steady diet of calcified resentments against vague, post-modernist buzzword nonsense like “woke” and “DEI” has created a whole political movement around getting unreasonably angry over feeling slighted about symbolic representation in pop culture to the point where they’re going to bring the whole country down it’s insane.
But of course, that’s exactly what would be oligarchs want.
I'm not sure why people are focusing on the engineers here. The fish rots from the head.
Elon is the definition of Dunning-Kruger. He seems smart (maybe) when he's talking about something you know nothing about but as soon as he talks about something you do know about, the illusion quickly shatters. Many here learned this after the Twitter takeover when he started talking about software and technical infrastructure.
The only thing going on here is some performative cuts to mollify the base and make some headlines. The real goal here is looting the public purse for the (further) benefit of the ultra-wealthy.
It’s the definition of failing up: you sin bullshit for long enough, and make big enough changes, that you get your next job before you’re accountable for the consequences.
No, it is not correct. That tweet is clearly being deceptive by listing their ages when the revolution started in 1776, which is largely irrelevant for these four and when they were impactful to the country. At minimum it should list their age when the US Constitution was ratified, which was 13 years later, in 1789.
Also, you consider Aaron Burr one of America's greatest leaders? He literally committed treason.
> Some of America's greatest leaders were younger than these guys.
All of them were at some point in their lives, but generally not when they were “America’s greatest leaders”.
(And none of the guys in your first linked X post were in charge of the revolution, even remotely, in 1776—Hamilton, for instance, was doing some of the heroics as a young captain that got him noticed and on the fast track that ended up in top leadership positions, but that's a far cry from being a top leader.)
What are you talking about? The whole reason this is happening is because US economic dominance is being eclipsed and dedollarization is occurring at a rapid pace. This is a freak out and reorganization of foreign policy and the economy to cope with that situation.
Here is data from the IMF, for example, showing US and EU area GDP as a percentage of global output over time, gradually declining since 1980. The decline from 1960 to 1980 in the US was even more dramatic: in 1960 the United States GDP was about 40% of global GDP.
US GDP growth is slow, China's is high and BRICS is coalescing.
In not too long, China's GDP will eclipse ours and their cooperative foreign policy as opposed to our full spectrum dominance policy will yield major benefits. Dedollarization is proceeding apace, and it accelerates with each sanction and aggressive and arbitrary move by the US. Other countries used to have no choice, but now choices are opening up. The end of dollar dominance ends the most powerful tool of U.S. hegemony and turns us into a mere great power, not the lord of the world.
Trump's policy is about corruption yes, but also likely about wringing more efficiency out of American industry by reducing worker protections and reducing middle management positions. They are trying different methods to juice growth. I don't think it will work for very long.
It's impossible to get these people to stop deluding themselves. My dad is a contractor and literally watched Trump's tariffs make his job harder and his materials more expensive from 2016-2020, and still has all the spreadsheets that show how much it has affected his clients and how the price never came down
You can bet your ass he still voted for Trump. "I don't even like the guy" he insists.
The farmers that voted for Trump in droves in 2016 got FUCKED by his tariffs and retaliation from China. Trump had to sign off billions of dollars to offset their losses. They still voted for him in droves. Vibes don't care about the very clear data on the spreadsheet.
A huge portion of my state's lobster industry goes to China, because there literally is not a big enough market here in the states. Selling to China took the industry from barely staying afloat and selling lobster for cheaper than beef half the time, to being a healthy industry that didn't have to worry about oversupply. They will be fucked if China notices. They still voted for Trump.
All these people have FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE with how much Trump hurts our economy. They don't care. "immigrants" or some bullshit. Funny, the guys up north growing potatoes sure love the immigrants come harvest time, especially when they were paid under the table. Of course, these dumbasses in NORTHERN MAINE insist on flying confederate flags to honor their "heritage". They are from NORTHERN MAINE, their heritage is: Being harassed and assaulted by the KKK for daring to be catholic, freezing to death in ice storms, being mistaken for Canadians, and murdering the hell out of confederate slavers for the glory of the Union
They're outright racists is what I'm saying. My brother has bitched and moaned about "affirmative action" for decades. The horror that a black person might be somewhere they don't "deserve" is their only concern. It's funny to blame anything on affirmative action when you come from a town with single digit black people, and without affirmative action in the past, you would be just like the rest of the white trash.
I understand you. I have the similar experience from different country. "Everyone steals but at least he is not THEM". The worst part of this all is that I feel how I slowly sliding into pure cynism. I just can't sympathize for some people if their problems are their own decisions over and over. For
example one of the ministers in our government sold fake cancer treatments to sick people. It's just forgotten.
These politicians who do not provide results and are just confidently talking nonsense still get voted. By the people.
People are indeed just tribal unga bunga monkes which learned to walk, talk and do stupid shit. Some more than others.
Is economic dominance the right metric to be looking at?
Yes, the US is the biggest economy. This doesn’t mean its ability to pay liabilities is infinite. Every amount of income has a particular amount of debt and interest that it is able to pay.
Take the largest company. It would not be able to service infinite debt. Apple could not service $5 trillion in debt, just like the US could not service 300 trillion.
I get why some people are concerned about the US’s liabilities and its global police status.
Also stopping giving many other countries billions of dollars a year after might be drastic. But I see why some people may not like this. Individuals can give to charities instead if this is really such a problem for them.
Now cutting research and other things is really dumb. Glad they reversed that quickly. Also needlessly licking fights with our neighbors is also really dumb.
Now only if we can reduce our military spending as well.
The US is tethering on the brink of hyperinflation due to not just the last 4 but the last 40 years. Interest on the debt is insurmountable.
You can argue whether the chosen approach is right, but no matter what, a drastically different course is needed as 'business as usual' is a sure way to disaster.
I for one hope the US get their act together at home rather than dragging the world into WWIII.
Your model for the economy is just utterly wrong. The US is in zero danger of hyperinflation, and probably has the smallest debt issues of any country (certainly of any major country).
Now, the problem is - what to do about how badly informed you and millions of Americans are. That you cheer for the destruction of valuable and painfully built state capacity for completely spurious reasons. It’s almost funny, except for all the innocent people who get hurt along the way.
Please substantiate your claims. I am not 'cheering'. I am 100% prepared to be converted.
As I see it that debt counter is compounding fast, and with BRICS gaining steam your abilities to keep shoving it onto the rest of the planet are diminishing.
The US has debt denominated in its own currency, a large and growing economy, vast natural and human resources, no prospect of a foreign invasion and debt declining relative to GDP the last few years (this last point is not even that important but just for the record).
I can’t even begin to tell you how far the US is from hyperinflation or any major debt issues - the only real risk the US faces is internal stupidity (I don’t only mean the current situation, idiocies like the ongoing debt ceiling nonsense apply too).
Look, prudence is not a bad thing, and it’s worthwhile to have sensible management. But talk of hyperinflation is either severe mis-calibration of risks, deep misunderstanding of how economies work, or intentional propaganda.
You’re the one making extraordinary claims, you’re the one that has to substantiate them.
What do you think is more likely, that you’re an economic genius and you can see an impending crisis that 50 years worth of economists couldn’t, and that somehow that crisis is going to happen in the next few years? Or maybe you don’t actually understand how macro economics works and have been manipulated into thinking this way by your inherent dislike of government spending?
The U.S. national debt has been increasing at a rate of approximately $1 trillion every 100 days, which equates to about 10 days to add $100 billion. When do we hit the panic button?
Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.
Look at how that turned out for Bismark's Germany after he was gone. His successors were high on their own supply, and in pursuit of short-term wins, destroyed the careful network of relationships and alliances that he curated.
Beijing is, no doubt, finding this entire folly amusing.
> Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.
I was asking specifically about how US economic dominance is a factor. Why is USAID more important when US economic dominance is high.
Helping people out before things get really bad and there are more wars abroad is a good investment. That's why the military has generally been supportive of USAID.
In general, it's also better to have friends in the world rather than going around being loud-mouthed jerks that no one likes.
Yes, though it's unclear USAID is fit for that purpose considering it also funds civil unrest and regime change so some might say is a jerk that no one likes. But questions of its effectiveness and efficiency aside, none of that answers my question about US economic dominance. Why is USAID very important when US economic dominance is high.
I was specifically wondering about that particular part of the comment by the original poster, it just seems quite interesting to me what the connection there is.
Soft power seems like mostly wishful thinking at best and a fraud on the taxpayer at worst. I don't think the noble savages feel forever indebted to their kind and wise master for throwing them a few scraps. Countries align with what interests them. Look how quickly countries all over Africa, South America, Middle East, the subcontinent turn to China and Russia. All the vaccines and condoms in the world aren't going to stop people and countries wanting to get the best price for the things they buy and sell.
USAID also has a fairly sketchy record in funding regime change efforts, so countries cooperate with it on a purely transactional basis, "trust" is zero.
if you are talking about the formation of germany,
That was also a lot of soft power and politics to keep socialists from gaining any real political power and a lot of soft power to get all other german states to form into germany.
there where two major wars during that time which mattered for the formation of germany, (the franco prussian war and the austro-prussian war, which was an extent of the politicals about who should form the german state).
Is this really a drastic action? As others in this thread have pointed out, these programs are a single-digit percentage of the Federal budget. We could delete these completely and still have a budget that is 90% the same as last year.
Wow. That’s a refreshing take on the reducing the corruption angle.
If these programs are so small, why aren’t they going after the real grift? It’s too hard? Why the small, more relevant to citizens programs get cut first?
Because its easy to avoid the military spending and the black box that represents.
First, these are symbolic, it is very hard to concretely argue that these programs are good for Americans, since even proponents of these programs say it's about "soft power". Corollary to this is that cutting something like social security is seen as cutting benefits to Americans (ditto with Defense)
Second, these programs are seen as funding "professional democrats" in a way that social security or defense are not. So this is also about cutting out their opponents support structures.
If these programs are so small, why do you care so much?
The goal is to dismantle as much of the government as possible. Where possible, they can replace the existing people with their own people, then steer government contracts to themselves.
I know some of the people involved, and named in this article. So do many other people on HN. I pitched my startup to one of these zoomers just a few months ago. I can tell you that whatever this is, it isn't that kind of cronyism corruption. We can do better than such accusations, and that's what the person you are replying to is asking for.
The way they're going there might not be a government much longer. I really do believe they're that stupid.
The entire stock market is premised on the stability of the US government. Without it all their wealth would disappear overnight. All the luxuries they love would cease being produced. They wouldn't be able to fly their private jets anywhere.
In the past the rich could stockpile easily-tradable goods like gold in order to maintain a luxurious life even if their government collapsed. When it comes to billionaires that's not possible. The logistics of keeping and moving that much physical currency/gold/etc don't work out in their favor.
If they keep this up they're going to lose almost all of their wealth as the world destabilizes. They're also setting themselves and their families up to be assassination targets for the rest of their lives (far, far beyond what they are already). There's people everywhere that will be severely impacted by their actions. There will be nowhere for them to go because the US really is the pillar of the world's economies.
They can operate this demolition op from the safety of their bunkers in NZ.
All they need is a way to send messages to their "useful idiot" new college grad minions.
True, instigating a global collapse might eventually get to them, but AFAICT, they just want to personally profit from US dysfunction. Plus, it seems like the rest of the world will simply bypass the US and say "you're not dependable any more, so we're just gonna pretend you don't exist". Ostracism (of the US) seems more likely than the entire world destabilizing.
It'll be just like the 1930s with a deeply isolationist USA.
History sure does have an uncanny way of rhyming if not actually repeating.
Something that greatly galls me is that the livelihood of tens of millions of families depend on the whims of people who think only in terms of profit. Government is not supposed to make a damned profit! The government's primary role should be to care for everyone, from entrepreneurs to people with disabilities. I'm not saying "handouts for all", I'm saying that the government needs to provide stability, a level foundation for all to build upon.
It's like Venkman in Ghostbusters, in the ballroom: he yanks away the tablecloth sending everything flying except "the flowers are still standing!". The rich are the flowers, secure on their own foundation, calm with the knowledge that the guy pulling the tablecloth can't affect them. In other words, the new administration should be carefully enacting new policies not causing chaos by doing everything too quickly.
Unless their goal is to destroy the USA, in which case US citizens will need to decide what country they want to live in and whether republicans are capable of delivering that.
> Government is not supposed to make a damned profit! The government's primary role should be to care for everyone, from entrepreneurs to people with disabilities. I'm not saying "handouts for all", I'm saying that the government needs to provide stability, a level foundation for all to build upon.
My understanding from both reading a lot online and conversations with Americans in person is that a significant number of them would consider the above statement to be “socialism” which is something they’ve been taught to hate, no matter what.
I can’t say I understand it. To me, it’s the most basic raison d’etre for government. I’m not sure what the anti-socialism types in the USA think that the government’s purpose is
Thank you for that mental image of the flowers still standing :D
> Unless their goal is to destroy the USA
I have indeed heard this, even in his first term -- that people were so fed up of politics-as-usual, that they decided to "send a wrecking ball into the White House".
After having seen the damage that wrecking ball did the first time around... to send it back must mean that these folks really want to demolish the very ground they're standing on.
The US is not a wobbling Jenga tower, that's what the news media wants you to believe. They'll keep pushing that story to peddle fear and outrage until they make it true.
Slightly shaky start to the market today but it largely recovered and is just as high as it was 10 days ago. Seems the markets are divided between worried and cautiously optimistic.
Why would they do anything else? Last Trump Presidency caused incredible inflation that for a huge part went into the stock market, because where else can it go?
"This decript junk" includes institutional knowledge that will take decades to reconstruct, USAID agents suddenly cut off from all official communication and equipment in the middle of war zones, and basic security guarantees about the payments system used by the US Treasury.
I agree that there is a lot of junk going on in the US government, but Elon Musk is close to the last person I'd trust to do a good, unbiased job cleaning that up.
Especially without oversight or any kind of accountability. Especially when he's flaunting federal law to do so.
He's a fool. This is akin to an outside engineer hacking and slashing at code he doesn't understand and then tests it "in production". All of us engineers worth a damn know how that is going to turn out.
People like you have been wrong about everything. Why do you insist on still believing what you want to be true but obviously isn’t? You’re like the IBM of thinking lol.
I don't think you have to take Musk at his word to see that he's not going to get people on Mars without significant resources that earthlings would prefer go towards other things. Government is likely to become a problem for him once the impacts of those decisions are felt.
To him, government efficiency means that the government is out of the way and no longer interfering with his efficiency. Might as well just do away with it entirely.
Even people who love Musk need to realize they're cogs in his machine. He's not here to make your life better, he's here to make sure nothing is in the way of the things he wants to achieve. He doesn't care about the quality of your life, the only thing you have, he cares about how much of it can be captured to his ends.
For some people, that seems to be fine. They work at SpaceX and Tesla and his other companies. For many of us, life is the journey and the quality of it matters, not the Martian destination, and he can fuck right off.
People like Musk dislike the government because people have a say. That say is imperfect and often corrupted, but people get to have some amount of input. They can vote, and organize, and they could decide that they'd rather have roads or water or any number of silly things that get in his way.
Companies are not democracies, Musk says "get rid of the supercharger team" and no one gets a vote, they just get rid of them. We should all be worried about what goals he efficiently wants to achieve, if you or I were in the way, would he care.
The danger is in the unchecked nature of this power, even if someone likes Elon Musk and thinks he's a brilliant genius, what gives him the right to supplant the will of the people with his own.
Elon has shown time and again that he will prioritize what HE wants, and if that means some people don't have jobs, well that's just fine. If that means that people should have to sleep on the factory floor and wake up and make cars he can profit off of and then back to sleep on the factory floor, that's also just fine. If that means that USAID doesn't feed the hungry, that's also just fine.
And maybe to anyone reading this that's happy with what he's done, you are just fine with it too. But what happens when he decides something you do care about is alright to destroy too to meet his goals, he's just fine with it. What do you do then? How confident are you that your goals and his will stay aligned, forever, that the ax of "efficiency" won't come for you and yours someday. And if that day comes, what will you say to the people that tell you "he's a brilliant genius and he's fine with it so so am I"
I would guess that part of it is to tear down what’s there so they can rebuild in their own vision. I think this is a desire that any engineer can understand- and also understand that it often has to be suppressed because it’s a common blunder.
How many engineers have walked into a legacy project and their first instinct is to rebuild? Of course this is sometimes warranted, but almost always costs way more than anyone expects and doesn’t necessarily lead to a better outcome.
Edit: I’ll also add that this mentality is more common in younger / junior folks, which fits the context here.
The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations. The view is that the government of those other nations should be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out in the future, and to bring the fraudsters to justice. Overall, the goal is to do a thorough accounting of where exactly US tax dollars are going to, and to use that information to decide if they should keep going to those recipients in the future, to put it to a vote using congress to decide.
[Political bias report: I'm a liberal who has read Rand and who does not agree with The Republican Party's views in the vast majority of cases. I have been listening to Musk and Ramaswamy talking about DOGE on X. I also follow conservative meme sites to keep up to date with the way they are thinking about things.]
If that actually was the goal, and if this function were being executed by a legally formed executive branch agency, with non-partisan career employees that have been properly vetted, hired, and granted security clearances, I might be behind this effort.
But that's not what's happening.
It's clear to me their goal is to dismantle as many "leftist" agencies as possible, like environmental protection, labor rights protection, securities laws enforcement, humanitarian aid, etc., and replace them with people who will enrich their friends and families and allow corporations to run roughshod over the rights of regular people.
It is bizarre to me that anyone could lack the critical thinking skills such that they'd accept DOGE's stated goals at face value.
those are most definitely leftist agencies, the federal government is filled with democrat voters and democrats have made it this way over decades, there's extremism everywhere to the point where the agencies overstep their boundaries and go after their political opponents. there's nothing non-partisan about it
Consumer rights, labor rights, and protecting our shared environment should match conservative principles. I agree with improving these agencies and making them work better for people.
But it’s absurd think that the representative government shouldn’t be involved in protecting citizens from companies.
Fact: most companies have only one incentive. To make more profit. Everything else is secondary. Companies have a very, very, very strong incentive to cut costs and hurt people if it helps their short-term bottom line. In fact, making more money is their only incentive. And there are thousands of examples of abuse, from tech getting shittier, to energy companies massively polluting certain regions, to poor safety records, to ballooning health care costs.
That’s a non-partisan fact — abuse from companies hurts everyone.
Your opinion is, apparently, that the free market and these companies themselves are better equipped to protect people. Even though there is absolutely ZERO incentive in capitalism for them to do anything that would protect people if it costs money and doesn’t help their bottom line.
If that is the goal, then what happened to "profile before you optimize"?
As an analogy, what's happening feels like this:
* Somebody (let's call them "X") has embarked upon a mission to de-bloat the ancient-but-working family desktop PC.
* X's first actions appear to be to desolder various things from the motherboard, while the computer is on.
* Anyone who sees what X is doing, is somewhere on a spectrum between "scratching their head" <----> "wow, they're trying their best to destroy the PC".
To those defending this particular way of "fixing" things, would you yourself replace a large, working legacy software system in this manner?
Trump understands the "shock and awe" PR strategy. His opponents were caught on their back foot, and he's moving fast while they are in disarray. Military thinking might be more effective than software engineering for this moment.
Certainly, one might test the software by removing access to external systems to see what happens, whether things break, whether it complains… and certainly, that’s what’s happening.
Something I didn’t expect from this was to see the main complainers scramble to define what’s really important to them, thus implicitly justifying many of the cuts made.
You're right, as long as software is concerned, and customers being left without service is a non-issue.
Though if you do that with hardware, you might irreversibly break/short a component -- so you unplug, then figure out you actually needed that part, but plugging it back in now won't get the system working again.
I think "running a country" has more hardware-like characteristics than a pure software system.
If that were the goal, I think we'd see some evidence of it.
You do not "do a thorough accounting" by deciding in advance what programs and operations to terminate based on specific ideological viewpoints. I don't doubt for a second that this is "the way they are thinking about things" – but it's hopelessly, irredeemably naive to think that's what's being done.
I don't believe Musk or Trum cares about "improving the lives of Americans". They would try to protect Americans if that was their goal. Their first targets are consumer protection, environmental protection and such.
they don't care about fraud either. Both are fraudsters themselves, both will enrich themselves and their families. They both surround themselves with fraudsters.
What I give to Musk is that the staggering nepotism you see with Trump is not there as much.
Which sounds kind of useful, considering these diseases a) carry over to the USA, b) diminish the buying power of those the USA exports goods to, and c) helps these countries to improve their economies, leading to a bigger market for American products.
Does the Republican Party have any humans with brains left, or is it all slime molds now??
It is not the only thing they do. So, no. There are 0 signs of any care for Americans. And there were zero signs of any such care from either of the gentlemen, ever.
The problem with that simplistic reasoning is that helping people in other countries also can help Americans, sometimes in ways they directly helping Americans can't do.
(I'm not saying that every dollar deployed by USAID succeeds in having a large impact on indirectly helping Americans. But the net effect is surely positive.)
A big example is that almost all plastic in the ocean comes from a couple of Asian countries. No amount of money spent in the US could stop that. But it would likely be very cheap to combine funding plastic recycling with threats of sanctions against those countries.
>The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations.
Lets be clear, that is not the goal - that is what they say the goal is and reality shows it is not. The goal is grift and theft adn destruction. Properly naming things is going to continue to matter more and more. Because no matter your bias or perspective, repeating propaganda is an act of propaganda.
and I was answering that to the best of my ability. I'm not just repeating propaganda, I'm distilling down the intent of the actors to the best of my understanding. No one can ever know someone's true intent, but I've done the best I can with the information I have.
With all due respect, I don't think you have done the best you can with the information you have. The only source of information your answer reflects is the stated intention of the people in question. But you don't seem to have made an effort to use information about the behavior of those people in order to evaluate whether to take their stated intentions at face value. You need to do that part to have done your best here.
It's fine if you don't want to do this, you're under no obligations here, but I just don't think "I've done the best I can with the information I have" is accurate.
The rest of this thread is based on about 1-2 weeks and people making wild projections based on it, that’s not much better.
For example multiple people here are making broad claims like Consumer Protections is completely shutting down, when all that’s been announced is a temporary freeze on operations as the new lead takes over (which happened in multiple agencies). Likewise the stated plan for USAID is to trim down foreign grants and merge the rest with the state department, so we don’t know what functions will continue there or if the Executive branch even has the authority to do that. Courts have already blocked last week’s freeze on federal grants and a few other things. The Mexican tariffs are already paused too and Canada probably isn’t far behind given the large risk to US markets and prices.
As dumb as plenty of this stuff is, it’s easier to get worked up and believe every dire headline you read than maintain a sober look at what tangible things have actually changed or can change that fast.
There is a lot of truth to this point that not much time has elapsed yet.
But, I think a lot of the thread is more informed by things that have already happened over much longer periods of time in the recent past than it is by the things that have happened in the last couple weeks. Specifically, there is a large amount of information available on the behavior of the current president during his last administration, and on the actions of the person behind the DOGE efforts.
Nobody is under any obligation to maintain a veil of ignorance about who these people have shown themselves to be. They have not earned any benefit of any doubt.
> the thread is more informed by things that have already happened over much longer periods of time in the recent past than it is by the things that have happened in the last couple weeks
Almost the entire modern history of the US government (including his last term) showed that not much at all changes. And it definitely doesn’t change quickly. Even stuff like tax rates have barely had any meaningful change considering US tax revenue has only increased exponentially since the 1980s along with the GDP. On paper very little changes in gov when you look more than skin deep.
This might be a new precedent where politicians actually do what they say and work hard to change the government but I’m highly skeptical.
Sounds like a lot of noisy broad stroke announcements and highly reactive social media headlines that will turn out to be minor IRL outcomes or get smacked down in court.
I think we're talking about different things. The history of human government is chockablock full of corruption. Not just in the US, but everywhere. Individuals with power often use it to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.
The people currently arrogating unaccountable power, illegally, have given us no reason whatsoever to trust them to use it for the public good rather than their own enrichment.
> behavior of the current president during his last administration
And what has been the lasting tangible effects of his last administration? Was it the end of democracy and the rise of fascism the Left loves to get hysterical about? Nope. And it won't be the case in this administration either. We can check back in four years to see who's right.
You are repeating propaganda though. You're describing the stated intentions of this group, on their terms, as they have defined them. There's no particular reason to presume those statements are sincere, and in fact there have been other, previous statements that directly contradict them.
Right, I can't wait for the announcement that they cut down x in spending and will use some percentage of the "savings" to do y (Mars via Elons proxy Jared Isaacman, AI infrastructure via Oracle/FAANGs) and then claim it will benefit the whole world.
They're literally accelerationists: They're shooting the gov in the face, so they can enact more emergency powers, and then it's one step to pure, raw fascism.
> I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric
You need to start caring about politics real fast if you care at all.
There is arguably no non-political angle to this. I’m not sure how you’d describe what appears to be happening without it seeming biased.
From here in Canada it looks a lot like the fascist takeovers I’ve read about since middle school. The playbook is bizarrely tight to Hitler, Mussolini, hints of Stalin, etc. I didn’t expect this in my lifetime. Or rather, I imaged I’d see it coming sooner.
The goal is to overturn the system. The electorate is mad that nothing changes regardless of Dem or GOP in charge. They want something to change. They've wanted it for so long that at this point they're okay seeing it burn down.
Why those funds were allocated to their ops and not equally to everybody? If those government organisations were serving only one side of the political spectrum than something is inherently wrong with it.
> If those government organisations were serving only one side of the political spectrum than something is inherently wrong with it.
