The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE | Hacker News Reader

The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

wired.com

1,683 pointsmedler2,991 comments

Well I hope in the (very near) future we decide we want the executive branch to have less power, so as to protect ourselves from a unitary executive who goes rogue. Yes it may be less efficient, but more resilient.

This drive for uber efficiency can 1) make government more fragile (see toilet paper supply issues during the pandemic) and 2) be a slippery slope to dehumanization (see paper clip maximizing problem).

Toilet paper supply issues were not an example of an efficiency problem, they were misinformation creating a demand shock.

Your average supermarket has limited shelf space and stocks to the level that it will reliably clear shelves before new supply turns up, or things spoil.

If a whole much of people just buy one extra pack that week, this can easily empty the shelves... Which then gets posted to social media to imply a supply problem, which then prompts people to increase their buying rate.

There's no solution to this other then education: there was no supply issue, and never was. Any "solution" would be concluding that a supermarket should devote an absurd amount of shelf space to toilet paper, just in case misinformation goes viral again.

From my understanding, toilet paper is produced for commercial and residential purposes. As people stopped going to the office (and restaurants and malls, etc), people stopped using commercial toilet paper and started using more residential toilet paper.

What I read at the time also said that it's very hard for a plant to shift from making commercial to residential toilet paper, that the margins are paper thin (pun intended) and so it would take a lot of time and money to retool.

That's the explanation for why they couldn't just "order more toilet paper" to refill the store shelves.

But that wasn't the cause of the problem: the cause of the problem was people thinking "oh I'm not sure about a shortage, better buy an extra pack" (I know we did) for just one week...and then someone posts an "empty store shelves!!!" image on social media...which in turn prompts another group of people to do the same at another store, and then the idiot-brigade scalpers get involved. There's still no actual shortage though! The amount of toilet paper being produced is the same, the consumption rate is the same, people have just changed their stockpiling preference and the rate at which they do is spreading faster then any conceivable supply chain adjustment. But the actual consumption rate hasn't changed at all.

The idiot-brigade scalpers are worth commenting on because IMO there's a second factor which usually turns up: it's kind of fun to "buy out the supermarket" of some good. Like there's a child-like glee of going "I'll totally buy all of it" but most people don't consider that you can do this for any one item in the supermarket for like, $300 on the spot. It's just there's no reason too - partly because it's the most expensive possible way to buy almost anything.

> There's still no actual shortage though! The amount of toilet paper being produced is the same, the consumption rate is the same, people have just changed their stockpiling preference

You seem to have entirely missed the point of the comment you’re replying to. The consumption rate of residential toilet paper increased. Have you seen actual commercial toilet paper and considered its texture and, more critically, the size and shape of the rolls? While it’s possible for someone to awkwardly wipe using a monster roll of commercial paper at home, the commercial roll is not really a desirable substitute for residential TP.

I remember seeing a video of a person in a warehouse making fun of the panic, the warehouse was full of more toilet paper than you knew what to do with. TP companies were probably happy, and the smart move is not to send way more supply than a store can contain, because if demand dies, now you have too much just sitting there. It's much cheaper for them to keep it at their warehouses.

After seeing Bush in office, the sensible thing to do would have been to reduce presidential power. Nobody bothered. Then again after Trump. Biden didn't do a damn thing to reduce presidential power, knowing what happened and what could happen. Way too late. The judiciary and congress are now both subservient to the president.

Biden didn't have the power to reduce his own power. Congress would have, but they're not interested in doing that.

Because they see themselves as Democrats and Republicans more than they see themselves as Members of Congress. The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.

If they see themselves first as Members of Congress, then they should try to seek more power for Congress, not for their parties.

219 Democrats and 1 Republican voted to limit presidential power. 0 Democrats and 208 Republicans voted against it.[1]

[1] https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021440

I'll check it out. But the fact that it was mostly split along party lines says to me that they still have more loyalty to their party than branch

Too bad the bill had things unrelated to limiting the presidential power like

> requires a candidate for President or Vice President to provide copies of tax returns for the 10 most recent taxable years to the Federal Election Commission.

> establishes a program to support states and localities transition to ranked choice voting systems.

While things that I support, it frustrates me that congress can't propose bills that are hyper focused on one issue.

I don't think those line items would have made the difference either way. Until the turbo-filibuster we have today is curtailed, most legislation is DOA from the jump.

Congress has slowly abdicated its power to the other two branches of government over the decades. As a consequence, it's become more and more performative over time. This reality ends up changing the type of people who even seek high office in the first place. Legislators get replaced by social media influencers.

At this point, congress is primarily a judge appointment machine.

And civic institutions that actually want to get things done, adjust accordingly. They spend less time drafting bills and lobbying congress, and more time fighting for change through the courts or by lobbying the executive directly.

What are these riders called? Pork or something?

Pork Barrel is the term you're thinking of, but generally speaking that applies to spending that gets slapped onto unrelated bills, not necessarily to more general bloat like this stuff. Riders is probably the more accurate term

The vast majority of congressional seats (both chambers) are safe seats and can't reasonably be flipped to the other party unless there is massive upheaval.

The real elections for those seats happen in partisan primaries, where hyper-partisan ideologues are over represented. The electoral danger for most members of congress therefore comes from primary challengers catering to those ideological primary voters, and so incumbents have to defend their seats by being more partisan than the primary challengers. And so the partisanship keeps ratcheting up and up.

The Republican party has been totally consumed by this and is now just a hollowed out cult of personality. The only way most Republicans can keep their seats is through total loyalty to Trump. Otherwise they get primaried.

The extreme filibuster we have today also makes most legislation impossible - so the job of a member of congress has become more and more performative.

At the same time, the population as a whole is sorting itself into like minded enclaves. Red areas are getting redder and blue areas are getting bluer.

If we could somehow get rid of partisan primaries, the filibuster, and expand the house by several factors, we could improve the situation. But it's all so broken already, I don't know if we can get there.

> If we could somehow get rid of partisan primaries, the filibuster, and expand the house by several factors

Honestly, just fixing the absurd gerrymandering (on both sides) would help with this. In basically every other developed country the governments have no powers to draw the electoral boundaries, which seems to work better.

Getting rid of gerrymandering is certainly the right thing to do, but surprisingly it won't be as effective at unwinding the mess as you'd think. "The Big Sort" is a big reason why (https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081295373/the-big-sort-ameri...).

Doing something like expanding the house of representatives to several times it's current size would probably help much more.

All these things are a bit academic though, since neither policy is very feasible.

> The identity/loyalty issue seems to be the main problem.

It always has been. Even back in Rome there were the plebeians and the patricians. Demagogues rose to power based on party lines, corruption grew, and then Rome fell.

What we are seeing today is what naturally happens when you fail to teach future leaders history, and instead they are taught, but this time it will be different.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/politics/house-vote-protect-o...

The House passed this Act in 2021 to reduce the presidents power, but Biden never asked the senate to act on it. Reducing his own power wasn’t a priority for him, he spent his political capital on pushing for other laws.

Are senators unable to act independently?

The article alluded to a Republican filibuster as the barrier to passing the senate.

There are certainly sympathetic federal judges, including on the supreme court, but as a whole the judiciary is not (yet) owned

The supreme court sure did take power away from the executive in Sacket v EPA, Ohio v EPA, and Biden v Nebraska, but it's likely that reasoning only applies to liberal presidents for the 6-3 conservative federalist society majority.

Repealing the Chevron Deference?

Might be a good thing that it would enable society to change faster because bureaucrats are slow to respond.

Then again, might not be the welcome change we want.

Repealing Chevron deference implies that everything which used to be left to regulatory agencies must now be passed via legislation or litigated in court. Which of those sounds like faster change?

Well, for his part Biden's DOJ did argue in court against the idea of blanket presidential immunity. SCOTUS disagreed, said POTUS needed more power.

For Congress' part, they did pass laws that make a lot of what Trump is doing now with impoundment of congressional funds, and firing inspectors general explicitly illegal. He's doing it anyway.

But the reason Trump is able to do what he's doing now comes down to the structure of the DOJ being an executive branch he controls. Combined with his immunity from SCOTUS. This means he can argue anything he does isn't a crime, no one will investigate or prosecute him, and he can pardon anyone acting in his direction / direct his DOJ to not prosecute them.

Nothing Biden or Democrats could do about this, because at the end of the day, Republicans decided they deserve this power, and they grabbed it for themselves. It was always there for the taking, they just needed to convince themselves with words and court decisions and speeches that they had the right.

"Nothing Biden or Democrats could do about this"

I think with some amount of imagination, they could have done something about it.

"imagination" here is an euphemism for lawlessness. Democrats believe in democracy. This whole plan requires Trump exerting full control over the DOJ and FBI rather than what is typically done which is allow them to act independently.

It's hard to unwind that clock. The next admin will may leverage that consolidated power to undo trump harms, but also see the benefits of keeping that power. I pray congress mandates the political independence of certain federal agencies (FBI, doj etc)

The problem is that we painted ourselves into a this corner long ago. Even if Congress wasn't generally paralyzed by bad-faith partisan fighting, the House and Senate are not equipped to do even a small fraction of what the executive branch does today.

If we removed much of the executive branch's power, it wouldn't be "less efficient". The government just wouldn't do anything.

Some people (current GOP) seems to think this would be a good thing.

Agreed. If government provides fewer services, companies can provide more services at a profit. Why have public (non-profit) education when you can have private (highly profitable) education? Who needs public (non-profit) health insurance when you can have private (highly profitable) health insurance?

The list can go on and on.

Exactly.

There's probably some theory about power being like the conservation of energy, in that it doesn't get destroyed, just transformed or moved. Take power away from the government and that power doesn't just make people more free, it just goes somewhere else. Clearly the intent is to move that power from the government (which is at least nominally meant to protect citizens) to companies/the rich.

That's how I see it as well. Government in theory should protect the citizens, which I assume often means the consumers and the workers. But maybe capitalism run amok is when capitalists accumulate the power and use it to strong-arm the government into liking the corporate shareholders (capitalists?) more than the citizens.

> capitalism run amok is when capitalists accumulate the power and use it to strong-arm the government into liking the corporate shareholders (capitalists?) more than the citizens.

This is pretty much the definition of fascism.

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini, famous fascist.

Whoa, I was unaware, thank you for sharing this

I had the same reaction, but then some cursory searching led me to this discussion on the "Talk" page for Wikiquote's entry on Mussolini which casts some doubt on the accuracy of the attribution and/or translation of this line:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Benito_Mussolini#Fascism_...

From there:

> At its core, the quoted saying is incompatible with fascism and frankly nonsensical. Under fascism, the state uses the market efficiency of capitalism to regulate and control the economy, namely by concentrating market shares to a relatively few large corporations into cartels, which in turn the fascist state has direct control over. Whereas, corporatism is state control by large interest groups, commonly pictured as large multi-national corporations with monopolistic powers. In other words, the controlling party under corporatism is the reverse of that under fascism."Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State."The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile

Not true though!

In Italian, corporativismo has a distinct meaning that is unrelated to the concept of commercial corporations. It refers to a system of collaboration between social groups, represented through joint associations of employers and workers. Essentially, it is a state-aligned alternative to independent trade unions, a "national syndicalism" of sorts.

The quote itself doesn’t appear to be a mistranslation—it just doesn’t seem to exist. (https://politicalresearch.org/2005/01/12/mussolini-corporate...)

Muskotrumpia may excel in performance-based state capture, but fascism it is not. The anti-state culture of the U.S. clashes with the "everything for the state" ethos that defines fascism. We're simply entering textbook Caesarism territory.

Not exactly. I'd say that is a self-serving quote to whitewash fascism.

The narrow definition of corporatism is basically just the public-private interweaving of government. Communism is just as much corporatist as fascism -- the main difference being that in communism the trade bodies are considered part of the government rather than part of the industry.

Fascism is more specific because it also encompasses fostering/breeding tribalistic tendencies (bigotry, nationalism, i.e. "othering") in society at large. In contrast, corporatism doesn't prescribe how the rest of society interacts.

Maybe you have a more positive view of corporations than me, because calling fascism a government of by and for corporations does not whitewash it at all for me.

Mussolini used the word 'corporation' in a different sense to the modern sense of a public company. He was referring instead to different sectors of society, something like a 'guild'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascist_corporatis...

and it does https://top-of-the-poops.org/

Most conservatives and Libertarians from all times think that.

A minority of those on the right, don't.

Have you considered reducing the overall scope of the federal government rather than just the executive branch?

And have the scope picked up by state and local governments (or even a global one)? Or just let corporations make the rules?

I see the government doing at least two things: setting rules and providing services. Do you want fewer rules or fewer services? Or something else?

In the USA the general scope for federal & state has expanded, with Federal having the most growth since about 16th Amendment. US code & regulations has expanded 1000x , cost per capita is 15000x

I only make the point that there is a broad spectrum of functional scopes for the government, and rather than looking at shifting the scope around, another possibility would be to revert the scope to sustainable levels

Yes, state and local should pick up. The closer to the people a government is, the better it is.

I want the fewest rules that create the most fair economy. And I know very few service better in the hands of government. And that includes bridges:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct

What about protecting ourselves from a biased bureaucracy who use their power for their own political ends? There is a history of this happening now like the IRS scandal and I am surprised how quiet people are about the mass migration event into the country from 2020-2024. It's to the point where people actually say it's just a conspiracy theory and disinformation despite it being a primary concern of most voters according to polls. It's hard to argue that DHS and other bureaucracies were completely innocent. At best they were negligent and incompetent but I think most people know they took steps to make illegal immigration and asylum claims easier to do and help fund immigration routes. This wasn't a platform Biden ran on. He did not win a democratic mandate to open up asylum claims to basically anyone who arrived and grant temporary protected status somewhat arbitrarily. I am surprised no one is concerned about un-elected people being able to do all this and escaping any responsibility.

I thought that was their strategy, though? Dismantle the executive branch to the point where the president has little power.

I guess it took Trump to make Liberals want a smaller executive government.

How would we protect ourselves when the rule of law is non-functional?

This definition is quite literally the only check to balance power available to the average person, at least when it worked. There is no longer equality under the law which is dependent on the other components which have also degraded.

Congress is non-responsive to their constituencies.

We are stuck in a positive feedback loop, eventually when the abuses are great society will fall back to the natural state prior to the social contract. These will not be peaceful times.

They have interesting pedigrees: Meta, Palantir, Neuralink, xAI, SpaceX, Databricks, Energize AI.

It seems clear where this is going. Data mining and algorithmic (claimed!) efficiency improvements while working on an essential and critical production system.

Since these people claim that "AI" does not need to respect privacy and copyright, perhaps they'll also train a model on this.

Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.

Democrats can oppose, but they don’t have any votes. All 3 branches of government are controlled by Republicans.

So, yeah. I guess we got the government we voted for? And since it’s a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the government we deserve?

Maybe it gets better later in the administration? That’s my hope anyway.

> I guess we got the government we voted for? And since it’s a democracy, I suppose that means we have exactly the government we deserve?

Well, we voted based on the only two options that were shoved down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people on the planet. I don't personally think we deserve this, why would we? That said, if we don't do something, it won't get better.

we voted based on the only two options that were shoved down our throats by various groups of the wealthiest people on the planet

Well, we should have made a system that didn’t allow the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.

Not trying to be flip, I’m just trying to point out that it still all comes back to us in the end. We just have to hope for the best at this point. Buyer’s remorse is not gonna change the actions these people are likely to take.

I do agree with you when you say, something needs to be done. If these pres-vice pres pairings are the best the current system could come up with, then obviously there is a need to add some new aspects to the system that might encourage more competence in the candidates it produces.

We didn't make the system, some slavers hundreds of years ago did.

It seems like we won't have to worry about the current system much longer though

No, but enough people voted for the party that put the supreme court justices in place who ruled on citizens united over the years.

Voting isn't a one time thing, it has repercussions that can be felt decades later (see shortages of ATC because of the actions of Reagan in the 80's).

I don't disagree, but I also don't see how that's a contradiction

> Well, we should have made a system that didn’t allow the wealthiest people on the planet to do that.

This feels correct-ish, but also pretty unrealistic. If you're born into a system where you have to choose between getting slapped and getting stabbed, then obviously the system shouldn't have been made that way -- that doesn't change the fact that it is that way, and you have to act within that system regardless of what ought to be the system instead.

I agree to an extent. Most of us are either still young, or just getting our bearings and seeing the problems as adults in the last 10 or so years. I feel comfortable saying that, knowing the demographics of the site. Most of us had little-to-no ability to shape the current situation. Our window has just opened.

or closed forever

We had two options, and we chose the greater evil. We absolutely deserve what's coming.

Increased prosperity, intelligent leadership and lawful order? I'll take it!

I guess time will tell if you're right. I hope you're right, because if not, we are in for very dark times.

Ok, so you stalked my comment history so I stalked yours.

What about the Trump administration is "intelligent"? Trump lies about everything. Pointing out other politicians lie isn't a good comeback. Trump lacks all understanding of how tariffs work, he said he was going to "repeal and replace" Obamacare on "day 1" in 2016, only to say he has "concepts of a plan" in 2024, whatever the fuck that means. He rarely has "ideas", he just bitches about stuff and handwaves away everything when pressed for any details.

"Lawful order"? I don't know that that means. I would say that writing a lot of executive orders that go directly against the constitution is literally the opposite of "lawful order", but you're free to disagree.

Deporting all these violent illegals has been outstanding in my opinion. He's actually enforcing existing immigration laws.

By way of threats of tariffs, He's gotten Columbia, Mexico and Canada to enact policies in the interests of America.

America gets constantly screwed by other nations because we've allowed great trade imbalances and weak borders. Other nations have been happy to step back and let the US fund the UN, NATO, etc. Historically, we have the lowest tariffs and accept the most illegal immigrants in the world. Trump's changing that and I'm here for it.

Btw, I'm all for legal immigration. I'm one myself. My family escaped a communist country and has experienced life under a leader much more authoritarian that what the Left conjures up about the other side.

Deporting violent immigrants is fine. Biden enforced immigration laws too, and when there was a bipartisan immigration reform bill Trump asked the conservatives to block it.

Trying to revoke birthright citizenship is not “enforcing existing law”.

The concessions from Mexico and Canada were already planned from last administration. Moreover, now there are retaliatory tariffs coming from them.

How does a trade imbalance imply that we are “screwed”? Trump repeats that constantly but it doesn’t seem implied to me.

The stuff about NATO is a lot more complicated than you’re making it out to be.

This is my biggest issue with Trump and his supporters, they treat everything as this incredibly reductive, black and white, “simple” issue.

> Biden enforced immigration laws too,

No he did not. Biden's first acts were to repeal Trump's stringent immigration orders. After 3 and half years with another election looming and seeing the disaster that caused, all of the sudden, his administration wasn't so hot on open borders anymore. If he enforced immigration laws, we wouldn't have so many people who have illegally entered the country.

> Trying to revoke birthright citizenship is not “enforcing existing law”.

And I never claimed that. But I support an amendment towards that end.

> The concessions from Mexico and Canada were already planned from last administration.

Nope, the 10,000 troops Mexico just agreed to is on top of whatever other things they "promised" to do. And tariffs are off the table for now.

> Moreover, now there are retaliatory tariffs coming from them.

Nope, no tariffs have been enacted on either side at the moment.

> How does a trade imbalance imply that we are “screwed”?

US trade imbalance by year:

2020: $626 billion 2021: $858 billion 2022: $971 billion 2023: $1 trillion

We also have historically the lowest tariff rates in the world. Gee, I wonder if that's related. And then when we raise them to level the playing field, everyone bitches and whines.

> The stuff about NATO is a lot more complicated than you’re making it out to be.

> This is my biggest issue with Trump and his supporters, they treat everything as this incredibly reductive, black and white, “simple” issue.

Pretty hand wavy there.

My issue with liberals is the lack of common sense, e.g. allowing biological men to destroy women in sports, not being willing to define what a woman is, getting mad at Trump for enforcing immigration laws (i.e. not letting people enter the country illegally and kicking out those who do)

> No he did not. Biden's first acts were to repeal Trump's stringent immigration orders. After 3 and half years with another election looming and seeing the disaster that caused, all of the sudden, his administration wasn't so hot on open borders anymore. If he enforced immigration laws, we wouldn't have so many people who have illegally entered the country.

Again, a bipartisan immigration reform was on its way to pass through congress until Trump told all the conservatives to kill it.

> And I never claimed that. But I support an amendment towards that end.

So you agree that an executive order ending birthright citizenship is bad?

> We also have historically the lowest tariff rates in the world. Gee, I wonder if that's related.

You still haven't demonstrated how having a trade imbalance implies that we're "being screwed". Trump keeps asserting that, but that doesn't seem obvious to me.

> Pretty hand wavy there.

Sure, I was writing this on my phone and I didn't have time to go into the details of the intricacies of NATO. You're free to look into the details of NATO yourself (you haven't), and if you do you'll likely understand why saying that the US is being screwed by paying more for NATO doesn't make sense.

> My issue with liberals is the lack of common sense,

That's because "common sense" doesn't actually mean anything. What do you think that "common sense" means? Your "gut feeling"?

"Common sense" is a phrase used by pseudo-intellectuals who want to reduce everything into pithy one-liners and ignore the fact that the world is actually pretty complicated, and your "common sense" is often wrong. It's not exclusive to conservatives, but it does seem to be a phrase that's extremely popular with them.

I reject the notion that immigration, NATO, biological gender, and pretty much any federal policy can be easily explained with "common sense". But what do I know, I'm just a liberal who doesn't have any I guess.

ETA:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36e41dx425o - US deportations under Biden surpass Trump's record

> Nope, the 10,000 troops Mexico just agreed to is on top of whatever other things they "promised" to do. And tariffs are off the table for now.

You're right, I looked it up, though what I should point out is that Biden was able to get Mexico to send troops without starting a trade war. It's not clear to me that this required the threat of a trade war.

> Again, a bipartisan immigration reform was on its way to pass through congress until Trump told all the conservatives to kill it.

That bill had concessions that loosened asylum restrictions and border closure measures. Why would would Republicans who want a secure border pass that when they could wait for Trump to become president and get everything they want in terms of a strong, secure border and tough laws against illegal immigrants?

Besides, even if it did pass, Biden has shown he is unwilling to enforce laws on illegal immigration.

> So you agree that an executive order ending birthright citizenship is bad?

If it turns out to be unconstitutional, then it's illegal and yes, therefor "bad". That's up to the courts to decide. Either way, I absolutely support legally repealing birthright citizenship.

> You still haven't demonstrated how having a trade imbalance implies that we're "being screwed"

Ok, looks like you're right on this, a trade imbalance is not necessarily bad for the US. It is bad for specific domestic industries that are affected by it though. I'd argue to a certain extant a nation has an obligation to protect its businesses in the context of international trade.

Here are some examples of common sense - Don't let biological men (humans with XY chromosome and a penis) into women's restrooms and locker rooms - Don't let biological men compete in women's sports because it's unfair and dangerous - Don't let violent thugs enter our country and if they do, kick them out.

> Besides, even if it did pass, Biden has shown he is unwilling to enforce laws on illegal immigration.

Again, the Biden administration deported a comparable number of people per year as Trump did first term. You keep repeating this, and sources have been provided to you, so it's bordering on dishonesty at this point.

> If it turns out to be unconstitutional, then it's illegal and yes, therefor "bad". That's up to the courts to decide. Either way, I absolutely support legally repealing birthright citizenship.

You didn't answer my question. The 14th Amendment really doesn't leave much wiggle room on this, and it's certainly not enough wiggle room to overrule it with an executive order.

Even if you think birthright citizenship is bad, wouldn't you agree that it's a terrible precedent to have a the president be able to arbitrarily be able to decide which Constitutional amendments need to be followed? Wouldn't you be against Biden writing an executive order repealing the second amendment?

I don't really see how birthright citizenship is bad, you haven't demonstrated this, all you've done is fear-monger about immigrants.

> I'd argue to a certain extant a nation has an obligation to protect its businesses in the context of international trade.

Sure, but the tariffs that Trump is threatening would be potentially helping some local businesses at the expense of others. It's not a clear cut net-win. If we impose tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico, or the EU, they are likely to give us retaliatory tariffs and that might affect businesses that depend on imports from those countries.

At least that's what nearly every economist says. Maybe they don't have common sense.

> Here are some examples of common sense - Don't let biological men (humans with XY chromosome and a penis) into women's restrooms and locker rooms - Don't let biological men compete in women's sports because it's unfair and dangerous

Well I'm glad you have it figured it out. I think people relying on "common sense", a term that doesn't mean anything for reasons already described, is really, really stupid. I also think that fear-mongering about trans people is pretty telling.

> Don't let violent thugs enter our country and if they do, kick them out.

No one wants violent criminals in here. Biden did deport violent immigrants. No one here wants violent people in the country. You can keep bringing this up as if I didn't already agree that we should deport violent criminals, indicating that you either a) didn't actually read my responses, b) ignored my response, or c) are just lying. I'm inclined to pick C at this point.

The trade imbalance, like GDP, is a very crude economic measure. Do a search for “iPhone China trade imbalance” for more details. TL;DR is every iPhone is added to the trade deficit with China. However, China (Foxconn) just puts them together. The actual components come from all over the world. Then Apple sells them for 3x plus all the iCloud services. Samsung (Korea) makes more than Foxconn per iPhone.

I dunno, sure doesn't look like Biden let up on enforcement to me [1]. More likely is that Trump destablised the west and caused a net increase in illegal migration attempts. Since Congress refused to pass comprehensive immigration reform (to please Daddy, of course) they didn't have the tools or money needed to keep up.

[1] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistic...

> My issue with liberals is the lack of common sense, e.g. allowing biological men to destroy women in sports, not being willing to define what a woman is

I find this one so funny. Most liberals agree with you on this, but none of us will get on board with turning to fascism because an incredibly small portion of the population needs a civil rights issue addressed. That means we are forced to deal with the radical leftists who you are so angry about, because at least they aren't trying to overthrow the government. It would get settled much faster, and much more to your satisfaction, if a third of the country wasn't determined to act in bad faith and pretend those people don't exist. That's just as bizarre as the people who pretend that biological women and trans women are the same.

> More likely is that Trump destablised the west and caused a net increase in illegal migration attempts.

nope, border encounters have dropped significantly after Trump took office.

To your last points, I won't address because you throw up unsubstantiated accusations that has become the Leftist party line. There's no discussion to be had here.

> nope, border encounters have dropped significantly after Trump took office.

Ok propaganda. CBP doesn't have numbers for January posted, so you have no idea what is actually happening.

> To your last points, I won't address because you throw up unsubstantiated accusations that has become the Leftist party line. There's no discussion to be had here.

Oh please, by all means, substantiate your last point. Ya'll are going to get exposed the next four years for being such feckless dorks.

> Ok propaganda. CBP doesn't have numbers for January posted, so you have no idea what is actually happening.

wrong. From the border chief:

"In the past seven days, U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 4,577 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally, a significant 55% decrease from the previous week’s 10,281 apprehensions. This trend indicates that our enhanced border security measures produce results. With more boots on the ground, we’re making a substantial impact to the security of our borders."

https://x.com/USBPChief/status/1884723200048693297

Yes, we'll see in four years. I look forward to it!

They put more boots on the ground and apprehended fewer people? Sounds like Mexicans are doing their work for them again...

> Ok propaganda. CBP doesn't have numbers for January posted, so you have no idea what is actually happening.

the above is what you claimed and are undeniably wrong about.

You can't admit error because you don't operate in truth, just emotions. When confronted with truth, you twist it to fit your narrative as you're doing here.

And the quality of the words (or lack thereof) that you choose to use e.g. feckless, dork, anti-social losers, weird, loathe reflects on you and your character and state of mind more than anything else. Here they are categorized as ad hominem attacks and are not looked upon highly because the kind of people who use them lack substantial arguments and thus resort to these low effort personal attacks.

> You can't admit error because you don't operate in truth, just emotions.

I went to the CBP website and you went to twitter (which I don't use because I'm not a drone). Where on the emotion wheel is "CBP website"? https://medium.com/@mcgill_dr/emotions-and-feelings-charts-d...

You've spent the entire thread making unsubstantiated claims about trans people based on right wing propaganda. Practicing ad hominem attacks downthread is all you are good for, why would I waste actual effort on you?

> I went to the CBP website and you went to twitter

I went to Google and the twitter post from the official account of the CBP chief came up in search results. You claimed that reports from January from CBP weren't posted so I "have no idea what is actually happening.". You are wrong. Based on numbers from the CBP chief himself, I do have an idea of what is happening.

You also posited "More likely is that Trump destablised the west and caused a net increase in illegal migration attempts." when actually, based on the CBP numbers, the opposite has happened under Trump's leadership.

> You've spent the entire thread making unsubstantiated claims about trans people based on right wing propaganda

If you you actually go through this thread again, you'll see I mostly discussed tariffs and immigration. Out of this entire thread, I've written one phrase about the transgender issue:

> "allowing biological men to destroy women in sports, not being willing to define what a woman is"

And both of those claims have been well documented. They are facts, not propaganda. E.g. high school volleyball play Payton McNabb who sustained life long head injuries when a trans gender player spiked a ball in her face. E.g. at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing she was asked if she could define what a woman is and her reply was "I can't --".

Again, you are not operating in truth.

> ad hominem attacks downthread is all you are good for, why would I waste actual effort on you?

You are part of the "smug left"[0]. It's no wonder Joe Klein says this about the Democratic party ""The intellectual corrosion is comprehensive; it is only matched by the self-righteous arrogance.". I'm not sure about the first part, I avoid calling people stupid, but the latter point about the arrogance of the left is spot on.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberal...

I don't really want to comment on most of this post, but I want to address your final point:

> You are part of the "smug left"[0]. It's no wonder Joe Klein says this about the Democratic party ""The intellectual corrosion is comprehensive; it is only matched by the self-righteous arrogance.". I'm not sure about the first part, I avoid calling people stupid, but the latter point about the arrogance of the left is spot on.

Where the fuck did conservatives get the idea that they can say whatever they want and people will always be nice to them? The "smug left" stuff comes from the fact conservatives will hitch their wagon to so much stuff that is, in so far that this can be objective, very stupid.

For example, when I was a teenager, Conservatives were really trying to push for Creationism being pushed in schools. Creationism has no scientific basis, it has no business in a science classroom, it's based on an extremely stupid set of books, and yet this is the hill Conservatives wanted to die on.

Sometimes I decide to push back, even politely, but frankly it's exhausting. Creationists are just wrong, how many times should I be expected to have the same polite argument when they clearly have very little desire to actually learn anything?

This might come off as "smug", that's fine. I'm ok with being considered "smug". If you're really making your political decisions based on how polite some people are to you, then that's a lot more telling of you than me.

I appreciate your willingness to engage. I've lost the willpower to believe I can do anything to lift the veil. They are too scared...imagine the sheer panic of your belief system being challenged, when you've already got an insecure and victim mindset that MAGA has exploited.

I almost want to just hold their hands as they tremble through widening their overton window.

Don't try and lift the veil. Point out the veil is stupid looking and people who wear it are dorks. We don't need MAGA people to agree with me, we need the apathetic non-voters of this country to see them for the weird, anti-social losers that they are, and loathe them for it.

> I almost want to just hold their hands

lol... give me a break. No thanks!

Not panicking or trembling at all. Quite content actually.

You clearly did not understand my comment... Overton window still the same fit. shrug

The filibuster in the Senate is powerful but it basically only blocks new laws from going in you can't really touch all the things Trump is doing via EO through Congressional obstruction the main avenue for blocking that is through the courts which ultimately have limited enforcement power.

I guess Elon believes that long wait times for government services is because of an O(n^3) function somewhere...

> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition

I think because this is so unprecedented the structures to oversee simply don't exist. The article mentions that congress has no mechanisms for oversight, and Elon is moving too quickly in this area for any checks to take place.

The courts are just now beginning to order injuctions and restraining orders, for the stuff that happened last week. The process seems to lag by 2-3 business days. So hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more this week.

How the administration responds to those is going to define how this constitutional crisis unfolds. And it is a constitutional crisis: congress unambiguously has the power of the purse, not the executive.

If Trump gets away with this, it isn't clear that Congress has any power at all.

The executive is just going to ignore any court orders.

It's utterly wrong to give Elon any benefit of the doubt in terms of his motives right now.

He's helping destroy the Federal government because doing so aligns with his interests as a billionaire.

Maybe the strategy is to let it play out until there is enough of a case that the other branches can’t look away? Let Elon show himself out by inevitably crossing Trump and going the way of so many other advisors?

Democrats have bigger fish to fry and DOGE isn't a real department so it doesn't have a whole lot of authority to do things on its own. It can only advise the government so in the end, until an executive order is signed or some other action is taken, there's nothing to be done.

You have no real handle on the scale of damage being done and DOGE is a real department as it was merged into the US Digital Service through executive order.

Who is running USDS, though? If it's now Musk, doesn't that require Senate confirmation?

You would think so but the legality of it all is very disputed.

No, USDS is an organization within the President's executive staff.

The constitutional requirement is that "Officers of the United States" need Senate confirmation unless Congress has provided otherwise. The precise contours of this have never been super well defined, but it doesn't sound like Musk is exercising sovereign power under his own authority, at least not yet.

I'm not sure what could possibly be a bigger fish right now. This is, quite literally, the dismantling of our entire government and its public services unfolding before our eyes.

It sound bad when you say it like that.

https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation...

> I try to keep emotion out of this newsletter. I have always tried to write Notes on the Crises in a calm, detached tone so that the information I highlight shines through. However, I must be honest with readers: I’m absolutely terrified. When I first read the Washington Post’s reporting I subsequently had a panic attack. I am not subject to those. I didn’t have one during the start of Covid-19 when I started writing about the full health, economic, and political consequences in March 2020 and knew before many, many people that millions would die. Nor at any time subsequently did I have one. Even as someone who has spent an unusual amount of time thinking about the Treasury’s internal payments system for a person who has never been in government, I find grasping the full implications of Elon Musk and his apparatchiks reaching into and trying to exert full control over the Treasury’s payment system mind-boggling.

> There is nothing more important on the entire planet than getting Elon Musk and DOGE out of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and allowing career civil service employees to run the Treasury’s internal payments system without capricious and self-serving interference from billionaires and their allies. This effort must fail if we are to safeguard any semblance of due process and lawfulness in the executive branch. A vague anonymous promise that DOGE only has “read only” access is not enough. They need to be rooted out so that we can return to the slower moving, less dangerous, “five alarm fire” constitutional crisis we were having as of Friday morning.

He who dares wins

What's the "win" here?

Same as you, I have no idea what’s going to happen. But something will, and it might be good. It might be bad as well, but at least the news will be interesting.

Same as me? Speak for yourself, I don't care about what might or might not happen, to avoid honestly dealing with what is happening. That they started doing this on a Friday night should tell you they know what they're doing, that is, that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. That it "might be bad".

> It might be bad as well, but at least the news will be interesting.

For those who read nothing about the first half of the 20th century, sure. For them this is surely "interesting". But since you wouldn't like your harm to be someone else's entertainment either, that's not an argument for anything.

Who is being harmed?

In context, that question would not about the present, but the future:

> It might be bad as well, but at least the news will be interesting.

Of course this doesn't mean "this might suck for me, but at least it will be interesting news for others". Why pretend otherwise?

> Approximately 20 members of Elon Musk’s staff have begun working within the Education Department. They have gained access to multiple sensitive internal systems, including a financial aid dataset containing the personal information of millions of students enrolled in the federal student aid program.

https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social/post/3lhcyirig6k...

You don't receive such aid, correct? So why care. Just a bunch of dudes soaking up highly sensitive information to do whatever with.

Trump spoke plenty of times of his desire of purging all sorts of things including the "deep state". It's amazing to me that all it takes is to tack on some vague claims about "efficiency" from a guy who lies like a child about the dumbest things, for some Americans to say "but what IF it saves a bit of money?" and just ignore the whole "using a very flimsy excuse to purge political opposition" thing.

time for obtuse edge lord is over, what is currently happening due to musk and trump is a serious threat to the stability of the US

He’s a threat to the unsupervised government institutions. If measured by the amount of money being stolen, the US government is the most corrupted in the world.

just making stuff up isn't "measuring" anything

That is objectively untrue

> quite literally, the dismantling of our entire government

So the three branches of government are being dismantled? There won't be anymore Congress or Supreme Court?

It's really hard to take hysterical comments like this seriously.

Democrats don't have a frypan.

Like Democratic elected officials? They lost. They have no power. They don’t control any branch of government.

They have as much ability to pass laws as you or I personally do. They have as much ability to hand down a Supreme Court or direct law enforcement as you or I personally do. None. Where are we? Complaining on social media I guess.

I’m quite frustrated why my elected officials as well but it is kind of hard to blame them when we don’t give them any actual power to wield.

Sure, but there's other things they can do. They can all stop trying to achieve bipartisan support on things, as the republicans do when they're in the minority. Senators can withdraw their unanimous consent. They can vote against everything. They can drag a bunch of reporters over to Treasury and start loudly asking questions

It sounds like some are finding a clue, like the ones who stomped down to USAID with reporters in tow today. They need to do more of this.

Just because they can't pass legislation doesn't mean they are out of ideas.

What you can do is write to or call them. Ask them to vote no on every senate confirmation. Ask them to not provide unanimous consent. Ask them to make a scene. Demand answers!

> They can vote against everything.

Have they voted on a single thing yet except the Laken Riley Act? (Which they probably shouldn't have done, but anyway.) This administration is not waiting on Congress to do anything.

But that aside, I agree that they need to start getting back attention. Being absolutely silent except for individuals saying things that are only reported on Bluesky is not enough to be taking back control of attention.

> Have they voted on a single thing yet except the Laken Riley Act?

I mean on things like confirmations, but when bills start coming up reps need to go full on toddler mode and say no to everything.

They need to read the Mitch McConnell book on gumming up the works of government and grind everything to a halt until the madness stops.

> But that aside, I agree that they need to start getting back attention. Being absolutely silent except for individuals saying things that are only reported on Bluesky is not enough to be taking back control of attention.

I completely agree. Social media doesn't help anything, unless they're live streaming themselves daring the people obstructing Treasury to arrest them.

This isn't a "business as usual" moment, this is a five-alarm-fire moment.

And why did they lose?

Propaganda, mostly. Conservatives have gained control of most Media outlets, and have been using them to launder consent. It's incredible that we've given Democrats absolutely no power, they can do literally nothing, and yet they're still somehow to blame for what Republicans are doing.

Which ones?

Democrats received more money than Republicans from big tech and media for a very long time, including the most recent presidential election. Are big media stupid for donating more to their enemies than who they purportedly support?

Your other option is admitting that Democrats had previously owned the media and doing precisely the thing you're accusing Conservatives of doing. You definitely cannot claim they did not seeing the checks written out to DNC and other PACs alongside the board seats from previous administrations.

I doubt it was propaganda. If you look at the polls, the most important issues have been the economy, the immigration and the violent crime. All 3 of which have been absolutely disastrous for the Biden/Harris administration.

And people voted accordingly, and correctly.

Biden's approval rating is 39%, disapproval at 58%.

https://www.cnn.com/polling/approval-rating-poll-of-polls

Polling on particular issues can be shifted by propaganda, so this isn’t a particularly strong argument against the idea.

Although, I’m not sure what propaganda really means in this context anyway, I mean, “the economy” is a pretty abstract thing so people engage with it mostly through reporting of various sorts. The decision of what aspects of the economy to focus on could be seen as propaganda.

The admin plays in a global economy which is ridiculously complex, so there’s always room for it to be doing as well as possible when my guy is in charge, underperform expectations when the bad guy is in charge.

When we speak about these 3 issues, there's no need for any propaganda.

Violent crime is out of control.

Illegal immigration is out of control.

Purchasing power of the population went down a lot, while average salaries haven't grown (or dropped significantly in some areas).

The fact you can't recognize how propaganda can distort the reality of the issues you are listing above, makes one question if you actually understand what propaganda is, or have any interest in understanding reality.

I won't ever claim it's a simple picture, but there's enough peer-reviewed information out on the web to elaborate on your 3 rather unspecific talking points. We can hold your hand if it's too scary to google each of your issues above, I do have empathy that changing ones belief system is scary, but the alternative is delusion.

>Violent crime is out of control.

Hilarious because it is in fact down: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...

You've been propagandized, my friend

Your own source says that violent victimizations is up YoY, and crime reporting is down YoY

that is a dishonest interpretation of the data, the overall _trend_ is "U.S. violent and property crime rates have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source"

Why should crime ever go up, if other countries show that the floor of crime rate is even lower through policy and enforcement changes? It is always valid to blame the government for high crime relative to other nations with lower crime.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/democrats-have-a-new-leader-but...

Good read on that topic

I was thinking of a theory that from evolutionary instinct people want to be king of their castle, secure against the enemy tribes and having a happy family - prince meets his princess has kids etc. The Democrat woke principles go against that rather - the rival tribes will take your job because you're the wrong skin color or a bunch crossed over the open border, your prince and princess stuff is outdated because male and female is replaced by gender fluidity and trans etc.

I don't have a strong opinion personally but I don't think it's a vote winner. The dems probably should have gone with a popular mainstream candidate like Shapiro say rather the the pro woke, most left voting in the senate Kamala.

They ignored economic problems for a majority of the population similar to the republicans for 20 years and focused on projects(wars) and culture war topics that are big mostly for the wealthy elite offspring of the ever shrinking middle class. They are by definition unable to act, all they want, left,right,center, is to conserve longer,slow down the decay.

The democrats have effectively no power. They control neither the house, senate, or presidency, the courts have become more conservative, etc. They can only talk. The filibuster will prevent new laws, but that isn't much when the federal government acts according to the presidency, and the filibuster does not prevent government appointments

I doubt they will maintain the filibuster

And the filibuster is nothing more than a polite restriction that the majority of the senate places on themselves — they are free to remove it if they wish.

The democrats were there on Election Day. They were shown the door.

> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.

You mean the same Democrats who were not given a majority on neither legislative houses, nor the Presidency?

Some people voted against their best interests. Consequences.

They should try coming up with some popular policies and winning elections.

No, they must talk about nothing but identity politics for the next 4 years, surely that is the best way to gain majorities in the Senate and House.

That's certainly one way to get a Trump third term

I have a feeling that's a part of how we got a 2nd Trump term.

Policies don't really determine elections in this age -- the only thing that determines them is people's brains being cooked.

Policies do a great deal to determine elections - American political parties are more polarized by policy now than they've ever been. It only seems otherwise because there's a lot of people who don't consider opposition to their policy objectives legitimate, and thus diagnose it as cooked-brain syndrome rather than attempting to understand and compromise.

People's policy preferences are downstream of how cooked their brains are. So it's not really policies that are determining it, it's the fact that their brains are cooked through constant exposure to bad things. If their brains are uncooked through constant exposure to good things, then their policy preferences will also change.

Now I'm not sure what we're talking about. If you postulate that brains can be "cooked" and "uncooked" in response to new information, doesn't "cooked" just mean "persuaded"? I definitely agree that my policy preferences would be more dominant if people spent more time ingesting the good arguments and good evidence that convinced me to hold them.

That's fair -- "cooked" does imply an increase in entropy that can't be reversed. I think it sadly is irreversible in some people, but many others can be brought back (you're already starting to see a backlash to Trump).

Being exposed to the arguments over and over, repeatedly, probably matters more than their quality. That's what I was going for with "cooked", since "persuaded" isn't quite the right word for it.

>>I think it sadly is irreversible in some people, but many others can be brought back (you're already starting to see a backlash to Trump).

Where are the people being brought back after voting for Biden or Harris?

> Where are the Democrats on all this? There is hardly any opposition. Are they not interrupting their enemy while he is making mistakes? That would be the only explanation.

This is the kind of thing that someone who's on TikTok a lot says. The line being fed to people by the Chinese government to make the Democrats look bad as well. But the truth is the Democrats have no power. None. They can't do anything to stop this. Elizabeth Warren and AOC have just as much power as I do to stop Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

I would look to c-span for some accurate real time reactions from dems

https://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/congressional...

> Where are the Democrats in all of this?

I think there's a fear they'll end up on the Kash Patel FBI enemies list:

https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemie...

> * Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payments systems of the Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people. The US Congress does that under Article 1 of the Constitution ... we don't have a fourth branch of government called 'Elon Musk”

> * Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT) “This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let’s call it what it is.” -And- "Let's not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions off of his business with China. And China is cheering at this action today. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our govt right now is doing it based on self-interest."

> * Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) "It is a matter for Congress to deal with, not an unelected billionaire oligarchy named Elon Musk. And Elon, if you want to run USAID, get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate and good luck in getting confirmed."

> * Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) “We asked to enter the Aid building, really on behalf of the American people, but to talk to Aid employees, because … there’s been a gag order imposed on Aid employees. So we wanted to learn first-hand what’s happening. We were denied entry based on the order that they received from Elon Musk and Doge, which just goes to show that this was an illegal power grab by someone who contributed $267bn to the Trump effort in these elections.”

Estimated crowd of 100 protesters (reported). Other attendees and speeches made by Congressmen Beyer, Raskin, Connolly, Omar, Olzewski, Senator Van Hollen (seems like more maybe there not much coverage to confirm)

The democrats are busy trying to squeeze more AIPAC money for when they get massively primaried for backing a genocide. No, i'm not joking the house minority leader gave a speech on israel's success in gaza this week

> Where are the Democrats on all this?

It's a big club...

Where it's going is largely irrelevant I suppose. The only reason the "doge" thing is going on is because Elon needed a way to insert himself into the government, and everybody else involved is too technically inept to realise (or care).

But the effects don't really matter because this is what the American public voted for. As an outsider who's read Daemon and Freedom when are you yanks gonna start the darknet already?

Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

Some people in the us government are very afraid of China.

Whether that fear is justified is a totally different topic

Why yes, let's let a totalitarian state become a superpower and start dictating the international order. I'm sure Xi Jinping will prove to be just as cuddly as Winnie the Pooh; nothing to worry about here.

Should we become a totalitarian state in order to compete with another? That feels like McCarthyism/Cold War/ “authoritarianism is fine as long as it isn’t communism” vibes.

I can see why one would think that; China is very successful in the world market (or, getting there) despite it not having a free market as such (although it has freed up a lot); despite, or is it because, it being a totalitarian state it is quickly catching up to the US, being the 2nd economy of the world; they still have like $10 trillion to go, but charts like https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070632/gross-domestic-p... predict China will overtake the US by 2030 at the current rate.

And there's nothing the US can do. Cutting government spending and starting trade wars with neighbours is not going to stop it. Building up a totalitarian state with deep government influence into businesses is not going to work and will be actively resisted, since Big Government is so against the principles of the current regime's voters - and China has been working on this for decades now. Free market won't work either, as it's already very free in the US itself - but the aggression of US companies in their sales practices, tax dodging, and privacy violations have caused their foreign customers like Europe to raise the defenses.

TL;DR, while I can see how totalitarianism can in theory create a strong economy, it isn't going to fly / work in the US.

Some people can't handle the idea that China has more people and are roughly as resource rich as the US, so if they work hard like we do they will naturally have the bigger economy.

I bet you're from the USA, so this may be hard for you to understand given your context, but as someone from LATAM, let me tell you: China can try really hard to be evil - they will have a LOT of work to be worse than the US.

That's mainly because the USA's flaws have been covered in far more detail, and has also played a bigger role in Latin America. Once those countries start to deal with China more you may find your observations were biased.

How many democratically-elected democracies has China overthrown through bloody dictatorships?

CCP's dictatorship bloodily conquered China, population 1.4B, 20% of the entire planet's people.

USA has also rescued hundreds of millions of people (including China!) from bloody conquerers, as in WW II.

You're arguing with folks who just want to be angry, not listen to facts or sage observations.

(it's not like the US is innocent; we have made a huge number of terrible mistakes attempting to maintain the Pax Americana. I fully acknowledge while being fairly sure that China could and would do far, far worse than the US)

This speculation that China could do far worse is totally unfounded given that they've had plenty of time to push buttons militarily that the US and the Soviet Union had already pushed with much less military power.

What democratic government did they overthrew? Because the ROC was no more democratic than the CCP... and Taiwan didn't have real election till the 1990.

China is allied with Russia right now to overthrow Ukraine

You're right, but that's not the point. Being afraid that another state will become the leading superpower and "dictate the international order" when your oligarchical country has been doing the same thing for the past 70~ years, and not in a "cuddly as Mickey Mouse" way, is HILARIOUS. The doublethink is off the charts! hahahaha.

America has been truly 'oligarchal' for approximately the past one month, whereas China has been a totalitarian state for the better part of a century.

Why not compare the Allies with the Axis next? The US was segregated, right, so... hey, same difference! /s

The US has a pretty extensive 100+ year history of imperialism, destabilization and violence in LATM [1], which is where they are from.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Everyone knows that.

A surprising number of people don't seem to know the first thing about China. Hey, it might not help that China doesn't allow a fifth of the world to learn the history of China.

But let's talk again in four years. The way things are going in America, I may agree with you guys by then :(

If this kind of take is what I missed by never installing TikTok, I don't regret it.

Also, China did try it only a few decades ago. Murder, starvation, horrific torture, reeducation camps, brainwashed children denouncing their parents... impressively evil. Not that Tiananmen Square or Uyghur ethnic cleansing or kidnappings of expat dissidents are so much better.

It's extremely telling that you're bringing up the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward and being downvoted as if the US had ever done anything to that scale.

For sure this country has its own flawed history with slavery and treatment of Native Americans, but China is absolutely on its own level with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

No, they are not. This is a bizarre and highly illegal coup by Musk simply because he can, and who's going to enforce the law? Trump's corrupt DOJ?

Can you explain what is illegal? Aren’t the people that Wired doxxed actually being paid by the government?

No, they are not actually part of the government, authorized by any act of Congress, nor paid by it.

Yes they are. If they are part of DOGE then they are part of the executive office of the President, which would be considered a part of government

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

There is no such thing as DOGE. Any new “construct” and its directives need to be created and funded by Congress. Musk isn’t even legally an employee of the federal government.

The President can hire him and Congress could direct him to do what he’s doing, but that step has been skipped.

That’s why this is massively illegal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_DOGE_Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...

It's not a legal Department.

Trump's team is claiming that anything computerized falls under USDS purview, hence the parasitic hijacking of the US Digital Service.

They renamed the US Digital Services agency to be DOGE. I don't know if they can rename a branch of government but that's how they are doing it. Musk has then gotten Trump to appoint members of his initial DOGE as representatives in each of the departments (Treasury, Commerce, etc) so they can have acting authority.

Trump's delegated Musk as a Special Government Operative and signed executive orders granting him and all his recommended employees security clearances w/o the requisite background checks that normally would be required.

