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?
How would we protect ourselves when the rule of law is non-functional?
This definition is quite literally the only check to balance power available to the average person, at least when it worked. There is no longer equality under the law which is dependent on the other components which have also degraded.
Congress is non-responsive to their constituencies.
We are stuck in a positive feedback loop, eventually when the abuses are great society will fall back to the natural state prior to the social contract. These will not be peaceful times.
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.
Well, for his part Biden's DOJ did argue in court against the idea of blanket presidential immunity. SCOTUS disagreed, said POTUS needed more power.
For Congress' part, they did pass laws that make a lot of what Trump is doing now with impoundment of congressional funds, and firing inspectors general explicitly illegal. He's doing it anyway.
But the reason Trump is able to do what he's doing now comes down to the structure of the DOJ being an executive branch he controls. Combined with his immunity from SCOTUS. This means he can argue anything he does isn't a crime, no one will investigate or prosecute him, and he can pardon anyone acting in his direction / direct his DOJ to not prosecute them.
Nothing Biden or Democrats could do about this, because at the end of the day, Republicans decided they deserve this power, and they grabbed it for themselves. It was always there for the taking, they just needed to convince themselves with words and court decisions and speeches that they had the right.
It's hard to unwind that clock. The next admin will may leverage that consolidated power to undo trump harms, but also see the benefits of keeping that power. I pray congress mandates the political independence of certain federal agencies (FBI, doj etc)
What about protecting ourselves from a biased bureaucracy who use their power for their own political ends? There is a history of this happening now like the IRS scandal and I am surprised how quiet people are about the mass migration event into the country from 2020-2024. It's to the point where people actually say it's just a conspiracy theory and disinformation despite it being a primary concern of most voters according to polls. It's hard to argue that DHS and other bureaucracies were completely innocent. At best they were negligent and incompetent but I think most people know they took steps to make illegal immigration and asylum claims easier to do and help fund immigration routes. This wasn't a platform Biden ran on. He did not win a democratic mandate to open up asylum claims to basically anyone who arrived and grant temporary protected status somewhat arbitrarily. I am surprised no one is concerned about un-elected people being able to do all this and escaping any responsibility.
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.
I remember seeing a video of a person in a warehouse making fun of the panic, the warehouse was full of more toilet paper than you knew what to do with. TP companies were probably happy, and the smart move is not to send way more supply than a store can contain, because if demand dies, now you have too much just sitting there. It's much cheaper for them to keep it at their warehouses.
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.
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!
> 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.
> 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.
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.
Where it's going is largely irrelevant I suppose. The only reason the "doge" thing is going on is because Elon needed a way to insert himself into the government, and everybody else involved is too technically inept to realise (or care).
But the effects don't really matter because this is what the American public voted for. As an outsider who's read Daemon and Freedom when are you yanks gonna start the darknet already?
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
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?
> * 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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!".
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
>> 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:
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
The guy who deciphered an ancient scroll destroyed by a volcano is too incurious to possibly understand things unlike the amazing geniuses who fund DEi operas in Peru
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.
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.”
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.
You realize USAID has been a conduit for CIA activities pretty much since its establishment? I mean the hint is the fact its head sits on the National Security Council. Why does a friendly aid organization need a seat at that table?
USAID played a huge role in the Vietnam War by supporting things like “civil defense forces” arming villages against Viet Cong, land reform and “open arms” program to get defectors from the North.
It had little to do with no strings attached foreign aid. It’s mostly been an arm of US covert activities in other countries (providing cover) and a massive, massive slush fund for the CIA (hence the billions going to “undisclosed recipients”).
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 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.”
> 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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"?
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
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.
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/
Since the goals are not clear for now, let's give Trump and Elon the benefit of the doubt, that what they're doing is from the good of their hearts, for the benefit of all the American people.
It's not like they're openly corrupt, narcissistic egomaniacs with history of screwing up people for their personal gain or something. Up till now, especially Trump, they've made huge strides in bettering the country and wellbeing of the people, let's let them cook.
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.
Asking the treasury to do ideological/legal analysis of transactions is the same as giving your bank the responsibility of approving your credit card expenditure based on their idea of what you need/should buy.
