The US is busy making the biggest own-goal one could imagine.
From a position of world-wide dominance and respect, it is being destroyed at a rate that is too quick for most to even start to comprehend what the outcome of these actions will be. I suspect the consequences of these actions will be carried for the rest of our lives, as they are not so easy to turn back.
Lots of other countries are standing by watching while the USA has seemingly found enough rope to hang itself.
It’s like the “fish don’t know they are in water” saying. As an American if you weren’t educated to be aware of Pax Americana you very much struggle to understand it. The current world order is far from perfect and many suffer as a result but the people in charge of this effort absolutely benefit from it far more than they seem to understand.
Brexit pales in comparison to the damage that has _already_ been done to the US federal government. The dust just hasn’t settled yet so most of it not visible right now.
As someone who has studied the American constitution and been actively engaged in much civil discourse locally, I firmly believe and comprehend the logic of an unmanageably large “government” being a very bad thing on many levels. Please explain to me your obsession with a massive tax funded “government” and your thinking behind a comment such as the one you made. Why do you think this way? Nothing could be more in line with the American forefathers vision than what trump and Elon are doing by dismantling a grossly overweight, fraud ridden, and useless system that the US calls much of its government. I’m eager for a cogent argument, that blends constitutionality and logic, for such a broken system. Hoping you’re the one to make this argument
Nothing could be more in line with the American forefathers vision than what trump and Elon are doing
the problem with people like you (I sincerely do not mean this in ANY derogatory way, just generalising people that make these arguments) is that you are using “American forefathers” as you see fit. American forefathers would be ROLLING IN THEIR GRAVES seeing and hearing what Trump and Elon are doing. They literally fought against people like the two of them.
If I have too choose between bloated federal government and having a President who thinks he is above the law and his Supreme Court cronies saying so in so many words and having a fucking african immigrant with god access to government computer systems I choose bloated government any day of the week and twice on sunday
There have been a lot of times over the past couple weeks where I've thought "OK, is the US toast now??", and the thing that finally did it for me was Trump's prominent post "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."
Trump announced the rule of law is dead and there has been basically no pushback. I mean, sure, it may have just been bluster, but the Republicans used to put the idea of the Constitution on a pedestal. Now the president is saying, loudly and prominently, that laws don't apply to him (or anyone who is "saving" the country), and it's crickets.
There is no way the US comes back from this in my opinion. I'm not saying something like "collapse" is imminent, but I think the decline is irreversible once the rule of law has been declared null and void.
Also, while I obviously have my opinions, I honestly would be genuinely interested in someone who has a different take (i.e. who thinks Trump's statement isn't as catastrophic as I think it is) to explain their rationale.
The whole issue with the idea that "Trump is destroying democracy," isn't that what Trump is doing is NOT damaging to democracy, or corrupt, or what have you. It is. But Trump will be gone in 4 years. There will be a new Republican nominee. Whatever (and I mean, whatever) that nominee says will be the new party line. And the idea that the Republicans are willing to continue an actual overthrow of law and order in the US is...close to a fantasy. The Republicans are with Trump as long as he is the most popular candidate. As soon as he is no longer useful in that function, he's toast.
As someone from LATAM who is more aware than they should be about the US system of government, I agree that the statement and lack of pushback is catastrophic for what it says about the current climate, but rule of law has been as weak as gypsum board for decades. The US system is full of shiny toys for a populist to cement power, and the only safeguards are decorum and the threat of eventual impeachment (good luck with that!). These issues exist because the American system is old and full of incremental cruft; newer democracies have had the advantage of starting with better safeguards, and there's an inability to actually change the system due to the legal system and Congress being a mess.
Practically speaking, common law is the judicial branch using moonlogic upon moonlogic to create pseudo-laws (Roe v. Wade, Citizens United v. FEC) that may be good or bad but should be made by Congress. If the Constitution is unclear, it should be modified through a democratic process that can actually pass, not be continually reinterpreted in absurd ways by a 9-person court that can be corrupted and has no term limits. Congress is unable to fix itself; the unlimited filibuster in the Senate proves that, and the "pro-forma" session is simply embarrassing. Clear systemic change is excruciatingly difficult, so actions must be taken through fuzzy emergent messes without guardrails like executive orders.
"Is outrageous thing X from this EO illegal? Idk, let's wait months to check with the courts."
The popular comment I see is that institutions are people at the end of the day, so "strong institutions" is just a buzzword, and the current crisis comes from cowardice and inaction. But if the mechanisms aren't there to stop a bad actor in the executive, the best they can do is make some noise (which they should). If they truly bend the rules, the executive can always just write a more unhinged EO, so it all reduces to who has control over actual enforcement.
The problem is widespread; for example, the election system is simply dysfunctional, like Flint water tier. From the basics of gerrymandering, to the electoral college creating absurd things like "swing states" (if you want to give more power to some states, just weight the votes), no real universal national ID, voter suppression, voting by mail is a horrible idea that invites conspiracy theories and is a crutch for the lack of accessibility, voting machines are bad and a crutch (see the French). Not even the schizophrenic rules-set is actually followed; the 2000 election was decided by Supreme Court fuckery. Trump would've been stupid not to try to interfere in 2020; an election was successfully stopped 20 years ago and nothing happened. The most basic democratic institution failed and the priority wasn't "let's fix this immediately, oh my fucking god." So yeah, rule of law has constantly been chipped away for some time, good luck with the midterms.
To be fair to the average American, the idea that "gradually, then suddenly" also applies to the state is something people learn firsthand and hopefully teach their descendants. The history of outsiders only goes so far.
The US just decided to negotiate with Putin directly, leaving Europe out of it even though they're the ones affected by the Russia-Ukraine war, not the US.
And Vance explicitly said that Russia can't be expected to go back to the pre-war borders. In other words, Russia gets what they want (Donbas).
>From a position of world-wide dominance and respect
It already had very low respect (except by paid hacks and client states) and declining world-wide dominance for decades. And the churn rate for those very dissaponting results, reflected in public debt, was huge.
And that's assuming a nation having "world-wide dominance" is a good thing to begin with.
If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on.
I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acting wantonly.
> We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on.
There are no organization or institutions or anything else that matters: only people matter. If people don't bother to have integrity then "institutions" (or anything based around them) are irrelevant.
> Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
Institutions try to make people more than the sum of their parts. The free market pits businesses against each other in a way that harnesses overall economic productivity. We’ve gotten pretty far with our federalized system and balance of branches. Something does seriously need fixing now that polarized parties lead Congress and the courts not to be doing their job checking the executive. And that presidents are chosen more for their charisma than from trust built up by people who actually work with them. A prime minister is chosen by peers, not by a general population that doesn’t know what they’re capable of.