So they are acting within the government, they are employees, and they've been granted special waivers by Trump to do all this craziness.

I think its going to come down more to the courts looking at whether these 'newly appointed employees' are breaking all kinds of laws passed by congress.

Again. All of these things must go through Congress. The President signs laws. He doesn't alter or create them.

What does the executive branch do?

The power President Trump is lawfully exercising in the executive order to control the Executive Office of the President of the United States stems from the Reorganization Act of 1939 (via https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_8248) which FDR had to get Congress to pass after his previous efforts to reorganize the executive branch during the Great Depression were deemed unconsititutional.

Critics at the time warned this Act would give the president too much power.

The Reorganization Act of 1939 lapsed after 2 years. Trump would need a new Congressional Reorganization Act to do what he's doing with DOGE.

Gotta say I'm surprised. I thought for sure I'd get ratio'd by Muskovites, but it seems people have woken up and realize our democracy is literally at stake.

The only way we prevent the worst case scenario is to stand up to authoritarian power.

Keep shining the light on these bad actors. Let's send them home.

Trump is not king. Musk has no authority. DOGE is a hacker crew without a legal mandate.

They're accessing extremely sensitive government systems that do things like disburse trillions of dollars in federal funding and trying to shut down agencies like USAID. I highly doubt they have the right clearances for that. Additionally, congress controls the purse, not the executive branch. Even if DOGE was an above board agency approved by congress, withholding money that congress approved is incredibly illegal and may lead to a real constitutional crisis.

If a presidential aide ordered USAID staffers to not go to work and physically locked them out, it would violate multiple federal laws and protections. Here’s why:

1. USAID Employees Have Legal Employment Protections

USAID employees—both civil servants and Foreign Service officers—are protected by federal employment laws. A presidential aide cannot simply tell them to stop working without a legal order, such as an official reorganization approved by Congress or a government shutdown following a funding lapse.

Under Title 5 of the U.S. Code, federal employees cannot be arbitrarily removed or prevented from performing their duties. The Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341) prohibits government officials from unilaterally stopping agency operations without congressional authorization.

2. Locking USAID Buildings Would Violate Security & Property Laws

Physically locking the doors to prevent USAID employees from entering their offices would likely violate:

18 U.S.C. § 371 (Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Government) if it were done to obstruct lawful government operations. 18 U.S.C. § 1361 (Willful injury of government property) if it involved unlawful restriction of access to a federal facility. Federal Continuity Directives require that government agencies maintain essential functions even in emergencies.

3. Presidential Authority Has Limits

The President does not have unilateral authority to suspend an entire federal agency’s operations without following proper legal processes.

Only Congress can permanently dissolve an agency like USAID by repealing its statutory mandate.

Even if a president wanted to reorganize or defund USAID, they would need to work through legal channels—such as submitting a restructuring plan to Congress.

What Could Happen If Someone Tried This?

If an aide illegally ordered staffers to stop working and locked the doors, several things could happen:

Congressional & Legal Challenges – USAID officials or Congress could sue, arguing the action was unlawful. Federal Court Intervention – A court could issue an injunction blocking the order.

Potential Criminal Charges – Any official involved in obstructing a federal agency’s work could face legal consequences.

Historical Precedents

Trump’s 2018-2019 Government Shutdown: While federal agencies, including USAID, were partially shut down due to funding lapses, career employees were still required to follow proper procedures.

Nixon’s Attempt to Defund Agencies: President Nixon tried to defund programs by impounding funds, but Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, limiting executive control over funding.

Bottom Line

Simply ordering USAID employees to stop working and locking the doors would be blatantly illegal and would likely lead to immediate legal challenges, congressional intervention, and possible criminal liability for those involved.

I don’t have the legal background to assess the accuracy of this response. Assuming it came from ChatGPT, how did you go about validating its correctness (and its relevance to the unprecedented new state of affairs) before posting?

It is not really good faith to assume that somebody has posted a chatGPT response and doesn’t know what the thing spat out. Assuming they wrote it themselves, they assessed the accuracy of the response by looking up the numerous citations that they used.

Look at the phrasing. That post was blatantly written by ChatGPT (or similar).

"unprecedented new state of affairs"

Are you suggesting the rule of law doesn't apply anymore? If so, why are you bothering to read Hacker News? Run!

To pile on, the very data they have in their hands probably has very strict legal requirements for storing/moving and distributing. Failure to account for proper processes can be held against them.

It's only matter of time until one of these clowns starts "accidentally" touching data like the 2020 census individual response data.

To me, that's the red line: If they can touch that and suffer no consequence, then there is no law or process can exist to ensure accountability of the government.

https://www.census.gov/about/history/bureau-history/agency-h...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-...

I still remember false pearl clutching over Clinton emails.

I'll add to the other good reply - in our constitutional system, branches are not allowed to delegate significant amounts of their power to other entities.

So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity. The courts, for example, cannot give their judicial power to others.

Similarly, the president can't delegate significant executive authority to others.

Where are the limits of this?

It's usually about delegating significant amounts of power or functions that the constitution explicit calls out as being owned.

But the limits are not tested often, so not tons of cases.

In the case of agencies, the executive branch also has no power in the first place to either set up, or disband, agencies. This is a power that congress owns. They can't, per above, delegate it, even if they wanted to.

> So congress, for example, cannot delegate making laws to some other entity

But this is standard practice, no? The US system is rather unusual compared to Parliamentary systems in that Congress delegates precisely this power to the executive all the time.

It's muddy but the Executive isn't making laws it makes regulations constrained by and implementing the laws passed by Congress. It's all nominally rooted in some law the Congress passed and instead of just making those interpretations known when they sue you because you're using a financial instrument to defraud people there's a whole process of making it known how the Executive believe the old laws relate to new situations. Congress has neither the bandwidth nor the knowledge to keep abreast of every novel maneuver around the law so they say this type of thing is illegal and this agency is in charge of saying what type new things are.

A great example of that are with various toxins and pollutants, there's no system in which we can go through the whole process of making a new law every time we discover that some miracle chemical is giving people giga-cancer. Instead Congress tasks an agency full of experts to decide what safe levels of the giga-cancer causing chemical is and makes sure we only ingest slightly below the LD50 of that so we can statistically live.

Yeah, but it's a distinction without a difference because some of the "fill in the blanks" stuff Congress does is so vague that executive agencies in practice write plenty of new laws from scratch. It's not just adding specific items to lists.

And then there's also plenty of cases where the constitution is just ignored without consequence. The CDC unilaterally announced payments to landlords were suspended during COVID, something it had no power to do. It didn't cause much of a fuss.

Regulations are nowhere near that freeform, and they have extensive public review and commentary. The EPA was in court for years debating whether CO2 could be included under the Clean Air Act because they had to stay in the narrow lanes Congress created.

The CDC case seems to make the opposite point: they took a broad interpretation of the public health act, and it was rejected in the courts as exceeding what Congress had intended:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/05/us/politics/eviction-mora...

Right, of course, it was clearly illegal but during the key period the CDC got what it wanted anyway. There were apparently no repercussions for this behavior, is making a decision this latest struck down by the courts are valid justification under federal employment law of the terminating employees?

Clearly illegal? The CDC temporary eviction moratorium went to our conservative Supreme Court and they ruled 5-4 in the CDC's favor. Maybe based on the fact we were dealing with a worldwide pandemic.

Yeah and ultimately in a very real politik way whatever the Supreme Court says is Constitutional is Constitutional because they are vested with the final say on what the Constitution means at any particular moment.

The CDC has pretty vast powers in a public health emergency and IMO the ability to forcibly quarantine people is a power far beyond the ability to pause evictions and is maybe even a necessary part of the former. (Can't really quarantine someone if their landlord can just throw them out right?)

No, they ruled against it. There were two moratoriums. The first was authorized by Congress. When that expired the CDC tried to unilaterally extend it and that was struck down:

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/bu...

Realtor associations and rental property managers in Alabama and Georgia again sued to enjoin the CDC’s new (“second”) moratorium. The District Court entered judgment for the landlords, and the Supreme Court affirmed.

The Supreme Court found that Congress could speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise the powers of vast economic and political significance that the CDC exercised in its order, but Congress had not done so. In addition, the CDC order “intruded” in an area that is the particular domain of state law: the landlord-tenant relationship. Absent clear Congressional authority, which was lacking, the CDC order was too broad and was properly struck down.

Sure, they ruled against the second moratorium, not the first. But it was a close ruling, because it's not as clear as you're making it sound. The CDC has very broad powers during a public health emergency.

Not saying I agree with what Trump's CDC tried to do, but it's not clear to me that the law bars them from taking extreme measures during a pandemic. It just has to be continually justified by facts on the ground.

I was reading https://apnews.com/article/usaid-foreign-aid-freeze-trump-pe... this morning and that article noted that USAID was apparently established by JFK. Wikipedia confirms that ("... USAID was subsequently established by the executive order of President John F. Kennedy ..."), and although USAID website is down right now, https://web.archive.org/web/20241229151048/https://www.usaid... seems to confirm that too.

I asked ChatGPT and it said many other agencies were established by EOs (e.g. FEMA, NSA, NASA, EPA). Quote from ChatGPT: "Many agencies later received congressional authorization, but their initial formation or restructuring was often directed by executive orders." So it seems like the last paragraph is incorrect.

It's not wrong, it just depends on what you consider an "agency".

If you mean "any organized entity that contains federal employees", by that definition, sure lots of "agencies" exist that are created by the different branches.

If you mean "something that can create binding regulations that interpret or implement law" - no, those have to be authorized by congress in some fashion. Even if they are run by the executive later, which is also somewhat muddy.

etc

Traditionally, they agencies are the things that have officers who are nominated by the president and approved by the senate, and have useful power as a result :)

I'll also point out - even the ones that are entirely created by other branches (executive, judicial) have to be funded by congress one way or the other.

This includes all the ones you listed.

They cannot legally spend money otherwise - ""no money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law".

Sometimes they are created with a small, more general emergency appropriation or something, but again, if they want to spend money, that also requires them to be authorized and appropriated by congress.

Some of the more interesting questions that we have thankfully never had to answer for real (outside of blustering) is around various branches using their power to deliberately interfere with the basic functioning of other branches (except as authorized by the constitution, which, for example, says congress can set the jurisdiction of courts except for the supreme court. Where we've come close to it has mostly been around appropriations designed to force another branch to do or not do a certain thing. We may come a lot closer the next few years depending on what happens.

The constitutional limit is easy (none of them is more powerful than the other, and may not interfere with the basic sovereignty of each other), but the lines are not.

Sure, thanks for the explanation! I didn't mean to imply that this was intentionally misleading, just wanted to point out that a lot (most?) of people, including mainstream media, are using the term "government agency" with a meaning closer to your first definition. And with that in mind it's valid to say that the exec branch actually does have the power to create / disband agencies. And even if we stick to the latter definition of the "agency" - it feels like there's a certain asymmetry here. Perhaps EOs can't be used to create a new agency, because that requires new funding to be approved by another branch. But what about disbanding an existing agency? That doesn't require approving new funding, right? So what stopping an EO to disband an agency?

Sure - let me try to give you a complete answer.

So the thing about appropriations is - they actually have to spend them unless it says something else.

It's not like a budget. It's an order to spend money a certain way. That's why generally congress is said to have the power of the purse - they give the directions on how money is spent.

So appropriations come with directions, time frames, etc.

The executive branch must spend them as directed, and they must be applied to the specific purpose as directed.

This is also why you will sometimes find federal agencies or the military spending infinite money towards the end of the fiscal year, because they are just making sure they spent all the money they were supposed to. Again, sometimes the appropriation says "spend up to", etc. But whatever it says, they have to do it.

So if they say "you have to spend 1 billion on USAID", they must in fact, spend 1 billion on USAID.

Let's take the agencies that are specifically authorized or created by congress out of the picture - they literally can't disband these (and i don't believe they've tried yet). These are usually the things created or later authorized by bills that say something like "their shall be an office of the xyz" or something similar.

So for example, CPFB is here: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:12%20section:...

(I just picked a random one, the establishment language is fairly standard, the rest i have no opinion on :P)

Given it is created and provided for by law, it must be disbanded in the same manner - legislation that removes it.

So if we are sticking to the other ones - it basically comes down to whether an appropriations bill allows it in some fashion.

Does it say "1 billion must be spent on USAID" or does it say "1 billion must be spent on giving aid to ukraine" or does it say ....

That is what in practice, enables or prevents an EO from disbanding an agency that is not specifically provided for by congress.

At least, as far as money/etc goes. There may be other reasons they can or can't disband an agency.

For example, Congress has a congressional research service that provides it with information. It is basic to the functioning of congress (or just slightly above basic). Whether established by law or not, it's unlikely to be constitutional for the executive to disband an agency that another branch depends on, since they are supposed to be coequal branches. This has rarely, if ever, been tested in practice though.

Even when different branches have hated each other with a passion in the past, the degree to which they would test the limits of constitutional power while pissing on each other was fairly restrained.

There are a few exceptions, but they are definitely the exception and not the rule.

Also keep in mind - while the president has some special powers, the general purpose of the executive branch is simple - to faithfully execute the laws. The only discretion in even doing that comes from the laws themselves and the constitution's description of the executive's discretion.

EO's (no matter who makes them) were not intended to be a path for the executive to do whatever it wants, and use power not granted to the executive

I say this not offering a view on the legality or not or wisdom or not, just trying to make sure i answer your question completely.

So let's take the case of USAID.

USAID was "created" by EO originally, but was recreated in 1998 by congressional act (The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.):

"(a) In general Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. "

(there is being the key words here. Not there can be)

The last relevant appropriations bill (section 7063 of the FY24 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act) says:

" Sec. 7063. (a) Prior Consultation and Notification.--Funds appropriated by this Act, prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, or any other Act may not be used to implement a reorganization, redesign, or other plan described in subsection (b) by the Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development, or any other Federal department, agency, or organization

[[Page 138 STAT. 844]]

funded by this Act without prior consultation by the head of such department, agency, or organization with the appropriate congressional committees: Provided, <<NOTE: Requirement.>> That such funds shall be subject to the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations: Provided further, That any such notification submitted to such Committees shall include a detailed justification for any proposed action: Provided further, That congressional notifications submitted in prior fiscal years pursuant to similar provisions of law in prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs may be deemed to meet the notification requirements of this section.

    (b) Description of Activities.--Pursuant to subsection (a), a

reorganization, redesign, or other plan shall include any action to-- (1) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize covered departments, agencies, or organizations, including bureaus and offices within or between such departments, agencies, or organizations, including the transfer to other agencies of the authorities and responsibilities of such bureaus and offices; (2) expand, eliminate, consolidate, or downsize the United States official presence overseas, including at bilateral, regional, and multilateral diplomatic facilities and other platforms; or (3) expand or reduce the size of the permanent Civil Service, Foreign Service, eligible family member, and locally employed staff workforce of the Department of State and USAID from the staffing levels previously justified to the Committees on Appropriations for fiscal year 2024. "

So the executive branch cannot eliminate, reorg, or downsize USAID without, at a minimum, consulting with congress.

Given current events, we'll see what happens.

Giving their names is hardly doxxing them, especially since they are breaking the law. And if they are government employees, it would still be illegal to hack into sensitive databases, copy data to insecure devices, suspend payments to federal contractors, bar federal employees from their offices, and disband entire agencies.

Not sure why this is being downvoted as Musk & co's actions are clearly bizarre and illegal.

The downvotes are because Musk has a large personality cult, especially on tech oriented sites like HN.

Also because they can easily afford to completely change the voting system on these sites lol

Do you have a reference for "clearly", from case law or a lawyer/judges perspective? IANAL, and I don't see any commenting here.

What do you think is going on exactly that there’s any remote chance that someone who isn’t a political appointee or employee of the government can be given the power to stop all payments to federal contractors or abolish Congressionally established agencies? The President doesn’t have those powers, much less Elon Musk.

I already said I'm not a lawyer. My perspective and opinion aren't relevant.

You don't have to be a lawyer to have perspective or opinion on the law. It just means you're probably less technically educated than most lawyers.

While it's true that a perspective and opinion can be made by me, it's in no way tied to the reality of how the courts will view it, which is all that matters, which is why I want an informed perspective and opinion, from the domain of law. A good example for the value of people's opinions vs how something is interpreted is Roe vs Wade.

If you have an informed reference that helped you achieve such clarity, I'm very interested. Unfortunately, my armchair has a broken leg, so I'm unable to use it at the moment. And, search engines are completely failing me.

that's a little self-flagellatory. I don't think it takes a whole lot of legal education to recognize that what is happening is not legal.

most lawyers aren't constitutional scholars either. do you really think an expertise in personal injury law in Rhode Island makes one more qualified to recognize that an unelected billionaire shutting down organizations without any Congressional approval or appointment is illegal?

I don't get how this could be a coup, Trump was duly elected, and he's delegated this power to Musk. It could certainly be bizarre and highly illegal, but to me, the essential piece of a coup is unseating the rightful leadership, and there's no element of that at present.

Judging from his last term, at some point Trump is likely to get tired of Musk, kick him out of the administration, declare he always thought Musk was a bad guy, and pretend like he never listened to him. If Musk tries to stay in after that, it could be a coup.

Seizing legislative power, which up until about 7 days ago included all control over federal funding, for the executive branch is a coup.

It's always been clear to me that federal agencies aren't allowed to spend money that congress hasn't authorized.

It's been less clear to me whether federal agencies are obligated to spend money that congress has authorized.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Imp...

Thanks, I had to dig, but impoundment looks like what i need to research.

This isn’t Trump’s power to delegate. Congress dictates spending, not the President. Usurping that power from Congress is the coup.

Separation of powers, checks and balances. The executive branch taking powers from the legislative branch with the judicial branch approving can be seen as a coup.

If it is illegal, then it can be coup. You are elected to act within the law.

Democracy becomes non democracy by illegal acta, typically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_coup

Don't forget that Trump is approaching 80. I don't know how well he will be able to keep up.

I would use the term 'purge' for what's happened so far, along with 'seizure'. the coup would come after the purge, once musk has full control of the monetary system and the republican congressional leadership and the courts have made it clear they won't do anything to stop Trump.

Trump cannot legally delegate his power to just anyone. Delegations of power are done through appointed positions that must be confirmed by the Senate.

He also doesn't have the power to just shut down a part of the government created and funded by an act of congress.

It looks to me like this is the natural outcome of the executive branch deciding what mandates from congress it will uphold. I.E. deciding which laws to focus on enforcing and which one's to have lax/non-existent focus.

Until Congress grows a spine and starts legislating again, the executive will continue to run rampant.

I’m not sure how having Congress “start legislating again” would be effective if the executive branch can simply ignore that legislation under your interpretation.

Congress did this on purpose.

Republican's STATED OBJECTIVE for decades has been obstructionism, entirely so they can go on the news and say "Look how ineffective the government is". Go look at how debates happened on the floor of congress 40 years ago. Go look at the AMOUNT of work done by a functioning congress. Compare it to how little republicans have done in congress since.

Then go ask republican voters and they will tell you that they explicitly prefer a congress that does nothing.

They want a king.

> A self-coup, also called an autocoup (from Spanish autogolpe) or coup from the top, is a form of coup d'état in which a political leader, having come to power through legal means, stays in power through illegal means through the actions of themselves and/or their supporters.[1] The leader may dissolve or render powerless the national legislature and unlawfully assume extraordinary powers. Other measures may include annulling the nation's constitution, suspending civil courts, and having the head of government assume dictatorial powers.[2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

For a recent example see the events in South Korea with President Yoon.

But which of those actually fits the present situation? Four years haven't passed. Congress is not dissolved. It's literally just a bunch of executive orders and firings within the executive branch, which, last time I checked Article II, is under the authority of the president.

First the coup starts happening, then the coup happens

I think “unlawfully assume extraordinary powers” may apply.

It’s certainly debatable, but shutting down agencies created and authorized by Congress and refusing to distribute funding legislated by Congress seems to be an overstep of executive power, and therefore an undermining of Congress’s power.

My main point was that ousting an incumbent or defying an election is not a requirement for something to be a coup, as the previous comment was suggesting. A legitimately elected official seizing more power than they are legally entitled to is a form of coup.

There is certainly a transfer of power going on, but whether that's unlawful will be for the courts to decide.

I’m not sure a court ruling is a requirement for something to be called a coup.

anyone can call anything anything, sure(is it a "coup" when I paint a good painting, or win a game of chess? https://www.thefreedictionary.com/coup), but the great-grandparent comment referred to a "bizarre and highly illegal" coup.

There's so many laws they're breaking it's hard to name them all and that's part of the point, flood the zone with misbehavior and it becomes difficult to track and react to it all. The President is not a little tyrant able to do whatever he wants with the Executive Branch just because he was elected, the idea that he is and should be is a bizarre new reading ideologically motivated to allow someone like Trump to tear anything they don't like to shreds and only keep the parts they want.

It's only democracy when I like it.

Conversely: It’s only an overstep of constitutional power when I don’t like it.

Whether Trump was duly (?) elected is still up for debate, after all he's a convicted felon, an insurrectionist, there's investigations into voter fraud, and foreign interference / propaganda that helped get him elected again.

He can't just delegate power to an unelected civilian like this.

To invoke Godwin's law, Hitler was democratically elected, Austria democratically voted to join the Reich, the people of the UK voted in favor of leaving Europe. Just because it doesn't technically meet your definition of a coup, doesn't mean it's a hostile takeover of the country's government and systems. But if you'd rather argue semantics that's fine too. If this keeps up, the US government will shut down by March and people will die - or, more will, as there's a link between the plane crashes and the Trump admin's cutting down on already understaffed air control staff.

In a just world, these kids will end up in jail for a long time, and Musk for the rest of his life. In a less just world, well, I don't want to get banned

Never appropriate. The actions are entirely unconstitutional. If the US decided to disband USAID it would have to be an act of congress, unelected friends of the president don’t come close to being able to make that call.

Doesn’t matter if laws don’t matter and aren’t enforced.

OP asked “is it appropriate”. Will they get away with it? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean it’s appropriate.

we keep having side debates about 'appropriate', 'ethical', 'traditional', 'conventional', 'legal', 'moral', whatever, but the fact remains that you can do whatever you want, until someone else stops you.

No one is stopping the people at the top of the US Government from doing what they want. In fact, there is a whole apparatus in place, at this point, to protect their ability to continue to operate unchecked.

I think we’re all aware of that.

Irrespective of whether our system of checks and balances is working (it isn’t) it’s still worth pointing out exactly what rules and norms are being broken.

To what end

What happens next, Mr. Chekhov?

In a sensu stricto it's illegal, but practically and regrettably they are able to make that call, because though there are rules against it, unless the sergeant at arms of the senate goes out and handcuffs them, nobody is going to stop them. When the executive branch and the judiciary both decide to ignore the legislative branch, what is the legislative branch going to do?

Not to mention the majority of the legislative branch is at a minimum going to pretend they're all for it

> going to pretend they're all for it

... right up until they pretend they're not and never were when the political winds shift again. Though, maybe the winds no longer shift in these parts ...

Send the US Capitol Police? Might makes right apparently, so why would you not act as such?

Who controls the US Capitol Police? I remind you that they obeyed Trump during the January 6th insurrection.

And of course, the executive branch has everyone from the FBI on down, you're not going to win a shooting (or shoving) war with them.

Well, we are in a very volatile place if members of Congress can successfully be barred from government property by Elon Musk.

https://bsky.app/profile/newsguy.bsky.social/post/3lhcadi7oy...

This seems like an inevitable outcome of indefinite growth in executive power.

> If there are no consequences, the law is immaterial.

That is exactly what I mean by "growth in executive power".

I disagree. This is the outcome of someone who doesn't believe in the law acting accordingly. If there are no consequences, the law is immaterial. If the law is to remain intact, show up with force and enforce it. Checks and balances within the branches of federal government.

Edit: DOJ Says Administration Doesnt Have to Follow Court Order Halting Funding Freeze - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42923302

So much for checks and balances I suppose.

Congressional Research Service: USAID Under the Trump Administration - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42941591 - Feb 20205

It's the inevitable outcome of a judiciary packed with lifetime appointments who put the traitor who appointed them over country.

It's called a coup.

How long until Elon dismisses Trump? Let that sink in...

Musk is a convenient fool for the trump administration.

He will be cast aside and scapegoated in less than 6months.

He might end up in jail in 2-4 years.

The Musk-Trump breakup will truly be the breakup of the century.

> He might end up in jail in 2-4 years.

You think the Trump administration is going to prosecute the wealthiest person on earth? Attention and wealth are the currencies of Trumpian politics, and I would be shocked to see Trump try to fight someone with such a massive ability to direct attention (via control over twitter and through having hundreds of billions of dollars).

If Trump can make money on it, he will put anyone in jail. Musk is such an easy target, Trump could take him down in a heartbeat , freeze his assets and put ownership of his companies in his control. And let me state this as clear as I can: this would all be perfectly legal “official acts”

You cannot practically imprison the richest man in the world. He'd end up running the place like a king, like El Chapo did. The only way forward is to exile him to Mars.

> Musk is a convenient fool for the trump administration.

Exactly this. And he doesn't even see it. There will be no "Elon dismisses Trump". Elon is not a natural born US citizen, Trump is. Trump wins, because if one has been paying attention, the people who put Trump in office don't like immigrants all that much.

Trump is 82 in 4 years.

The one thing even the richest can't avoid is time.

The thing about Trump and Musk is that they both believed the other to be a convenient fool. It will definitely be interesting to see who lasts longer.

I'd bet on Musk as he has better connections among the Silicon Valley elite that are propping up this administration. Plus, the way that Trump is rubber-stamping everything Musk does as soon as he hears about it seems to suggest which one is actually in charge.

One of them is 78 and the other is 53. Eventually, time wins.

Time doesn't matter here. Elon can never hold the highest office nor the second highest. The best he can ever do is be their appointed henchman.

The MAGA mobs may only care about a few cherry picked bits from the Constitution, but the requirement of being a natural born citizen (usually meant as born on US soil with 2 US parents, but generally, either one is accepted) is definitely one of them. And he won't be getting meaningful support from anywhere along the other end of the scale anytime soon, so I left them out

Elon doesn't have to be president to run things. We've had multiple US presidents who were proxies for business interests.

> we are in a very volatile place

Understatement of (this) century at least.

We’ve seen that in Korea very recently.

Look at the comments. It's only been two weeks, and people are already tired of members of Congress running to the media after Musk does something illegal. They want these members to force the police to arrest them on behalf of Musk.

I'm in agreement. These people are softer than tissue paper. Where's the energy South Korean representatives had when their President declared martial law?

> Who controls the US Capitol Police? I remind you that they obeyed Trump during the January 6th insurrection.

[Citation Needed]. Seriously. Heck, even a cursory read of the Wikipedia article would tell you they are controlled by the Legislative branch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_Police

> The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is a federal law enforcement agency in the United States with nationwide jurisdiction charged with protecting the United States Congress within the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its territories. It answers to the Capitol Police Board and is the only full-service federal law enforcement agency appointed by the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States.

Misinformation is infectious.

https://www.uscp.gov/the-department/oversight

The Capitol Police Board oversees and supports the United States Capitol Police in its mission and helps to advance coordination between the Department and the Sergeant at Arms of the House of Representatives and the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the Senate, in their law enforcement capacities, and the Congress. Consistent with this purpose, the Capitol Police Board establishes general goals and objectives covering its major functions and operations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations.

The Capitol Police Board consists of the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate, and the Architect of the Capitol. The Chief of the United States Capitol Police serves in an ex-officio non-voting capacity. The Chairmanship alternates annually between the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms.

The legislative branch can recall both the president and the judges, but it won't do that because it is happy with what they are doing.

Even a Democrat landslide in two years wouldn't change it, because almost all Democratic politicians are unwilling to cause a fuss (or they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing).

But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?

> But the people are getting what they voted for

I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic.

This is true on all sides of course, folks who voted for Obama didn’t vote for drone strikes against US citizens either. Winning a presidential election does not mean four years of dictatorship and silencing of criticism.

We (supposedly) elected a king. He’s exempt from all rule of law save spineless congressmen.

Whether most of the people doing so were smart enough to understand it is a good question, but the fact is we put a Perón-like figure into office, and only age will likely make him leave.

FWIW, people thought that when Obama ran around saying “these extrajudicial drone strikes are illegal” they assumed that he would end them rather than do what he actually did - make them legal.

Power Wars by Charlie Savage covers this rhetorical zig zag.

I think that’s extremely debatable. Last I checked “unauthorized access to confidential taxpayer information” was not an election topic

Gee, I'm shocked, shocked, that a guy who stole large numbers of classified documents on his way out the door and stuffed them in unused bathrooms in his house(s) would fail to safeguard confidential taxpayer information.

You're right, it wasn't an election topic. Nobody who had any power cared to make it one, nobody who cared had the power... and nobody else was paying attention.

I don't think it's extremely debatable.

Obama didn't run on drone strikes, but everything Trump is doing has been a part of the Trumpist or Republican fringe platform for years. The Republicans have wanted to defund and destroy government ever since Grover Norquist said he wanted government to be small enough to drown in a bathtub. Purging academia of DEI and "woke," aggressive anti-immigration policies, tariffs, rule through executive order, none of it is new, all of it is established, boilerplate Trump-era Republican doctrine.

Trump ran on "draining the swamp." This is what "draining the swamp" means.

The only real exception to the norm seems to be Trump's sudden hard-on for invading Greenland and Canada.But even then you can look back at his infamous comments on not wanting immigration from "shithole countries" like Haiti versus places like Norway, or his comments on Mexico sending rapists over the border, and see how he might want to forcibly annex a few million white people to balance out the scales of white replacement or whatever racist paranoid shit goes on in his head.

I don't know. But let's please stop pretending no one who voted for Trump knew who he was or what he was about, or that what's happening now is not in effect what many Trump supporters wanted.

What happened to all that soaring rhetoric about the tyranny of the majority?

> But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?

No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.

Whether anyone with the relevant power chooses to punish these violations, is a different matter. The choice since January 2020 has been to repeatedly do nothing in the face of illegal action, but winning elections doesn't make criminal action magically non-criminal.

> No electoral mandate (and the argument for a clear mandate for all of this is thin or nonexistent) makes unconstitutional/illegal action suddenly legal or constitutional.

Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?

The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?

Why are they operating illegally, then? If "the will of the people" is unified enough to change the Constitution, why not… do that?

Why go through all the trouble of amending the Constitution when you can just do whatever you want because nobody's going to stop you? Suppose Trump declared himself king tomorrow. Who with any power is going to push back? It doesn't matter if it's against the law if nobody cares about the law.

I was responding to this:

> Playing devil's advocate - but the people asked for this, right? Isn't it time to amend the constitution then?

> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?

Amendments require approval of 3/4 of states and there are still enough states to vote against. Also what amendment, specifically? That Trump can be president more times? Exert more power? Eliminate opposing political parties? Legislate pi to be 3?

Yes, that is my point.

Is constitutional referendums also managed on a FPTP electoral system?

You're saying that elected officials may operate as kings ordained by the will of the people. But they were willed into office, not willed into supreme power.

There are still laws. But you make a case for "might is right"

That's only the case in a pure direct democracy, which isn't what the US is.

There's a process for amending the constitution. If they want to amend the constitution, follow the process. Even if they only follow it once to change the constitutional requirements and reduce the threshold going forward.

We are (theoretically) a nation that is governed by laws, with equal protection for all under those laws. This creates stability and predictability, which encourages commerce and development.

When you go all Calvinball with government, you destroy that stability and predictability, and investment drops.

One team follows the rules, the other team doesn't care about rules and doesn't follow them. Guess which one struggles to achieve their goals.

This is the predictable outcome of the last 50 years of US politics, of the subversion of the rule of law and decency. The southern strategy, the 1994 Newt Gingrich legislative session, the failure of the supreme court to allow recounts in Bush V Gore, the teaparty, september 11th. All of it has only served to entrench and reward conservative opposition to the rule of law.

Also the Clinton administration where we were told repeatedly that the private actions of the president, and accusations of sexual misconduct have no bearing on their ability to be president. I’d also say the reaction to the Bush v. Gore election which solidified in the public consciousness the idea both of unreliable elections and that an election could be (and depending on what corner of the political world you were in, was) stolen. Decades of telling voters that if you don’t vote for one of the “lesser of two evils” you’re throwing away your vote. Decades of congress abdicating their responsibility to the executive branch to avoid the electoral consequences. Decades of cheering on executive fiat changing the rule of the land (see Net Neutrality) like it was a good thing (or at least like it is when one’s chosen team is enacting one’s preferred policies). Or happily going along with the president blatantly and openly refusing to enforce the laws as passed by congress (see federal enforcement of drug laws), again at least when one’s own team is the one doing the ignoring.

I used to think that people really just weren’t paying attention to the sort of precedents they’re setting when they do certain things. But the older I get, the more I’m convinced that it’s intentional. Take the dreaded “filibuster” that supposedly prevents congress from anything (except apparently banning Tik Tok). The filibuster in general, and its current form specifically are entirely products of congresses own rules. At any time, congress can decide by simple majority to change the rules of their proceedings and they could do anything from requiring that you actually get on the floor and speak instead of just declaring “filibuster” like some Magic: the Gathering spell. Or they could reduce the vote requirements to override a filibuster. Or they could abolish the thing completely and declare all their laws pass with a simple majority vote. So there must be some reason why they don’t do this, why it’s not the number one agenda item the moment the Democrats get any major it in congress. And the only logical conclusion is the current state of affairs benefits the congressional reps and that’s more important to them than the overall functioning of the system.

> the people asked for this, right?

No, not by sufficient margin.

Even assuming every state would decide this direct question the same way as they did the Presidency this past election, a Constitutional amendment requires ratification by 38 states.

> The will of people is the ultimate judge, isn't it?

Ultimately it has to be, but not always in the moment. The bar to Constitutional amendment is high for a reason.

> No, not by sufficient margin.

Honest question: would the margin have been sufficient if the outcome was reversed? Would you be understanding of their position if Republicans had the same feelings and ideas of resistance if roles were reversed?

Illegal and unconstitutional executive overreach is what it is, regardless of party.

I don't really envision a Democratic administration making a similar illegal and unconstitutional flurry of bullshit, but if they did, I would absolutely call them out on it.

The requirements to amend the Constitution are clear: a 2/3 supermajority in each chamber of Congress, followed by 3/4 states ratifying it. Neither chamber comes close to clearing that bar, let alone the state margins.

So this discussion is pretty confusing to me, because the Trump administration objectively does not have the level of support you seem to think they do. Are you saying the incoming administration should get a little amendment as a treat? Are you just not aware of the procedure? Where’s the disconnect here?

The position of the devil's advocate is that the procedure is a little undemocratic - it prevents people to express their will, right? - and ought to be bent when it's really needed. Insert whatever justification here the interested side could plausibly produce.

And like many devil’s advocate positions, it doesn’t make sense. Like, how exactly does the procedure prevent people from expressing their will? If there were truly popular support for DOGE, they would be able to conjure up the required votes in Congress and amongst the states.

But they can’t, because that support doesn’t exist. You’re starting from the presupposition that this is “the people’s will”, but voter turnout was less than 2/3 and Trump only won a plurality of that. That’s not to say that he didn’t win, but you’re talking about whether we should amend the Constitution to satisfy less than a third of eligible voters.

32 is less than 38, regardless of the political valence.

On the grounds that I'm, y'know, human I will grant that I'd probably find myself filling in the details of where exactly the constitutional lines are drawn somewhat differently in line with my policy preferences, but the question wasn't whether this is within bounds of the Constitution, but whether we ought to (morally) consider the Constitution amended anyway because of the electoral victory. My answer to that will always be no - both because of the numbers and also because the election conflates a bunch of questions where ratification asks just the one question directly.

1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has plenty of shills to advocate for him.

2. 49.8% of the popular vote is enough to elect an executive, but not enough to overturn the constitution, which places clear limits on the power of that executive. The more radical the change, the larger the consensus that it requires. In order for the executive to legally receive this power, you need a supermajority of states.

But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.

> 1. The devil doesn't need an advocate, he already has plenty of shills to advocate for him.

Yes, but - if you want to review your arguments, it might be still useful.

> But in a world where the courts and the cops are on your side, nothing needs to be legal anymore.

Maybe not legal - but effective it could be. As a recent example, Syria changed the people at power disregarding laws - cops and courts weren't enough to prevent it.

'Experiencing a Syrian-style civil war' is not exactly ranking highly on my bucket list.

There US state is also far more internally secure than the Syrian state ever was.

constitution is deliberately a law that is hard to change. it's not meant to be amended every election cycle

The constitution and laws are for the people. If the people don't care for them then they're just meaningless bits of paper.

Frankly we haven't had any real rule of law for a long time, and that's finally filtered through to the general populace. The law has been selectively enforced for decades (the famous "three felonies a day"). Of course the people don't respect the law any more, why would they?

> they are secretly happy with what the other branches are doing

Knowing people in democratic politics, this isn’t true. The root of the problem is that they don’t understand or prioritize power.

They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose. Minority on the Supreme Court, house, senate, presidency.

Think about Obama’s first presidency. Sixty senators. What happens if they:

1. Make DC a state. That’s two senators. I don’t think they could get Puerto Rico.

2. Make Election Day a federal holiday. That spikes turnout, which benefits democrats (see: advantage in every major issue.)

That’s the type of thinking that gives and maintains power. But they don’t think that way until it’s panic time and already over.

Having power for the purpose of having power isn't too meaningful. In democracies parties (already questionable concept) should ideally not worry about power, but worry about reaching useful goals.

It's hard to reach a useful goal without power to do so.

Also, think game-theoretically (or practically). If you don't dedicate at least some effort to gain and retain power, you will be displaced by those who do. The first priority of a pilot is to stay in the air, the second is flying in the right direction.

Right, and it's all rather obvious. The problem is better seen when, if you focus on staying in power, you have to spend all your resources on this goal, and you can't reach any other goal. Republican party in USA currently does rather little - they do dismantle government, but the more they do that, the harder it is to them to stay in power, so their resources are self-limiting.

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-oba...

> They have overwhelming support for every major issue

Obviously not, or they wouldn’t have lost.

From a purely power-based standpoint, Obama probably should have pushed more in 2008. But that’s the only time he could have done it - even passing ACA got the Democrats severely punished in the 2010 Congressional elections.

you may be undervaluing the effect of conservative billionaires owning every conceivable propaganda outlet and mashing on the fear, racism, and division buttons like they were going out of style.

The major issues [0] included things like the economy, foreign policy, violent crime and immigration. Which generally favour Trump & the right wing. I don't understand the lack of strategic empathy among some on the left for being realistic about what people are focusing on. The election was close to a coin flip, obviously the democrats didn't have a big advantage.

Climate change might not even be a major issue any more, people are cooling to it.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-t...

> Obviously not, or they wouldn’t have lost.

That doesn't follow. It would be true if everyone voted on a correct and comprehensive understanding of the issues and where candidates actually stood on issues, but a massive proportion of the population just votes on vibes and is completely ignorant of actual policies or issues. Trump is objectively more responsible for the overturning of Roe v Wade than any other person, but ask a swing voter and it's pretty likely they won't know how Trump has anything to do with Roe v Wade and think he's pretty tolerant of abortion.

People don't vote on actual policy. They vote on vibes and other heuristics.

There isn't necessarily a contradiction there; Roe v. Wade was objectively a bad ruling. It was a wild reach to suggest that the US constitution implied anything about abortion; the question is basically whether or not it counts as murder and in the US that is supposed to be resolved by state legislators.

I'm in that camp, I'm extremely tolerant of abortion but the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was good jurisprudence. Probably not well advised, if they're going to burn political capital there are more important issues.

> Roe v. Wade was objectively a bad ruling. It was a wild reach to suggest that the US constitution implied anything about abortion;

Wrong. The Constitution grants a right to privacy.

* The 3rd amendment secures our privacy in our homes against demand for quarter by soldiers.

* The 4th amendment grants us privacy in our persons, homes, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure. ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...")

* The 5th amendment secures our privacy from compulsion to bear witness against ones self and secures our life, liberty, and property against deprivation without due process. ("nor shall any person ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;")

* The 14th amendment explicitly extends that protection to guard against action by States ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ")

* And the 9th amendment makes it clear that not all rights are explicitly enumerated in the bill of rights.

It is incoherent to hold that the Constitution doesn't grant us a right of privacy and control over our bodies, and it follows that we have a right to remove things from our bodies. The aforementioned amendments limit the extent of rights when there's a compelling government interest, but our freedom to exercise the right must be balanced against that government interest and the right doesn't exist if the government can't just make it impossible for anyone to exercise the right.

Roe v Wade was an objectively good decision.

> the question is basically whether or not it counts as murder and in the US that is supposed to be resolved by state legislators.

No. Murder is the unlawful and malicious killing of a human being [0]. Not only are abortions not typically done with malice, but US code defines "person" and "human being" [1] (relevant text included below) and fetuses are explicitly not human beings. Further, the 14th amendment explicitly prohibits states from making or enforcing laws that abridge Constitutional privileges.

|§ 8. ‘‘Person’’, ‘‘human being’’, ‘‘child’’, and ‘‘individual’’ as including born-alive infant

| (a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words ‘‘person’’, ‘‘human being’’, ‘‘child’’, and ‘‘individual’’, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

| (b) As used in this section, the term ‘‘born alive’’, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2023-title1/pdf/U...

When you ask yourself why the Democratic Party doesn't in fact do things that you think would be obvious ways to further it's goals and purpose, over and over again, for generations, you might want to start pondering this concept:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

the evidence is in front of us

the Dem leadership has done nothing substantial about their supposedly spotlight issues for 50 years.

there is a reason for this

Dems have not held power in the US since at least Reagan, Full Stop.

"51" senators (when at least two aren't even democrats and one routinely votes against the party for his literal coal lobbyist cronies) isn't Power.

The one time Democrats held some power for about FIFTY DAYS, we got the ACA. We could have gotten medicare for all but a "Democratic" senator refused. Medicare for all has been on and off the Democrat platform since before RFK got got.

That so many "liberals" and "leftists" insist the democratic party hasn't done anything despite fifty years of being explicitly voted away from the reigns of power is part of the problem.

Go look at the coalition FDR had if you want to know what it takes to push Progressive policy in the US system.

The last time dems held the House, Senate, and Presidency at the same time was a little over two years ago.

> They have overwhelming support for every major issue

The problem is for a lot of these this only becomes apparent when pollsters remove all context and political baggage. For instance, ask people if they like Obamacare/ACA and results are mixed. But go down the line and ask about the constituent pieces of it all and you'll see positive support.

The Democrats have completely and utterly failed at packaging these things up with a message that resonates with the people. Instead they've allowed their opponents to demonize their stances. And that's how we wind up with people holding signs that say things like "Keep government out of Medicare"

The truth is fighting with one hand behind its back when it is fighting lies.

Creation is harder than destruction.

Stop blaming the dems.

The Repubs found an infinite money/PR glitch.

1) They create an issue at Fox. 2) Sell it breathlessly 3) congress person brings it up in the legislature, points to news reports as proof 4) pass a new bill, or stall another 5) Refer to these actions on Fox, showing it as proof. 6) go to the polls after creating the arena you want to fight in.

Add in the internet and the media advertising incentives, and you have escalating sensationalism and extremism.

Post watergate, the Republican strategists decided to win at all costs. There is no messaging that is “nice”, and if dems are aggressive they get penalized for it. Because many people didn’t believe this was true. It was too outlandish.

I understand why things are the way they are. And the dems are pretty fucked now. Whining about it doesn't help though, and it won't get them out of this mess. But neither will just saying "we have better ideas".

They need to come up with a solution that'll actually work. Instead they seem to keep punching themselves in the face.

> Whining about it doesn't help though, and it won't get them out of this mess.

Are we sure? Them keeping quiet while fascists run rampage gives me the feeling of "not saying anything means you're consenting". A gruesome analogy that doesn't fit, because it's the nation getting raped (or since it's Trump, do we want to call it sexual assault), and it seems the Dems were supposed to be another guardian of the nation...

I didn't say they shouldn't do anything. I said that them whining about the situation won't help. To be honest I have no clue what they *should* do, as I said before it seems they're pretty well fucked for now. They could steal the GOP playbook and start a multi-decade effort to take over all media sources and influence people's internal metaphors. But that's going to take some time.

But I hope someone smarter than I figures out a better path.

There’s no solving a problem if theres no ability to look at it in the first place.

This is the other magic trick that happens in America that I can’t figure out fully.

I’ve had the chance to talk to people across stripes in America, including people with significant seniority. I’ve made this point in more refiner points for YEARS now, well before Trump.

It’s not a point that people like to acknowledge. Like here ! It’s a massive issue, one that deserves its own conversation, and it’s reduced to a “whining about it”.

Step up for gods sake.

Here! this is a simple way to move forward, this is how I started to resolve it - why does free speech matter? In layman’s terms, it matters because it’s in support of a market place of ideas. In that case is it ok if you have a market place which has a monopoly? What happens if it’s ok for say… junk food and cigarettes to be sold by the same people who certify it as healthy?

How do you address the issue of advertising incentives that drive part of the escalation in rhetoric.

What do you do to throw a spanner in the free money glitch? Here, and everywhere in the world that is learning to replicate this?

We’re originally meant to be on Hacker news. It’s become VC unicorn hopeful land. Asking these questions, and finding an interest in providing if it’s wrong, or right is part of the most basic flame wars we indulge in.

To be fair, the Democrats message extensively about things like the Affordable Care Act, but most people don't see those messages because the liberal media only wants to talk about migrant caravans, egg prices (sometimes), and immigrants committing crimes.

During these elections, Dems lost even the support of the precariate, the least wealthy who traditionally voted for left wing. No wonder actually, because they largely stopped to represent the the interests of these groups. When I see a black worker in a small grocery store wearing a MAGA hat, I understand that Dems have failed miserably. All the DEI boards did not represent interests of that guy.

There's two points here:

1. Most US media (especially radio) being conservative allowed Republicans to define Democrats in their terms. Consequently, the "Democrats are all trans rights and DEI" was a Republican choice.

2. The Democrats certainly didn't make it hard for (1) to happen.

Look, this is not some Fox News, this is The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/dnc-mee...

I'm no Trump fan, but losing to Trump required some serious efforts :-(

Yes, the Democratic party is terrible at avoiding dumb issue traps that are unpopular.

But the public dissemination of these positions is very conservative media driven.

Counterfactual: if progressive media had been as dominant as conservative media is, everyone would have spent the last 4 years hearing about government infrastructure spending and Project 2025.

In reality, you instead heard a relentless drumbeat of easily attackable Democratic positions, with nary a peep about Republican extremes.

So, yes, Democrat fault for having those positions in the first place. But the de facto situation is mostly created by conservative-dominated media being able to repeatedly broadcast those to an uninformed public.

> They have overwhelming support for every major issue: abortion, gun control, corporate taxes, HNI taxes, healthcare, social security, climate, gay rights. All of them. And yet they lose.

The dems spent this last election cycle distancing, downplaying, and reversing each of these issues. Is it any wonder why they are losing? Rather than play to their strengths and party positions they endlessly and relentlessly try and shift right.

Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.

The Kamala/Biden campaign took painstaking measures to try and quash every single one of these issues rather than centering it in the discussion. Instead, they wasted an entire campaign talking about how much Liz Cheney loves them.

Even now, Schumer is saying "let's just sit back and let people watch what's happening" rather than pressing his advantage and Jeffries is saying "It's not great, but God is in control".

Dems desperately hate their base. That's why they lose. They simply transparent in the fact that the only thing that matters is corporate campaign contributions.

> How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.

On the contrary, they very much want to “control” guns out of existence. But they know during election season they have to tone down the rhetoric in the hopes that people forget everything they’ve said about guns during the last three years.

I don't think what Kamala and Walz said/showed about guns was in any way reassuring to gun owners.

> Do dems actually support abortion rights? Kamala didn't really campaign on that. How about gun control? Kamala was all too happy to talk about how she's a proud gun owner.

On the contrary, abortion was one of the main issues the Democrats campaigned on. I live in California, and while I didn’t get presidential campaign ads for obvious reasons, down ballot Democrats campaigned hard on a pro-choice message, despite the fact that California is about the last place where pro-choice is under threat. (Gun control a little less, but I still saw it sometimes.)

The issue is that Democrats successfully passed a lot of pro-choice ballot measures in 2022 after Dobbs. In 2024 they couldn’t use this issue much, since the states with heavy abortion restrictions after 2022 are much less sympathetic to the pro-choice cause, particularly because Democrat party messaging has moved a long way from “safe, legal, and rare”. Also, Trump distanced himself from the pro-life cause during the 2024 election, even removing the strongest pro-life language from the Republican party platform.

Without the pro-choice vote that delivered the midterms, and combined with the general incompetence of the Kamala campaign, Democrats really had little to offer, especially since they’re associated with unpopular policies like DEI, open borders, trans advocacy, inflation, etc.

Yes! This is exactly right. People care(d) about abortion so they tried to fix it at the local/state level. In many ways they made a lot of progress.

Unfortunately, they then moved on when there is a lot that the federal government (the FDA, for example) can still do to effectively limit access.

And state constitutions can’t override a federal ban that’s supported by a Supreme Court that upholds it.

>I do not believe US policy makers and thought leaders think FGM is a good thing in the US

This may not occur to you, you assume other people are like yourself. That they work in an office and perform a similar job as your own. Given that scenario, if the turnout of Democrats is lower than you expect, the only reasonable conclusion is that some bosses are less reasonable than your own, and ducking out for 40 minutes to go vote at 2pm just isn't allowed! And therefor if it was a federal holiday, their office jobs would just call it off for that whole day, they'd vote, and the Republicans would never win an election ever again.

However, the people who would vote for Democrats don't have such jobs. The jobs they have are menial, they are working all hours of the day and night, someone has to cover that shift on election day, and if somehow one or another of them does have an office job, there's no guarantee that it will be a paid holiday at that employer. My own employer ignores several federal holidays and instead gives us off days for Easter (Good Friday) and some other Christian holidays.

Your political opponents would hoof it through a warzone to cast their ballot. Having to vote early (or late, or apply for a mail-in) isn't why your numbers are down.

> But the people are getting what they voted for, so is it really ethical to intervene in that?

Did people vote for this? I thought people were voting on the price of eggs. Trump dishonestly disavowed the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 ghostbuster containment system of horrible policies when people started becoming aware of the horrors that were in there. Sure, Trump is releasing those demons on us now, but a lot of voters claimed to believe Trump's dishonest disavowals.

Trump wouldn't have won if he had been honest about what he would do. Voters didn't choose *this*.