Is there? I feel like there are many cases where this is not true. Supporting disenfranchised groups for one. If you are funding protection for a group of people you don't need to be funding their attackers as well to make it "fair", the funding of the disenfranchised groups is literally you putting your thumb on the scale to try and even things out.
"one side of the political spectrum" is pretty loaded and it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. If we are talking about "funding democrats" then sure, that's not good but if we are talking about "funding women's health" then no, I'm not going to play "both sides" games. The sad thing is we live in a country where a large number of people think that "funding women's health" _is_ "serving only one side of the political spectrum".
Unfortunately we're also talking about funding so our rivers aren't on fire. We don't have to speculate on what is left and right because even what is purely sensical is being completely dismantled. People should be fucking outraged but half the country thinks the EPA is "woke." We're genuinely fucked.
Between Elon's stated goals, the systems under scope and my personal experience from state & local finance, they are performing a strategic efficacy audit of treasury spending. The US Treasury normally doesn't audit transactions -- they execute requests for transfers from other agencies and defer governance to congressional oversight.
The GAO doesn't even audit in the intuitive sense. They audit that spending is being recorded properly, and for many agencies even that low bar isn't met. In other words GAO is okay with you dumping money into a hole as long as you count how much.
DOGE is doing a practical audit of the spending. i.e. taking high-level spending principals from trump and identifying specific budget items to eliminate.
It's worth noting the difference between Budget & expenses since families normally blur the two. Budgets are the plans developed by the President and approved by Congress, and expenses are what actually get spent during the year-- and they vary widely.
DOGE's unique approach is to use the Treasury as the "chokepoint" for telemetry so they can cluster and classify all of the transactions .
Imagine a massive microservices platform with 10k services and you want to know which ones are viable ( cost/benefit). Rather than survey all 10k, you would surveil a router or LB chokepoint to measure the input & output of all 10k services. That seems to be their approach with the treasury.
One minor nit: while presidents do usually present their version of the ideal budget, Congress is responsible for developing the budget, and what they pass can sometimes look pretty different from what the president proposes.
Ever seen "Johnny English Strikes Again"? I'm sure Musk did, and is now implementing Jason Volta's plan as just retribution for the not-so-subtle reference hidden in the villain's electric name.
Isn't this just the Dark Enlightenment that Curtis Yarvin has espoused and Thiel, Musk, and JD Vance have also endorsed? TL;DR - Dictatorships are superior to democracy, and quick executive actions that replace legislative responsibilities with the tacit endorsement of judicial and legislative branches are functionally the same. The foundations for this were laid when Trump got so many Federalist judges approved last term and the Supreme Court endorsed the anything goes if President does it theory.
This will sound like a conspiracy theory, but this is the playbook of Curtis Yarvin, specifically the "RAGE" step - Retire All Government Employees. Some references:
Watch the whole video (posted months ago predicting all these actions), but here is the relevant section: https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?t=1201
I love this post. “Explain what is going on with the government without mentioning politics. If the reality is that current events and the people involved in them are driven by ideology, invent a version of reality wherein they are not” is like walking into a Sephora, opening up the folding chair that you’re carrying, and loudly demanding the catfish dinner and a beer.
> But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.
I'm a bit confused because the stated goals, either the "digestible" ones or the ones they've stated outside of mainstream media, are all political in nature.
How could you get an answer about the motivation and goals of this behavior that isn't "political"?
The right is at present a coalition of conservatives, nationalist patriot types and globalist libertarians. DOGE seems to be a mix of two goals:
1. They think that the civil service has become not just openly hostile but outright dangerous to any form of Republican government, and therefore that taking direct control of the civil service infrastructure at high speed is essential to avoid being kneecapped by rogue federal employees again. They think that this happened during Trump's first term, and that if they don't get this problem under control then America has effectively become a Democrat dictatorship that does whatever the left wants regardless of who wins elections. They have a good reasons to believe this is a real problem they need to solve and fast, see Sherk for some egregious examples [1] but there are many more you could cite.
2. A genuine belief that the government is very inefficient and in particular that a lot of the waste is basically just funding the Democrats via various 'laundered' routes like allied NGOs that pretend to be politically neutral charities but aren't. Doing something about that is a good way to get libertarians like Musk and his allies on board. Everyone is in favour of government efficiency in principle so letting the libertarian types go cut waste is an easy way to build that coalition even if the other parts don't care about fiscal efficiency much itself.
These two are interlocked. Poor performance and efficiency improvements are one of the legal justifications for laying off civil servants, so it's much easier to get the civil service under control if #resistance results in being one of the ones "optimized out" of a job. That's doubly true if the sort of NGOs that would hire them if they were fired are being defunded simultaneously.
It's a plutocratic coup, a takeover of the country by a small group of unelected men. The goal is to own and exercise power without opposition and without any rules.
There's two parts to it. First, there's the reasonable position that the government is inefficient or has too much bureaucracy or regulation. If that's the case, how do you improve that? Chesterton's Fence says that all those regulations are in place for a reason, but it's reasonably to believe that some of those reasons may not be relevant anymore, or could be better written to allow for more efficiency. However, sitting down to figure out why existing regulations exist and how to get rid of them without allowing whatever bad outcome they were created in response to is difficult. If you have the general feel that a regulation is bad, why not just get rid of it? Or an office you don't like, or a committee that likes to say you're doing things wrong? If you've got the vibe that "this thing is bad", why do you need to prove it before getting rid of it? So it's taking things that are legitimate problems and trying to fix them based on vibes rather than data. Which, if some of the problems you're annoyed with are "it takes too long to build a building because the EPA wants data to see if there's environmental impacts", is it really a surprise you'd want to take that out without data?
Second is the dismantling of the deep state. The deep state exists, but it's not a conscious effort in general. Instead, it's the typical aspects of institutional inertia, multiplied by the fact that the kinds of people wanting to work in government favor inertia more than in most private businesses. Of course the low level government bureaucrat at your local post office or whatever is going to want to slow-roll things and keep things from changing as much as possible; that's just the kind of person that typically looks for a government job and gets hired. Of course they're going to resist rapid changes from people that want things to be fixed yesterday. If your conception of the government is as an agent to execute orders, rather than as an agent to steadily administer regulations, then you're going to resent the people who don't respond instantly to the executive's desires
FWIW I voted for Kamela because I think that the process of governance is just as important as the governance itself, and did not want Trump to remove the existing processes in this way. I can definitely see why people would want to change processes, and given the historical ineffectual attempts at changed processes I can see why people would vote for someone who promised to tear it all down, but I don't think tearing it all down is the best option. Although, I didn't vote for Harris as much as I voted for the most effective way to prevent Trump, but given the American first-past-the-post voting system that was the best I could do. https://ncase.me/ballot/
If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective.
Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset voters, and congressional approval. Instead they'll going to disrupt some of the highest ROI small-money grants like food or medicine to impoverished countries because they don't have any representation.
It won't meaningfully reduce the deficit and means we we're signing up for warlords and global instability in the near future.
Medicare fraud perpetuated by individuals is u likely to be that high. Overbilling by hospital corporations and medical device companies could be possible. But corporations aren’t the target of DOGE.
When I got hit by a car in Italy, a CAT scan was a standard part of the triage process. Then I went to the ortho in the US and she was flabbergasted - apparently the bar is much higher to get one here.
I do. I think it's interesting to have scans of parts of my body – brain, body fat/muscle distribution, etc. I also use them as reference for how my body changes over the decades.
(EDIT: Nothing to do with medicare or fraudulent billing. Just pushing back on the "for fun" point. I can fall asleep in those things.)
I expect MRI to be a high capex investment but low cost to run it each time. Maybe someone more knowledgeable might step in.
Of course, to play devil's advocate, using an MRI because you have it might lead to acquiring more MRI machines because of the high usage of the existing ones, I guess.
I used to do MRI experiments in grad school for neuroscience.
One time, I got curious, and did some back-of-the-envelope math on how much they cost. In NYC, an MRI machine drew as much energy in 20 minutes, as my apartment did in a month.
Between electricity, keeping a superconductor cool, and personnel costs, it cost ~$100/hr in a medical facility, 20 years ago.
I don't think there are all that many MRI machines that just sit there, unused, most of the day. There might be some hospitals that want to reserve their MRI machine for emergencies, so that it's less likely that you'll have to wait when you really need it.
Even though they name cost of operation, energy use, cost of spare parts, maintenance and repair as expenses for running an MRI. It looks to me like the biggest cost by far is going to be the acquisition and installation. So if you've invested in an MRI machine you probably want it to be in use as much as possible in order to recoup the cost of the machine.
Sounds like a DEXA scan would be much more appropriate. Less radiation, cheaper, faster, and specificity tailored for measuring body composition. It’s like 40 bucks and five minutes.
Getting an MRI for body composition is like using industrial high precision equipment to measure the length of a hotdog
Just in case anyone else reads this and is confused. MRIs only use radio waves. No ionizing (or visible or even IR) radiation is used. The strong magnetic fields are a risk (due to interacting with metallic items embedded in the body). The contrast agents also can cause some undesirable side effects.
You mean go after military contractors like SpaceX and Palantir? That would require they actually want to reduce the deficit, not just kill departments that they find evil because of some projected vengeance.
Great recent article which explores how to actually cut $2T of federal expenses (though if course a tally doing so very quickly would cause a recession):
It isn’t about budget but about ideology. Firing prosecutors who investigated Trump, firing FBI agents involved in Jan 6th arrests, firing employees for having pronouns in email signatures, going after agencies that spend <.1% of the federal budget just because they have “diversity” or “aid” in the name, using emergency executive power over vague threats like “drugs”. This is a government takeover and purge of anyone who can be considered disloyal to the administration. This may be a surprise to people who have only ever lived under functional first-world governments and the rule of law, but the rest of the world recognizes it as a story that has played out many times before.
Exactly. An ideology of "the world is out to get me, I shall seek vengeance on them," which honestly, is maybe the farthest thing from what Christians should believe, if they read any of the New Testament. And I think maybe even has been taboo since Hammurabi.
At what cost? Are we counting lives lost, QALYs, who defines the cost-benefit.
I can free up a lot of budget by sacking the entire armed forces and selling the jets to Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. "freeing up a significant fraction of the budget" is not consequence free. If he forces the health insurance industry to reform and extract a sane profit margin above cost of service, he deserves a medal. If he wipes out USAID and stops his competitors being funded for battery car programmes he secured for himself in times past.. Less such.
"waste" is a very emotive term for government spending. Many economists laugh at the belief spending less money is net advantageous as a thing in itself: money makes the world go round. Sometimes you want it spent more than you want it saved.
Presumably positive lives and QALYs. That's the whole point of cutting taxes for many people. I would rather be spending my money on my health than going without while the fed pisses it away on handouts, corruption, and incompetence.
I want to run the heater so my kids aren't cold but cant afford it. Meanwhile my mayor is using my tax dollars to buy 200 home depot sheds for 800k each from a donor.
Yes, the point is spending money, just by the people who earned it.
I can't rebut this without being insulting, or dismissive of the situation you have to live in. I am sorry you are living in such constraint. I continue to believe you are wrong "less tax" will fix your problem but I can say that from the comfort of an economy with a fully hypothicated medicare tax, and something approaching universal health coverage.
I do not believe paying less tax will fix the kind of cynical systematic corrupt behaviour of your mayor, and other tiers of government.
I don't think paying less tax will fix the corrupt behavior of my mayor either, but it would limit my exposure and loss.
Fundamentally, the urge to eliminate taxes and reduce the size of the government is a vote of no confidence. Not just now,but permanently. It's not a vote for reform. I don't think the government leadership has my best interests at heart. I think it would happily take everything I have and leave me to starve in the street if it could.
Wanting to cut whatever tax is going to those sheds has nothing to do with for-profit companies. They are not the alternative. The alternative is not having the tax.
He can save a bunch of money and fire everyone! The amount of money doesn’t matter if what is gone is critical. When those things are lost, we will have to rebuild at a higher cost than maintaining.
Why the hell should be trust that liar's opinion on what is "waste". He has absolutely no authority to stop any payments that Congress has authorized. Trusting any one person with that much power let alone someone as morally bankrupt as Musk is deeply stupid.
If he frees up a significant fraction of budget while making the government better and more effective, and not doing anything illegal or wrong, then yes, I'd be happy to eat my words!
Thing is, I checked my twitter feed for the first time in a month, and was recommended Alex Jones, so I can predict how well DOGE is going to work out pretty accurately.
Better for who? Because since the inauguration, lots of marginalized people are facing increasing government harassment, and if any newly freed monies are applied to more of that, then I'd say the government isn't getting any better for a huge swath of society.
Though he absolutely, literally is. The executive branch taking control over finances is unconstitutional, and there are likely a bevy of other things involving laws for conflicts of interest and laws for security clearances.
The only question is what'll happen in response when the criminals control so much of the infrastructure.
As a bonus, Musk is currently breaking the First Amendment as well, as he is both wearing a government hat and actively censoring people discussing what he's doing.
Only if he does so in a way that doesn't actually hurt the millions of people who rely on that money. Only if he does so in a way that doesn't dismantle agencies that spread the US's soft power around the world. Only if he does so in a way that's auditable, transparent, and accountable.
Even if he does manage to find his $2T to cut (which I think is pretty unlikely), he will fail at the above metrics.
But sure, it would be cool to be proven wrong on that. I really hope I'm wrong. Otherwise he'll have hurt a ton of people (that he doesn't care about) and will have set the US back on the world stage decades. Not to mention... hello recession... or worse.
In total, federal workforce compensation amounts to 4.3% of the federal budget. So even if Musk fires literally every single federal employee, I would still say that he would not free up a significant fraction of the budget.
> if Musk frees up a significant fraction of the budget?
Freeing up money is not actually that hard. Doing it in a constructive way is a lot more difficult. I could go in and completely defund roads, airports, social security, public schools, the courts, the military, and save a ton of money.
Then what. What's the big plan? What are we going to do with all this money that will give us a better ROI?
That money was paying for stuff. Some stuff runs smoothly we enough that we take it for granted. Is everything perfect? No, but I'd like to see a little more care when screwing around with important infrastructure and services.
This reminds me of people that join a legacy software project and start proposing that you do a completely rewrite of the system without really understanding why certain decisions were made. It's almost always a total disaster and then someone else needs to come up and clean up after them.
What words? That this playbook of making promises to then create another crisis to change the subject is well known? That is true and will remain true. Will you read up on the 20th century so you're on the same page as the comment you're replying to?
But how would the words "it's not about the budget, but ideology" but refuted by budget cuts, anyway? I can give you candy in my van, and the candy can be real, but that still doesn't make it about the candy. And freeing up a significant fraction of the budget is hardly saying anything. You can save money by throwing people on the streets and letting them starve. You can make money by letting drug dealers go free and making them give the government a cut of the profits. Maybe not enough to offset the tax cuts to the super rich, or the costs incurred by just setting everything on fire to consolidate wealth for a few sociopaths, but probably "significant". So? That's supposed to be an argument for waving firing prosecutors for political reasons through?
Musk has zero chance of freeing up a ‘significant’ fraction of the budget. 73% of the budget goes to mandatory spending (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest payments, and other income assistance programs). Musk will touch zero of this. Trump and the GOP won’t let him. The Democrats too for that matter. And it’s mandatory spending is what has been exploding over the last decade, not discretionary spending
The remaining 27% is split 50/50 between defense and everything else. Musk will not be given access to the DOD. The remaining half of discretionary includes things like transportation, R&D/science funding , education, NASA/SpaceX, climate/energy, etc… essentially a lot of high value investments for our future that slashing would be like shooting ourselves in the foot.
It's so sad and disappointing that no one seems to understand this. It is literally impossible for Musk to cut $2T of spending, at least not without an act of Congress. An act that would likely be career suicide for even the most right-wing reps and senators once their constituents stop receiving their social security checks and health care. And when the bond market collapses when we stop paying interest on our debts.
Non-American here, from the outside it seems like the Jan 6 thing was way overblown. It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time but the perpetrators were not targeted the same way. Not condoning either, but there seems to be selective govt retribution.
Big rowdy protests on all matter of topics are fine. I actually used to work across from an embassy and they had huge street-closing protests every year. I'd walk straight through them to go grab a sandwich, I never felt unsafe.
This was something else. They stormed the fences, smashed windows, broke into the Capital building, they trashed the place, they beat the shit out of the cops. People died. DC Metro Police officers—let's be clear, they deal with real crime—described this as the most brutal hand to hand combat they'd ever experienced.
I'm not sure what you've heard about America. If you ever have a chance to visit DC, do it, it's a very cool city.
There was zero real prospect of that occurring, especially with broad agreement across the aisle that Trump lost.
It was a protest that got out of hand. Those who committed violence deserved custodial sentences, but the rest who were mere trespassers never should have seen the inside of a jail cell.
"To prepare for the attack on the Capitol, Tarrio and the other leaders of the Ministry of Self Defense established a chain of command, chose a time and place for their attack, and intentionally recruited others who would follow their top-down leadership and who were prepared to engage in physical violence if necessary."
There was zero real prospect of that occurring, especially with broad agreement across the aisle that Trump lost.
I mean, there was a whole plan around certifying the results of the election and it's not entirely clear how many people would have gone along with it if things had gone just a little bit different.
I agree that Jan 6 was not that big a deal. However, Jan 6 was just one part of a larger, nearly successful conspiracy to overturn the election. The conspiracy included pressuring the Vice President to exceed his authority; fraudulent electors; and extorting false claims of fraud from states.
In comparison to other countries where coups are almost normal, for a country that has not come close to that, this was a big shock to the accepted normal. When other countries like Syria overthrow their leaders, you almost go "of course they did", but to see anything approaching that in the US is totally out of left field. That's what makes it a bigger deal than what you want think.
> It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time
This is exactly how public perception will instantly normalize things if Trump ever gets the power to throw political enemies out of windows. "Oh this stuff happens all the time. Politicians have always been killing their enemies. Look up Seth Rich and Whitewater. Don't be so naive."
It will happen in the blink of an eye. And then it really is over.
Agree with this. Not to condone Jan 6, but the prosecution of those protestors was punitively harsh. People who should have been given simple fines for trespassing were instead given custodial sentences.
I sat on a January 6 jury that voted to convict the accused, who was then sentenced to several years in jail. I watched hours and hours of participant and security camera footage and listened to testimony from a Constitutional lawyer of the Senate and many law enforcement officers who were there that day (and could be identified in the footage).
Most of the Jan 6 trespassers got off pretty easy, especially if they settled. Most of them who made it into the rotunda stood around gaping with dumb looks on their faces, like the proverbial dog that catches the car. They didn’t know what to do and they sensed they shouldn’t be there. Many of them then listened to Capitol police offers in the building and exited.
But many didn’t exit and they formed a tense, violent, and scary mob, in the seat of our government, to disrupt the Constitutional transfer of power. It is amazing that more people didn’t die (a SWAT team quickly dispersed the mob outside the Speaker’s lobby right after the lone shooting) and there were many acts of heroism and smart policing to distract, disorient, and delay the mob, buying more time for evacuation of Members of Congress and for law enforcement to regroup in force. Many in the mob had weapons, which is a couple of felony counts right off the bat (possessing weapons in the Capitol, which is looser than you may think, and possessing weapons in the Secret Service restricted area around POTUS and VPOTUS, which is a felony that doesn’t mess around).
The felonies and misdemeanors at issue in the case I was on were pretty clear and the jury reached its verdict thoughtfully, carefully, and quickly (we all quietly read through the many pages of the counts and judge’s instructions before opening discussion; it was an excellent group of people).
January 6 was an insurrection. Most members of the mob were sad sack idiots, and I can feel sympathy for them as individuals. But if anything, the government did not treat them harshly enough, nor quickly enough.
I am a bit worried about my own safety now, with all the insurrectionists having been pardoned. Fun times.
As a non-American I don't think Jan 6 was overblown. It had some real potential for escalation had Pence given in to Trump's demands. At the same time I do think the prosecution was too harsh, though that can be said from just about any crime in the US. Morally Trump is way more responsible for Jan 6 than any of the protestors.
I can assure you, despite superificial anecdotes — nothing similar happens “all the time”. protestors will find their way in buildings, but they typically don’t show up, destroy barricades, get shot, plant explosives. And they certainly don’t do it right as they were attending a rally designed to stroke exactly this situation
The Floyd riots in Portland a few years ago which got memory holed.
Rioters were shining high power military-grade lasers at peace officers, assaulting cops. They sieged government buildings and destroyed and burned much of their own city. Nothing happened to most of them.
A young boy was shot and killed in Seattle (where a few blocks of the city 'seceded' from the US) and I watched some LARPing teenager dressed like a dollar-store ninja hit a cop in the head with a baseball bat (the ninja turned out to be a local politician's son so I can imagine the punishment levied). The mayor went on TV and described all this madness as a "summer of love".
The behaviour I observed was abhorrent and eclipsed anything that transpired on Jan 6.
Yet it was all conveniently forgotten.
Smashing some doors and windows was child's play in comparison, and the melodrama surrounding 1/6 was over the top. I actually heard someone describe it as "worse than 9/11". They were serious, too.
And you want me to believe the guy on 1/6 with the buffalo horns is somehow comparable to the cowards blinding people with industrial lasers? The Portland riots to this day is some of the most insane footage I've ever seen and the lack of punishment and length of time it was allowed to go on is unbelievable.
Most of the Portland rioters should still be in jail but most got off with a slap on the wrist if they got any punishment at all.
It's an inconvenient truth for some because I remember even middle aged Google engineers were arrested for acting like fools. You would think educated people would know better.
There is a 100% chance some posters on this very website were at the Portland or Seattle riots and somehow have justified that their participation was righteous.
Where on earth are you getting “burned and destroyed much of [Portland]” from? As a Portlander, the biggest effect of the Floyd protestors was boarded up buildings in the 10-block radius around the local county jail, in the middle of a moribund pandemic-era office skyscraper district. Please, if you believe an American city’s been destroyed, at least pause and double-check before making it the centerpiece of an argument.
(Many of those arrested were let off because of insufficient evidence. I think that requiring evidence to convict someone is a good thing.)
I know what I saw, it was repugnant behaviour, don't try and split hairs. The fact that the madness was contained to only 10 blocks is, on the whole, irrelevant.
Portland is the seat of government of the USA now? (I used to live in Kenton/St Johns when the latter was still called Tweakville, although I moved away well before 2020)
Oh no, I was disputing the "burned and destroyed" part – don't pick and choose what I said and ignore the rest.
I know what I saw: between 2020 and 2024 I worked at PSU and took a bus that went over the Hawthorne Bridge, went past the Justice Center, and dropped me off near City Hall. Once in a while I went to Pioneer Square to eat lunch. I worked late nights, and on the way back home after midnight I either walked back on Broadway or 4th, to City Hall, and took the same bus back. Those are the "10 blocks" you're talking about. The fact that they were all standing, not burnt, and were in use during business hours is fairly relevant to the conversation.
The worst I saw was the glass broken in the fancy glass entrance to the Oregon Historical Society. The best I saw was murals painted on the boards Apple had put up to protect their store in Pioneer Square.
Can you provide examples of when something similar has happened in other US government buildings? I'm American and I can't think of anything, at least not anything that happens "all the time".
Jan 6 was not overblown. Rioters rushed the building, smashed windows, and broke into the offices of Congresspeople and staffers. People were injured and hospitalized. Capitol Police were understaffed and lost control of the situation, and were physically attacked.
Those convicted of crimes due to their part in Jan 6 deserved what they got. It is a disgusting miscarriage of justice that nearly all of them have been pardoned.
Outside of it being a "thing that happened in a govt building", the goal of Jan. 6th was to prevent the certification of the election, have the results be declared invalid and for Trump to declare himself president instead of Biden.
The fact that this failed doesn't really mean that the underlying intention was just "protesting".
Yes. Sadly, abusing the justice system to harshly punish your political opponents by forcing them to either accept trumped up charges or bankrupt them is something new here. The circus has been quite the spectacle.
Their goal was to prevent The Vice President from certifying Biden's electoral college victory as the US constitution mandates. That is a VERY BIG DEAL.
American here, nope! It was a huge deal. An attempt to disrupt the peaceful transition of power. Not sure what other examples you think were on par but it was the kind of big deal where people went home sick to their stomachs for the day because I've never seen anything like it in my life. A desecration of something sacred.
> It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time
That is a laughable assertion, most importantly because the job that Congress was doing on Jan 6th, and which the deliberate goal of the protesters was to stop, was the peaceful transfer of power, which is probably the most important (and historically rare) job in a modern democracy.
Saying "but hey, some left wing protesters surrounded a police station" is a ridiculous false equivalence, because what they were trying to accomplish was orders of magnitude different.
"Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.
"Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The account was confirmed by an administration official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
"The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds."
As near as I can find, some 6 people were arrested for this violent protest by the Secret Service, and some 16 by DC police. Is is vanishingly difficult to find if anyone was subsequently charged and convicted for this event, which was without parallel, at least in my lifetime. This followed the events of May 30, 2020, when the Church of St. John's Episcopal In Lafayette Square, across from the White House, was sent on fire. To date it seems that no one has been arrested or charged for this destruction.
So they didn't even attempt to enter the building and they certainly didn't attempt to overthrow election results? I just cant see how you think these are the same category of event with respect to political impact.
