The conservative thesis is that DOGE is going through and eliminating wasteful spending, which is simple and, if you trust them, a good goal.
The liberal thesis is that DOGE is like an army going through government institutions, replacing the old guard with new loyalists, and then removing safety nets, which results in people having to sell their assets (like housing, farms, or small businesses) when disaster (not being able to pay for fertilizer, not being able to pay for healthcare, suppliers costs going up 25%, etc.) hits them.
It certainly feels like GOP policy is to cause disaster, and that makes sense if you understand that it costs money to deal with a disaster, people sell assets to pay for disaster response, and then rich people are able to buy those assets. Those assets are then rented back to the sellers, creating a persistent system of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, which is very consistent with tax cuts for the rich.
The right's take on this also seems premised on the idea that the bureaucracy has just grown and grown (it's been fairly steady over time, and leans small when compared to our international peers, so...) and that nobody's worked on efficiency or tracking work that whole time, when in fact there's been a shitload of that and, while you can find waste or even, rarely, fraud, it is not rampant, unless you define waste or fraud as "doing things I don't want them to, even though it's in the budget". In fact, on the fraud front, a lot of government inefficiency has been deliberately introduced—to fight fraud or corruption. So even if you find something inefficient, you better be careful or you'll be undoing an anti-fraud or anti-corruption measure.
You see stuff like Elon asking for those dumb-ass "five things" emails when a large proportion of government workers already have their productivity tracked multiple ways, many of them quite objective and hard to fake, because people who are not complete morons have already worked on these problems.
This is government based on dumb right-wing misconceptions about how government works. Or, if the people doing it aren't true believers, at least playing to those incorrect notions among voters.
Very telling what he said on The Joe Rogan Experience, that he has found things that are so jaw dropping that he can't point them out because it would get him killed.
But then he has some young nerds with no history dealing with that "sensitive" information putting them in a place where they can then extort those people, or sell that information to others.
That it would then go against the cause, because it would stop his important work, he said.
So I wonder how he's treating Republicans with dirt on their hands, if the then gives them a pass, "for the cause".
Because the real thing he should be doing would then to anonymously blow the whistle on them in such a way that it can't be traced back to him. I'm not sure if he'd do that, even if it's what "the people" he's working for, that is, the American taxpayers, deserve. And he says he's doing it all for them.
Or indeed, they are soldiers and they're destroying the government because they're working for/with people who'd be unable to destroy it with direct military action.
In that light, the absence of the 'profit' stage is sort of the point. It's mysterious if you have to come up with a narrative where somebody benefits from the destruction. If it's just sabotage, it serves as its own purpose and nobody around here needs to benefit or indeed survive it.
And will anyone talented enough to put all the pieces back together want to work for the federal government after all this? Feels like a good way of ensuring the only path forward is to pay large sums to private enterprise to fill the gaps.
That's assuming that the expectation is that the government keeps the same services afterwards. It seems the strategy is closer to making services dysfunctional to the point where they're unsalvageable, then cut funding for them because they don't work.
OR, it's really easy to prove the government doesn't do anything valuable when you run the government.
My concern is that they don't believe this across all pieces of the government, and they do believe it in ways that only impact everyone else negatively.
all those perspectives have truth to them but you're missing a third: they are preparing for automation.
you can drastically reduce workforce sizes at all companies. AI hasn't done this yet because there's no hole to fill; people fill the hole happily. but.. it's coming and we all know how behind gov (and many businesses) navigate compared to our best tech companies. this reduction in gov size will happen first, then maybe 2026 or whenever you'll hear stories of legislation to increase pay for gov workers and congress to attract better talent.
This isn't preparing in the slightest. This is impulse-response. Taking a sledgehammer to our institutions and seeing what happens. A cruel child picking apart the legs of a spider just to see how many it can before it dies.
Adding performance guidelines has been done before. It was done in a systematic way that tried very carefully to avoid disruption to functions[1]. DOGE is forcing its way into offices and physically compromising internal data systems in order to feed data into an experiment.
They said they want "shock and awe" applied against the bureaucracy, to break it down and make it so it can't resist illegal directives. Plus they want to remove its ability to effectively regulate industry.
Why speculate about this when they said exactly what they're gonna do, and why, and then started doing what they said they would?
I’m not sure if what you’re proposing as a libel thesis actually is. Keep in mind the Heritage Foundation wrote the literal playbook (Project 2025) that the Trump admin is clearly following. In P2025 they clearly call out the intent to dismantle the U.S. government, remove safeguards and checks against presidential power and replace career public servants with Trump loyalists by the 10s of thousands.
That’s not some liberal talking point. That’s straight from conservatives. Feel free to see how far along they are in implementing P2025 here:
Project 2025 architect and current head of the office of management and budget said, on video:
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.
It is frustrating that the conversation around DOGE becomes "well we can all at least agree that efficiency is needed, right?"
The government is openly lying about nearly every aspect of its efficiency efforts, and this is not debatable. The only debate is whether they are lying to the courts or to the American public.
They tell the public that Elon Musk, the leader of DOGE, is conducting mass firings, canceling contracts and programs, canceling building leases, etc. Then they go to court and say that Elon Musk is not in charge of DOGE (and not even a part of DOGE at all), that DOGE and OPM do not make any directives about firings in other agencies, that federal agencies are independently determining which contracts to cancel, etc.