If you believed Trumps disavowal, you're seriously gullible. We all knew that was fake.

Impeach! That's the prerogative, and the enforcement mechanism, of the legislative branch.

Trump has already been impeached a couple of times. That definitely isn't happening with a conservative majority in both houses of congress.

Dems should bring up articles of impeachment yet again. It will fail in the house and if it doesn't the senate won't convict. But that's really not the point right now. The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal" and make the republicans defend the behavior.

Why? To what end? How will any of that have any effect in the next two years, at least? Nobody elected Elon or any of the DOGE people.

Yeah. Frankly driving a wedge between Trump and Elon would be the more effective political strategy, since it wouldn't exactly be uncharacteristic of them to spectacularly fall out, and Trump couldn't care less if DOGE exists or not as long as he's getting praise from the right quarters

It's inevitable that the two will break up, but it'll be after trump has used him to do all the deeply unpopular hacking apart of social safety nets that he wants to do. He's a useful idiot. A very rich useful idiot.

What a convenient scapegoat to have when we eventually feel the ruinous effects of these decisions. "I trusted ELLEN and he couldn't get the job done, THATS why I FIRED him"

Dollars to donuts this goes the other way. Trump isn't known for playing the long game, and Elon (for all his craziness) is incredibly Machiavellian.

E.g. 'Trump was coopted by the deep state, and that's why I couldn't get it done.'

Also convenient once Trump is (a) term limited and more importantly (b) too old to be politically useful anymore.

Also a very valid theory!

Once Elon has all the passwords, it won't matter what Trump says about him.. He's in forever.

Elon is clearly bankrolling Trump, hes his boss. Trump is CEO and the techno oligarchs are his board.

> Nobody elected Elon or any of the DOGE people

Nobody ever votes for the President's cabinet or anyone else they bring in.

The Senate actually does vote on a chunk of the President's cabinet.

The voters on election day don't, which is obviously what the comment was referring to.

I'm not convinced that the democrats (most of them anyway) are actually apposed to what is happening. Both parties seem to have largely the same goals just preferring to use different tactics in order to achieve them.

I love how "both sides are the same" continues to persist, even though Biden did absolutely none of what Trump has done these last two weeks, either in terms of method or outcome. They truly could not be more different and yet people like you are like theyrethesamepicture.jpg.

Waste of time and really achieves nothing other than theatrics. I don't doubt they'll do it though. Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.

> Theatrics is really all the Dems ever do these days.

They have no power. They can't set the agenda; they can't get legislation to the floor; they can't call investigations. They certainly can't arrest lawbreakers. All they can do is make a case against the ruling party. And if they do it quietly and politely, no one will hear it. So really, it is political malfeasance for them not to be theatrical.

All they can do is make Republicans pay some price for the destruction they are bringing to the country and the world. And this requires theatrics. They have no other levers they can pull.

How exactly are Democrats going to do that considering they don't control the House or the Senate? All that's required to block impeachment is a simple majority to kill the resolution. The Republicans control a House majority and can schedule those kill votes whenever they want. They don't need to defend anything, they can just vote to kill the measure.

Not only that, but the impeachment first needs to make it past the House Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans and chaired by Jim Jordan. Democrats have no tools to impeach. Their best bet is to focus on the midterms.

Elections have consequences.

Too simplistic.

Democrats can’t force an impeachment, but they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law. They can continue to make the case all day, every day.

Assuming that a policy can only be achieved if you can ram it down opponents throats is a sad commentary on just how authoritarian the US has become.

America is a democracy, and the Trump won the election, and the Republicans won the majority of elections in the House and the Senate, and by virtue of those elections they also control the Judiciary Committee by a wide margin which can block attempts at impeachment. Trump is not going to be impeached less than a month into his term for doing exactly the kind of things he said he was going to do during his campaign. The best bet for Democrats is to focus on winning the midterms. Impeachment is not a serious option.

Not the point. The point is to signal (to stand against, to protest) that what the current wankers in charge are doing, shredding up what little decency was left in Washington, is not normal, is wrong, and moving the needle one more small notch towards fascism.

From afar, it's grotesque seeing what's happening over there. Perhaps you're too close to see it.

A lot of politics is purely performative. I’d wager over 50% of presidential candidates in any given election know full well they have no chance of securing the nomination but run anyway to build up their profile for a cabinet position or a future run.

Making a noise today about impeachment would be similar. It would play into a strategy for winning the midterms. It’d generate more headlines about the blatant illegality occurring under our noses, it’d be a stick to beat rivals with come election season. No, there would be no hope of it actually resulting in an impeachment, but that would be beside the point.

He's following the Project 2025 playbook and during his campaign he specifically claimed he would not be implementing Project 2025.

Democrats were warning that he was lying about his intentions, and that he would in fact implement Project 2025, but that is not equivalent to him campaigning on Project 2025. I think this is an important distinction.

Project 2025 didn't call for closing down USAID, so I don't think that's a relevant concern for this issue.

> they can try to find a handful of Republicans who still care about the rule of law

there simply are none

>The dems need to get off their asses and actually message that "hey, this isn't right or normal"

They have been doing that. The issue is that people just look at it all and think "its all political theater"

The only way anything will change is if the ~200m americans who didn't vote actually start to realize that voting matters. Texas could turn blue if all the people in the liberal areas actually voted, which would basically win the election for Democrats.

Okay, another nitpick, but it's not because the majority is _conservative_, is it? If they truly voted from conservative principles, _some_ possible actions of the administration could offend them enough to impeach. It's probably more correct to say that it definitely isn't happening with a loyalist (MAGA) majority?

In the US, "conservative" is synonymous with "Republican" and "Republican" is (so far, at least) synonymous with "MAGA loyalist", so it's really splitting hairs to call out the alleged difference.

I thought one of those synonyms was going to be "spineless". It's amazing how many lines on the sand the fascist has crossed, but despite some Republican noise, in they end they vote to protect their job and its perks (like info about stock movements before they become public, amongst the many other forms of corruption) rather than to defend their principles. But then again, the Vichy Democrats are quiet too, they're too chickenshit to escalate and call out this enemy of the constitution.

I grew up in a "democracy" with rigged elections and decades of one president. From TV we thought "Oh, America is such a better place, the politicians are clean, the cops are honest and can't be bought...". Hah, fucking Hollywood fairytales.

Yep, you're right. When I was a kid during the Obama years, I was even proud of our country. Now I realize that it and the conservatives in it are basically no different to Putin and his followers in Russia, and the liberal opposition party is spineless and feckless at best, complicit at worst. We may well have an autocoup soon, if we haven't already. I hope to be able to leave this country before that point, but until then I can only attend protests, even though they seem ineffective at effecting change. I hate everything.

Republicanism used to mean something. Now it means whatever Trump wants.

Martin Bormann's son: "What is National Socialism?"

Bormann: National Socialism is whatever the Fuhrer says it is.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archi...

Republicans in the US have made being culturally regressive and staying on top as a demographic (white straight christian men) a cornerstone of their politics since the civil rights era. That’s what it has meant to be a Republican for generations.

"Capture" is the basic theme of current US government. MAGA capture of the Republican party, for instance. Regulatory capture by by various industrial sectors.

This is what US Conservatism looks like. You get with Trump's program or you get primaried out. Simple as that.

No true Scotsman?

I don’t think so. The Republican Party had some pretty consistent positions for the better part of the last century, until those got in the way during the Obama era. It’s not like it was perfect before but when it came to questions like “is the President above the law?” or “is Canada an ally?” you could predict how most of the party would side. Stuff like granting unappointed people control over multiple agencies, running roughshod over the national security process, trying to impound huge chunks of the budget, etc. wouldn’t have flown even in Trump’s first term before they finished purging non-loyalists from the party.

I mean you could impeach him again. But that's doesn't really do anything other than wave a finger at him and says "Naughty naughty".

Hell, the guy is able to re-run and win the elected office again after being impeached a few times during his previous administration. Congress needs to affirm his impeachment to force him out of office and that requires a supermajority, which will never happen. Trump could kill someone on national TV and he would maybe get impeached, but he'd have enough friends in congress defending his actions that he would still be president. I mean he's already a convicted criminal.

That's why he just doesn't care anymore and is going crazy as if no laws exist. Laws mean nothing to him. At worst they are an annoyance or noise to him, but he already proved that nothing can stop him.

It’s fascinating to watch, from a distance. If I was a US resident, or worse: US citizen, I’d be terrified.

Your politicians are watching from a distance too, and taking note of what works.

We have a functioning political system, and not nearly as much power concentrated into the hands of a single person.

For now.

Three branches of government, two houses, mix of federal and state powers, checks and balances, an impeachment system, all that stuff?

I think key is not having an executive branch that consists of a single person and/or party.

Our elected officials don't have any direct power over government agencies (ministerstyre), they create laws that the agencies need to follow. Then we have independent bodies that can investigate and remove bureaucrats that don't follow the law.

Now are there any cracks in this system? Probably. But we dont have a president with unlimited power than can only be checked by congress at this point.

yes, I've noticed a huge uptick in the right wing party using almost exactly the same language and bullshit moves.

Eh, they've already seen that with the balkans and eastern bloc countries in the 80-90s. You're gonna get a bunch of Orbàn-like small time dictators on every state that once on a while have to bow to the requests of a central-government more interested in its own political intrigues than governing anything.

US Doomers are expecting something similar to the Civil War movie in the next few years, the reality will be more similar to "The Lives Of Others".

Fiveeyes resident here, and not quite "terrified", but at least "deeply concerned".

"The rest of the world" will not carry on unscathed if the worse end of the range of possible outcomes for the US happen.

(I'm deeply curious about how fiveeyes intelligence operations with Canada are going right now.)

We are

It's worse to be a US citizen? Then why are so many people coming in the US and why are so many people upset about removing the ones that come here illegally? It seems like people should be happy the federal government is giving them free rides away from here if it is so bad ...

Giving up the power to do the one thing you are constitutionally permitted to do, just because it doesn’t work for one particularly teflon-coated individual, is incredibly short-sighted.

Yes the reality of the situation is bleak. But to give up on impeachment would cede even more power to the executive branch.

The Senate didn't find guilt last time. If they do find guilt, the office is stripped. I don't think it's happening anytime soon, but the failed impeachment doesn't really speak to the consequences of a successful one.

> The Senate didn't find guilt last time.

That's not true, most just relied on him being a former president at the time of impeachment.

McConnell:

> “Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty…There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day… There is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict and disqualify former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen. ...The Senate’s decision today does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.”

More quotes with sources:

https://www.justsecurity.org/74725/in-their-own-words-the-43...

It's true in the meaningful, procedural sense, which is obviously what someone would mean with "find guilt".

He'll wear an impeachment as a badge of honor. The rule of law is a mostly self-supporting system. When nearly the entire edifice of government stops being concerned with it, the system breaks irreparably. We're looking at nothing less than the fall of the Roman empire in speed run, in my opinion.

They'll 25th him before they consider impeachment. Right now Trump is just a useful idiot being puppeteered by the Silicon Valley elite. They got "Just Dance" Vance as VP, so they have a good backup.

All they would really need to do is take the existing Trump "speeches" and present them as the.word salad they are too prove him incapable of serving. That story would viewership so the media would be all over it 24-7. That's one reason Trump is rubber-stamping everything Elon says or does - he knows they have him by the balls.

I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.

As the economy crashes, proletariat sentiments will change. If trump is unable to get a war going, or it doesn't develop how he expects, the economy will be the obvious narrative. And if they get trump out before midterms, his endorsement isn't the same thing.

> I think you are assuming too much love for the guy exists in the Congress which he is effectively obviating.

You're assuming that the founders were actually correct about a power rivalry between the branches producing a system of checks and balances between them.

As it turns out, when the whole team is rowing in the same direction, congress doesn't actually care that they've abdicated power or all responsibility to check the executive. Their personal comfort is not threatened by it, and this particular congress doesn't care about governing well.

Sure, the republic will be destroyed, but in the meantime, they'll extract a lot of value for their paymasters.

Congressmen that had a spine, and refused to do that all got primaried out.

Which is why the less Trumpy republicans should have supported the anti gerrymandering acts at the start of Bidens term. The primary problem only exists because of gerrymandering.

Good luck with that. He is in for the next four years and will finish his term.

Impeachment and removing him from office means the dems will need to control congress. Which can’t happen until 2027. Then, those dems will need convince at least a double digit count of GOP senators to vote to remove him and not care about facing the wrath of the MAGA base…just to get him out a couple of years before term limits do?

> term limits

I kinda imagine the next 4 years will work hard towards the singular goal of eliminating those. Or he might just ignore them with a whole lot more preparation than the badly organized insurrection of last time.

It takes much longer than 4 years to amend or unamend (which would be required in this case).

He’s out in January 2029 without a doubt.

The executive branch is currently ignoring the law. Why would they start following it in 2029?

He's already floating the idea of a third term, and the house is considering a constitutional amendment that would allow it.

Of course, that'll be a moot point if he continues to just ignore the constitution as he has been so far this entire term, and the other two branches continue to just let him.

Source?

Do you understand how long and what it takes to ratify an amendment? There a reason why we haven’t done one in 33 years and that one took 202 years. The process is designed to be difficult, it’s much more than a simple majority and bang of a gavel.

We are still working on approving the equal rights amendment. That’s one that started 102 years ago, and we have been trying to get the 3/4 state’s agreement for it for only 53 years.

So no, I seriously doubt with a 50/50 divided electorate in this country that we will repeal the 22nd amendment in the less than 4 years that the US would have to do it before Trump could run again.

The executive branch from 2021 through 2024 ignored some laws too. That’s what executive branches do…”selective enforcement”.

He wanted the national guard there. What you’re saying isn’t any better than someone parroting some Newsmax theory about depopulation. There’s no real substance behind your claim, just mischaracterizations and innuendo repeated ad nauseam so people view it as fact.

He did. But I think Republicans in general (and Trump in particular) are being incredibly disingenuous about the National Guard thing and trying to blame {not even calling it a riot anymore} Jan 6 on Pelosi.

Why wouldn't Pelosi want the National Guard there?

Kent State. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Putting a bunch of moderately trained military in a chaotic situation with angry civilians is a recipe for disaster.

And if they'd opened fire on the crowd? Do you really think Trump and the Republicans would have backed that use for force?

After how they treated the United States Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt for climbing through a broken window into the Speaker's lobby, after ignoring multiple orders to stop?

The democrats will have to convince enough voters that what they really want is to turn the entire country into California. I'm not sure that will be a winning strategy. Judging by the most recent DNC shenanigans, I don't think they learned very much from the last election.

RIP rule of law.

The rule of law is always contingent on the good will of the powerful. RIP USA. They are dismantling the country, not an abstract concept. Godspeed my American friends, I hope you live in a strong state, can get to one, or have a second nationality.

It doesn't take much for a successful coup. Really just the right amount of people to sit on their hands and think that maybe someone else will do something to stop it.

Real. Essa galerinha vai estilhaçar os EUA, vagabundo....

Ore por nós, nesta hora da nossa estupidez. Na verdade, foram muitas outras horas de estupidez, mas o sofrer começa agora.

Apt sentiment. Translation:

Pray for us in this hour of our stupidity. In truth, there have been many other hours of stupidity, but the suffering begins now.

Translation, for convenience:

Real. This bunch is going to tear the US apart, Vagabundo

There isn't much rule of law left.

Think something should be illegal? It's probably in there somewhere. Want to do it anyway? It's probably allowed somewhere else. Want to know if you can or can't do something? Well, good luck figuring that out. With enough time spent in lines talking to civil service workers you can get an answer that may be correct. Or maybe not. Probably best to hire a lawyer at hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you whether you can or not. (The lawyer will say "no", because if he says "yes" and is wrong, now he's in trouble, and nobody wants that.)

The system has grown and changed and mutated, and now it's a behemoth that nobody really understands. It's such a mess that people are genuinely hopeful that an AI will ride in and help us all untangle all that we humans did.

And the people that we've put in charge of doing all of this are collectively the most unaccountable folks ever. They routinely skirt, side-step, or ignore the rule of law as they see fit, and they still enjoy a 90%+ re-election rate and an incredibly high barrier to entry for reformers.

I see we are to:

“And if I did, you deserved it.”

In the narcissist's prayer in your approved overthrow of our government.

At some point the military needs to remember their oath to the constitution. And act accordingly

Typically you use uprising/insurrection against the right and you coup the left as the military is usually more right than the average citizen.

Typically yes. But I don’t know what about this is typical. Trump will throw military under the bus just as fast. It’s up to them to realize that.

The left will throw them down even faster. I'm honestly baffled as to why any police bothered stopping January 6th - it predictably got them hated by the right, but they never got any thanks or appreciation from the left either, so it looks like a complete losing move to me.

They got the Congressional Gold Medal award, and every time I heard Nancy Pelosi speaking of them, she sounded personally grateful.

Also, it was their job to keep Congress safe, and there are a lot of people that take their job and their honor seriously. Maybe they don't make the podcasts, but they are out there keeping our society safe.

You're baffled that someone would do their job if nobody is going to thank them for it?

When someone's in a highly politicised position where it's not obvious what the right call is, I'm baffled that they wouldn't take the route that aligns so heavily with their interests, yes. Much as I'm a fan of personal integrity, there's only so much shitting on my whole profession that I could take.

What's not obvious about preventing trespass?

You're not usually meant to use force to prevent trespass outside of some very narrow circumstances. And whether someone is trespassing or is somewhere they have every right to be is very often unclear.

In turkey this has been the other way around! Us does not look so much different now

Not really. Right/Left labeling is silly in general so it's hard to explain in those terms, but Turkish military is and has been anything but Left. You could maybe call them reformist, secular authoritarians, in opposition of religious, populist authoritarians.

Interestingly after 50 years and 2.5 coups, the kind of people they pushed out are the ones running the country for the past 20 years and they're stronger than ever. I take it as a signal that the problem wasn't specific individuals and parties, but they were merely symptoms of deeper problems with the Turkish people.

Maybe it's the same for US as well.

There was a momentous coup in 1980 that clamped down on the left and nurtured the religious right, to counter communist influence. It was a Carter administration project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Theory

America as 70s/80s Turkey, just have the military coup the civilian government every time it gets out of line. Not a super stable way to run a country!

That's why you send letters asking if it would be a good idea to prominent people on both sides first.

When a ruler becomes authoritarian and fascist, the military has usually sided with that ruler historically.

Usually because that leader financially rewards military leaders.

That'd be a major change in the US.

Not that it couldn't happen, but military peers would feel some kind of way about their superiors who did that.

This sounds very ignorant. The members of the military very much understand and remember their oath to the constitution and they are acting accordingly currently.

Why do you think it's illegal? USAID was established by an executive order by JFK, not by Congress; Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it specifically be USAID. Closing it and not replacing it with anything would be illegal, but closing it doesn't seem obviously illegal.

Edit: not only that, but they didn't close USAID entirely: they just closed the USAID headquarters, and installed Marco Rubio as the new head of USAID. While this may or may not be desirable, I don't see how this is actually illegal. The specific organization of USAID was established by executive order; this is one of the many consequences of the Republicans winning control of the executive branch of government.

They’re not replacing it with anything. They’re defunding it.

Any plays on who is gonna win the Super Bowl? If I were you I’d find a betting market and put ALL my money on your claim.

Edit: Daww, no sense of humor?

No need to guess when they’ve already publicly stated it.

That's even more clearly illegal. The Executive doesn't determine where money goes.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 1:

> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

Interesting take. I think it applies to every agency? Shutter NASA, and any congressional act merely specifies an agency for aeronautics and space, not necessarily this exact one? As long as it’s eventually reconstituted, no foul.

I’m suspicious, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised we’ve hit the “one simple trick” era of governing.

No, NASA was specifically created by the "National Aeronautics and Space Act" [1], not by an executive order. USAID was created by executive order by JFK. [2]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Aeronautics_and_Space...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...

And USAID was then formalized as an independent agency by Congress in 1998:

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prelim&...

The bill you link to specifically allows the President to abolish USAID: as it states,

Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. [1]

And here's the text of section 6601, which explains how to abolish USAID:

(a) Submission of plan and report Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998, the President shall transmit to the appropriate congressional committees a reorganization plan and report regarding-

(1) the abolition of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the United States Information Agency, and the United States International Development Cooperation Agency in accordance with this chapter;

(2) with respect to the Agency for International Development, the consolidation and streamlining of the Agency and the transfer of certain functions of the Agency to the Department in accordance with section 6581 of this title;

(3) the termination of functions of each covered agency as may be necessary to effectuate the reorganization under this chapter, and the termination of the affairs of each agency abolished under this chapter;

(4) the transfer to the Department of the functions and personnel of each covered agency consistent with the provisions of this chapter; and

(5) the consolidation, reorganization, and streamlining of the Department in connection with the transfer of such functions and personnel in order to carry out such functions.

The President can abolish USAID, or can streamline it, or terminate functions within it, according to your own provided links, and only has to submit a report about it.

1: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prelim&...

2: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:22%20section:...

> Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998

That provision expired 26 years ago.

Fair enough; my initial read was that this meant that as of October 21, 1998 reports would be required (whereas previously they weren't), but honestly I think that was the wrong read and you're right.

All you need is a time machine.

How do you keep ignoring this part:

“Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998”

That's not correct. Acts of congress specifically created the agency after JFK's XO.

Regardless, the agency is a party to contracts which it is currently breaking. The actions of DOGE are causing the US to break contracts, which is illegal.

A contract in itself is not law (though it can be legally enforceable), so how is breaking a contract illegal?

Furthermore, very likely any such contracts have language around the cancellation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

Ctrl-F "illegal" - 0 results

> Congress only mandated that some agency for aid should exist, not that it specifically be USAID

That was true in 1961, but not in the 63 years since then. The Foreign Assistance Act has been amended many times with specific requirements since written for the by then already existing United States Agency for International Development[1]

[1] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1071/pdf/COMPS-107...

Nothing in that bill says that USAID needs a specific headquarters to be open, or that it can't be run by Marco Rubio. How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run USAID illegal?

> How is closing the HQ and assigning Marco Rubio to run USAID illegal?

This framing seems disingenuous given the already far reaching effects of the frozen funding, the layoffs, the shut down of communications, the shuttered offices, and, apparently, giving non government employees unfettered access to its computer systems.

But yes, shutting down the USAID or trying to muddy the waters by saying it'll totally still exist, they'll just somehow run it out of the state department and not fund anything should indeed not be possible without an act of congress.

According to USC 6601 — which is the current law — the President literally has the power to abolish USAID entirely, and only has to submit a report about it to do it. [1] Saying that closing the HQ and assigning a Republican as the head of USAID is "illegal" or "should not be possible without an act of Congress" doesn't make sense. Congress already passed an act allowing the President to terminate USAID. Congress does not mandate that USAID exists forever, and does not prevent the President from terminating it or streamlining it.

1: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:22%20section:...

… did you read the first sentence???

> Not later than 60 days after October 21, 1998

I’m pretty sure it’s now 2025, which is more than 60 days after Oct 21, 1998. Therefore, the president does not have power to abolish USAID. Please try again.

Ah, my read of that was that as of October 21, 1998, the President would have to submit a report to close USAID (whereas previously the President did not have to submit a report). However, your reading makes more sense.

It’s not his reading. It’s the only reading.

Did you read the bottom? Clinton already executed this in 1999.

>> Memorandum of President of the United States, Mar. 31, 1999, 64 F.R. 17079, provided...

Uh, that obviously cannot be executing a power that expired 60 days after October 21, 1998.

(It was actually delegating power to revise the USAID reorganization plan—which was not a abolition—and to set the effective date of then part of the reorg that was not transfer of mandatory functions to the Secretary of State.)

That is not at all what that says...

Are there any LLMs that can explain all the amendments to the layperson?

This is the most Hacker News comment I've ever read.

Not if you want accurate information.

I have used it on Municipal Codes to explain things. I just don't have enough background on federal law and how amendments are stored.

This seems like a stretch. If I close Wal-Mart headquarters does Walmart still exist? For a little while, maybe. Warehouses will probably run on autopilot, people will still get paid for a bit, etc, but the company is walking dead. What they've done is effectively decapitate an agency without the consent of the legislature.

Our legislative branch is unable to even minimally fulfill its Constitutional duties.

We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them.

The Congressional budget process is fundamentally broken and increasingly nondemocratic - the leadership of both parties get "continuing resolutions" passed while they draft a mountainous "omnibus" bill that includes all their pork and graft, then they whip the members of the majority party to pass it without reading it.

The Congressional oversight committees are usually captured by the industries and/or agencies they oversee.

Congressional hearings are not used to inform Congress or the people; they're nakedly partisan acting gigs for committee members.

Congress has unconstitutionally delegated much of its authority to a bureaucracy run by the executive branch, intending to have it operate independently of the president. Now we have a president who is choosing to exercise his authority over the executive branch.

Of course, it is illegal and unconstitutional for the president to eliminate programs that are established by law. But remember the executive branch bureaucracy ONLY exists to allow the president to implement the laws passed by Congress. If the laws aren't explicit or delegate to an executive branch agency HOW they law/program will be implemented, then the president has enormous authority over how to implement it, and there is nothing Constitutionally wrong with that. So if the president says "we don't need 10000 people to implement CFR 1.2.3 section 4, we only need 10", and he can implement the law/program as passed by Congress with 10 people, then he's allowed to do that.

The big problem is that Congress MUST depend on the executive branch to, er, execute. Whatever is required to implement the law, that isn't specified in the law, is up to the executive branch, and the President is the head of that branch.

And all this BS about "classification" again only exists to enable the president to do his job. If the president says someone can have access to something, that is non-negotiable, as two USAID folks found out over the weekend. The bureaucracy has for decades used classification to make a currency out of secrets and to try to avoid oversight. Looks like that ride has ended.

And yet all of the inefficiency of Congress and the Courts is better than the alternative, which is dictatorship with no guardrails. We've seen what this looks like in many countries, and nothing you say, do, or own will be safe.

Right, the crusty 236 year old government is showing it’s age and has problems but has also resulted in an exceptionally successful country, so the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it, but instead, the voting populace just decided to burn it to ash; although, many are too politically ignorant to even understand the consequences of their decision.

Tariffs will soon educate them.

The markets expected the tariffs to be cancelled, and as if by magic, they just got cancelled.

Unfortunately, the speedrun to an autocracy won't be, the market's fine with that one.

> the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it

You can't, though. It's ossified too much. The constitution was always meant to be a living document, but now it's a sacred text for which new amendments are practically inconceivable.

It's called a living document because you can amend it.

So, America has been dovetailing towards being a monarchy because Congress won’t do their jobs, and it was inevitable that a President would eventually arrive who would wield that power? If nobody is willing to enforce the law, and the majority willingly hand the keys to the democracy to a single individual with dubious intentions, is it best to just accept this as the “natural order of things”? The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens. I preemptively left the country last year and won’t be back anytime soon, so as sad as I am to see this day, I’m also strategically working to insulate myself from as much of the fallout as I can.

The electoral college was created to prevent a majority from doing such things, but having the electoral college override the will of the people creates all sorts of problems (and possible tit-for-tat in future elections).

Well, it would have been pretty damn nice to see it “activate” when a candidate with 34 felonies and two impeachments won the election, but that didn’t happen, so any supposed utility is immaterial now. I disagree with the entire concept in principle and do believe that the democratic vote should choose the candidate (even now). I just don’t think most folks actually know what they bargained for.

I think a bunch of states actually make it illegal for electors to be faithless.

What does it mean for it to be illegal? If they cast faithless votes, would those votes stand, but then they open themselves up for prosecution? or would the votes not stand at all.

Yeah, the one useful feature I ever thought it might have would be as a check against a crazy-unqualified demagogue, and since then I have seen it fail spectacularly, twice.

That was the original intent. It’s like a half way to a parliamentary system where the legislature elects a PM except here it is a separate one time use assembly.

In fairness to the framers, it was originally supposed to increase in size along with the growth of the House of Representatives.

The electoral college was created in the time before the Internet, computers, television, radio, telephone, telegraph, electricity, the automobile, the airplane, and the train. It was logistically impossible to have a national popular vote at the time. Even the gap between the election and inauguration was based on the time it would take a man on horseback to reach DC from the farthest point out in the country.

There’s tried and true solutions to these things. You can ask any Frenchman, they made a whole thing out of it during the last olympics.

Really depends on the allegiances of the police and armed forces I guess.

Yep. When push comes to shove, I suspect more of them will side with the authoritarian since that's kind of the personality type that tends to get involved in these kinds of occupations.

>The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens

What generation was raised to respect those institutions? Because the boomers were against them and their policies, and Gen X was cynical about them...

Millennials, I'd argue. During the 90s, culture at large painted a picture of stability and progress, all made possible by democracy. See Francis Fukuyama's The End of History for the kind of tone that permeated the time.

As we Millenials have gotten older, we too have seen through the veil and realized the system isn't perfect. More importantly, perhaps, we've seen the wide range of ways people react to this imperfect system. Some have chosen to undermine its very foundations to get their way, leaving many to wonder what we're left with if -- to loosely quote Whose Line Is It Anyway -- the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

The late 70s through the 90s were kind of our last stable period (the 60s & early 70s were tumultuous with Viet Nam and Watergate, and the 30s & 40s were dominated by Depression and World War). That all starts to unravel with 9/11 and the response to it (starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost us $Trillions and didn't really help stabilize the region and ironically began the destabilization of the US).

Much as we like to kvetch about Clinton (and I've certainly done my share of it, and certainly much of the criticism has merit), if there was a "golden age" of America in recent memory, the Clinton era was it.

"I preemptively left the country last year".

Where did you go? I am in a position to leave, but not sure where to go.

The best safe space after the US is Switzerland.

If you move anywhere else, you risk making it worse for yourself.

One option is Taiwan which gives gold cards to people with impressive GitHubs.

> One option is Taiwan

Ummm... yeah, I think that could easily end up in the category of "making it worse for yourself" given the geopolitical risk.

Go where you have friends, family, or some clear reason to be. The fact that you are open to suggestions implies this is an aimless/distracting way to waste years of your life. Perhaps you have the type of trouble you can't run away from ? I am speaking from experience and hoping you don't give up on the US assuming your roots are here. Take a long vacation abroad as an alternative.

America is not moving toward a monarchy. The idea that no one is willing to enforce the law is not true. There have been many criminals that have just been removed from the country and many more are in the process of being removed. I'm not sure what "handing the keys to democracy" means, if this is about the United States then that country is a constitutional republic. I'm not sure what leaving the country served, if it makes you happy great, but there is so much hyperbole on the left. The funny thing is that people at the highest levels of the left that pushed insane hyperbole, clearly don't even believe their own nonsense about Trump and the administration, with their sheepish smiles.

As far as the article, Musk is a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it is a good idea to have an entity concern itself with improving the efficiency and reducing the bloat of the bureaucracy of the federal government and Musk is not a dummy, he is the richest person in the world and runs some quite high-profile companies. On the other hand, it is hard to deny Musk is a little bit of a buffoon: fighting with Asmongold on X over his clear lies about video games is sort of unbelievable, telling Americans to "F [themselves] in the FACE" if they don't want all high-skilled jobs in this country to go to H-1Bs, and various other sort of juvenile things. Having these kids that Musk has hired to run-around the federal government is probably not the best thing but I think this doomsday stuff is completely silly.

Technically one of those criminals would have been musk himself, who was in violation of immigration law by violating the terms of his student visa when he first started working in SV: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk...

He also just pardoned a bunch of criminals who physically assaulted police, desecrated Congress, because… they were on his side? That’s simply unprecedented. I don’t need a “party leader” to tell me that’s wrong.

It's silly but some of it is true. Curtis Yarvin is a monarchist and believes countries should be run as a company with a tech CEO as king, ska dark enlightenment. Peter Thiel believe in his ideas, he funded JD Vances career. Musk seems to be onboard, if not just to enrich himself and achieve his Mars goals. Other tech billionaires are as well.

Their goal seems to be to dismantle the federal government and buy up assets and land. Then form micro countries like above with themselves as king/CEO.

https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no

Didn't the Supreme Court judge that the president can't be prosecuted for crimes relating to his official duties? The only recourse is impeachment, and that requires the cooperation of his own party. The president can also pardon all the rest of his associates as required.

So good luck relying on rule of law.

His official duty is not to subvert the constitutional process.

> We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them

Which Congress authorized and funded.

Congress, historically, has made formal declarations of war only at the request of the President. No President has asked for one in decades nor are they required to make war.

Several presidents have asked for Congression authorizations (Southeast Asia, Iraq, etc.) which are tantamount to the same thing.

Furthemore, the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 specifically enumerates declaring war as a power of Congress:

>> [The Congress shall have Power] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...

They aren't the same thing at all. We've had Presidents ask for authorization without asking for a declaration since the 18th century - the Quasi War was the first I believe.

The precedent is well understood. The President may ask for authorization for any extended war and for a formal declaration, if desired. Then, and only then, will Congress act. Congress will not issue a declaration absent being asked by Commander of the military, for obvious reasons.

This idea that Congress is somehow not doing its job because it's not issuing a formal declaration that were not requested nor required, is simply nonsense.

Frankly, if requesting authorization was the same thing as requesting a declaration, then one could just as easily argue Congressional approval of funding for a war is a declaration.

A declaration of war or an authorization of force are both Congressional approvals for use of military force against an enemy of the state. I get that's inconvenient for your argument, but they're the same.

And the president doesn't have the authority to declare war on his or her own accord, full stop, because the constitution explicitly gives that right to Congress (and no other branch).

Any convoluted timelines around requests are immaterial to those facts.

If the president uses the military to attack an enemy of the state, without Congressional approval, that's outside of his or her authority.

Not for purposes of the Alien Enemies Act they aren't the same.

This concept (Congress failing) gets repeatedly stated in many contexts without sufficient pushback. It should be considered whether perhaps for organization so large its functioning quite reasonably. Much of the current outrage has been manufactured via a long game of propaganda since at least the Reagan era but probably longer.

Yes. The country was doing very well until a couple of weeks ago. Now it's being dismantled.

How much of this is due to the fact that our congress is a hospice ward?

We desperately need term limits. Age limits might make sense too but term limits would mostly take care of that.

>> is the legislative branch going to do?

Impeach. Subpoena. Then arrest if subpoena ignored. Pass laws (supermajority to bypass veto). Cut funding to executive office. Then go nuclear with things like amendment putting the armed forces under legislative control. Lots options. All require a united front.

> All require a united front.

Which requires Republicans to honor their oath to uphold the Constitution. So it's a non-starter.

Or, massive recalls across the country change the math. My point is that there are totally legal and constitutional options. Nobody need result to silliness.

> Lots options. All require a united front.

So in other words "no options" because we will never have a unified front in the legislative branch.

> what is the legislative branch going to do?

What did Parliament do during the English Civil War?

More succinctly -

"So Sue them"

It will take a long time to go through the courts, the courts may not care, and even if they do, you can usually appeal and drag your feet long enough that it doesn't matter. Oh, and bonus here, if you become president again you get another reset. It's illegal, but there's no recourse for action.

It's a DDoS on the legal system and he's got all three branches by the balls. The courts can intervene in some of the cases some of the time, but it won't intervene in all of the cases all of the time.

The only way forward here is if everybody in the federal government either does the same thing, or that they become so ineffective and unreliable at _their_ jobs that everything is slowed down enough for the courts to intervene.

"unless the sergeant at arms of the senate goes out and handcuffs them"

Capturing the courts is the first step in a fascist takeover. The Republican controlled legislature isn't going to send the sergeant at arms and arrest him.

There is nothing in the way now. "It could happen here."

Lot's of speculation over the decades about what Gödel's Loophole was, but one wonders if it lies in this direction.

"Gödel told Morgenstern about the flaw in the constitution, which, he said, would allow the United States to legally become a fascist state." [1] Unfortunately Morgenstern never completely specified what this flaw was. As pointed out in the wikipedia article speculation is that "The loophole is that Article V's procedures can be applied to Article V itself. It can therefore be altered in a "downward" direction, making it easier to alter the article again in the future." But given how difficult it is to amend the constitution it doesn't seem like the problem lies there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole

Same vibes as https://xkcd.com/538/ to be honest

> The actions are entirely unconstitutional.

For all the fetishization of the constitution popular media has led me to believe Americans engage in, when push comes to shove it doesn’t seem to be worth the paper it’s written on.

It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.

If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th

You are correct. USAID is an executive agency.

That doesn't mean it's subject to the whims of the president. When Congress creates independent agencies, they lay out exactly how the president has oversight (usually by hiring and firing the director and/or board).

I remember you pushing this idea (that the independence of independent executive agencies are unconstitutional, or unaccountable, or similar) heavily in a thread a couple days ago. Where is it coming from? AFAIK virtually everyone on both sides has agreed that the independence of these agencies was a Really Good Thing for the last hundred years.

I argued that independent agencies are extra-constitutional, not clearly "un"constitutional, but very clearly not enumerated in the Constitution.

Given that, they've operated on a consensus model for so long, it's hard to say that the current admin is doing something illegal by changing (as long as the money is spent by end of fiscal year, due to impoundment laws). This may be a "constitutional crisis" in the parliamentary sense, but hardly in the American sense.

>virtually everyone on both sides has agreed

This is something I've talked about elsewhere, but the electorate that put Trump in office did it specifically in rejection of the Dem & GOP cooperation of the last several decades which led to the same things happening regardless of who was in charge.

From that perspective (and without saying anything about legality or wisdom, etc) Trump is doing exactly what the people who put him in office asked him to do.

I understand you're arguing this, I'm asking where this meme came from. Independent agencies have been around for more than a century and AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new. Whence came this idea? Is it something you personally invented that the rest of the right doesn't subscribe to, or are others advocating it, and if so could you refer me to what arguments they're using to justify it?

I haven't seen arguments that they're constitutionally unsavory, but I've seen arguments, that the President, as chief executive, does have almost CEO-like control over them. FDR did exert such control, in his case using it to expand the federal government, but he ran a fast-moving government.

So it's not like there isn't precedent for this, it's just that the consensus was as you said, the independent (some would say unelected) bureaucracy running things. But that was only ever a convention.

In most cases the law that created the agency spells out exactly what control the president has, and AFAIK presidents still have to follow the law like everyone else. Is there any real justification for this, beyond the general notion that FDR once got away with something similar so maybe Trump should too?

> AFAICT the idea that there's something constitutionally unsavory about them is very new.

I don't think anyone's claiming that they're "unsavory" - just that they are creatures of the executive that were created by the executive and may be abolished by the executive as well.

And I don't think it's a new position either? The Ron Paul types have been complaining about them for literally decades.

>Trump is doing exactly what the people who put him in office asked him to do

I challenge you to find 1 in 30 Trump voters who could say what USAID stands for or its intended purpose or any of its effects on global politics.

So I dont know about "exactly"...

Eliminating birthright citizenship is cut and dry an attempt at unconstitutional rescindment of the 14th amendment of the constitution.

That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd. The 14th amendment was added to solve a specific problem, the disenfranchisement of slaves who had truly been born here without their say or that of their parents, for generations, and with the leave of the United States government when that was occurring. Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.

Besides all of that, there is the danger that if Democrats try to play the 14th card against him, Trump will declare the immigrants enemy combatants. At which point they are no longer under the jurisdiction of the United States at all, and he can do more than simply deport them. The left has been out-maneuvered at every step here, it's unlikely that this is the point at which they start winning.

> That's unclear to me. The idea that someone can just cheat the naturalization process by smuggling their pregnant selves onto our soil long enough to give birth is absurd.

But that's not true. Only their offspring gains US citizenship, not them.

And then the parents gain Permanent Residency because of the children. Birthright tourism is an actual business...

If you want to get rid of the Permanent Resident status for parents of citizens, go ahead; perfectly constitutional.

But I suspect that isn't the limit anti-14th-amendment people's ambitions.

Most of Europe and the world don’t have as wide ranging protections for free speech or bearing arms as we do, either. So using that as an argument is not relevant, regardless of any spiffy smart sounding Latin phrases.

The text of the 14th amendment follows:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.

Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?

> For better or for worse, the amendment does not make any exceptions for denying citizenship to persons born of late term pregnant women who just arrived on the shores.

"and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" could easily be read to exclude those who are born to people present unlawfully and/or in violation of their visa. I think it's pretty plausible that the Supreme Court might overturn Wong Kim Ark.

> Marking lawful citizens as enemy combatants for simply being born in the US sounds like a very bad idea to me, and should be to you too. Why would I not be a potential enemy combatant for making this comment on hacker news right now?

Welcome to how it's always been for anyone who didn't have citizenship. The "enemy combatant" concept is some tinpot dictator bullshit, but at this point it's been well established in the US and supported by both sides of the aisle, the Dems wouldn't have a leg to stand on in campaigning against it. Talking about applying it to "lawful citizens" is purely circular logic - Trump will take the position that they aren't and were never lawful citizens.

The debates on the amendment make it clear that Congress believed the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals.

Indeed, one of the Senators (Cowan) against the amendment feared millions of invaders who settle as trespassers leading to a loss of control over immigration due to the amendment.

It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.

https://www.justfacts.com/document/1866_birthright_citizensh...

> the 14th extended to the children of outright criminals

A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.

> It is simply impossible to read the debate and argue that Congress' understanding of the amendment didn't include exactly the group people today are trying to exclude.

What Congress believed at the time is not binding on today's courts if they don't want it to be, as the history of interpretation of many other parts of the constitution shows.

> A criminal is very much "subject to the jurisdiction of" the US, far more so than an illegal immigrant who if caught will likely not be imprisoned or even tried, but simply deported.

Deported using......jurisdiction?

You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?

This argument doesn't work.

> Deported using......jurisdiction?

No, just deported. When the Navy shoots at Somali pirates they don't worry about jurisdiction. The left has been at pains to point out that illegal entry is not a crime and border patrol is not law enforcement, but that cuts both ways.

> You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?

If they do a medium-sized crime the US ignores it and just deports them, that much happens all the time already, no-one wants more people in prison.

If they do a big enough crime then I'm sure the US would find some way to charge them, but that's no different from what they do for full-on foreigners who never come anywhere near the US. E.g. if they kill a US citizen on US soil then the US would claim jurisdiction on that basis, even if the perpetrator stayed on the other side of the border the whole time.

>You think if they do some big crime the US is going to ignore it and do nothing but give a referral because oops no jurisdiction?

If you were being reasonable, you might realize that short of those crimes deserving the death penalty, our country is better off just deporting. I don't want to spend $50,000/year (and up) on sequestering someone from our population, when deportation accomplishes that same result. Just make sure the deportation is successful. Send them with a crate of evidence for local prosecutors (who, in theory, should want to prosecute them... unless they really were sending them here to destablize our country with sabotage and rape).

This would remain true for me, even if it had no impact on citizenship of their children.

I'm not saying there's a pressing need to prosecute and imprison, I'm saying the option exists because the US has jurisdiction. The US is not forced to do nothing about the crime.

And I could imagine situations where it makes sense to prosecute and then deport with a suspended sentence, which keeps costs relatively low but also gives them a much bigger incentive to never come back.

I didn't say anything about the parents being imprisoned, tried or even caught.

Indeed, Senator Cowan feared "Gypsies" who "settle as trespassers wherever they go" and whose "cunning is of such a transcendent character that no skill can serve to correct it or punish it." He argued the amendment to make those born here citizens would prevent their removal, as a class.

He went beyond that of course. His diatribe includes floods of "Mongol race", Chinese, Australians and even cannibals.

Really, the arguments against jus soli today almost sound like they're channeling the man.

The jus soil argument is an interesting solution to a problem that even the Founders recognized, which is the tendency for a democracy/republic to create a second, lower class of "not-quite citizens" (famously, Rome).

It means that even if your citizenship never gets worked out, your descendants will be handled.

Having it so extreme as to be "anyone born on the soil (except diplomat kids)" is a novelty. Not necessarily a bad one, but also not obviously what the 14th was attempting.

> Nor can an overly permissive reading be justified on moral grounds... most of Europe (and indeed, the world) does not honor the concept of jus soli.

It is extremely common in the Americas though. I think only Colombia and a few island countries don't have birthright citizenship here. I think it is a good concept for us, the US has historically been a nation of immigrants and our country has a culture that is shaped (and IMO strengthened) by people from all over the world.

The reason why it's common in the Americas has little to do with perceived virtues of immigration, but because they were colonized. Granting citizenship through jus sanguinis is not really possible in this case; granting it via principle of jus soli on the other hand legitimizes the conquest.

The debate over the 14th amendment covered children of foreign countries.

> Mr. Cowan: I am really desirous to have a legal definition of “citizenship of the United States.” What does it mean? ... Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen? Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen? ... If the mere fact of being born in the country confers that right, then they will have it; and I think it will be mischievous. ...

> Mr. Conness: If my friend from Pennsylvania, who professes to know all about Gypsies and little about Chinese, knew as much of the Chinese and their habits as he professes to do of the Gypsies ... he would not be alarmed in our behalf because of the operation of the [proposed amendment] ... so far as it involves the Chinese and us. The proposition before us ... relates simply in that respect to the children begotten of Chinese parents in California, and it is proposed to declare that they shall be citizens.

It is very hard to look at the debates and argue it was just done for ex-slaves and has no other effect given they very clearly debate the effect.

That is totally hyperbolic. I think it is true that birth-right citizenship is part of the 14th amendment and the Trump administration will fail in this challenge. However, there is some debate about it among legal scholars, though, again, I think the weight of the evidence is in favor of birth-right citizenship,

However, disagreeing about the interpretation of the constitution when it is not actually that "plainly" clear, it has been supported by precedent is not the same as ignoring the constitution. In fact, it sets up a challenge for the Court to decide and it will almost certainly find in favor of this kind of citizenship.

Many presidents, including Obama, have put forth orders and supported legislation that was ultimately found to be unconstitutional; it does not mean they were running a monarchy or whatever the left is implying.

IANAL, so a grain of salt and all that.

> It'd be interesting to find out why people think moving the USAID organization under the Secretary of State is unconstitutional.

If there are no existing laws to prevent this, then it probably is legal. Given the voluminous laws in existence, I would not be surprised if there was one out there which is relevant.

> If they do not disperse the money as directed by Congress to specific causes by the end of the fiscal year then there is a problem, but not until September 30th

While this might be a "strict letter of the law" kind of thing (again IANAL), violating the spirit of a law is still illegal. Disbursement schedules are a real thing, with real-world impact when they are not adhered to, and can cause very real problems.

It’s unconstitutional because the U.S. has separation of powers: the Congress passes laws and the President executes those laws. USAID was explicitly chartered by the Congress as an independent agency outside of the executive offices:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1071/uslm/COMPS-10...

That means that the President can’t wipe it out as an independent agency unilaterally. He could go to the members of his party in the legislature and ask them to create a bill rechartering the agency but then it would get public debate and they’d have to own what they’re doing, so he took the path of daring anyone to enforce the law. It’s like hot-wiring your buddy’s car because you don’t want to ask if you can borrow it, except that it’s disrupting millions of lives.

disrupting millions of people who REALLY need CIA slush fund money to do "good things" with it, they promise. USAID needs to go into the dustbin and fast.

That’s a valid opinion, but it’s still illegal not to have Congress change the law just as it’s illegal for hurricane survivors to help themselves to Walmart’s stock even if they really need food or clothing.

Thanks for the extract!

I didn't see where the chartering is in that, all the refs I saw assumed the group's existence, and only a few referred to it as an "agency"--but maybe I missed it?

Most of what I saw was that USA was supposed to follow the guidance of the Secretary of State, or work with other departments. That was Rubio's claim, that not only did it not work with the State Department, but it subverted that department's work and that there was no cooperation with Congressional oversight committees.

Does the US have a constitutional court?

In some constitutional democracies there is a court that sits above the apex court, and they rule on constitutional matters only. I feel this is is an effective check/balance, as it makes the interpretation of the constitution completely unambiguous.

you're talking about the US Supreme Court but it has been politicized over the years and leans to one party or the other instead of strictly interpreting the constitution. For example, many people believe it leans heavily to the right side these days.

IANAL, but my understanding is that that effectively is what SCOTUS does most of the time, i.e. very few issues make it to SCOTUS that aren't constitutional questions. In any case, there is not any higher court like you're describing.

The US Supreme Court is the original constitutional court. It invented the idea that courts can rule on the constitutionality of laws and governmental actions (in Marbury v. Madison, 1803).

Some more recent constitutions have established a separate court that only rules on constitutional issues, but the US doesn't have that.

nit: it's actually written on parchment

Strict constitutionalists would call many of these programs unconstitutional.

This is a problem for the left and for neo-cons; they flouted the constitution for so long, that now that someone else (Trump) is doing it to them, the left/neocons don't really have a base that responds well to cries of "Unconstitutional!".

Strict constitutionalists would only apply the 2nd Amendment to barrel loading smooth bore muskets.

I guess you're agreeing with me?

Constitution says nothing about barrel loading, smooth bore muskets. It says "arms". It's a fairly timeless umbrella term for "weapons or objects usable as such". The only people who have trouble understanding this are generally those who approve of the Machine gun registry being closed by having the federal expenditure to maintain it set to $0, and don't that as being an example of "infringement" of a Constitutionally granted right.

Love your answer, totally agree! But please don't feed the trolls!

It also says "a well regulated militia" as a context where the amendment applies.

It also says “the right of the people” a phrase understood in every other part of the constitution and its amendments to refer to the individual citizenry. Notably, you don’t need to be a member of the press to exercise a right to free speech.

> Notably, you don’t need to be a member of the press to exercise a right to free speech.

The first amendment says congress can't abridge freedom of speech OR freedom of the press. So obviously you don't need one to exercise the other.

The second amendment has much worse wording.

It has different wording but I feel like it’s only difficult because of the politics and emotions attached to it. If it said instead:

“A thriving community of professional musicians, being essential to the existence of great art, the right of the people to keep and play musical instruments shall not be infringed.”

I really don’t think anyone would be arguing that it restricts the right to keep and play musical instruments only to people who are already professional musicians.

A rule saying you already need to be a professional is unreasonable in this scenario. But I think a rule that you have to engage with the community of musicians if you want to have a musical instrument could probably coexist with that wording.

If we go down that route, the "militia" in the US is divided into the "organized" militia, which is effectively the National Guard forces, and the "unorganized" militia, which is everyone not in the "organized" militia and are:

> able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States

So I'm not sure "a rule the you have to engage with the militia" is going to get any better of a reading on the 2nd amendment from an "individual" vs "some group of people defined by the government that aren't 'the People' of every other part of the constitution" perspective.

Where did you get that definition?

And wouldn't "well-regulated" mean organized?

> "a rule the you have to engage with the militia"

To be clear, I was not implying that wording. You changed the musician version too much to swap out single words like that.

