Elon Musk's Doge Wants Access to the Treasury's Payment Systems | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk's Doge Wants Access to the Treasury's Payment Systems

rollingstone.com

72 pointsbelter16 comments

Don't resign in protest omg just don't comply - you'll get fired anyways but it'll take longer and you'll defend doing the right thing that much longer

Part of me hopes the whole system collapses and burns quickly so the rest of the world can avoid the same mistakes when their elections come up.

I think the point is a collapse of the existing system and consolidation of power. And, I think it'll only embolden other megalomaniacs.

I don’t see this ending well (for us).

Don’t forget that the USA federal government has hit the debt limit and is currently attempting "extraordinary measures" to avoid sovereign default. The next few days/weeks will be interesting.

DT didn't care https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/... - he wanted the limit gone. Also it's a self-imposed limit that can be changed, rather than an external constraint.

Basically, yes the debt issue is real, but this seems unrelated.

He's got the perfect intern for the job come on guys I say let him at it!

context: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/about.html

I'll bite.

I'm probably being naive here, but if you were in charge of a new department in your company responsible for bringing much-needed fiscal austerity, wouldn't your first stop be at the account payable office?

There are other more nefarious potential interpretations for why they want access, and I know it's entertaining to s**t on billionaires, but Occam's razor would say this is the obvious place to start looking when you want to cut federal spend.

Get access to the data, scrutinize it, and understand where tf $6 trillion dollars are going to. Trust, but verify. We know the topline [1] -- social security, national defense, medicare/health, etc -- but at this scale, the devil is in the details. Even a rounding error would be worth billions of dollars in savings.

[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Unelected, unconfirmed by the senate. Literally just henchmen. This isn't how a democracy works.

Also just sharing credentials for anything like this says you don't actually know tech or cyber security. It's like putting your 7 year old in charge of the military because he knows more about tanks than you. These shared creds will likely end in ransomware attacks on this office and any others it can network with. I hope when the government falls there are some places in the world where the economy doesn't fail. RN it doesn't feel like this is going to end well.

Realistically how can we keep our money safe?

> in your company

This is the point where you have made mistake in your assumption. Democratic countries are not private companies. (But even in your metaphor: this unelected individual is performing hostile take-over.)

All government spending is already public information. The United States Congress is already responsible for that spending, not the unelected henchmen of some rich Nazi.

Then a detailed report can be requested. Even for practical reasons, you don't want to enter a new system that you know nothing about and start digging from scratch. If you want quick answers, you'd normally start by asking people who ran it for ages. Then follow up (provided you have authority to do that)

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