We are told endlessly in the UK that "institutions are strong". This is about as foolishly optimistic a statement as I can recall hearing, from ostensibly serious people. Institutions are not strong. Institutions are made of people. People are weak, corrupt, lazy, stupid, and endlessly self-serving. Institutions are weak.
> We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on.
The wide masses yes - the 1% who is looking to profit immensely from the upcoming chaos not.
DOGE is not about trimming government costs, it is about allowing the large companies to rip off the masses without repercussions (e.g. the planned demise of CFPB or OSHA/DoL) and it is about preparing the transfer of what used to be government-provided services at cost or subsidised to privatised for profit enterprises where the 1% profit (e.g. the dismantling of public schools).
The end game is obvious, neofeudalism: everything that the 99% do shall generate profit for the 1%. We shall own nothing and rent/pay for everything. It begins with five to six figures medical bills at birth and ends with our funeral costs.
I think if you looked at the history of the global economy and geopolitics since 1970 or 1900 pre Federal Reserve, I think you could make an argument that the dystopia that you're worried about already exists.
“Uppers”? I thought the leading theories were MDMA and Ketamine (and recovering from neck surgery), neither of which are best-described by the word “uppers”, nor is that behavior an effect that “uppers” generally have (e.g. cocaine, (meth)amphetamines).
> stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with
I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both conventions and laws is hard to stop. The only mechanism is impeachment, and that as we have seen is _extremely difficult_ to do -- in many cases that has been used frivolously by both parties, but even in the case where it should have been a slam dunk -- Trump's attempted coup -- the most GOP senators were too afraid of their own re-election chances because of Trump's ability to "rile up the masses" (look at Liz Cheney). A climate of fear is an essential part of authoritarianism because it paralyzes those who might be able to take action to ensure that the democratic principles are upheld.
When you have an angry mob attack the capitol building and threaten to kill politicians, and they are pardoned by the person who incited them, that generates a lot of fear.
This is correct. I don't think it is possible to design a democratic system that is impervious to authoritarianism when a large enough percentage of the population is in favor of it. After the last election, it is clear that a slight majority of Americans are either in favor of outright authoritarianism or are at least not turned off by it.
I wonder how much is this is "rational" due to Congress being broken as an institution. Hyper-partisanship and an unchecked filibuster means that Congress is stuck in permanent gridlock. The only way to get anything done is through executive power. But the system wasn't designed to work that way and so the checks on executive power can seem stifling to progress. It seems that many are willing to look the other way if they feel like its the only way to get what they want done. Concern only seems to come into play when its the other side wielding power. And this seems to be true across the aisle. Many on the left were frustrated with Biden's perceived timidity when it came to exercising executive power. And I feel like he was pressured into doing things that he wasn't fully comfortable doing unilaterally (especially regarding student loan forgiveness). Of course, the difference is that Biden spent 40 years in the Senate, understands the role of Congress in government, and had no intention of "ignoring the rules". Trump isn't limited by that type of thinking since he had no experience with, no great knowledge of, or respect for American government.
I would contrast politician knowingly enabling angry mob who attacks the capitol building and threaten to kill politicians ... with the same politician refusing to do the right thing for fear of maybe not being elected again.
All the while pointificating about morals and values.
> I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both conventions and laws is hard to stop.
This isn't true at all.
The main way the President is stopped is through the courts, which is already underway, but Trump has actually prevailed in several decisions (e.g. right to cancel government contracts, right to fire probationary employees) while blocked other (e.g. birthright citizenship).
But it's not one court decision since it can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court (which Trump intends to do on several issues).
Impeachment is a very high bar which is usually reserved for serious violations of the law or process. We aren't anywhere close to that.
Ultimately the system of checks and balances was designed to slow down change. The variety of term limits and actors meant that it would take a significant concentration of resources for a protracted period of time to consolidate power.
The fact that the richest man in the world, acting with at least a visual approval of the next 10-100 richest people in the world has only managed some minor chaos is a testament to how insulated from economic power the US government was (in the grand scheme of things).
Real issues will emerge if such concentration of power is made perpetual.
>>Ultimately the system of checks and balances was designed to slow down change.
I think a good part of the world still doesn't get it. Progress is mostly a outcome of stability, not change, even less rapid change.
This whole concept might sound counter intuitive. But think about it seriously. Exponential growth, when you factor in small losses in between comes when you stick to one process(that generates small gains) for long. Not by making rapid changes to a process(in hopes of making one big gain) for a long time.
Sadly true, the wonder is that the idiot has been showing his hand since at least 2015 and he still was been given another term!?! My guess, the first two years will be a type of cringe humor/horror. Mid-terms will be a political slaughter. Never, ever underestimate the ignorance and naivety of the American voter, especially my generation, the boomers.
It's exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley elite. Between the stupidity and kowtowing it has revealed a startling amount of groupthink and cowardice, even among people I once held as independent thinkers.
Isn't that more or less the behavior that's normally associated with the professional managerial class? That is to say: They throw in with whatever side will give them prestige and privilege.
I highly recommend everyone read the Curtis Yarvin NYTimes interview [linked below] to see the full extent of the intellectual bankruptcy. This guy is apparently seen as some meaningful thinker by the Silicon Valley elite (Vance and Andreesen have quoted him), but in literally his 3rd sentence just straight up lies.
Yarvin's claim: "[In] F.D.R.’s first inaugural address,... he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I’ll take it anyway"
From FDR's speech: "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency..."
Operative phrase: "I shall ask the Congress"
These people are, at best, dishonest and cowardly. Even more disappointing, it's increasingly clear the only indicator of actual intelligence is net worth. This is rather lossy signal, unfortunately.
I think a lot of this “DOGE scenario” couldn’t happen in most of Europe, or Canada, or Australia/New Zealand - due to the US having a presidential instead of parliamentary system of government.
In a parliamentary system, if the Prime Minister wants to merge/abolish/restructure government agencies, it normally just happens - because, most of the time, the Prime Minister can be confident the legislature will vote for any necessary legislation, since the PM’s party/coalition will control the legislature. So, the whole argument that Trump is illegally shutting down government agencies, why would a PM shut something down illegally when they can do it legally? The only exception might be in a minority government scenario, when the PM might not have the votes to get the necessary legislation passed - but, in such a scenario, if they decide to bypass the legislature and shut it down anyway, the legislature likely wouldn’t let them
Similarly, this whole “impoundment” thing - in most parliamentary systems, the executive is under no obligation to spend appropriated funds, and if they decide not to, the legislative majority will not have any problem with it - because, the executive and the legislative majority are basically the same thing. It is only because in the US (and maybe other countries with presidential systems, such as much of Latin America), the legislature gets upset by the executive deciding not to spend appropriated funds, and tries to make it illegal for them to do so. (Although we’ll see what the Supreme Court has to say-don’t be surprised if the current conservative SCOTUS majority decides that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is at least partially unconstitutional, or else renders it judicially unenforceable, e.g. using the political question doctrine.)