Where did I get the definition of the militia? The US Code: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246

As far as I know that’s been the definition at least since the 50s though I’m pretty sure at least the “able-bodied males 18-45” part has been around even longer

> Where did I get the definition of the militia? The US Code

You can't look to the US Code for definitions of terms in the Constitution; the US Code definition applies to the portion of the US Code that that definition is applicable to, but (except where the Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to define something) cannot define terms in the Constitution, otherwise, Congress could simply rewrite the Constitution by redefining the language used in it, and would never need to use the more difficult process of Constitutional Amendments.

As a general rule I agree, but in that case we’re limited to what the constitution says explicitly and what is says explicitly is that keeping and bearing arms is a right of “the People” which is a distinct group from “the States” and “the United States”. Further we know that the Militia is not the Army, nor the Navy, and that it too is also considered a separate group from “the people”.

It seems reasonable to conclude then that the right must be conferred to all the people because if they meant for it to be limited to the Militia they would have said “the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”

Totally appropriate. Everytime congress would ask USAID for information on their spending or audit what they were doing, they would just ignore the requests and say they were apolitical. They're not apolitical. The state department is by definition political, and responsible for the US interests. Totally reasonable to roll it under the state department where they will have to answer questions and not refuse audits. It's not going away it's just going to be accountable to the public that pays its budget (the US taxpayer).

What is your source for this? USAID has an inspector general like every other government agency. Inspector generals are independent of the agency and part of their function is to perform audits. Congress has the same powers with regard to USAID as it has with any other agency. It can investigate, subpoena, etc. The senate must confirm nominees to lead the agency. USAID is subject to the same laws like FOIA as any other agency.

What does it even mean to say that the state department is by definition political? There are political appointees, but the overwhelming majority of the state department is career foreign service or career civil service, which are apolitical. The same is true for USAID.

None of what you're saying makes any sense or has any relation to reality.

My source for what?

Marco Rubio (head of the state department) stated that they refused to audited. So did other congressmen. https://x.com/cspan/status/1886473339201360210

Do you disagree with what he says in the above video? They denied to be audited. The US in USAID stands for United States. Can we not ask what they spend the money on?

USAID was not created by congress. It was created by executive order 10973 by JFK. It can be undone by executive order. It's function can be rolled into the state department.

I worked on USAID software for reporting costs and results and there were annual and quarterly briefings IIRC. It was kind of a whole thing.

Also, Congress codified it as an independent agency in 1998. So.. that last part isn't true either. This stuff isn't hard to look up.

That is factually incorrect. Congress did not codify USAID as an independent agency in 1998. It reaffirmed and clarified its role. The foreign affairs reform and restructuring act of 1998 left USAID a separately managed and operationally independent agency UNDER THE AUTHORITY of the secretary of state. Congress did not explicitly codify it as fully independent.

This stuff isn't hard to look up, but feel free to send an explicit link explaining why they can spend money and never have to answer any questions about what they are spending it on. Some of the alleged things that they spent the money on are ridiculous (not going to repeat them here).

Something is "constitutional" if nine unelected political operatives in black robes with lifetime appointments say it is.

This same court invented prisidential immunity out of thin air. They invented "history and tradition" doctrine out of thin air (and then selectively applied it). They invented "major questsions" doctrine to allow them to act as all three branches whenever they want to.

There is absolutely no opposition to any of this. There are only the perpetrators and the controlled opposition who are 100% complicit with what's going on.

Nobody is coming to save you and certainly not the courts.

what's unconstitutional is how USAID would stiff-arm senators who want to investigate their activities

Got a source on that? Didn't realize USAID had so much political weight to throw around.

Joni Ernst is a Senator who I heard speak on this issue. She was trying to get information out of USAID and it became a long battle just to check their work and could only do so under extremely limited conditions later. They try to hide everything, basically.

This source apparently talks about it, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14359253/joni-ernst...

Your comment assumes that the constitution and democracy still stand- which does not appear to me to be the case. Hopefully I’m wrong.

Too late, Musk already has direct access to Treasury systems:

https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation...

And can incite people against anything he chooses on X, like:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1885964969335808217

and he can certainly act quicker than any checks and ballances. We'll see how the system works to get rid of the chaos monkey on the inside.

>The actions are entirely unconstitutional.

At this point, who cares? The democrats in power have proven themselves wholly incapable of doing anything for many years now.

US National Debt Adds $1 Trillion Every 100 Days.

What is your point?

Their point (i assume because had same convo with my dad) is that the debt is such an emergency we should toss the rule of law

Sometimes following rules leads to an unrecoverable state, and then you have no choice but to reboot. Compound interest leads to either stagnation and decline, or else to jubilee. It's an inherently unstable system that has felled many civilizations before ours. Debt grows exponentially while real economies saturate in an S-curve. Eventually something has to give.

This is not that situation, you're been told so so you can give up what little power you have left out of stupidity.

Interest payments are the largest item of the federal budget. Give it time and they will consume the whole thing.

Stop unaudited government spending? Ukraine says it’s received only about half of what the Biden admin said it gave it.

It's looking like this was at least larping as a 40+ billion dollar slush fund. There may have been some legitimate (useful) spending, and they will find out after auditing the system, but it also looks like there was lots of waste and once-removed (one degree of separation) self-dealing.

This doesn’t mean what you think.

How exactly is this approach an improvement over the status quo? Elon is not auditing spending. He’s pursuing political grudges and generating chaos for its own sake. The outcome will not be less government waste and fraud.

Read the rest of their replies in the thread - they're fully living in a full on fantasy land concerning what's actually happening.

Yes and it is fine. That’s a scary number with zero context, but given the borrowing rate and the investments we’re making in future GDP, this is good borrowing!

it isn’t good when a group of people tries to destroy the entity that’s making those investments. These shitheads are basically corporate raiders coming in to tear things apart for personal gain.

Ironically, it is the “fiscally responsible”, “WhY nOt RuN gOvErNmEnT lIkE a BuSiNeSs” gang who want to destroy any fiscally responsible investment.

If they want to reduce spending meaningfully, they need to cut defense, social security, and Medicare. They won’t, because it’s political suicide.

Which investments in future GDP do you mean?

The billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations. That kind of investment.

Provably false, if you bother to get out of your echo chamber

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/pete-buttigieg-did-not-sp...

I'm curious if you read the fact check?

The most charitable interpretation is 243 Chargers.

According to the AP[0] it's 214

[0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-electric-vehicle-charg...

I think it's the price per charger that's the important value here, and the original claim "billions of dollars for 8 EV charging stations" is indeed provably false (even if you amend it to 243 or 214 EV charging stations). The money hasn't been spent yet.

This is like building a computer, getting it mostly done, and declaring it useless because it doesn’t turn on yet. Or complaining the Manhattan Project had produced zero nukes by early 1945.

It’s a decade long project, with phases and 50 different state governments doing the actual contracting. The Fed side is mostly funding and establishing the Tesla charger as the national standard - which required quite a bit of diplomacy to get all the car manufacturers onboard.

It is somewhat amusing timeline wise as a choice since the Manhattan Project ran from 1942 to 1946:

Jan 1942: Roosevelt authorizes the atomic bomb

Jul 1945 (55 months later): Trinity

Aug 1945 (56 months later): Little Boy

By comparison:

Nov 2021: IRA becomes law

Feb 2025 (40 months later): <250 charging points

But this would take 120 months to complete. What an interesting comparison.

“Things happen fast in wartime” is perhaps not the novel discovery you think it is.

Zero bombs in early 1945. What a waste of money!

Ah, so if they had the extra year they would have had charging stations everywhere. What a pity. All that money wasted because we didn't wait till August.

They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.

Well, maybe if the government declared a War on Climate Change or War on Lack of Charging Stations.

Haha, a tremendous idea. If war works, then use war.

There’s also the matter that the Manhattan Project was under one authority. As an ancestral comment mentioned, there’s multiple automakers involved. It would be trying to build a bomb and dealing with not only the gun type design vs. the implosion design but a bevy of others, whose proponents all have equal influence over Oppenheimer to stymie the effort.

> They invented a novel weapon in half the time your heroes dreamed of building a charging station.

It's a plan to build tens of thousands of charging stations, by 2030.

In all 50 states, with the states and local administrations being responsible for contracting, permiting, buying land, utility work, etc. Most of the work is not on the Feds here.

It should not be at all surprising that 10k+ little building projects take some time to get going. Even from the folks who credulously believed the President could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.

So they came up with an overly complicated plan with little outcome and this is supposed to be amazing?

Oh hang on, I can do better. I have a plan to build 3 billion teleportation machines by 2045. This makes for a great mad libs set.

I have a plan to build thousands of Super Star Destroyers on Exegol by a long time ago.

I don't know how to explain to you that EV chargers exist, unlike teleporters and Star Destroyers.

But we have a plan, ceejayoz. We've got a plan. And ten years from now we'll have a plan and maybe one shed where we can build a teleporter, but always remember the bomb: in early 1945 there was no bomb.

The Interstate Highway System took like 36 years to build, wouldn't that be a better analogy, since it's an entity that exists in many different places at once? Whereas the bomb was built on eminent domain-seized property so you didn't have to deal with local jurisdictions or landowners.

That is a better analogy, yeah, and much more convincing. If this is delivering at an equivalent pace (same year had a state complete their I-70) then I am convinced.

I think your other comment about it being harder because it's an overly complicated plan doesn't convince me. The complexity and feasibility of a plan are also characteristics of its quality.

But this comment I buy. Color me convinced.

I didn't mean it was overly complicated so much as it's probably got more bickering stakeholders, as it involves private industry who presumably don't want Tesla to be able to dictate the standard.

Coming up with one would have been a reasonable outcome. Using Tesla's would also have been reasonable. They managed to sort out who to give EUV tech. But in any case the space of disagreement here isn't large enough to be worth arguing.

Here’s the entire sentence:

> There are currently 214 operational chargers in 12 states that have been funded through the law, with 24,800 projects underway across the country, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

I can see why you omitted the context.

I'll give you a general tip for reading opinion pieces / fact checks (from generally reputable sources):

Any "fact" it claims which is bad for it's case, you can believe with > 90% probability

Any "fact" it uses to support it's case should be taken with a tablespoon of sodium.

For example in this case: 24,800 projects underway. I assume if many were mostly built then they would say "10,000 chargers expected to be operational by March".

If they were under construction at all, they would probably say "under construction" This is a statement from the Federal Highway Administration! it's PR! (as it should be, nothing wrong with tooting your own horn) and the most they claim is "underway".

Of course we won't get an investigative story about this, but I'd wager the vast majority is in the earliest possible stage (before even permits to build)

So, the criticism of Buttigieg is well founded, and the "misinformation" is more directionally correct then the "fact check"

Education, health, infrastrucure, science.

Most government spending is just keeping old people alive and happy, and paying the interest on debt. Say what you want about, but its not an investment in the future.

If a balanced budget led to a flat or negative GDP, reduced the USA’s power and influence globally, and/or lowered standards of living, then would it still be desirable? What exactly is the argument against a deficit besides that it might be giving some groups leverage over the USA, which is dubious?

The argument is that it inevitably gets you to a state like Argentina was in, where the government repeatedly defaults until eventually you're forced to crash the economy for years to escape the loop. I'd rather have a flat GDP than 95% annual inflation.

I’m not advocating for war but one thing this deficit pays for is being a military superpower, which is the main way our debt is “guaranteed”. As in, call in the debt at your own peril.

US government debt doesn't exist as a line-of-credit agreement that someone could choose whether or not to "call in". It's primarily represented by Treasury bonds, securities which represent a promise by the US government to pay a specific amount of money at a specific point in time. It's true that the US can decide one day to default on these promises, but this doesn't have anything to do with military strength, nor can military strength mitigate the negative consequences for the (mostly domestic) investors.

You are advocating killing our own citizens for trying to cash in their t-bills?

He's not advocating it. But it's simply the reality of the US as a superpower.

Just look at Panama this very week. They were threatened to be invaded if they didn't give up economic deals with China and go back to being a servant colony of the US.

The odds of citizens cashing in and demanding all their money at once is pretty slim. The odds of countries that hold US debt doing it are better. But there's a strong deterrent for countries doing that. And it's the reality that the US has no issue with invading, and they've done it countless times this past century to the applause of the voters.

I hate threads like this because of all the misinformed debt hysteria.

People like to bring up places like Argentina and Venezuela, but their debts weren't denominated in their own currencies, so they had to collect dollars in order to repay debts in dollars. As a currency issuer, since we create dollars, we can never run out of them. Nor do we have to round up dollars and take them back from currency holders before we can repay a debt. Doing so just takes those dollars away from the non-government so that the issuer can zero out a ledger somewhere. The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason. The only way we could default on our debt is if we decide to. The only way to "pay off" the "debt" is to take all the dollars away from the non-government, which is _us_.

Respectfully, it's you who's been misinformed by viral but false monetary theories. It's true that the US government can't run out of dollars in the same way that you or I might run out of dollars. It's not true that the government has no fiscal constraints, or that taxes and spending are unrelated parameters.

> The interest is interest we choose to pay, for some reason.

Perhaps this is the best point to talk about, because the precise way in which it's untrue is very concrete. The US government doesn't choose how much interest it feels like paying; it sells securities which promise a specific payout schedule according to an auction-set interest rate. If investors want to buy at a high interest rate, there's no mechanism for the government to demand they accept a lower one.

I never said that we have no fiscal constraints, just that the common misconception is backwards. I also never said that the government chooses the rate. It chooses to pay interest when it chooses to sell securities.

I think the popular misunderstanding is more harmful than some of the misunderstandings you point out (which some people may indeed have) because it leads to people pushing austerity because of their monetarist dogma.

Nobody ever asks who's going to pay for stuff when it's so-called "defense" spending. But if we want health care or education then it's all apoplectic "debt, hyperinflation, enslavement of future generations, where's the money going to come from!?"

Who holds the vast majority of the debt of the government of the United States?

Hint: it's not China, the UK or any other foreign government.

It's us silly. We owe ourselves. :)

Precisely.

The only potential problem here is that "we owe ourselves" simplifies things given that some individuals are owed much more than others, i.e. there's inequality. Other than that? The whole debt charade is just political groups weaponizing (and perpetuating) the lack of fairly basic macro-economic understanding in the population.

76 of those days are social security, medicare/medicaid, vet benefits, income security for the poorest citizens and interest payments.

15 of those days are national defense.

9 of those days are what Elon hopes to cut in half.

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

The deficit is a huge problem. I don't know how to fix it. But, what DOGE has done so far is exactly the opposite of what makes sense.

I agree with your numbers. If we're seeing this much resistance to cutting down mostly foreign-focused programs, would you really be making this comment if Elon/Trump were trying to cut social security, medicare/aid, etc?

I think it's primarily the "how" that people are resisting. I'm not sure why that's being dismissed.

Maybe elsewhere, but this specific thread (i.e. the parents I responded to) appears to focus on the actions, not the "how".

I would be 10X as concerned and so would everyone else because mishandling those programs could absolutely wreck the lives of tens of millions of people.

My point is that a lot of people seem to be in an "ends justify the means" mindset here where it's OK to rubber-stamp over laws, security, any sort of requirements for competence, or even basic understanding of what's being destroyed because in the end, this is chaos is going to have such a tremendous impact.

But, it's not. It mathematically can't. Even if it all turns out amazing it will be a small dent in the problem it's claiming to solve.

So, in the end, all of this is actually just chaos for sake of chaos. In the process, a whole lot of real people will be hurt in real ways. It's not bad at the same scale that "Turn off Medicare until we understand how it works" would be. But, it's nonsensically destructive in exactly the same way.

>I would be 10X as concerned

Exactly my point. This is (one of the reasons) why Trump is cutting these small programs. People would really flip out if he cut social programs for Americans

Of course. But, then there's the rest of my comment...

Have to start somewhere. Pork barrel patronage slush funds are an easier jumping point than welfare benefits.

Or we could repeal the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, that are largely responsible for the deficit exploding in the first place?

https://www.google.com/search?&q=trump+tax+cuts+defecit

They aren't though - not even close.

I agree, but note that comment was in response to one that wrote "Have to start somewhere."

I applaud the goal of rooting out the pork. But, "We have to do something. This is something." doesn't excuse how it's being done.

Turning off the entire flow of money is unnecessary, even counter-productive, to understanding how the money is flowing. Even if half of the money is waste, turning off the other half is causing tremendous real harm for no reason.

It is completely unnecessary and horrific to rubber stamp around national security protocol for something as incomprehensibly impactful as the federal payments system.

And, in the end, what are we going to get out of all of it? What I'm seeing out of Elon is propaganda about programs like "studying shrimp on treadmills" which was an microscopic piece of a very sensible study on marine safety and security. That's exactly the kind of work the government is supposed to be doing. But, if you frame it badly enough, you can destroy it for everyone and claim it as a victory.

> Even if half of the money is waste, turning off the other half is causing tremendous real harm for no reason.

I mostly agree with you, except I would add that the waste is causing real harm as well, as it could be better spent.

The deficit is not a huge problem. If all the deficit hawks literally disappeared tomorrow the country would run more efficiently.

From what I've read, the deficit looked like a huge problem and turned out to not be a problem from WWII to 2008. That's the situation most economists, finance leaders and regulators grew up in.

But, the demographic crisis means that moving forward our growth in entitlement spending for the growing population of seniors is far outpacing our growth in GDP from our slowing population of workers.

We can't tax or cut out way out of this. Elon's cuts are going to be performative at best. Real cuts would put tens of millions of seniors, vets and disabled people into destitution. Taxing the billionaires more would be nice. But, taxing them to zero would only paper over a few years of the problem.

The only way out I see is through massive investment to increase per-capita GDP long term. As a super duper liberal, I'm gung ho on "Bring manufacturing back!" in the form of

1. Re-prioritize trade schools and trade skills so we can actually perform high-skill work in factories if/when we build them. 2. Do everything we can to catch up with China making locally-built green energy tech dirt-cheap and highly effective. 3. Figure out how to incentivize the market to local build the interconnected web of advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to produce high tech goods fast and cheap.

I see the work of https://www.hadrian.co/ as an example of what I'm talking about. I'm starting to see some senators act like they need to stop talking about it and actually do something about it. But, the "best" I've heard from Trump is "Drill, baby. Drill!" and "Tariffs are magic."

If Trump laid out a plan for how to target tariffs surgically and use those proceeds to build up manufacturing, I'd be on board. But, he hasn't. Instead, he has made it clear his only plan is to create chaos, achieve performative concessions, and declare personal triumph while netting great harm for everyone in the end.

To put it another way, the private sector gets an income of $1 trillion every 100 days. Now suppose you stop that income. What happens to the private sector?

So US is trying Germany's austerity?

> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US?

With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago.

I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt itself. Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government. Accountability requires a true adversary/"outsider". Should that be DOGE, or its current implementation? Probably not. Should the adversarial concept of DOGE exist? I would enjoy seeing arguments against the concept. It seems like it's severely needed.

You are way underreacting to what’s going on here. This is not about saving money, or trying to cut waste or fraud. Elon Musk has been posting wild conspiracies on X to justify what he’s doing. But the actual changes are reactionary and political. Accountability is long gone if someone like Elon is in direct charge of what bills get paid. Fraud and waste will skyrocket in these conditions.

I am not a fan of Elon, but his companies are run very capital efficient. So why would "fraud and waste" skyrocket under him?

Corruption skyrockets when:

- Safety checks are dismantled

- Decisions are made at the whim of an executive

- Executives surround themselves with sycophants

We have a worldwide internet service now.

We have electric vehicles (something that would not have happened without TSLA)

On the other side, the corruption is obvious with billions spent on 8 EV chargers.

Why lie?

https://x.com/SecretaryPete/status/1861214037435900357

Incredibly precarious world we live in where only one man could have enabled humanity to have EVs. Tell me more about this planet.

They mean that he will divert or protect payments and credits going to his own businesses or partners. His interest in capital efficiency exists to generate profit for himself, not as a blessing for other orgs he provides as a gift. He did it with Twitter/X after he became owner of its profits.

If treasury money is diverted to his private interests, that is waste and perhaps fraud. But to him it achieves the same end (personal profit) as capital efficiency of orgs under his own ownership, not just his control

You don't see the conflict of interest in one person both controlling how public funds are spent, and running private companies that may have those funds directed to benefit them?

When Elon runs his companies, he is beholden to shareholders to use the company's resources effectively to generate and maintain value.

Who is Elon beholden to when managing public funding and programs as an unelected non-official? Who will vote him out when he wasn't voted in? Who will revoke his confirmation when he was never confirmed?

Trump is beholden to public support. Trump empowers EM. If EM loses public support and voters make their will known, the behavior will end.

What is happening in DC (currently) has broad public support.

> Trump is beholden to public support.

After the election he’s not. Only has to appease a handful of congress critters and a few wealthy people.

> What is happening in DC (currently) has broad public support.

Things have been moving quite quickly, so this seems like a premature judgement. Can you cite a survey that shows that levels of support for disbanding USAID, for example; or taking over the treasury system; or "deleting" DirectFile?

Democrats and their surveys.

> Democrats and their surveys.

I am responding to a specific comment about public support. Besides surveys, what method would you suggest for accurately determining public support for particular policies? And leave your self-satisfied partisan snark out of it.

I couldn’t care less about measuring the popularity of the President a couple weeks into the term. You could ask a fortune-telling chicken for all I care.

I’m ecstatic about everything that’s being done to make the country better right now. We’re again moving in the right direction. That’s what matters to me.

> I couldn’t care less about measuring the popularity of the President a couple weeks into the term. You could ask a fortune-telling chicken for all I care.

Then why are you responding to my objection to a post asserting the alleged popularity of current actions? Are you just interesting in spreading snark and bitterness without any thought or substance?

> I’m ecstatic about everything that’s being done to make the country better right now. We’re again moving in the right direction. That’s what matters to me.

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that you're dumb. What's happening right now is vandalism of the government.

Absolutely not

Look at the Boring company.

JFC, he named a quasi-governmental agency "DOGE"! He may as well have called it "The Department of Pump"

And his buddy the president is happily sending the currency and stock markets up and down with his every idiotic tariff announcement. I wonder if the top man at DOGE is on the list of people who Trump tips off?

Musk, Trump and half this administration are off-the-charts corrupt.

> So why would "fraud and waste" skyrocket under him?

TSLA doubled in value in the month after the election, despite the financials of the company going down. The only reason for the increase in share price is because the market expects Musk to benefit from Trump's corruption, in the form of less oversight and more government subsidies.

That's a very valid argument. Both SpaceX and Tesla are quite capital efficient. Maybe another angle to consider is what's being optimized for? What outcomes would be considered successful for these federal agencies? That's probably going to tell us more about whether the austerity measures that seem likely result in more efficient use of resources to create successful outcomes.

One thing that seems worth think through more is whether the stated outcomes of those agencies is what's actually be optimized for, or whether those are suborned for personal gain by a few parties.

He is capital efficient because of foreign workers

This is not correct. SpaceX is covered by ITAR and therefore cannot hire foreigners.

Of the approximately 70,000 Tesla employees in the US, fewer than 2,000 are H-1B workers. The rest are US citizens or permanent residents. Tesla's manufacturing is much more vertically integrated than other auto manufacturers, so they rely almost entirely on their US factories to produce the cars they sell in the US. Other auto makers tend to do more manufacturing overseas to save on labor/safety/environmental costs, then do final assembly in the US to avoid tariffs.

Private enterprises are optimized for survival and fitness.

Bureaucratic agencies are optimized for more bureaucracy.

> Private enterprises are optimized for survival and fitness.

usually at the cost of the workers, environment, etc.

> Bureaucratic agencies are optimized for more bureaucracy

they are designed for continuity because people die when they suddenly stop functioning.

Tesla and SpaceX ran on government money. X is doing poorly enough that he’s suing former advertisers demanding that the courts force them buy ads.

He now has significant influence over all of those things. Official government communications are only being released on X, incentivizing people to use it. The next NASA contract is going to be awarded by people who know their boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss owes his political career to the owner of one of the bidders. Last quarter, a quarter of Tesla’s net income was unrealized Bitcoin profits – and he’s pushing the government to subsidize Bitcoin so it can get the kind of adoption it hasn’t been able to achieve on merit!

This is why government ethics rules exist, and why high-level officials have public confirmation hearings. Even if he was incredibly scrupulous about not making decisions based on his own interests, it reeks of corruption and provides many avenues for potential abuse (e.g. what if China threatened to seize his factories unless he helped them get a better deal?). The federal employees he’s attacked have annual training reminding them that they can’t accept gifts over $20/year – and really shouldn’t even then – with consequences up to going to jail for a long time.

Hold on there, Tesla has repeatedly shown an amazing ability to cut costs of their products while improving functionality/quality.

Yes Tesla benefits from credits caused by other companies not meeting co2 targets set by the government but that wouldn't have been enough to save them from three near bankruptcies. And yes, they are still quite a ways away from being a leader in overall quality and consistency but yhey are executing extremly well in their R&D compared to other US car companies only to be outdone by the Chinese, certainly not any US company.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNWYk4DdT_E

As someone solidly on the left, this has really frustrated me to no end with the typical lefist sources I watch. In 2025 Facts really matter but all I see are facts being omitted to push a narrative (ie. Elon wasn't the founder of Tesla, Tesla/SpaceX is just alive because of the government subsidizes, Elon does not know anything about how to make a car/rocket).

They cite his bad behavior or screwups in reforming Twitter but unless you have followed everything that Elon has accomplished/failed at you are lying by omission. This is especially dangerous now because by dismissing him as dumber than he really is, you are setting him up for surprise successes because people let their guard down.

This is what I see on /r/fednews at how shocked they are over how fast he is moving at his slash and burn.

You would have known this had you followed the whole Twitter saga very closely, the early days of Tesla where they ousted the original CEO for deliberately lying to the board, and the three near bankruptcies of the company where Elon pulled out hail mary after hail mary to save the company.

When was Tesla founded and when was Elon involved?

Tesla is getting cooked by Chinese carmakers and only tariffs or outright bans can help. In EU their sales are falling quickly due to his salute.

See this is my point. You can easily google that answer and I suspect you know it already. The entire context is missing because you are pushing your narrative. Tesla was founded by Eberhardt and Tarpenning and thats where the left always stops. Without any doubt we know that Eberhart would have tanked the company. Tesla would have been nothing without Elons involvement especially now that we know of the lies that occurred early on during Roadster. There would be no Tesla left had he continued. Leaving this out causes people to miss lessons that help them understand how Elon thinks.

Lessons such as how he brought in his fixers to go 'line by line' in the books to figure out where all the money is going: sound familiar?

>Tesla is getting cooked by Chinese carmakers and only tariffs or outright bans can help. In EU their sales are falling quickly due to his salute.

Did you not read my message completely or were you so fixated on your conclusion that you missed how I admitted that Chinese are outdoing Tesla?

Don't listen to me, heres Elon Musk talking about how good his Chinese competitors are:

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

"If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."

In regards to EU, yes they are sinking there, so are all the other EU companies. The Chinese will own that market. That entire continent is a sinking ship and in hindsight maybe it was a mistake to even open a factory there as im sure Musk is realizing now.

I am so disappointed that the left has apparently learned nothing from the Twitter saga and are instead relearning all the mistakes made there because they didn't pay attention the last several times this happened. Instead of downvoting figure out how you can exploit Musks's weaknesses to stop him.

So the company was founded, Elon Musk joined later and funded it. Are investors founders now or what? This isn't a leftist things, it's just reality. I'm not disputing that he was instrumental in Tesla's success, saving the company several times with new financing.

He overpaid about 20B for twitter and tanked it's value so it's almost worthless now. For example by telling advertisers to fuck off, and when they did he started suing them for doing what he told then to do. All this to turn twitter into a far right extreme and racist echo chamber to push propaganda. All regular users and companies are fleeing it to other platforms. Now he's using his position in government go force agencies to use it for communication, padding his own pockets.

And you still think he's a good guy.

I don't think there is anything I can say to knock some sense into you but i'll bite anyway.

>So the company was founded, Elon Musk joined later and funded it. Are investors founders now or what? This isn't a leftist things, it's just reality.

The left position implies or outright says that he just used his money to take over the company pushing the poor founder out. This nonsense is as far from the truth as you can imagine. Two guys that came along with no financing and just a general business plan. As the founders they were given the chance to run the company and ran it into the ground losing almost all of the investor's money. The original plan was for Elon to start his own company: A company called Faraday Motors(ironic). He was convinced by his business partner to instead join forces with these other two guys. A mistake he probably still regrets.

Is the left correct in that Elon was not the founder? Yes...are they being disingenuous? Absolutely. We can't be playing this stupid game anymore after their abysmal loss this past election.

>I'm not disputing that he was instrumental in Tesla's success, saving the company several times with new financing.

You make it sound like he just wrote a check, walked away, and it magically fixed itself. Now you are being dishonest. A lot had to happen correctly between then and now for Tesla to be where it is today and not just some distant memory.

OP made the claim "Tesla and SpaceX ran on government money." This is another disingenuous statement. Tesla utilizes a program open to any car company to encourage them to transition to ZEV. Its not Tesla's fault that other car companies still cannot take advantage of the program due to the cars that they sell. They had 10+ years to turn the ship around and many still haven't done so. It is certainly not some sweetheart deal only allocated to Tesla or even created for Tesla.

The same can be said for SpaceX: they provide a service, the government pre-paid for that service...SpaceX still has to provide the service. The left makes it sound like they are just being thrown free money.

Frankly why do you even nitpick this so much? What are you even trying to prove? My overall point was that people need to know this history so they can see his tricks coming a mile away instead of being caught off guard like many are doing right now. How is that a bad thing?

>He overpaid about 20B for twitter and tanked it's value so it's almost worthless now. For example by telling advertisers to fuck off, and when they did he started suing them for doing what he told then to do. All this to turn twitter into a far right extreme and racist echo chamber to push propaganda. All regular users and companies are fleeing it to other platforms. Now he's using his position in government go force agencies to use it for communication, padding his own pockets.

Thats just like your opinion man. Here is an alternative take: That Twitter deal in hightsight is looking to be one of the best acquisitions in the history of tech. For 44 billion (of which a lot is other people's money) he literally bought the USA. In the grand scheme of things it is chump change.

>And you still think he's a good guy.

Well I really don't know what kind of a person he is. What I do know is that he will continue to surprise you if you keep your mind closed like that.

Elon has gone off the reservation. Just based on his insane social media postings, he's either completely mad or is cynically pretending to be. Either way he is completely untrustworthy.

At this point, it's probably the safer bet to assume Musk isn't the primary reason those companies are capital efficient.

Maybe he runs companies like he plays video games. Someone else drives while he pretends to.

> Trying to cut jobs/waste/find fraud is political/career suicide for anyone in government

US Government Accountability Office already existed to do this, without it being career suicide for those involved (at least until Trump began attempting to end it despite being nonpartisan)

They exist to report an ever increasing number and list of actions each year. The GAO needs more teeth to be effective.

They also need a congress willing to increase revenues or decrease spending.

start with the “defense” budget first, cut that by 95% and go from there… oh wait, that money is going to… :)

Indeed. There's undoubtably fat to cut all across the board but anybody who decries government spending and waste and doesn't include the DOD as part of that is a hypocrite at best.

the fact that this comment I made was downvoted by more than 0 people tells you all you need to know about that :)

I didn't downvote you, but tell how you would like to downsize the military's mission 95%. No overseas bases? No Coast Guard? No R&D? Just looking at a big number and saying "cut it" is easy, saying what to cut is hard.

95% is overly aggressive, but that doesn't mean there's opportunities to trim fat.

Addressing the DOD's accounting failures is a first step -- famously admitted to by Don Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld says, “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building. Because it's stored on dozens of different technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”

There's zero incentive to cut waste -- in fact the opposite. At the end of the fiscal year it's SOP to spend every last penny in the budget on anything they can, just to ensure their budget isn't cut.

Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US ~$6T and we got nothing to show for it.

There's got to be a reasonable center between "God bless the US Military" and "Shut it all down".

There is about zero chance Trump and Musk will make debt smaller.

Why?

Look at the growth of the national debt during the last Trump presidency.

And Bush, and Reagan.

Find me a Republican president who did not increase the national debt.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-say...

https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-us-federal-go...

You would have to cut entitlements if you're relying on cuts alone, and those require Congressional action to change. It's absolutely wild people actually believed Musk without spending a few minutes understanding the issue.

Is "not grow so fast" a worthy goal, by a department with an efficiency directive?

$250 - $500 billion are lost to fraud, every year[1]. That's near 40% of social security spending.

[1] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-105833#:~:text=GAO%20est...

Certainly, building systems to search for and prevent fraud is a worthy goal. Solving for that is orthogonal to what is taking place (which is Musk and his loyal, inexperienced band of lackeys doing whatever they want without governance and oversight). Is all of USAID fraud? Does the executive branch have the authority to unilaterally shut the program? No, these are the actions of authoritarians.

Everything Musk and Trump have done have been virtue signaling, removing oversight and political independence, gutting consumer protections, and pissing off our allies.

A Russian puppet candidate could not do more damage to this country than what the Trump administration is doing right now.

Nothing being done fights the large causes of fraud/waste/abuse. Nothing being done helps the cost of housing or the cost of healthcare or college or fuel.

The so called successes of the tariff wars so far have been done at the expense of our long term credibility as a nation.

They would have to reverse the deficit to start reducing debt and that is unlikely with a cost cutting approach.

Actual debt won't get smaller, but reported debt can get smaller when they fire whoever is responsible for reporting that.

Firing is what is needed, but it won't happen for people that report spending, it will happen for those that hide it.

No, but they could slow the growth of debt.

US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off our debt) has basically remained static since COVID. I agree that the US requires a serious debate about our fiscal priorities and the appropriate levels of spending and taxation, particularly with automatic social security cuts looming. But it is nowhere near an emergency and fiscal decisions are the responsibility of Congress, not the executive.

Surely taxes/fees represent our ability to pay off debt, not GDP?

We have a fiat currency. The only real limit to the ability is its effect on inflation.

You're upgrading from a crisis that impoverishes a bunch of people to ... a crisis that impoverishes everyone. Unclear what the improvement was. And potentially literally how you get Hitlers running the government, inflation is one of those effects that breeds political instability.

I did not recommend an action. You are projecting.

You said we - possibly there is a flaw in my grammer. How should I be referring to this "we"? Isn't the "I" to "We" transform applied to "you" still "you"? I thought "you" could be plural for groups.

I don't think going from "we" to "they" would be appropriate although in hindsight it might have been a better choice.

there are distributional impacts from crowding out and potential long term effects on AS, never to mention that the inflation risks are very real… debt is likely already politically constraining the fed right now

"Since COVID" is a bad baseline, I would draw a parallel with someone who's condition "stayed stable since they entered the hospital a few days ago". It is too recent and the situation pre-COVID was quite bad. The US is the most indebted entity [0] in history. But it is not obviously the most productive; since that title may sit with China now. It is a precarious position.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_p...

Complaining about the “national debt” is the clearest sign that someone does not understand economics.

What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.

Do you think inflation is gonna happen? Again, literally not how it works. In fact, too low public spending means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation.

1. I don't think you have a theory for how it works.

> means you get deflation which is even worse than inflation

2. People regularly come up with this theory that prices dropping is a terrible thing. An extraordinary claim for which I've never seen an argument I accepted and the evidence is as thin as a rake. Typically the countries that experience the horrors of deflation go on to be unusually wealthy and prosperous - I'd like to see more of it. But it is easy to see why the governments would believe deflation is bad that since they are typically enormous debtors and inflation favours debtors.

Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.

People who bring up this theory, bring the great depression as evidence, forgetting that the problem there was caused by the law forbidding to reduce salaries, which made prices going down equivalent to minimal wage going up, which of course leads to unemployment.

Given the confusion around, eg, the 2008 financial crisis I just flat out reject that there was 1 lesson in the 1930s that was so unambiguous that the debate is settled. It is a ridiculous claim. There was so much going on and so many people always pop up in a crisis trying to muddy the waters to get their preferred policy through. Look at the minimum wage debate - still unsettled despite what I would consider overwhelming evidence in theory and practice. And whatever anyone's personal beliefs, if that can't be settled there is no way at all that the inflation/deflation question has a firm answer from one event in the 1930s.

Especially given that "prices always up"="good" is counter-intuitive and I can't find anyone with a clear argument in favour of inflation. There is lots of gobbledegook and occasionally people who make arguments equivalent to holidays being bad because they reduce economic output. Which is an argument but not very persuasive, I'd prefer to optimise towards an end state where I get to live out a permanent comfortable holiday; even if the economic metrics go down. I like comfort.

What countries did you have in mind? (Haven’t heard that before, would like to investigate)

Well if I want to talk about inflation we have things like the Nazis, Zimbabwe, a long list of collapses that countries never really recover from. But if we look up deflation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Historical_examples

EU - Still to see the long term consequences, but it isn't obvious the deflation was the bad thing in the story.

Hong Kong - Jewel of Asia.

Ireland - Very high HDI and GDP ppp per capita.

Japan - Economic success story.

UK - Can't argue that they're a success! But their problems after WWI wasn't the deflation.

US - Some good some bad, lots to debate, but the latest episode (Great depression in the 1930s) set them up to conquer the world and establish the Not-An-Empire they have now. If that is a bad outcome I fear the good ones.

I'm not seeing the Zimbabwe equivalent. In fact it looks a lot like deflation is associated with - if not a precursor to - long term economic success and prosperity.

Is there an example where you can explain how the deflation actually led to economic success? The above feel like very distant correlations more than a result.

'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.

I'm not arguing that deflation leads to economic success. I'm arguing the evidence that it is bad is nonexistent. Although it has some interesting interactions with the tax system and government policies.

If you go through the arguments, inflation/deflation are both mostly neutral because people just adjust their expectations by whatever they think the rate will be. In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth. And by reversing that, deflation is usually positive but only because it suggests that the political leadership at the time was interested in honest market signals rather than seizing an opportunity to conduct handouts.

> 'prices dropping' often includes labor as well, since currency is primarily a medium of exchange.

Inflation or deflation, by definition, doesn't impact how much someone can buy in real terms. Because wages and goods are theoretically changing at the same rate.

Deflation is bad because it’s literally your economy shrinking. It’s not prices dropping, it’s less spending across the board. Depending on your demographics you end up with huge unemployment numbers or a standard of living for the older generation that can’t be sustained by the new generation.

If you’re arguing a fringe point of view please make that clear up front. If I knew you think deflation is good I wouldn’t have ever replied.

And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.

> Deflation is bad because it’s literally your economy shrinking.

Well, this comment is off to a bad start. What about a very small economy of 1 widget that can be produced and sold for $2 per unit time, then a technological change that causes the equilibrium to move to 2x widgets for $1 apiece in over the same time? The real production of the economy has doubled, and experienced 50% price deflation. The same basic scenario can be developed at any economic size and complexity. No unemployment. No standard of living drop. Just people affording more stuff.

Deflation, in fact, is literally not the economy shrinking. It is a systemic reduction in prices.

> And by the way, you say Japan is an economic success story because of deflation, but I guess you never bothered looking up their 300% debt ratio that they have been running for decades, exactly because they didn’t want deflation to ruin their economy.

This is pretty typical of anti-deflation comments in my experience - what are you trying to say here? Countries manage to overwhelm themselves with high debts with inflationary monetary policy too; the problem - if there is one - is the borrowing of money. It is hard to end up in debt without borrowing money and investing it unproductively. That decision is independent of monetary policy.

And I didn't say Japan was an economic success because of deflation. There wasn't a "because".

> Inflation or deflation, by definition, doesn't impact how much someone can buy in real terms. Because wages and goods are theoretically changing at the same rate.

From your earlier post: > Frankly I suspect that if prices go down all else equal most people will be better off and able to afford more stuff. Wild take, I know.

As you mention above, this isn't likely to actually be that different.

But:

>In practice though inflation policy is typically masking money printing projects or policies that destroy wealth

Inflation rewards moving money into goods, and deflation rewards moving money out of goods. Generally, an economy where money moves around is better than one where it sits idle. Yes, it does penalize saving cash (), which offends many puritan mindsets (including mine), but it rewards risk-taking and committing your currency towards capital, both of which tend to make the economy more productive.

() - So, if your 'wealth' is in currency, then inflation does devalue your wealth. But if your wealth is in capital, that capital should fluctuate with the currency, and inflation doesn't devalue that.

Heh, you noticed. I was being a bit sneaky in my word choice [0] there - the commonly used measure is the CPI [0] which doesn't include wages - so in practice it would often measure "deflation" which is really just prices going down due to technology improvements and people becoming better off. Think what has been happening in the tech world for however long. If not for pro-inflationary policy the overall economy would tend to stable prices except for massive drops in the cost of tech goods, leading to measured "deflation" (not really deflation but error in the measure) and people getting wealthier.

That was why I said "prices go down" instead of "deflation" - because the measure in practices is a price basket which doesn't directly include wages.

> But if your wealth is in capital, that capital should fluctuate with the currency, and inflation doesn't devalue that.

In the abstract, yes. In practice, after you factor in the interactions with capital gains tax it actually means there is a wealth tax (transaction tax? Extra tax on the principle, anyway) which is relatively punishing to anyone trying to save for their old age.

EDIT [0] With benefit of 24 hours hindsight, it would have been more proper to say "consumer prices" to distinguish the CPI from inflation.

Have there been any efforts to remove the limit completely, so we can spend freely?

I will admit that I don't understand economics, but infinite free money hacks seem too good to be true.

Infinite free money hacks is literally how fiat currencies work.

The government wants the economy to operate at close to full capacity, so it creates money and spends it into the private sector.

Eventually that money makes it to individuals, who want to save some of that money. There’s also foreign agents that might want to hold on to your currency, and trade happening that means some of your money leaves your country.

If the government maintains steady spending, this money supply slowly dwindles, which leads to a shrinking economy.

So governments issue debt to offset that dwindling money supply. The catch is that spending that doesn’t create real resources is inflationary, so you have to spend money on things that eventually earn you more money.

At the end of the day, that’s the idea of macro economics. Spend enough to get your economy growing, while making sure inflation doesn’t go up too much. Which is why people that complain about debt have no idea what they’re talking about.

The reason Trump won was because “the economy is doing great since Joe Biden”, meant the billionaires tripled their wealth as mega corporations went from less than a trillion market cap to more than 3 trillion, while me and millions others fixed salaries went up 5% if you were fortunate.

I don’t see how that’s relevant to the macro economics discussion, and I don’t see how Trumps tax cuts for billionaires are going to help you in any way.

If you don't see how that's relevant to the macro economics discussion, i don't see how the macro economics discussion is relevant.

We're sending in the young guns to save on government spending because trump won partly on "Biden ruined the economy". The government spending leads to the increase of government debt. Or is the debt coming from a separate source?

Biden governed far too much as a center-right President, I agree. Meanwhile Trump had those same billionaires with front row seats at his coronation. So the situation will continue to get much worse.

But all of this has nothing to do with the debt.

Those billionaires didn’t choose to inflate the money supply. I have no issue with them having assets that go up in value. That just doesn’t mean the economy is doing great. The point is there is way too much spending, and this includes Trump, yet it seems like they really are trying to make a dent in our federal spending, and Musk going in and looking at USAID, is quite awesome. Trumps net worth actually went down from being in office, and so far so has Elon’s, so I ain’t worried.

> What do you think happens if the debt goes up? Do you think the government is gonna go bankrupt? That’s literally not how it works.

You're the one that has no idea what hes talking about.

Debt uncontrollably going up without something to balance it means exactly that. If the debt exceeds the GDP, which is where the US is clearly going, we are looking at a collapse of the US dollar and its global influence. Theres no telling what will happen after that because its unfathomable

This is also why the techbros are staging a coup on the US, so the US doesnt come for the billions when it goes bankrupts

Japans debt is 300% of their GDP and yet their society seems to work a lot better than the US. Maybe there’s more to economics than debt ratios.

Well, yes. Japan as a nation is a net creditor. Net creditor don't generally struggle when paying back their debts. The question of where the money will come from has an obvious answer. If the US was a net creditor then the story would be completely different.

Japan's currency is in the toilet. They are struggling.

The value of a currency has nothing to do with how that country’s economy is doing. It’s mostly a factor of international trade. That has nothing to do with debt ratios.

The debt exceeds the GDP since 2012: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

I think you're arguing against a position that not many people here hold - people aren't worried about bankruptcy so much as inflation.

My understanding is that the reason the USD is unusually resistant to inflation is that there's artificially high demand due to international demand for the currency as the global reserve currency.

But yeah, if that effect weakens (and the BRICS are trying to challenge the USD as reserve currency), then I think you'll see the USD weaken/inflation spike in response to large deficits.

Another way to look at that time series is that US debt as a percentage of GDP has doubled from 62% to 121% since 2007.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

My point is that our debt only grows unsustainably in response to severe crises (the great financial crisis, COVID). Our deficit is otherwise sustainable during "normal" times as our economy grows alongside it. We of course should want our debt to GDP ratio to be declining during periods of peace and prosperity (and it is evidence of political malfeasance that we haven't seen that happen since the late 90s). But our current spending is not a crisis in it's own right.

Why should you care if the national debt goes up or down? Why is it bad if it goes up? Do you actually understand the underlying mechanics, or have you just built a lot of eloquent abstractions around the idea of “number go up is bad”?

I'm not an expert but I think I have a reasonable understanding of the situation. If the US debt to GDP ratio gets too high, purchasers of US Treasuries (bills, notes, and bonds) will lose confidence in the US government's ability to service that debt and demand a higher yield on US Treasuries at auction, which increases the cost of servicing the debt. At that point, the government has two choices; pay the higher yield which eventually results in fewer services/higher taxes and a contraction in the real economy, or to default on the debt which would result in very bad things happening (this is where I cop to ignorance on the scale and exact details of the badness). We should get ahead of that by reducing our services/raising taxes now so that we don't risk a loss of confidence that would restrict our ability to borrow in a time of crisis.

Two things:

1. Nobody is losing confidence in the US over debt ratios. Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with financing their spending or capital flight. This is a myth that has been proven false.

2. If the private market doesn’t want to purchase bonds, the central bank can do it. Either way, there is never a need to default on debt owed in your sovereign currency. This will never happen. The risk here is inflation, but that risk is always present, regardless of how spending is financed.

This is false.

1. Japan is a net creditor nation, meaning it owns more foreign assets than it owes in debt. The U.S., on the other hand, is a net debtor nation, meaning it relies heavily on foreign investors to finance its deficits. Japan also has a high domestic savings rate, and a large portion of its debt is held by its own citizens and institutions. This reduces capital flight risks compared to the U.S., which depends more on foreign investors (e.g., China, Japan, and others buying U.S. Treasuries). The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, which gives the U.S. unique advantages, but also means its debt is held globally. A loss of confidence in U.S. debt could have larger consequences compared to Japan.

2. U.S. benefits from strong global demand for the dollar, but this is not guaranteed forever. If the Federal Reserve were to absorb all bond issuance ( basically monetizing the debt), inflation expectations would rise sharply, leading to a currency crisis or higher interest rates. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are extreme examples of this.

U.S. essentially "exports" its debt due to its persistent trade deficits. U.S. runs large trade deficits, meaning it imports more goods than it exports. Other countries (like China and Japan) accept U.S. dollars in exchange for their goods, and then reinvest those dollars into U.S. assets, primarily Treasury bonds. This has helped finance U.S. debt at low interest rates for decades. If global confidence in U.S. debt declines, foreign demand for Treasuries could drop, leading to a weaker dollar, higher interest rates, and inflationary pressures.

All of your comments in this thread are misleading.

This creditor/debtor dichotomy is meaningless. It doesn’t change the fact that the debt is owed in dollars and can always be serviced. If foreign investors lose confidence in the US and sell off their treasuries, the central bank can just purchase them and nothing would change. In fact, that’s what Japan does, and that’s why they’re a net creditor. And no, this would not lead to inflation. Again, look at Japan for an empiric example.

> Again, look at Japan for an empiric example.

I already wrote about how Japan is different from the US and why that changes everything.

> debt is owed in dollars and can always be serviced. If foreign investors lose confidence in the US and sell off their treasuries, the central bank can just purchase them and nothing would change

It changes everything for US citizens. Zimbabwe's debt is also serviced, but I'm not sure US citizens would like to pay one trillion dollars for bread and get cut off from the majority of products and resources that the US imports, because the dollar would be worth as much as the paper it was printed on. It would also mean that the whole stock market would collapse because no one would recycle the dollar anymore. It would be a devastating blow to the US economy. It's so obvious to anyone that knows anything about economy that at this point you are just spreading lies.

No, you didn’t explain how Japan is different. Because in fact it’s not. The key point is that a government that issues debt in its own currency can always service that debt, and this is NOT inflationary.

Zimbabwe’s inflation happened because the country had debt denominated in USD and CNY, along with massive political instability, a shrinking economy, and a war happening all at the same time. Couple that with a useless central bank and you have hyperinflation.

How is that in any way comparable to the US? It’s not. This is obvious to anyone arguing in good faith.

> The key point is that a government that issues debt in its own currency can always service that debt, and this is NOT inflationary.

Hmm. Let's follow your argument to its conclusion. Why stop at 300% of GDP? Why stop at 300 times GDP? It seems that even a small nation with a sovereign currency can eliminate all taxation, borrow an infinite amount of money, buy an infinite amount of stuff, make all of its citizens infinitely wealthy, service its debt with printed money forever, and prices and interest rates will both be unaffected. It's amazing, then, that no nation has yet taken advantage of this exploit!

I feel confident that is not right. I think it may be right that (marginally?) there is not a big difference whether a fixed amount of government spending is financed by taxation or debt, because printed dollars and t bills are so easily interchangeable. But it seems that you are trying to use this argument to prove that if these things are equivalent that they are (in any quantity!) harmless, and that's a non sequitur.

Of course that’s not what I’m arguing, please don’t straw man me.

The constraint on public spending is the amount of real resources that can be utilized. Productive utilization of resources is not inflationary. For example, if you have 10% unemployment, a government can hire those people to build infrastructure regardless of the debt ratio. On the other hand, if you issue public debt to purchase commodities that’s obviously inflationary.

But in either case, the constraint is real resources and inflation, not the debt ratio.

You asked why countries haven’t done this already? They have, it’s called quantitative easing and they do it in financial crises to absorb the productive capacity that the private market isn’t utilizing anymore.

>> and they do it in financial crises to absorb the productive capacity that the private market isn’t utilizing anymore.

Oh, so the Central Banks can actually make use of "things" so that there is no waste. This is an absurd claim.