The fact that they're going for the payment system and not for contract/orders analysis is exactly the red flag people are and should be concerned about.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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).
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.
The list can go on and on.
A minority of those on the right, don't.
This definition is quite literally the only check to balance power available to the average person, at least when it worked. There is no longer equality under the law which is dependent on the other components which have also degraded.
Congress is non-responsive to their constituencies.
We are stuck in a positive feedback loop, eventually when the abuses are great society will fall back to the natural state prior to the social contract. These will not be peaceful times.
For Congress' part, they did pass laws that make a lot of what Trump is doing now with impoundment of congressional funds, and firing inspectors general explicitly illegal. He's doing it anyway.
But the reason Trump is able to do what he's doing now comes down to the structure of the DOJ being an executive branch he controls. Combined with his immunity from SCOTUS. This means he can argue anything he does isn't a crime, no one will investigate or prosecute him, and he can pardon anyone acting in his direction / direct his DOJ to not prosecute them.
Nothing Biden or Democrats could do about this, because at the end of the day, Republicans decided they deserve this power, and they grabbed it for themselves. It was always there for the taking, they just needed to convince themselves with words and court decisions and speeches that they had the right.
I see the government doing at least two things: setting rules and providing services. Do you want fewer rules or fewer services? Or something else?
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.
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.
Dead Comment
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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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.
He's helping destroy the Federal government because doing so aligns with his interests as a billionaire.
https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/congressional...
I think there's a fear they'll end up on the Kash Patel FBI enemies list:
https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemie...
So, yeah. 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?
Maybe it gets better later in the administration? That’s my hope anyway.
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.
But the effects don't really matter because this is what the American public voted for. As an outsider who's read Daemon and Freedom when are you yanks gonna start the darknet already?
It's a big club...
Deleted Comment
> * 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)
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primar...
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax...
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extend...
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.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-plan-boosts-bud...
Something something promises something kept?
Alternatively, it's possible to increase revenue.
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)
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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!
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.
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.
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At this point, who cares? The democrats in power have proven themselves wholly incapable of doing anything for many years now.
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https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation...
And can incite people against anything he chooses on X, like:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1885964969335808217
and he can certainly act quicker than any checks and ballances. We'll see how the system works to get rid of the chaos monkey on the inside.
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!".
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Occams razor would instead suggest that either a recession or some other form of social instability is not an externality but an objective.
It makes me scared for what the ultimate aim is, but I think at this point it's beyond giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Sleep deprivation, stress and overwork, controlling the lives of participants, targeting at risk populations, etc. are cult programming techniques.
15 of those days are national defense.
9 of those days are what Elon hopes to cut in half.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
The deficit is a huge problem. I don't know how to fix it. But, what DOGE has done so far is exactly the opposite of what makes sense.
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.
Hint: it's not China, the UK or any other foreign government.
It's us silly. We owe ourselves. :)
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.
I don't know how anyone isn't.
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.
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.
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:
https://acoup.blog/2022/07/08/collections-is-the-united-stat...
I think he makes a good case there, even if you are right and by some measurements the US did better in the past.
The US watched the rest of the world burn itself down during WW1 (partially) and during WW2 (almost completely).
There were basically 0 industrialized countries doing better in 1945 than they were in 1928.
The US reached those insane peaks because of a total aberration. It was never going to last.
China and India, for example, have been between 1/3 and 1/2 of the world economy for multiple millennia.
After the Age of Discovery Europe as a whole took over at least 1/3 itself.
The US would do well to adjust to this new reality, but I guess the temptation to make America great again is too strong.
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.
Whether that fear is justified is a totally different topic
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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.
Where do you base that on? China’s GDP is huge. It overtook the whole EU’s GDP.
USAID played a huge role in the Vietnam War by supporting things like “civil defense forces” arming villages against Viet Cong, land reform and “open arms” program to get defectors from the North.
https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/assistance/...
It had little to do with no strings attached foreign aid. It’s mostly been an arm of US covert activities in other countries (providing cover) and a massive, massive slush fund for the CIA (hence the billions going to “undisclosed recipients”).