Many political scientists argue that the presidential system is inferior to the parliamentary, and produces political instability, gridlock, strongman (caudillo) rule. For a long time, while much of Latin America suffered from many of those problems, the US escaped them - whether due to wealth, cultural protective factors, or just plain good luck. However, with the return of caudillo Trump (arguably in his second term acting even more like a caudillo than in his first) and now the “DOGE scenario”, maybe the US’s luck has finally run out, and its politics are at last turning Latin American.
To be fair, the regime running this playbook simply wants different rules and the people who should stand in their way have spent a decade claiming the existing status quo will stop them.
So, it's really hard to point out that we want to revert to the status quo because the winner of the last election was apathy in first place.
Feds consumed <5% GDP during most non-war time between civil war and WW1. During which time standard of living and economy rose about as much during the post WW2 period of massively growing government and regulation.
It's hard to take these apocalyptic premonitions about federal government reduction seriously.
So you're telling me that government spending was continually going up, and while this happened our quality of life massively and suddenly improved? I feel like reversing this process is very bad.
Reverting to the world of 110 years ago in what way resembles today?
This sound like you are deeply misplacing your confidence in your personal understanding of the world.
Maybe best not to invoke the period with the worst economic inequality in US history as some sort of example?
You're also forgetting the tremendous amount of social unrest during that time because of that inequality (and as a result, the workers rights we enjoy today which largely arose from that period, and the Great Depression, though there have been great efforts to erode them).
…youre saying that life was good from 1870-1910? Reconstruction and the gilded age??
I mean, there was technological and medical improvements, sure, and continued urbanization.
But that’s… those are some of our nations most shameful, inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal government as it exists now was just getting started after we realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local democratic systems were completely broken. More relevantly, we didn’t have cancer researchers, epidemiologists, the NSF, or, most relevantly, nuclear weapons.
Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face, unless they’re young and don’t know anyone older than them, and/or advocates isolationism.
Regardless, this exact story makes it clear that the goal isn’t cutting the size of the government at all — it’s politicizing the civil service, and bringing it under the exclusive control of a supreme executive. They’re not exactly ashamed of it!
Not shocked at all. The US Gov right now is crazy, and I wouldn't go back with a crazy ex without a huge overhaul first.
And yup, it's about as disrespectful a dismissal as you'd expect from a Musk "plan". I'm not surprised they are having trouble
>"Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people's personal contact emails," the memo added.
Wait, they don't keep personal emails on record? I have to fill that out for every single job I apply to. Pretty sure USAJobs and my State job board required it to.
I guess they either aren't answering or these were more senior personell than I thought.
>Despite having the words "National" and "Security" in its title, it was not getting an exemption for national security
Yeah, they're firing all the probation employees and NNSA got caught in the net.
Probation employees btw include some recently promoted senior employees.
And probation is just the first status.
This is a plan designed to progressively cull employees by status - there'll be another round after this.
Even if they could rehire everyone instantly, these people are now ripe for being turned by a foreign adversary like Russia or China. And I bet the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have increased their espionage efforts exponentially over the past few weeks.
And that’s even before we consider that the current administration has shown a tremendous affinity for enemies and dictators while putting the hammer down on allies and friends.
And I nearly forgot the appointment of individuals to the highest positions in charge of state secrets and intelligence, who are either already compromised or highly sympathetic to those enemy regimes.
To those of you who have pushed back on the arguments that the US is heading towards authoritarianism, I hereby present Exhibit A:[0]
> “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.
> By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
> The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
The hallmark of authoritarianism is to be above the law. (Which is why the SCOTUS ruling was so damaging and directly contributing to this.). If you’re not familiar with China, the way things work there is “rule by law” rather than “rule of law”. The difference being that “rule by law” means that those in power can do whatever they want since they make up the laws as they go (like a monarch ruling by decree). Trump’s statement is exactly that. And make no mistake this is not a one-off quip like buying Greenland. His actions so far have made it clear he believes that there should be no restraints on the power of the executive branch. In other words , authoritarianism.
It's a variation on every despotic announcement ever.
* I am the country. I am the law.
* When the president does it, that means it's not illegal.
* Anyone who opposes me is an enemy of the state.
* People loyal to me, prepare for violence.
Trump could pardon Eric Adams. But he won't do it, clearly, to dangle a future criminal charge against him. It's coercion.
Instead, via Bondi and Bove, they have ordered career prosecutors to dismiss the case, and nearly a dozen of those attorney's have resigned instead of following orders. Many of these people clerked with Republican federal judges.
One is Noah Schactman, 38-years old, US attorney, SDNY, three combat tours in Iraq, two bronze stars, Harvard graduate, clerked with Roberts and Kavanaugh. This is his letter resigning and explaining why the order from DOJ superiors was inappropriate and not considered.
Hundreds of thousands of people in civil service and armed forces have taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States. 5 USC 3331. This isn't an oath to a country, political party, president, or a superior. It's an oath to a contract.
What's the biggest difference between a startup and a country?
Aside from the obvious distinction, Musk has no experience running existing corporations with lots on the line to lose, he comes from move fast break things, great for a social media app, who gives a shit, great for literal moonshots, go big or go home.
However when you manage something big, any upside from improving is weighed against its risk of degradation.
What I find confusing is that this is not typical of conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I don't think that's a controversial statement. And I truly believe that's what (at least half of) the people voted.
My best estimation is that they are conservatives in that they want to conserve power that they hold, and they see the government not as a foundation for their corps, but as an enemy, not state as a literal creator of money, but as its dilluter or robber (through taxes), not the state as the basis for the fiction that is a corporation, but as a taxer of them. And their emnity is mostly due to the redistributive role of their state.
And I believe that people vote out of aspirational belonging to a rich class, they think they are rich, or they want to aspire to become rich, or they buy into the establishes morals that entitles the rich to power.
So that's how I wrap my heads around the conservative right overthrowing and destroying the government, they see it as a threat to their established power, or their chances to rise to power.