>> Zimbabwe’s inflation happened because the country had debt denominated in USD and CNY, along with massive political instability, a shrinking economy, and a war happening all at the same time. Couple that with a useless central bank and you have hyperinflation.

No mention of velocity or the role of human behavior in an inflationary environment.

You argue in bad faith.

> Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with...

I don't know what the fallacy of "something is the same along one dimension, therefore the situation along some other dimension(s) must be the same too" is called, but this is a clear example.

>> Japan’s debt ratio is over 300%, and they’ve had no issues with financing their spending or capital flight.

This statement is very misleading. The Bank of Japan holds 45% of all outstanding bonds.

>> If the private market doesn’t want to purchase bonds, the central bank can do it.

This is NOT sustainable. Arguing that it did not fail yesterday or last year is not evidence that it won't occur. History rhymes with itself.

Higher relative debt = higher relative interest payments.

Go high enough, interest payments consume the entire federal budget. There is no way out except revenue growth (infeasible without breakthrough productivity improvements), taxation, and printing money (equivalent to taxation). Before that point, other bad things happen such as creditors losing faith in the government, making debt more expensive and destabilizing the dollar's position as global reserve currency.

Over the last few decades, debt has continued to rise as a percentage of the federal budget, and appears that trend will continue without drastic action.

Barring massive political instability, nobody is ever going to lose confidence in the dollar, regardless of debt ratios. Japan has a debt ratio of over 300%, economists have been predicting a crash and capital flight for decades, but none of it has come to pass.

At the end of the day, the Japanese market is huge and people want access to it. Same thing goes for the US.

If the private market doesn’t want bonds, the central bank can purchase them. That’s not inflationary. What is inflationary is how the government then spends that money, but that’s true for any government spending, regardless of how it was financed. Either way, the debt ratios is literally meaningless.

Hindsight is 20/20, so let's use it. How many times has the "too big to fail" hedge worked out favorably for everyone involved?

There is no failing for a country with a sovereign currency. Fish can’t drown in the sea. A country is not a business.

What do you mean "there's no failing for a country with a sovereign currency"? There are many, many examples of countries failing. Some of them had sovereign currencies. Sure they can't "run out of money" if they can print more. Along with many more examples of being able to adjust internal values and metrics. This is a very different thing from not being able to fail.

I’ll be clearer. The failure mode that you’re talking about, where debt ratios are so high that a country isn’t able to service its debt, is economically speaking impossible. This isn’t “too big to fail”, it’s the system working as intended.

I'm not sure why you think that's what I'm talking about, because I never brought that up. In fact I agree with that point. The apparatus will never report a failure because it has an incentive not to. The whole system is built and described in a way to make failure seem impossible because confidence is necessary for it to work. But when numbers and reality don't match, reality wins.

That’s not what I said at all! There’s no failure being hidden, public deficits are a normal feature of fiat currencies.

Again, I'm not making any comment on the deficit. Literally never brought it up. I'm talking about people losing confidence in the dollar.

>> There is no failing for a country with a sovereign currency. Fish can’t drown in the sea. A country is not a business.

So, a country is not a business but it is comparable to fish?

Are you seriously claiming that there is no precedent?

The interest still needs to be paid. That requires revenue growth, taxes, or printing money. Taxes and printing money makes everyone poorer - the IOUs of yesterday coming due. Japan has had many challenges over the past few decades.

Money creation is necessary in a healthy economy. It makes all of us richer when the government spends money on infrastructure.

We're not spending money on infrastructure, we're spending it on entitlements.

> If the private market doesn't want bonds, the central bank can purchase them. That's not inflationary.

Central bank buying bonds and increasing money supply absolutely is inflationary. That is precisely how FOMOs work, with the end goal being increasing or decreasing money supply depending on inflation and labour market. So if you already have stubborn inflation and you have a fiscal crisis then unmooring inflation expectations by lowering rates is exactly what you don't want to do (risk becoming a banana republic that inflates away it's debt). I don't think this will happen in the near future but it is absolutely a risk and you'd be foolish as a central banker not to consider it.

>> Do you actually understand the underlying mechanics

Do YOU actually understand the underlying mechanics? Your questions suggest that you do not.

There’s a severe crisis every 10 years. Do you really want to be at a point where the next one topples us?

Why not? That's the situation many Americans are living in, why not America itself?

This doesn't make any sense. Crises planning should be a fundamental function of the government. Just exceptin that every crises puts us close to being ruined and eventually one will, but it's fine because with no crises were doing ok, is unacceptable

2007 is a choice baseline… did something happen in 2008?

Housing crisis, banks failing.

>US debt as a percentage of GDP (i.e. our ability to pay off our debt)

US debt as a percentage of GDP doesn't demonstrate the continued ability to pay off the debt, since the ability to pay off the debt is dependent on that debt's interest. The issue with the debt in the current environment is that it is going to start rolling over into higher interest rates. If the debt is structured to pay higher interest then that lessens the ability to pay off the debt even if the debt as a percentage of GDP stays the same.

Ripping apart institutions is a great way to increase interest rates.

Some people have a lot of unexpressed sadness and anger and fear from the pandemic (and housing crisis before that) and are projecting it on to indirectly or totally unrelated things.

Our national debt is directly related to the 45 years of regressive tax policy.

What was the national debt to GDP ratio before income taxes were instituted? It wasn't even 10% between 1890 and 1910 --that's without the income tax.

Are you saying income taxes lead to an increase in the national debt?

You know how people borrow on future income?

We were doing that before income taxes.

Hell, we were borrowing before we had states.

And life SUCKED then. Absolutely no labor rights, food filled with sawdust, income inequality, bank runs constantly, no retirement.

The national debt increased because we increased the amount of the federal government does, it the income tax.

No healthcare, no public research to today's extent, no military etc. etc. Yes when your government is doing nothing normally it doesn't cost that much.

When was there no military? When was the US government literally doing nothing?

> And life SUCKED then

More than 100% of the net improvement is from tech and medical R&D, not the bloated military-welfare apparatus.

What created the conditions for that R&D to take place in relative security, and to be realize its return in a global marketplace?

And Silicon Valley was originally majority weapons/ tech r&d for the military.

Bletchly Park? Military.

Have you done the maths to check if that would have fixed things?

No but it's not rocket science.

In 1960 the top tax rate was 91%. In 1980 it was 70%. Reagan dropped it to 35% and it's stayed below 40% since. Then add in that corporations and the wealthy have moved away from having normal income that isn't taxed (loans backed by assets) and you've lost half the tax revenue that paid for cheap housing, nearly free healthcare and public college and you have a healthy society and middle class.

But then to screw the pooch even more, Bush printed 5 trillion for his wars and two tax cuts. Trump printed money for his tax cuts too. (these expenses were never in the annual budget - they just printed the money)

Tesla, one of the richest corporations in our country just reported 0% tax in three years.

Our national debt has nothing to do with the annual budget and expenses, including USAID and helping Ukraine.

It is 100% because of tax policy.

While tax cuts do contribute to the national debt, it is not accurate to say the national debt is "100% of tax policy". Tax revenue as a % of GDP has been pretty stable for a long time. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

So what actually is driving the national debt higher? The never popular answer is entitlement spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) + interest, which is exasperated by an aging population. In fact, almost all future debt growth is driven by these programs. The rest of the budget is expected to balance out. Tax revenue is expected to increase, and discretionary spending is expected to fall as a % of GDP.

GDP is 27 trillion.

The government "borrowed" from the SS fund. That's why it's endangered. The money was there and it should still be there.

The government also screwed the postal service by taking their profits (one of the few things in government that actually makes one) and then yells at them for not making enough income.

We need a flat corporate and billionaire tax that has no loopholes.

The government borrows money from Social Security, and the government pays that money back with interest. So what you are complaining about is actually a transfer of money from the general fund into Social Security. And when we talk about the impending insolvency of Social Security, we're talking about the point at which this subsidy stops (because they won't have any surplus funds to lend), and the program is forced to cut benefits to match what payroll taxes bring in.

Also very predictable exenditures over time, which increase with an aging population with decreased firtility rates. Which have little to do with actual firtility but are just a measure of kids vs parent ratio, it might play a role though. Everyone always forgets that it is entirely predictable but nobody does something about it because it hurts.

Also doesn't help if you borrow against the money put in. The US is not alone in taking money from the baby's/old peoples fund unfortunately, same happened here but worse the money was just taken. Although it was mostly spend on education and construction so there is that at least.

How is social security adding to debt when its funded by payroll tax? And the government has borrowed 3 trillion from it.

Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper. The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t. And negotiate down costs and all materials and drugs on top of that.

>How is social security adding to debt when its funded by payroll tax?

Simple - the payroll tax doesn't raise enough funds to cover the full cost of the program. Even if it did raise 100% of the needed funds, that's still money Congress cannot tax a second time. At the end of the day, the government has two buckets: income and expenses. It doesn't matter whether some of that income is called "payroll tax", and some of it is called "income tax". Every cent raised through a payroll tax, is a cent that cannot be raised through an income tax, and visa-versa.

>Replace Medicare and Medicaid with a socialised 1 payer system as it would be much cheaper.

Yet...none of the advocates of a socialized healthcare system have ever put forward a real bill that can be rated by the Congressional Budget Office. Instead, they put forward shell bills which importantly lack any funding mechanisms.

> The numbers I saw was that the current system costs 48t and 1 payer system would be 32t.

The current system is divided between public and private spending. Even if you could reduce the overall cost to 32T, that's still a net cost increase on the public side. How will the government raise that money? The advocates for social healthcare never say.

I mean it ran at a surplus for 30 years until 2009 when boomers started retiring, still has over 3T in assets. How can you claim it's adding to the deficit?

If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets? Or did you want to keep the tax but stop paying out? I don't see how the outcome is different then.

Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.

>I mean it ran at a surplus for 30 years until 2009 when boomers started retiring, still has over 3T in assets. How can you claim it's adding to the deficit?

It takes money from the general fund in the form of interest payments. And the CBO assumes that when the 3T in assets run out in about ten years, there will be some kind of continuous bailout whereby money from the general fund is used to plug the shortfall.

>If it's removed and replaced with nothing do you just let old people die in the streets?

You don't have to remove it entirely. You could implement means testing so that only those who truly need it receive money.

>Increase income tax on the wealthy? It's not hard, you used to do it.

It wouldn't generate enough revenue. Social Security and Medicare, and their associated interest payments are expected to run a ~100T deficit over the next 30 years. If you want to go the "just raise taxes" route to bridge that, you'll have to raise taxes on everybody. If you doubled middle class taxes and implemented a 20% VAT, it might raise enough to stabilize social security and medicare. But that would be the largest tax increase in American history, and Americans would receive no new benefits in return.

>In 1960 the top tax rate was 91%

How many times does this need to be debunked?

I just googled it, and it's true. So there's nothing to debunk.

The percentage of federal taxes paid by income looks like this:

Top 1%: 40.4%

Top 5%: 61%

Top 10%: 72%

Top 25%: 87.2%

Top 50%: 97%

Bottom 50%: 3%

That hardly looks regressive. Is there some other standard by which you are judging whether tax policy is sufficiently graduated enough?

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

Now change it to comparing disposable income.

Not the GP, but yes there is: The wealthiest people don't earn their wealth in the form of income.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/06/08/richest-...

the 25 richest Americans (by Forbes’ tally) paid a “true tax rate” of just 3.4% on wealth growth of $401 billion between 2014 and 2018.

Why would pay taxes on paper wealth? That argument is disingenuous but no doubt the author intended it to be.

because they can take loans against their paper wealth and spend that as income. and as a bonus they get to write any interest payments off of their taxes.

This isn’t true and is a nice internet trope.

Never mind that “wealth” can evaporate as quickly as it’s created, the numbers don’t make sense at for “borrow until you die”.

If you think it does I challenge you to do it. Instead of selling taxable equities during retirement, just borrow against them then let your heirs get them tax free when you die.

You can insanely cheap margin loans against your holdings if you keep the ratios high. Like 1-2%. Sure it won’t add up to much but you can do it.

Then kept rolling it over for 20+ years and tell me how 1-2% interest is less than a 25% capital gains tax.

Maybe if you’re going to die within a few years (and can time your death).

Then explain why if it works so well why Musk paid $10B in taxes when he sold Tesla stock if it works so well.

> Then explain why if it works so well why Musk paid $10B in taxes when he sold Tesla stock if it works so well.

Loans to Musk were a risky asset before the election. He was at risk of investigation in the event Trump lost. No one would have given him a loan big enough to supply the cash needs which this sale supplied.

That said, ordinary billionaires can of course make use of this strategy.

Impressive, very nice.

Now let's see control of assets.

The Tax Foundation has a well-known conservative leaning mindset when they publicize data. They project the benefits for business and lower tax policy.

It is not a legit source for progressive tax policy.

The Congressional Budget Office has been the most reputable source for tax policy data. The current director was appointed by Trump 2019 and was retained through Biden's presidency.

The CBO is very wonky and so far as withstood partisan meddling by presidents.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with how the Tax Foundation operates but their source of data is directly from the IRS website:

https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/FedData...

(see the footnote)

> That hardly looks regressive.

I know you're making a good faith argument, but you're twisting the definition of regressive. For example, if a country has one citizen with an income of 1 trillion, and one hundred thousand citizens with an income of $10,000 each, the trillionaire would still pay over 99% of taxes even if taxes were proportional.

The point is that with severe income inequality, it is fair that the super rich pay a very, very high proportion of taxes. The 40.4% seems high for the "top 1%" of the population, but if you replace "top 1%" with their actual average income, the comparison is less misleading.

The bottom 50% own 2.4% of American wealth [1], while paying 3% of taxes. That, to me, is regressive.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50215

This only takes into account income tax and not other taxes which are often more regressive such as sales tax, payroll tax etc. When analyzing taxes paid we should take into account all taxes

Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare, and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely uninterested in doing any of those things, and are in fact going to make them worse.

Indiscriminately firing federal workers whose salaries will collectively make up maybe one tenth of one percent of the budget is not at all about reducing debt, that's just the thin justification they are using the destroy any independence and competence within the government that might get in the way of their looting and corruption.

Anyone who thinks that Trump and Musk are serious about reducing the federal debt at this point aren't likely to be swayed by anything I say. But for anyone who genuinely believes that I hope you will look at what the national debt and deficit are right now, and then to check on them in a few years when both are dramatically worse. You will find that two of the most prominent bullshitters in the world are in fact bullshitting on this topic as well.

Fast tracking into Banana Republic, Canada and Uruguay will remain as the last bastions of Democracy in the americas.

Easiest thing to do IMO is fund anyone that is over 18 that has paid into Social Security. Anyone younger - simple, reduce taxes to not include it. Phase that fucker out. Get rid of all but 10% of federal income tax.

Also, make all black budget projects that involve underground alien bases public and move it all private, so Elon and other people can just directly invest in those instead of coming out of our taxes through the DOD.

> Any remotely serious attempt to balance the budget will have to involve serious cuts to some or all of Defense, Medicare, and Social Security; along with tax increases, either new taxes or closing loopholes. Trump and Elon are completely uninterested in doing any of those things

This. Right. Here.

Defense yes. But social security is funded by a payroll tax, not debt, and the government has borrowed 3 trillion from it.

A socialised medical system would be much cheaper than Medicare.

To add to this: specifically regarding random firings and loopholes. Every marginal dollar spend on the IRS brings in $5 to $9 in return to the government [*]. Yet they are firing IRS agents. More generally, we know, and the government knows, how to reduce the deficit because the CBO offers options regularly [%]. All of the big ticket items require some kind of healthcare cuts, which are all not fun. Note that they do not have any suggestions for cutting any part of USAID. The biggest saver would be "Eliminate or Limit Itemized Deductions".

[*]: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444

[%]: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60557

It's telling DOGE went straight for the treasury. There's no non-nefarious reason for this, at all.

You’re describing the independent Inspectors General. That were summarily fired. Could they have had more power and independence? Sure. But there were real independent offices doing what you describe.

The problem is EM and DOGE are equating “fraud and waste” to “I think it’s wasteful”, which is a judgement the adversarial auditor should not be allowed to make.

And guess whose fault that deficit is? Answer: Bush and Trump.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primar...

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-2017-trump-tax...

https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extend...

He campaigned (first time) to reduce the national debt and instead exploded it by giving massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest of the wealthy.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-plan-boosts-bud...

Something something promises something kept?

> I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago.

Alternatively, it's possible to increase revenue.

Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?

Aren't other countries adversarial enough?

I think these are made up concerns. By and large the US is dominant in the real world, and always will be given its size, location and cultural foundations. And that translates to being able to print and spent a large amount of money, which could be used to solve real world problems, such as:

- climate change and the need to transition energy, transportation over time with some urgency

- chronic housing shortage

- education costs

Instead they're focusing on fake problems and solutions that will make the real problems worse.

> Haven't republicans been campaigning on reducing govt spending for like 50 years?

Not really. There is a political strategy Republicans have engaged during this time known as "Two Santas" which can explain it:

  First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans 
  control the White House they must spend money like a 
  drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far 
  and as fast as possible.
  
  This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus 
  making people think that the GOP can produce a good 
  economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes 
  people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa 
  Clauses.”
  
  Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans 
  must scream about the national debt as loudly and 
  frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our 
  children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut 
  spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government, 
  crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around 
  the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending 
  money.
  
  This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own 
  social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus 
  shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus 
  right in the face.[0]

0 - http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas...

Ha! That's great.

The opposite of that play is:

Voted-in Conservatives: we are the party of fiscal responsibility. We shall reduce govt spending by running services into the ground.

Voted-in Libs: We were voted in to undo all this f*kery... gotta spend those $$$

Conservatives: Didn't we say you can't trust those libs with the $$$?

For the record - I think society needs both parties alternating in power to function properly. Either one in power forever is a mistake

What you describe is the insidious effect of repetitive use of the "Two Santas" strategy:

> Voted-in Conservatives: we are the party of fiscal responsibility.

Conservatives are provably not. See[0].

> Voted-in Libs: We were voted in to undo all this f*kery... gotta spend those $$$

This is a common misperception, fostered in large part by the effectivity of the "Two Santas" political strategy.

0 - https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-749929...

Oh I very much agree the cons are bad at money. Just talking about what they say.

Except that is inaccurate. With the exception of the Biden admin, Republicans have been increasing the national debt at a _much_ higher rate.

Both private and public dept have been rising rapidly since the 70/80's and the introduction of neoliberal policies. Real wages have stagnated, so Americans go into debt. Tax cuts for the rich, so the US has to borrow.

Yes I agree with that.

I’m just talking about what they say rather than reality.

I’d have edited for clarity but I missed the window.

> With the exception of the Biden admin

The last year in office Trump was spending $8 trillion a year and Biden left office spending $6.7 trillion.

Yes, but it would be dishonest to claim that only Republican admins drastically increased the deficit. Biden is an exception. I’m not comparing him to Trump either.

Strange how the national debt increases much faster when the president is a Republican. Republicans love to run the debt up when they are in power and then use it as a weapon when they are not.

The things being done make the deficit worse, not better

The US government owes about 2.5 years of median salary to every American, but when an average work lifecycle is 40 years, it isn't too bad.

We have it: three branches of government. But the political branch loyalty has been superseded by political party loyalty and it breaks the system.

What I think should happen is that the vast majority of legislators (Senators/Representatives) should be furious that the Executive branch is disregarding laws that they wrote themselves. And the justices should be furious that the Executive branch is disbeying their interpretation of the law.

I am happy to cut government spending and increase government efficiency (obviously). I have so far not seen any evidence that DOGE is working is this direction. As I like to point out the marginal dollar spent on the IRS brings in ~$10 of revenue. If DOGE or Trump really cared about the deficit they would expand the IRS. They would take ease the burden of NEPA, but in the meantime increase the number of bureaucrats to make the process faster. They would reform the Paperwork Reduction Act. They would make it easier for government officials to handpick hires.

On the policy side they would push for port automation. They would get rid of the Jones act. They could standardize and simplify the tax code (& get rid of loopholes like stepped up basis)

Instead they are breaking random government websites, blocking & politicizing USAID (< 1% of budget), mass firing with seemingly no plan for running various orgs, trying to increase mass incarceration (?) and reinforcing captured markets (like TurboTax).

By what metric do you think the U.S. is as “economically dominant” as it was in the period after WWII?

Most of the world's currency is backed by the currency they print? The USA has to spend a few cents to gain a hundred dollar bill, but any other country has to exchange a hundred dollars of actual goods and services (to the USA!). Losing this privilege would be devastating.

The economic power of the US is also largely due to its reputation for rule of law (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5zaImTF92g) when contrasted with other regimes like the CCP. Once that image goes out the window, it becomes no more attractive to foreign investment than any other banana republic run by thugs.

It does not matter. If republican party voters cared about appropriateness, they would not picked up Trump and Musk. They picked them because they wanted to see maximal harm and they see lack of ethics/morals as strength.

No. They want to stop the bleeding from the last 4 years. I blame the person that made the mess. Not the one cleaning it up and showing it to us.

If you are bleeding from the wound on your head it does not mean you need to cut off your legs. This is just weakening of state while covering it under this charade.

Inflation was because of pandemic and wars. Rest is absolute nonsense.

The Biden administration just had to make things easier for businesses after covid. They had a very easy job and couldn't even get that right.

Instead, The biggest oil pipeline in the US was shutdown on day one and increased regulations led to our current situation with inflation.

The democrats are also war mongers and want to have perpetual wars to line their pockets.

It's telling when there isn't one negative story about Biden/the democrats (especially when we found out they were colluding with big tech to suppress the speech of average citizens) in 4 years, and we immedialy get slop hit piece articles about Trump and Musk.

You said it! How long before a lot of small countries start leaving treaties like the Berne Convention? Why would they bother protecting other big countries copyrights when they're no longer getting support through programs like USAID and there's no longer any guarantee that the US will protect them in any way.

The first country to pull out has the chance to make like $100 billion by creating the next TikTok competitor that never takes down content for violating anyone's copyright. It'll be like Edison moving to Hollywood all over again! Let the gold rush begin!

You see the carrot vanishing... OK. But what about the stick? The whole point of Trump's policy is 'we forgot the stick, let's use it again'. I see this true for international policy but you could probably extend that to that infamous DOGE: Fed agencies must be 'productive' (whatever that means), or else.

I don't think these fences are being torn down by inexperienced engineers by their own initiative. They have a mandate (or so they think), a direction, and maybe specific orders from much more experienced folks, AFAICT.

> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

Where do you base that on? China’s GDP is huge. It overtook the whole EU’s GDP.

What are you talking about? The whole reason this is happening is because US economic dominance is being eclipsed and dedollarization is occurring at a rapid pace. This is a freak out and reorganization of foreign policy and the economy to cope with that situation.

Is there any data you can share that backs that up?

US GDP growth is slow, China's is high and BRICS is coalescing.

In not too long, China's GDP will eclipse ours and their cooperative foreign policy as opposed to our full spectrum dominance policy will yield major benefits. Dedollarization is proceeding apace, and it accelerates with each sanction and aggressive and arbitrary move by the US. Other countries used to have no choice, but now choices are opening up. The end of dollar dominance ends the most powerful tool of U.S. hegemony and turns us into a mere great power, not the lord of the world.

https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/currencies...

Trump's policy is about corruption yes, but also likely about wringing more efficiency out of American industry by reducing worker protections and reducing middle management positions. They are trying different methods to juice growth. I don't think it will work for very long.

Small twist: Panama "pledged" to exit China's BRI.

- https://freebeacon.com/national-security/panama-wont-renew-b...

- https://ground.news/article/panama-pledges-to-exit-chinas-be...

Here is data from the IMF, for example, showing US and EU area GDP as a percentage of global output over time, gradually declining since 1980. The decline from 1960 to 1980 in the US was even more dramatic: in 1960 the United States GDP was about 40% of global GDP.

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/EU/CHN/USA

If by cope you mean ensure it happens by running our economic power into a trade war iceberg.

what are you talking about? this statement of yours does not match reality in any way

Sure, a cold war has started and China is the enemy. But why make enemies out of your closest allies?

The US tried tariffs during Japan's rise as an automobile powerhouse. Look where that's left the American auto industry.

Sanctions have their place as a carrot and stick mechanism. But Trump offers no carrots. Only stick.

It's impossible to get these people to stop deluding themselves. My dad is a contractor and literally watched Trump's tariffs make his job harder and his materials more expensive from 2016-2020, and still has all the spreadsheets that show how much it has affected his clients and how the price never came down

You can bet your ass he still voted for Trump. "I don't even like the guy" he insists.

The farmers that voted for Trump in droves in 2016 got FUCKED by his tariffs and retaliation from China. Trump had to sign off billions of dollars to offset their losses. They still voted for him in droves. Vibes don't care about the very clear data on the spreadsheet.

A huge portion of my state's lobster industry goes to China, because there literally is not a big enough market here in the states. Selling to China took the industry from barely staying afloat and selling lobster for cheaper than beef half the time, to being a healthy industry that didn't have to worry about oversupply. They will be fucked if China notices. They still voted for Trump.

All these people have FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE with how much Trump hurts our economy. They don't care. "immigrants" or some bullshit. Funny, the guys up north growing potatoes sure love the immigrants come harvest time, especially when they were paid under the table. Of course, these dumbasses in NORTHERN MAINE insist on flying confederate flags to honor their "heritage". They are from NORTHERN MAINE, their heritage is: Being harassed and assaulted by the KKK for daring to be catholic, freezing to death in ice storms, being mistaken for Canadians, and murdering the hell out of confederate slavers for the glory of the Union

They're outright racists is what I'm saying. My brother has bitched and moaned about "affirmative action" for decades. The horror that a black person might be somewhere they don't "deserve" is their only concern. It's funny to blame anything on affirmative action when you come from a town with single digit black people, and without affirmative action in the past, you would be just like the rest of the white trash.

I understand you. I have the similar experience from different country. "Everyone steals but at least he is not THEM". The worst part of this all is that I feel how I slowly sliding into pure cynism. I just can't sympathize for some people if their problems are their own decisions over and over. For example one of the ministers in our government sold fake cancer treatments to sick people. It's just forgotten.

These politicians who do not provide results and are just confidently talking nonsense still get voted. By the people.

People are indeed just tribal unga bunga monkes which learned to walk, talk and do stupid shit. Some more than others.

The US is tethering on the brink of hyperinflation due to not just the last 4 but the last 40 years. Interest on the debt is insurmountable.

You can argue whether the chosen approach is right, but no matter what, a drastically different course is needed as 'business as usual' is a sure way to disaster.

I for one hope the US get their act together at home rather than dragging the world into WWIII.

Your model for the economy is just utterly wrong. The US is in zero danger of hyperinflation, and probably has the smallest debt issues of any country (certainly of any major country).

Now, the problem is - what to do about how badly informed you and millions of Americans are. That you cheer for the destruction of valuable and painfully built state capacity for completely spurious reasons. It’s almost funny, except for all the innocent people who get hurt along the way.

Please substantiate your claims. I am not 'cheering'. I am 100% prepared to be converted.

As I see it that debt counter is compounding fast, and with BRICS gaining steam your abilities to keep shoving it onto the rest of the planet are diminishing.

The US has debt denominated in its own currency, a large and growing economy, vast natural and human resources, no prospect of a foreign invasion and debt declining relative to GDP the last few years (this last point is not even that important but just for the record).

I can’t even begin to tell you how far the US is from hyperinflation or any major debt issues - the only real risk the US faces is internal stupidity (I don’t only mean the current situation, idiocies like the ongoing debt ceiling nonsense apply too).

Look, prudence is not a bad thing, and it’s worthwhile to have sensible management. But talk of hyperinflation is either severe mis-calibration of risks, deep misunderstanding of how economies work, or intentional propaganda.

You’re the one making extraordinary claims, you’re the one that has to substantiate them.

What do you think is more likely, that you’re an economic genius and you can see an impending crisis that 50 years worth of economists couldn’t, and that somehow that crisis is going to happen in the next few years? Or maybe you don’t actually understand how macro economics works and have been manipulated into thinking this way by your inherent dislike of government spending?

It is worth remembering that the inflation rate is always a policy choice - it is impossible to have hyperinflation without someone running a printing press at high speeds. So when you say "on the brink of hyperinflation" what you are implying is the Fed are considering adopting hyperinflation as a policy. That is unlikely; everyone knows how hyperinflations end and they are unlikely to just randomly adopt a policy known to be disastrous. Even if pressured by something big like the collapse of the US dollar or the US being in a position where no-one will buy their debt at an interest rate they can handle.

If the US has a problem, it'll look like some fairly substantial hit (eg, external forces closing their current account deficit) and a longish period of being economically weakened due to a lack of investment in productive capital. Maybe some riots since the pain will probably not be spread evenly.

It is a catastrophe, but mainly a catastrophe of opportunity costs. We've had a counterfactual running in China over the last 20 years of what could have been happening in the US economy if they hadn't mucked up their overall strategy (particularly energy policy and banking regulation) so badly. Plus there is an impression forming that they are actually a lot weaker militarily than had been assumed to date, I wouldn't put money on Taiwan's long term independence right now. The US doesn't have the funds to handle all the military problems if overseas nations stop picking up the tab.

Please please please take a minute to look at this administration's tax plan and their previous one.

They did already and are planning to again add trillions to our deficit. Go look at it, it's laid out very clearly.

There is no good faith here, these actions are a plundering of the state.

Is economic dominance the right metric to be looking at?

Yes, the US is the biggest economy. This doesn’t mean its ability to pay liabilities is infinite. Every amount of income has a particular amount of debt and interest that it is able to pay.

Take the largest company. It would not be able to service infinite debt. Apple could not service $5 trillion in debt, just like the US could not service 300 trillion.

I get why some people are concerned about the US’s liabilities and its global police status.

Also stopping giving many other countries billions of dollars a year after might be drastic. But I see why some people may not like this. Individuals can give to charities instead if this is really such a problem for them.

Now cutting research and other things is really dumb. Glad they reversed that quickly. Also needlessly licking fights with our neighbors is also really dumb.

Now only if we can reduce our military spending as well.

> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

Why is USAID needed most in times when the US is very "economically dominant"?

Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.

Look at how that turned out for Bismark's Germany after he was gone. His successors were high on their own supply, and in pursuit of short-term wins, destroyed the careful network of relationships and alliances that he curated.

Beijing is, no doubt, finding this entire folly amusing.

US dominance was built on hard power (war machine). Ditto for Bismarck. Nothing works without the hard power part.

if you are talking about the formation of germany, That was also a lot of soft power and politics to keep socialists from gaining any real political power and a lot of soft power to get all other german states to form into germany.

there where two major wars during that time which mattered for the formation of germany, (the franco prussian war and the austro-prussian war, which was an extent of the politicals about who should form the german state).

So should the world read your comment as a ditching of soft power to use hard power? Is america going to war?

Is that why you made that statement in the context of everything that was built on that hard power being demolished?

I'm not sure what you're asking. I think you're trying to make a point, but it is going over my head.

The world should read "less carrot, more stick" from the Trump admin.

But what stick? The stick doesn't work when they know you aren't going to use it

Reminds me of that scene in The Irishman: "Just show it to him, don't use it."

I think Trump will use the stick.

He caved on tariffs to both Mexico and Canada now, so I guess we'll move on to the next concept of a stick.

Soft power seems like mostly wishful thinking at best and a fraud on the taxpayer at worst. I don't think the noble savages feel forever indebted to their kind and wise master for throwing them a few scraps. Countries align with what interests them. Look how quickly countries all over Africa, South America, Middle East, the subcontinent turn to China and Russia. All the vaccines and condoms in the world aren't going to stop people and countries wanting to get the best price for the things they buy and sell.

USAID also has a fairly sketchy record in funding regime change efforts, so countries cooperate with it on a purely transactional basis, "trust" is zero.

> Because it takes decades of investment and work to build up international trust and soft power, but as it turns out, it takes all of two weeks for a fool to destroy it.

I was asking specifically about how US economic dominance is a factor. Why is USAID more important when US economic dominance is high.

Helping people out before things get really bad and there are more wars abroad is a good investment. That's why the military has generally been supportive of USAID.

In general, it's also better to have friends in the world rather than going around being loud-mouthed jerks that no one likes.

It's also a tiny amount of the budget.

Yes, though it's unclear USAID is fit for that purpose considering it also funds civil unrest and regime change so some might say is a jerk that no one likes. But questions of its effectiveness and efficiency aside, none of that answers my question about US economic dominance. Why is USAID very important when US economic dominance is high.

I was specifically wondering about that particular part of the comment by the original poster, it just seems quite interesting to me what the connection there is.

> considering it also funds civil unrest and regime change

Non crazy conspiratorial source for these huge allegations?

Here's one https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26876801

I might be able to find you a Fox News link if that would be more to your liking.

Working against apartheid in South Africa would also count as "fomenting unrest" so I don't know how useful that metric is. Even what you linked is basically equivalent to the US projecting soft power and pro-capitalist sentiment (inappropriate, IMO, but probably within agency mission parameters).

It really doesn't matter if you know how useful that metric is or not, it is what I was specifically talking about and what the parent poster asked about. I'm just glad to be able to blow their mind by proving these "huge allegations".

> fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.

So you're saying they hired a bunch of undistinguished Berkeley drop-outs just because they're libertarians? A sort of affirmative action for libertarians?

It's always projection with these guys.

Is this really a drastic action? As others in this thread have pointed out, these programs are a single-digit percentage of the Federal budget. We could delete these completely and still have a budget that is 90% the same as last year.

Wow. That’s a refreshing take on the reducing the corruption angle.

If these programs are so small, why aren’t they going after the real grift? It’s too hard? Why the small, more relevant to citizens programs get cut first?

Because its easy to avoid the military spending and the black box that represents.

My guess is a few things.

First, these are symbolic, it is very hard to concretely argue that these programs are good for Americans, since even proponents of these programs say it's about "soft power". Corollary to this is that cutting something like social security is seen as cutting benefits to Americans (ditto with Defense)

Second, these programs are seen as funding "professional democrats" in a way that social security or defense are not. So this is also about cutting out their opponents support structures.

If these programs are so small, why do you care so much?

> If these programs are so small, why do you care so much?

Because they help starving children?

> First, these are symbolic

Are we talking about how USAID worked against apartheid in South Africa now?

>starving children

The people who put Trump in office want the US Gov to focus on American children

> The people who put Trump in office want

That's not remotely universally true, but that's also not what you asked about

oh, so what are they doing to that end

Military spending didn't explode the deficit. Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations did.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=trump+t...

Because doing it all at once is not how debasement works.

USD as reserve currency is a hen that lays golden eggs.

The US maintains monopoly on this free money cheat through goodwill driven manufactured consent, diplomacy, financial bullying and military might. Each subsequent tool being more heavy handed & less preferred than the last. Heavy handed tools while effective, break more than they fix. This prudence sustains Pax Americana.

In 2025 America, good will is at an all-time-low. Mechanisms for classical diplomacy are being actively dismantled by Elon-Trump. Financial bullying is now the cudgel of choice. Pax Americana is under threat.

Post-WW2 peace is among mankind's most remarkable civilizational achievements. It isn't self-evident and it definitely isn't the historic norm. How long until nations start questioning the deal ? How many decades of work is being dismantled within days ?

May be hyperbole, but the locks on Chesterton-Pandora's box are being opened. It might work out, but Elon's aggressiveness seems so unnecessary at a time when the American economy is doing exceedingly well.

I'm honestly terrified that they'll turn my savings to some sort of nothing by fucking over our currency.

I don't know how anyone isn't.

That sounds improbable. If US currency falls every western economy falls with it

How does that make it improbable?

Not true. EUR and GBP will thrive.

How? When 2008 crisis happened the whole of west went down with the US

That was when the US was tightly aligned politically, economically, strategically at every level from national security to economic liberalism, with the rest of the West.

For years it was a given that the UK and Europe needed to buddy up to the US. That's not the sentiment any more, because the next four years feel like that's the wrong direction, and Ukraine is about to fall and that's the priority.

Improbable is probably how a lot of citizens of countries have felt in the past before their savings lost their worth. I'd rather us not be risking it at all.

So what is the action plan?

Closing USAID is idiotic from a foreign policy perspective. Gives China a huge opportunity to fill the void in countries and grow its global influence. It’s already done so in Africa due to US being so preoccupied with the “war on terror”. Not to mention that aiding developing countries - reduces chances of instability/conflicts/etc which otherwise end up costing much more. Plus it’s about access to raw materials (why do you think China cares about Africa?). Idiotic no matter how you look at it.

A lot of what USAID was spending money on would shock people. Meanwhile, no money left to rebuild parts of the US

Oh please enough with the hand wavy bs. Give some examples of how much we are “saving” and what is being cut, and what it will be spent on to “rebuild” America (whatever tf that means). Then we can be the judges of how shocking or not it is.

HUD and FEMA alone are 2.5x larger than USAID's budget, so while I can't argue with the unsourced bit that it would be shocking, it's clear there is and was even more money being spent on Americans too.

First, give some examples of what you are talking about. Second, we spend all kinds of money on things I don't agree with, which is how it works.

You realize USAID has been a conduit for CIA activities pretty much since its establishment? I mean the hint is the fact its head sits on the National Security Council. Why does a friendly aid organization need a seat at that table?

USAID played a huge role in the Vietnam War by supporting things like “civil defense forces” arming villages against Viet Cong, land reform and “open arms” program to get defectors from the North.

https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/assistance/...

It had little to do with no strings attached foreign aid. It’s mostly been an arm of US covert activities in other countries (providing cover) and a massive, massive slush fund for the CIA (hence the billions going to “undisclosed recipients”).

That’s an interesting thought because I saw Trump, and many other elections, as a conservative reaction. A main complaint I see is people thinking the country is going backwards, rather than into uncharted territory.

The young and incurious have been targeted, recruited, and brainwashed into this by tech moguls for just this reason. A steady diet of calcified resentments against vague, post-modernist buzzword nonsense like “woke” and “DEI” has created a whole political movement around getting unreasonably angry over feeling slighted about symbolic representation in pop culture to the point where they’re going to bring the whole country down it’s insane.

But of course, that’s exactly what would be oligarchs want.

>The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

now look at the deficits.

Which are roughly like me having a mortgage that’s the same as my annual salary. Which is quite commonplace.

It’d be a problem if we had to pay it all off tomorrow, but we don’t.

depends on the mortgage if it is fixed or variable.

have a look at this: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/interest-payments...

it is like borrowing at higher rate than the rate at which are are growing our income.

Current value for that metric is the same as 1985, if you expand the chart.

absolutely. and now look at the inflation and fed rate of late 70s and 80s. we have not yet won the inflation war and fed has already paused the rate lowering cycle. so if we need to increase the rate higher to bring inflation down to 2%, imagine the % of debt payment as part of revenue; in 70s/early 80s, the fed rate was as high as 15% compared to 4-5% now.

To understand the scale at which we have printed money, analyze the fed balance sheet https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

Chesterton fence == I don’t have an argument but I do have a fence and you don’t, so I guess somebody should have learnt their lesson!

>> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

In which parallel reality do you live? Some metrics:

- U.S. share of global GDP (nominal). 40% in 1960 to around 24% nowadays.

- Share of global exports from the peak of 17% in 1963, to around 8.5% today (China is 14%).

- Global R&D expending from the 1960 peak of 69% to 30% today with China closing the gap currently at 23%.

- Reserve currency status of the Dollar dropped from 71% to 59%.

- Share of outward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 47% in 1960 vs 22% in 2022.

Even the strongest selling point of the american economy of being the largest consumer economy is strongly dependent on high levels of consumer debt as well as the ability to sustain gigantic trade deficits based on the global appetite for the dollar and US bonds.

And then we have some other points of concern: In 1950, manufacturing represented 28% of GDP, while FIRE was 10%. Today, manufacturing is 10%, and FIRE is 20%. FIRE’s dominance reflects financialization — prioritizing short-term profit through financial engineering over productive, long-term investment. It encourages Rent-Seeking vs Productive Activity, for example, in Finance, much of the sector’s growth comes from fees, interest, and speculative trading (e.g., derivatives, high-frequency trading) rather than financing innovation or infrastructure. In Real Estate Rising prices often reflect speculation rather than new construction or improved living standards. This leads to inequality amplification, FIRE disproportionately benefits high-income earners (e.g., Wall Street, landlords). The top 1% owns 53% of stocks and 40% of real estate wealth (Fed data), which exacerbates wealth gaps without broadly improving household economic security. Real Estate alone now accounts for ~60% of corporate profits, something that create obvious systemic risks.

The US is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, but it is far from being as economically dominant as it was in the past, exactly the contrary of what you said.

I understand that after the gains we all had in the stock market in recent times, we might be tempted to consider this as a measure of the health of American Economy and considering market capitalizations, its global dominance. But that is a mistake. Stock Prices reflect investor sentiment, not fundamentals, they are driven by factors like speculation, liquidity and future expectations, not direct economic performance. Also, a handful of mega-cap companies dominate indexes, which introduces a lag that could mask broader economic issues. For example, the "Magnificent Seven" drove around 75% of the S&P 2023 gains, while small-cap stocks lagged. Also, tech and finance dominate markets, but they are not labor intensive, and thus they can't contribute as much to employment. Also, as the top 10% of the households own almost 90% of stocks, rising markets enrich the wealthy but don't reflect wage growth or living standards.

Also, a lot of the stock market exhuberance has been driven by things like stock buybacks, inflating share prices at the expense of investment and wages.

True that the US's share of global GDP is lower than it has been. But there are many other ways to measure its power (and dominance), so it is easy to argue about this between reasonable people.

Rather than make any specific point, I'd recommend acoup's detailed post about the US's overwhelming dominance across a huge swath of areas:

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/08/collections-is-the-united-stat...

I think he makes a good case there, even if you are right and by some measurements the US did better in the past.

The US is still the most powerful economy in the world. No question about it. What I was questioning was the argument from OP that it never have been as dominant since WWII. And no, the US has been way more powerful in the past, even if it is still the most powerful economy.

Regarding the metrics, 1945 to roughly 1971 or more realistically, 2010, were anomalies.

The US watched the rest of the world burn itself down during WW1 (partially) and during WW2 (almost completely).

There were basically 0 industrialized countries doing better in 1945 than they were in 1928.

The US reached those insane peaks because of a total aberration. It was never going to last.

China and India, for example, have been between 1/3 and 1/2 of the world economy for multiple millennia.

After the Age of Discovery Europe as a whole took over at least 1/3 itself.

The US would do well to adjust to this new reality, but I guess the temptation to make America great again is too strong.

I'm not sure why people are focusing on the engineers here. The fish rots from the head.

Elon is the definition of Dunning-Kruger. He seems smart (maybe) when he's talking about something you know nothing about but as soon as he talks about something you do know about, the illusion quickly shatters. Many here learned this after the Twitter takeover when he started talking about software and technical infrastructure.

The only thing going on here is some performative cuts to mollify the base and make some headlines. The real goal here is looting the public purse for the (further) benefit of the ultra-wealthy.

Welcome to the kleptocracy.

It’s the definition of failing up: you sin bullshit for long enough, and make big enough changes, that you get your next job before you’re accountable for the consequences.

If it's at some economic dominance peak is at the point at the top of an upward curve, when the acceleration has ended and the object reaches 0 velocity before coming back. It's a downward trajectory: public debt, failing infrastructure, failing manufacturing capabilities, failing leadership, failing rule of law, increased irrelevance on the world stage, and let's not get started with the culture.

If the dollar falls further from being the global reserve currency (something which both administrations did their best to ensure it will happen) that will be an even worse blow.

That there are people in bubbles believing it's all fine, or they never been better, is also a contributing factor to all this.

Agreed - it’s arguably as much a risk-on behavior as the excessive spending they’re warning about. They are using a similar cut-first mentality to what has been done in the private sector, but in the govt there are more considerations than the direct economic impacts of the actions. In an ideal world the better route is likely to spend more time on analysis before making cuts and to try and reduce variance, but it’s fair to say that might impede the initiative entirely plus they are trying to act quickly before the opposition wakes up.

Or, for that matter, before the judiciary can act as a balance. Establishing “facts on the ground”.

Young, inexperienced people have a hard time saying “no”. It’s even harder when working 120 hour weeks where you have less than 7 hours a day outside work (not even enough to get a full nights rest): https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-doge-work-silicon-...

Sleep deprivation, stress and overwork, controlling the lives of participants, targeting at risk populations, etc. are cult programming techniques.

This is actually curtis yarvin's RAGE (retire all government employees) concept. Curtis Yarvin, an extreme right-wing tech person out of Silicon Valley and the person who JD Vance is a disciple of. Their belief is that the U.S. government itself “must be deleted” and that what the country needs is not a president but a dictator, which is what a CEO of any successful corporation actually is. Yarvin said that the American people “must get over their ‘dictator phobia’” while Vance says we have to do things that make even conservatives “uncomfortable.”

It's just big tech weakening the power of state. The economics incentive is just a cover up for masses and politicians.

The U.S. national debt has been increasing at a rate of approximately $1 trillion every 100 days, which equates to about 10 days to add $100 billion. When do we hit the panic button?

Trump's first term is responsible for a large portion of the debt. He should take accountability and step down.

I think assuming that their intentions are a well functioning economy have been disproven by the rapid pace of kicking pillars out from under it.

Occams razor would instead suggest that either a recession or some other form of social instability is not an externality but an objective.

It makes me scared for what the ultimate aim is, but I think at this point it's beyond giving him the benefit of the doubt.

I was literally going to quote Chesterson's fence. How are people this smart and also this dumb?

> The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII.

That may be true if you look at the US in isolation, they're much richer now compared to 1950, but they've never had a strong a contender as China is right now. The Soviets were matching them militarily back in the Cold War years but they were never close to surpass them economically, like China is now in the process of doing.

The US weathered the recession better than nearly any developed nation so the idea that we aren't economically dominant is hilarious

The guy who deciphered an ancient scroll destroyed by a volcano is too incurious to possibly understand things unlike the amazing geniuses who fund DEi operas in Peru

Elon is also now claiming to have "deleted" 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov/): https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520

This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software! (login.gov is a good example of craft you don't generally see in commercial enterprise software, let alone government software)

According to that tweet they were apparently “far left” because they also worked on Direct File, which sought to cut out the middleman (TurboTax et al.) and let Americans file taxes directly. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, unless you're in bed with Intuit, this seems pretty hard to argue against!

Then why did it send me to id.me to send my photo ID to some low cost outsourcer?

Because someone lobbied their bosses.

I would rather show up at the local post office in order to verify my identity. Such a matter common in another country where I have lived.

This is starting to happen. I had to do this for NIH recently.

Or it would be happening absent the recent chaos.

I can't imagine many people agreeing with you here.

You need to be (a) able to walk and drive, (b) in driving distance to a post office and (c) able to work around the post office's opening hours and (d) willing to waste the time to drive/line up etc.

Or you can spend less than a minute to upload a photo of your passport.

I think the objection is more that ID.me should be ID.gov.

Which is great until someone impersonates you by spoofing a photo of you that satisfies “liveness” detection. It’s a lot harder to AI up an animated image in person at a post office.

This is exactly right. The capability to do identity proofing via the USPS is in the code and available on GitHub for you to browse.

id.me is valued at $1.8bn and has more than 130m users and has "partnerships with 15 federal agencies, 40 agencies in 30 states and over 600 retailers".

Bit of a stretch to call them a low cost outsourcer. They seem pretty legitimate.

They are a private business in search of a problem that is unnecessary for federal and state agencies to rely on for idp and identity proofing services.

Pretty hilarious to think that a $1.8bn business is "searching for a problem".

And given the frosty working relationship between federal and state agencies I am sympathetic to the idea that a private company would be able to deliver a better solution.

Login.gov is the default idp for the Social Security Administration, supports 200+ federal agencies for identity, and IRS was in the works to onboard Login.gov before this new admin fuckery occurred. They handle over 10 million monthly active users and 40 million monthly sign-ins across nearly 50 agencies and states. Will it still happen? Who knows. id.me will likely IPO based off the ~$130-$150M ARR they have, some folks will get wealthy, and it'll still end up the equivalent of confirming your discount eligibility at Home Depot for veterans.

There’s a bigger story to tell than just a number.

Is that $1.8B of revenue? Of profit? $1.8B of total funding in the last six months? In the last ten years?

Here’s $100M of funding for a 6% stake, four years ago:

https://siliconangle.com/2021/03/22/digital-identity-network...

Last year: a liquidity event for early investors and employees, none of which helps the ongoing business but instead lets the founders and C-suite buy a private island / holiday home / mobile home / home:

https://thepaypers.com/digital-identity-security-online-frau...

A $275M loan — not an investment, though you get a good deal if they default! — to keep them afloat?:

https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/idme-secure...

The only rung deeper into the hype pit would be valuing them as a unicorn based on a too-big-to-fail government bailout.

Loans get issued based on profit generation (or asset value), so no, it is not “to keep them afloat”. You can’t get a loan if your company is not doing well or too risky (that’s why startups raise equity - because they are still too risky for someone to lend them money).

A loan is a form of debt, which is one of the two main forms of capital - the other main one being equity. Debt is less expensive than equity, so companies prefer to issue to raise capital via debt than equity.

Its not just profit that is considered for a loan. Anything related to states is more stable and thus less risky. Or how would you evaluate state bonds by profit only? Elon knows what i am talking about.

Who controls the .me tld?

Montenegro.

> this seems pretty hard to argue against!

Removing consumer protection would be something hard to argue against too, but yet, here we are: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfp...

"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his new role as acting director."

Nothing of this makes sense in that all these actions don't seem to make life easier or better for citizens in particular or the world in general.

Everything about it makes perfect sense because pesky things like consumer protection and occupational safety cut into the profits of the owning class.

I guess I'll just have to become a shareholder

Too late the 0.1% took all the cookies and didn’t learn how to share as children

I'm just going to buy cake at this point.

Looks like we'll have leaded gas back in pumps pretty soon.

The target to replace lead water pipes was abandoned by Trump yesterday.

Got to keep people mad and dumb I guess.

> target to replace lead water pipes was abandoned by Trump yesterday

Source?

I'm only finding a Guardian article about Congressional Republicans planning a CRA action [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/03/republicans-...

Slippery slope fallacy. And bad politics. Reflexively defending State department ops to destabilize foreign countries through a putative foreign aid organization by hand having about leaded gas (in the context of a guy who restarted the EV industry) is how you get to this point in history.

CFPB was responsible for trying to fine creative ways to control other companies, and by debanking others. This was Elizabeth Warren’s doing and a complete farce. As Zuckerberg said, Meta was brought in front of the CFPB by Warren and he was confused because Meta isn’t a bank.

Was it before or after he tried to pull off that Libra thing?