They burned the church and tried to break into the White House forcing an evacuation of the president! The 1/6 riot, by contrast, was by turns both violent and civil, but no one was armed and attempting "to overthrow the election results". In fact the Trump plan of continuous debate over the merits of the election was thwarted by the riot. It was diametrically opposed to his interests and ended up favoring the Democrats. Many questions still linger over the identities of major participants, including the "pipe bomber" and the "scaffold commander", whom the FBI unaccountably never identified. Note that the 1/6 participants were relentlessly tracked by the state for years by some 6000 FBI agents and tried in DC courts, unlike the 2020 rioters aiming to storm the White House.
This one wasn’t restricted to just a govt building, although it did start with the takeover of a police building. Kids were shot and killed. But the rioters were initially aligned with BLM so there was a lot of sympathy from the government and media. Barely anyone was investigated or punished, in contrast to Jan 6th.
They didn't take over the police building. They protested outside it, and the police boarded it up and voluntarily vacated it.
This was basically a very long street protest, which is fundamentally different from taking over the US legislative buildings by force.
No children were shot. A 19-year old named Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr was shot and killed. His killer, an 18-year-old mentally disabled person with a history of conflict with Anderson, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
No matter your ideology, I'm not sure how you can believe this is the same category of thing.
The link I posted has a crime section. There were 5 separate shootings. A 16 year old boy was shot and killed and a 14 year old was shot and in critical condition. From a loss of life due to violence perspective, CHOP/CHAZ was worse.
> From a loss of life due to violence perspective, CHOP/CHAZ was worse.
But from a potential to overthrow the government perspective, Jan 6 was worse. The entire Senate and the Vice President were in that building. The stated goal of the mob was to stop the transfer of power ("stop the steal"). They chanted their methods, which included hanging the Vice President and Speaker of the House, 1st and 2nd in line of succession. They brought a gallows. That's why it was an insurrection and not just a protest.
They don't want to be effective. They want to punish and humiliate anyone they don't like, and lie about it because claiming "efficiency" is an easy way to get overly credulous American moderates to look the other way.
As someone who witnessed the absurd corruption of the weird fiefdoms carved out by the horrifically inefficient career staff at the Department of State and USAID, I have to say that all this really couldn't happen to a better set of people.
Musk also thinks it's funny we all have to say "DOGE" because he is a petty moron with the sense of humor of a spoiled 13 year old gamer from the year 2000.
Catching Medicare fraud likely requires a level of automatic data anomaly analysis that's simply beyond all the participants involved, both in terms of getting access to the actual databases and in getting the qualified manpower to build such a system.
If the DoD's auditors can't track down all the expenses, then why would DOGE be any more successful?
I think that the practical solution is to hire more auditors/investigators, and they would end up paying for themselves, but I don’t think Elon would accept a solution that requires more humans and up front cost.
Trump and almost all of Congress doesn't want to touch the entitlements. Bush Jr tried to reform social security and got trounced for it. Since then no one seriously tries to change it because the other side will beat you over the head with it, even if they are half truths.
Voters like to vote themselves "free" things, even if it might destroy the economy.
This has been a known pattern for millennia. Democracy as it is today in the US suffers from the same ills Plato discussed. It is not a good nor sustainable system. It is not the system the founding fathers put in place.
That none of our rulers question it nor propose alternatives is very telling about who runs our society and what their end goals are. The only reason society appears to be improving (and it is on the whole) is due to our incredible technological advancement. That being said, we should be living in a utopia by now if our rulers weren’t parasites.
i will vote for whichever party reforms entitlements and raises taxes, especially less distortionary taxes like on inheritance, property, and consumption.
the estate tax should be 100% of anything over $20 million. If property taxes on homes and land are legal then they should also apply to anyone who ones more than $20 million in shares of public companies.
Yes, let’s further remove everyone from nature’s only real instinct for selflessness (familial bonds) so we can all become disembodied laborers for our true family: the central planner class in Washington.
I’m sure creating a strong disincentive to value creation won’t affect the economy in any way. Europe is doing so great with their much higher taxes, just look at Norway. By wealth tax hammering their entrepreneurial class the’ve encouraged them to leave so they can fully focus their economy on becoming a natural resource extracting petro-state. A real progressive utopia.
It’s not like we’d be creating a crazy strong incentive for the state to literally kill certain people to stay solvent. Ok, low key maybe we would be…but the Bolsheviks did such a fantastic job with all the private assets they seized.
There’s no possible way this can’t result in a utopian, prosperous, fair society. It works beautifully every time it is tried. Great idea comrade.
Yes, it makes perfect sense. Don't address any of the counterpoints I raised, ignore the implementation details, and just keep repeating that. It sounds like a really great idea.
Artificially creating fairness by eliminating success has no downsides, especially in a competitive anarchic global system. It's gonna feel so good to not have those evil entrepreneurs trying to create too much value in the world to enrich their families. Fairness should be the ultimate end goal for everything, not overall prosperity. Because nature is 100% fair, this totally aligns with reality.
Bad analogy. Money is representative of externalities, of things exchanged by others, like the time they spent working to earn the income, or selling something, and it extends through many levels of transactions in society.
That’s nothing like someone’s good looks, which, by the way, is subjective and has changed over the ages.
Using this logic, having good genes represents an even greater injustice.
As you have said, money is a fuzzy representation of at least some value created via societal transactions.
Genetics, on the other hand, are wholly undeserved, even by the people passing them on. If we aim to champion fairness, I don't see how this cannot be part of the conversation.
Do you actually expect serious responses to your hyperbolically emotional and sarcastic posts? Well, here goes…
The only implementation detail I would change is the flat rate of $20 million. I would peg it to something like GDP per capita or average CoL multiplied by some number of years.
People have come from nothing and gone on to do amazing things. If you can’t get some kind of profit generating company off the ground or at least passive income through wise investing with that kind of windfall, then you quite frankly deserve to work in the proverbial widget factory with the unwashed masses. To wine about that betrays the lack of grit that probably lost you the nest egg on the first place.
The best entrepreneurs are the ones that are interested in learning and building amazing things. The ones in it to hoard wealth saddle the world with bullshit because it’s a bullshit incentive that requires bullshit mechanisms to protect their income stream. Think patent trolls.
If you want to see what fair looks like in nature, look at what every other animal beside humans get when they start life: the risk that around every corner lies a disease, predator, competitor, starvation, grave injury… What presumably sets humans apart and allowed us to thrive is cooperation on larger and larger scales throughout our evolution. Hoarding wealth is antithetical to the very thing that is supposed to make us an exceptional species.
There's a deep irony in both acknowledging that humans thrive on cooperation and building on the work of those that came before us, and yet also wanting to forcibly disrupt that process and centrally re-distribute wealth to less efficient but "fair" means every time someone dies.
"Hoarding wealth" is the entire reason we have capital to invest in new ideas and innovations.
Fairness sounds great of course! Who doesn't like fairness? The problem is, true fairness is neither achievable nor desirable, given the realities of human nature.
When you aim to force it onto the world via centralized authority, it generally results in worse outcomes since it can only be enforced punitively via the stick (instead of the carrot) -- creating even less fair power structures than the ones you aim to disrupt.
The point of my sarcastic posts is to illustrate this fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and how the world actually works. Again, we've tried this a million times, with the receipts to show for the results. It's not good.
who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away?
Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ?
What do you think happens with the customer base, during that transition, exactly ? What happens to the jobs lost?
If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?
"Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? "
Employees.
"who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away?"
Whoever they hire.
"If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?"
$20 million is plenty. Taxing someone AFTER they die is the fairest possible time to do so. Insisting you should have control of your assets even after you are dead is pretty absurd when you really think about it.
EDIT: Honestly the minimum could be $100 million or even $1 billion. The goal is to prevent a permanent class of overlords from growing.
>"Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? "
>Employees.
The controlling interest in a company is determined by shares owned. This reads like you're suggesting that the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of.
Whoever purchases the business at auction. Transition? Businesses already need to cope without a CEO for periods, such as injury. Might even go smoother if the executor gets to appoint an acting manager and is able to authorize the CFO to keep paying wages and bills.
Work all your life to give yourself and your kids excessive power over me? I didn't agree to that. Society gets to decide what the social contract is, and a lot of us are not happy that excessive wealth/power is able to be accumulated, negatively affecting our lives. Why are we forced to also accumulate unnecessary wealth in order to defend ourselves? Perhaps a better reward for success is leisure and stress free living and providing an opportunity for another to also succeed and flourish.
It’s week 2. I think they will have time to go after those big orgs.
But also you’re missing an important theme of the administration. Foreign aid doesn’t go to Americans. Social security and Medicare do. Trump didn’t run a tea party platform.
He mentioned in an interview last night that they have evidence that there is fraud rings of people outside the US posing as citizens and collecting medicare and other welfare. Sounds like it'll be a big item they take on in the near future. Some evidence for this is that all manner of fraud ramped up during covid and since then the federal budget has ballooned from 4.5T to over 7T.
These kinds of vague rumours ("they have evidence" is weasel words) are used to legitimize the development of invasive programs (and software) that profile people; see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand... that affected tens of thousands of people (causing children to be removed from their parents, divorces, suicides, etc), mostly justified because of a small group of people defrauding the benefits scheme. The total cost of setting this right is in the billions and increasing, many times more than whatever they saved on fraud.
they have evidence that there is fraud rings of people outside the US posing as citizens and collecting medicare and other welfare.
They'll release that evidence right about the same time they release all the "evidence" that Giuliani had about election fraud. Which they've promised to release hundreds of times before. But never have. Because it doesn't exist.
Are there people outside the U.S. gaming the system? Sure. Are they "rings" or "gangs" or whatever scary name they're using this week? Based on past performance, I have zero faith we'll see any evidence.
> Are they "rings" or "gangs" or whatever scary name they're using this week?
As someone who is very into the "scambaiting" hobby of hunting down identity thieves, phone call scams, etc I would imagine they would look something like these operations you see in India or Russia where you get have an office full of professional thieves calling elderly people and scamming them out of their bank accounts, harvesting data or getting them to sign up for useless subscriptions. In 2023 alone there was $43 billion lost from identity theft. There was $200 billion in fraud from the various covid hardship assistance programs. These programs are huuuge and they have ballooned beyond what is logical in the past few years. Even democrats talk frequently about medicare fraud.
Without commenting on this specific situation, you're very naive to think government/regulatory policies are not exploited in systematic ways by rings/gangs. Have a look at cum-ex dividend fraud in Germany, GST refunds on gold in Australia, carousel/missing trader VAT fraud in the EU, ETS carbon credit fraud in the EU, etc. All multi to tens of billion dollar frauds that were systematically exploited by rings/gangs.
Yes, there’s always fraud but 40% of nearly a trillion dollars a year is an incredibly high number - like the entire Nigerian GDP! It’s simply not possible for that to be happening with a regularly audited public service which routinely finds and successfully prosecutes much smaller fraud operations. That kind of effort would involve hundreds or thousands of people and one of them would slip up.
This is a classic misdirection: fixing Medicare means dealing with the world-record inefficiency of the American healthcare system and paying a little more in taxes. They can’t say that because it’s unpopular with the rich donor class, and if they say services will be cut it’ll be very unpopular with their elderly base, so instead they point to something everyone hates and pretend that it’s big enough to solve the fundamental mismatch.
I also heard tell about underpants gnomes that steal your underpants at night. A lot of people are saying it. Could be anywhere from 1 million to 10 million pairs per year, nobody knows, but we're looking into it.
This is an attack on the government without a legal basis. Evidence can be submitted and process can be followed, he and his team are doing neither are opening themselves up to severe legal consequences. They should research Michael Cohen and Giuliani.
These people have our information, right now, in some drive in their backpack. This will be a scandal for years to come if the nation survives this.
Would it matter much? It seems like the election is fueled on false narratives and outright lies amplified by social media and technology that many of us here helped to build. Apathy is a real thing but at least close to half the population fully intended to and did vote for their choice of leadership. What can we (generalized we in the tech community) now combat this?
We need to use our skills to build platforms that have both high retention and diffuse ownership that uplifts its users. We need to build a media ecosystem that isn't just a toy. My generation treated social media like it was just an amusement, and didn't notice it slowly turn the flow of information back into AM talk radio until it was too late. There have to be genuine alternatives to Tiktok and X and Instagram that are just as obsessive about UX as the proprietary apps are, but can't be owned.
Seems like we need a news 2.0 that isn't something controlled by a couple of entities that can filter and shape narrative at the whim of a political party (either political party). Problem that we don't seem to have a good answer for is, how to make such a thing trust worthy and trusted by the public.
It’s a bit scary to be honest. I can understand why uneducated people that easily manipulated or who don’t know better can have those opinions, but educated people with access to the information still having those opinions is scary to me.
"It's scary to me that other people would have differing opinions than me."
I'm very happy with this administration's direction so far. Actually enforcing immigrations laws, stop letting countries take advantage of us economically, cut stupid government waste, cut out the identity politics and DEI wasteful bullshit. It's exactly what I voted for.
The left/right divide in American politics is a myth. Clinton and Harris are both establishment candidates. The only establishment candidate to have won a presidential election since George Bush Sr. in 1988 is Biden. And that was only because of Trump's first term, and he was losing his election before bowing out.
The Democratic Party has been putting forward establishment candidates since at least Jimmy Carter, the only exceptions being Bill Clinton and Obama. And notably, they both were, like Trump, a bit of a black swan in party politics.
The trade war pales in the long run compared to the power grab by Musk and supporters (accessing the Treasury payment system, shutting down agencies without congressional approval). It's very bad news for American government and democracy, it looks like a coup.
im well aware trump is worse and is not solving anything.
Also-
I do wish the gripe wasn't the egg thing - that one in specific is because they're intentionally killing hens to keep us safe from disease. last thing i want is for them to make the egg price go down and everyone gets sick.
when the tarrifs happen we will have plenty of economic disaster to point to.
Also Also-
when the pitch for the two candidates are
"things stay bad"
vs "i promise to change things to make your life better (lie)", it kinda makes sense
i don't agree with trump voters. frankly i hate them. but it's understandable at least
Politicians look at how people vote to decide how to run and how to govern.
When you vote for Kamala over Trump, you show them your preferences, and they'll run and govern in a more methodical way. The next batch of candidates gets even better.
But Trump winning means the next batch will be even worse.
Kamala did not promise to govern in a methodical way, she promised essentially not to govern, but to keep the system trucking along. The end state of "nothing will fundamentally change" and "I wouldn't have done a single thing differently" is exactly the same as the end state of Trump's accelerationism. It's not clear what other message is going to be sent either way.
> The end state of "nothing will fundamentally change" and "I wouldn't have done a single thing differently" is exactly the same as the end state of Trump's accelerationism.
Pretty wild to suggest that continuing stability, growth, and reindustrialization is the same as tearing everything down.
It sounds like you're assuming that if more people had voted, they would have voted for not-Trump. Is there data backing that up? Is there any indication that the result would have been different?
Neither side wants to give us affordable healthcare or education. Everything good comes from those two things imo. Voting doesn't matter anymore. Only money. The oligarchs have won (for some time now) and the government is their puppet.
They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI, SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI.
It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential and critical production system.
Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on this.
Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.
Like Democratic elected officials? They lost. They have no power. They don’t control any branch of government.
They have as much ability to pass laws as you or I personally do. They have as much ability to hand down a Supreme Court or direct law enforcement as you or I personally do. None. Where are we? Complaining on social media I guess.
I’m quite frustrated why my elected officials as well but it is kind of hard to blame them when we don’t give them any actual power to wield.
Sure, but there's other things they can do. They can all stop trying to achieve bipartisan support on things, as the republicans do when they're in the minority. Senators can withdraw their unanimous consent. They can vote against everything. They can drag a bunch of reporters over to Treasury and start loudly asking questions
It sounds like some are finding a clue, like the ones who stomped down to USAID with reporters in tow today. They need to do more of this.
Just because they can't pass legislation doesn't mean they are out of ideas.
What you can do is write to or call them. Ask them to vote no on every senate confirmation. Ask them to not provide unanimous consent. Ask them to make a scene. Demand answers!
Have they voted on a single thing yet except the Laken Riley Act? (Which they probably shouldn't have done, but anyway.) This administration is not waiting on Congress to do anything.
But that aside, I agree that they need to start getting back attention. Being absolutely silent except for individuals saying things that are only reported on Bluesky is not enough to be taking back control of attention.
> Have they voted on a single thing yet except the Laken Riley Act?
I mean on things like confirmations, but when bills start coming up reps need to go full on toddler mode and say no to everything.
They need to read the Mitch McConnell book on gumming up the works of government and grind everything to a halt until the madness stops.
> But that aside, I agree that they need to start getting back attention. Being absolutely silent except for individuals saying things that are only reported on Bluesky is not enough to be taking back control of attention.
I completely agree. Social media doesn't help anything, unless they're live streaming themselves daring the people obstructing Treasury to arrest them.
This isn't a "business as usual" moment, this is a five-alarm-fire moment.
Propaganda, mostly. Conservatives have gained control of most Media outlets, and have been using them to launder consent. It's incredible that we've given Democrats absolutely no power, they can do literally nothing, and yet they're still somehow to blame for what Republicans are doing.
Democrats received more money than Republicans from big tech and media for a very long time, including the most recent presidential election. Are big media stupid for donating more to their enemies than who they purportedly support?
Your other option is admitting that Democrats had previously owned the media and doing precisely the thing you're accusing Conservatives of doing. You definitely cannot claim they did not seeing the checks written out to DNC and other PACs alongside the board seats from previous administrations.
> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.
You mean the same Democrats who were not given a majority on neither legislative houses, nor the Presidency?
Some people voted against their best interests. Consequences.
The democrats have effectively no power. They control neither the house, senate, or presidency, the courts have become more conservative, etc. They can only talk. The filibuster will prevent new laws, but that isn't much when the federal government acts according to the presidency, and the filibuster does not prevent government appointments
And the filibuster is nothing more than a polite restriction that the majority of the senate places on themselves — they are free to remove it if they wish.
I guess Elon believes that long wait times for government services is because of an O(n^3) function somewhere...
> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition
I think because this is so unprecedented the structures to oversee simply don't exist. The article mentions that congress has no mechanisms for oversight, and Elon is moving too quickly in this area for any checks to take place.
The courts are just now beginning to order injuctions and restraining orders, for the stuff that happened last week. The process seems to lag by 2-3 business days. So hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more this week.
How the administration responds to those is going to define how this constitutional crisis unfolds. And it is a constitutional crisis: congress unambiguously has the power of the purse, not the executive.
If Trump gets away with this, it isn't clear that Congress has any power at all.
You can't just prefix any random BS with "you seem to be". No, there is zero indication for that. You're just going "I know you are, but what is Elon?"
Policies do a great deal to determine elections - American political parties are more polarized by policy now than they've ever been. It only seems otherwise because there's a lot of people who don't consider opposition to their policy objectives legitimate, and thus diagnose it as cooked-brain syndrome rather than attempting to understand and compromise.
People's policy preferences are downstream of how cooked their brains are. So it's not really policies that are determining it, it's the fact that their brains are cooked through constant exposure to bad things. If their brains are uncooked through constant exposure to good things, then their policy preferences will also change.
Now I'm not sure what we're talking about. If you postulate that brains can be "cooked" and "uncooked" in response to new information, doesn't "cooked" just mean "persuaded"? I definitely agree that my policy preferences would be more dominant if people spent more time ingesting the good arguments and good evidence that convinced me to hold them.
That's fair -- "cooked" does imply an increase in entropy that can't be reversed. I think it sadly is irreversible in some people, but many others can be brought back (you're already starting to see a backlash to Trump).
Being exposed to the arguments over and over, repeatedly, probably matters more than their quality. That's what I was going for with "cooked", since "persuaded" isn't quite the right word for it.
> I guess we got the government we voted for? And since it’s a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the government we deserve?
Well, we voted based on the only two options that were shoved down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people on the planet. I don't personally think we deserve this, why would we? That said, if we don't do something, it won't get better.
we voted based on the only two options that were shoved down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people on the planet
Well, we should have made a system that didn’t allow the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.
Not trying to be flip, I’m just trying to point out that it still all comes back to us in the end. We just have to hope for the best at this point. Buyer’s remorse is not gonna change the actions these people are likely to take.
I do agree with you when you say, something needs to be done. If these pres-vice pres pairings are the best the current system could come up with, then obviously there is a need to add some new aspects to the system that might encourage more competence in the candidates it produces.
> Well, we should have made a system that didn’t allow the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.
This feels correct-ish, but also pretty unrealistic. If you're born into a system where you have to choose between getting slapped and getting stabbed, then obviously the system shouldn't have been made that way -- that doesn't change the fact that it is that way, and you have to act within that system regardless of what ought to be the system instead.
I agree to an extent. Most of us are either still young, or just getting our bearings and seeing the problems as adults in the last 10 or so years. I feel comfortable saying that, knowing the demographics of the site. Most of us had little-to-no ability to shape the current situation. Our window has just opened.
No, but enough people voted for the party that put the supreme court justices in place who ruled on citizens united over the years.
Voting isn't a one time thing, it has repercussions that can be felt decades later (see shortages of ATC because of the actions of Reagan in the 80's).
Ok, so you stalked my comment history so I stalked yours.
What about the Trump administration is "intelligent"? Trump lies about everything. Pointing out other politicians lie isn't a good comeback. Trump lacks all understanding of how tariffs work, he said he was going to "repeal and replace" Obamacare on "day 1" in 2016, only to say he has "concepts of a plan" in 2024, whatever the fuck that means. He rarely has "ideas", he just bitches about stuff and handwaves away everything when pressed for any details.
"Lawful order"? I don't know that that means. I would say that writing a lot of executive orders that go directly against the constitution is literally the opposite of "lawful order", but you're free to disagree.
Deporting all these violent illegals has been outstanding in my opinion. He's actually enforcing existing immigration laws.
By way of threats of tariffs, He's gotten Columbia, Mexico and Canada to enact policies in the interests of America.
America gets constantly screwed by other nations because we've allowed great trade imbalances and weak borders. Other nations have been happy to step back and let the US fund the UN, NATO, etc. Historically, we have the lowest tariffs and accept the most illegal immigrants in the world. Trump's changing that and I'm here for it.
Btw, I'm all for legal immigration. I'm one myself. My family escaped a communist country and has experienced life under a leader much more authoritarian that what the Left conjures up about the other side.
The filibuster in the Senate is powerful but it basically only blocks new laws from going in you can't really touch all the things Trump is doing via EO through Congressional obstruction the main avenue for blocking that is through the courts which ultimately have limited enforcement power.
Maybe the strategy is to let it play out until there is enough of a case that the other branches can’t look away? Let Elon show himself out by inevitably crossing Trump and going the way of so many other advisors?
The democrats are busy trying to squeeze more AIPAC money for when they get massively primaried for backing a genocide. No, i'm not joking the house minority leader gave a speech on israel's success in gaza this week
> * Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payments systems of the Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people. The US Congress does that under Article 1 of the Constitution ... we don't have a fourth branch of government called 'Elon Musk”
> * Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) “This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let’s call it what it is.” -And- "Let's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions off of his business with China. And China is cheering at this action today. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our govt right now is doing it based on self-interest."
> * Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) "It is a matter for Congress to deal with, not an unelected billionaire oligarchy named Elon Musk. And Elon, if you want to run USAID, get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate and good luck in getting confirmed."
> * Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) “We asked to enter the Aid building, really on behalf of the American people, but to talk to Aid employees, because … there’s been a gag order imposed on Aid employees. So we wanted to learn first-hand what’s happening. We were denied entry based on the order that they received from Elon Musk and Doge, which just goes to show that this was an illegal power grab by someone who contributed $267bn to the Trump effort in these elections.”
Estimated crowd of 100 protesters (reported). Other attendees and speeches made by Congressmen Beyer, Raskin, Connolly, Omar, Olzewski, Senator Van Hollen (seems like more maybe there not much coverage to confirm)
> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.
This is the kind of thing that someone who's on TikTok a lot says. The line being fed to people by the Chinese government to make the Democrats look bad as well. But the truth is the Democrats have no power. None. They can't do anything to stop this. Elizabeth Warren and AOC have just as much power as I do to stop Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Democrats have bigger fish to fry and DOGE isn't a real department so it doesn't have a whole lot of authority to do things on its own. It can only advise the government so in the end, until an executive order is signed or some other action is taken, there's nothing to be done.
I'm not sure what could possibly be a bigger fish right now. This is, quite literally, the dismantling of our entire government and its public services unfolding before our eyes.
> I try to keep emotion out of this newsletter. I have always tried to write Notes on the Crises in a calm, detached tone so that the information I highlight shines through. However, I must be honest with readers: I’m absolutely terrified. When I first read the Washington Post’s reporting I subsequently had a panic attack. I am not subject to those. I didn’t have one during the start of Covid-19 when I started writing about the full health, economic, and political consequences in March 2020 and knew before many, many people that millions would die. Nor at any time subsequently did I have one. Even as someone who has spent an unusual amount of time thinking about the Treasury’s internal payments system for a person who has never been in government, I find grasping the full implications of Elon Musk and his apparatchiks reaching into and trying to exert full control over the Treasury’s payment system mind-boggling.
> There is nothing more important on the entire planet than getting Elon Musk and DOGE out of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and allowing career civil service employees to run the Treasury’s internal payments system without capricious and self-serving interference from billionaires and their allies. This effort must fail if we are to safeguard any semblance of due process and lawfulness in the executive branch. A vague anonymous promise that DOGE only has “read only” access is not enough. They need to be rooted out so that we can return to the slower moving, less dangerous, “five alarm fire” constitutional crisis we were having as of Friday morning.
Same as you, I have no idea what’s going to happen. But something will, and it might be good. It might be bad as well, but at least the news will be interesting.