But I'm just some idiot on hn who hopefully will come back to delete this later
The president is a con man who larps as the richest person on the planet and his biggest accomplishment last term was a giant tax cut for the rich. The "actual" president is the richest man on earth and has a vested interest in destroying anything that can tax him or hold him / his businessess accountable in any way.
Awfully convenient that the richest people in the world think that the proper way to balance the budget isn't by raising taxes, but by burning the whole government to the ground. They have the resources to live in a walled garden for the rest of their lives and they don't care who else gets hurt.
> The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
"What I find confusing is that this is not typical of conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I don't think that's a controversial statement"
I think it'd be fair to call them populist right? I think they couldn't be further from classical conservatism. Chesterton's Fence is a concept that seems foreign to them.
Destroying government and rule of law and replacing it with a violent movement, giving people implicit permission to be brown shirts ("he who saves the country cannot violate the law") isn't just "populist right" in the same way "cancer" isn't an "inconvenience" -- yeah sure technically you could say that, but you probably wouldn't.
> What I find confusing is that this is not typical of conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government
Right, these people aren't classical conservatives in any sense of the word. I would think of most of these people more as libertarians: small government, little regulation or oversight, let the market sort it out.
The striking thing is that the actual conservatives in Congress are sitting on their thumbs, letting this all happen. But I think that's because actual conservativism in US politics is mostly dead, and has been so for a while. Republicans would rather play at culture wars, and cry about spending (that they themselves never rein in, even when they have the power to do so) and taxes (for the rich and corporations of course, that need to be cut).
It is pathetic that it seems like the only prominent Republican that has a problem with all this now is Mitch McConnell, when he's the one who enabled Trump in the first place during his first term, and failed to shut him down when he actually had the power to do so. Be careful what you wish for, Mitch.
59% of Republicans in Congress are newly elected since Trump began his first term (which saw the highest attrition among members of the president's part in modern history). Those who remain are the most aligned with Trump, or at least willing to appear so in order to retain their office.
The American right has (always?) been anti-government overreach traditionally. I don't actually think Trump or Musk are particularly conservative or right wing (they'll say and do what gets them the support) but on this topic they are actually very much in line with political tradition.
I think they're overshooting here and will need to correct, but I get the impression as an outsider that the American people who voted Trump in are sick and tired of a social structure that isn't benefiting them and seems to give them no "out" or way forward. They will take the wild and crazy antics/experiments because hey, it wasn't exactly working before anyway, was it?
American right was always pro government overreach when it comes to cops, military and so on. The are anti government when the government is helping someone they dont like. They are against public schools, public health care, consumer protection, safety rules.
Trump or Musk are very much American right as it always was, except without pretension of respectability.
This is LITERALLY the twitter layoffs playing out again. They fired people who had credentials and other things they needed so had to hire them back. Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes? Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile accurate lists of necessary employees
Very similar to the story about the Supercharger network.
Apparently the boss of the team was told to make layoffs, she did some but not enough to please Musk, so Musk in a face to face meeting demanded she make more. She said they couldn't without affecting delivery.
Musk fired her. Then fired the team. Then hired the team back because she was correct.
But not before lots of ongoing projects got stalled because contacts just disappeared and stopped answering phones.
> The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.
and
> The contractor said he had expected Supercharger projects to provide about 20% of his 2024 revenue but now plans to diversify to avoid relying on Tesla.
Such a fragile ego. A mature manger should be able to handle a subordinate disobeying without throwing a temper tantrum and firing the whole team and damaging the whole company out of spite.
Why people think it’s a good idea to put this wealthy dickwad in charge of one of the most (allegedly) important projects in the current admin is beyond me. Move fast and break things is a stupid policy to apply to public policy.
One goal is to get rid of any critical voices. Only yes-men (or women) will be left standing. It is a test of allegiance, and those that care more about the mission of the organization, or team, customers, users, general public than the boss - are considered to fail. It is core to authoritarianism. Kneel before the king :/
In that case I'd say it seems to have proven effective for Musk multiple times now, so why stop now? In his experience, he can just keep shit-canning feds until something immediately bad happens - say he is sorry and give them a job back.
As others have already pointed out, the real damage is silent, has already been done, and will be suffered by generations to come while being able to blame others.
Problem is, it’s not backfired - the example you cited “worked”, because it rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors.
I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
Makes sense. And isn't this the ol' military trick, that in software dev / project management parlance is now called a "scream test"? I.e. if your unit feels like it's doing nothing but endlessly filling out all kinds of reports, and no one knows which ones are important, the solution is to stop submitting any reports at all - and wait until calls and angry letters from higher-ups begin. That will quickly reveal which reports you need to keep filing, and which you can ignore.
>Rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and their supervisors.
This doesn't make sense to me. The federal government isn't a company making Widget X, where you can gut, tweak, and repair it until you minimize the cost per widget and maximize the number of widgets sold. The government does a lot of things, often in the hopes of results in one or more decades, and there's rarely an easy and immediate way to measure success.
For example, the Surgeon General announced tobacco's link with cancer in 1964. It wasn't until the 1990s that smoking rates really started to fall in any significant way. The federal and state governments have spent decades and billions of dollars to reduce smoking rates, and they've been wildly successful. The tax revenue generated by any person-years alive which were won through that effort will never make up for the billions spent. But those people will contribute more to the economic and social life of the US, and the tobacco settlement deterred other companies from causing so much harm.
Did the twitter employees come back at the same pay or did they ask for much more expensive packages since they'd been identified as crucial to operations?
Sounds like the kind of thing that could end up increasing costs rather than reducing them.
It only "worked" because the key personnel decided to come back. Had they decided to move on to greener pastures, the end result would've been very different.
I'm still waiting for file upload API v2. V1 was only made EOL like what, 9 months ago.. Its totally fine to gut your company when all you need is maintenance mode.
Yes, and the personnel rapidly identified that their new boss is a jerk that has no respect to their work and their life, so why should they work for him, when any boss in random fastfood is probably more capable to their job better that this one idiot, plus private sector pays more...
This is horribly naive. It’s not twitter. There are safety outcomes which need to be considered in safety critical agencies.
I mean can you even claim to make the assumption that the actual key staff were rehired? Can you make the assumption that they are working safely with the resources they need? Can you make an assumption that they have covered the entire scope of the organisation?
Probably not.
Chess is played one piece at a time, not smashing all the pieces off the board.
Valid point, but Twitter's development post acquisition stalled and the company was massively devalued, so I'm not sure that can be considered a positive case.