But of course, that’s exactly what would be oligarchs want.
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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?
It's always projection with these guys.
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.
Welcome to the kleptocracy.
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The US tried tariffs during Japan's rise as an automobile powerhouse. Look where that's left the American auto industry.
Sanctions have their place as a carrot and stick mechanism. But Trump offers no carrots. Only stick.
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.
now look at the deficits.
It’d be a problem if we had to pay it all off tomorrow, but we don’t.
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.
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.
They did already and are planning to again add trillions to our deficit. Go look at it, it's laid out very clearly.
There is no good faith here, these actions are a plundering of the state.
Why is USAID needed most in times when the US is very "economically dominant"?
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.
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.
This is the same guy that nearly tanked PayPal because he was obsessed with rewriting their entire system for Windows.
His PR makes him sound like a founder but he was not.
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!
Removing consumer protection would be something hard to argue against too, but yet, here we are: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfp...
"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.
Hopefully it's obvious at this point: Musk and friends not there to do anything but enrich themselves, and destroy.
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.
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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.
[1] https://github.com/18F
[2] https://analytics.usa.gov/
> 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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
It is not exclusively found in young people, as one can plainly see with the plutocrats in charge today.
FWIW, even when it is justified in a software context, we understand that there will be a (usually large) business cost.
When implementing this in a political context, there's no way to skim over the fact that there will be a huge human cost. But here we are anyway.
[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.]
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
A bold claim. Can I get a list of these nations?
Because last time I checked, if in doubt the US backed who is better for them not for the people of that nation.
And what’s waste is highly political.
In the long run the US will lose lots of its influence in other countries.
> I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric
You need to start caring about politics real fast if you care at all.
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.
Sadly, based on the comments here and elsewhere, HN is not immune to 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"?
Watch the whole video (posted months ago predicting all these actions), but here is the relevant section: https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?t=1201
NYT interview: https://www.nytimes.com/video/podcasts/100000009910862/curti...
Gil Duran did a lot of the reporting on this. https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happe...
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https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-2...
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It's fascinating that people still wonder what kind of goals they may be pursuing.
The President launched a meme coin 48 hours before being sworn in !!! Even crypto scammers were outraged at the audacity of the scam.
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.
[1] https://americafirstpolicy.com/assets/uploads/files/Tales_fr...
Why does an alcoholic crash their car and ruin all their personal relationships?
Why does someone with impulse control problems make a self destructive statement?
Why does a tech billionaire who is clearly intoxicated by his own power and a cocktail of legal and illegal drugs behaving erratically?
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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/
It's not like they're openly corrupt, narcissistic egomaniacs with history of screwing up people for their personal gain or something. Up till now, especially Trump, they've made huge strides in bettering the country and wellbeing of the people, let's let them cook.
LMAO. That's like going to Reddit and asking for relationship advice.
1. Part one on Curtis Yarvin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYrPNvVhKLU
2. Part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpEg4LS3CT0
No affiliation with the show just thought the episodes were enlightening.
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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.
The fact that they're going for the payment system and not for contract/orders analysis is exactly the red flag people are and should be concerned about.
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.
[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
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.
I guess he's got time to run the country too.
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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.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo
> 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.”
* https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration...
Also maybe "Why big tech turned right":
* https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezo...
General right-wing plan:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
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Some of them most certainly could not pass US security clearance.
https://bsky.app/profile/jsweetli.bsky.social/post/3lh7nii7y...
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.
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trill...
Most of what's been discussed so far is culture war dog whistling which won't save any money- or just cutting entitlements and hang the consequences.
*Though of course actually doing so very quickly would cause a recession
Well, not without fascist criminality anyway.
Dead Comment
ok, but just after he fixed twitter bots like he promised, or ships working Autopilot.
same tired old lies, medicare is more efficient than private insurance
If the DoD's auditors can't track down all the expenses, then why would DOGE be any more successful?
Running after bullshit is the low-hanging fruit.
Voters like to vote themselves "free" things, even if it might destroy the economy.
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.
Dead Comment
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.