I worked at Facebook when the Libra thing happened, and it was obviously meant to be a global bank that evades banking regulations by sprinkling crypto magic.

When it launched, employees were told that we'd soon be able to receive a portion of our salaries in Libra. Every practical feature of the system was effectively a Facebook bank account where the unit of currency was tied to a basket of major currencies. The rest was smoke and mirrors.

So yeah, Zuck feigning surprise about being dragged in front of CFPB was just an act (like most of what he does in public).

> When it launched, employees were told that we'd soon be able to receive a portion of our salaries in Libra.

LOL, crypto-company scrip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip) coupled with a touch of pump (and possibly dump).

I'll have to look into that. But giving these people any good faith is quite charitable to say the least.

> CFPB Warns that Digital Marketing Providers Must Comply with Federal Consumer Finance Protections > Tech firms that use behavioral targeting of individual consumers regarding financial products are liable for violations

Oh, ok.

A significant part of the animosity towards the EU and Trump's threat of tariffs is its consumer protection and preventing US companies, especially US tech companies, from doing whatever the hell they want.

A major difference between the US and EU is what the TikTok nonsense proved: the US is happy for a US company, aligned to Trump's authority, to track, influence and commodify its users at will; whereas the EU doesn't want any company to have that power regardless of location.

...Seems more like the EU reserves that power to itself, which I'd argue is even worse

Every national government tracks people, including the USA, so Americans get the worst of both worlds.

Why would it be worse?

While this is true in principle, it's worth adding the caveat that EU countries have also been pushing for backdoors to encrypted communications in order to expand law enforcement access. Of course while this contradicts the stance on privacy the EU put forward with the GDPR (which sneakily redefined the right to privacy and control of your personal data as an indelible human right btw).

But in case anyone thinks this is a dunk on the EU: this is still not as invasive as the US law enforcement's powers of warrantless surveillance which have repeatedly blown up the EU-US frameworks for data sharing (Privacy Shield and its other iterations, which Mr Schrems seems to have personally made a sport of shooting down faster than they get implemented). It's also not entirely contradictory as the focus here is on protecting the rights of people against corporations while still providing means for the state to violate those rights when necessary (similarly to how the state can violate your right to free movement through incarceration or your right to bodily autonomy by shooting you, neither of which seem to upset the people who'd think this one is a gotcha).

Considering the EU's main function is being a transnational economic region (if you ignore all the fluff about shared values and history and instead follow the definition of "a system's function is what it does"), it's absolutely true that the EU is remarkably restrictive on what corporations can do compared to the US - even before Trump.

EDIT: The two sibling comments prove my point: while EU member states have been pushing for legislation like providing backdoors to encrypted communication, this is neither unique to the EU nor a contradiction and the US already has far wider reaching measures in place.

Consider for example the Switzerland-based CIA and BND (Germany) shell company that distributed backdoored encryption to hostile nations which Germany backed out of when the CIA defended distributing the same technology to friendlies without informing them or their intelligence agencies. Or literally any of the Snowden leaks, which described not only mass surveillance of US citizens but also espionage against US allies (infamously including wiretapping then-chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone) to a degree none of the EU member states have ever done anything comparable to - and which those mostly didn't act on because of the importance of maintaining good terms with the US. Or the post-9/11 legislation which not only allowed warrantless surveillance with gag orders (which is why "canaries" became popular in cryptography communities) but even literally killing or abducting and indefinitely incarcerating US citizens without a trial - not to mention torture.

You can criticize the EU for state overreach. You can't do so by using the US for grounds of moral superiority - not even moral equivalence. You can argue about different attitudes to free speech, gun ownership or the right to self-defense (e.g. castle doctrine), sure. All of these are valid grounds for debate. But the US government can (according to its own jurisdiction) legally do so many more things to both its own citizens and non-citizens both within and outside its borders that trying to use it for a libertarian "win" against the EU seems farcical at best.

And another factor is that those surveillance laws haven't passed, despite some member states pushing for them since at least 5 years ago.

It's an ongoing war.

Do you think Trump understands how tarifs work exactly? Or is it just something he learned other countries are afraid of but he has no idea that American importers and their customers are gonna pay them (and he shares this misunderstanding with more than half of the population)?

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5121390-trump-sa...

This article doesn't indicate that he knows what tariff mechanistically does. Only that it will take inflict some amount of suffering on American citizens and possibly force manufacturing back into America.

He knows how they work: he threatens them and his supporters cheer, he implements them and people negotiate. There are other, some would say better, ways to get the same effects but tariffs are Trump's go to. In the metaphor "when you have a hammer everything is a nail" maybe Trump is the hammer and tariffs the nail?

I'd say tariffs are a hammer, every international issue looks like a nail and Trump is the simpleton that keeps swinging.

> This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software!

Hopefully it's obvious at this point: Musk and friends not there to do anything but enrich themselves, and destroy.

Musk usually elevates technical and capable people, and gives them more power, not less.

I suspect 18F would have been adopted by USDS, if it had been less overtly partisan in its hiring practices.

Care to provide an example? I was casually looking at applying, but I am on the conservative side as easily searchable on Google by voter registrations

The only person Musk ‘elevates’ is himself.

People with that kind of wealth have transcended humanity. Not towards greatness but towards total indifference.

At this point, Elon is doing only damage while he thinks he cleans up. Someone will have to cleanup after the cleanup aka damage doen though, and it won't be pretty.

>while he thinks he cleans up

He doesn't.

Don’t do clean up.

The biggest mistake the dems can make is to come in and do clean up. This would be paying the bills of the abusive member in a relationship.

People depend on the state. Someone has to be the adult in the room. If your marriage fails what do you do with the kids? You abandon them because you don’t want to clean up?

Dems were already the adult in the room, US voters decided they don’t want one.

Nope, they were in control, spent 4 years focusing most of their attention on things the voting public found various degrees of stupid, then put up two successive candidates in ‘24 that were absolute jokes. The voters decided that the Democrats weren’t serious and sent them a message: “Even this obviously-corrupt buffoon is better than the arrogant elitist that you put up. Do better or be prepared for irrelevance.”

Personally I’m no fan of 90% of the GOP agenda, but my fondest wish is complete dissolution of the DNC, and another party taking over as the party of the non-rich to restore some balance.

Right! The dems are stuck doing the responsible boring and non eye catching thing.

Economists, policy makers etc. increasingly have to make the dems carry the weight, in a political and media market which moves so fast that facts can’t even matter.

In this situation, is it a surprise that they could deal with Covid, undo 2008, end nafta, or any number of great things, but still lose faith of the populace because they didn’t hit the populist taking points?

It now very much feels like an era of talking points, and damn the facts.

In which case either making the talking points stick, or change the talking points.

Course not. Mine is a horrid take.

It’s a statement on the fact that the children are being held hostage, and that this is how the pattern will be made to continue.

You have to decide whether you are ok with this pattern continuing. If it’s possible to do it without harming the children, then that is what must be done.

If it’s better to let this pattern continue, then thats also an ok choice. But at least the costs must be articulated and accepted. People can know what role they are playing in this relationship; the tradeoffs they found unacceptable.

Yeah, Dems should skip the next election, maybe a few and let the people cook themselves.

It still might happen that there won't be any further elections in which anyone but trumpists can actually win.

This is all democrats have done my entire politically aware life. It’s like clockwork. Republicans majorly screw things up. Democrats get elected in a wave and start doing the hard work of cleaning up the mess and making tiny steps of progress and then the next election comes around and Republicans win on some culture war nonsense that they created themselves and they get fuck up the system once again. Every single time. Democrats have no opportunity or willingness to enact the agenda of the people who vote for them. They are in perpetual cleanup and maintain the status quo cycle.

The Democratic Party is the conservative one.

My brother works for 18F.

18F might also be "far-left" cause it was created by Obama folks. I also wonder if it is also bad in his mind cause conflicts with taken over Digital Service.

>far-left

>Obama folks

Obama was not in any way "far left"

I added air quotes to make irony obvious.

People these days use /s for that, not quotes..

You should understand what putting a word in quotes means, regardless of internet memes.

According to Wikipedia [1], and I quote:

"A quotation or quote is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation

By quoting "far-left" the poster is indicating that he himself does not believe that Obama is far left but that it is something someone has said or written about Obama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

I "support" the article's criticism section.

Agree, but when you staff an entire agency with his supporters, the echo chamber effect can result in it becoming a hive of far-left types.

The same would apply to the right too, except that the right tends to shut down agencies, not create them.

DHS is a counterexample here. It’s huge.

Especially on the international stage. American "far-left" is totally different to say, European "far-left."

Obama wasn't US far left either though. More center right.

Yes, what's center right in the US is "far left" to the far right currently in power.

Obama would be "far right" by current Democrat standards. He was against gay marriage in 2008, for example.

Funny, because I remember he was a far-left muslim communist from Africa back then by Republican standards.

Of course, it goes without saying that opposing same-sex marriage doesn't make one "far right". I mean, I know you knew that and are just ragebaiting – but I wanted it to be explicitly clear for others.

I'm not rage-baiting. I'm saying it's a reasonable point that people can disagree on, but if any Republican candidate had had it as a policy position in the last election they would have been labelled as "Far Right".

And Kamala Harris was labeled far-left for campaigning on a Trump-lite platform on immigration and the economy that appealed to no one.

>And Kamala Harris was labeled far-left for campaigning on a Trump-lite platform on immigration and the economy that appealed to no one.

I am begging people on the left to stop slandering "we will enforce the law" as a right-wing position. It is not, shouldn't be, and the right doesn't deserve to get credit for it.

Kamala wasn't "Trump-lite" any more than AOC is "Stalin-lite". The differences between the two are fucking categorical.

Yes, you’re rage-baiting; a republican candidate would have been labeled that way because of the aggregate of their positions, not this one.

Though of course, that is by modern standards quite a conservative right position to take. (And incidentally not one I’d consider reasonable to take; though I’m obviously biased by being directly affected)

No, I don't think it takes more than one position to get you labelled "far right" these days. The Free Speech Union, which is UK pressure group in favour of free speech was recently labelled "far right" by Wikipedia for promoting free speech.

This is what I mean by rage-baiting :)

Disagreeing with you is rage-baiting?

I just checked the wiki, but can't find the far-right references.

There is some chatter in the Talk page about some members of the group associating with far-right figures and pushing some very dodgy views on far-right topics. Is this what you are referring to?

The far right accusation was recently removed after they publicised it.

Which dodgy views on far right topics?

Obama was further to the right than the conservatives in the UK at the time.

Ironically, one of the founders of DOGE(nee USDS), Mikey Dickerson, was caught colluding with billionaire Reid Hoffman to spread misinformation ahead of a 2017 election in Alabama in favor of Democrats.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jon...

"caught colluding" implies they were doing something illegal

No, it doesn't.

collusion. noun. col· lu· sion kə-ˈlü-zhən. : secret agreement or cooperation for an illegal or dishonest purpose

Something can be dishonest without being illegal.

Emphasis on the 'or'

The whole sentence does though.

Which law is it being implied was broken?

Not illegal, just nefarious. Which is why they got real embarrassed when what they were doing was revealed and stopped it.

The overreaction is absolutely crazy. In no way are they leftist. They are about as woke as any typical modern progressive company. A lot of my colleagues in both public and private sectors include their pronouns in their signatures. They choose to use inclusive language and policies.

The big hubbub on X was about the Slack bot that recommends inclusive language. https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/CHANGELOG.inclusion...

There is a hit piece article not worth linking that calls out some of the devs who worked there. The comment section of that page is very hateful. As an American it’s shameful to see that level of hate for anything to do with policies of inclusiveness.

The company looks like they hire regular people of all types. A few of the adults are trans or identify as queer and they are acknowledged as equal coworkers. Fairly representative of the tech industry I’d say. What is so bad about that? They seem to write some excellent code and have a good company culture akin to a lot of SV tech companies.

Being in bed with tax preparation companies is probably the main thing, but I also vaguely recall a statement by someone years ago (perhaps Grover Norquist or Dick Armey) that filing tax returns should be kept annoying simply for the sake of keeping people angry about taxes in general.

That works until people learn the correct targets to direct their anger.

Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about?

It's not taxes that are the problem per se it's fuckwits like Boris Johnson's cronies that think taxes are theirs to garnish and use any chance, even a global pandemic, to steal every dime they can lay their hands on.

>Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about?

No, but paying an exorbitant amount, but seeing few things being improved around you, but endless wars funded and cronies getting richer, and useless bureucracy enlarged and making your life or business more difficult, is.

> filing tax returns should be kept annoying

That's just plain stupid. Taxes are already annoying enough.

In New Zealand the government makes it really really simple to pay your taxes (automated tax returns for the majority). You can call our tax department on the phone and they answer and they are helpful and they don't seem to screw you. The idea is to make it simple for people and businesses to pay their taxes so that they pay. The IRD is run like a smart business.

Unfortunately a lot of things are just plain stupid.

Replacing the government with unaccountable middlemen is sort of their goal, isn't it? Think of the efficiency we could gain once we do away with all of that accountability nonsense...

If you goal is to make government small, ineffective at consumer protection and such, this is absolutely the first group to target.

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has deleted a group that was devoted solely to making the government more efficient. Makes perfect sense, in Trumpistan logic.

Given his tech record, he probably dragged a file named 18F to the Recycle Bin.

This is the same guy that nearly tanked PayPal because he was obsessed with rewriting their entire system for Windows.

I had a coworker who turned beet red when I put Musk and PayPal in the same sentence. You know that feeling when your parents didn’t yell and you wished they would? I was too afraid to ask for the full story.

His PR makes him sound like a founder but he was not.

“X.com was … founded by Ed Ho, Harris Fricker, Elon Musk, and Christopher Payne … It merged with competitor Confinity in 2000 and the merged company changed its name to PayPal in 2001.”[1]

I’m sure individual usage will vary, but I would call him a cofounder.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)

> This article is about the defunct online bank.

Assuming you meant X.com (formerly known as Twitter) - in no universe is there a Twitter cofounded by Musk.

No, parent presumably meant the original x.com

Musk has been sitting on that domain name since PayPal. We are talking about companies, not domain names.

Confinity is the company that developed the PayPal website that survived that merger. Elon Musk was not on the Confinity side, he was trying to pivot his x.com bank into a PayPal clone and buy users ($30 per signup) faster than them until they merged to avoid running each other out of cash. The two startups were operating out of the same building at the time. After the merger, Musk was named CEO but ousted from the company just 5 months later, in part for being absent much of the time (including at the time of his firing), and in part because the PayPal engineers had circulated a petition to the board asking them to remove him. The board agreed.

Co-founder is just a marketing name and has no meaning in reality, actions do. Looking at this he provided in money which was likely to ruin his business by overspending it and greater minds prevailed in the end (I'm not saying paypal is a good thing or not). Why they made him CEO I cannot fathem but it has probably something to do with the bullying behaviour he is known for.

I've been named co-founder once but as soon as its usefulness ran out it got removed from the website (nothing else changed).

Edit; needed to be response to parent, sorry.

Wasn't he also in the USA illegally because he was in violation of his student visa?

yeah yeah, and something about a slave labour diamond mine which is just as relevant to Musk having a team capable of cleaning up.

Wow, I can’t believe this is so controversial. When companies A and B merge, what would you describe the A-founders as, in relation to the resulting company?

Reverse merger makes it an acquisition not co-founding.

Looking at the quoted post, what do they have against Direct File? It is really hard to keep track of their positions which I believe is intentional.

Many in the GOP are generally opposed to federally-funded free tax return filing: https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/irs-direct-file...

> In December, however, Kelly and 28 House Republican colleagues wrote to President-elect Donald Trump to ask him to end the program: “We write to urge you to take immediate action, including but not limited to a day-one executive order, to end the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) unauthorized and wasteful Direct File pilot program. The program’s creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach, and its rollout and structural flaws have already come at a steep price.”

All the dramatic language they use to dress up their claims is completely ridiculous.

The argument (if you take it in the most charitable light) is that reducing barriers to paying taxes will make people less averse to paying taxes. So they fight any effort to bring sanity to the tax code or tax payment process.

So even taken charitably I think they are wrong. But I do believe it is simply just corrupt and malicious.

You'd think the threat of having your bank accounts frozen and armed law enforcement officers showing up at your door were the most significant factors in making people "less averse" to paying taxes. I doubt reducing the barriers to filing your taxes correctly makes anyone happier about having to pay taxes either.

You should see the crazy shit they say about the IRS hiring 80,000 more employees that they desperately need.

What the actual fuck. Simplifying government paperwork = government overreach. Got it.

Direct File competes with Intuit and other tax prep companies. Of course they're against it; DF threatens corporate profits.

Isn’t it wonderful when they make rules stating you must pay taxes, then they make it so convoluted and obscure that you’re forced to spend extra money to file them?

It seems almost like corruption.

DirectFile makes it such that anyone with a simple tax situation (some W-2s, some dependents, etc) can easily file their federal taxes online. Free. Straight to the IRS. My only gripe with DirectFile is that it doesn't yet cover more complex cases (but let's not have perfect be the enemy of good; it's probably good enough for 75% of citizens) and you still have to find a way to do state filings based on your state.

Well by next year it won't be available for anyone so no one will be dissatisfied with what it can and can't do!

True, except for the “almost”

It's an intentional position by the Republicans to condition Americans into reflexively supporting tax cuts. https://archive.ph/mQ0cu

This fuckery will continue unabated for the rest of our lives until we collectively stop paying income taxes with the demand that a Constitutional amendment is put in place to force the government to be honest and helpful both around the procurement (just sending a dang bill) and government spending (expressly forbidding genocides, foreign coups, certain bailouts, etc) with real teeth in it.

Of course, right now it seems even the existing amendments are not safe. Our government is a non-functioning, dishonest imperial oligarchy, and we just keep paying our tithing out of fear, telling ourselves it's all going to schools and highways.

Unrelated corporations are not natural allies. In fact they often compete.

This is true, but it’s much harder to compete against a free government service and that’s not the only option. For example, how much does Intuit’s advertising budget on X have to go up for it to be worth the effort of a few hours? (Repeat for xAI contracts or fleet Tesla purchases)

I don’t know if there is any quid pro quo but that’s why we have ethics laws because otherwise you have to constantly ask whether something is good for the country or just the guy making the decision.

Well the person making the decision can just decide to do what they think will make them most money on a stock trade too, it's like they built corruption into the system. So, they could sort Intuit/Quicken then announce gov will provide free software... make a killing on the short, then say 'only kidding'!

Yes, that’s why we have laws specifically banning insider trading and people in senior level positions are required to disclose their trading activities.

Competitors can have mutual interests.

When did the political system stop being about making life better for the average person?

In Sweden we have gotten a paper from the tax office saying "we believe your taxes should be like this" and then you can change parts you disagree with (and risk punishment if you are wrong).

Direct file seems great.

When there's interests which are making $100's to $1000's from many millions of people in the USA and want to keep it going.

(Really) not saying it's a good idea, but if Swedes were required to fill in the paperwork, or even better/worse actually transfer the taxes (maybe including payroll), we would probably be more upset with how our taxpayer money is spent.

If you are politically motivated to minimize the tax burden, it makes sense to be skeptical of direct filing (even if you are not bribed by Intuit).

I didn't think of it like that. Interesting thought.

> When did the political system stop being about making life better for the average person?

In the US, when we elected mediocre actor Ronald Reagan, I think. His trickle-down economics nonsense turned out to be a just and early example of catering to the rich in broad daylight instead of behind closed doors. And the people, for the most part, bought it, so now we have legal scams like 401ks that the average citizen thinks are there to help them.

The point has always been to seize control of the money while removing all accountability and they are finally succeeding because liberals handed them the election over Gaza, which is no longer in even in our news cycle.

It all makes my stomach turn, to be honest.

I like the idea that trump is your punishment for supporting a genocide, enjoy him and his goons dismantling the federal state.

It's referred to as Elizabeth Warren's Direct File project.

They oppose anything that reduces private companies revenue. Direct file reduces Intuits TurboTax revenue.

> It is really hard to keep track of their positions which I believe is intentional.

The reasons are unimportant. The important thing is that you trust Uncle Don and Uncle Elon, our grand leaders, who always have your best interests at heart.

Corrected link: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520

He got rid of 18F, a group within the Govt to improve usage of tech (and hopefully therefore efficiency), because of a tweet.

A tweet about IRS Direct File, a group that replicates the basic automatic taxation program of other advanced economies?

Over a fear that the Government would take over deciding what taxes people pay, despite a fact that such a program doesn’t necessarily block you from manually filing your own taxes (don’t know if the American implementation has that, but the UK one certainly allows you to override PAYE).

Yes HN commenters, this is the genius behind Government reform.

EDIT: Jesus Christ someone is going to convince him FedNow is a conspiracy and kill another basic system other countries have easily managed.

He clearly wants to replace the US government technology platforms with X/XPay/etc

Yes - This is an underrated point.

The circle of Elon, Thiel, Andersson, etc conceptually orbit Balaji. Balaji, The Network State author, explicitly advocates for a techno-libertarian exit because they perceive the US and especially "team blue" as getting in the way and slowing down their vision.

I still don't understand what Balaji wants to achieve with his crypto oriented nonsense. Could not make any sense of it.

His ideas builds on Curtis Jarvis work, dark enlightenment. He is a close associate of Peter Thiel and JD Vance. Essentially they want to destroy the federal government, buy up assets and land, start their own micro countries where they can be King CEOs. Sounds like a joke but its not.

It's important to point out, and this not an understatement, that they believe that democracy is a failed project. Democracy in their eyes is either a failed experiment or obsolete.

They share a belief that "change from within"[democracy] is impossible and that "exiting" is the only other option. This extends to governance models where people are encouraged to vote for their governance by packing up and moving (digitally and/or physically) rather than attempting change from within.

Curtis Yarvin? None of the things these people say sound interesting in the least. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to get it.

He said wants X to be an “everything” app like WeChat a few years back. Nice an authoritarian.

Thanks for the link on 18F in the feds. Didn't realize how much they had put up on Github and other areas [1]. analytics.usa.gov [2] is also pretty cool. Apparently its Jekyll, Sass, React and d3 from their Github.

343,025 first time users in the last 30 minutes, with GSA Advantage, USPS Tracking Results, NIST, CEAC Visa Status Check, and Federal Student Aid being some of the biggest sources. Had no idea this was available.

[1] https://github.com/18F

[2] https://analytics.usa.gov/

Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding.

But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

They're cutting their opponents' access to federal funds.

Why those funds were allocated to their ops and not equally to everybody? If those government organisations were serving only one side of the political spectrum than something is inherently wrong with it.

> If those government organisations were serving only one side of the political spectrum than something is inherently wrong with it.

Is there? I feel like there are many cases where this is not true. Supporting disenfranchised groups for one. If you are funding protection for a group of people you don't need to be funding their attackers as well to make it "fair", the funding of the disenfranchised groups is literally you putting your thumb on the scale to try and even things out.

"one side of the political spectrum" is pretty loaded and it can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. If we are talking about "funding democrats" then sure, that's not good but if we are talking about "funding women's health" then no, I'm not going to play "both sides" games. The sad thing is we live in a country where a large number of people think that "funding women's health" _is_ "serving only one side of the political spectrum".

Unfortunately we're also talking about funding so our rivers aren't on fire. We don't have to speculate on what is left and right because even what is purely sensical is being completely dismantled. People should be fucking outraged but half the country thinks the EPA is "woke." We're genuinely fucked.

Welcome to the club of "right wing extremists."

and the club of left wing hysterics.

They were allocated equally. The goal is to change that.

What does “equally” mean and how would that be determined?

Also correct. These programs are seen as funding professional democrats who then vote for more funding

The goal is to dismantle as much of the government as possible. Where possible, they can replace the existing people with their own people, then steer government contracts to themselves.

The way they're going there might not be a government much longer. I really do believe they're that stupid.

The entire stock market is premised on the stability of the US government. Without it all their wealth would disappear overnight. All the luxuries they love would cease being produced. They wouldn't be able to fly their private jets anywhere.

In the past the rich could stockpile easily-tradable goods like gold in order to maintain a luxurious life even if their government collapsed. When it comes to billionaires that's not possible. The logistics of keeping and moving that much physical currency/gold/etc don't work out in their favor.

If they keep this up they're going to lose almost all of their wealth as the world destabilizes. They're also setting themselves and their families up to be assassination targets for the rest of their lives (far, far beyond what they are already). There's people everywhere that will be severely impacted by their actions. There will be nowhere for them to go because the US really is the pillar of the world's economies.

They can operate this demolition op from the safety of their bunkers in NZ.

All they need is a way to send messages to their "useful idiot" new college grad minions.

True, instigating a global collapse might eventually get to them, but AFAICT, they just want to personally profit from US dysfunction. Plus, it seems like the rest of the world will simply bypass the US and say "you're not dependable any more, so we're just gonna pretend you don't exist". Ostracism (of the US) seems more likely than the entire world destabilizing.

It'll be just like the 1930s with a deeply isolationist USA.

History sure does have an uncanny way of rhyming if not actually repeating.

Something that greatly galls me is that the livelihood of tens of millions of families depend on the whims of people who think only in terms of profit. Government is not supposed to make a damned profit! The government's primary role should be to care for everyone, from entrepreneurs to people with disabilities. I'm not saying "handouts for all", I'm saying that the government needs to provide stability, a level foundation for all to build upon.

It's like Venkman in Ghostbusters, in the ballroom: he yanks away the tablecloth sending everything flying except "the flowers are still standing!". The rich are the flowers, secure on their own foundation, calm with the knowledge that the guy pulling the tablecloth can't affect them. In other words, the new administration should be carefully enacting new policies not causing chaos by doing everything too quickly.

Unless their goal is to destroy the USA, in which case US citizens will need to decide what country they want to live in and whether republicans are capable of delivering that.

Thank you for that mental image of the flowers still standing :D

> Unless their goal is to destroy the USA

I have indeed heard this, even in his first term -- that people were so fed up of politics-as-usual, that they decided to "send a wrecking ball into the White House".

After having seen the damage that wrecking ball did the first time around... to send it back must mean that these folks really want to demolish the very ground they're standing on.

My other pet metaphor is that we're all standing on top of wobbling Jenga tower and the republicans want to knock out the blocks beneath us.

And thank you :)

The US is not a wobbling Jenga tower, that's what the news media wants you to believe. They'll keep pushing that story to peddle fear and outrage until they make it true.

> Government is not supposed to make a damned profit! The government's primary role should be to care for everyone, from entrepreneurs to people with disabilities. I'm not saying "handouts for all", I'm saying that the government needs to provide stability, a level foundation for all to build upon.

My understanding from both reading a lot online and conversations with Americans in person is that a significant number of them would consider the above statement to be “socialism” which is something they’ve been taught to hate, no matter what.

I can’t say I understand it. To me, it’s the most basic raison d’etre for government. I’m not sure what the anti-socialism types in the USA think that the government’s purpose is

Slightly shaky start to the market today but it largely recovered and is just as high as it was 10 days ago. Seems the markets are divided between worried and cautiously optimistic.

The markets only care about what'll make them money. The markets responded to the tarrifs, then the same-day (temporary) rollback of them.

Sometimes they put their finger on the scale a bit, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

Why would they do anything else? Last Trump Presidency caused incredible inflation that for a huge part went into the stock market, because where else can it go?

This is pretty much my investment thesis for the foreseeable future.

The markets have been disconnected from reality for a long time, at least a decade.

I know some of the people involved, and named in this article. So do many other people on HN. I pitched my startup to one of these zoomers just a few months ago. I can tell you that whatever this is, it isn't that kind of cronyism corruption. We can do better than such accusations, and that's what the person you are replying to is asking for.

Trump is provably corrupt, so why should I give his accomplices the benefit of the doubt?

Well for one, they don’t come from Trump or Musk.

They're taking orders from bad actors, it's absurd to assume good faith.

Why do you assume they are taking orders? This organization is not regimented.

Why would I assume otherwise? They aren't neutral observers from a trusted third party. Neither Musk nor Trump has a track record of honesty, and both have used their power for personal gain. A recent example is Musk moving NTSB announcements to Twitter.

From what I can tell, the apparent purpose of DoGE is to benefit Trump and his allies financially, weaponize funding against opponents, and dismantle parts of the government they oppose. Musk’s preference for young engineers may stem from the same logic the military uses with young soldiers — they tend to be more obedient and less likely to push back.

Since you know the people in question, do you have any ideas? I am honestly mystified myself and hopeful someone who knows the people in question can shed some light.

Do you have specific questions? I really don’t think it is complicated. They’re doing what they say they are doing: instrumenting up the government to see what it is doing, and reorganizing it from the ground up to be more efficient. So far all their actions are in line with this.

It’s like a creditor-initiated bankruptcy proceeding. An agent comes in and stops all transactions, audits the assets and liabilities, and comes up with a plan. That’s what they are working on right now.

I’m trying to be objective in my description. I’ve personally worked for the government before and I think they are being hopelessly naïve in thinking that the government can fixed in this way, and also appear to be dangerously ignorant of the law (or counting on executive pardons). But I do t think there is any intentional malice or corrupt intentions here.

They know absolutely nothing about running the government or administering these programs, and these idiots are pushing to prod in a system that controls 1/5th of the US economy.

Gotcha. The reason I was mystified is that the budget is written by Congress, so I would guess a phone call to a leader in Congress with a desired budget number would do the job. Given that this doesn't seem to be the plan, I couldn't tell if maybe they had some other goal. I hope that explains how someone could be mystified.

It is not the budget that is the issue to them, except maybe in the total size. I'm sure they think it can be done cheaper. Rather it is how the money is spent that they are looking at. That's within the executive branch's authority, not Congress.

No, you are absolutely wrong about that. The whole point of the Revolutionary War was we didn't want an executive who decided how to spend our tax money.

Congress doesn't just give the executive branch a slush fund they can use to implement whatever political agenda the administration has. The money is for specific things, and the president has to spend it on them. He also can't just not spend it. His just is to make the money go from A to B, not to decide whether or not it gets to B.

Yes, the executive can set a policy agenda, and they have powers within the executive branch to administer the agencies, but one of those power is not the ability to spend or hold up congressionally appointed funds. The president's job is to spend that money on our priorities, not his. Many times his priorities will align with the voters, but at the end of the day he is the president for everyone, not just Republicans. This is the whole system of representation we have been living under for 200+ years.

We pay those taxes, we vote for our representatives, they allocate spending, the president makes sure the funds are lawfully spent. That is the system. You seem to be suggesting some other system where the president gets to decide how the money is spent. That's not how the system works.

Have you worked in government? I have. I helped manage a program that was an actual line item on the national budget. I'm quite familiar with how it works.

There is a lot of executive leeway in interpreting how to spend money allocated in congressional authorizations. As I said, I was managing a program that was in the 10's of millions of dollars and a line item on my agency's budget. The actual wording of the authorization was quite short, and there was a lot of executive agency in deciding how to structure it.

But most of your comment doesn't seem to be addressing what my comment was saying, and is politically charged enough that I don't think it would be fruitful for us to continue this conversation. I wish you the best.

As an employee of the government responsible for these items, you are beholden to follow the law. If you break the law you are prosecuted. You have to go through background checks, get training on what you're legally allowed to do, receive training for security clearances and how to handle sensitive data, go through that whole vetting process. You must preserve documents, be free of conflicts of interest, your work is auditable, and your department must respond to FOIA requests. The bar is high for you because the public puts our trust in you to spend our money.

None of this is true for Musk. He's not treating any of this with care, and we can see this in real time as USAID food/medicine is held up and rotting at borders. How is that not wasteful?

If you were to make those kind of capricious decisions as a government employee leading to people going hungry and staying sick or worse dying... Congress would rightfully be demanding answers and your resignation.

I think it should be obvious to everyone we are not dealing with an instance of a regular employee exercising routine and precedented discretion here, when Congress is up in arms, agency employees are up in arms, class action lawsuits are being filed. How often does a response of this scale happen when you make a decision?

>Do you have specific questions? I really don’t think it is complicated. They’re doing what they say they are doing: instrumenting up the government to see what it is doing, and reorganizing it from the ground up to be more efficient. So far all their actions are in line with this.

I think this is pretty much correct. The media, however, is taking full advantage of creating as much panic as possible.

I am curious though - what do you think about Curtis Yarvin being invited to the Coronation Ball in DC? It's things like that that make these theories spread. Why are they friends with a guy who openly calls for the fall of democracy and even invited him to high-level events?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Nothing these people are doing is transparent.

They're doing shady stuff in the shadows as fast as they can. Which is exactly the way you do things when they're not above board legally or ethically.

Whatever you think about Musk, he is a lot more transparent than other big donors and people who vie for influence in the USG. He is an idiot at times for sure, but he is an idiot publicly.

It's insane to me that people on the so called left are going to bat for the status quo, the status quo that protects bureaucrats and lobbyists and friends giving friends contracts and salaries.

Someone saying extremely stupid things in public, just making shit up and punishing those pointing that out, doesn't strike me as "honest", it strikes me as heavily disordered. And starting this stuff on a Friday night is the opposite of being transparent or welcoming scrutiny. Also:

> Thomas Shedd, a Musk-associate and now head of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), told government tech workers in a meeting this week that the administration plans to widely deploy AI throughout the government. Shedd also said the administration would need help altering login.gov, a government login system, to further integrate with sensitive systems like social security “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud,” which employees identified on the meeting as “an illegal task.”

https://www.404media.co/things-are-going-to-get-intense-how-...

Finally, batting against someone trying to make the status quo worse for his own gains isn't "batting for the status quo". If your house needs renovating, and I stop someone who tries to set it on fire, it doesn't mean I'm against renovation.

So you prefer corporate speak suits who don't make the mistake of embarrassing themselves in public? Because they don't ever speak in public? Are you honestly telling me you prefer un-named lobbyists having influence, because that has been the status quo. At least we can point the finger at Musk. And yes, I would posit doing and saying stupid shit in public IS more human than what we normally get. Its a pretty normal human behavior to make mistakes, embarrass yourself, lash out, etc. It's certainly more human like behavior than elected politicians engage in where they disclose absolutely nothing and hide behind PR speak approved by a team of 20.

I don't really know what your quote is about, seems like grinding a specific gear which I'm not particularly interesting in looking into.

But to your final point. The jury is still out on whether Musk acts _exclusively_ for his own gains. Sure he has an ego, but he was also instrumental in bringing EVs to the market (which many of his now opponents were quick to adopt), and at the very least has rekindled an interest in space exploration and so on.

I have many misgivings about the man, but at least we can see him. Which is better than the previous status-quo.

This is a False Dilemma fallacy. I'm not going to pretend the government is perfect but handing the keys of the kingdom to a Nazi will always be a bad idea. Let's do something else.

> So you prefer corporate speak suits who don't make the mistake of embarrassing themselves in public? Because they don't ever speak in public?

No, because they're not insane, have no clue what they're talking about, and don't call anyone who points that out a "radical leftist", or whatever their particular word for "unperson" would be.

> At least we can point the finger at Musk

And then you can get fired, like the Twitter engineer correcting his utter nonsense claims about how Twitter works. So he's an "idiot" (lies, smears people, and talks nonsense, too), but at least he's unable to hide it.

Because since we "can point our fingers at him" the pointed fingers get dismissed. Some people even said he can't have anything to hide because he posts so much on X. Okay, so so we know he's a terrible person and up to idiotic, destructive things, but that's a good thing, because other people could be worse because they're not posting every brain fart on a social media site they bought for that purpose. What?

> I would posit doing and saying stupid shit in public IS more human than what we normally get

All humans are human. One world you could use, just not for Musk, is "humane". To me he's very stuck up, pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-deep. He's not an adorable dork, he's a pushy, controlling, cowardly try hard. He wants desperately to be liked, or feared, or respected, but he doesn't genuinely love other people, and he isn't genuinely curious either, so it's all just a ghoulish, awkward, and completely dishonest show.

And people who don't tell people to "fuck their face" and such, or agree with neo-nazi conspiracy theories, or don't find outrage at their Hitler salute so funny they can't stop joking to the point even the ADL says something, etc. don't only refrain from these things because they have big PR team.

> Sure he has an ego, but he was also instrumental in bringing EVs to the market (which many of his now opponents were quick to adopt), and at the very least has rekindled an interest in space exploration and so on.

And if WWII hadn't happened, we wouldn't have computers right now. So? We would have had them 300 years later or whatever. This idea how progress, that humans constantly nibble at, that they cannot help but think about, could only have happened exactly how it happened is something I don't buy into. And without looking at the damage it's not a credible "calculation" anyway.

Musk is a Nazi. I've read history books. I'll take the status quo over Musk every time.

Whereas you are an "Evil_Saint" ?

Hopefully you don't get to power yourself, with that kind of username, and all your book knowledge.

Cool Story Bro. Username are meaningless. I know that you know that.

Do you think that there are security or data exfiltration risks with their approach, e.g. putting classified documents/emails into private company's LLMs to summarize information or identify certain ideological motivations? I don't see how they could begin to understand the scope of what they're working with without A.I. assistance.

If I was a billionaire who wanted to become even more rich by any means possible, I would do exactly that

The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations. The view is that the government of those other nations should be responsible for taking care of their own citizens. The goal is to uncover fraudulent payouts, stop more from going out in the future, and to bring the fraudsters to justice. Overall, the goal is to do a thorough accounting of where exactly US tax dollars are going to, and to use that information to decide if they should keep going to those recipients in the future, to put it to a vote using congress to decide.

[Political bias report: I'm a liberal who has read Rand and who does not agree with The Republican Party's views in the vast majority of cases. I have been listening to Musk and Ramaswamy talking about DOGE on X. I also follow conservative meme sites to keep up to date with the way they are thinking about things.]

>The goal is to find government waste and to trim the fat. The goal is to make the US government lean, efficient, and effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations.

Lets be clear, that is not the goal - that is what they say the goal is and reality shows it is not. The goal is grift and theft adn destruction. Properly naming things is going to continue to matter more and more. Because no matter your bias or perspective, repeating propaganda is an act of propaganda.

The question I was answering was

> Maybe what goal do they think they're pursuing?

and I was answering that to the best of my ability. I'm not just repeating propaganda, I'm distilling down the intent of the actors to the best of my understanding. No one can ever know someone's true intent, but I've done the best I can with the information I have.

You are repeating propaganda though. You're describing the stated intentions of this group, on their terms, as they have defined them. There's no particular reason to presume those statements are sincere, and in fact there have been other, previous statements that directly contradict them.

> I'm not just repeating propaganda

You literally are, though

With all due respect, I don't think you have done the best you can with the information you have. The only source of information your answer reflects is the stated intention of the people in question. But you don't seem to have made an effort to use information about the behavior of those people in order to evaluate whether to take their stated intentions at face value. You need to do that part to have done your best here.

It's fine if you don't want to do this, you're under no obligations here, but I just don't think "I've done the best I can with the information I have" is accurate.

The rest of this thread is based on about 1-2 weeks and people making wild projections based on it, that’s not much better.

For example multiple people here are making broad claims like Consumer Protections is completely shutting down, when all that’s been announced is a temporary freeze on operations as the new lead takes over (which happened in multiple agencies). Likewise the stated plan for USAID is to trim down foreign grants and merge the rest with the state department, so we don’t know what functions will continue there or if the Executive branch even has the authority to do that. Courts have already blocked last week’s freeze on federal grants and a few other things. The Mexican tariffs are already paused too and Canada probably isn’t far behind given the large risk to US markets and prices.

As dumb as plenty of this stuff is, it’s easier to get worked up and believe every dire headline you read than maintain a sober look at what tangible things have actually changed or can change that fast.

There is a lot of truth to this point that not much time has elapsed yet.

But, I think a lot of the thread is more informed by things that have already happened over much longer periods of time in the recent past than it is by the things that have happened in the last couple weeks. Specifically, there is a large amount of information available on the behavior of the current president during his last administration, and on the actions of the person behind the DOGE efforts.

Nobody is under any obligation to maintain a veil of ignorance about who these people have shown themselves to be. They have not earned any benefit of any doubt.

> the thread is more informed by things that have already happened over much longer periods of time in the recent past than it is by the things that have happened in the last couple weeks

Almost the entire modern history of the US government (including his last term) showed that not much at all changes. And it definitely doesn’t change quickly. Even stuff like tax rates have barely had any meaningful change considering US tax revenue has only increased exponentially since the 1980s along with the GDP. On paper very little changes in gov when you look more than skin deep.

This might be a new precedent where politicians actually do what they say and work hard to change the government but I’m highly skeptical.

Sounds like a lot of noisy broad stroke announcements and highly reactive social media headlines that will turn out to be minor IRL outcomes or get smacked down in court.

There's a difference between trying to improve stuff and wrecking stuff with no concern for the law. The later is a lot easier.

I think we're talking about different things. The history of human government is chockablock full of corruption. Not just in the US, but everywhere. Individuals with power often use it to enrich themselves at the expense of the public.

The people currently arrogating unaccountable power, illegally, have given us no reason whatsoever to trust them to use it for the public good rather than their own enrichment.

> behavior of the current president during his last administration

And what has been the lasting tangible effects of his last administration? Was it the end of democracy and the rise of fascism the Left loves to get hysterical about? Nope. And it won't be the case in this administration either. We can check back in four years to see who's right.

In 2016 people predicted he wouldn't leave office peacefully, and then 4 years later his administration closed with an armed insurrection, thus ending the tradition of peaceful transfer of power in America going back over 200 years.

So you might not want to take that bet, they have a good track record predicting Trump.

> his administration closed with an armed insurrection

This is an opinion held by the Left.

Isn't it a bad sign that this admin is launching tons of ill-conceived initiatives that will be blocked?

I can't see how that is a good thing either, even if you are somehow credulous enough to believe their claims.

Here is some much needed background on how we got here

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=1...

Right, I can't wait for the announcement that they cut down x in spending and will use some percentage of the "savings" to do y (Mars via Elons proxy Jared Isaacman, AI infrastructure via Oracle/FAANGs) and then claim it will benefit the whole world.

I don't believe Musk or Trum cares about "improving the lives of Americans". They would try to protect Americans if that was their goal. Their first targets are consumer protection, environmental protection and such.

they don't care about fraud either. Both are fraudsters themselves, both will enrich themselves and their families. They both surround themselves with fraudsters.

What I give to Musk is that the staggering nepotism you see with Trump is not there as much.

They are currently in the process of tearing down USAID, which provides money to other countries to help with things like disease eradication.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-usaid-c0c7799be0b2fa7c...

Which sounds kind of useful, considering these diseases a) carry over to the USA, b) diminish the buying power of those the USA exports goods to, and c) helps these countries to improve their economies, leading to a bigger market for American products.

Does the Republican Party have any humans with brains left, or is it all slime molds now??

Emergency and humanitarian aid will remain. I’m sure all the political and cultural funding is gone though. For instance, Pepfar is still running.

https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-forei...

USAID mission is not about “aid”, is what finances overthrowing/influencing foreign governments: https://x.com/iammurphycolet/status/1886407439047614962

You could also call this "defending against anti-american expansion". Which seems like a thing foreign adversaries would love for the US to stop doing, if only they had a few folks on the inside to help them...

So now we are pro imperialism?

This stuff is also what breeds hate against US world wide. People are tired of foreign government mendling in their country.

Don't forget funding Sesame Street in Iraq to the tune of $20M

> What I give to Musk is that the staggering nepotism you see with Trump is not there as much.

Hiring a bunch of guys who work at companies he or Thiel owns definitely counts as nepotism.

The vast majority of Americans care about improving the lives of Americans. Trump and Musk are likely no exception.

They might care about other things more than that though...

The problem with that simplistic reasoning is that helping people in other countries also can help Americans, sometimes in ways they directly helping Americans can't do.

(I'm not saying that every dollar deployed by USAID succeeds in having a large impact on indirectly helping Americans. But the net effect is surely positive.)

A big example is that almost all plastic in the ocean comes from a couple of Asian countries. No amount of money spent in the US could stop that. But it would likely be very cheap to combine funding plastic recycling with threats of sanctions against those countries.

If that actually was the goal, and if this function were being executed by a legally formed executive branch agency, with non-partisan career employees that have been properly vetted, hired, and granted security clearances, I might be behind this effort.

But that's not what's happening.

It's clear to me their goal is to dismantle as many "leftist" agencies as possible, like environmental protection, labor rights protection, securities laws enforcement, humanitarian aid, etc., and replace them with people who will enrich their friends and families and allow corporations to run roughshod over the rights of regular people.

It is bizarre to me that anyone could lack the critical thinking skills such that they'd accept DOGE's stated goals at face value.

Come now, it's obvious why they're not using "non-partisan career employees that have been vetted..." Please stop assuming we're not thinking critically or clearly if we disagree with you, you can't just shout it into the air and manifest it as truth. There are many arguably 110% valid reasons for why they are doing things the way they are.

They assume, as rightfully a lot of us do, that this all happened under the watch of these same individuals, and that they're arguably biased (we can't assume they're non-partisan). The problem is that the government is in a state of auto-pilot, and that's what led us here because we're not paying attention. In order to get out of it, we need to try something different and get (arguably) impartial or fresh pairs of eyes on the problem.

> it's obvious why they're not using "non-partisan career employees that have been vetted..."

Right, because those people are not loyal to them.

> They assume, as rightfully a lot of us do, that this all happened under the watch of these same individuals

All what happened? Environmental protection? Consumer protection? Automatic tax filing systems? Those things happened over decades of fighting for the rights of everyday Americans over the rights of a few rich elites. They're written in the blood, sweat, and tears of the downtrodden and exploited. That's exactly why they're being targeted. If you want to find inefficiency, throw a dart almost anywhere within DoD.

Sure, so since it's not clear for now, let's give Trump and Elon the benefit of the doubt, that what they're doing is from the good of their hearts, for the benefit of all the American people.

It's not like they're openly corrupt, narcissistic egomaniacs with history of screwing up people for their personal gain or something. Up till now, especially Trump, has made huge strides in bettering the country and wellbeing of the people, let's let him cook.

Surely that just leads to. "We've investigated ourselves and found no fraud."

Some people are about to learn about soft power, how important it is, how fast it's lost, how quickly alternatives fill the gaps

None of that is the goal. That's the propaganda.

Those may be the stated goals but I don't see any reason to believe those are the goals. Trust is earned.

If that is the goal, then what happened to "profile before you optimize"?

As an analogy, what's happening feels like this:

* Somebody (let's call them "X") has embarked upon a mission to de-bloat the ancient-but-working family desktop PC. * X's first actions appear to be to desolder various things from the motherboard, while the computer is on. * Anyone who sees what X is doing, is somewhere on a spectrum between "scratching their head" <----> "wow, they're trying their best to destroy the PC".

To those defending this particular way of "fixing" things, would you yourself replace a large, working legacy software system in this manner?

Certainly, one might test the software by removing access to external systems to see what happens, whether things break, whether it complains… and certainly, that’s what’s happening.

Something I didn’t expect from this was to see the main complainers scramble to define what’s really important to them, thus implicitly justifying many of the cuts made.

You're right, as long as software is concerned, and customers being left without service is a non-issue.

Though if you do that with hardware, you might irreversibly break/short a component -- so you unplug, then figure out you actually needed that part, but plugging it back in now won't get the system working again.

I think "running a country" has more hardware-like characteristics than a pure software system.

Trump understands the "shock and awe" PR strategy. His opponents were caught on their back foot, and he's moving fast while they are in disarray. Military thinking might be more effective than software engineering for this moment.

Those are the stated goals. I’m not sure they are the actual goals.

You may want to consider whether you are overly credulous.

The goal is to enable cronyism and corruption as well as undermine resistance to legally and morally dubious acts.

I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

If that were the goal, I think we'd see some evidence of it.

You do not "do a thorough accounting" by deciding in advance what programs and operations to terminate based on specific ideological viewpoints. I don't doubt for a second that this is "the way they are thinking about things" – but it's hopelessly, irredeemably naive to think that's what's being done.

> effective at improving the lives of Americans while not prioritizing improving the lives of citizens of other nations.

A bold claim. Can I get a list of these nations?

Because last time I checked, if in doubt the US backed who is better for them not for the people of that nation.

And what’s waste is highly political.

In the long run the US will lose lots of its influence in other countries.

It's a plutocratic coup, a takeover of the country by a small group of unelected men. The goal is to own and exercise power without opposition and without any rules.

Since it worked so well for Russia in the 90s onwards, why not America?

I would guess that part of it is to tear down what’s there so they can rebuild in their own vision. I think this is a desire that any engineer can understand- and also understand that it often has to be suppressed because it’s a common blunder.

How many engineers have walked into a legacy project and their first instinct is to rebuild? Of course this is sometimes warranted, but almost always costs way more than anyone expects and doesn’t necessarily lead to a better outcome.

Edit: I’ll also add that this mentality is more common in younger / junior folks, which fits the context here.

I think the word you're looking for is "immaturity".

It is not exclusively found in young people, as one can plainly see with the plutocrats in charge today.

FWIW, even when it is justified in a software context, we understand that there will be a (usually large) business cost.

When implementing this in a political context, there's no way to skim over the fact that there will be a huge human cost. But here we are anyway.

When reality doesn't agree with logic, question your assumptions.

Why does an alcoholic crash their car and ruin all their personal relationships?

Why does someone with impulse control problems make a self destructive statement?

Why does a tech billionaire who is clearly intoxicated by his own power and a cocktail of legal and illegal drugs behaving erratically?

Isn't this just the Dark Enlightenment that Curtis Yarvin has espoused and Thiel, Musk, and JD Vance have also endorsed? TL;DR - Dictatorships are superior to democracy, and quick executive actions that replace legislative responsibilities with the tacit endorsement of judicial and legislative branches are functionally the same. The foundations for this were laid when Trump got so many Federalist judges approved last term and the Supreme Court endorsed the anything goes if President does it theory.

https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-2...

This will sound like a conspiracy theory, but this is the playbook of Curtis Yarvin, specifically the "RAGE" step - Retire All Government Employees. Some references:

Watch the whole video (posted months ago predicting all these actions), but here is the relevant section: https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no?t=1201

NYT interview: https://www.nytimes.com/video/podcasts/100000009910862/curti...

Gil Duran did a lot of the reporting on this. https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happe...

it's not a conspiracy theory, it's an actual conspiracy. it's all out in the open for reading / download.

Yep! That's why I said it _sounds like_ a conspiracy theory. Just hope it can be halted in time.

They are looking for The Cathedral.

The goal is to overturn the system. The electorate is mad that nothing changes regardless of Dem or GOP in charge. They want something to change. They've wanted it for so long that at this point they're okay seeing it burn down.

Until it directly impacts them ... and then it's "I didn't think the leopards would eat MY face!".

this is irrelevant to the GP's question

Until there social security checks stop coming. Then they will riot.