Yes, using this tactic in the govt is much riskier than a private company. And we won't know in this case if it "works" until after many months. And then deciding whether it "works" is very subjective depending on whether the collateral damage on human lives is acceptable or not.
"works" implies that they are able to a) find those personnel and b) win them back over. It seems like they shokingly cannot do either.
It's also still weird because a lot of the firings focused on probationary workers.Very few would prove themselves in a year, so they did have to defer to key personell in he end to figure out "hey, he needed those people". Except he may not get those worers back.
> but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
Sure, positve for his ego. He didn't care about recovering the supercharger conractors, he didn't care about repairing his adverts' relationships on Twitter and even threatened to sue as if they are obligated to advertise on his plaform. Call me treachorous but I don't think he really cares about making an efficient government. He's just funding his tax cuts.
Getting bureaucrats to fire each other is met with every delay tactic
possible. Might be able to put it off for two years which is all they
need.
Going in crazy like they are doing now, may serve the administration
if they start having department do their own layoffs in a hurry,
because they know otherwise it will be done for then.
It worked with twitter though. The site did not implode like all the naysayers predicted, it's at least as good, if not better than it was, just going off of usage statistics.
This is basically 0 based budgeting, where you get rid of everything and then only add back what you deem to be absolutely necessary. I expect good results.
> Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile accurate lists of necessary employees
It's not about achieving results primarily, it's a public perception game. Trump and Musk are going for the perception of "they do what they say from day 1" - it doesn't matter if what they plan succeeds at all (and if it's struck down by judges, it's just additional fodder for "un-American judges!!!" propaganda), or if what they do actually has the outcome they promised.
The GQP voter base no longer cares about anything but the appearance of "winning", and it's aided by completely off-the-rockers media and influencers.
People should read Elon Musk by Walter Issacson. Here's an excerpt from the chapter on his "algorithm":
> [Step 2] Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.
He thinks this is a feature, not a bug. Is he wrong? I don't think so.
If we fired 25% of the federal govt workforce, it would save 1% from the federal budget.
This has nothing to do with trimming waste and everything to do with replacing the government with loyalists from top to bottom. What comes after that isn't going to be pretty.
If we take Twitter/X as an example of this process, my personal experience has been that it has been degraded to a spams and bot hell shortly after Musk took over.
But my personal experience isn't quantifiable, what is quantifiable is X valuation which, according to Fidelity, has been depreciating and back in Oct. 2024 was estimated at nearly 20% of the original acquisition price.
The only reason you think he isnt wrong is because you think it wont impact you. I hope one day you find yourself in the same situation, even worse, then I hope you remember this comment.
I don't want to live in a world where it's right. Treating people like this, toying with their livelihoods, is wrong, full stop. It might "work" for certain definitions of "work", but it's morally repugnant.
I was going to mention this as well. This is pretty standard musk, delete large swaiths of stuff, see what breaks, and put the essential pieces back. It's supposed to be much faster than meticulous planning.
This sounds like a software developers take. I think it is an algorithm that can work well in non critical systems. I think it is naive in the extreme to apply it to critical systems.
i run into this problem often when building teams, people who fail to understand that the real world is not an algorithm. the very first people i release are those incapable of seeing beyond math.
their failure to see wider context, their failures to understand that massive chaotic fractal tier contexts interplay will forever be these people’s downfalls.
He's assuming everyone will grovel back to him and that this can be undone. That's the wrong part.
Layoffs will often cost you your best employees. Either because you laid them off, because they saw the signs and jumped before the layoffs, or because you end up overworking the post layoffs and they leave over the bad balance. You're never paying 10xer 10x the salary, so the attritiion is usually a matter of when, not if.
people aren't machines. They have their own interests and very few want to feel like they are one step away from being let go.
i don't see how this is (technically) related to the twitter layoffs - and even less how it could be "literally" given that the twitter layoffs where about LAYOFFS and this news item is about reHIRING ... or are you maybe a little challenged with language and what you actually want to say is that in both cases Elon Musk is involved?
> Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes?
"Move fast and break things." /s
Then try to move fast to fix the things you just broke.
(Perhaps government tend to moves slowly for a reason: when a company breaks things customers can go to a competitor, when government breaks where can you go?)
Which is why Congress employs an army of auditors, who audit and report their findings to them.
The difference is, they are largely non-partisan appointments, who are expected to actually do their job, instead of rubber-stamping propaganda pieces. Their work can be verified, and there are consequences to them engaging in fraud, and there's a chain of custody for the evidence they find.
Which is more than can be said for giving a bunch of politically-appointed teenagers read/write access to every single system in the government... Paired with a blanket immunity from prosecution.
Readit News
From a position of world-wide dominance and respect, it is being destroyed at a rate that is too quick for most to even start to comprehend what the outcome of these actions will be. I suspect the consequences of these actions will be carried for the rest of our lives, as they are not so easy to turn back.
Lots of other countries are standing by watching while the USA has seemingly found enough rope to hang itself.
the problem with people like you (I sincerely do not mean this in ANY derogatory way, just generalising people that make these arguments) is that you are using “American forefathers” as you see fit. American forefathers would be ROLLING IN THEIR GRAVES seeing and hearing what Trump and Elon are doing. They literally fought against people like the two of them.
If I have too choose between bloated federal government and having a President who thinks he is above the law and his Supreme Court cronies saying so in so many words and having a fucking african immigrant with god access to government computer systems I choose bloated government any day of the week and twice on sunday
Trump announced the rule of law is dead and there has been basically no pushback. I mean, sure, it may have just been bluster, but the Republicans used to put the idea of the Constitution on a pedestal. Now the president is saying, loudly and prominently, that laws don't apply to him (or anyone who is "saving" the country), and it's crickets.
There is no way the US comes back from this in my opinion. I'm not saying something like "collapse" is imminent, but I think the decline is irreversible once the rule of law has been declared null and void.
Also, while I obviously have my opinions, I honestly would be genuinely interested in someone who has a different take (i.e. who thinks Trump's statement isn't as catastrophic as I think it is) to explain their rationale.
Practically speaking, common law is the judicial branch using moonlogic upon moonlogic to create pseudo-laws (Roe v. Wade, Citizens United v. FEC) that may be good or bad but should be made by Congress. If the Constitution is unclear, it should be modified through a democratic process that can actually pass, not be continually reinterpreted in absurd ways by a 9-person court that can be corrupted and has no term limits. Congress is unable to fix itself; the unlimited filibuster in the Senate proves that, and the "pro-forma" session is simply embarrassing. Clear systemic change is excruciatingly difficult, so actions must be taken through fuzzy emergent messes without guardrails like executive orders.
