And now we see what is possible
geohot.github.io
geohot.github.io
But if anyone is curious about the idea that we have too many government bureaucrats, and whether this increases costs, I encourage them to read the findings of the Transit Costs Project. In looking deeply into why transit is so expensive in the US, they found that a major cost was that the US has too few bureaucrats, and instead has to hire extremely expensive consultants.
https://transitcosts.com/about/
This aligns with my understanding from friends/family members who work at state and county agencies: they are rarely able to provide the quality of service people want because they're severely understaffed, and are killing themselves in a sisyphean attempt to meet people's needs.
But "just get rid of 80% of the bureaucrats" isn't how you start that conversation.
See also Noah Smith's 2023 post "America needs a bigger, better bureaucracy":
> I believe that the U.S. suffers from a distinct lack of state capacity. We’ve outsourced many of our core government functions to nonprofits and consultants, resulting in cost bloat and the waste of taxpayer money. We’ve farmed out environmental regulation to the courts and to private citizens, resulting in paralysis for industry and infrastructure alike. And we’ve left ourselves critically vulnerable to threats like pandemics and — most importantly — war.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-...
It’s almost a sad reality most people accept.
Does this mean X is a good place to frequent? No, it does not, just like Twitter wasn't a good place to frequent. I only ever used Twitter passively and I only ever use X in the same way. I do not post and I have no interest in doing so, I do however like that X now allows different viewpoints. While I do not like the increased amount of spam, shitposts, crypto scams and other nuisances which came with the opening up of the platform I see this as a temporary problem which can be solved just like spam on email no longer is a problem - I have been self-hosting my mail since the early 90's and saw the rise of spam as well as its current defeat (which may be temporary due to the ascent of generative AI but that is another story for another time) on my own server.
So, yes, X mostly works, at least for me. I only use it by following links in articles, I never use the site directly, only through a self-hosted Nitter [1] instance, I do not log in nor do I respond to anything. Maybe things are different for those who live on the platform but... maybe that is not a good thing to do anyway?
Twitter was trying make money, X is doing much worse at that than Twitter was. Musk may not care about that and may be fine with the significant drop in valuation since his purchase (he may have had other goals).
Is it the case that we want the government to become much less effective at current goals, with the possibility that it transforms to effectively serve other goals? Of course if you just say that the government is bad, it's easy to argue that making it less effective is good, but "it's bad and needs to change" is not an articulation of an interesting argument.
To come back to your original premise it also remains to be seen how X can end up with a sustainable business model. The same was true for Twitter so this is not a new thing. There is an organised advertising boycott against X which was spearheaded by those who are angry that what they considered to be "their" medium was opened up to the "bitter clingers, garbage, deplorables and irredeemables* (to use but a few of the terms bandied about by the old guard when referring to those who do not abide by their ideology) which will eventually peter out so that is one of the potential avenues. Additional revenue streams may be found by extending X - which in itself is a rather simple and low-bandwidth service - with features like video streaming etc.
Will I use such a service? Most likely not, I never used Twitter and I do not use X since I dislike the format. I also prefer decentralised services over centralised ones so I self-host nearly all services I use. Why then do I not support 'Twitter alternatives' like Mastodon or Threads over X? Threads is connected to Metafacebook which I shun like the plague so that is out just like any other service run by that abomination is. Mastodon is a collection of fiefdoms run by petty tyrants who wield the ban hammer like the old Twitter regime dreamed they could do. I do self-host a number of 'fediverse' services (Peertube, Pleroma, Pixelfed, Lemmy - only Peertube sees any real use, the rest is purely experimental) but I do not see these as alternatives due to their limited reach:
person A posts something on fediverse site B which will never be seen by those who use fediverse site C since that site is run by a petty tyrant who bans everyone on fediverse site B because that site *did not ban* fediverse site D where someone once posted something which the petty tyrant running fediverse site B does not like.
For example, if the transformed government were to fail to reasonably protect the Great Lakes from contamination with industrial byproducts, I would consider the transformation a failure and a bad outcome.
I work for the government. Sure, state government, but still… I take this seriously. You're gonna find out that quality of services falls apart if and when this happens.
This doesn't belong on HN.
They've demanded to fuck around. And they shall commence finding out.
Unfortunately, the ones most intent on around-fucking are almost certainly the ones least likely to connect it to the out-finding.
Did the author even bother to look how the US federal budget is spent?
Social Security, Medicare and defense account for 54% and Trump has promised not to cut these.
11% is spent on interest payments, and since Trump will cut taxes and thus reduce federal income, the government will have to keep borrowing and keep paying even more interest.
Maybe he could cut the 18% of the budget that goes to the states? Oh, but those are mostly benefiting red states. Hmm.
No biggie. I’m sure Elon Musk will figure this out in an afternoon while tweeting and playing Diablo in the White House.
Also, if you're an enemy of the USA, a great moment to attack American interests would be just after 80% of government employees are fired.