Same as me? Speak for yourself, I don't care about what might or might not happen, to avoid honestly dealing with what is happening. That they started doing this on a Friday night should tell you they know what they're doing, that is, that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That it "might be bad".
> It might be bad as well, but at least the news will be interesting.
For those who read nothing about the first half of the 20th century, sure. For them this is surely "interesting". But since you wouldn't like your harm to be someone else's entertainment either, that's not an argument for anything.
In context, that question would not about the present, but the future:
> It might be bad as well, but at least the news will be interesting.
Of course this doesn't mean "this might suck for me, but at least it will be interesting news for others". Why pretend otherwise?
> Approximately 20 members of Elon Musk’s staff have begun working within the Education Department. They have gained access to multiple sensitive internal systems, including a financial aid dataset containing the personal information of millions of students enrolled in the federal student aid program.
You don't receive such aid, correct? So why care. Just a bunch of dudes soaking up highly sensitive information to do whatever with.
Trump spoke plenty of times of his desire of purging all sorts of things including the "deep state". It's amazing to me that all it takes is to tack on some vague claims about "efficiency" from a guy who lies like a child about the dumbest things, for some Americans to say "but what IF it saves a bit of money?" and just ignore the whole "using a very flimsy excuse to purge political opposition" thing.
You have no real handle on the scale of damage being done and DOGE is a real department as it was merged into the US Digital Service through executive order.
No, USDS is an organization within the President's executive staff.
The constitutional requirement is that "Officers of the United States" need Senate confirmation unless Congress has provided otherwise. The precise contours of this have never been super well defined, but it doesn't sound like Musk is exercising sovereign power under his own authority, at least not yet.
Most Scandinavian countries are required to make any communication in public departments (including all coworkers emails) public on request by journalists or anyone interested.
This is to make any doubts regarding e.g USAID public instead of making such drastic measures necessary.
But also make work of an entity such as Doge transparent. They are after all funded by my money (as a taxpayer).
Most Scandinavian countries are required to make any communication in public departments (including all coworkers emails) public on request by journalists or anyone interested.
In the U.S., too. In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in the modern age.
But it's all happening so quickly that nobody can keep up with it. And the people who are supposed to take care of these things have been fired.
Also bad, when requests are made by legitimate parties, they are being ignored or dismissed by the new regime.
Let what's happening in the U.S. serve as a warning to you that no matter what laws you pass, electing lawless people brings lawlessness. And the law you passed cannot help you against people who don't respect the law.
In the U.S., too. In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in the modern age.
In practice, at least one San Francisco (city/county-level) department and at least one California (state-level) department deliberately makes it difficult to get responsive records, even though the law requires them to not only provide those records, but help the public identify which records might answer the questions they have.
> instead of making such drastic measures necessary.
These drastic measures are neither necessary[1] nor legal (Well, they are a necessary step in carrying out a self-coup...) But there's nobody left to prosecute or enforce the law.
First they came for the judges and made sure that the courts were stacked... And then they could do what they want, because they have the police, the army, and the courts.
[1] It's actually wild how people here are actively arguing for shredding the constitution because the country is carrying a debt. America truly is done.
https://doge.gov does not say anything about what the DOGE plan is, and https://www.usds.gov/ is not apparently up to date wrt DOGE. Is there something other than the Executive Order [0] that lays out concretely what DOGE intends to do? This group of engineers is doubtless skilled, but I don't seem them as the decision makers and planners here.
Sorry, you have been blocked
You are unable to access doge.gov
Feels like the Twitter transition again.
Hey remember when there was concern that he might not have time to effectively run Tesla and SpaceX. And then Twitter. And 12 kids. Or popping ketamine and playing Diablo 4 all night.
We went through something similar in the 1960s with the Whiz Kids, young college graduates from the RAND corporation with no experience in government or the military. 'But you have to obey us because we're so much smarter than you.'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...
Of course not. Getting all of this done requires overwhelming amounts of surprise. Trump signing a flood of executive orders is a part of this: it takes time to figure out what's going on with each one, and how to combat it. And in that time, the damage can already be done.
Musk and his coup team aren't really accountable to anyone but Trump, and have no direct legal authority. The way that they get things done is by threatening and steamrolling people, and gaining control of important functions (like the ability to put people on leave or fire them). All of this requires some amount of secrecy and chaos in order to pull off. If they were posting detailed plans on their website, it would make those plans harder to execute.
the plan is more specifically this right wing crypto idea called "the network state" - using technological means to bring down the Democratic state and replace it with a crypto-based oligarchy that serves big tech interests only:
See perhaps "The bro-ligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term":
> All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.
> The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said.
[…]
> The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.”
here's Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan on X: "Whoever made the original graphic (of these kids that Musk told to hack into the machines) doesn’t understand the scale and speed of smart high IQ people who can program, and what they can do in a moment when intelligence now on infinite tap using LLMs"
It’s hilarious, I’ve never interacted with Garry Tan at all, my profile is as apolitical as you can get, and yet I’m blocked from him on X and on BlueSky.
I don’t know how any of these people can take themselves this seriously. If Claude et al. will be guiding national budget policy we’re in for interesting times…
That is why they only take from other people (music, PDFs, code, literature, papers) without ever creating anything themselves.
Musk is an exception in that he at least popularized and scaled production of the original Tesla inventors from whom he bought the company. SpaceX seems to be run by Gwynne Shotwell.
Hah. I'm a pretty good coder and have been accelerated with AI, but it's definitely not ready to make me capable of redesigning the US federal government.
There is a real irony to how clueless he is about the complexity and vast sets of requirements these systems have. High IQs and programming are cool and all, but these systems are bigger than these kids.
What he did to win the scroll competition had to do with data analysis, not ancient history, so of course it could be relevant. But none of us, including the author of the article, knows what they're specifically doing, so it's not possible to say how relevant it is. It's a pity the reporter didn't do some reporting about that, instead of writing a hit piece calling them lackeys.
You're more confident about that than I am. I find it easy to imagine how a person who produces the first kind of analysis could be technically useful in analyzing government data. He presumably didn't know anything about ancient scrolls before working on the first thing, so he has a track record of conquering a steep learning curve.
That seems entirely relevant - getting to the bottom of a cryptic and poorly documented puzzle without any help from the contemporaries (in the case of the scrolls, because the are dead, in the case of government employees, because it’s not in their interests).
I write that only half in jest. Maybe less than half.
Since when did winning competitions require experience optimizing costs across various industries?
I don't think anybody is doubting they're smart, just that they have no experience doing this kind of work and are now being trusted by the highest level of government to do it.
how is someone’s age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of American journalism
Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely. This why they are good in rapid cutting regardless of consequences. Any amount of brilliance will not compensate even 10 years of experience.
A 55 year old learns to keep their hot-headed militant opinions to themselves. But from my experience in the insides they’re no different. And the 55 year old has held those opinions for 40 years and they’re not gonna change.
Agree. It seems largely they are just writing code to make sense of the enormous amount of data and unravel the tangled mess that is the US federal budget.
How do you know that they are largely writing code? Is that because the appropriate oversight has indicated as such? What visibility do any of us have to what they are doing? And why should we trust any result they produce?
The lack of critical thinking in this entire comment section is breathtaking?
George Washington led a revolution at 44 years old, and those guys were 32, 36, 31, and 29 when the constitution was drafted and the federalist papers were written. I guess the upside from the comparison could be that 11 years from now these kids might realize how badly they fucked up the federal government and try again with a more balanced approach.
Good point. I didn't mean that the founding fathers solely led the revolution, but that being "founding fathers" meant that they led significant part of the revolution. For instance, Hamilton was a chief staff aide to Washington, and Madison was in some state's legislature. Of course, they may not qualify as "leading" at that time, but at least they were participating, right? And that is similar to those 19-year olds in DOGE: they are employees in DOGE, and they are led by someone more senior.
You are of course conveniently leaving out all the people who were much older. Washington was 44, Jefferson 33, Adams 41, Hancock 39, Franklin 70, and many more. Those were just the top ones I could think of. And a quick click-through on the Wikipedia article shows that people under 30 were the exception, not the rule.
Why is it a lie? Isn’t it obvious that some people were older and where the kids' superiors? And at least the younger ones were still our founding fathers, while the 19-year olds in doge are employees. Isn’t the entire cabinet of Trump much older than these 19-year old? Aren’t Musk and his lieutenants older than the 19-year olds? We’re talking about qualification for participating a job, not solely being responsible for it, no? If anything, I offered a stronger argument by comparing founding fathers, or political geniuses at their times, to merely some tech whizes under layers of management.
> On top of that, I would not automatically assume Musk's staff have the skills and talent of the people you mention
Me neither. I was arguing the opposite: we should not assume that one does not have experience to the point that it is outrageous, just because that person is young. Such a young age should make us more doubtful, but should not give us complete conviction.
19 year olds are much more malleable. They can be fanatic, and follow orders easily. They aren't educated. They have a limited grasp of morality, and can't oversee the consequences of their actions. They have no other obligation in life than to this holy task.
Somewhat ironic to claim a "limited grasp of morality" and a lack of education when the instutions doing said education have been preaching moral relativism for a while now.
I’m not disagreeing with you but let’s ask the question “experience for what”? Is it making a couple of dashboards, extract data from legacy systems into something more queryable, or generating a couple of expense reports? Or will they be making actual significant decisions affecting millions? How likely would that be?
Regardless, they seemingly have access to tons of financial data that they are basing brash decisions on with zero context. That combined with the fact they are reporting to a manchild that is demonstrably stupid as shit when it comes to "improving" such systems (see Twitter and the play by play of his first days there).
It takes tenure to know what sorts of discretion are required when reporting to such an extremely senior "leader", and to not get caught up in the hype of being involved in something.
I think it is more about how Musk needs to surround himself with young easily impressed and gullible minds, because anyone else would probably see through him all day. These young guys are probably afraid to speak out against him, or are sucking it aaaaall up as ordered by Musk. He will have chosen who gets to tag along.
None of them have seemingly ever held more than 1 full time job. Age is discussed, but experience is clearly lacking. Your argument skips over that entirely.
Their experience is relevant. If they're being brought into build data analysis systems to make sense of data of various organizations there's zero chance they've worked on a project of that scale let alone do they understand all the gotchas you need to deal with working on a project of that scale.
You're offering a completely false dichotomy here.
Not all 20-year olds are mature. No mater how bright they might be when it comes to topics in STEM. Their minds haven't matured enough, especially the male mind.
They do immature shit because there's prestige dangling in-front of them, or because they've been convinces by Musk et. al. that this is the cause to fight for.
There's a reason organized crime preys on young people. They're malleable, do what they're told, blindly ambitious, and want to please their superiors at all costs.
Experience - which comes with age - is absolutely critical in all intellectual pursuits, including programming, government, and just about everything else. Experts and lifetime learners learn more each day. A 20 year old simply has not had the time to be exposed to the same breadth or depth of ideas, or to critique them seriously. Younger people are also far more vulnerable to hormonal impulses, manipulation, and more likely to have been exposed to a much more limited world view.
I can’t imagine anyone but insufferably arrogant - and really fucking wrong - young people making an argument to the contrary. Not that there aren’t benefits to youth - being unburdened by complexity, ignorant enough to be especially bold - but these aren’t actually that useful. And we have good evidence to support that; older founders do better, for example: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-old...
I think Third Republic France is a more apt comparison. Political fights about religion and content of education, check. Diverging media landscape aligned with party political identity and ideology, check. Major changes to civil service personnel after consequential elections (1879-1884), check.
They were tearing down statues and demanding public self-criticism a few years ago, but that was actually the other side.
Shutting down the universities and firing any professor who isn't politically correct is a couple of years in the future; Trump probably has to replace the accreditation system for the universities first. There isn't currently a mechanism for "sending down" suspected subversive thinkers except for deportation.
The Red Guards haven't been formed yet, though commuting the sentences of the ringleaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys is a start. (You may not be aware of this, but the Red Guards were over 10 million people.)
The news media are still independent, for all that matters.
So are almost all of the police, although Trump has said he wants to bring them under his command.
So I don't think we're likely to see that kind of widespread mass killing in the next two or three years. The organizational infrastructure for doing it the traditional way, using hand tools, can't be built overnight. Vance's ally Anduril might be able to automate the process with AI-powered surveillance drones, but they won't have enough production capacity for at least three years.
You must be meaning the one the Democrats were part of then-
Classifying any sort of Palestinian aid group as a terrorist organization to strip them of being nonprofits, pressuring schools to expel pro-palestinian protesters?
Or the other one the democrats lead-
When every occupy wall street leader was arrested and the protesters were gassed by the military?
> Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials.
Congress gets to make laws. They can intervene by making a law that allows them to intervene, which is the job we elected them to do. Apparently they prefer getting bossed around instead.
“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on…”
"Gradually and then suddenly" is how it always happens, whether that's the collapse of democracy or the collapse of dictatorship. You can't take it for granted just because it hasn't happened yet. And that 'suddenly' almost did happen on January 6th 2021 if not for the moral courage of Mike Pence. That same moral courage will be absent this time around given the lesson they learned on that day. Appoint loyalists.
You can blame the MAGA for everything that is happening, but they literally said this is what they were gonna do. Over half of the US, implicitly said, "Given all of that, and Kamala, it really doesn't matter who is the president".
This is the part I'm curious about. Trump may be many things, but lacking transparency around his motives and actions is not one of them. As you say, he is doing basically exactly what he said he would.
So what I'm curious about is whether anyone who voted for Trump, and especially not the hard core MAGA folks but more the "The Dems suck, prices are too high" folks that shifted toward Trump in 2024 vs previous elections, are surprised/angered/scared by his actions. If so, what was their thought process?
I'm especially curious how they feel about Musk's role in all this. I just can't wrap my head around people that were "drain the swamp" nativists are cool with an unelected foreign-born billionaire having free reign, essentially unaccountably, to do whatever he wants to any federal department. If somebody told me in 2010 that this would happen in 2025 I would tell tell them that they are nuts. If the Dems had done anything 1/10th as egregious, Republicans would be apoplectic, and rightfully so.
It basically comes down to ignorance. Most people don't have the time, inclination, and/or capacity to evaluate political platforms or the competence of individual politicians. They just decide based on heuristics or "vibes". Trump seems confident and strong. Harris doesn't seem to stand for anything much besides the status quo. They don't like that there was inflation under Biden, and Trump is the opposite of Biden. They don't necessarily like Trump's attitude, but figure they don't have to like him as long as he gets the job done. That's roughly the level of thinking that's happening, in the cases where there's much thinking at all, and people aren't just voting the way their friends, family, and neighbors all vote.
Basically this is a fundamental flaw of democracy, that you leave the most important decision in the hands of the median citizen, who has no particular aptitude for making it. Of course, other systems of government have their own flaws. Like Churchill said, democracy's the worst form of government, except for all the others. (Though I would argue that the particular structure of the American democratic system is especially flawed.)
> I just can't wrap my head around people that were "drain the swamp" nativists are cool with an unelected foreign-born billionaire having free reign, essentially unaccountably, to do whatever he wants to any federal department.
Go on Twitter or any other site that doesn't ban a certain flavor of discourse. Observe how much glee is being expressed towards negative emotions of others (such as "libs" or marginalized people). That's the point.
Again, I don't think that's really the whole story. For the 35-40% of the electorate that is hard core MAGA, sure, and for the smaller percentage of "terminally online" Twitter people, moreso. But for the folks who really were just unsatisfied with the direction of the country, didn't like the Dems, wanted to send a protest vote over Gaza, etc. - what are those people thinking/feeling?
> Go on Twitter or any other site that doesn't ban a certain flavor of discourse.
I just don't understand where people even get this idea. Is it the repetition and perpetuation of it that makes so many people believe it? We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others (so there's a line at racism, calling for violence, and advertising for scams for example). There has never been a "flavor ban" unless one's flavor is KKK
> We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others
If only it were that simple, because that's demonstrably not true. I'll give you a perfect example that was made clear by recent events.
Before last month, it was against Meta's rules to say that being LGBT was a mental illness. Similarly, you couldn't say people had a mental illness due to their religion.
But by this point I think it should be pretty clear that, in many respects, what we define as a "mental illness" is not some hard and fast rule, it's largely what we see as beyond the norm of socially acceptable boundaries at any given time.
I am gay. For someone else to have an opinion that being gay is a mental illness is a perfectly valid opinion, and it doesn't infringe on my rights (as long as they're not advocating for locking me up or whatever). I literally see no need to prohibit people from expressing the valid opinion that my being gay is a mental illness (I may think you're an asshole, but being a jerk certainly isn't banned on the Internet).
So when Meta announced their policy change to allow more "free speech", at first I was like "Ok, cool". I only became livid when I read the policy and saw that it's still against their rules to say people in "protected groups" have a mental illness except for a specific carve out for gay and trans people. F that. So I have to pretend all of the completely absurd religious nonsense about believing some sky fairy is out there and randomly does things like performing miracles (but for some reason never obvious enough to actually be miraculous) is not a sign of mental illness, but being gay is? Yeah, free speech my ass.
Point being, in your comment you have basically made an arbitrary division between what "whatever opinions" are valid, and what counts as e.g. racism, and pretend that it's a clear line.
> Trump may be many things, but lacking transparency around his motives and actions is not one of them.
That's not the perception I have. Between changing opinions 180° for no discernible reason (besides reports/speculation of money changing hands, but it's not given as the reason so that's hardly transparent) and most actions being in the short-term interest only of himself, it doesn't strike me as though everyone is aware that voting for him is going to make their future worse (exceptions may include some of the ultra rich affected by the same short term gains as himself). What I hear on this side of the pond is that he also e.g. denies knowing the people who wrote project 2025 and the plan being ridiculous, then (I checked Wikipedia to see what came of it) "nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his administration" and it was found that "nearly two-thirds of his executive actions 'mirror or partially mirror' proposals from Project 2025." (Wikipedia, last paragraph of article lede on project 2025)
I'm curious how you see it, since you might be more into USA politics than me (most people are). Doesn't he change opinion most of the time and am I just hearing of the exceptions? Are his denials regarding project 2025 seen as obvious lies and thus deemed transparent that this open-secretly is the plan known to everyone? Or do you see it this way for another reason?
I'm not apathetic, but I'm also not going to vote for anyone who empowers Israel, which Harris vowed to do. I was happy when she took over from Biden but she quickly revealed herself to be Biden 2.0. Before you say something about Trump being pro-Israel, I also didn't vote for him. Our entire system is beyond redemption, so acceleration it is I guess.
This is such a toxic load of crap. Kamala actually would take the oath of office seriously and wouldn't be busy dismantling the government for her own gain.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling.
3 reasons come to mind -
1. There's a vast and profound difference between trimming inefficiencies ("cutting waste") and eliminating a valuable function. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
2. This entire administration and its main actors have given zero reason to assume what they are doing is in good faith. In fact, quite the opposite they have incited worry that their motivations are not honest.
3. They are doing this with a shocking lack of oversight, on their own terms.
1. The baby in this analogy is not defined objectively. Both sides disagree about which is the baby and which is the bathwater. I can see both sides here. For example, I think USAID is doing a lot of good work all over the world, but I also don't think a country with such a huge deficit should be spending money like that. Put on your own oxygen mask before you help those around you.
2. What type of actions/behaviors would lead you to believe this is being done in good faith? That seems somewhat hard to demonstrate when the other side almost universally assumes you never do anything in good faith.
3. This is the fault of our government structure since always and specifically our Congress over the last many decades, which has ceded more and more of the actual running of government to unelected civil servants who technically fall under the umbrella of the Executive branch. If we wanted to prevent things like this from being done, we should've had an actual civil service ala the UK, which although it falls under their Executive branch, it is not unilaterally controlled by it (e.g. the Civil Service Commission prevents the PM from just doing whatever he wants).
As a secondary note, oversight in this case seems somewhat hard to achieve, given the usual problem of "who watches the watchers?" If you think some part of the government is performing poorly and that this is systemic, who do you trust to provide oversight that might not themselves have ulterior motives to preserve the status quo?
Everyone deserves a presumption of good faith by default. But Trump has a long history of dishonesty and lawbreaking, culminating in an attempted self-coup in 2020. At some point, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith anymore. And he passed that point a long, long time ago.
This is perhaps the single biggest disconnect I see between Democrats and Republicans right now. To Democrats, Trump is "the man who attempted a self-coup", and everything he does is viewed in that light. Whereas Republicans seem to think that it just wasn't a big deal that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Because that is just a lie to give cover for their real goals. Which is nothing less than a coup. Musk and DOGE have absolutely no legal authority to stop payments authorized by congers and no right to access the federal payment system.
Because it’s happening outside of any legal oversight. One man is telling you “this is waste and fraud and abuse”, and you’re just supposed to believe it.
There also happens to be lots of historical precedent to this kind of aggressive purges that aim to install loyalists in government, not least Germany in 1933.
(Nazis also made a big deal out of stopping “sexual deviants.” Studies of trans people and their history were the first books they burned. And now the CDC in USA is removing that information everywhere they can. A strange coincidence.)
IMO, I think they're really just glorified accountants being propped up by a mix of Musk's ego and the left's seething hatred of Musk and anything trump touches:
Because of Trump's history. Trump attempted a self-coup in 2020 by trying to overturn the election. This attempt was foiled because many judges, public officials, etc. resisted it, including many Republicans. Now Trump is back in power, and Democrats are very nervous about anything that looks like "Trump packing the government with loyalists" or "Trump trying to gain more power over public officials", because that would make it easier for Trump to attempt a future self-coup.
In short: Framing this as "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" is assuming good faith, but given Trump's history, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith.
(Secondary to that: There's a difference between "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" versus "shutting down entire functions of government without a replacement". Look at Musk trying to shut down USAID, for example. If Musk wanted to "cut waste, fraud, and abuse", that would mean "reforming USAID to achieve the same outcomes while spending less money". Instead, Musk is proposing to eliminate USAID entirely. Even if not for the self-coup angle, that's clearly not just "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse". Foreign aid is established by Congress, and only Congress has the constitutional authority to eliminate that aid.)
If Biden created a branch of the government called "Freedom, Liberty, and Happiness for America" with enormous funding and filled it with his allies and sycophants with dubious goals, would you say its critics are "against freedom and liberty"? Why would anyone be opposed unless you hate America?
Because the current cuts are basically like that joke about the person looking for their lost keys where the light is better instead of where they lost the keys.
If you believe there's any cutting of waste, you are woefully misinformed. This is a kleptocracy. The only thing that will happen here is mass looting of the public purse by the wealthiest and the elimination of any form of progressive taxation or wealth redistribution to those that aren't wealthy.
If we were really concerned about waste, the first and only place to look is the $1T+ we spend every year on the military.
>It has been a kleptocracy for decades and they've been looting all of us with no resistence or accountability.
And yet, the average life in US has gotten better and better under democratic rule, while worse under republican rule.
The problem with people like you is that you are so bought into a narrative of "government bad" that any sort of mistake or non optimal that the government does is seen by you as corruption.
And then when you have people like Musk, Rogan, Hotz, and other prophet wannabes that amplify that messaging, it solidifies that in your mind and you move become farther and farther from reality, until you are solidly in MAGA land where anything liberal is automatically bad, even if your side does the exact same thing.
There is a shitload of government bloat and inefficiencies, but these things need to be trimmed over a long period of time, not by Musk style of breaking things without giving a fuck about what he breaks.
Most of the metrics that matter have gotten worse over the past decades. Under both democrats and republicans. Education, physical and mental health, cost of living, healthcare costs, wealth inequality, I could go on.
When you see all the smart people like Musk, Hotz, Andreesen, Ackman, getting involved and changing their minds, maybe it's time to reconsider your priors too.
People like Musk and Andreesen getting involved are evidence that you're about to see fraud and overreach that concentrates power and resources in their hands instead of the American people. No matter what you think about Trump and whether he's actually trying to do a good thing, those people getting on board are not a good sign.
Go read Trump's sovereign wealth fund announcement from today. The plan is to take all the money from the tariffs (and other unspecified actions he takes, probably including the stuff DOGE does), and then spend it on private investments of his choosing.
So, he's already announced you'll be paying 10-25% tax on all imported goods moving forward, and that he'll personally loot the revenue.
They just create new accounts. But anyone who thinks sending home all the inspector generals is cutting waste/fraud is clearly arguing in bad faith. Unfortunately, I've argued this was the case well before the election -- but everyone told me, "only Trump seems to know this is about grocery prices!".
You're reading an extremely biased view on the topic by perusing the comments. Anything that seems slightly non-left-leaning is generally dismissed and ridiculed here.
Decrying a billionaire unelected oligarch putting his greasy fingers on the inner workings of the entire American society is not necessarily liberal. Constitutional conservatives certainly can’t be happy about that either.
Elon Musk is the quintessential Silicon Valley poster child, who believes his limited domain knowledge is enough to fix all of the world’s issues. No surprise that people that think alike and populate this corner of the internet, wouldn’t see no problem there.
What he’s doing is technically and formally a coup. See how Mussolini took power in Italy.
If you can’t see that, you’re definitively part of the problem.
It’s impossible to make a point with people like you.
You are so convinced of the superiority of the individual that you can’t in any way see the issue at hand.
And if this incredible power a single man is wielding is not a problem to you, then you don’t subscribe to a civil democratic society.
If you don’t there is no civil conversation left to have with people like you.
I don't think he cares? Seems like he's happy to fill the role publicly. It appears to be on purpose like a wrestler turning heel or a gamer drawing aggro on a mob. Society of the spectacle indeed.