"Is outrageous thing X from this EO illegal? Idk, let's wait months to check with the courts."
The popular comment I see is that institutions are people at the end of the day, so "strong institutions" is just a buzzword, and the current crisis comes from cowardice and inaction. But if the mechanisms aren't there to stop a bad actor in the executive, the best they can do is make some noise (which they should). If they truly bend the rules, the executive can always just write a more unhinged EO, so it all reduces to who has control over actual enforcement.
The problem is widespread; for example, the election system is simply dysfunctional, like Flint water tier. From the basics of gerrymandering, to the electoral college creating absurd things like "swing states" (if you want to give more power to some states, just weight the votes), no real universal national ID, voter suppression, voting by mail is a horrible idea that invites conspiracy theories and is a crutch for the lack of accessibility, voting machines are bad and a crutch (see the French). Not even the schizophrenic rules-set is actually followed; the 2000 election was decided by Supreme Court fuckery. Trump would've been stupid not to try to interfere in 2020; an election was successfully stopped 20 years ago and nothing happened. The most basic democratic institution failed and the priority wasn't "let's fix this immediately, oh my fucking god." So yeah, rule of law has constantly been chipped away for some time, good luck with the midterms.
To be fair to the average American, the idea that "gradually, then suddenly" also applies to the state is something people learn firsthand and hopefully teach their descendants. The history of outsiders only goes so far.
>...concerns that the U.S. will abandon Europe and align with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Nothing to worry about with Musk doing nazi salutes and Trump looking at hanging with the nearest we have to a modern reich.
And Vance explicitly said that Russia can't be expected to go back to the pre-war borders. In other words, Russia gets what they want (Donbas).
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It already had very low respect (except by paid hacks and client states) and declining world-wide dominance for decades. And the churn rate for those very dissaponting results, reflected in public debt, was huge.
And that's assuming a nation having "world-wide dominance" is a good thing to begin with.
I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acting wantonly.
There are no organization or institutions or anything else that matters: only people matter. If people don't bother to have integrity then "institutions" (or anything based around them) are irrelevant.
"There are no institutions, only people." — https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395 (possibly quoting Papandreou)
In the US context:
> Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
* https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-11-02-010...
The wide masses yes - the 1% who is looking to profit immensely from the upcoming chaos not.
DOGE is not about trimming government costs, it is about allowing the large companies to rip off the masses without repercussions (e.g. the planned demise of CFPB or OSHA/DoL) and it is about preparing the transfer of what used to be government-provided services at cost or subsidised to privatised for profit enterprises where the 1% profit (e.g. the dismantling of public schools).
The end game is obvious, neofeudalism: everything that the 99% do shall generate profit for the 1%. We shall own nothing and rent/pay for everything. It begins with five to six figures medical bills at birth and ends with our funeral costs.
2014 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...
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I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both conventions and laws is hard to stop. The only mechanism is impeachment, and that as we have seen is _extremely difficult_ to do -- in many cases that has been used frivolously by both parties, but even in the case where it should have been a slam dunk -- Trump's attempted coup -- the most GOP senators were too afraid of their own re-election chances because of Trump's ability to "rile up the masses" (look at Liz Cheney). A climate of fear is an essential part of authoritarianism because it paralyzes those who might be able to take action to ensure that the democratic principles are upheld.
When you have an angry mob attack the capitol building and threaten to kill politicians, and they are pardoned by the person who incited them, that generates a lot of fear.
I wonder how much is this is "rational" due to Congress being broken as an institution. Hyper-partisanship and an unchecked filibuster means that Congress is stuck in permanent gridlock. The only way to get anything done is through executive power. But the system wasn't designed to work that way and so the checks on executive power can seem stifling to progress. It seems that many are willing to look the other way if they feel like its the only way to get what they want done. Concern only seems to come into play when its the other side wielding power. And this seems to be true across the aisle. Many on the left were frustrated with Biden's perceived timidity when it came to exercising executive power. And I feel like he was pressured into doing things that he wasn't fully comfortable doing unilaterally (especially regarding student loan forgiveness). Of course, the difference is that Biden spent 40 years in the Senate, understands the role of Congress in government, and had no intention of "ignoring the rules". Trump isn't limited by that type of thinking since he had no experience with, no great knowledge of, or respect for American government.
All the while pointificating about morals and values.
This isn't true at all.
The main way the President is stopped is through the courts, which is already underway, but Trump has actually prevailed in several decisions (e.g. right to cancel government contracts, right to fire probationary employees) while blocked other (e.g. birthright citizenship).
But it's not one court decision since it can be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court (which Trump intends to do on several issues).
Impeachment is a very high bar which is usually reserved for serious violations of the law or process. We aren't anywhere close to that.
The fact that the richest man in the world, acting with at least a visual approval of the next 10-100 richest people in the world has only managed some minor chaos is a testament to how insulated from economic power the US government was (in the grand scheme of things).
Real issues will emerge if such concentration of power is made perpetual.
I think a good part of the world still doesn't get it. Progress is mostly a outcome of stability, not change, even less rapid change.
This whole concept might sound counter intuitive. But think about it seriously. Exponential growth, when you factor in small losses in between comes when you stick to one process(that generates small gains) for long. Not by making rapid changes to a process(in hopes of making one big gain) for a long time.
It's exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley elite. Between the stupidity and kowtowing it has revealed a startling amount of groupthink and cowardice, even among people I once held as independent thinkers.
Yarvin's claim: "[In] F.D.R.’s first inaugural address,... he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or I’ll take it anyway"
From FDR's speech: "I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency..."
Operative phrase: "I shall ask the Congress"
These people are, at best, dishonest and cowardly. Even more disappointing, it's increasingly clear the only indicator of actual intelligence is net worth. This is rather lossy signal, unfortunately.
Interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in...
In a parliamentary system, if the Prime Minister wants to merge/abolish/restructure government agencies, it normally just happens - because, most of the time, the Prime Minister can be confident the legislature will vote for any necessary legislation, since the PM’s party/coalition will control the legislature. So, the whole argument that Trump is illegally shutting down government agencies, why would a PM shut something down illegally when they can do it legally? The only exception might be in a minority government scenario, when the PM might not have the votes to get the necessary legislation passed - but, in such a scenario, if they decide to bypass the legislature and shut it down anyway, the legislature likely wouldn’t let them
Similarly, this whole “impoundment” thing - in most parliamentary systems, the executive is under no obligation to spend appropriated funds, and if they decide not to, the legislative majority will not have any problem with it - because, the executive and the legislative majority are basically the same thing. It is only because in the US (and maybe other countries with presidential systems, such as much of Latin America), the legislature gets upset by the executive deciding not to spend appropriated funds, and tries to make it illegal for them to do so. (Although we’ll see what the Supreme Court has to say-don’t be surprised if the current conservative SCOTUS majority decides that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is at least partially unconstitutional, or else renders it judicially unenforceable, e.g. using the political question doctrine.)