I don't think it's possible to answer this apolitically because their goals are political in nature.

The right is at present a coalition of conservatives, nationalist patriot types and globalist libertarians. DOGE seems to be a mix of two goals:

1. They think that the civil service has become not just openly hostile but outright dangerous to any form of Republican government, and therefore that taking direct control of the civil service infrastructure at high speed is essential to avoid being kneecapped by rogue federal employees again. They think that this happened during Trump's first term, and that if they don't get this problem under control then America has effectively become a Democrat dictatorship that does whatever the left wants regardless of who wins elections. They have a good reasons to believe this is a real problem they need to solve and fast, see Sherk for some egregious examples [1] but there are many more you could cite.

2. A genuine belief that the government is very inefficient and in particular that a lot of the waste is basically just funding the Democrats via various 'laundered' routes like allied NGOs that pretend to be politically neutral charities but aren't. Doing something about that is a good way to get libertarians like Musk and his allies on board. Everyone is in favour of government efficiency in principle so letting the libertarian types go cut waste is an easy way to build that coalition even if the other parts don't care about fiscal efficiency much itself.

These two are interlocked. Poor performance and efficiency improvements are one of the legal justifications for laying off civil servants, so it's much easier to get the civil service under control if #resistance results in being one of the ones "optimized out" of a job. That's doubly true if the sort of NGOs that would hire them if they were fired are being defunded simultaneously.

[1] https://americafirstpolicy.com/assets/uploads/files/Tales_fr...

They kneecapped themselves by being a party of opposition with no constructive ideas for decades.

There's two parts to it. First, there's the reasonable position that the government is inefficient or has too much bureaucracy or regulation. If that's the case, how do you improve that? Chesterton's Fence says that all those regulations are in place for a reason, but it's reasonably to believe that some of those reasons may not be relevant anymore, or could be better written to allow for more efficiency. However, sitting down to figure out why existing regulations exist and how to get rid of them without allowing whatever bad outcome they were created in response to is difficult. If you have the general feel that a regulation is bad, why not just get rid of it? Or an office you don't like, or a committee that likes to say you're doing things wrong? If you've got the vibe that "this thing is bad", why do you need to prove it before getting rid of it? So it's taking things that are legitimate problems and trying to fix them based on vibes rather than data. Which, if some of the problems you're annoyed with are "it takes too long to build a building because the EPA wants data to see if there's environmental impacts", is it really a surprise you'd want to take that out without data?

Second is the dismantling of the deep state. The deep state exists, but it's not a conscious effort in general. Instead, it's the typical aspects of institutional inertia, multiplied by the fact that the kinds of people wanting to work in government favor inertia more than in most private businesses. Of course the low level government bureaucrat at your local post office or whatever is going to want to slow-roll things and keep things from changing as much as possible; that's just the kind of person that typically looks for a government job and gets hired. Of course they're going to resist rapid changes from people that want things to be fixed yesterday. If your conception of the government is as an agent to execute orders, rather than as an agent to steadily administer regulations, then you're going to resent the people who don't respond instantly to the executive's desires

FWIW I voted for Kamela because I think that the process of governance is just as important as the governance itself, and did not want Trump to remove the existing processes in this way. I can definitely see why people would want to change processes, and given the historical ineffectual attempts at changed processes I can see why people would vote for someone who promised to tear it all down, but I don't think tearing it all down is the best option. Although, I didn't vote for Harris as much as I voted for the most effective way to prevent Trump, but given the American first-past-the-post voting system that was the best I could do. https://ncase.me/ballot/

Between Elon's stated goals, the systems under scope and my personal experience from state & local finance, they are performing a strategic efficacy audit of treasury spending. The US Treasury normally doesn't audit transactions -- they execute requests for transfers from other agencies and defer governance to congressional oversight.

The GAO doesn't even audit in the intuitive sense. They audit that spending is being recorded properly, and for many agencies even that low bar isn't met. In other words GAO is okay with you dumping money into a hole as long as you count how much.

DOGE is doing a practical audit of the spending. i.e. taking high-level spending principals from trump and identifying specific budget items to eliminate.

It's worth noting the difference between Budget & expenses since families normally blur the two. Budgets are the plans developed by the President and approved by Congress, and expenses are what actually get spent during the year-- and they vary widely.

DOGE's unique approach is to use the Treasury as the "chokepoint" for telemetry so they can cluster and classify all of the transactions .

Imagine a massive microservices platform with 10k services and you want to know which ones are viable ( cost/benefit). Rather than survey all 10k, you would surveil a router or LB chokepoint to measure the input & output of all 10k services. That seems to be their approach with the treasury.

One minor nit: while presidents do usually present their version of the ideal budget, Congress is responsible for developing the budget, and what they pass can sometimes look pretty different from what the president proposes.

Good point

This is propaganda.

and the messaging saying that it’s a fascist power grab by oligarchs is not propaganda?

This is politics. All parties are presenting messaging that supports their goals.

how so?

Asking the treasury to do ideological/legal analysis of transactions is the same as giving your bank the responsibility of approving your credit card expenditure based on their idea of what you need/should buy.

The fact that they're going for the payment system and not for contract/orders analysis is exactly the red flag people are and should be concerned about.

Banks actually do that though. Credit cards have massive risk analysis engines behind them, and the limits are tied to your creditworthyness. So maybe it's not a good analogy.

Thats for giving you credit. Not for spending your own balance.

It's about spending your balance too. They will block transactions if they think there's a high risk of the transaction triggering a chargeback complaint, if they think the recipient might be sanctioned, if they aren't sure if the card was cloned etc.

What would be your recommendation?

Ever seen "Johnny English Strikes Again"? I'm sure Musk did, and is now implementing Jason Volta's plan as just retribution for the not-so-subtle reference hidden in the villain's electric name.

They're literally accelerationists: They're shooting the gov in the face, so they can enact more emergency powers, and then it's one step to pure, raw fascism.

> I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric

You need to start caring about politics real fast if you care at all.

You got your rhetoric as (not) requested.

There is arguably no non-political angle to this. I’m not sure how you’d describe what appears to be happening without it seeming biased.

From here in Canada it looks a lot like the fascist takeovers I’ve read about since middle school. The playbook is bizarrely tight to Hitler, Mussolini, hints of Stalin, etc. I didn’t expect this in my lifetime. Or rather, I imaged I’d see it coming sooner.

Hyperbolic hysterics. From here, that's what I observe.

What would seem like a reasonable, measured response right now?

It’s worth adding here too that Musk’s own purported ambitions are entirely political. He has even gone so far as to claim he has given up on democracy. Ironically, he also claimed this election was crucial. DOGE is a politically motivated program.

This is all worthy of intense scrutiny and concern

> What would seem like a reasonable, measured response right now?

A response to what? I fully support kicking out illegal immigrants and dismantling government agencies that are only wasting taxpayer dollars.

When I called out hyperbolic hysterics I mean things like what you said here:

"The playbook is bizarrely tight to Hitler, Mussolini, hints of Stalin"

These people murdered/executed millions of innocent people.

Has Trump come close to executing even one person?

That's why it's hard for me to take the Left seriously when they engage in hysterics like this.

They are playing post-URSS playbook, at 10x the speed.

It's fascinating that people still wonder what kind of goals they may be pursuing.

The President launched a meme coin 48 hours before being sworn in !!! Even crypto scammers were outraged at the audacity of the scam.

> But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

I'm a bit confused because the stated goals, either the "digestible" ones or the ones they've stated outside of mainstream media, are all political in nature.

How could you get an answer about the motivation and goals of this behavior that isn't "political"?

Cut spending.

Look up Curtis Yarvin. This is all his libertarian tech bro fantasy come to life

Made it easy for anybody who makes it this far:

1. Part one on Curtis Yarvin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYrPNvVhKLU

2. Part two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpEg4LS3CT0

No affiliation with the show just thought the episodes were enlightening.

Behind the Bastards is a great podcast. I think they did a good job bringing this guy's viewpoints to the forefront here, and explaining the context.

> This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric

LMAO. That's like going to Reddit and asking for relationship advice.

I love this post. “Explain what is going on with the government without mentioning politics. If the reality is that current events and the people involved in them are driven by ideology, invent a version of reality wherein they are not” is like walking into a Sephora, opening up the folding chair that you’re carrying, and loudly demanding the catfish dinner and a beer.

> This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.

Sadly, based on the comments here and elsewhere, HN is not immune to political rhetoric.

Elon Musk's goal is to gain as much power and control as possible. Line go up.

Since the goals are not clear for now, let's give Trump and Elon the benefit of the doubt, that what they're doing is from the good of their hearts, for the benefit of all the American people.

It's not like they're openly corrupt, narcissistic egomaniacs with history of screwing up people for their personal gain or something. Up till now, especially Trump, they've made huge strides in bettering the country and wellbeing of the people, let's let them cook.

https://doge.gov does not say anything about what the DOGE plan is, and https://www.usds.gov/ is not apparently up to date wrt DOGE. Is there something other than the Executive Order [0] that lays out concretely what DOGE intends to do? This group of engineers is doubtless skilled, but I don't seem them as the decision makers and planners here.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

We went through something similar in the 1960s with the Whiz Kids, young college graduates from the RAND corporation with no experience in government or the military. 'But you have to obey us because we're so much smarter than you.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...

That wasn't even remotely similar to what is happening now.

The Whiz Kids, for all their flaws, were duly and lawfully appointed. It wasn't this.

Are they skilled? Or just arrogant and drunk on power?

Some of them most certainly could not pass US security clearance.

https://bsky.app/profile/jsweetli.bsky.social/post/3lh7nii7y...

the plan is more specifically this right wing crypto idea called "the network state" - using technological means to bring down the Democratic state and replace it with a crypto-based oligarchy that serves big tech interests only:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo

See perhaps "The bro-ligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term":

> All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.

> The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said.

[…]

> The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.”

* https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration...

Also maybe "Why big tech turned right":

* https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezo...

General right-wing plan:

* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

here's Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan on X: "Whoever made the original graphic (of these kids that Musk told to hack into the machines) doesn’t understand the scale and speed of smart high IQ people who can program, and what they can do in a moment when intelligence now on infinite tap using LLMs"

https://x.com/garrytan/status/1886283334466302201

as though "dont worry everyone, these kids are really good coders!" has anything to do with it

the tech oligarchs know nothing about wisdom, integrity, rule of law, it's all a big joke beneath their superior brains

That is why they only take from other people (music, PDFs, code, literature, papers) without ever creating anything themselves.

Musk is an exception in that he at least popularized and scaled production of the original Tesla inventors from whom he bought the company. SpaceX seems to be run by Gwynne Shotwell.

Don’t need rule of law when you have LLMs!

These tech goofs trying to convince “the plebs” that they’re wizards that can cast magic.

It’d be more funny if people didn’t actually believe them.

It’s hilarious, I’ve never interacted with Garry Tan at all, my profile is as apolitical as you can get, and yet I’m blocked from him on X and on BlueSky.

I don’t know how any of these people can take themselves this seriously. If Claude et al. will be guiding national budget policy we’re in for interesting times…

yes he actually blocked me the other day on Bluesky as well, however I seem to be unblocked, so I edited my message to not mention that part.

Hah. I'm a pretty good coder and have been accelerated with AI, but it's definitely not ready to make me capable of redesigning the US federal government.

There is a real irony to how clueless he is about the complexity and vast sets of requirements these systems have. High IQs and programming are cool and all, but these systems are bigger than these kids.

Nice, the $ logo is a 22.5kb 375x372 avif file resized to 48x48. That is efficient!

Only top engineers at work there. Pahhaha!

Of course not. Getting all of this done requires overwhelming amounts of surprise. Trump signing a flood of executive orders is a part of this: it takes time to figure out what's going on with each one, and how to combat it. And in that time, the damage can already be done.

Musk and his coup team aren't really accountable to anyone but Trump, and have no direct legal authority. The way that they get things done is by threatening and steamrolling people, and gaining control of important functions (like the ability to put people on leave or fire them). All of this requires some amount of secrecy and chaos in order to pull off. If they were posting detailed plans on their website, it would make those plans harder to execute.

Didn't they already do exactly that with Project 2025?

[https://doge.gov/]

  Sorry, you have been blocked
  You are unable to access doge.gov

Feels like the Twitter transition again.

Hey remember when there was concern that he might not have time to effectively run Tesla and SpaceX. And then Twitter. And 12 kids. Or popping ketamine and playing Diablo 4 all night.

I guess he's got time to run the country too.

I'm also blocked. Is it some geo block perhaps? I'm from Germany

I'm from Indonesia and my access has been blocked too.

I think they're posting their daily updates on their X channel https://x.com/DOGE

If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective.

Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset voters, and congressional approval. Instead they'll going to disrupt some of the highest ROI small-money grants like food or medicine to impoverished countries because they don't have any representation.

It won't meaningfully reduce the deficit and means we we're signing up for warlords and global instability in the near future.

Catching Medicare fraud likely requires a level of automatic data anomaly analysis that's simply beyond all the participants involved, both in terms of getting access to the actual databases and in getting the qualified manpower to build such a system.

If the DoD's auditors can't track down all the expenses, then why would DOGE be any more successful?

Running after bullshit is the low-hanging fruit.

I think that the practical solution is to hire more auditors/investigators, and they would end up paying for themselves, but I don’t think Elon would accept a solution that requires more humans and up front cost.

> should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense

ok, but just after he fixed twitter bots like he promised, or ships working Autopilot.

Medicare fraud perpetuated by individuals is u likely to be that high. Overbilling by hospital corporations and medical device companies could be possible. But corporations aren’t the target of DOGE.

Not just by individuals - by Medicare Advantage managed care organizations, too… like the biggest insurers in this country.

Yes but still not the target of DOGE

Oh yes, I agree with you - I just wanted to mention another source of unaccountable spending on Medicare.

The 40% estimate is for fraud and waste combined. "Waste" being things like unnecessary MRIs.

Nobody gets an MRI for fun.

I do. I think it's interesting to have scans of parts of my body – brain, body fat/muscle distribution, etc. I also use them as reference for how my body changes over the decades.

(EDIT: Nothing to do with medicare or fraudulent billing. Just pushing back on the "for fun" point. I can fall asleep in those things.)

I expect MRI to be a high capex investment but low cost to run it each time. Maybe someone more knowledgeable might step in.

Of course, to play devil's advocate, using an MRI because you have it might lead to acquiring more MRI machines because of the high usage of the existing ones, I guess.

MRI techs are paid a lot of money, so I don't think it's entirely free on the margins.

I don't think there are all that many MRI machines that just sit there, unused, most of the day. There might be some hospitals that want to reserve their MRI machine for emergencies, so that it's less likely that you'll have to wait when you really need it.

I found this page here with some info about costs: https://info.atlantisworldwide.com/blog/the-cost-of-an-mri-w...

Even though they name cost of operation, energy use, cost of spare parts, maintenance and repair as expenses for running an MRI. It looks to me like the biggest cost by far is going to be the acquisition and installation. So if you've invested in an MRI machine you probably want it to be in use as much as possible in order to recoup the cost of the machine.

There could be though. That's a manufacturing problem.

I used to do MRI experiments in grad school for neuroscience.

One time, I got curious, and did some back-of-the-envelope math on how much they cost. In NYC, an MRI machine drew as much energy in 20 minutes, as my apartment did in a month.

Between electricity, keeping a superconductor cool, and personnel costs, it cost ~$100/hr in a medical facility, 20 years ago.

Sounds like a DEXA scan would be much more appropriate. Less radiation, cheaper, faster, and specificity tailored for measuring body composition. It’s like 40 bucks and five minutes.

Getting an MRI for body composition is like using industrial high precision equipment to measure the length of a hotdog

Just in case anyone else reads this and is confused. MRIs only use radio waves. No ionizing (or visible or even IR) radiation is used. The strong magnetic fields are a risk (due to interacting with metallic items embedded in the body). The contrast agents also can cause some undesirable side effects.

Ha, I knew this comment was coming. I should left it as “More comfortable” but that was too subjective

I'm a bit wary of regular DEXA due to the ionizing radiation. MRIs have essentially zero health side-effects if you're not using any contrast agents.

DEXA is definitely cheaper, but a good amount of my time spent in MRIs was due to assisting in various research and QA projects. Unless you're made of money, I wouldn't recommend that to anyone who has to pay. I wish they were cheaper...

They give them to people like they're going out of style. Why just last week I had fourteen of them myself!

that's it?

That's true. But under a fee-for-service (FFS) model, providers get paid per procedure they do. That gives them an incentive to order more testing, and generally "do more stuff."

There's also an IT angle (relevant for HN!): medical systems don't always talk to each other. Which means that maybe the patient got an MRI last month, in a different health system... but I don't have access to it in my health system, so I order a redundant one.

I wonder how they determine an MRI is wasteful.

When I got hit by a car in Italy, a CAT scan was a standard part of the triage process. Then I went to the ortho in the US and she was flabbergasted - apparently the bar is much higher to get one here.

It’s cute you think they’re trying to be “effective”.

It isn’t about budget but about ideology. Firing prosecutors who investigated Trump, firing FBI agents involved in Jan 6th arrests, firing employees for having pronouns in email signatures, going after agencies that spend <.1% of the federal budget just because they have “diversity” or “aid” in the name, using emergency executive power over vague threats like “drugs”. This is a government takeover and purge of anyone who can be considered disloyal to the administration. This may be a surprise to people who have only ever lived under functional first-world governments and the rule of law, but the rest of the world recognizes it as a story that has played out many times before.

Will you eat your words and admit you are wrong if Musk frees up a significant fraction of the budget?

How much is “significant”?

What words? That this playbook of making promises to then create another crisis to change the subject is well known? That is true and will remain true. Will you read up on the 20th century so you're on the same page as the comment you're replying to?

But how would the words "it's not about the budget, but ideology" but refuted by budget cuts, anyway? I can give you candy in my van, and the candy can be real, but that still doesn't make it about the candy. And freeing up a significant fraction of the budget is hardly saying anything. You can save money by throwing people on the streets and letting them starve. You can make money by letting drug dealers go free and making them give the government a cut of the profits. Maybe not enough to offset the tax cuts to the super rich, or the costs incurred by just setting everything on fire to consolidate wealth for a few sociopaths, but probably "significant". So? That's supposed to be an argument for waving firing prosecutors for political reasons through?

He can save a bunch of money and fire everyone! The amount of money doesn’t matter if what is gone is critical. When those things are lost, we will have to rebuild at a higher cost than maintaining.

> if Musk frees up a significant fraction of the budget?

Freeing up money is not actually that hard. Doing it in a constructive way is a lot more difficult. I could go in and completely defund roads, airports, social security, public schools, the courts, the military, and save a ton of money.

Then what. What's the big plan? What are we going to do with all this money that will give us a better ROI?

That money was paying for stuff. Some stuff runs smoothly we enough that we take it for granted. Is everything perfect? No, but I'd like to see a little more care when screwing around with important infrastructure and services.

This reminds me of people that join a legacy software project and start proposing that you do a completely rewrite of the system without really understanding why certain decisions were made. It's almost always a total disaster and then someone else needs to come up and clean up after them.

If he frees up a significant fraction of budget while making the government better and more effective, and not doing anything illegal or wrong, then yes, I'd be happy to eat my words!

Thing is, I checked my twitter feed for the first time in a month, and was recommended Alex Jones, so I can predict how well DOGE is going to work out pretty accurately.

Better for who? Because since the inauguration, lots of marginalized people are facing increasing government harassment, and if any newly freed monies are applied to more of that, then I'd say the government isn't getting any better for a huge swath of society.

> and not doing anything illegal or wrong

Though he absolutely, literally is. The executive branch taking control over finances is unconstitutional, and there are likely a bevy of other things involving laws for conflicts of interest and laws for security clearances.

The only question is what'll happen in response when the criminals control so much of the infrastructure.

As a bonus, Musk is currently breaking the First Amendment as well, as he is both wearing a government hat and actively censoring people discussing what he's doing.

In total, federal workforce compensation amounts to 4.3% of the federal budget. So even if Musk fires literally every single federal employee, I would still say that he would not free up a significant fraction of the budget.

but but but, it worked at Twitt...er, X

At what cost? Are we counting lives lost, QALYs, who defines the cost-benefit.

I can free up a lot of budget by sacking the entire armed forces and selling the jets to Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. "freeing up a significant fraction of the budget" is not consequence free. If he forces the health insurance industry to reform and extract a sane profit margin above cost of service, he deserves a medal. If he wipes out USAID and stops his competitors being funded for battery car programmes he secured for himself in times past.. Less such.

"waste" is a very emotive term for government spending. Many economists laugh at the belief spending less money is net advantageous as a thing in itself: money makes the world go round. Sometimes you want it spent more than you want it saved.

Presumably positive lives and QALYs. That's the whole point of cutting taxes for many people. I would rather be spending my money on my health than going without while the fed pisses it away on handouts, corruption, and incompetence.

I want to run the heater so my kids aren't cold but cant afford it. Meanwhile my mayor is using my tax dollars to buy 200 home depot sheds for 800k each from a donor.

Yes, the point is spending money, just by the people who earned it.

I can't rebut this without being insulting, or dismissive of the situation you have to live in. I am sorry you are living in such constraint. I continue to believe you are wrong "less tax" will fix your problem but I can say that from the comfort of an economy with a fully hypothicated medicare tax, and something approaching universal health coverage.

I do not believe paying less tax will fix the kind of cynical systematic corrupt behaviour of your mayor, and other tiers of government.

I don't think paying less tax will fix the corrupt behavior of my mayor either, but it would limit my exposure and loss.

Fundamentally, the urge to eliminate taxes and reduce the size of the government is a vote of no confidence. Not just now,but permanently. It's not a vote for reform. I don't think the government leadership has my best interests at heart. I think it would happily take everything I have and leave me to starve in the street if it could.

You certainly probably feel that, but I do not believe you thought your way into this position.

I would argue it is you that has not seen the balance sheets, absurdly high line items, or worked for a government contractor - else you would 100% agree with his stance on taxation.

A huge chunk of government spending is a horrendous waste/scam and you will likely never understand this unless you take the initiative to look at the spending breakdowns or actually spend a bit of time at a government contractor.

No, I didn't think my way into it. I initially thought myself into thinking efficient government was possible, then I watched the government callously destroy friends and family. Watched them be eminent domained without compensation. Watched their businesses and retirement plans capriciously taken away, often for no practical reason.

These real world observations demonstrated my theoretical model was flawed.

> I don't think the government leadership has my best interests at heart

And for-profit companies have your best interest at heart? With government services you can at least optimize for goals other than profit.

Wanting to cut whatever tax is going to those sheds has nothing to do with for-profit companies. They are not the alternative. The alternative is not having the tax.

> you can at least optimize for goals other than profit.

The goal should be providing the service I want for the least tax dollars possible.

The government is horrendous at doing this. There is no performance or competitive incentive.

USAID is a great example of saving pennies by spending dollars.

The only QALYs that should matter to the US Gov't are American QALYs.

I don't need to be funding $50M worth of condoms to be sent to Gaza. That's a "them" problem, and while there might be second order effects to a population explosion there, I honestly don't care.

Why the hell should be trust that liar's opinion on what is "waste". He has absolutely no authority to stop any payments that Congress has authorized. Trusting any one person with that much power let alone someone as morally bankrupt as Musk is deeply stupid.

Musk has zero chance of freeing up a ‘significant’ fraction of the budget. 73% of the budget goes to mandatory spending (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest payments, and other income assistance programs). Musk will touch zero of this. Trump and the GOP won’t let him. The Democrats too for that matter. And it’s mandatory spending is what has been exploding over the last decade, not discretionary spending

The remaining 27% is split 50/50 between defense and everything else. Musk will not be given access to the DOD. The remaining half of discretionary includes things like transportation, R&D/science funding , education, NASA/SpaceX, climate/energy, etc… essentially a lot of high value investments for our future that slashing would be like shooting ourselves in the foot.

https://www.pgpf.org/federal-budget-guide/

It's so sad and disappointing that no one seems to understand this. It is literally impossible for Musk to cut $2T of spending, at least not without an act of Congress. An act that would likely be career suicide for even the most right-wing reps and senators once their constituents stop receiving their social security checks and health care. And when the bond market collapses when we stop paying interest on our debts.

Only if he does so in a way that doesn't actually hurt the millions of people who rely on that money. Only if he does so in a way that doesn't dismantle agencies that spread the US's soft power around the world. Only if he does so in a way that's auditable, transparent, and accountable.

Even if he does manage to find his $2T to cut (which I think is pretty unlikely), he will fail at the above metrics.

But sure, it would be cool to be proven wrong on that. I really hope I'm wrong. Otherwise he'll have hurt a ton of people (that he doesn't care about) and will have set the US back on the world stage decades. Not to mention... hello recession... or worse.

Why stop there? Just don't spend tax dollars on anything, 100% of the budget freed. This is such a stupid fucking argument

Non-American here, from the outside it seems like the Jan 6 thing was way overblown. It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time but the perpetrators were not targeted the same way. Not condoning either, but there seems to be selective govt retribution.

"It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time but the perpetrators were not targeted the same way."

Huh? American here. Can you point to any examples? I can't think of a single one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protes...

This one wasn’t restricted to just a govt building, although it did start with the takeover of a police building. Kids were shot and killed. But the rioters were initially aligned with BLM so there was a lot of sympathy from the government and media. Barely anyone was investigated or punished, in contrast to Jan 6th.

They didn't take over the police building. They protested outside it, and the police boarded it up and voluntarily vacated it.

This was basically a very long street protest, which is fundamentally different from taking over the US legislative buildings by force.

No children were shot. A 19-year old named Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr was shot and killed. His killer, an 18-year-old mentally disabled person with a history of conflict with Anderson, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

No matter your ideology, I'm not sure how you can believe this is the same category of thing.

The link I posted has a crime section. There were 5 separate shootings. A 16 year old boy was shot and killed and a 14 year old was shot and in critical condition. From a loss of life due to violence perspective, CHOP/CHAZ was worse.

> From a loss of life due to violence perspective, CHOP/CHAZ was worse.

But from a potential to overthrow the government perspective, Jan 6 was worse. The entire Senate and the Vice President were in that building. The stated goal of the mob was to stop the transfer of power ("stop the steal"). They chanted their methods, which included hanging the Vice President and Speaker of the House, 1st and 2nd in line of succession. They brought a gallows. That's why it was an insurrection and not just a protest.

> There were 5 separate shootings.

Most of the shootings had no known relation to the protests except police broadcast they had abandoned the neighborhood. It was predicted this would lead to violence. Protesters did not ask for this.

The 1st shooting was outside the protest area. The killer and victim had a history of conflict.

The 2nd shooting was outside the protest area. The victim said he was attacked by white supremacists.

The location of the 3rd shooting was unclear. The victim refused to talk to police.

The 4th shooting was outside the protest area. The victim refused to talk to police.

The 5th shooting did involve protesters. The 2 boys drove through the occupied park and at a group of protesters. Protesters working as security guards shot at the vehicle in defense.

Remember May 31, 2020?

"Secret Service agents rushed President Donald Trump to a White House bunker on Friday night as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the executive mansion, some of them throwing rocks and tugging at police barricades.

"Trump spent nearly an hour in the bunker, which was designed for use in emergencies like terrorist attacks, according to a Republican close to the White House who was not authorized to publicly discuss private matters and spoke on condition of anonymity. The account was confirmed by an administration official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

"The abrupt decision by the agents underscored the rattled mood inside the White House, where the chants from protesters in Lafayette Park could be heard all weekend and Secret Service agents and law enforcement officers struggled to contain the crowds."

As near as I can find, some 6 people were arrested for this violent protest by the Secret Service, and some 16 by DC police. Is is vanishingly difficult to find if anyone was subsequently charged and convicted for this event, which was without parallel, at least in my lifetime. This followed the events of May 30, 2020, when the Church of St. John's Episcopal In Lafayette Square, across from the White House, was sent on fire. To date it seems that no one has been arrested or charged for this destruction.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-george-f...

So they didn't even attempt to enter the building and they certainly didn't attempt to overthrow election results? I just cant see how you think these are the same category of event with respect to political impact.

They burned the church and tried to break into the White House forcing an evacuation of the president! The 1/6 riot, by contrast, was by turns both violent and civil, but no one was armed and attempting "to overthrow the election results". In fact the Trump plan of continuous debate over the merits of the election was thwarted by the riot. It was diametrically opposed to his interests and ended up favoring the Democrats. Many questions still linger over the identities of major participants, including the "pipe bomber" and the "scaffold commander", whom the FBI unaccountably never identified. Note that the 1/6 participants were relentlessly tracked by the state for years by some 6000 FBI agents and tried in DC courts, unlike the 2020 rioters aiming to storm the White House.

People break into state chambers all the time to disrupt votes. It’s happened in Texas a few times in the last 5 years or so.

What? When? Where?

That many in Texas? Can you link to a couple?

I'm not seeing much in a quick search... unless you mean people who arrive normally and then are removed for heckling, which is totally different.

"A few times in the last 5 years or so" != "all the time".

With protest signs. Not weapons and restraints. And gallows outside.

This article gives a lot of context for why Jan 6 is a big deal, especially in light of the pardons handed out afterward. It's a long read, but it's enlightening: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/evenhanded-injustice--j...

> It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time

That is a laughable assertion, most importantly because the job that Congress was doing on Jan 6th, and which the deliberate goal of the protesters was to stop, was the peaceful transfer of power, which is probably the most important (and historically rare) job in a modern democracy.

Saying "but hey, some left wing protesters surrounded a police station" is a ridiculous false equivalence, because what they were trying to accomplish was orders of magnitude different.

Agree with this. Not to condone Jan 6, but the prosecution of those protestors was punitively harsh. People who should have been given simple fines for trespassing were instead given custodial sentences.

169 people were sentenced relatively lightly for brawling with capitol police.

I sat on a January 6 jury that voted to convict the accused, who was then sentenced to several years in jail. I watched hours and hours of participant and security camera footage and listened to testimony from a Constitutional lawyer of the Senate and many law enforcement officers who were there that day (and could be identified in the footage).

Most of the Jan 6 trespassers got off pretty easy, especially if they settled. Most of them who made it into the rotunda stood around gaping with dumb looks on their faces, like the proverbial dog that catches the car. They didn’t know what to do and they sensed they shouldn’t be there. Many of them then listened to Capitol police offers in the building and exited.

But many didn’t exit and they formed a tense, violent, and scary mob, in the seat of our government, to disrupt the Constitutional transfer of power. It is amazing that more people didn’t die (a SWAT team quickly dispersed the mob outside the Speaker’s lobby right after the lone shooting) and there were many acts of heroism and smart policing to distract, disorient, and delay the mob, buying more time for evacuation of Members of Congress and for law enforcement to regroup in force. Many in the mob had weapons, which is a couple of felony counts right off the bat (possessing weapons in the Capitol, which is looser than you may think, and possessing weapons in the Secret Service restricted area around POTUS and VPOTUS, which is a felony that doesn’t mess around).

The felonies and misdemeanors at issue in the case I was on were pretty clear and the jury reached its verdict thoughtfully, carefully, and quickly (we all quietly read through the many pages of the counts and judge’s instructions before opening discussion; it was an excellent group of people).

January 6 was an insurrection. Most members of the mob were sad sack idiots, and I can feel sympathy for them as individuals. But if anything, the government did not treat them harshly enough, nor quickly enough.

I am a bit worried about my own safety now, with all the insurrectionists having been pardoned. Fun times.

What kinds of weapons fid they have?

If it was an insurrection, why didn’t they use them?

Or was it the peaceful kind?

Ctrl+F ‘weapon’ and ‘gun’ in the House Jan 6 report. The details of what happened are exhaustively documented there and elsewhere.

ok thanks, I did, here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/html-submi...

it mentions exactly 7 people that carried guns:

Garret Miller

Christopher Kuehne

Guy Reffitt

Jerod Thomas Bargar

Mark Andre Mazza

Lonnie Leroy Coffman

Joe Biggs

also, Alex Kirk Harkrider brought a tomahawk axe

not much of an insurrection, we could say a mostly peaceful one

You have the answer to your question.

I find it odd that you’re ok with peaceful insurrections. It’s not ok for a small mob to attempt to overthrow the government, whether they go about it violently or not. (Ironically, the fictional election fraud that was being protested would itself be a peaceful insurrection, so one wonders what supporters of peaceful insurrections would have found to complain about in Biden’s victory!)

You can read the rest of the report if you are still inclined to view this disgraceful episode in US history as a ‘mostly peaceful’ one.

Knives are weapons, too, as are other things.

Garret Miller did not have a gun Jan 6. I have contacted Loudermilk to get this corrected.If you look up his case you can see he was not charged with having a weapon. He was searched by an officer when briefly detained on steps leading to entrance on east side. Very easily to prove wrong. The J6 committee report has many inaccurate statements

They didn’t use them because:

1. They got lost. 2. When they got to the House, Cap Police was there, and distracted/delayed them for a few minutes. 3. Officers with guns drawn were on other side of doors. 4. Ashley Bobbitt was shot as soon as she started to climb through the Speaker’s lobby doorway, stopping and upsetting the mob. 5. The Capitol police SWAT came up the stairs into that area a minute or two later and cleared them out. 6. And finally I can’t emphasize this enough: these people were morons.

I don’t really want to argue online with a redpilled HN idiot about Jan 6. If you think Jan 6 wasn’t bad, then you, too, have likely been mislead because you, too, are likely a moron. Or if you’re not a moron, then you’ve just turned heel for the lulz, a moldbug wannabe.

Here's a guy (known as "zip tie guy") who made it to the house chambers: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/7E1B/production...

He was carrying zip ties (intent was to tie up house members), a taser, and wearing body armor. Later, he was found guilty of felonies and sent to prison, then pardoned and released by Trump.

That's right, Trump pardoned a guy whos intent was to go into the house of representatives, secure the representatives, and taser them.

Now, to be fair, I think most of the protestors were yokels who had no intent of doing that. It's typical in any protest to have a distribution- from peaceniks to fuck-shit-up people. If all you did was stand outside holding a sign and moved away when asked, I am not worried at all. If you go in an sit in nancy pelosi's chair in her office... that's worrisome but not truly scary. If you go in with weapons and attempt to kidnap representatives... you should go to jail and stay there and not be pardoned.

[update: there are a few factual corrections. It was the senate gallery, not the house chambers, and he stole the flexicuffs from a closet inside the building)

You had hours of video because the National Guard was intentionally delayed while waiting only 2 miles away from the Capitol. DOD officials were caught lying to Congress about it.

The mob was inside for really only 45-50 minutes. There was hours of video because there’s obviously a huge amount of video evidence from all the devices seized by FBI and from the many cameras inside the Capitol. The prosecution showed us video only relevant to the accused, but there was a lot of it.

Ha. Hours in terms of video footage from multiple devices doesn’t explain the delayed response from the National Guard nor the DOD’s lying about it to Congress. They only had to delay long enough for them to get inside.

As a non-American I don't think Jan 6 was overblown. It had some real potential for escalation had Pence given in to Trump's demands. At the same time I do think the prosecution was too harsh, though that can be said from just about any crime in the US. Morally Trump is way more responsible for Jan 6 than any of the protestors.

They were trying to overturn an election that they lost. Historically, failing to overthrow the government is unhealthy.

There was zero real prospect of that occurring, especially with broad agreement across the aisle that Trump lost.

It was a protest that got out of hand. Those who committed violence deserved custodial sentences, but the rest who were mere trespassers never should have seen the inside of a jail cell.

Right. So treason is fine as long as you are fucking clown about it?

The total number of people charged with, much less convicted of treason, is zero.

Seditious conspiracy is pretty close, but also, Biden dropped the ball on prosecuting.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/proud-boys-leader-sentenced-2...

"To prepare for the attack on the Capitol, Tarrio and the other leaders of the Ministry of Self Defense established a chain of command, chose a time and place for their attack, and intentionally recruited others who would follow their top-down leadership and who were prepared to engage in physical violence if necessary."

There was zero real prospect of that occurring, especially with broad agreement across the aisle that Trump lost.

I mean, there was a whole plan around certifying the results of the election and it's not entirely clear how many people would have gone along with it if things had gone just a little bit different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

> It was a protest that got out of hand.

I agree that Jan 6 was not that big a deal. However, Jan 6 was just one part of a larger, nearly successful conspiracy to overturn the election. The conspiracy included pressuring the Vice President to exceed his authority; fraudulent electors; and extorting false claims of fraud from states.

Yeah - they should’ve just had a court overturn it like Romania!

How is not a big deal that a few thousand citizens were various levels of conscious and unconscious participants in an organized coup attempt?

Explain Trump getting re-elected in 2024.

As on-the-nose as the Democrats are, I don't think that would have been possible if the public thought he orchestrated a serious attempt at a coup.

The public are misled, thanks to omnipresent right-leaning media and increasingly hard-to-penetrate echo chambers.

In the immediate aftermath of Jan 6, even his fellow republicans called it a coup, until they changed their minds for political expediency.

Exactly. And a certain amount of maga are still in favor of a coup, and then a certain amount of blissfully ignorant new voters.

This is just willful ignorance. See the links others have posted.

Oh yeah, if you erase the fake electors, and the entire scheme by the presidents men to overturn the results, you can pretend that

Absolutely. This is how it was during Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, Biden. There’s always a protest.

It’s totally a normal part of the past half century plus of the peaceful transition of power.

People get together on DC to help the outgoing president threaten and scare congress, to see if they change the way the election is called.

It’s just one of those things that people do to see if America is actually strong, and if congress folds, well you know you need a new congress.

Its tradition! Its like a hazing!

American here, nope! It was a huge deal. An attempt to disrupt the peaceful transition of power. Not sure what other examples you think were on par but it was the kind of big deal where people went home sick to their stomachs for the day because I've never seen anything like it in my life. A desecration of something sacred.

Outside of it being a "thing that happened in a govt building", the goal of Jan. 6th was to prevent the certification of the election, have the results be declared invalid and for Trump to declare himself president instead of Biden.

The fact that this failed doesn't really mean that the underlying intention was just "protesting".

More then one person died. That doesn't happen. What are you talking about?

Their goal was to prevent The Vice President from certifying Biden's electoral college victory as the US constitution mandates. That is a VERY BIG DEAL.

"Your honor, I was just shoving the guy a little cuz he pissed me off, that happens all the time!"

"Mr. Redcap, you tried to shove him off a cliff."

In comparison to other countries where coups are almost normal, for a country that has not come close to that, this was a big shock to the accepted normal. When other countries like Syria overthrow their leaders, you almost go "of course they did", but to see anything approaching that in the US is totally out of left field. That's what makes it a bigger deal than what you want think.

> It feels like similar things happen in other govt buildings in the USA all the time

This is exactly how public perception will instantly normalize things if Trump ever gets the power to throw political enemies out of windows. "Oh this stuff happens all the time. Politicians have always been killing their enemies. Look up Seth Rich and Whitewater. Don't be so naive."

It will happen in the blink of an eye. And then it really is over.

I can assure you, despite superificial anecdotes — nothing similar happens “all the time”. protestors will find their way in buildings, but they typically don’t show up, destroy barricades, get shot, plant explosives. And they certainly don’t do it right as they were attending a rally designed to stroke exactly this situation

I live in DC; it was not overblown.

Big rowdy protests on all matter of topics are fine. I actually used to work across from an embassy and they had huge street-closing protests every year. I'd walk straight through them to go grab a sandwich, I never felt unsafe.

This was something else. They stormed the fences, smashed windows, broke into the Capital building, they trashed the place, they beat the shit out of the cops. People died. DC Metro Police officers—let's be clear, they deal with real crime—described this as the most brutal hand to hand combat they'd ever experienced.

I'm not sure what you've heard about America. If you ever have a chance to visit DC, do it, it's a very cool city.

This does not happen here.

Yes. Sadly, abusing the justice system to harshly punish your political opponents by forcing them to either accept trumped up charges or bankrupt them is something new here. The circus has been quite the spectacle.

What would be a good example of these "similar" situations you were thinking of?

Do they involve a crowd smashing through doors and windows specifically to reach or at least terrorize human victims inside?

The Floyd riots in Portland a few years ago which got memory holed.

Rioters were shining high power military-grade lasers at peace officers, assaulting cops. They sieged government buildings and destroyed and burned much of their own city. Nothing happened to most of them.

A young boy was shot and killed in Seattle (where a few blocks of the city 'seceded' from the US) and I watched some LARPing teenager dressed like a dollar-store ninja hit a cop in the head with a baseball bat (the ninja turned out to be a local politician's son so I can imagine the punishment levied). The mayor went on TV and described all this madness as a "summer of love".

The behaviour I observed was abhorrent and eclipsed anything that transpired on Jan 6.

Yet it was all conveniently forgotten.

Smashing some doors and windows was child's play in comparison, and the melodrama surrounding 1/6 was over the top. I actually heard someone describe it as "worse than 9/11". They were serious, too.

And you want me to believe the guy on 1/6 with the buffalo horns is somehow comparable to the cowards blinding people with industrial lasers? The Portland riots to this day is some of the most insane footage I've ever seen and the lack of punishment and length of time it was allowed to go on is unbelievable.

Most of the Portland rioters should still be in jail but most got off with a slap on the wrist if they got any punishment at all.

It's an inconvenient truth for some because I remember even middle aged Google engineers were arrested for acting like fools. You would think educated people would know better.

There is a 100% chance some posters on this very website were at the Portland or Seattle riots and somehow have justified that their participation was righteous.

I imagine the 1/6 folks felt the same way.

Where on earth are you getting “burned and destroyed much of [Portland]” from? As a Portlander, the biggest effect of the Floyd protestors was boarded up buildings in the 10-block radius around the local county jail, in the middle of a moribund pandemic-era office skyscraper district. Please, if you believe an American city’s been destroyed, at least pause and double-check before making it the centerpiece of an argument.

(Many of those arrested were let off because of insufficient evidence. I think that requiring evidence to convict someone is a good thing.)

"Uhm acksually, it was only 10 square blocks"

I know what I saw, it was repugnant behaviour, don't try and split hairs. The fact that the madness was contained to only 10 blocks is, on the whole, irrelevant.

Good luck with your future riots.

Oh no, I was disputing the "burned and destroyed" part – don't pick and choose what I said and ignore the rest.

I know what I saw: between 2020 and 2024 I worked at PSU and took a bus that went over the Hawthorne Bridge, went past the Justice Center, and dropped me off near City Hall. Once in a while I went to Pioneer Square to eat lunch. I worked late nights, and on the way back home after midnight I either walked back on Broadway or 4th, to City Hall, and took the same bus back. Those are the "10 blocks" you're talking about. The fact that they were all standing, not burnt, and were in use during business hours is fairly relevant to the conversation.

The worst I saw was the glass broken in the fancy glass entrance to the Oregon Historical Society. The best I saw was murals painted on the boards Apple had put up to protect their store in Pioneer Square.

So: what did you see?

Portland is the seat of government of the USA now? (I used to live in Kenton/St Johns when the latter was still called Tweakville, although I moved away well before 2020)

Homes there are going for at least 500k now, I think…

Ha! I lived on Pier Park Place across from a heroin dealer.

Ok so even if I agree with your description of those two events, two things don't make "happens all the time".

Can you provide examples of when something similar has happened in other US government buildings? I'm American and I can't think of anything, at least not anything that happens "all the time".

Jan 6 was not overblown. Rioters rushed the building, smashed windows, and broke into the offices of Congresspeople and staffers. People were injured and hospitalized. Capitol Police were understaffed and lost control of the situation, and were physically attacked.

Those convicted of crimes due to their part in Jan 6 deserved what they got. It is a disgusting miscarriage of justice that nearly all of them have been pardoned.

Five Puerto Rican nationalists stormed the Capitol in 1954 and shot 30 rounds at lawmakers. 5 injured. They were later commuted by President Carter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_United_States_Capitol_s...

As a non-american I also thought the same. Reading a synopsis of evidence completely changed my mind [1]. Pipe bombs planted at party headquarters to divert the police, maps of tunnels under the Capitol building and so on. Not amateur stuff.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_of_the_January_6_Unit...

Exactly. An ideology of "the world is out to get me, I shall seek vengeance on them," which honestly, is maybe the farthest thing from what Christians should believe, if they read any of the New Testament. And I think maybe even has been taboo since Hammurabi.

Even if they somehow managed to clear $250 bn in wasteful federal expenses, people would still be upset and start demanding how it should be spent.

They don't want to be effective. They want to punish and humiliate anyone they don't like, and lie about it because claiming "efficiency" is an easy way to get overly credulous American moderates to look the other way.

Musk also thinks it's funny we all have to say "DOGE" because he is a petty moron with the sense of humor of a spoiled 13 year old gamer from the year 2000.

You don’t really need to get moderates to look the other way when you have crazed MAGA going at this gung-ho.

As someone who witnessed the absurd corruption of the weird fiefdoms carved out by the horrifically inefficient career staff at the Department of State and USAID, I have to say that all this really couldn't happen to a better set of people.

Trump and almost all of Congress doesn't want to touch the entitlements. Bush Jr tried to reform social security and got trounced for it. Since then no one seriously tries to change it because the other side will beat you over the head with it, even if they are half truths.

Voters like to vote themselves "free" things, even if it might destroy the economy.

i will vote for whichever party reforms entitlements and raises taxes, especially less distortionary taxes like on inheritance, property, and consumption.

the estate tax should be 100% of anything over $20 million. If property taxes on homes and land are legal then they should also apply to anyone who ones more than $20 million in shares of public companies.

who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away?

Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? What do you think happens with the customer base, during that transition, exactly ? What happens to the jobs lost?

If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?

"Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? "

Employees.

"who manages businesses that are owned by sole owners that pass away?"

Whoever they hire.

"If i work all my life to give my kids a better future, who's to say that I can't do that ?"

$20 million is plenty. Taxing someone AFTER they die is the fairest possible time to do so. Insisting you should have control of your assets even after you are dead is pretty absurd when you really think about it.

EDIT: Honestly the minimum could be $100 million or even $1 billion. The goal is to prevent a permanent class of overlords from growing.

>"Who controls Stripe if the Collison brothers perish in a car crash ? " >Employees.

The controlling interest in a company is determined by shares owned. This reads like you're suggesting that the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of.

"the revenue from inheritance taxes should be given in the form of shares to the employees of whichever company the deceased had ownership of."

This is actually a really good idea!

I actually think we are talking about different things.

I don't dispute that you are coming from a sincere POV, but my point is that you haven't thought about the 2nd order consequences.

Liquidations are always messy, and usually wipe out value, and result in real losses of jobs and of customers. Have you thought about what happens when a trained operator is moved aside, by a vote of activist staff, to a charlatan (AKA "politician")?

Or, what about the tax consequences to the employees who get the awards ? What cash do they use to pay for the award ? Now employees are forced to sell to have liquidity. Who buys from them? A vicious CEO partnered with a vulture PE? Or maybe a competitor sitting on a pile of cash, with the well connected CEO's hidden knowledge about a founder competitor's health issues, and eagerly anticipating a monopoly upon death?

There's a million ways this goes literal off the rails. No company, no jobs, complete wealth destruction. There is another name for this action, when done without "regulation" support: its called confiscation or nationalization, and its usually done by despots or tyranical govts without respect to human flourising. That tells you all you need to know about this sort of tax.

An immoral action that is not illegal, its still immoral.

The road to serfdom is paved with good intentions.

Whoever purchases the business at auction. Transition? Businesses already need to cope without a CEO for periods, such as injury. Might even go smoother if the executor gets to appoint an acting manager and is able to authorize the CFO to keep paying wages and bills.

Work all your life to give yourself and your kids excessive power over me? I didn't agree to that. Society gets to decide what the social contract is, and a lot of us are not happy that excessive wealth/power is able to be accumulated, negatively affecting our lives. Why are we forced to also accumulate unnecessary wealth in order to defend ourselves? Perhaps a better reward for success is leisure and stress free living and providing an opportunity for another to also succeed and flourish.

Yes, let’s further remove everyone from nature’s only real instinct for selflessness (familial bonds) so we can all become disembodied laborers for our true family: the central planner class in Washington.

I’m sure creating a strong disincentive to value creation won’t affect the economy in any way. Europe is doing so great with their much higher taxes, just look at Norway. By wealth tax hammering their entrepreneurial class the’ve encouraged them to leave so they can fully focus their economy on becoming a natural resource extracting petro-state. A real progressive utopia.

It’s not like we’d be creating a crazy strong incentive for the state to literally kill certain people to stay solvent. Ok, low key maybe we would be…but the Bolsheviks did such a fantastic job with all the private assets they seized.

There’s no possible way this can’t result in a utopian, prosperous, fair society. It works beautifully every time it is tried. Great idea comrade.

$20 million of completely unearned money is plenty for children to inherit.

Yes, it makes perfect sense. Don't address any of the counterpoints I raised, ignore the implementation details, and just keep repeating that. It sounds like a really great idea.

Artificially creating fairness by eliminating success has no downsides, especially in a competitive anarchic global system. It's gonna feel so good to not have those evil entrepreneurs trying to create too much value in the world to enrich their families. Fairness should be the ultimate end goal for everything, not overall prosperity. Because nature is 100% fair, this totally aligns with reality.

History has shown these systems work every time.

Children of rich people don't automatically deserve all of that money they did nothing to earn.

Yep, and good looking people don't deserve all the preferential treatment they get in the world. Those genes were inherited from their parents.

We should do plastic surgery to the best looking children to make them average-looking...it's social justice.

We won't achieve true fairness until we forcibly take central control of all decentralized processes (markets, nature) to ensure no tall poppies.

Bad analogy. Money is representative of externalities, of things exchanged by others, like the time they spent working to earn the income, or selling something, and it extends through many levels of transactions in society.

That’s nothing like someone’s good looks, which, by the way, is subjective and has changed over the ages.

Using this logic, having good genes represents an even greater injustice.

As you have said, money is a fuzzy representation of at least some value created via societal transactions.

Genetics, on the other hand, are wholly undeserved, even by the people passing them on. If we aim to champion fairness, I don't see how this cannot be part of the conversation.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. If that’s what you want to believe, so be it, but I disagree.

Do you actually expect serious responses to your hyperbolically emotional and sarcastic posts? Well, here goes…

The only implementation detail I would change is the flat rate of $20 million. I would peg it to something like GDP per capita or average CoL multiplied by some number of years.

People have come from nothing and gone on to do amazing things. If you can’t get some kind of profit generating company off the ground or at least passive income through wise investing with that kind of windfall, then you quite frankly deserve to work in the proverbial widget factory with the unwashed masses. To wine about that betrays the lack of grit that probably lost you the nest egg on the first place.