I don't think that Elon Musk can be singled out as the source of these changes, he's didn't just magically appear lur of nowhere and start doing what he's doing.
It’s funny on the news apps DOGE seems like some kind of conspiracy and on twitter the guys who run it regularly hold spaces where they explain what they’re doing and thinking about.
Is there literally any other public figure more transparent than Musk? He tweets every thought and people who know him IRL confirm he says the same things in private.
Did you know that someone can tell lots of lies all the time. Telling a lot of lies all the time would look identical to transparency. Hell even just talking a lot about things that are true but are not at all important or your priorities would look like transparency.
Just because someone won't shut up doesn't mean they are telling you their true intentions.
Twitter requires an account to use, and when you sign up, you agree not to sue Twitter. In the United States, arbitration clauses are generally airtight. Even if you what Musk says is truthful and the whole truth -- and it's not -- those conditions alone are bad enough. That's not transparency.
Transparent ? He's just playing the same game that Trump - all smokes and mirrors.
He mastered the art of news manipulation and took it to the 21 century. And people are falling for it (I did too at some point). Tesla is one of the most secretive companies out there, and for a good reason. Musk is regularly saying outrageous lies, without any consequence. The FSD game has been going for 10 years. 10 YEARS.
Lookup Montana Sceptic case - the guy was exposing that Tesla was close to bankrupcy at the time (which Musk later confirmed). Musk, in all his transparency went after him, including threatening his boss.
The reality is that none of his companies are really profitable (yes I know, Tesla made some money in the past 3 years. They are valued as if they made 100x what they did), and all would be dead without government subsides.
He's regularly tweeting that he's cutting off funds that were congressionally approved by simply pressing "delete" on checks that are to be sent, which would be an extreme violation of federal law. It also contradicts everything else we're told where it's said that he has only "read only" access to the computer systems.
so if by "transparent" you mean "tweets all day about crimes he is committing, but we actually dont know if hes just bullshitting", then OK, overall, not that helpful!
Elon Musk has lied constantly about many things over the last 10 years and he is absolutely not trustworthy to unilaterally decide what is or isn't "government waste"
Hilariously naive? Are you aware that fiction writers are usually demonstrating something about the real world? Have you ever read a thought experiment? Do you discount blueprints because they're not made from concrete and steel? Get outta here.
The Handmaid's Tale, a good book, you should read it sometime. Harry Potter is also interesting in that it tells a lot about its author and her world view.
Are you unaware that Harry Potter is about a Facist takeover of the wizarding world by people who insist on genetic purity and believe that mixed breeds and non-wizards should be wiped out, and done primarily by a nonviolent coup of the governing body of the wizarding world?
This is like a Christian quoting scripture to an atheist, there are real world parallels of current events to draw from which carry substantially more weight.
What evidence do people have that anything damaging is happening? Because these people are assumed to be conservative and not progressive? How is this any different than an internal audit whose work would be kept confidential? Or even a third party vendor who presumably would be covered by confidentiality agreements? The allegations in these comments are completely without evidence and are outright politically biased. All the wired article can say is there are a handful of young presumably conservative engineers doing their job. That about sums up the scandal.
Nothing about this is normal, goes by standard practices or procedures, and is being led by a capricious man-child who wasn't elected to office, nor confirmed by the senate, with extraordinarily dubious intentions and conflicts of interest, who has brought in a bunch of near-children to clandestinely infiltrate huge swaths of our government, none of which have the appropriate security clearances, training, ... to engage in any of these activities.
Have they explained what they are doing? No. If you ask them, would they tell you? Is there any kind of oversight available? No. As a matter of fact, prior to these actions, Trump dismissed the inspectors general responsible for this oversight, in violation of the law which was passed to prevent him from doing just that, again.
Who in their right mind would assume that everything "above board"?
Yeah let's let them continue their coup until we can assess all the consequences and determine whether dismantling the whole country was a good or bad thing
We have his last "audit" of Twitter, where he repeatedly and publicly embarrassed himself with half hearted explanations for his clearly personal firings as he carved the platform into a racist hellhole.
Some of us know people that work for him, confirming he is that boss that will fire anyone giving him bad news on the spot because he wants to push his dumbass unreachable deadlines. And mostly because he thinks it's cool and has reveled in his ability to fire people like any small human would.
We have the evidence of the family, that everything Musk says about his presence in raising his own kids is a lie. He was not around, and seems to only push the narrative because he knows being an absentee father would be unpalatable to the conservatives he's courting.
They're hiring interns to fire people because they're molding their ride or die sycophants. It's completely natural to assume when they're telling us they're being thoughtful, they aren't. That when they say it's for you, it's for them. It always has been. That you choose to stick your head in the sand is your problem.
History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes.
Komsomol/Soviet, Red guards/China.
Ideology fan the flame of youth into fanatic.
Who/what is providing the necessary guardrail?
God speed America. Future belong to the young.
Make good/long term decision.
The Trump-supporting Red Guards might be the Michigan Militia? Or the marchers at the disastrous "Unite the Right" rally? Those are tiny fringe groups orders of magnitude too weak to carry out a Cultural Revolution. Maybe the 1500 people who got pardoned for the January 6 riot?
You may not be aware of this, but the Red Guards were over 10 million people.
They really really have deteriorated. I’m not sure that dang’s efforts alone would be enough to hold back the tide though. I worry this is a culture shift :/
Not necessarily a culture shift - assuming you mean IRL culture, not HN culture - but rather a sign of HN's much increased popularity in recent years, outside the thoughtful nerd circle.
I did mean HN culture, but you make a really good point either way. Maybe I need to find a yet-more-secluded corner, where the rest of the world can’t encroach so easily
To the people talking about how "Zelenskyy said that he only got $75 billion of the $175 billion in foreign aid we sent them, where'd that $100 billion go??? That's right, it went into the pockets of the Deep State!" and then deleting their comments:
According to https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine, "It’s important to note that of the $175 billion total, only $106 billion directly aids the government of Ukraine. Most of the remainder is funding various U.S. activities associated with the war in Ukraine, and a small portion supports other affected countries in the region." Of that $106, about $70 billion is weapons, $33 is budget support. So it makes sense that lawmakers would claim that "We sent Ukraine $175 billion!" and Zelenskyy would directly see less than $175.
The the line from Zelenskyy is an attempt to clarify to the world that $X billion in a bill somewhere doesn't equate to $X billion on the ground in Ukraine directly; he's not saying there was some kind of corruption involved and that the money mysteriously disappeared.
To relate more to the HN crowd. It's like opening a new project and the initial reaction is everything is terrible. Then as someone understands the project better they see it's not terrible, but the problem is much more complex than they initially understood. Basically classic engineer hubris.
"Bringing in young talent with new skills is literally 'what can be unburdened by what has been' if that's a thing anyone on the left still wants" -- Lulu Cheng Meservey
Would be fucking terrified knowing that my personal employment records were in reach of these children. Who's the responsible adult in the room stopping them from "losing" a backup they've made or maintaining the non-compliant equipment they'll have brought in.
"They have apparently installed sofa beds in the office of the OPM."
"Government employeees in various agencies report that staffers from DOGE are turning up at this offices, plugging in servers and running "code reviews"."
"What the DOGE people seem most keen on is access to personnel records and as much information as possible about what employees actually do. According to one civil servant interviewed by DOGE personnel, the questions include, "Which of your colleagues are most expendable?""
There are people in this thread claiming that Wired "doxxed" these engineers working for Musk dismantling things they don't understand; however didn't Musk publicly mock individual federal employees on his twitter account, drawing the eyes of millions onto random government functionaries for no other reason than to capriciously taunt them about being fired?
I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.
How exactly is this doxxing? When you're backchanneling cabinet-level access to a sizable chunk of the country's personal data (and a nontrivial amount of classified information to boot) you're now essentially operating as a public figure.
This is reporting in the public interest. Nothing they revealed isn't available already as verifiable public information.
It's still doxxing because these are not elected officials.
But then again... these are people outright breaking the law and I sure do want to know who's potentially tampering with my data. If the courts won't do it, someone has to put names and faces to this.
It is legal to make a federal government employee’s name, role, and salary publicly accessible because taxpayer-funded positions fall under the scope of public interest and open-records laws, which promote transparency and accountability in the use of government funds. You can find this information on official databases like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, which routinely publishes data about federal employees’ salaries and positions, as well as on other government websites that provide access to public records.
U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material
U.S. Code § 371 - Obstructing or Impairing Legitimate Government Activity
Executive Order 14117 of February 28, 2024, “Preventing Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern” (“the Order”) (though this may be rescinded by Trump)
If any of those BS Crypto plans[0] have any weight to them That's a straight out constitutional overstep
Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: "The Congress shall have Power . . . to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . ."
I'm probably only scratching the surface here. I'm not surprised if there's a dozen other laws with legal ledger around this. You don't want any one man messing with the economy.
>Now, as fears emerge Trump’s administration is “dangerously” undermining the U.S. dollar, Musk has confirmed he wants to put the U.S. Treasury on a blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—including Musk’s pet project dogecoin.
Whether trump can legally create a whole new government department by executive order is up for debate, but he did it and hired these people into roles within it. By my math they have 0 right to hide from the expected scrutiny of any other public official.
What government organization in the US federal government hides the names of their leaders? Can you name one? Even our security agencies make those names publicly known.
I don't see what that has to do with anything in the discussion so far?
It looks like you can't believe that there are bad arguments for good causes; and instead want to keep arguing that the cause is good, and thus all arguments must be good?
Journalists reporting on people abusing government power is good. These people should be deeply scrutinized and shouldn't be able to hide while they destroy the machinery that hundreds of millions of people depend on.
People who work at the highest levels of our government are public figures. It is the job of reporters to report on who they are and what they're up to.
It’s relevant here that “doxxing” here just means “exposing their names and internet posts”, right?
In that case, yes, the OPM already “doxxes” most federal employees, even making their salary data public. It’s seen as a worthwhile tradeoff to give taxpayers transparency into how their money is spent.
I really hope we can all agree it is an extremely shitty thing to do for the worlds richest person, somehow entrusted to go in and supposedly save the government some money, to publicize random individuals information he stumbles across in the process because he personally doesn't like their job title. Fuck off with whether it is 'legal' or not, that isn't the issue.
These 5 people are our employees. We pay them with our tax dollars to assist in delivering services to ourselves and our fellow citizens. Unless secrecy is a distinct function of the service they deliver, I expect their names to be public. Transparency and accountability is owed to the taxpayer, if that's not acceptable to people then they are free to lend their talents to the private sector instead.
Part of the problem is we're not sure who is paying them and who ultimately they report to. Are they doing what's best for Musk and his business interests or what's best for the US? Even Altman has called out Musk in a similar fashion.
What's happening now is the exact opposite of transparency and accountability.
Federal employees working at the level these guys appear to be currently working are always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting, yes. This is not "doxxing", it is just reporting on the government. Even if there was an effort to keep this information secret, it would almost certainly be subject to FOIA requests. These aren't spies, they're public servants.
- Public figures are public by influence; public servants are employees and can/should have their information revealed when necessary.
- Revelation of information of employees under public pay is not 'doxxing'. Making it seem as if it's 'doxxing' is stretching the definition, like saying someone merely touching you has committed 'violence'. Your intentional use of a more serious concept for a less serious one is misleading.
- Your private employer has no duty to the public, they answer only to the end stakeholders. In contrast, public servants must be accountable and known to the public - it's literally in their name, 'public' and 'servants'. Why you should confuse your status with that of public servants is bewildering.
The issue isn’t whether or not their names are public.
The issue is that Elon Musk is highlighting them specifically in a negative way that will lead to very predictable, very personal, very negative outcomes without any recourse.
So if an administrator in a school district allegedly violates policy all their employees are open season? (We are also talking about no trial to determine whether your claims are true)
It has nothing to do with whether they are doing anything wrong. They're high level federal employees. Hundreds of years before anyone invented the word "doxxing", newspapers would have printed their names and likenesses. They have chosen employment which puts them into the public interest. No more no less.
What Musk is doing with DOGE is the most unconstitutional power grab any US Citizen has tried is a very long time. The normal rules do not apply anymore.
Actually, the point is that the normal rules _do_ apply, and the normal rules very much encourage the publication of the names and likenesses of civil servants.
I'm kind of surprised that no one has made the argument that there is something special about these individuals, the work they're doing, or the circumstances of their work. There are, after all, exceptions to the "normal rules." But the fact that no one is making this argument is, at the end of the day, quite telling.
Do I need to remind you that Elon Musk has gained unauthorized and illegal access to the federal payment system? It is very possible he will be arrested for doing this if a democrat gets elected unless Trump pardons him. But then his US citizenship can be revoked.
EDIT: "Wasn’t he authorized by the President, the chief executive?"
The President doesn't have the authority to do that.
It's an interesting question. The president's powers are supposed to be limited and checked. That was the whole point of the American Revolution.
One of the ways the president is limited is that the he can't authorize people to commit crimes. e.g. he couldn't instruct his AG to open an investigation into his political opponent under false pretenses in order to hurt his electoral chances. If the AG were to do that, it would be a crime. So the question isn't whether the president has authorized Musk to do something, but whether or not the president even has the power to do the thing he delegated.
And what is the power in question? It's control over spending appropriated by Congress. And that's where separation of powers comes in. Congress is supposed to control the purse strings, and the president is supposed to make sure the money is spent on the priorities of the people, taking care of prosecuting fraud and abuse. The point of giving Congress this power is to give the people a mechanism to set their priorities on how their own money is spent. It shouldn't be the case that one guy comes in and then gets to decide how to spend all our money.
But that appears to be what they are trying to do, in claiming that their cuts are all under the guise of reducing fraud and abuse. But really what they're trying to do is do an end-run around Congress. They want all the money, but they don't want to have Congress vote on it, because they don't actually have the votes to implement the agenda they want to, since Congress is so divided. So instead they're just taking the funding they have and allocating it in ways that support only the agenda items they want to see implemented.
The thing that makes revolutions fail or succeed is whether or not they take control of the money. Trump isn't doing that. He appears to just be auditing for fraud and corruption. If he was trying to control the money, then he'd need to march doge into the federal reserve. But he can't because it's not organized under the executive branch. They claim they're not even part of the government.
" He appears to just be auditing for fraud and corruption."
The constitution gives Congress sole authority to control spending and any payments Musk stops is a extreme violation of the Constitution. I really hope this ends with Musk either in prison for life or with his US citizenship revoked and him deported back to South Africa.
If Musk stops any payment that Congress has approved he is breaking the law. and the US Constitution. Considering he is an immigrant he could have his citizenship revoked and be deported.
You still believe the lies that con artist Musk tells you? He isn't ever going to Mars. Tesla is never going to have FSD so good they are willing to take legal liability for accidents the way Waymo does.
>>One of the ways the president is limited is that the he can't authorize people to commit crimes. e.g. he couldn't instruct his AG to open an investigation into his political opponent under false pretenses in order to hurt his electoral chances. If the AG were to do that, it would be a crime. So the question isn't whether the president has authorized Musk to do something, but whether or not the president even has the power to do the thing he delegated.
ok, but since the investigative (FBI) and the prosecutorial (US Attorney) apparati are under the control of the executive, if the local USA goes along with Trump and against the law, the remedy is....what exactly?
Impeachment, followed by conviction and removal-from-office, in theory.
In practice this is extremely unlikely because the threshold for the vote in the Senate is high enough that you'd need bipartisan consensus, and the US Constitution wasn't really written expecting the party system to exist.
The power of the purse is the authority of the United States Congress to levy taxes and control government spending. It's a key part of the separation of powers in the Constitution and a check on the executive branch.
What Trump and Musk are doing with DOGE and the federal payment system is in blatant violation of this separation of powers.
Indeed. One of the highest paid people in my local school district is a librarian who teaches no classes and gets paid 275k. Do you think it would be a good idea to get a wired article published with his name address, and 4 similar teacher profiles?
Are you suggesting that the article we're discussing is "weird"? Does it list anyone's address? I feel like it just says their names and provides some basic bio info. Seems like pretty normal reporting on an important story at the top levels of the federal government.
Yeah I’m not suggesting anything weird either. I just think the community might want to know which teachers are really well paid. They have chosen employment in the public interest. Are you with me?
Yo there’s literally articles regularly published on the names and pay of all local city employees in my city with specific call outs to the top paid ones.
While it seems you are implying that is not cool, it’s actually unremarkable and common government transparency.
Federal pay is already supposed to be public knowledge and is highly regulated based on role https://www.federalpay.org/. Although who knows if that's true anymore. Seems like all precedent is up in the air nowadays
New stories routinely come out about the highest paid people in colleges typically being the head football coaches. The conservative media has been railing on academic administrator salaries for years.
That sounds like a job better suited for your local paper. The scope of national politics is far greater.
But even if Wired did, it still wouldn't be "doxxing", which used to imply publishing not just names but addresses and other PII (like SSNs) for non-public, non-governmental figures.
I can look up every single public employee in my area, and find out what they make. It's not hard to find out where they live. It's called government transparency.
The hypocrisy of Musk once again in full effect. Anyone who still thinks Musk is out to help anyone but himself, I have a bridge to sell you. It's sitting right next to 'free speech'.
When it comes to these people specifically, they need to be publicly called out. What's happening is unprecedented and possibly illegal. I know most of the press has been bought off or strong-armed to look the other way by the new administration, but at least someone is still doing reporting.
is Asmongold wrong? the WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit is now banned for 72 hours.
"This community has been banned
This subreddit has been temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content. Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit’s platform-wide Rules. It will reopen in 72 hours, during which Reddit will support moderators and provide resources to keep Reddit a healthy place for discussion and debate."
Musk is committing treason as we speak by gaining illegal access to the US federal payment system. This is the first time anyone has tried to do this in US history and that is because it is EXTREMELY unconstitutional.
there's a whole lot to unpack here, and none of it is good. at the end of the day, you can consider Musk an outside contractor. how exactly is that treason? also, in which part of the constitution does it say anything about the federal payment system? that's not an article I'm familiar
The power of the purse is the authority of the United States Congress to levy taxes and control government spending. It's a key part of the separation of powers in the Constitution and a check on the executive branch. If Musk actually stops any payment that was authorized by Congress then he is violating the Constitution.
DOGE also has no legitimate need or legal right to access the federal payment system. He is in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and should be arrested and put on trial along with any other DOGE employee who has accessed the federal payment system.
You will need to do some mental gymnastics to find a criminal statute that could be used to prosecute that and it does not appear the US Attorney for DC is at all interested in doing that.
Musk and DOGE employees could be arrested and tried by the DOJ if a democrat wins the next Presidential election. These are the crimes they have broken.
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) - 18 U.S.C. § 1030:
If the employee exceeded authorized access or acted without authorization to manipulate the payment system, they could be charged under the CFAA, which criminalizes unauthorized access to computer systems.
Obstruction of Federal Proceedings or Official Duties - 18 U.S.C. § 1505 or § 1913:
§ 1505: Obstruction of agency proceedings or congressional actions.
§ 1913: Prohibits using appropriated funds to lobby or interfere with government decisions, though applicability may depend on intent.
Interfering with congressionally mandated payments could constitute obstruction of lawful government functions.
Theft or Conversion of Government Funds - 18 U.S.C. § 641:
If the payment was lawfully owed and the employee’s actions deprived the recipient of funds, this could be seen as theft or conversion of government property.
False Statements or Fraud - 18 U.S.C. § 1001:
If the employee falsified records, submitted false information, or lied to justify stopping the payment, they might face charges for making false statements.
Conspiracy - 18 U.S.C. § 371:
If others were involved, conspiracy charges could apply to defraud the U.S. or commit other offenses.
Malfeasance or Misconduct in Office:
While not a specific federal statute, general misconduct or breach of public trust could lead to charges under broader provisions or administrative penalties (e.g., termination, fines).
If the employee exceeded authorized access or acted without authorization to manipulate the payment system, they could be charged under the CFAA, which criminalizes unauthorized access to computer systems.
Obstruction of Federal Proceedings or Official Duties - 18 U.S.C. § 1505 or § 1913:
§ 1505: Obstruction of agency proceedings or congressional actions.
§ 1913: Prohibits using appropriated funds to lobby or interfere with government decisions, though applicability may depend on intent.
Interfering with congressionally mandated payments could constitute obstruction of lawful government functions.
Theft or Conversion of Government Funds - 18 U.S.C. § 641:
If the payment was lawfully owed and the employee’s actions deprived the recipient of funds, this could be seen as theft or conversion of government property.
False Statements or Fraud - 18 U.S.C. § 1001:
If the employee falsified records, submitted false information, or lied to justify stopping the payment, they might face charges for making false statements.
Conspiracy - 18 U.S.C. § 371:
If others were involved, conspiracy charges could apply to defraud the U.S. or commit other offenses.
Malfeasance or Misconduct in Office:
While not a specific federal statute, general misconduct or breach of public trust could lead to charges under broader provisions or administrative penalties (e.g., termination, fines).
Widespread defamatory allegations and calls for violence aren’t common everyday life but they are routine on reddit.
Banning users with moderate opinions is not normal in everyday life, but is routine in many subreddits. Including users sharing opinions held by moderate democrats.
It used to be that way, with high diversity of opinions between subreddits.
These days, all the default subs are left leaning, most are far-left leaning, which means most users have a partisan experience. This then impacts the overall makeup of the site’s userbase which cascades this bias through every other subreddit.
Sure, there are a small number of relatively low traffic communities that have held out, but they are now an insignificant proportion of the content on the site.
It’s a natural artefact of the voting systems it uses for recommending content. These tend to result in echo chambers because political extremism results in more engagement, and thus more extreme users vote more and have a larger influence on what is shown.
This is then amplified by the echo chamber effect, which distills the user base into ever more extreme positions as the moderate users find their opinions outside the evolving fringe of acceptable opinion.
The reason I class it as far-left now, even though I wouldn’t in the past, is two things:
Firstly, it is now plagued with extremist content, including calls to violence, which are tolerated by users and moderates alike.
Secondly, the opinions expressed have a left bias relative to other members of the left. There are plenty of moderate democrats, including people like Obama, who would quickly find themselves banned from many default subreddits for their more moderate tolerant opinions.
There is no arbiter for the median set point, as you know. I think the problem latent in both the point you respond to, and your response is the lack of desire amongst us all to agree the position of the left-right needle. It's just much more useful to be able to fling the terms/directions around as a pejorative, than to be particularly factual.
It's a very odd time. The USA is emerging into a combination of a Kleptocracy, a Kakistocracy, Autarky and Technocracy. It's like somebody's dream pivot fractured into every ocracy under the sun.
I don't have to subscribe to a belief in a conspiracy to advantage Russia, to beleive the SITUATION will advantage people who benefit from an unstable US polity.
I also don't have to subscribe to a belief it was "the plan" to believe the super-rich will ride over this wave, and pick the cream off as it floats upward. Thats what they do, all the time. This is just a particularly active milk churn and there's going to be a LOT of cream.
I agree on most parts of your respnse, but I was aiming at precisely at how the commenter I responded to tends to make absolute claims for what, it seems to me, are relative to their position and attempt to instate as more common and common-sense than it really is, and betrays a certain blindness to a simple psychological fact that people usually react more strongly to things that pressure them more (a relative phenomenon) and ascribes to this reaction some political valuation (an absolute).
I myself do not find left-right divide that much useful, at least to describe this melting pot of our time.
I enjoyed the question you posed immensely because it goes so strongly to the perceptual bias we bring to the table. I know I look with outrage at how strongly my left wing government has swung right, not for a minute believing I might have got more left wing as I got richer, older, and less exposed to the risks. "Of course I've always been left" I mutter, putting decent french butter on my croissant.
I've been on Reddit since at least 2007. I've not seen any swing in political views. I think it's just that the sort of people that use Reddit are the sort of people who are typically more left-wing.
I'm just glad we have social networks which are left-wing to bring balance to the system.
Reddit has been in a state of hysteria for the past couple of weeks. You’re right that the overall leaning hasn’t changed much, but it was never this crazy, even during Trump’s first term.
It’s a nonstop barrage of nazi labels, overblown news, and comments that “hint” at more direct involvement and violence.
It's so weird that I've even started to doubt whether most of those comments are from real people.
An alternative take on this is that the opposition doesn't really believe that anything extraordinary is happening and hence there is no strong response outside just some press releases.
I personally tried to follow all the news for a week. I tried to read the articles and research what was shared on reddit. Oftentimes my interpretation of these news wasn't nearly as dramatic as what reddit was aligning on. At the end, I figured it's too much work to double check every single piece of news, so I just stopped using reddit for some time.
I'm not sure why you're surprised. Reddit has always been left leaning and progressive, and they were making a lot of noise about Trump his first term, especially with the Mueller investigation.
Now you have a huge trade war going on, he keeps threatening the soveriegnty of multiple long time allies, a billionaire has extensive access to government data (the same one that did that nazi salute), along with ICE being ramped up all in the first couple weeks of his term. Our president also ran a crypto scam that made him billions right before his term started. He also keeps joking about running for a third term and is challenging a 150 year constitutional law on birthright citizenship with an executive order. Even you have to admit that this is a lot going on compared to anything we've seen before.
I think that the issue with what's happening on reddit is that it's hard to know what's real or what's not. I think that there is a lot that this administration could be criticized for but the criticism has to be precise and targeted, such that most of the energy goes to the topics that are important.
A lot of comments and energy were expended there. Everyone talked as if it were the end of NATO and that the U.S. was abandoning Europe. In reality, it was just a 20% reduction in force (which was the first sentence in the linked article).