Many political scientists argue that the presidential system is inferior to the parliamentary, and produces political instability, gridlock, strongman (caudillo) rule. For a long time, while much of Latin America suffered from many of those problems, the US escaped them - whether due to wealth, cultural protective factors, or just plain good luck. However, with the return of caudillo Trump (arguably in his second term acting even more like a caudillo than in his first) and now the “DOGE scenario”, maybe the US’s luck has finally run out, and its politics are at last turning Latin American.
So, it's really hard to point out that we want to revert to the status quo because the winner of the last election was apathy in first place.
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It's hard to take these apocalyptic premonitions about federal government reduction seriously.
See for instance: https://www.investopedia.com/gilded-age-7692919
You're also forgetting the tremendous amount of social unrest during that time because of that inequality (and as a result, the workers rights we enjoy today which largely arose from that period, and the Great Depression, though there have been great efforts to erode them).
I mean, there was technological and medical improvements, sure, and continued urbanization.
But that’s… those are some of our nations most shameful, inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal government as it exists now was just getting started after we realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local democratic systems were completely broken. More relevantly, we didn’t have cancer researchers, epidemiologists, the NSF, or, most relevantly, nuclear weapons.
Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face, unless they’re young and don’t know anyone older than them, and/or advocates isolationism.
Regardless, this exact story makes it clear that the goal isn’t cutting the size of the government at all — it’s politicizing the civil service, and bringing it under the exclusive control of a supreme executive. They’re not exactly ashamed of it!
If even half of NPR's report is true, the way in which it was conducted was grossly cruel and with complete ignorance.
DOGE and it's supporters are quiet literally playing like a child with the levers that decide if you wake up tomorrow.
And yup, it's about as disrespectful a dismissal as you'd expect from a Musk "plan". I'm not surprised they are having trouble
>"Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people's personal contact emails," the memo added.
Wait, they don't keep personal emails on record? I have to fill that out for every single job I apply to. Pretty sure USAJobs and my State job board required it to.
I guess they either aren't answering or these were more senior personell than I thought.
>Despite having the words "National" and "Security" in its title, it was not getting an exemption for national security
This just gave me a chuckle and I had to share.
And probation is just the first status.
This is a plan designed to progressively cull employees by status - there'll be another round after this.
And that’s even before we consider that the current administration has shown a tremendous affinity for enemies and dictators while putting the hammer down on allies and friends.
And I nearly forgot the appointment of individuals to the highest positions in charge of state secrets and intelligence, who are either already compromised or highly sympathetic to those enemy regimes.
> “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.
> By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
> The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
The hallmark of authoritarianism is to be above the law. (Which is why the SCOTUS ruling was so damaging and directly contributing to this.). If you’re not familiar with China, the way things work there is “rule by law” rather than “rule of law”. The difference being that “rule by law” means that those in power can do whatever they want since they make up the laws as they go (like a monarch ruling by decree). Trump’s statement is exactly that. And make no mistake this is not a one-off quip like buying Greenland. His actions so far have made it clear he believes that there should be no restraints on the power of the executive branch. In other words , authoritarianism.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/politics/trump-saves-c...
Be careful, America, what you wished for.
Instead, via Bondi and Bove, they have ordered career prosecutors to dismiss the case, and nearly a dozen of those attorney's have resigned instead of following orders. Many of these people clerked with Republican federal judges.
One is Noah Schactman, 38-years old, US attorney, SDNY, three combat tours in Iraq, two bronze stars, Harvard graduate, clerked with Roberts and Kavanaugh. This is his letter resigning and explaining why the order from DOJ superiors was inappropriate and not considered.
https://bsky.app/profile/noahshachtman.bsky.social/post/3li5...
Hundreds of thousands of people in civil service and armed forces have taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States. 5 USC 3331. This isn't an oath to a country, political party, president, or a superior. It's an oath to a contract.
Aside from the obvious distinction, Musk has no experience running existing corporations with lots on the line to lose, he comes from move fast break things, great for a social media app, who gives a shit, great for literal moonshots, go big or go home.
However when you manage something big, any upside from improving is weighed against its risk of degradation.
What I find confusing is that this is not typical of conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I don't think that's a controversial statement. And I truly believe that's what (at least half of) the people voted.
My best estimation is that they are conservatives in that they want to conserve power that they hold, and they see the government not as a foundation for their corps, but as an enemy, not state as a literal creator of money, but as its dilluter or robber (through taxes), not the state as the basis for the fiction that is a corporation, but as a taxer of them. And their emnity is mostly due to the redistributive role of their state.
And I believe that people vote out of aspirational belonging to a rich class, they think they are rich, or they want to aspire to become rich, or they buy into the establishes morals that entitles the rich to power.
So that's how I wrap my heads around the conservative right overthrowing and destroying the government, they see it as a threat to their established power, or their chances to rise to power.
But I'm just some idiot on hn who hopefully will come back to delete this later
The president is a con man who larps as the richest person on the planet and his biggest accomplishment last term was a giant tax cut for the rich. The "actual" president is the richest man on earth and has a vested interest in destroying anything that can tax him or hold him / his businessess accountable in any way.
Awfully convenient that the richest people in the world think that the proper way to balance the budget isn't by raising taxes, but by burning the whole government to the ground. They have the resources to live in a walled garden for the rest of their lives and they don't care who else gets hurt.
Please let’s not popularize the label “progressive right,” our political labels are already a mess in the US but that is just too much.
I think it'd be fair to call them populist right? I think they couldn't be further from classical conservatism. Chesterton's Fence is a concept that seems foreign to them.
Right, these people aren't classical conservatives in any sense of the word. I would think of most of these people more as libertarians: small government, little regulation or oversight, let the market sort it out.
The striking thing is that the actual conservatives in Congress are sitting on their thumbs, letting this all happen. But I think that's because actual conservativism in US politics is mostly dead, and has been so for a while. Republicans would rather play at culture wars, and cry about spending (that they themselves never rein in, even when they have the power to do so) and taxes (for the rich and corporations of course, that need to be cut).
It is pathetic that it seems like the only prominent Republican that has a problem with all this now is Mitch McConnell, when he's the one who enabled Trump in the first place during his first term, and failed to shut him down when he actually had the power to do so. Be careful what you wish for, Mitch.
