Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

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I was pretty sure someone was going to say something like that.

Musk didn't, of course. Neither did any of the cabinet members win an election for that position. Neither did any of the cabinet members or advisors of any previous administration.

But Musk being appointed is a consequence of Trump's election, just like all cabinet members, advisors, and so on for every previous administration. You elect the person, you get their crew.

So people like Musk are "taking over" from other people who did not themselves win an election, but were put in positions of power by those who did win elections.

If you're going to argue that Musk wasn't elected (and he wasn't), then you also have to note that every person that is getting replaced by a Trump appointee is also someone who wasn't elected.

I may not like the people Trump is putting in position - they, um, don't seem like A players - but this particular criticism is unfair. Trump won a democratic election; he appoints his people just like all previous administrations did.

Except the person I responded to specifically said he was responding to the headline. If it really is the PayPal mafia taking over and not them subservient to them as a part of the Trump Administration, that would be bad.

Them being appointed to cabinet positions (or cabinet adjacent) is not in of itself bad / against democracy.

I can't remember ever seeing a private citizen so publicly a part of a presidential campaign, with the explicit expectation that a new government department with novel scope and power would be created for them to control.

The potential for this may have been latent all along, but it's incorrect or disingenuous to say that this is anything like the normal allocation of cabinet roles.

> I can't remember ever seeing a private citizen so publicly a part of a presidential campaign

What does "private citizen" mean, exactly? The majority of people in every political campaign are US citizens, if that's what you're getting at.

Do you think that's what I was getting at? That seems like an almost useless definition in this context. I can't see why I would use it or why you would suggest it.

I was assuming that I was speaking to more-or-less literate adults who can infer a reasonable meaning for words without me having to define them precisely.

In any case what I mean "exactly" is someone not a career politician or bureaucrat, nor with stated aspirations to become one.

It is not that unusual for a president to create a special committee to do X. The difference this time is that Musk is much more vocal and cocksure (or maybe just that he has his own media platform, so we get to see that he is vocal and cocksure).

But the problem these special committees always run into is that they have no actual constitutional authority to do anything. They can't pass legislation, they can't codify federal regulations. All they can do is make recommendations. (The president may give those recommendations the force of orders, but the president could have issued those same orders without the committee.)

So I don't think this that different from normal.

> a new government department with novel scope and power would be created for them to control.

But it's not. Despite the name, it's not actually a department - that requires congressional approval. It's just a committee. And the only power it has is issuing recommendations to actual departments. And those recommendations only have the power that Trump gives them - which also is nothing new.

Ok, sure, if you don't think this is different from usual then that's that I guess. I do think it's different but I don't find much value in trying to convince people of this today. There are more serious irregularities to worry about anyway.

> There are more serious irregularities to worry about anyway.

Absolutely. And I do worry. I worry about the people Trump is appointing. I worry about him destroying checks and balances. I worry about his repeated "joking" about a third term.

It's just that this particular thing doesn't seem that irregular to me... so far. Once details emerge, that could change.

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