On the flip side, the trade war with Canada deserved heavy criticism—and luckily, it was well covered (I count that as a win).
From the list you just shared, I don't really have a good sense of the relative severity of each and I think it's because there is no place where these topics could be discussed (even HN isn't immune as you can see from one of the comments below)
I truly despise people who gaslight the way you are right now. Musk did two very blatant Nazi salutes and us right now illegally accessing the US federal payment system. These are unprecedented actions and a strong response to them is hardly "hysteria".
It used to be very libertarian (big on free speech, etc) but has since shifted substantially liberal, including much warmer attitudes towards the use of violence.
In 2010 Reddit was center-left, with a high degree of variance between subreddits.
Today it is a far-left echo chamber in most large subreddits.
The process of change was gradual. Like all echo chambers it is a result of distillation, with marginal moderate users progressively leaving in response to seeing the shrinking frontier of acceptable discourse.
Early Reddit had a philosophically libertarian majority (or at least, a significant percentage) and a demographic of mostly STEM-oriented, bookish, nerdy dudes from 18-40. Ron Paul was a popular political candidate. "Socially liberal, fiscally conservative" was a common refrain, although in 2008 that usually meant supporting gay marriage and wanting legal marijuana. People were skeptical of big corporations and big government alike, but had genuine belief that technology was changing the status quo in positive ways (remember when Google was a startup and "Don't be evil" felt earnest). The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unpopular, but a big chunk of the criticism focused on ways the PATRIOT act invaded individual privacy and the wastefulness of DHS spending. Open source software and filesharing were discussed as philosophical stances and acts of resistance against entrenched powers. Race and gender were rarely discussed as being particularly important.
Writing this made me realize not just how different Reddit was, but also the issues of the time and the ways they were thought of and talked about. It's almost hard to map onto contemporary parties, policies or issues.
Imagine if this was a male journalist snooping through newly appointed young, female engineers' histories, e-stalking them the same way and writing an article of his findings. You can justify it as "it's technically still reporting", but it's very creepy that they thought of this and then continued to think this was a good idea throughout the process.
>I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.
Why? Its ok when our betters engage in such behavior and who could be better than the rich?
When some poors like "journalists" try to do this, they're just upending the system for their own gain. It would really be tolerating corruption if you just tolerated them ripping up our current system of governance just because they preferred a different set of rules. Elections have consequences and its just gauche to ignore the results like this.
These are not "individual engineers". They're government officials with seemingly vast powers which aren't yet fully understood by the public. As the article details, they seem to have the authority to demand access to most if not all of the government's computer systems; we don't yet know which of them have this authority, or what limits there are, or what review processes are in place.
That doesn't mean it's OK to call for violence against them! But Wired isn't doing that. It does mean that news outlets need to report on who they are and what they're doing, even if they fear (even if they know) that third parties might issue death threats.
It's created by renaming U.S. Digital Service that was created in 2014 by President Obama within the Office of Management and Budget. So it's a part of executive branch.
I've seen that argument, but I don't understand it. The President has decided that executive agencies should operate according to certain new standards, charged the USDS with enforcing that, and put Musk in charge with a new meme name. Perhaps one or another of those standards is unlawful, but it's hard to see how the entire idea could be. What extra step is required to make DOGE legitimate?
The president is allowed to set standards for executive agencies. But his job is to faithfully execute the laws, and in doing so, he can't just shut down executive agencies by trying to fire everyone, and take them over with random people he appoints as advisors. Those agencies exist not for him to wield power over, but to implement our priorities as authorized by the Congress.
The way it's supposed to work is the executive sends an aspirational budget to congress that embodies his policy agenda, our representatives vote on the budget, the congress appropriates the money that we send the government to the executive branch, and then the executive branch spends that money, again, faithfully. That's the oath he took. What that means operationally is that he can't just defund things we voted for in the budget that doesn't match his political agenda. Doing so should be impeachable, because it would represent a breach of his oath. It doesn't matter that he has a different agenda, he's the president for everyone.
Since he's not doing it this way, that's why people are pointing it out as unconstitutional, and illegal.
For DOGE to be legal what it needs to operate in just an advisory capacity. It should recommend things to cut, but there has to be reasons, an auditable process, transparency, and meaningful oversight. For starters, Musk has a massive conflict of interest in that he's a recipient of government contracts. So he himself shouldn't even be part of this process without first answering to that. If we keep going down this path, the people advocating for it now will not like being on the receiving end when that level of capriciousness is directed against them.
I mean "mr free speech absolutist" has already tweeted that anyone complaining about the government would have their account suspended. Kind of on brand for a nazi.
I see things done by DOGE are getting noticed. I vaguely remember that DOGE will be decommissioned around 2026 independence day I believe? I have no confidence in judging what the outcome might be at this point, so I will wait till the last day of DOGE.
HN is filled with people who work for intelligence agencies and military contractors. Defending US abuses as well-meant mistakes, or framing any professional consequences or exposure of bad things the US does as treasonous is how they sleep at night.
They may seem nice and thoughtful when discussing other subjects, but when it comes to surveillance, censorship, subverting elections, or misleading the public, they think it's the most heroic possible thing. I get the impression that they think that they're heroically sacrificing their own morality for the greater good, and if you told them they'd go to hell for what they've done, they would be proud. Meanwhile, outside of that mental drama, they're collecting huge checks and have never missed a meal in their lives.
Same vibe you get from people who work in extremely polluting industries who think of themselves as lovers of nature. They're doing what is necessary to save what is possible to save. Also incidentally collecting huge checks.
More likely Trump continue to fire prosecutors that try to do their jobs upholding the literal law. No prosecution, no pardon needed.
The check on that is for Congress to impeach and remove a corrupt President from office, but that will be difficult with how many Republicans are complicit.
Based on what we've seen this past week it seems the next administration would have an obligation to fire them all, in much the way Trump is firing anyone who looked into or investigated him. And extrapolating to the next few months I'd say the next administration will likely have an obligation to attempt to send anyone associated with DOGE to prison for the rest of their lives. At least this appears to be the type of government Donald Trump and his voters believe America should have.
> And extrapolating to the next few months I'd say the next administration will likely have an obligation to attempt to send anyone associated with DOGE to prison for the rest of their lives.
If they get pre-emptive Presidential pardons, nothing can be done (unless you go with state-level charges).
Do you remember when Presidents disclosed their finances and avoided things that could look like gifts/bribes? When they didn't fire prosecutors for getting too close to their business? When trial-balloons about becoming "President For Life" were taboo? When their lawyers didn't argue they had presumptive immunity to literally assassinate the other candidate?
This news item is just one more previously-unthinkable line crossed in an unambiguous trend towards more-crazy.
___________
> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next."
-- They Thought They Were Free: The Germans The Germans, 1933-45* by Milton Meyer, published 1955.
> Do you remember when Presidents disclosed their finances and avoided things that could look like gifts/bribes?
So quaint. Now bribes are out in the open and no one even bats an eye. Trump coin, Trump media, never released anything about tax returns, selling merch, etc... It's comical to me that his followers think he's dismantling the deep state grifters, when he is a deep state grifter.
I have to give some credit to Trump and the media around him for being masters at the narrative. Hillary's emails and Hunter on a board of a company requires investigations and congressional involvement, but Trump and his family casually take 100's of millions if not billions in bribes and no one thinks twice.
I want to add here that the Holocaust required a war (the Wannsee conference was in 1942), massive censorship (easy during a war) and misdirection like model concentration camps (Theresienstadt), where international agencies could look around and see how "humane" everyone was treated.
There was no Internet, only official propaganda. Sometimes the truth leaked via the Swedish embassy or railway workers, but it cannot spread far if those who spread it are killed themselves.
But I agree that people all over the world have been docile and compliant since 2020 on all sorts of issues, so the danger is there even if it should be harder today.
*Unmaking. But yes. Some real collapse of the republic scale shit, take over by Orban style autocratic political men. Pax Americana & our influence in the world abroad for sure.
This is potentially falling of the Soviet Union bad. Not that we will dissolve the union (still hopefully a very low chance) but that the system of government collapses & the various business-mafias squabble to claim what they can in the power vacuum that follows; a loss of national integrity.
> A lot of people are acting like the end of history is here.
Would you rather:
* 'over react' about the end of history, and be wrong (i.e. things turn out fine), or
* 'under react' and end up with a bunch of thugs in charge?
It's possible this is a situation where you're crying "wolf" when there isn't one, but given Trump's erratic mind, and the stated plans of the political right
And with regards to "over reacting" and nothing happening: a lot of folks said Y2K was an over reaction because nothing happened, but nothing happened because people did a much reacting. That nothing burger was a success, not a sign of over reaction.
There is a process to revoke citizenship for people that lied as part of the process. Some are arguing that Musk did lie, his brother publicly said that weren't intending to enroll when they were on student visas.
I hope you don't think that this administration wouldn't deport a citizen. They have said they would deport people that were born here - birthright citizenship which is outlined in the constitution, based on their parents status.
Why shouldn't a 19 year old college dropout have the power to fire any government employee responsible for national security or live-saving services by looking at their code for 5 minutes? Makes perfect sense.
I'd wager that a 19yo is MORE likely than a 29yo, which is also relevant. Also, properly trained individuals are less likely to fall into this trap. How much training have these completely non-vetted children had?
Yeah I mean Zucc was only 20 when he started Facebook and popularised the adage "work fast and break things", which was a great strategy for Facebook and its burnt out staff (or those that couldn't hack it) so of course it'll work for the biggest economy in the world too, it's basically the same as a startup, right?
It is very strange idea to equate life experiences gained before 18 of people born in 21st century in 18th century.
Also, as outsider, I would never understand US fascination with "Founding Fathers". Some folks born about 300 years ago and somehow having answers to all the questions for all the times. Back than this country was a backwater colony which barely started industrialization. Overwhelming majority of population lived out of sustenance farming and majority of trade goods were products of slave labour.
I mean, it is what it is, but where this yearning for glorious past which never existed comes from? Like, life in USA became more or less good only several generations ago, after the country became giant economical winner of WW2. And it did it by investing heavily into helping allies, not building isolationist policies.
> I would never understand US fascination with "Founding Fathers"
Have you read any of their writing? A lot of it is timelessly insightful and they were very intelligent men.
> having answers to all the questions for all the times
This gives away that you haven't read them, because they themselves explicitly denied having answers for all time, and stated that the government needed to evolve with the governed.
Perhaps you should read their comment again: they never said the "Founding Fathers" claimed to have eternal answers, rather they pointed out the odd ritualised deference by people today to things written hundreds of years ago by people who (by your own admission) explained that the things they wrote would likely not be entirely applicable to the future.
> Like, life in USA became more or less good only several generations ago, after the country became giant economical winner of WW2.
This judgement of course depends upon the standards of the observer and where in the US you look. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, many elites in the Empire of Japan had spent time in America and came to view America as spoiled, decadent, and too soft to fight a long war.
How high are the chances of these young engineers getting highly lucrative offers from China and Russia just to tell them what they saw? They are set for life, and Elon Musk does not recognize that he enabled this.
Amazed at the pushback against an effort to cut waste out of government. There is a ton of it. It's your tax dollars being wasted... let's instead discuss whether things they've identified are keep, toss, or reform and if the wrong call has been made.
Setting aside the issue of the public’s PII and PHI in the hands of the most odious individuals, your post is a mischaracterization of what’s going on. They’re not identifying things and creating a report for evaluation; they’re identifying things and using illegal thuggery to shut things they don’t like down. This is illegal and unamerican.
This is incredibly dangerous. A select few, having such control over so many millions? Are you nuts?! This is a serious question, as a new member of this community, is this a normal type of comment I can expect on HN?
If only there was a group of people that were given the legal rights to make that decision... We could call them like... A Congress and we could like write those processes down. Maybe call that document a Constitution.
Of course there is. Who says that's what they are trying to do? What specific credentials do these children have that makes them uniquely qualified to handle this task? Why is Elon the appropriate vessel for this activity? The man has more conflicts of interest than nearly anyone else for this task, and has the temperament, self-control, and maturity lesser than those he's hired.
I'm amazed that ANYONE is okay with this nonsense.
I don’t know how this will shake out, but I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.
Edit: by the way, this post isn’t off-topic. It is about the activities of the US Digital Service (now known as Doge), and the exploits of young hackers who came up through top tech companies. It has implications for information systems security, especially as it relates to Silicon Valley culture.
> I do worry that these 19-24 year olds (…) are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.
On one side you have a handful of arrogant young adults doing the bidding of a couple of wannabe despotic man-babies. On the other you have an entire nation made up of millions of people and with major influence over the rest of the world.
I’m having a hard time understanding why your concern lies with the former.
> He bought a company and claims all the credit for it
Dude, Musk founded Space X. It's because of these kinds of ridiculous comments that I find it hard to take the Left (at least the ones on the internet) seriously.
From a journalistic standpoint, it's entirely fair to report on these 19-24 year olds, and it is not doxxing to do so. They are quite literally now involved in the US government, and are consenting adults making the rational decision to involve themselves in real legal jeopardy.
> it's entirely fair to report on these 19-24 year olds
Of course it is. As it will be to go after them through the criminal justice system in years ahead. I believe OP’s point is they don’t realise the jeopardy they’re getting themselves into.
The whole thing is sham, doesn't matter how illegal, apparently presidents can, at alarming rates, and completely openly to the public now just pardon anyone for anything.
> presidents can, at alarming rates, and completely openly to the public now just pardon anyone for anything
It's wild how badly Biden screwed the pooch on this one. Campaigned in 2020 on keeping Trump out of office. Not only failed at that (he's more dangerous than he would have been with a narrow margin in '20) but also blew the precedents he claimed made Trump dangerous.
Alternate history has Biden forcing the Congress and states' hands by issuing a blanket pardon for all federal inmates, effective some time in the future, unless a Constitutional amendment is ratified by X date.
The danger is that in a system without any meaningful rule of law, people will turn to violence as a means of achieving justice. This is an incredibly dangerous road we're going down.
I guess that's good. It's interesting that we're just now learning the names of the people that hope to disrupt these agencies, but we don't know exactly who, or even how many, of these agencies existed.
In other words, there are these critically important agencies that I didn't even know existed, but they're basically the glue that holds together our democracy. Who runs these agencies is not important, what is important is that they continue to run as they have in the past and anyone looking to disrupt that should be thoroughly investigated.
That's another way of saying you don't think there should be reforms. It won't happen.
In the past you had events that reshaped and wiped away the buildup of bureaucracy. Kind of like a refactor. These events have been war or revolutions.
I think its worth thinking about things as a system that we can periodically refresh, ditch the old and start from scratch. It's not healthy to just keep adding layers without a good mechanism to remove them
When I was in that age range (five decades ago) everyone I knew of the same age was politically aware and many were politically active. Has that changed so much that they can claim to be naively unaware of what they are doing?
I don't see why anyone should worry about the people actually committing crimes and being in legal jeopardy. That's the purpose of the legal system. People need to learn that ignorance of the law is not a defense.
I’d go as far as to say that’s the intention here. They’re fall guys and they’re too naive/arrogant to realise it.
People say “oh, Trump will pardon them” but I wouldn’t be so sure, why does he care? Once this is done they’re not of any real use to him so it’s entirely possible he won’t waste the political capital pardoning them. Would be in character for a guy famous for not paying folks who have done work for him.
Lon Horiuchi could not be convicted for literally sniping an unarmed women with a child in her arms, standing in a doorway of her house threatening no one. Supremacy clause for executive federal employees.
... The feds invoked supremacy clause to squash the case long enough it was too stale by the time it wound through appeals. The special prosecutor did not at all want to drop it and said as much.
The supremacy clause was what ultimately killed it, by being useful enough to delay cases to the point they're dead.
I really don't worry at all for these people. They're adults, even if young, and they've made their choice. Any consequences they suffer will be well deserved.
I'm sure Trump will preemptively pardon them at the end of his term anyway. My worry is that these people will never be held accountable for what they're doing.
Sure, if you want to play the whataboutism card, go for it.
While I understand why Biden did what he did there, I didn't agree with it. At the very least it sets bad precedent and allows people like you to pretend they have a "gotcha!" argument when they really have nothing.
Nah theyll have pardons if they ever get into trouble. That was part of the reason trump pardoned the j6ers, to let all his minions know that they have free rein to commit crimes.
That's why they need OPM: So they can run off a giant listing of DOGE-droids and tear it from the dot-matrix printer and stamp every page with a big rubber stamp saying "Pardoned! D.J. Trump"
It doesn’t really. Obviously the alleged security breach is egregious and if they’re committing crimes they should be prosecuted. But given that they’re relatively young, part of me wonders if these guys are being exploited by Musk and Thiel and will be scapegoated if the political winds start blowing another way. But that makes no difference to their criminal liability.
Some of the key actions taken or threatened by DOGE are at least arguably illegal without permission from Congress, such as dismantling USAID, offering "deferred resignation" firing employees without due process, unilaterally stopping payments to agencies or individuals, and some smaller ones. Beyond that, there is the FACA lawsuit challenging the organization of DOGE itself; the administration has partially mitigated that by making Musk a special government employee, but no word on the rest of DOGE.
Why worry? They signed onto be one of Musk's sycophants are at this point are clearly aware of their actions. You can have accomplishments and still be on the wrong side of history.
Why are you concerned? They're adults and know this is blatantly illegal and are serving their lord anyway. They don't even have the pleasure of deniability since the government officials literally stepped in, physically blocked them, and told them they weren't allowed.
Personally, I hope they get what's coming to them.
Your question was valid and you didn’t deserve to get downvoted. That being said the person who responded to you is wrong. They did have the appropriate security clearance to access the records.
Some people are skeptical on the legitimacy of what some are calling “emergency” security clearances given by executive order[1] but there’s no evidence this is not within the bounds of the president’s power. An expedited clearance could have been granted in 48 hours but presumably the backlog has already lasted longer than that and would hamper plans for the first month in office.
In my mind, there are a number of instances online where people (read: men) are acting like entitled princes, and the one thing that gets them to back off is making their families aware of what's going on.
Considering that these six are almost certainly peak internet people, I can't say I entirely disagree with trying to make sure their families know what they're doing. And so those family members know who to blame if data is leaked, potentially like the bank account details stored in the treasury payments system.
Just to make sure I understand what you're saying and the underlying principle and how it might apply. You support internet mobs (and eventually IRL mobs) harassing innocent people who happen to be related to somebody else?
Do you agree with everything your relatives do? Are you willing to be held to the same standard? If you brother/sister/son/father/uncle/nephew/whatever does something I don't like, can I publish your personal information and get an internet mob to call and threaten your employer?
When people can't be legally held accountable, then why are you surprised that there are those trying to hold them accountable via extrajudicial means?
I'm not surprised. In fact, I expected it. Lynching is a long-held tradition in the United States after all. And vigilante Justice is hardly an American invention.
I'm asking if it's what is actually being argued and if people believe that it is right.
By the same logic, it's not hard to get this place: If the sheriff won't hold a black man accountable for whistling at a white woman, then of course the white citizens must take justice into their own hands, right?
Let's ignore the ethics of your position just for a second.
How do you think would affairs develop if the policy you defend now continues? Suppose the families of those men are "made aware of their son's actions" (i.e. they are harassed, because that's what's really going to happen).
The administration will make sure that public the has the right to know the name and addresses of the loved ones of opposition politicians and their associates. And, it may come to a surprise to you, but most crazy people with a lot of firearms generally support the administration and ruling party. Those people can harrass families with unprecedented effectiveness. They can also do much worse.
How is what you are suggesting a good idea from a purely tactical standpoint?
This is a gross justification of something you know to be wrong. If all the employees who are currently working at the Treasury had their names leaked you wouldn’t think twice about it being a case of doxxing.
Somehow people feel justified in their condemnation because they don’t know what was happening in the department before and assume more was done than actually was by these DOGE employees. Note that the article has no idea of the extent of work done by each of them, the internal processes at DOGE, or the legality of these events.
At this point it’s just fear mongering with words like “coup” being thrown around and baseless accusations about the halting of payments to essential programs like Medicare, Medicaid, social security, etc. None of which have been verbally stated as a target for termination this term
That's what reporting on public figures entails, especially when their public actions are legally murky at best. Or are you proposing they're not actually public figures (in which case why do they have access to the systems they do?)
But really, yeah, lets talk about questionable people creating questionable lists......
So the concept of "doxxing" doesn't apply to anyone who works in a government job? We can just publish the private information of any low-level employee?
By their unprecedented and legally-murky access level, they're far from "low-level employee".
And for the important folks, we make a loud cry about even their birth certificates and birth parents, so why not this?
All sense of decorum has been burned down long ago, and hilariously, it's been burned down by the same people now pretending to complain here.
If we're gonna make it to the other side of all this, it's going to take another Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, or Roosevelt to restore any of our former dignity. And no, this one's gonna be lucky to have history consider it even a Nixon.
Right. So, the basic principle is: if you think you're doing something valorious and can rationalize the result, you can ruin the lives of whomever you like.
This doesn't seem to be a huge leap from the rationalization for "doxxing" in any other period.
We're still in the "burn it all down" phase, and the problem about "burn it all down" is you get burned too, especially if you're in there looting while the house is on fire.
We haven't yet found the leaders who will be the ones rebuilding. Maybe we have the ones who will be sitting on a charred throne claiming a burned-out husk of a throneroom in their hard-earned kingdom of ash, but not the ones who will rebuild.
So spare me the feigned morality right now, we all know no one's playing by those rules anymore.
What's the underlying principle here? If you think somebody is a fascist you can attack their family? Do you think there should be any legal process or protection for anybody accused by another random person of being a fascist?
I don't necessarily approve of this action, but... a key to a peaceful life is to not piss off too many people at once. If you decide spit on a hundred million people, you're not gonna like it when a fraction of them spit back. Break the social contract at your own peril.
Is anyone surprised? It's not like it was a secret, and a majority of voters still voted this government in.
Maybe most thought it'll be better for inflation and chose to ignore or belittle the crazy. It seems we're getting the crazy now - and not, yet anyway, a single action of inflation.
In Trump's first term he had one of the lowest rates of fulfilling campaign promises of any president. I was caught off-guard by him actually appearing to go through with this.
Well, Cultural Revolutions are almost always done by young and inexperienced.
Btw, i wonder how many of those raiding the government offices are really DOGE people and not say Russian or Chinese agents pretending to be DOGE - if one to believe the news the security let them into the building once they threatened to call Marshals Service (social engineering DOGE style. That clearly shows couple things - 1. DOGE themselves didn't bother to get proper paperwork, clearances, etc., a "promising" start so to speak and 2. that at least the building security part of the government there got totally rotten as it failed to perform their basic duties. And the agencies' (Treasury(!), USAID,...) employees just giving their laptops and access to internal systems to the first schmuck supposedly from some DOGE - and that all after years of trainings of "don't leave your screen unlocked", "don't give sensitive info to the strangers pretending to be your higher-up or a colleague" . Really shows the effectiveness of all those trainings :)
If your point is that Elon Musk is overthrowing the government and these are his pals, then this statement makes sense. If you were trying to make any other point then this makes zero sense.
I'm concerned about my US bonds, as the way to access them is through a government website. Are these people going to block my access and steal my money?
>> “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”
Investors' faith in US bond and equity markets is, unironically, the most powerful immediate-term check on the current administration. The longer-term check is the midterm elections in 2026. If they really screw things up, as they appear to be doing, that's their deadline for fixing them.
The republicans purged a lot of people from voter rolls. They're going to do the same in 2026.
If you want to vote, anticipate dozens of hours over several months making sure you weren't removed from the register.
Why are they so against people voting? The number of actual fraudulent vote cases prosecuted was very, very small, but the measures taken against voter fraud have been disproportionate.
When government IDs are universal, we can require them to vote.
Here's a study from about a year ago: [0].
Upshot is that 21% of Americans 18 and older don't have an ID that matches their name and address. Disenfranchising a fifth of Americans isn't something I'd accept.
Note also that it's 23% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans, and 31% of independents. You can see why Democrats are anti-ID-check while Republicans are pro-ID-check as a general rule.
I am totally fine with disenfranchising people who don't have up to date IDs. The cost of a perception of illegal ballot stuffing is high and the benefit of these voters is marginal at best.
There's a good amount of evidence that more turnout would help Republicans in general, even before (at least if you applied the "socio-economic voting preference determinism" logic that one tends to apply).
It's good to be against voter suppression because voter suppression is bad, even if in theory it doesn't help "your side". One would hope that doing that work would convince some people you're on "their side", but it's quite nebulous.
Because the GOP isn't a monolith. Lots of them are still operating under a playbook 2024 proved obsolete. Race is no longer an almost-perfect proxy for partisan affiliation [1].
Does blocking non citizens from voting count as “suppressing voter turnout”? It’s all just politics and words, and we’ve picked our side and so we use the language that best supports it. Is someone pro-life, or are they anti women’s rights? Is someone pro-choice, or are they pro-baby-murder.
How does one actually convince someone of the “rightness” of their side? It somehow starts with love your enemies, though if I say that to my more right wing friends it means capitulate to whatever the progressives want. All I know is the spirit of the age is evil.
Passing laws to make it harder to vote, and easier to challenge a persons voter registration and ballot, and then running an operative campaign to specifically target voters on the other side of the political spectrum is a bit different than "just politics". Legal, sure. Ethical, moral, fair, absolutely not.
Imagine if the US misses bond payments and defaults because of bureaucracy problems (not lack of money). It would completely explode the interest rates of any loans they have and completely tank the US government for years.