59% of Republicans in Congress are newly elected since Trump began his first term (which saw the highest attrition among members of the president's part in modern history). Those who remain are the most aligned with Trump, or at least willing to appear so in order to retain their office.
I think they're overshooting here and will need to correct, but I get the impression as an outsider that the American people who voted Trump in are sick and tired of a social structure that isn't benefiting them and seems to give them no "out" or way forward. They will take the wild and crazy antics/experiments because hey, it wasn't exactly working before anyway, was it?
> I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Trump or Musk are very much American right as it always was, except without pretension of respectability.
It's all a matter of who gets to define the "over" in "overreach".
Laws which enforce racial segregation are overreach, for those in the American left who support equality.
Federal laws which override state segregation are overreach, for those in the American right who support structural racism.
Marijuana prohibition laws - overreach, or not?
Anti-mask laws - overreach, or not?
Required prayer in school - overreach, or not?
Anti-pollution laws - overreach, or not?
Apparently the boss of the team was told to make layoffs, she did some but not enough to please Musk, so Musk in a face to face meeting demanded she make more. She said they couldn't without affecting delivery.
Musk fired her. Then fired the team. Then hired the team back because she was correct.
But not before lots of ongoing projects got stalled because contacts just disappeared and stopped answering phones.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside...
> The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees said, was not pleased with Tinucci’s presentation and wanted more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by firing her and her entire 500-member team.
and
> The contractor said he had expected Supercharger projects to provide about 20% of his 2024 revenue but now plans to diversify to avoid relying on Tesla.
As others have already pointed out, the real damage is silent, has already been done, and will be suffered by generations to come while being able to blame others.
What is he thinking how this will turn out?
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I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
A strategy that seems to be hot in the US, but is an utter ethical abomination and shameful.
This doesn't make sense to me. The federal government isn't a company making Widget X, where you can gut, tweak, and repair it until you minimize the cost per widget and maximize the number of widgets sold. The government does a lot of things, often in the hopes of results in one or more decades, and there's rarely an easy and immediate way to measure success.
For example, the Surgeon General announced tobacco's link with cancer in 1964. It wasn't until the 1990s that smoking rates really started to fall in any significant way. The federal and state governments have spent decades and billions of dollars to reduce smoking rates, and they've been wildly successful. The tax revenue generated by any person-years alive which were won through that effort will never make up for the billions spent. But those people will contribute more to the economic and social life of the US, and the tobacco settlement deterred other companies from causing so much harm.
Sounds like the kind of thing that could end up increasing costs rather than reducing them.
I mean can you even claim to make the assumption that the actual key staff were rehired? Can you make the assumption that they are working safely with the resources they need? Can you make an assumption that they have covered the entire scope of the organisation?
Probably not.
Chess is played one piece at a time, not smashing all the pieces off the board.
It's also still weird because a lot of the firings focused on probationary workers.Very few would prove themselves in a year, so they did have to defer to key personell in he end to figure out "hey, he needed those people". Except he may not get those worers back.
> but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments has been positive, not negative.
Sure, positve for his ego. He didn't care about recovering the supercharger conractors, he didn't care about repairing his adverts' relationships on Twitter and even threatened to sue as if they are obligated to advertise on his plaform. Call me treachorous but I don't think he really cares about making an efficient government. He's just funding his tax cuts.
Degrade the service of a website, and maybe it loads a little funny; degrade the services of a government and people die.
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Going in crazy like they are doing now, may serve the administration if they start having department do their own layoffs in a hurry, because they know otherwise it will be done for then.
Because good governance is not the goal.
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This is basically 0 based budgeting, where you get rid of everything and then only add back what you deem to be absolutely necessary. I expect good results.
more guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43061481
I agree. Federal credential management and safekeeping is not particularly well crafted.
It's not about achieving results primarily, it's a public perception game. Trump and Musk are going for the perception of "they do what they say from day 1" - it doesn't matter if what they plan succeeds at all (and if it's struck down by judges, it's just additional fodder for "un-American judges!!!" propaganda), or if what they do actually has the outcome they promised.
The GQP voter base no longer cares about anything but the appearance of "winning", and it's aided by completely off-the-rockers media and influencers.
> [Step 2] Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.
He thinks this is a feature, not a bug. Is he wrong? I don't think so.
This has nothing to do with trimming waste and everything to do with replacing the government with loyalists from top to bottom. What comes after that isn't going to be pretty.
Twitter lost 84% of its revenue.
Do you want the USA GDP to shrink that much over the next few years?
And then we can stop and check - if he is still fine after it, then maybe we didn't trim enough.
It's easy to trim other people when you are completely insulated from the consequences.
Didn't facebook end up changing that?
There's some things you can't undo once they break.
their failure to see wider context, their failures to understand that massive chaotic fractal tier contexts interplay will forever be these people’s downfalls.
sisyphean masochists.
He's assuming everyone will grovel back to him and that this can be undone. That's the wrong part.
Layoffs will often cost you your best employees. Either because you laid them off, because they saw the signs and jumped before the layoffs, or because you end up overworking the post layoffs and they leave over the bad balance. You're never paying 10xer 10x the salary, so the attritiion is usually a matter of when, not if.
people aren't machines. They have their own interests and very few want to feel like they are one step away from being let go.
Doesn’t work in with people though. You will be deemed as unreliable.
Alliances will form without you as no one needs a partner that can leave you standing at any moment.
Running the company is the very opposite of running a country.
The feedback loop is weeks vs years/decades.
However this is people's livelihoods, mortgages, kids etc. being on the receiving end of it through no fault of your own must be awful.
Or maybe not.
When it comes to government, yes.
"Move fast and break things." /s
Then try to move fast to fix the things you just broke.
(Perhaps government tend to moves slowly for a reason: when a company breaks things customers can go to a competitor, when government breaks where can you go?)
Dead Comment
I'm also not a fan of the fire and rehire method, either.
It does feel like more time should have been spent, from an outside agency, watching and deciding.
What they're doing now is an old trick, and I'm surprised more people don't tell them to screw off.
Which is why Congress employs an army of auditors, who audit and report their findings to them.
The difference is, they are largely non-partisan appointments, who are expected to actually do their job, instead of rubber-stamping propaganda pieces. Their work can be verified, and there are consequences to them engaging in fraud, and there's a chain of custody for the evidence they find.
Which is more than can be said for giving a bunch of politically-appointed teenagers read/write access to every single system in the government... Paired with a blanket immunity from prosecution.