Republican Senators have been talking about needing better communication with Musk as he cuts programs, but the government tells federal judges that it's outrageous to suggest that Musk is cutting programs.
Anyone is free to believe that this is good or acceptable, but then they should say that. Say that reducing the deficit is a valid rationale for lying to the courts, lying to the public, obscuring the chain of command, violating duly enacted laws, and violating lawful court orders. It's dishonest to look at criticism and say "what, do people have a problem with efficiency?"
I wonder if some of these humanitarian projects are "wasting the money" on helping three letter agencies manage and finance foreign activities. Then there comes some tech billionaire with a chainsaw and thinks it's funny how he stopped the funding and was cheering about it without noticing what he just did.
Readit News
The liberal thesis is that DOGE is like an army going through government institutions, replacing the old guard with new loyalists, and then removing safety nets, which results in people having to sell their assets (like housing, farms, or small businesses) when disaster (not being able to pay for fertilizer, not being able to pay for healthcare, suppliers costs going up 25%, etc.) hits them.
It certainly feels like GOP policy is to cause disaster, and that makes sense if you understand that it costs money to deal with a disaster, people sell assets to pay for disaster response, and then rich people are able to buy those assets. Those assets are then rented back to the sellers, creating a persistent system of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, which is very consistent with tax cuts for the rich.
Claiming something is "fraud" removes opposition to cancelling it. This isn't 5d chess, it is 1d chess.
You see stuff like Elon asking for those dumb-ass "five things" emails when a large proportion of government workers already have their productivity tracked multiple ways, many of them quite objective and hard to fake, because people who are not complete morons have already worked on these problems.
This is government based on dumb right-wing misconceptions about how government works. Or, if the people doing it aren't true believers, at least playing to those incorrect notions among voters.
Dead Comment
But then he has some young nerds with no history dealing with that "sensitive" information putting them in a place where they can then extort those people, or sell that information to others.
That it would then go against the cause, because it would stop his important work, he said.
So I wonder how he's treating Republicans with dirt on their hands, if the then gives them a pass, "for the cause".
Because the real thing he should be doing would then to anonymously blow the whistle on them in such a way that it can't be traced back to him. I'm not sure if he'd do that, even if it's what "the people" he's working for, that is, the American taxpayers, deserve. And he says he's doing it all for them.
In that light, the absence of the 'profit' stage is sort of the point. It's mysterious if you have to come up with a narrative where somebody benefits from the destruction. If it's just sabotage, it serves as its own purpose and nobody around here needs to benefit or indeed survive it.
My concern is that they don't believe this across all pieces of the government, and they do believe it in ways that only impact everyone else negatively.
you can drastically reduce workforce sizes at all companies. AI hasn't done this yet because there's no hole to fill; people fill the hole happily. but.. it's coming and we all know how behind gov (and many businesses) navigate compared to our best tech companies. this reduction in gov size will happen first, then maybe 2026 or whenever you'll hear stories of legislation to increase pay for gov workers and congress to attract better talent.
We know the hack and slash method leads to more corruption and doesn't produce savings.
The resources like 18f would have been critical for what you are describing above.
'Agentic AI' is still a pipe dream, context is still required for application of what we know it can do anyway.
Nothing shows any inkling that DOGE has the appropriate SME's in place. If they do they better start communicating intent and proving themselves.
Right now it seems that they are rank amateurs who are nothing more than an impediment to efficient, effective government.
This isn't preparing in the slightest. This is impulse-response. Taking a sledgehammer to our institutions and seeing what happens. A cruel child picking apart the legs of a spider just to see how many it can before it dies.
Adding performance guidelines has been done before. It was done in a systematic way that tried very carefully to avoid disruption to functions[1]. DOGE is forcing its way into offices and physically compromising internal data systems in order to feed data into an experiment.
1. https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/bkgrd/bri...
Why speculate about this when they said exactly what they're gonna do, and why, and then started doing what they said they would?
Also, how do we plan automating park rangers ?
That’s not some liberal talking point. That’s straight from conservatives. Feel free to see how far along they are in implementing P2025 here:
https://www.project2025.observer/
We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.
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The government is openly lying about nearly every aspect of its efficiency efforts, and this is not debatable. The only debate is whether they are lying to the courts or to the American public.
They tell the public that Elon Musk, the leader of DOGE, is conducting mass firings, canceling contracts and programs, canceling building leases, etc. Then they go to court and say that Elon Musk is not in charge of DOGE (and not even a part of DOGE at all), that DOGE and OPM do not make any directives about firings in other agencies, that federal agencies are independently determining which contracts to cancel, etc.
Republican Senators have been talking about needing better communication with Musk as he cuts programs, but the government tells federal judges that it's outrageous to suggest that Musk is cutting programs.
Anyone is free to believe that this is good or acceptable, but then they should say that. Say that reducing the deficit is a valid rationale for lying to the courts, lying to the public, obscuring the chain of command, violating duly enacted laws, and violating lawful court orders. It's dishonest to look at criticism and say "what, do people have a problem with efficiency?"
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