It appears to me that Trump is doing phenomenal, and my I didn’t like the other side vote for him, is turning into I kind of like him and would more actively support him. He seems like a strong president, especially compared to his predecessor, and the promise to “make America great again”, seems like it might becoming more of a reality.
If he can negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, in a relatively soonish timeframe, I will be very happy. But it’s kind of a game of chicken, a high risk high reward type gamble, that could be very dangerous and lead to worse things, so I’ll just have to wait and see.
Ultimately I read comments here and I think the “other side” is blind, which they likely think of me.
Well, I’m on the other side of the Atlantic, so probably not the other side you meant so take it for what it’s worth.
Your president has threatened war on Denmark, a close ally to my country (think your relationship with Canada until he started threatening them with war too). If I knew nothing else about him that would be enough.
I’ve been using American web hosts since the ’90s. I’m currently in the process of moving away from Digital Ocean
to a European host. I’m cancelling as many other services (Netflix, Strava, etc) as possible. Not much, about $300-400 less per month from me to the US.
I’m happy I got to visit New York a few years ago.
Because you found a person with opinions different to your own?
I think most of what Trump is attempting will work out poorly, for America, Trump, and the world in general. I can't prove that and there are so many presumptions in my world view, my estimation might be incorrect.
Trump was elected. I think a lot of that support came from people who had been voting for either Kang or Kodos for years and knew the outcome of that wasn't going to be what they wanted. I believe those people know exactly what kind of person Trump is, but that Trump acting in his own self interest might cause government action that is at least not-as-bad as the alternative of a perpetual status quo.
I don't think that is the case, but I think it would be unreasonable to declare that someone who believes something different is wrong simply because I think my opinion objectively carries more weight.
I'm trying to download my 1099 forms from TreasuryDirect and it's coming back as unavailable. Probably unrelated to everything going on now, but the fact I thought that it could be related for a second is crazy.
>>> TreasuryDirect is unavailable.
>>> We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you try again later.
They'll steal it via inflation. Trump's already announced a few programs that involve him siphoning federal dollars into the pockets of his cronies (including the tariff revenue).
Blocking your access to any sort of "sell my bond back" button while they do it seems prudent.
The last two admins already "stole" it via inflation. Do you have any idea how many dollars were printed in the last 5 years?
Cutting federal spending is obviously not the thing that will lead to more inflation (though tariffs certainly might, but that is not really the subject of the current discussion).
The next four years are going to be a test of the US Constitution. But when they are up -- and they will be, and people are more angry at Trump than the last time around the pendulum swings wildly back again, as it always does, what is going to happen to Musk and the rest of them?
Maybe you are, but that's not me, and that's not a ton of people in the comments here (I would say easily more than half) reacting negatively to what Musk and Trump are doing.
Stop projecting, and stop making sweeping generalizations about HN posters.
you. I'm here because I like programming and because I have fun reading the stupid bullshit some people pass for intelligent thought around these parts.
I think it is going to be much harder to get Trump to leave after these four years than the last time. I imagine there will be an amendment on the table soon to do away with the two-term limit, if there isn't already. Or, he may just say "come and get me" and if the military is on his side, he can just continue to rule as he sees fit.
Key word here is "cannot be elected more than twice". So as long as there is no official election, he is not technically violating the constitution by remaining in power. I'm playing devil's advocate here.
Trump is old and is not the leading example of a healthy person. I think there's an entirely reasonable chance that nature takes care of this one for us.
That said, I don't think it matters at all. This isn't a Trump problem. Sure, he's the figurehead, but there are ample figureheads waiting in the wings, just as malleable to the alt-reich's needs. They will be more than happy to step in and allow the current dismantling of the USA to continue, and for Something Very Else to be built in its place.
Yup, exactly. Hell, even if Trump were to die of a heart attack tomorrow, Vance would happily continue the cureent trajectory, and he might even be better at doing so.
The cult of personality would die though, with a considerable impact to the regime. We've been predicting the death of orange man for years considering his diet, and yes it's a miracle he's lived this long, but an often understated asset of his is that he doesn't drink an once of alcohol. That can help him survive way past his 2nd term, I think.
I worry more about what will happen to the US then. The backlash is going to be very tempted to fight fire with fire, to fight unconstitutionality with unconstitutionality.
Can we get back to a functioning rule of law and a limited government at the end of this? I'm... hesitant.
The problem is that the optimistic approach requires that there's enough left of the government in order to use legal means to stop the catastrophe. I really really hope there will be, but right now I'm worried that's a losing proposition.
And here I thought they'd actually consider my resume. They didn't even bother looking. When DOGE first called for people to apply, they did it on X and said we can send a message to their account on X.
So I actually got excited about tackling waste, and wrote this cover letter:
Little did I know this admin was going to be shutting down datasets from data.gov and other crap. I really tried to bring something positive into it, but it's just more of the same. They sidelined Vivek too.
You should have, had you done any research. This was long after Elon’s slide into anti-democratic, far right ideology. And as we now know merely weeks before he did multi Nazi salutes on stage.
This feels like people who are surprised that Trump is ticking boxes on Project 2025 despite it being out for multiple years.
There’s a pizza shop in NW DC with a basement you should investigate.
Well, it's refreshing that you're doing an "I told you so" about Musk, rather than getting on my case about my suggestion to use Blockchain to "increase public transparency and accountability", which is what I thought was more likely to happen on HN.
I think there are actually good use cases for blockchain and smart contracts, and DOGE was finally going to be one of them.
of course Musk recruits young ambitious kiddos - they work hard, for not much money, and don't question authority (because they're blinded by their ambition)
it's only when you get older that you see how rife this is for abuse. as a simple example, if DOGE knows influential Treasury recipients, then they could find ways to extort them. help us and you'll get your money on time. oppose us, and...
heck, I'm a treasury recipient (albeit a very small one), so if I take to X and start criticizing Trump or Musk, is my money at risk? Maybe not today but maybe within his term. Scary times.
Everyone likes to throw the "1st amendment" in the conversation, when it suites them... but I agree given the recent retaliatory tendencies, it is difficult to criticize the current administration, and effectively leaving it in its own echo chamber.
I am wondering if that partially explains how Musk radicalized himself lately. While I like the idea of absolute free speech, it kinda falls when the powerful are retaliatory... and kinda loose with the rule of law.
While I get the idea of "the bureaucracy" having its own life sometimes getting in a way of change, and the President willing to get more done, faster. But the fact that the bureaucrats do not carring on sometimes is because they follow a due process.
Now with those young men taking the control of the $6T/yr, this is a tremendous power. Even unintentionally, a mistake could have dire consequences.
Dictators always liked to exploit the idealism of young people. The Nazis had the Hitler youth, China had the Red Guards, most prison guards for the Khmer Rogue were teenagers. They happily did the dirty work and could be discarded easily once not useful anymore.
I would all be for scrutinizing what government does but you can't just go around and cut everything you don't understand within 15 minutes. And I bet they will keep the moon and Mars programs going.
Who knows. If you happen to mention any words that are on the CDC's new forbidden words list, maybe you will fall victim to the next Ctrl+f search these guys run.
It's also only when you get older that you see how rife the existing system is for "abuse" (if you want to call it that). Maybe the young upstarts have other motives for dismantling the existing system than simply blind ambition, especially if the existing system is set up with entrenched patronage networks that are basically inaccessible to the "young ambition kiddos".
Your example is pretty unpersuasive. It is already that case that "influential Treasury recipients" are called upon to "help" those in power. How else can you explain the various volte face moves by seemingly apolitical economic actors. I think the kiddos might finally be getting wise to how the game is played and how it is rigged.
If they are accessing TS/SCI information and places like SCIFs have they filled out their SF-86? Are any of them dual nationals and do they have any ties or vulnerabilities to hostile foreign states?
Basic questions given the enormous access they are being given, far beyond frankly any handful of people have generally had in US government history.
Also, they have apparently plugged in their own private server at OPM. Has this already been compromised by Chinese/ Russian agents? Has the NSA had a look?
Would contractors need to do any of this? Is DOGE using federal funds?
I'm not exactly clear on the situation but if they are just doing this for free and don't have access to confidential information, I could see that potentially being the key loophole here.
disappointing to see so many “hacker” news comments complaining about lack of credentials or system-specific expertise.
yes, existing government systems are insanely complex - that’s part of the problem! the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.
we don’t even know what these kids’ mandate is (also disappointing). but if your general premise is “smart outsiders who are good at engineering are always the wrong people to rework complex, inefficient systems,” i’d like to think you’re on the wrong site.
The problem with these types of comments is your filtering reality through some sort of weird hero-complex you're clinging to. It's not realistic and it's harmful.
The people involved in this are not qualified or capable in _any_ manner to be doing what they're doing. They are sycophants.
Worse, it's putting an entire nation in jeopardy.
This isn't "smart, young spirits defy all odds and save the day!" it's really "hitler youth comes in and starts thrashing about until daddy gets his way."
Yep. You can move fast and break things in a SAAS startup or some dumb LLM as a service startup.
But the stakes are much higher in what they're touching. And the way they're being brought in is selecting for loyal sycophants, nothing else. If they disagree musk will axe them in seconds.
I'm open to outsiders improving inefficiencies. The concern is that these are kids, barely out of college. They don't have the domain-specific knowledge required to rework these complex systems, no matter how smart they are. Plus, given Musk's track record, they were likely chosen more for their loyalty to Musk than for their technical acumen.
> yes, existing government systems are insanely complex - that’s part of the problem! the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.
Yeah, and why don't we build concentration camps again? They're super efficient in term of work per unit of food. Colonies are also super nice, lots of free stuff!
Some people should open history books, life isn't about refactoring everything, making things as simple as possible, &c. It would be comical if it wasn't the very first thing you learn as an engineer
If you think a rocket is more complex than hundreds of years of infinitely complex people making decisions and compromises through democracy you're completely out of touch with reality, and if you genuinely think we can just burn it all down because some nerd unilaterally thinks he found a better way to do it you're just plain dumb.
> the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.
Sorry, but that's such an absurd comment. These kids don't even know anything about rocket building, let alone they're able to build a rocket from first principles. Second, the US government is much more complex than a rocket; it cannot be understood by a single person. Third, you can waste rockets, but a whole nation depends on one goverment. You can't just experiment with it. Fourth, there are lives at stake. It's not just a payload, or one or two astronauts who know what they signed up for, that are at their mercy.
Checks and balances were never tried in the first place. There must have been some assumption of decorum and decency, so strong that whatever loopholes are, have been left wide open.
Without a competent or impartial FBI and AG, there's literally zero chance these people will be investigated.
With a house and senate that fears the president, there will be no impeachment.
And even if they successfully manage to impeach the president, I'm 100% sure Trump will challenge it.
Yeah, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Gonna be 4 very, very long years.
So basically we are down to relying on the cycle of life as the ultimate check and balance. Hopefully he won't appoint one of his sons as his successor like in North Korea.
A radical improvement in the national debt at the hands of the world's most competent entrepeneur? I think many people were voting specifically for this. Things are going exactly as advertised.
You are conflating debt and deficit. Cutting the deficit by a few hundred billion dollars will barely impact the rate of growth of the debt, it's not a "radical improvement in the national debt", it's a modest reduction in spending.
If it wasn't, he made it real. Elon is the deep state. An unelected individual who has set up a no-oversight machinery with hands on the levers of state power, and using them to his own ends, independent of public benefit. Every accusation is a confession.
As someone from the developing world where USAID regularly funded organizations that were often divisive and insidiously subversive, can’t say that I’ll be unhappy to see this thing dismantled.
The recent events should finally put to rest all the JFK conspiracies. Messing up with the government at this scale should indeed put you into some 3-letter agency hitlist.
"U.S.A.I.D. was created in 1961 to help the United States win the “hearts and minds” of citizens in poor countries through civic action, economic aid and humanitarian assistance. As a cold war policy tool, the agency was, at times, used as a front for C.I.A. operations and operatives. Among the most infamous examples was the Office of Public Safety, a U.S.A.I.D. police training program in the Southern Cone that also trained torturers."
> The information about USAID’s development and humanitarian assistance programs is intentionally open and public; to perform the agency’s mission, USAID employees work directly with non-government organizations, contractors, United Nations organizations and host country governments. However, in order for USAID employees to effectively and efficiently carry out the agency’s programs, they often must have access to sensitive and sometimes classified information provided by other federal departments and agencies. Such information may pertain to U.S. foreign policy and relations as well as security conditions and threat data.
> On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The AP reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.
It's attracted a lot of attention that killing USAID has been such a high priority for these guys despite only being 1% of the budget and having a seemingly innocent humanitarian mission. But what's USAID doing that involves classified data? Distributing humanitarian aid shouldn't require any information whose disclosure would seriously disclose national security, should it? Presumably this means USAID has been used as cover for covert operations around the globe.
> William Blum has said that in the 1960s and early 1970s USAID has maintained "a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover. (...) From 2010 to 2012, the agency operated ZunZuneo,[199] a social media site similar to Twitter in an attempt to instigate uprisings against the Cuban government. Its involvement was concealed in order to ensure mission success. The plan was to draw in users with non-controversial content until a critical mass is reached, after which more political messaging would be introduced. At its peak, more than 40,000 unsuspecting Cubans interacted on the platform.[199]
(There's a lot more there. Check it out if you haven't heard of this.)
So, if it's been a key part of the US's overseas covert operations for decades, why did it go into the wood chipper in a weekend? Did Elon Musk just fail to realize its importance to the US's worldwide influence?
With no evidence beyond the above, I think USAID was targeted because it's been a nucleus of the Intelligence Community's resistance to Trump consolidating his power.
I keep seeing a contradiction that I’m having a hard time explaining. On one hand, there are numerous comments saying that what these individuals are doing is illegal. On the other hand, there are comments saying they work for the federal government and so doxxing them is fair game.
If they work for the government, how is what they are doing illegal?
Being an employee of the federal government doesn't give you access to everything. There are laws, passed by Congress, about who is allowed to do what.
I don’t doubt what you are saying about Trump giving them access. Do we know how he did that? I guess I’d like to understand how we know if it was legal or not.
It's the other way around. It's not legal unless these people are under an executive branch department or agency, with department heads appointed by the president, and confirmed by the Senate.
These people have not all been vetted, hired, and granted security clearances appropriate to the level of access they've obtained.
Curious european here. Do you think we will see some serious mass protests in big USA cities if this continues? By this I mean "reckless" action by Musk and Trump.
The vast majority of Americans either voted for this, or don't care.
Will there be some protests? Sure. Nothing will come of it, though. The only thing that will enact any real change is if big corporations start losing any profits due to all this upheaval, in which case they may put pressure to get things settled down.
A lot of voters didn't turn out, so it's not accurate to say most Americans voted for this. There's also the issue of Trump saying Musk helped him win two key states during his inauguration speech, which some consider just short of an admission to rigging the election.
Only something like 3% of the population needs to actively strike and protest to start affecting corporations.
Abstaining from voting means "I am ok with whatever the rest of you decide". While that's not an active vote in favor, it's close enough.
I don't care about non-voters. If they don't care enough to vote, they're not worth considering when we try to assign "blame" for the current situation.
No one cares about protests even if they happen. Remember all the women's march / pussy hat protests? What a great instagram opportunity that was. They are chances for people to cosplay as "members of the resistance" as they live their day to day lives as urban PMC drones.
I'm a pessimist sometimes so I can't imagine any real uprising coming out of this. At the end of the day, people in the US have to pay the bills, people live beyond their means whether they know it or not, no one can afford to sacrifice any of their time to a real revolution save for a small minority.
Oh sweet, we're at the honeypot general strike stage of a Trump presidency. Glad we're just hoping trade union consciousness springs forth from the lowest union rate in american history.
Only if there's inflation. If there's no inflation then people won't do anything. Most people don't know what's going on because they get their information from social media echo chambers. Truly a dystopia in the making.
This is exactly the type of thing that Trump said he wanted to do. Who is protesting that who wouldn't be unconditionally protesting Trump anyway? Plus, with the federal NGO money spigot cut off, a lot of the NGOs that organize protests are probably having operational problems.
Good. These guys, in addition to obviously being very smart, are young and don't have a lot of baggage in government or industry.
I think they are perfect for tracing down what has been going on and finding where inefficiencies and/or corruption has been occurring. Anyone who has issue with rooting out corruption and inefficiency isn't in the right.
Of course what is done with what they find will not be in their hands.
I've worked on billion dollar defense projects, and have supervised plenty of smart junior consultants from top consulting firms (McKinsey, etc.) - guiding them through processes, while they're digging through data.
Believe it or not, but you don't know what you don't know, and domain expertise is absolutely crucial. Slashing things you think are inefficiencies can lead to some serious footguns.
And I fully expect Musk to value speed over precision.
I think it would be great for the federal government to be more efficient and less corrupt. For example, let's talk about USAID. It would be great if DOGE could make USAID more efficient, to accomplish the most possible good with the money allocated by Congress.
So far, that's not what DOGE appears to be doing. Rather than "rooting out corruption and inefficiency", DOGE appears to be cutting government spending that Musk disagrees with.
And that's unconstitutional! The executive branch doesn't have the constitutional authority to unilaterally cut a program established by Congress. If Congress allocated $X billion for foreign aid to country Y, the executive branch must disburse that aid.
Furthermore, speaking of corruption: Both Trump and Musk have major conflicts of interest. Prior to Trump, presidents were expected to divest business interests and put their assets in a blind trust; but Trump refused to do so. And SpaceX is a major federal contractor; if the head of a major federal contractor is _also_ the biggest supporter of the incoming president, the conflict of interest is obvious.
As you said, anyone who has an issue with rooting out corruption isn't in the right. So surely you're alarmed by these conflicts of interest, right? Don't you agree that Musk should either fully divest from SpaceX, or step away from politics?
I think part of the concern is that Elon Musk is still the CEO of or has strong financial interest in a lot of companies, some of which get government contracts (e.g. SpaceX).
Finding out corruption and inefficiency is fine, but I think a lot of people are skeptical that that's the actual goal of this "advisory board". How likely is it that Elon is going to find anything inefficient about SpaceX? Tesla? What's to stop him from using this data to haggle better deals from the government paying for his projects?
It's entirely possible that SpaceX is efficient enough, but it's still a conflict of interest. I don't think a guy who owns and runs a company that competes on government contracts should be in charge of determining which parts of the government is efficient.
Ok, but what does that have to do with the nature of the young guys charged with the analysis?
I read through your past comments. It's obvious to me what you believe. And I don't agree with your worldview but not sure that matters. If you don't like Musk and don't like Trump, fine, I get it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like either of them in person either, and, they both have vested interests on that we can agree. You know who else has vested interests? The people benefiting from waste, fraud and abuse. The people who have been directing public funds into propaganda and a black hole. I'd like to see western civilization persist. If you feel differently that's a value judgement and it's fine. But hearing kveltching and ridiculous statements from liberal midwits on every single policy article is getting really really old and it's shitting up this site. This is what is going to happen. And it's long overdue.
Ok, so you acknowledge that there's a conflict of interest, and you still think that Elon Musk is the only human who can possibly find government inefficiency?
I have some less polite ways of saying this so I'll keep to myself, but that seems like a profoundly ignorant viewpoint. There are 330 million Americans, and the only person that could possibly find government inefficiency is a guy with extremely clear and obvious conflicts of interest? Ridiculous, I do not believe that you actually believe that.
I personally think that it is extraordinarily stupid to get someone who routinely gets government contracts to be in charge of determining what is "efficient". I personally wouldn't choose any active CEO, but even if you believe that somehow a businessman is going to be better, couldn't you choose a CEO that doesn't have federal contracts? Even if it was a conservative, even if it were someone who I absolutely despised, it would still be a better choice than Elon Musk. I genuinely cannot think of a worse choice for this project than Elon, honestly.
My distaste for Trump and Musk has nothing to do with whether I'd "like them in person". I already dislike most people and I am quite confident I would not like any politician if I met them in person. I do not make my political decisions based on "how much I would like hanging out with them".
I think Trump and Elon are profoundly stupid people, and they're kind of a match made in heaven, which I find very dangerous.
"Western Civilization persisting" shouldn't start with an dubiously-legal "department" with clear conflicts of interest. This shouldn't be controversial.
> Ok, but what does that have to do with the nature of the young guys charged with the analysis?
Because the only reason they are doing it is because they don't know enough about their legal exposure to know they should not. They aren't qualified to handle this data. I thought the whole thing was we were going to have a meritocracy.
just imagine how insecure and fucked up their solutions will be? waiting for the S3 bucket that has global read permissions on a literal "select * from usa_citizens" dump of data.
Elon Musk and all of these DOGE employees should be arrested and charged with multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. They have no need or right to access the federal payments system and no authority whatsoever to stop payments congress has approved.
Of course Musk's coterie of government hackers are young. They might have technical skills, but their still developing brains haven't really developed any morals. Any ability to think bigger than themselves, other than to try to impress their idol steers their actions. Eager to please they don't ask themselves "whats the bigger outcome of this" To them it's all for lolz, and technical clout.
Elon himself has said he uses ketamine in order to 'not feel bad feelings'. Let that sink in for a minute. Maybe, Elon, you should feel bad, rather than numbing any unwanted feeling..
That's not close to true, but even if it were, it doesn't make it ok for you to break the site guidelines. Commenters here need to stick to those regardless of what anyone else is doing. Otherwise, we just end up in a downward spiral, since everyone always feels like the other side started it and is doing it worse.
I would love just one year of this decade to be uneventful / boring...
I used to think people were over-doing it in their criticism of Trump – I thought he was dreadful, but ultimately a contained / containable force. I was even a little optimistic that he might be a disruptive force (inadvertent) that would make other politicians return their focus to everyday, working class concerns.
I was naive and stupid. And many people are kidding themselves even now about what's going on. There's nothing normal or business as usual about what's happening in America right now. I'm not qualified to predict where this all ends, but I don't think any of it's good and I don't think this ends after Donald Trump's second term.
To the people thinking DOGE is about cutting "wasteful spending", I can only shake my head. What will it take for people to see clearly what's right before them?
No, you weren't. People on every angle of this are tired of the government not working. It's easy to have that glimmer of hope that maybe he really will make a good change. The problem is, he's a salesman - a grifter. His art is to latch onto that glimmer of hope and sell you on it while never delivering on it.
Each of us feels that we belong to some tribe. If your tribe supports what you see going on, you won't be alarmed by it. Reality is less important than the discourse's impact on your tribe.
Besides, maybe everything is fine and the Muskovites are right.
One has to take in the broader picture. The DOGE events are one piece of the puzzle. It was only last week that far-right thugs were pardoned unconditionally by the President.
Some people hold conservative views, some liberal and others a mix. People have "tribes", but that's not what this is about.
What is happening is not good if you view rule of law and liberal democracy as being good things.
Voting a new president into office doesn't grant that person extra-constitutional powers. What they say during an election doesn't create those new powers, either.
Because the US has a constitution. Congress (not the Executive branch) allocates funding and the Executive Branch (in this case a Billionaire who's friendly with the President) cannot decide not to spend the money Congress has already decided to spend.
How exactly is it not constitutional? All of this seems like well established precedent. He's advising the president and the president is taking actions.
Isn't that well established precedent that's been going on for a long time?
Also if you believe it's not constitutional it still doesn't make sense how it can be a "coup".
Why? A majority of voters asked for this. It was pretty explicit they were going to do some serious trimming of the fat. The campaign promises were no secret. Now, if Trump tried to fire him but he somehow still maintained his power within the government then that would be a coup.
A majority did not. And the ones who voted for Trump didn't ask for someone to illegally access the systems that Elon has access to. This is the kind of stuff they voted to fix.
> Now, if Trump tried to fire him but he somehow still maintained his power within the government then that would be a coup.
Trump isn't exactly subtle when he expresses his disappointment in one of his hires. We'll definitely hear about it if it happens. The idea that Musk is somehow acting against Trump's direction is ridiculous though.
It's more a question of the article. What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative? that kind of thing.
Can you tell if there's a concerted effort to flag Musk and DOGE related threads? I've seen threads go from nothing to [flagged][dead] in the course of 30 seconds after being up for 40 minutes, suggesting very spiky flagging behavior. This has come up a few times recently, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904148
(Of course, I could just be misunderstanding how flagging works on the site... maybe the state machine has to transition in order from regular -> [flagged][dead] -> [flagged] after vouching?)
I haven't looked specifically at DOGE stories but from my general perspective, this is the same as what we see with all the hottest/most divisive topics—that is, it's the same with Musk in general, Trump in general, and Israel/Gaza, to name perhaps the 3 most in-that-category topics.
You can also email moderators at hn@ycombintor.com to request unflagging. I do that occasionally, with mixed results. (I've come to know which are long shots, and typically concede the point, but at least make the attempt.)
If you use the vouch feature much, eventually they take it away from you. Same with upvoting and downvoting, but it all happens silently so most people don't notice.
I didn't see much misuse of vouching in your recent history so I've removed that penalty from your account now. But please make sure that the comments you're vouching for are respecting the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Because I'm scared of how much extra work it would create, and because it's the sort of frog-boiling bureaucratism that it is in the spirit of this site to avoid. I call it frog-boiling because it's easy for me to imagine that one day I would wake up and be horrified by the systems we had inadvertently let spring up around ourselves.
HN works best with informal systems, not formal ones. The informal contract around transparency is: people are welcome to ask questions and we always answer them, but we don't formally publish a moderation log or anything like that (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
> I call it frog-boiling because it's easy for me to imagine that one day I would wake up and be horrified by the systems we had inadvertently let spring up around ourselves.
You're already removing the ability of users to vouch. That frog is boiled.
I'm saying tell them on their user page. Include a line that only they can see which says "can no longer vouch" or similar. That way they know what's happened instead of having to guess what's happened.
I didn't see it yesterday either, otherwise I would have turned the flags off sooner.
But thanks for the kind reply—I confess I was expecting something else!
Edit: incidentally, (and not directing this at you personally!), if even one of the commenters spending their time complaining about flags on HN had let us know about this submission at hn@ycombinator.com, this would probably have happened earlier. I say "probably" because I haven't processed all the emails from the last 12 hours yet.
- Include the post item in your subject line. That would be "42922647" for this particular story.
- Include some idea of what the problem is. For example, for a flagged story I'd have "vouch" as the first word of my subject, followed by the article title.
- I typically include the full article link (in body) and title (in subject) as insurance against my own fat-finger-fumbling.
- A brief description of the problem. E.g., "I'd like to vouch for this article".
My own typical emails are for titles (frequent), link indirection, preferred sources, and occasional mentions of flagrant violations of HN comment guidelines (flagging tends to pick those up most of the time).
For the latter, you can use the "replies" endpoint to see if a mod has previously responded to a given userID, e.g.:
Addition: Comments also have IDs (and are essentially the same as posts), and if you're referencing a specific comment or thread, that should similarly be highlighted in the email subject.
dang, for my clarification, why are you so clearly in favor of this being unflagged?
I haven't been flagging these topics, but I have defended those who do, on the grounds of "not politics" and "leads to flamewar discussions". On the politics front, you have deliberately allowed more politics recently (or at least that's my perception) when you thought it was of general interest, or of tech interest. But the discussions are, perhaps less flame-full than expected, still somewhat incindiary (not least the discussions around flagging, with accusations up to being full-on fascists aimed at those who just don't want HN to be overrun by this).
So: What made it clear to you that this was something that should not be flagged?
It may have come to your attention that 1) there's been a fair bit of political activity of late 2) with impacts on YC, startups, and many of HN's readers, and 3) involving some notable individuals within the tech world.
Much of that argues to facilitate some discussion of at least a sampling of these stories. And this particular item has garnered a large number of both votes and comments. Slightly over the "flamewar" threshold (> 40 votes, comments > votes), but not in the extreme. The flamewar-detector heuristic is surprisingly accurate (I've gone through much of HN's front-page archive a couple of years ago), but not perfect. High-profile political discussions are among the more notable exceptions. Self-discussion of HN is the other (and AFAIR the most highly-ratioed high-placed story was one such item early in HN's life).
I turned off the flags on this one because there hadn't been a thread specifically about DOGE personnel and there is a clear overlap between the people in the article and the interests of HN. I mostly mean the type of people, not the specific individuals, but at least one of them (the Vesuvius prizewinner) did work which was the subject of major threads here.
Personally I would rather the article had been more neutral and more informative, but beggars can't be choosers.
Btw, you do realize that not all politics is off topic on HN, yes? I'm pretty sure you must have seen some of my explanations about this over the years, but if not, please take a look at some of https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
All of the following can be (indeed are) true at once: (1) most political stories are off topic here; (2) we don't want the frontpage to be dominated by politics; (3) some political stories are on topic; (4) significant and interesting things are going on right now, even though it's hard for most people to stay curious about them.
No, you might even be right that I have a "victim complex", given that my country is currently being victimized by the current US administration's pointless desire for a trade war. I'm especially hot under the collar at the moment.
But I would still maintain that this site's culture reflects the Silicon Valley finance culture it came from, and it's not a pretty culture.
Flags are applied by users in virtually all cases, not mods.
Contentious topics, regardless of how merited a discussion might be, tend to draw flags inordinately. But again, you generally can't blame mods for this.
(HN does systemically penalise, or outright ban, numerous sites. I strongly doubt Wired is in either category, though if you want to know for certain, you can email mods. For a number of fairly evident reasons the full list isn't publicly disclosed, though pg provided some lists and extracts early in HN's histoyry, notably <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984095>. There were 38,719 banned sites as of the end of 2012, a number which has doubtless increased.)
I didn't even mention mods in my (admittedly flamey) comment, I actually don't think the moderation of HN is a problem as much as the larger culture that comes with being tied to a SV finance company. But thanks for the info.
He's just one guy, presumably doing his best to keep up. My guess is that HN's flagging system was designed with good faith actors in mind and is vulnerable to organized brigades using it as a mega-downvote to bury stories critical of Musk.
Please elaborate? I define experience in terms of mostly "time" spent on something. And I consider any engineer with less than 5 yrs of experience as "inexperienced" regardless of whether they are talented or not. I've met many talented, but inexperienced engineers who still needed redirecting.
You can cherry-pick any two data points like that to make any point you want, all equally unfounded, so the only thing a comment like this actually does is restate your existing preference.
Edit: or perhaps one could say restate-and-reinforce. I think that's (edit: well, might be) largely the function of adding snark and indignation to internet comments.
I think you need to admit HN is failing due to how easy it is to manipulate what content and comments are shown. Allows a single determined group to literally control the narrative. Eliminate upvotes/downvotes. Keep flagging but make it public record. And revoke privileges for those who abuse it.
That's not an accurate description of what's happening, and we're not going to redesign the site in response to political winds, gale-force though they are right now. Actually that would be the worst moment to do that.
I think many users would be willing to hear a long-form version of your take on the subject (maybe in a fresh meta thread for visibility?), but your comment as-is feels like a shallow dismissal of legitimate concerns.
You’re not really offering any insight into why or how you reached the conclusion that you posted. As a user on the outside, it sure looks like the site structure has begun to buckle in the wind.
Sorry - I spent hours yesterday writing about this at length, so in my mind I've already done that, but you're right, of course. Let me dig up the links for you...
That’s entirely understandable - I’ll dive into your profile to read those thoughts.
I second the suggestion to have some sort of metathread, stickied comment on hot political threads, or other consolidated way to present your collected thoughts so that a larger number of users see it and can benefit. Like you said, the winds are blowing hard, and you might go a long way to quelling the moderatorial waters by addressing the whole site as a collective.
Past efforts to do that kind of thing haven't worked, so I'm a bit down on the idea. What ends up happening is (1) the meta communication stirs up a flurry of objections, some relevant and many not; as well as people passionately restating what they feel about current affairs and/or how much they dislike what some other comment said; and at the same time (2) most people still don't see it, so it ends up not having the desired effect and just taking a ton of time.
Somehow, no matter how often we repeat something, the set of users who hear it always has measure zero (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25787443). That's why I mostly stick to answering specific comments with detailed explanations, and hope that at least some other users will see it.
There's something a little interesting in the measure zero observation; we've run into it in a couple places too. For instance: we now do voice calls ahead of our last hiring exercise (it's a little bit counterintuitive and needs some prep) because no matter how carefully we wrote about it, even with highly motivated candidates (many of whom we statistically end up hiring!) nothing we write seems to sink in. We have an API quirk that works the same way, too.
It 100% absolutely is, you're just too deep to recognize it.
It's what's happened across Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook over the past decade. You've all built platforms intended for social discourse but instead built extremely brittle systems subject to gamified manipulation by showing people which opinions reward and punish them. And those are then manipulated at-large by outside groups responsible for elevating a particular way of thinking about a given topic.
Conversations do not need a algorithmic popularity mechanism.
That's just not an accurate description of HN based on what I know, but of course it's indeed possible that I'm too embedded to see clearly.
Edit: some of these points can be refuted by data though (albeit not public data, which means people have to take our word for it, which many are understandably reluctant to do). For example, flaggers of these stories are by and large longstanding community members who have participated for years on HN in lots of threads about lots of topics, etc. That doesn't prove they're not flagging at the behest of outside groups, but it does make it unlikely.
That would be a disaster of epic proportions. Every thread, no matter how innocuous the topic, would devolve into perpetual feuds about which kinds of people were upvoting and downvoting which other kinds. These sorts of shitstorms were pretty common on HN, in the long-long-ago, and even then all we were revealing were comment scores, not voting attribution.
Then we remove upvotes and downvote entirely. Web2.0 online discourse (visibility is controlled by recommendation algos keyed on upvotes/downvotes) is fundamentally broken.
That would create a different forum. HN is an experiment in how long this kind of forum can ward off gravitational collapse. There are things fundamentally wrong with these kinds of forums, but that's true of every kind of forum.
Not to pile on what tptacek has already nicely said, but I agree and still think there is plenty of room for new forums. The vast majority of possible permutations have not been tried yet, and I wish more people would.
These aren't "political winds". This is all a bit too much "we're all looking for the guy who did this", when it comes to Y Combinator and "tech bros" in general.
> Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
> The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.
That HN is for stuff not discussed in the news is basically disproven daily. The other thing I keep hearing that "if we allow this, the front page would be only about politics", I don't believe it anymore. It's like the stone that keeps tigers away. People may genuinely believe in that stone and that they're guarding the village, but I think it's bull and having to entertain this superstition takes up more resources than the occasional tiger attack would.
I know disabling flags is probably not feasible, since real spam does get posted. but we have "showdead" for comments, why can't we simply have the same option for threads? Then those who want to discuss these things can do it, at the price of also having to wade through actual spam. Anybody else would be unaffected. If the goal is not to suppress awareness and discussion, that can be very easily proven with such a feature, and the best time to implement it would have been a long time ago IMO.
To be honest, it's such a long article I couldn't find a good passage that summarizes it, so I went for the most stark bit. Because it's really quite mad.
But it wasn't my intent to claim you run HN like this either way; but I'm making the educated guess that people who think the above isn't mad, but quite exciting, would be both likely to use this site, and prone to abuse flagging to suppress discussion, and/or awareness of the article that would be discussed.
Ah I see, and yes that's a mistake I make rather often (assuming that a comment is about moderation when it's actually about the community). But tbh I don't have this impression of the HN community. I don't think we have that many users who feel that way, and certainly we have many more users who would strongly disagree.
Votes are a far bigger problem than flagging because it takes a pavlovian approach to what ideas are allowed. Flagging is important to remove spam and wholly inappropriate content. And if you revoke the ability of users who flag content based on a personal disagreement, that user simply loses that ability.
I suggested to add the ability of users to have their view of HN unaffected by these flags. Without that, HN simply has no ability to defend itself against abuse of users who take it upon themselves to play censor.
Some of us are sick of politics all over HN all the time.
To answer the three replies that are already here:
No, it's not because we're Elon fanboys. "Aiding Musk's government takeover" means it isn't going to be an article about Musk per se, but about US politics.
No, it's not because we're closet fascists that want to silence all dissent. We don't care what you think of Musk, we don't care what you think about US politics, we just don't want it to be the dominant topic on HN. Yeah, we know, tech is bleeding over into politics, but... how many Musk stories do we need in one day? However many the number is, we're past it.
"Elon" brings out the worst in us? Yeah, that may be true... but it's true of the people who post the articles as well as of the people who comment.
> Some of us are sick of politics all over HN all the time.
That was never the situation.
> how many Musk stories do we need in one day? However many the number is, we're past it.
So the number is zero. Having one story for each major separate event is one story too many. This is still what it is. The longer the rationalizations for it get, the more sad it gets.
> Yeah, we know, tech is bleeding over into politics, but... how many Musk stories do we need in one day?
You should Ask Musk to cool down then. We didn't vote him in. We didn't ask him to break the law and compromise american security. We didn't grant him access to the US treasury. "We" voted this in. Those who didn't want this are 3 months too late.
And I see this excuse on every platform. I see a story I don't want to engage with... I just move on. Maybe you browse new, but I've never seen politics be "the dominant topic on HN".
My experience working for Tyler Technologies in the Courts and Justice division opened my eyes to the absolutely arrogant and basically consequence-free mismanagement of public data in the hands of private enterprise. The fiasco with JudyRecords.com is absolutely important to keep in mind. If anything, I find stressing "efficiency" in government is simply a cover for "gutting functionality" because anytime something doesn't fit in "the model" of services then it simply gets dismissed.
Is this a technology equivalent to burning the libraries of old? Once the data is gone, come on, do you think any reasonable efforts will be made to restore it? Frankly speaking, is the course DOGE taking a mandate by the people to be enacted by representatives in the government or is it vice-versa, that "we are changing your society whether you like it or not" is the fundamental principle.
Then again, I just got out of jail after a year on a made-up Terroristic Threat charge politically motivated, so my perspective is likely skewed regarding motives and actions of those who have unchecked power at their disposal.
Ageism is refusing to hire someone who meets all the qualifications for the job because of their age. Refusing to hire someone whose inexperience makes them unqualified for the job is not the same as ageism.
To make the objections folks have here plain: these employees literally do not have the security clearance required to access the data they’re looking at. What they are doing is illegal.
We can and should yell at young people for knowingly doing illegal shit and raiding our government, though. Like, that’s my money they’ve unilaterally and extracongressionally decided to reappropriate with a smirk on their faces. Fuck that.
> We can and should yell at young people for knowingly doing illegal shit and raiding our government, though.
Why just young people? If an old person does it then it's ok? I think GP is wrong about this, but you're inadvertently proving GP's point and making me wonder if maybe there is some ageism going on...
I would hope that most people recognize that different standards for people by age are not ok, but that isn't the same as different standards for different levels of experience and qualification.
This submission was submitted and flagged yesterday: the fact that it's on the front page (for now) means it was rescued from death and implies that opposite of your observation.
> I'll grant you idealism but might that be a consequence of naivete and inexperience?
Very possible too. I'll add that young people have less to lose, or so in their mind. In contrast, a grown-up will have family, kids, and their own pride to take care of. Tons to lose.
As for history, I'm sure there were many counter examples. It's just that I couldn't think of any. The examples I had in mind were Aung San Suu Kyi, Wang Ching-wei, and Thabo Mbeki. Wang's story is particularly interesting. In his youth, he showed remarkable courage when he attempted to assassinate a Qing's royal prince, facing death with heroic resolve. Before his expected execution, he even composed a famous farewell poem. However, in his later years, he underwent a dramatic transformation, becoming a puppet leader for the Japanese invaders. He steadfastly maintained that Japan would emerge victorious and that China's resistance was futile.
USAID was created by Congress. To get rid of it, Congress must pass a bill doing so and the president must sign it. That’s how this country’s fundamental institutions work. Don’t like it? Try to amend the Constitution. That’s what the rule of law means.
GSA houses 18F which created Direct File, which lets people file their taxes for free. This takes money out of the pockets of companies like Intuit, in which my portfolio is heavily invested. Although their stock is up 50% since the introduction of Direct File, I believe it would have been up even more without Direct File. This is taking alpha out of my portfolio and thus food out of my children’s mouths.
I actually just looked up the arguments against Direct File, and the Republicans who oppose it argue that the IRS has no incentive to make sure that you pay the least taxes possible, while third parties do (in order to win your business). I believe this relies on the assumption that the tax code is so complicated that not even the IRS knows what you owe, what with all the special exemptions, tax discounts, etc. and therefore it takes a market to incentivize doing the work to navigate the tax code to get the biggest discount possible.
My reply to that would be that what this really means is that the tax code is too complicated, and keeping the market involved is killing the incentive to simplify it. If it were too simple, TurboTax et al. would go out of business. If Direct File were instituted and people found that they were charged more than they should owe, then this is a pressure to simplify the tax code so that the IRS can definitively tell you the minimum taxes you should pay.
I have personally found that when the government wants more of your money through taxes, they tend to raise taxes or lower credits or do something to incentivize behavior. They don’t tend to try to confuse people into not knowing what they owe and thus only private companies can get me the lowest taxes. So I don’t find that argument persuasive.
I do think the tax code is too complicated, but don’t think that’s a conscious choice by some government official or office. It’s a result of small changes by many generations of people over long periods of time. It does seem like it could be simplified, yet the IRS also seems to know how much most people owe because it’s reflected in forms like W-2s and 1099s and such. So maybe they should just send most people a transmission telling them how much the IRS thinks they owe, and provide the refund or a bill accordingly, and whoever disagrees with the assessment can file.
If Direct File takes away too much revenue from Intuit by handling all of the simple cases, then people with more complex taxes will have to pay quite a bit for their tax software. It might not even make sense to continue producing it. Or at least that could be what Intuit lobbyists are furiously telling republican congressmen.
I don't agree with any of this, but USAID has been involved in many global attempts at colonization and ethnic cleansing. One specific one you could look into is the colonization of Eelam Tamil.
> One underlying motive of the settlement pattern was to change the demographics of the Eastern Province, and it was clearly UNP policy laid down by JR and energetically implemented by Gamini. In Systems H and C 90% of the settlers were Sinhala and 10% Muslim – there were no Tamils although the land was in the Eastern Province, a majority Tamil province.
What? No I mean actual colonization. You can look up the Mahaweli Development programme, it was specifically designed (under the guise of creating fertile land/pastures) to colonize more of the Sri Lankan region. "Somehow" there ended up being cities that were 94% Sinhalese and only Sinhalese-language was used in USAID made documents/guides/brochures, despite being the least used language among 3.
Ah yes, USAID, the agency that provides foreign aid (disaster relief, combatting poverty, providing technical advice) to create a strong, positive impression of the US is "working against your interests".
America is the most successful country in the world, and you want to stop all that to tear it down? So that the richest man in the world can get even richer by directing the US government to his liking? Or what? I really don't understand how you think a failed businessman reality Tv host and a "dark gothic maga" troll are going to be good for America.
So, uh, when you tear it down, before you rebuild, who is going to manage the military? How do we stay competitive in science? Does it seem likely we will recover from a full tear-down quickly enough to stave off permanent damage to our economy and mental health?
The idea that a bunch of yokels working for lulz could tear down and rebuild a system better is daft.
There doesn't seem to be anything interesting in this article, it's simply a Red Channels style blacklist against young people who are auditing a government program. The only reason this was published is because Wired is an intelligence outlet (and has always been.) Otherwise, the publishing of random government auditors' uninteresting resumes would obviously be considered harassment (if not doxxing, like Musk barked.)
Really, all this article says is that if you are an auditor for the commission appointed by the president, we will make sure that this comes up in an aggressively negative way when somebody who you want to work for googles you. It's pure intimidation, masquerading as journalism. It's somehow worse than Bill Ackman hiring trucks with the names of college students protesting a genocide being blasted as antisemites. At least Bill Ackman isn't pretending to be a journalist.
edit: every single article by this "disinformation expert" has been an anti-Trump or anti-Musk article. She has no other beat.
> if you are an auditor for the commission appointed by the president, we will make sure that this comes up in an aggressively negative way when somebody who you want to work for googles you.
You just archeologically unearthed the dictionary definition of accountability. If the people doing the auditing are a goon squad from corporate, what reasonable person should accept their results?
Man, these are some seriously impressive motherfuckers—my resume looks absolutely shameful compared to any one of them, and I'm over a decade older than they are.
This seems broadly good. If you told me a democratic admin had recruited these people, I would think "wow! what a positive signal for the current admin!"
The Obama admin created the US Digital Service — i.e. the unit that “DOGE” has now reappropriated — which attracted and hired folks like Google’s Matt Cutts [0]. The USDS did not, as far as we know, try to sneak in fresh-out-of-college-grads by bypassing the normal hiring process.
I applaud these guys and the work they're doing. Any bureaucracy, public or private, with access to a guaranteed income stream will grow like a tumor. The entire federal govt needs to be audited and gutted. The time for committees, reports and similar half measures is over.
Even taking your statement at face value, as a non-troll, this makes no sense.
Have you ever optimized a slow program? How do you do that? A popular approach is with a flamegraph. It shows the hot parts of the execution; what is burning CPU cycles. If we profiled federal government, we'd find 4 big areas of spending [1]. Social security, medicare, the military, and debt interest. In our flamegraph, these are big fat sections. If you're profiling a program, would you look at this and say, "oh i'm going to spend my time optimizing this function call which takes up .01% of the execution time?" no, you wouldn't (unless you're an intern).
But that's hard, which is why elon isn't doing it. Nobody wants to cut social security because then a bunch of old people would starve to death. Same with medicare. Defaulting on our national debt would be a bad look. And god forbid we give the military less money. So where does that leave us? Even if you truly believe elon cares about making the government more efficient, the approach doesn't make any sense. In the absolute most charitable reading of it, he's just incompetent and he's doing this for show to get some widely supported easy wins (let's get rid of the penny and save $86M/y!) so people will like him. But the more realistic viewing is that he's gutting programs in order to further his own agendas, which is literally the definition of corruption.
There's a saying "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" but you don't become the richest man in the world by being incompetent. You become the richest man in the world through malice.
There is still a sensible positive interpretation. It's possible that the distortionary economic and geopolitical effects of this spending both domestically and abroad has just as severe or worse negative externalities as items with larger budgets. Those externalities could range from inflation, displacing local industries and organic fundraising mechanisms, enabling rent-seeking corruption, overproduction of idle elites, instilling self-crit degrowth ideation, and political polarization/backlash abroad (My Japanese relatives now have a very dim view of Rahm Emanuel and Biden due to their USAID type activities and strings-attached diplomacy of paternalistic progressive cultural imperialism).
A reverse Keynesian effect you could call it - where there are second-order deadweight loss effects from "NGO" grift make-work complex, rather than a synergy.
I don't understand why the editors allowed the engineers' names to be made public. What did they hope to gain by doing this other than making them magnets for harassment and possibly threats?
The identities of the engineers are now unambigiously in the public interest as they now have an impact on the government. These aren't scrappy hackers trolling on internet forums.
They're public servants. Most public servants have their name, position, level, salary, etc listed in public datasets. There is no "doxxing" of public servants. This isn't a usenet.
In normal circumstances, e.g. as contractors I would agree. However, they are not, as far as I can tell they are operating as federal employees. No federal employee name is private.
I do see this (article) as mostly retaliation though. Maybe deserved or not. Hard to tell at this point. But these people are public employees nevertheless, they never had the option for anonymity.
Young people should be happy to see more representation in the federal govt. Among roles of authority it's probably 65+ . They're spending your & your grandkid's prosperity every minute.
People under 55 should be happy about this situation.
> Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.
> While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.
> At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.
> Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.
Their funding has been hard for Congress to vet, and it seems like they do some shady things. Kudos to Elon and his team for cutting us more than $1b/day so far!
It’s not Elon Musk’s place to make spending allocation decisions for the US government. The Constitution assigns that power to Congress. It is not hyperbolic to say that if Elon/Doge can arbitrarily cut spending, then Congress has effectively been abolished, and the US Constitutional order is over.
Now, if Elon wanted to review spending allocations and recommend cuts to Congress, that would be fine. I would be in favor of that, provided he accessed the data in a legal and privacy-respecting way.
Before destroying an entire organization, it’s important to know their true impact and how much it’ll hurt to have them gone. So far, I’ve seen zero evidence that deep thought or analysis went into these decisions. In other words, it’s objectively a careless decision. If it’s not careless, then Elon should be sharing evidence, lengthy discussions on his decisions, etc. Plus, there should be a public comment period because Elon sure as SHIT doesn’t have enough context to understand the full impact.
I, for one, do not like the fact that the richest man in the world, who still owns multiple companies in conflict with our government, gets to unilaterally make these decisions with no input from the public. Not only is it undemocratic, it’s objectively corrupt! You know, that thing where we expect our federal decision makers to not have severe conflicts of interests?
So no, don’t fucking give kudos for shit like this. And a single tweet from one president isn’t enough to justify decisions of this magnitude.
If those allegations are true, sure, reform or shutter the department. But do it democratically. Move fast and break shit is not the correct problem solving model to apply to geopolitics or even federal policy, and it’s absurd that this isn’t self evident.
> Before destroying an entire organization, it’s important to know their true impact and how much it’ll hurt to have them gone
I have to prove my impact every 6 months as an engineer. I expect an entire organization can do the same - the fact there is not a clear impact people can point to speaks volumes.
Every right-wing comment on this page is just asserting stuff. There's no information in any of them. No attempts to educate or inform. No breakdown or analysis of what USAID does and the cost-benefit of shutting them down.
Try doing a little research and writing a paragraph on what USAID does and the pros and cons of shutting them down. It would be good for you.
This is just blatantly false. The 10% number is ridiculous which anyone involved with foreign aid knows. But you can easily tell that the countries want the money from the cases where the US threatens to take away aid over some disagreement and then the foreign countries capitulates. You know these are sovereign nations that can say no to the aid if they don't want it right? You don't just show up without a visa and hand out money without the approval of the foreign government.
The moral arguments against what the left or right do are exactly the same.
Suddenly the left is all concerned about doxxing or unelected bureaucrats in government.
Truthfully politics in America is not about any moral compass - it’s about individual preference to see certain political ideas win or lose.
Instead of pretending politics is based on a set of moral issues, just accept that it’s a set of opinions. Some simply like certain causes, people, or businesses more than others do.
This is where we are, we need to stop complaining and deal with things as the actually exist. I am doing this in my own way, my fear is Elon and Co. hitting Medicare/Medicaid so I am making my own: https://medicare.dev. I think this is going to become more and more common as fed become less and less stable/reliable.
I fully support young folks being put in those high pressure situations. Lets them learn and showcase what young people can do.
I think there are huge benefits when you put together a team of people that usually don't have distractions like kids, intimate relationships, health problems etc that can hinder productivity.
Even more beneficial to a team when you combine the wisdom and experience of older folks with the passion and energy of the youth.
or young folks are passionate, idealistic, lack real-world experience, and idolize heroes, which makes them perfect foot soldiers for carrying out tasks without questions.