The best entrepreneurs are the ones that are interested in learning and building amazing things. The ones in it to hoard wealth saddle the world with bullshit because it’s a bullshit incentive that requires bullshit mechanisms to protect their income stream. Think patent trolls.

If you want to see what fair looks like in nature, look at what every other animal beside humans get when they start life: the risk that around every corner lies a disease, predator, competitor, starvation, grave injury… What presumably sets humans apart and allowed us to thrive is cooperation on larger and larger scales throughout our evolution. Hoarding wealth is antithetical to the very thing that is supposed to make us an exceptional species.

There's a deep irony in both acknowledging that humans thrive on cooperation and building on the work of those that came before us, and yet also wanting to forcibly disrupt that process and centrally re-distribute wealth to less efficient but "fair" means every time someone dies.

"Hoarding wealth" is the entire reason we have capital to invest in new ideas and innovations.

Fairness sounds great of course! Who doesn't like fairness? The problem is, true fairness is neither achievable nor desirable, given the realities of human nature.

When you aim to force it onto the world via centralized authority, it generally results in worse outcomes since it can only be enforced punitively via the stick (instead of the carrot) -- creating even less fair power structures than the ones you aim to disrupt.

The point of my sarcastic posts is to illustrate this fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and how the world actually works. Again, we've tried this a million times, with the receipts to show for the results. It's not good.

Having children inherit the wealth and privilege of their parents is how you get aristocracies and they suck for everyone who isn't an aristocrat which is like 99.9% of the population.

Ironically, aristocracy has more in common with the communist theories in this thread than it does with capitalists giving their kids inheritance. Both communist seizing of assets and aristocratic control of them are about centralized control as opposed to markets which lead to competitive decentralized control.

There’s no market economy on earth with 100% wealth confiscation above any threshold (as being suggested here). Might be wise to infer why that is.

Having children inherit 100% of billions and billions of dollars is the antithesis of capitalism.

> 100% wealth confiscation above any threshold

This is a clever play on words, akin to “made with 100% real juice” while 98% is sugar, water, preservative and food dye. Very different framing from “you can inherit e.g. $20 million tax free”. Of course a realistic system would be graduated, not all or nothing around some hard, unchanging limit.

Again, if you want to leave enough to ensure a lifetime of not only survival, but luxury, be my guest. But that is still only in the tens of millions, not hundreds of billions.

A person that didn’t accumulate that wealth likely doesn’t have the experience to manage it. So not only is it being locked away, it will be perverted. “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” And that’s before you even consider spoiled brats that get drunk on power like trump or musk.

The idea of such grandiose inheritance seems to be a workaround for “you can’t take it with you.” But your kids are not you. It’s a control fantasy. You can’t prevent all suffering for your children, they will still die alone in their own mind one day.

It’s reasonable to want to minimize that suffering. But there are extremely marginal returns on that once you’re beyond 2 commas of net assets in the current economy. I believe that setting them up for life in such a way actually cripples them, in the shirtsleeves curse way.

> Might be wise to infer why that is.

Part of the reason is that they generate tax revenue from other avenues, like pure wealth taxes, or much higher income tax.

And I doubt you’d be willing to follow all their other examples, like free speech limitations, gun control, immigration, or medical philosophies like euthanasia and abortion. Note that this is not an exhaustive list and is only stated rhetorically, designed to help you realize that you’re comparing apples and oranges.

At the end of the day we do actually need some government services and they need to need paid for as long as we have any semblance of market economy. Staunch libertarians are happy to forego two marshmallows later so long as they can have one now.

We’ve seen that centrally planned communism fails, but that decentralized nodes of aristocracy and oligopoly also fail. I think we’ll eventually see societies try some new things to break out of this dichotomy. It’s not a question of whether or not to distribute, but how.

If money is the representation of the cooperative effort that has come before you, then hoarding wealth is holding human cooperation hostage.

In order for an economy to function, currency needs to, you know, be current. If you lock up current in a capacitor, it’s only potential energy, and it can leach away to nothing. Kinetic energy is what makes things actually happen.

I do agree with you on the dangers of centralized planning. But it’s a necessary evil. Indeed, there could be no wealth to hoard without centralized authority, because it is that authority that gives wealth (in its modern form, fiat currency) its value. Unless you want to go back to warlords, rape, pillage, slavery? Surely the leopards would never eat my face?

At the very least, you need to pay the devil his due in terms of the military that maintain the reality of the nation’s existence and soft power, in order for that fiat currency, economy, and way of life to even function at all. Not to mention all the other agencies that afford our modern quality of life.

That’s not the same as a feudal lord extracting his tribute because we elect the leaders that serve us and place limits on their occupation in the seat of power, as much as it would seem that some people want to do away with that system.

An economy requires money to flow. The rich hoarding wealth is like a tumor hogging all the blood supply and harming the health of the organism.

how are you personally benefiting from the billionaires billions? trickle down is a fairy tale ~ always was.

This has been a known pattern for millennia. Democracy as it is today in the US suffers from the same ills Plato discussed. It is not a good nor sustainable system. It is not the system the founding fathers put in place.

That none of our rulers question it nor propose alternatives is very telling about who runs our society and what their end goals are. The only reason society appears to be improving (and it is on the whole) is due to our incredible technological advancement. That being said, we should be living in a utopia by now if our rulers weren’t parasites.

Great recent article which explores how to actually cut $2T of federal expenses (though if course a tally doing so very quickly would cause a recession):

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trill...

Most of what's been discussed so far is culture war dog whistling which won't save any money- or just cutting entitlements and hang the consequences.

Plus the whole issue of "the executive branch can't unilaterally change or suspend laws."

Well, not without fascist criminality anyway.

Holy typos, batman.

*Though of course actually doing so very quickly would cause a recession

Have to take out the enemy machine gun nests first before you take the citadel. Goodbye USAID/CIA.

LOL the trump admin just ressuplied Israel to the tune of a billion to keep murdering children defense budget is not getting cut

It’s week 2. I think they will have time to go after those big orgs.

But also you’re missing an important theme of the administration. Foreign aid doesn’t go to Americans. Social security and Medicare do. Trump didn’t run a tea party platform.

They did save that billion dollars... Enough to power the federal government for a little over an hour.

You mean go after military contractors like SpaceX and Palantir? That would require they actually want to reduce the deficit, not just kill departments that they find evil because of some projected vengeance.

> some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste

same tired old lies, medicare is more efficient than private insurance

Most Scandinavian countries are required to make any communication in public departments (including all coworkers emails) public on request by journalists or anyone interested.

This is to make any doubts regarding e.g USAID public instead of making such drastic measures necessary.

But also make work of an entity such as Doge transparent. They are after all funded by my money (as a taxpayer).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_public_access_to_...

> instead of making such drastic measures necessary.

These drastic measures are neither necessary[1] nor legal (Well, they are a necessary step in carrying out a self-coup...) But there's nobody left to prosecute or enforce the law.

First they came for the judges and made sure that the courts were stacked... And then they could do what they want, because they have the police, the army, and the courts.

[1] It's actually wild how people here are actively arguing for shredding the constitution because the country is carrying a debt. America truly is done.

Most Scandinavian countries are required to make any communication in public departments (including all coworkers emails) public on request by journalists or anyone interested.

In the U.S., too. In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in the modern age.

But it's all happening so quickly that nobody can keep up with it. And the people who are supposed to take care of these things have been fired.

Also bad, when requests are made by legitimate parties, they are being ignored or dismissed by the new regime.

Let what's happening in the U.S. serve as a warning to you that no matter what laws you pass, electing lawless people brings lawlessness. And the law you passed cannot help you against people who don't respect the law.

> In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in the modern age.

This was instituted in Sweden in the year 1766. Source: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offentlighetsprincipen

That's 10 years before the USA declared independence.

I guess we have different definitions of "modern" age.

>pioneer something when somebody pioneers something, they are one of the first people to do, discover or use something new.

  In the U.S., too. In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in the modern age.

In practice, at least one San Francisco (city/county-level) department and at least one California (state-level) department deliberately makes it difficult to get responsive records, even though the law requires them to not only provide those records, but help the public identify which records might answer the questions they have.

>In the U.S., too. In fact, it was the United States that pioneered this in the modern age.

The hack in the US is to just label everything "SECRET," and it's excluded from FOIA.

Is this supposed to contrast with the US? You just explained the US Freedom of Information Act of 1967.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(...

That DOGE is not transparent is because the Musk/Trump administration has moved beyond the rule of law.

I hate that in this country, everything is political and everything has only 2 sides. Is there waste and inefficiency in government spending? Yes, I think so. Should we do our best to cut and trim this? Absolutely. Is DOGE's ham-fisted, half-assed version of this "doing our best"? Of course not.

But apparently in this country, you have to be either pro government waste or pro DOGE. No middle ground or common sense allowed.

> I hate that in this country, everything is political and everything has only 2 sides.

> But apparently in this country, you have to be either pro government waste or pro DOGE. No middle ground or common sense allowed.

Take a close look at who is creating two sides. Perhaps there is more nuance to the points being made by the people who do not seem to be pro DOGE.

It's the other side! They're the ones creating two sides!

If we can define what "pro DOGE" means and say that anyone who does not fall under that definition is therefore not "pro DOGE", then we've got two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive groups. Failing those two things, we've got what's called a "false dichotomy". OP is saying there are two groups: those who are "pro government waste" and those who are "pro DOGE". Who do you think is creating that false dichotomy?

edit:

Just adding that I realize the parent comment is making a joke, just expanding on my thoughts with this one.

they are certainly leading the dance, but it takes two to tango

I am sitting here in EU and asking myself why does DOGE need access to data. All you need is access to the data structure to build software around it.

They're not building software, they're finding reasons to fire people.

I don't think there are many people who are "pro-government waste". That would be a strange position to hold.

I do think that Elon Musk and DOGE are attempting to create a "with us or against us" binary narrative that leaves no room for even-handed nuance (not unlike Trump), in an effort to push an agenda that maybe doesn't have much to do with government efficiency (for example, MTG's clampdown on allegedly-liberal media [0]).

[0] - https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/marjorie-taylor-greene-hear...

The democrats couldn’t cut wasteful spending so the republicans have to instead. Ever seen the debt clock?

Can you look at the chart "Federal Debt Trends Over Time, FY 1948 – 2024" and tell me what you see?

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...

The last budget surplus we had was under Bill Clinton - Democrat. But instead we had to go to war in the middle east, give massive tax breaks to corporations, and rain helicopter money during COVID. Those happened under Republican administrations. You can't pretend anymore that Republicans are the fiscally sound ones. And they're going to do it again. Despite all this talk about cutting spending and reducing the deficit, that debt clock is going to keep going up for four years straight, just as the time before, and the time before that.

>The last budget surplus we had was under Bill Clinton - Democrat

Yes, and that made us very proud of him. Bill Clinton’s administration was a great administration.

>But instead we had to go to war in the middle east.

First, Trump campaigned promising the American People that if he won the election, he would end the war in Israel with the Palestinians before he even took office to bring peace to the Middle East. True to his word, the war ended a couple of days before he even became president.

Second, these political parties change faster and more often than we do. Historically the Republican Party (Chenny/bush era) was the party of war. Now the Democrat party is the party of war. The Republican Party as you knew it is not more. It was subverted into a controlled opposition party managed by some very smart people on the left.

The party is now The Party of Trump. He controls the party. It’s the other way around like it is in the Democrat Party. Precisely one of the reasons he became the nominee instead of the other candidates.

In 2016: the question was asked “Is there any one on stage… who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party and pledge and independent campaign against that person?” Out of the 10 nominees on stage, only Donald Trump raised his hand. That set him apart from everyone else.

> Give massive tax breaks to the corporations.

Trump was asked about things he would do differently in his second term compared to his first term. A study was done that showed his focus on cutting regulations were significantly more beneficial economically than cutting taxes. This study surprised him and he quipped, it doesn’t cost us [any tax revenue] to cut regulations. Thus, he said he would focus more on cutting regulations than on cutting business taxes. That isn’t to say he won’t cut business taxes; he will, just less than before. His goals are to make America a rather competitive and attractive place to do business and host your company. According to economics, this should increase the number of businesses here that pay taxes here, as that is the primary goal and focus. It’s expected there will be lower taxes for businesses with most of their workers in the USA because their employees will all pay taxes.

>and rain helicopter money during COVID.

We had a global pandemic and that’s a pretty good excuse that’s often ignored. Each American received one or two stimulus checks then. A problem was, after the pandemic was over, the Biden administration didn’t cut the helicopter money. Now Doge team has to come in and cut it all out. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was supposed to address it, but it turned out to just be a giant spending package and you can’t spend your way out of inflation.

> You can’t pretend anymore that Republicans are the fiscally sound ones.

The old conservatives of your Bush era forgot they were supposed to be the fiscally conservative as opposed to being fiscally liberal ones. Trump admitted at the beginning of his recent campaign during an early livestream on X with Elon Musk that while the growing debt/deficit was a problem, there wasn’t (isn’t then) so much support for addressing it. Elon Musk became that much needed support and deserves the credit for making the conservative side fiscally conservative again. Elon made it popular and cool to be fiscally sound again like it was in the Bill Clinton era.

We can see the results on the near-daily updates by Doge on X. Here are 12 things the Doge team has identified or removed:

-$7 million on various projects studying magic

-$1,513,299 to use kittens in a study to analyze motion sickness.

-State Department spent $2.1 million on border security—for Paraguay.

-USAID spending $20 million on “Ahlan Simsim” a new Sesame Street show in Iraq

-USAID paid $3 million to a rapper in Gaza to produce antisemetic rap songs

- $2.5 MILLION to DEI in Serbia

- $70,000 on an Irish DEI musical

- $47,000 on transgender operas in Colombia

- $32,000 on a trans comic book in Peru

-The National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Bearded Ladies Cabaret a $10,000 grant to support a cabaret show on ice skates focused on climate change

-2 million for sex changes in Guatemala

- $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt

Do you support keeping all of this (wasteful or fraudulent) spending or do you support them cutting it?

The list goes on and on with USAID. Here’s a viral photo of ISUS taking a photo with a RPG from inside a USAID tent — giving us pause and evidence to where our USAID dollars are or were going.

https://x.com/wilkowmajority/status/1886895278495797506

> Can you look at the chart "Federal Debt Trends Over Time, FY 1948 – 2024" and tell me what you see?

I see a benign and calming treasury.gov website that has been overseen by Janet Yellen the former treasury secretary who inspired confidence in pretty much no one in her video interviews and press conferences.

Janet Yellen caused billions of unnecessary debt to be added to the debt by not proactively selling treasury bonds at the lowest interest rates instead waiting until interest rates were much much larger. When you’re rolling over $36 Trillion of debt, a difference in treasury interest rates from 0.25% to 4.5% is massive. Massive actually isn’t a strong enough word to describe numbers of that magnitude.

My impression from this website is that it’s downplaying the problem while also having a recent history of incompetence and ineptitude hoping people will complain less.

I prefer the usdebtclock.org website because the numbers stay up to date on it. It also doesn’t downplay the problem, it merely shows the numbers and lets you draw your own conclusions from it.

>That debt clock is going to keep going up for four years straight.

Would that make you happy? It would be better if they can stop the clock. But balancing the budget is a lofty goal to some. According to Elon Musk, if they can cut federal deficit spending from $2T to $1T and we can grow the economy by $1T then we get to have no inflation in 2026.

“How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?” Musk was asked on stage during the Madison square gardens rally. “Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion.”

To be fair, I’m not aware of him being asked whether that will take 2, 4 or 8 years as it takes time for preexisting contracts to expire and not be renewed. It’s expected that the Democrats will step into congress to block further cuts after the two year mark — so all of the cuts have to be made quickly and be made now while we still have a real shot at improving America’s fiscal outlook… because it’s probably the last shot we’ll get —- at giving our kids and the young people of our country a future rather than a debt for them to pay off.

Next, as sure as gravity, international confidence in the U.S. government finally reigning in spending (again) will cause investors to be willing to buy U.S. treasuries at lower interest rates. This allows the government to be able refinance the debt, further lowering wasteful government spending. On a local note, it also lowers borrowing costs for (for example) young people that want to buy their first home making mortgages more affordable.

Have you ever tried to balance the Federal Budget? I have. It was required as the final project in our Macroeconomics class. It’s not easy but I did it. The far-left fiscally-liberal Democrats can and will block DOGE from making progress in many ways. One example to blame already: Judge Paul Engelmayer, a temporary judge, recently blocked DOGE Treasury data access.

Sure, in the same way that a hacksaw and diet/exercise are both effective weight loss tools...

No center party. Arguably the eligible, but non-voting share (~36%!), could have made it happen, but alas such choice does not exist.

Of course their is a middle ground.

The problem is what is classified as waste. It won’t be the projects of the GOP‘s donors.

Well, Cultural Revolutions are almost always done by young and inexperienced.

Btw, i wonder how many of those raiding the government offices are really DOGE people and not say Russian or Chinese agents pretending to be DOGE - if one to believe the news the security let them into the building once they threatened to call Marshals Service (social engineering DOGE style. That clearly shows couple things - 1. DOGE themselves didn't bother to get proper paperwork, clearances, etc., a "promising" start so to speak and 2. that at least the building security part of the government there got totally rotten as it failed to perform their basic duties. And the agencies' (Treasury(!), USAID,...) employees just giving their laptops and access to internal systems to the first schmuck supposedly from some DOGE - and that all after years of trainings of "don't leave your screen unlocked", "don't give sensitive info to the strangers pretending to be your higher-up or a colleague" . Really shows the effectiveness of all those trainings :)

Well from a foreigner's perspective, US is finally getting its own version of Cultural Revolution.

This is perhaps more analogous to an immune reaction to a(n attempted) Cultural Revolution.

Or a counter-cultural revolution.

Not really. To an outsider this looks very much like the cultural revolution.

I think the Democrats are the ones that are into struggle sessions and re-education ...

We'll see.

They were tearing down statues and demanding public self-criticism a few years ago, but that was actually the other side.

Shutting down the universities and firing any professor who isn't politically correct is a couple of years in the future; Trump probably has to replace the accreditation system for the universities first. There isn't currently a mechanism for "sending down" suspected subversive thinkers except for deportation.

The Red Guards haven't been formed yet, though commuting the sentences of the ringleaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys is a start. (You may not be aware of this, but the Red Guards were over 10 million people.)

The news media are still independent, for all that matters.

So are almost all of the police, although Trump has said he wants to bring them under his command.

So I don't think we're likely to see that kind of widespread mass killing in the next two or three years. The organizational infrastructure for doing it the traditional way, using hand tools, can't be built overnight. Vance's ally Anduril might be able to automate the process with AI-powered surveillance drones, but they won't have enough production capacity for at least three years.

> The news media are still independent, for all that matters.

The media has bent the knee to Trump, a meteorologist was fired for critiquing Trump on her private Instagram, and an LATimes article's editors removed the article author's criticisms of Trump. You have to goto YouTube to find people openly critizing Trump.

freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences sweaty

I think Third Republic France is a more apt comparison. Political fights about religion and content of education, check. Diverging media landscape aligned with party political identity and ideology, check. Major changes to civil service personnel after consequential elections (1879-1884), check.

I don't see the parallels. When are the academics going to be sent to the countryside and where are the self criticism sessions being held?

how is someone’s age relevant? Is a 55 y.o. Software engineer who spent 20 years in a bureaucratic wheel any better than a bright 20yo mind? They both suck in a different way! Writing an entire article with ageism as a center piece is truly pinnacle of American journalism

When they're as young as literally 19 years old, then it must be the case that they lack the appropriate experience.

I’m not disagreeing with you but let’s ask the question “experience for what”? Is it making a couple of dashboards, extract data from legacy systems into something more queryable, or generating a couple of expense reports? Or will they be making actual significant decisions affecting millions? How likely would that be?

Regardless, they seemingly have access to tons of financial data that they are basing brash decisions on with zero context. That combined with the fact they are reporting to a manchild that is demonstrably stupid as shit when it comes to "improving" such systems (see Twitter and the play by play of his first days there).

It takes tenure to know what sorts of discretion are required when reporting to such an extremely senior "leader", and to not get caught up in the hype of being involved in something.

(edit: added last sentence)

Experience is an important teacher and a 19 year old doesn't have it.

I find it hard to believe that any 19-22 year old would have the appropriate level of experience to handle this responsibility.

Sure, a 55 year old also may not have the appropriate responsibility, but at least it's reasonable to expect that they could.

Pretty sure these whiz kids engineers are writing software to analyze things like where all the money goes.

Decisions will ultimately be made and implemented by the appropriate authorities, of course.

Agree. It seems largely they are just writing code to make sense of the enormous amount of data and unravel the tangled mess that is the US federal budget.

Right, 5 guys are gonna untangle what you allege is generations of tangled mess.

Got it.

How do you know that they are largely writing code? Is that because the appropriate oversight has indicated as such? What visibility do any of us have to what they are doing? And why should we trust any result they produce?

The lack of critical thinking in this entire comment section is breathtaking?

Why would you hire top software engineers to do anything else than build software systems?

Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely. This why they are good in rapid cutting regardless of consequences. Any amount of brilliance will not compensate even 10 years of experience.

> Kids tend to miss a reasonable doubt and tend to hate sincerely

What does this even mean?

that they are more hot-headed and militant in their opinions

A 55 year old learns to keep their hot-headed militant opinions to themselves. But from my experience in the insides they’re no different. And the 55 year old has held those opinions for 40 years and they’re not gonna change.

Appropriate authorities? I have little faith in that at this point.

I think that’s a bit of a naive take.

None of them have seemingly ever held more than 1 full time job. Age is discussed, but experience is clearly lacking. Your argument skips over that entirely.

19 year olds are much more malleable. They can be fanatic, and follow orders easily. They aren't educated. They have a limited grasp of morality, and can't oversee the consequences of their actions. They have no other obligation in life than to this holy task.

That's why it's relevant.

This is exactly the reason why they were selected.

Exactly. They sure are brilliant. But there are 30+ year old brilliant people as well…

Somewhat ironic to claim a "limited grasp of morality" and a lack of education when the instutions doing said education have been preaching moral relativism for a while now.

If you'd said cultural relativism, yes, some institutions (in particular sociology and the like) did preach that, but moral relativism? Those institutions certainly preached morality.

However, engineering schools have not been affected, AFAIK.

Experience - which comes with age - is absolutely critical in all intellectual pursuits, including programming, government, and just about everything else. Experts and lifetime learners learn more each day. A 20 year old simply has not had the time to be exposed to the same breadth or depth of ideas, or to critique them seriously. Younger people are also far more vulnerable to hormonal impulses, manipulation, and more likely to have been exposed to a much more limited world view.

I can’t imagine anyone but insufferably arrogant - and really fucking wrong - young people making an argument to the contrary. Not that there aren’t benefits to youth - being unburdened by complexity, ignorant enough to be especially bold - but these aren’t actually that useful. And we have good evidence to support that; older founders do better, for example: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-old...

I agree. Fascism is fascism whether it’s a teenage Octavian, Agrippa or a groyper. Underestimate them at your peril.

The age of one person isn't that relevant, you're right about that. The average age of an entire "agency"[0] is relevant though.

[0]: DOGE may not technically be an "agency", but whatever the case, they have and are acting with power equal to that of an agency.

I think it is more about how Musk needs to surround himself with young easily impressed and gullible minds, because anyone else would probably see through him all day. These young guys are probably afraid to speak out against him, or are sucking it aaaaall up as ordered by Musk. He will have chosen who gets to tag along.

With age comes life experience and an appreciation that it's hard to make things better, and breaking them is rarely good.

Similarly, it is easier to convince an impressionable 19yo to do reckless and possibly illegal things.

It doesn't strike me as totally irrelevant.

20yos with max 2 weeks of experience in the job - given the inauguration date.

Because there's a baseline age to have the necessary skills, experience, and cognitive development to be able to accomplish the task.

Their experience is relevant. If they're being brought into build data analysis systems to make sense of data of various organizations there's zero chance they've worked on a project of that scale let alone do they understand all the gotchas you need to deal with working on a project of that scale.

You're offering a completely false dichotomy here.

Yet it is encouraged that everyone votes (distributed system affecting the lives of many) and are given weapons of war to kill people (military, cops).

We have a minimum age on the Presidency. They work at the discretion of their employers.

Let's face this head-on.

Not all 20-year olds are mature. No mater how bright they might be when it comes to topics in STEM. Their minds haven't matured enough, especially the male mind.

They do immature shit because there's prestige dangling in-front of them, or because they've been convinces by Musk et. al. that this is the cause to fight for.

There's a reason organized crime preys on young people. They're malleable, do what they're told, blindly ambitious, and want to please their superiors at all costs.

good quip over here https://x.com/pmarca/status/1887003073530286569

Experienced enough to win this though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39261861

Since when did winning competitions require experience optimizing costs across various industries?

I don't think anybody is doubting they're smart, just that they have no experience doing this kind of work and are now being trusted by the highest level of government to do it.

> who have little to no government experience

Decoding ancient scrolls has no relevance to government procedures.

What he did to win the scroll competition had to do with data analysis, not ancient history, so of course it could be relevant. But none of us, including the author of the article, knows what they're specifically doing, so it's not possible to say how relevant it is. It's a pity the reporter didn't do some reporting about that, instead of writing a hit piece calling them lackeys.

That's a completely different type of "analysis" and on a completely different scale. The skillsets are not even remotely comparable.

I'm glad you've done both and are here to weigh in! Perhaps you should join the cause as you are presumably a subject matter expert in both things?

You're more confident about that than I am. I find it easy to imagine how a person who produces the first kind of analysis could be technically useful in analyzing government data. He presumably didn't know anything about ancient scrolls before working on the first thing, so he has a track record of conquering a steep learning curve.

But we don't actually know what they're doing.

That seems entirely relevant - getting to the bottom of a cryptic and poorly documented puzzle without any help from the contemporaries (in the case of the scrolls, because the are dead, in the case of government employees, because it’s not in their interests).

I write that only half in jest. Maybe less than half.

That's impressive! Now how does that experience translate into financial accounting systems?

A SAP FICO consultant in Moldova is better qualified than these young men.

That would be relevant if our governmental budgets were printed on ancient scrolls. What was the point of posting this?

I came in first place in my college CTF. Where do I sign up to decide which parts of the government should be shut down?

Found it. For anyone else interested https://neuralink.com/careers/apply/

I think Musk asked for applications on twitter.

I mean that’s cool, but not what he will be remembered for.

Imagine being one of those 6 with your name on the list of people that destroyed US democracy.

In pondering the mindset of these people, I was reminded of a very different submission on hn yesterday [1]. Quote:

"Avoid, at all costs, arriving at a scenario where the ground-up rewrite starts to look attractive"

Seems to me that in their narrow, reckless arrogance they're doing something similar to the mechanisms of government. This is all broken and people who built it were idiots. Lets just scrap it and built it again with a modern stack.

Chesterton's fence, metacognitive ability, overconfidence effect, those who do not learn from history, etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42920285

I think rewrites are popular in part because during rewrite it is possible to drop features, either voluntarily or because of deadlines, while it would probably never fly to drop feature from working, existing implementation.

Also your theory doesn't hold up for cases when you rewrite your own code. I've rewritten my old code hundreds of time because I was "idiot" in a sense that it was unmaintainable with new changed requirements.

Rewrites are sometimes necessary.

Rewrites of other peoples code/laws also allows you to think "I'm much smarter than they are".

Governance has a lot more "unknown unknowns" than you expect.

A rewrite enables dropping features including, but not limited to: checks and balances, due process, a government for and by the people, and certain inalienable rights.

And just to make it clear: I am not being facetious, I am very concerned that all of these are under serious attack.

Checks and balances are already broken because of DOGE, because the Department of Justice simply ignored a court order to stop the funding freeze, and because the firing of FBI career employees was probably illegal [1].

Due process is coming under serious threat due to the building of camps in Guantanamo and El Salvador, where detainees will likely have insufficient access to legal counsel.

A government for and by the people will be replaced by fascist "network states", sovereign territorial entities under authoritarian control by a "CEO", i.e. dictator [2]. The goal is to enable ultra-wealthy individuals to freely "exit" democracies, to live and govern without any rules.

Inalienable rights are explicitly under attack by the ultra-libertarians in Musk's circles. Nick Land, one of the main thinkers behind this neo-fascist brand of thought (branding it as "Dark Enlightenment"), quotes Patri Friedman, who runs Pronomos Capital, the corporation that builds these network states for Peter Thiel and others:

> Patri Friedman remarks: “we think that free exit is so important that we’ve called it the only Universal Human Right.” [3]

Id est, building a privately-owned, corporate-controlled, dictatorial "network state", which is exactly what "free exit" means, justifies abolishing all human rights.

The worst thing is that this all sounds like an insane conspiracy theory, but this is operating completely in the open. The statements of Peter Thiel, Patri Friedman and others are freely available, and they make very clear (Peter Thiel):

> Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. [4]

[1]: https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-totally-il...

[2]: https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

[3]: https://keithanyan.github.io/TheDarkEnlightenment.epub/TheDa...

[4]: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

But sometimes these people aren’t wrong! Microsoft Teams really does suck. And while not all of the federal government is Microsoft Teams, the State department definitely is.

A more likely scenario is they're now fully aware how little time they have versus how long things take and how much heal dragging they're going to face every day of it.

So they've decided this time to rampage straight out of the gates and sustain it as long as they can.

This is a key weakness of central planners - the centralization and the slow rate of development of the bureaucracy. It takes far more effort to develop an invasive and parasitic bureaucracy than it does to blow it to pieces.

So this is a natural strategic asymmetry that makes perfect sense to exploit. Enjoy!

Shock and awe.

Using this military metaphor to describe operations against America's own government is absolutely wild to me. It's legitimately shocking to me how extreme people have become over the past ten years.

The size of the federal workforce has not grown in 50 years.

These cuts will make no impact on the federal debt.

DOGE is breaking every federal records law there is with no oversight.

Elon Musk has clear, undeniable conflicts of interest at play here.

But people are celebrating because the federal government is .. slow, relies on the interpretation of complex law and procedure, and I guess is nice to women and minorities.

Executive branch employees coined the term “Resistance” to declare their opposition to the democratically elected president’s agenda in 2017. So the war metaphor seems quite fitting. The shock and awe will stop when the public can be confident that civil servants will work just as hard to implement the agenda of the president regardless of which party wins the election. That is fundamental to our system of democracy.

And the unelected government isn’t nice to us “minorities.” it’s full of ideologues who categorize us into meaningless groups like “Hispanic” and “Asian,” fund random NGOs that we have never heard of that purport to speak for us, and want to implement a system of racial preferences in gerrymandering. I’d love to see how many grants went to “Asian” organizations that promote the idea that “AAPI hate” is more of a problem than rising crime or affirmative action.

What I'm reading then is that it's not about actually about workforce spending or federal debt at all. That's sort of what I expected.

Curious if you have thoughts on Elon Musk's conflicts of interest? Both as a large federal contractor, and as someone with business dependence on China. Also the breaking of federal records laws (e.g. using signal and not retaining any other records).

It is about spending and trust over spending. I was skeptical Elon was going to find meaningful cuts. But the again I thought USAID was spending $50 billion on things like vaccines for kids in Bangladesh. Then I find out that it’s funding anti-Trump groups like Kristol’s (https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1886647920566636637) and left-wing government destabilization abroad. So now I want Elon’s nerds to trace every payment and find out how much USAID money went to “democracy” NGOs to do stuff like encourage the recent overthrow of the government in Bangladesh.

The narrative emerging here is that the same permanent-government gremlins that we always knew bankrolled efforts to destabilize the rest of the world are perfectly okay with turning those same tactics inward if the wrong candidate wins the election. If we can put these people out of business and find even $25 billion a year in the process it will be worth it.

I don’t care about Elon’s conflicts. Worst thing from that is we get a giant EV credit next year. I’m much more worried about the conflict from federal employees who overwhelmingly support one party funneling federal money to aligned NGOs.

This is the part that I'm so surprised about. It turns out that people don't actually care about the law when it's inconvenient. And it turns out that people are willing to accept and support crazy things: conflicted/unqualified leaders, the sacrifice of American influence and stability, the alienation of our allies, the purposeful cost-raising for American consumers. What matters most apparently is the culture war.

It's clear that we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it here -- so you're welcome to the final word if you want it -- but I think the feeling that resonates with me in these conversations is "I don't care about the law or other consequences as long as I get my way." That feels bad to me.

And when people making those points disagree with me on it -- this week it's justification to kill USAID and give treasury control to Musk, next week it will be the destruction of the department of education, soon it will be ignoring the 14th amendment of the constitution -- it's hard to tell if they aren't being honest with me or if they aren't being honest with themselves.

This is about upholding the highest law. The Framers intended the executive branch to be responsive to elections. Federalist 39 spends a lot of time analyzing the best way for people with authority in the “administration” to be appointed by the politically accountable President and confirmed by the politically accountable senate. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_2_2-3s.... The Constitution requires that voters must be able to effectively change government policy through the election of the president. It does not envision presidential elections as being some mere signal provided as an input to a permanent administration.

That legal rule does not depend on voters’ motivations. If they want to deport all the illegal immigrants—an executive action within the discretion of the president—that’s their prerogative. How civil servants feel about that is immaterial. Voters’ cultural and policy preferences must win out. And the problem we have now is that, regardless of who wins the elections, the government remains overwhelmingly controlled by a group with particular cultural preferences.

This isn’t about “law” versus “culture war.” The culture war is simply the factual context in which a legal dispute of tremendous gravity is playing out.

Minorities have no rights in your conception of democracy except what they can defend by force. You really think that’s the big picture take of the Federalist papers?

The divergence of civil servants from the public on issues like affirmative action or immigration go to policy preferences, not rights. Individual rights are enforced primarily by courts in any event.

What is your take on Cruikshank and the Slaughterhouse cases?

> The Constitution requires that voters must be able to effectively change government policy through the election of the president.

Forgetting about Article I, are we?

Using “government” here in the British sense to refer to the administration. And it’s Congress that forgot about Article I. Live by the unconstitutional delegation sword die by the unconstitutional delegation sword.

> Live by the unconstitutional delegation sword die by the unconstitutional delegation sword.

Now that comment is just lawless — it's in the same general category as the "thinking" that led to Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and others having to face suspension or even disbarment in multiple states.

(For lurkers:) For decades, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional for Congress to delegate authority to executive-branch agencies to deal with changing conditions — as long as the delegation was properly cabined, with administrative procedures, political accountability through presidential appointments and Senate confirmations, judicial review, etc.

The "conservative" movement, though hates that "delegation doctrine"; those folks want only Congress to be able to restrict what people can do, by passing laws. According to me, for many of those folks, it's because they just can't stand having anyone tell them they can't do whatever they want (a.k.a. "You're not the boss of me!").

These soi-disant conservatives know that in the modern era, Congress is largely dysfunctional when it comes to enacting restrictive laws. So, a long-term project of crippling agency authority has been the best way for them to free themselves to do whatever TF they feel like — negative effects on the rest of us be damned.

And indeed, in recent years, the "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court has been hacking away at Congress's ability to delegate. The conservatives on the Court have announced new ipse-dixit rules such as the "major questions doctrine" (MQD), in which SCOTUS purports to reserve to the judicial branch the authority to overrule agency interpretations of the law in areas that the justices regard as "major questions." (That goes back to Chief Justice John Marshall's jaw-dropping bootstrapping of judicial-review authority in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803.)

Bottom line: What Rayiner seems to be saying above is this: Oh, so it's OK for Congress to delegate to agencies? Fine, then it's OK (he implies) for President Trump to go along with allowing out-of-their-depth strangers — Elon Musk and the DOGE Boys — to aggressively "disrupt" absolutely-vital functions of the national government, with no evident oversight from anyone (it's not at all clear that President Trump is paying any attention himself).

Identify for me the error? Congress delegates sweeping authority to the executive branch and appropriates a slush fund instead of discrete appropriations. Having done so, why can’t the executive branch then exercise that discretion as he sees fit? Your only counter argument is something about “oversight”—but what’s the constitutional standard for how much the president needs to supervise those to whom he delegates authority?

If Congress has become “dysfunctional,” as you put it, isn’t it even more important for the executive branch to be highly responsive to elections? Otherwise you’re positing a system where all the governance is performed by a civil service comprised 90% of laptop class democrats, with elected Congress merely laying out procedural rules for how policy should be adopted and the elected president merely supervising compliance with those rules. I can see why democrats love this idea, but I can’t imagine why you’d think it would be a persuasive argument to anyone else.

Speaking of “lawless”—if legal conservatives stooped to finding constitutional principles in “emanations from penumbras” we’d have a heck of a lot more fun. Why not have a “living constitution” that reflects our view of what modern developments demand?

> what’s the constitutional standard for how much the president needs to supervise those to whom he delegates authority?

It’s GOT to be more than seems to be happening now.

Edit: And it's not just presidential supervision, it's the whole checks-and-balances thing — designed as safeguards against just the sort of thing we're seeing now.

Isn’t Second amendment incorporation to the states (and the completely expected result of undocumented immigrants claiming firearms rights) basically what you’re asking for?

> Why not have a “living constitution” that reflects our view of what modern developments demand?

Because "[y]our view" is dangerously naïve about human nature, and might have been serviceable in earlier times but less likely to be so now?

> the democratically elected president

That doesn't trump (so to speak) all other considerations — Adolf Hitler was "democratically" chosen. (And yes, I'm going there.)

Easier is just to point out that polls show that all of this DOGE stuff is deeply unpopular [1] (as is Elon himself, incidentally). We don't have to speculate as to which of the president's agenda items have a popular mandate; we can just ask the electorate.

[1]: https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/survey-results/daily...

Racially discriminatory SBA loans and affirmative action in colleges also are deeply unpopular, but Democrats keep pursing those policies because they’re important to a portion of their coalition.

Trump is the first Republican in memory that understands coalition politics (because he was a Democrat). Most republicans don’t like Gabbard and/or RFK Jr. But, like Musk, they were advertised as part of the package deal and Trump voters satisfied themselves they could live with it.

Gabbard's favorables are +43 among Republicans and RFK Jr.'s favorables are +71 among Republicans [1].

[1]: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabRepor...

If civil servants invoke Hitler to justify declaring “Resistance” to the democratically elected President, and said President turns out not to be Hitler, then they invite the reaction that results.

I was promised Muslim internment camps in 2017. There having been none, I’m cheering on the DOGE strike teams.

> I’m cheering on the DOGE strike teams.

I'd cheer if the DOGE strike teams in OMB, etc., were to be arrested, indicted, duly tried and convicted, and imprisoned for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and possibly the Economic Espionage Act. But I'm under no illusion that this would ever happen with Trump controlling the DOJ. Maybe Maryland's Democratic state government can make some state-law crime stick if the DOGE people ever venture across the District line.

And only 4 more years of this. Enjoy!

Maybe less than four years. The mid-terms are next year, and I've been reading that a lot of GOP officeholders are terrified of what's going on but also terrified of opposing The Dear Leader — because of fears for their personal safety and that of their families.

CFAA is predicated on “without authorization.” I’m pretty sure they all have Trump’s and Bessent’s authorization. It would be like prosecuting the IT guy hired by the CEO for going into the system. What am I missing?

> I’m pretty sure they all have Trump’s and Bessent’s authorization.

From what I've (very-superficially) read, zero of the prescribed clearance protocols were followed before giving the DOGE Boys access to highly-confidential systems and data. Perhaps Trump has authority to waive those protocols — but did he do so? He seems to be letting Musk run wild. And when Trump was in trouble for taking classified documents with him to Florida, didn't he claim that he'd "mentally" declassified the documents?

So the prosecution would be based on the notion that access was “unauthorized” because certain “protocols” weren’t followed even though the legally relevant principals had provided apparent authorization?

In that case, I’d support applying similarly creative and capacious legal interpretations in hunting for ways to prosecute civil servants that participated in “Resistance” activities. Prosecuting government employees for breach of disclosure obligations is always like shooting fish in a barrel. There were also widespread reports of career employees misrepresenting facts or withholding information from political appointees. I bet you could premise 18 USC 1001 prosecutions based on that.

That’s pretty black-and-white thinking, with no apparent recognition that there are shades of gray.

I think it's important that people go there too.

It's better to live in a transparent society where everyone knows who has the mindset of "people I don't like are Hitler", so they can make efficient decisions on who they associate with and how they interact with certain types of people.

It’s also reveals civil servants that can’t be trusted to do the people’s business. I’m in DC—many people were crying in 2017. The people who voted for Trump have no reason to afford those folks the presumption of objective professionalism civil servants demand. The stories about civil servants just being terrible employees because they can’t put aside their feelings is sickening: https://x.com/restoreorderusa/status/1886771416235663833

And the same is true about people who don't recognize blindingly-salient historical parallels with 1930s Germany.

Does the US constitution have an emergency decree mechanism whereby the president can effectively assume full power and suspend civil rights?

Are the republican party committing acts of violence against their opposition, so as to push them out of Congress and establish a supermajority?

Has the US come out of a major recession exacerbated by a harsh post-war reparations treaty, resulting in hyperinflation and an angry and desperate population?

So what you really mean by "blindingly-salient historical parallels" is "there's an person in power who I don't like", so a typical leftist case of "everyone I don't like is Hitler".

Bit emotionally incontinent isn't it, letting your understanding of history be distorted by your desire to call a president you don't like bad names

> Does the US constitution have an emergency decree mechanism whereby the president can effectively assume full power and suspend civil rights?

It could well be in the offing: Egged on by Musk, Miller, etc. — and putting his people in position to give orders to the folks with badges and guns — Trump is seeing what he can get away with by way of executive orders. He's getting zero pushback from the governing GOP majority in Congress nor from any of his cabinet. That's Trump's long-established M.O.: Test the boundaries and guardrails, then go charging through the identified weak spots.

> Are the republican party committing acts of violence against their opposition, so as to push them out of Congress and establish a supermajority?

Pretty close: You might not have seen the news reports of GOP senators and representatives who've said privately that they oppose what Trump has been doing but they're afraid to cross him, out of fear of personal danger to themselves and their families from lunatic MAGA thugs who fancy themselves to be Trump's warriors — e.g., the January 6 rioters whom Trump whipped into a frenzy and then sent charging off to the Capitol.

(GOP senators' fear of personal danger reportedly was also part of the reason there weren't enough GOP Senate votes to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, where conviction would have disqualified him from any office.)

> Bit emotionally incontinent isn't it, letting your understanding of history be distorted by your desire to call a president you don't like bad names

Call it what you will: I've been around for awhile and was long ago trained to look at trends, not just individual data points. (Life isn't a snapshot, it's a movie.) IMHO my take on events is sounder than what you've written; eventually we'll see whether one of us has his head in a warm dark place.

> Are the republican party committing acts of violence against their opposition, so as to push them out of Congress and establish a supermajority?

Update: "The judge, for her part, seemed initially unconvinced that FBI agents could definitively prove that they were about to face political retaliation, saying, “a fear of something happening is not sufficient, even if the fear is a serious one,” she said. [¶] But she changed her tone by the end of the day. At one point, they could not guarantee that the DOJ has not already leaked the list, with lawyers specifying that DOJ has not “officially” done so. [¶] “There is no question that it would put a number of FBI agents and significant danger,”" [0]

[0] https://www.notus.org/courts/trump-doj-fbi-agents-names-priv...

I am thrilled that Elon is doing this. Our government doesn't get anything done. Taxes are a fucking scam with how much gets wasted.

Finally someone with a "just ship it" mindset has entered the govt and is getting shit done for the first time in forever.

I brought this on myself for making a political comment on a forum, but I'm curious how much spending you think goes to this. Like of every $1 in taxes you pay - how much do you think goes to USAID (or the entire federal workforce)?

When you see the answer you might question the honesty of the cost-savings argument here.

I'd ballpark USAID at maybe half a percent? It's an easy win. A few more of these and Elon will have made a meaningful dent in the wastage of my tax dollars.

I'd consider even a 3% reduction in spend a massive success. The percentage of money being wasted is much higher, somewhere between 30% and 70% (estimates vary.)

If you've ever worked for a government contractor you've seen the immense waste/scam firsthand.

> The percentage of money being wasted is much higher, somewhere between 30% and 70% (estimates vary.)

Any cut of 30% or above involves cutting entitlement spending (social security, medicare, medicaid).

Yes, and military contracting as well. There is immense waste in all of these programs.

There's a great dishonesty in this argument, because it intentionally ignores the fact that this is only the opening couple of weeks in something that's going to continue for 4 years, Milei-style.

So obviously it's not a matter of what percent savings comes from closing USAID specifically, but in what total savings the posture behind that is going to create over the next 4 years.

What do you expect the total savings to be?

Who knows, never been done before.

Is your position that if someone can't say the exact percent, that's the end of the argument and the US government should continue its unbounded deficit spending?

No, the argument is that the best case answer here is "< 1%" and it comes at huge cost in disruption.

If that's what it turns out to be, that no matter what happens politically, the government absolutely cannot do anything to bring its spending under control, then the US is effectively a failed state, and in that case, DOGE's role is a diagnostician.

But I seriously doubt that's the case. What's more likely is that it is perfectly possible to bring spending under control, and that the people who are complaining are doing so because they've had their lips taken off the teat.

So there are a few bigger levers the US can use to reduce spending.

1. Raise taxes to pre-2017 TCJA levels and eliminate deficit spending. Pay down the debt. A much, much bigger chunk of our spending is debt interest (17%) than anything DOGE is targeting.

2. More aggressive Medicare/Medicaid service and drug price negotiation. This is 39% of the budget, and even a few percent here would have a bigger impact than anything DOGE is disrupting.

DOGE is a performative gimmick. It's hugely disruptive, mostly just to "own the libs."

The biggest and easiest lever the GOP has to bring spending under control is to let the 10-year TCJA tax rates expire without renewal. Do you think they will do that?

Maybe sound a little less excited about it lol

If I was a foreign adversary of the US I would be salivating at the idea of several unvetted 19-25 year olds with unlimited access to classified government computer systems. The security implications are apocalyptic.

> unlimited access to classified government computer systems.

What makes you think they have access to classified government computer systems, let alone unlimited access?

It's my understanding that classified data is on a completely separate network called SIPRNET[1] and that basic accounting data (e.g. USAID grant data) (a) isn't classified and (b) access to USAID data doesn't imply access to SIPRNET

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRNet

Thanks Dang for letting this political conversation persist!

> Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials.

Congress gets to make laws. They can intervene by making a law that allows them to intervene, which is the job we elected them to do. Apparently they prefer getting bossed around instead.

The majority of the currently elected Congress supports this – it is part of the mandate for which they were elected.

Unfortunately, laws have to be signed in by the president

Not with a two-thirds majority--which I realize sounds to the modern ear as politically impossible, but we're going to have to change that if we want to survive as a nation. The whole "living document" aspect of the constitution is a rather important one.

I don't even have much to say about which sorts of decisions that two thirds should make--that's their job--I'd just like it if they grew a spine and started making some.

Re that scroll

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-21-year-old-u...

It seems to me like it really appropriate background...

These are not engineers, they are not software engineers, they are brown shirts.

Amazed at the pushback against an effort to cut waste out of government. There is a ton of it. It's your tax dollars being wasted... let's instead discuss whether things they've identified are keep, toss, or reform and if the wrong call has been made.

Setting aside the issue of the public’s PII and PHI in the hands of the most odious individuals, your post is a mischaracterization of what’s going on. They’re not identifying things and creating a report for evaluation; they’re identifying things and using illegal thuggery to shut things they don’t like down. This is illegal and unamerican.

If only there was a group of people that were given the legal rights to make that decision... We could call them like... A Congress and we could like write those processes down. Maybe call that document a Constitution.

I want to down-vote you, but I seemingly cannot.

This is incredibly dangerous. A select few, having such control over so many millions? Are you nuts?! This is a serious question, as a new member of this community, is this a normal type of comment I can expect on HN?

You've encountered a rare political thread that the moderators have allowed to stay up.

The physics are different here

I'm almost certain this thread is being targeted by bots. Comments in support are always cookie cutter talking points like "cutting waste and fraud", "what's wrong with executive branch auditing itself", etc

You've been fooled.

Of course there is. Who says that's what they are trying to do? What specific credentials do these children have that makes them uniquely qualified to handle this task? Why is Elon the appropriate vessel for this activity? The man has more conflicts of interest than nearly anyone else for this task, and has the temperament, self-control, and maturity lesser than those he's hired.

I'm amazed that ANYONE is okay with this nonsense.

They have made the wrong calls at every step. I posted a link to an article in a sibling comment; have a read of that.

Yes, there's waste. I'd rather have the waste than a coup.

Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25.

Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical.

Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency.

The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status quo. If we’re serious about cutting waste in gov spending, let’s not turn away new minds.

The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.

- one decoded the Herculaneum Papyrii at the age of 20, winning the Vesuvius Challenge

- another built a startup funded by OpenAI

- one interned at SpaceX and got a Thiel Fellowship

- another was a top engineer at a major AI firm

This is who they are bullying and putting a target on. The best of us nerds. https://x.com/anothercohen/status/1886480470185001025

All of those people you listed as examples were legally and duly appointed/hired for their roles and not given carte-blanche over agencies without oversight.

source ?

Source? and what's the median?

Also, that was during WW2 which would likely skew those #s (though I would actually expect to much older, as in not most-fit-military age)

Richard Rhodes' introduction to Serber's "The Los Alamos Primer" suggests 24:

> Despite this leavening of older men (Oppenheimer was thirty-eight), the group's average age was only twenty-four.

The field being relatively new also heavily influenced the scientists being so young.

The age of modern quantum mechanics started in 1925. Heisenberg received the Nobel Prize for his 1927 work on the uncertainty principle in 1932 at the age of 31. 10 years later the Manhattan Project started.

There just weren’t that many older scientists with training in the field. Young PhDs were only a few years removed from the first discoveries that enabled nuclear physics to leap forward.

If you look at the Manhattan project org chart and take people randomly at the top, they're all at least in their 40s. "There are young people on the project" is a thing but at the end of the day things like the Manhattan Project are downstream of the will of an entire behemoth (at least in theory attempting to represent the will of the people), balancing various interests and ethical or moral questions that are usually downstream of some experience.

They also have gone through the military chain of command...

I didn't see Musk's confirmation hearing. OMB's head needs to be Senat confirmed, Musk is giving OMB orders and took over their e-mail addresses. Where's the hearing? Where's the confirmation?

i feel that a lot of people are commenting without knowing a lot about the government. putting aside whether Trump is exceeding his statutory authority (he very well might be with this USAID stuff, he certainly has with his past XOs), you can have an executive branch position with access and managerial control without being confirmed. who confirms the White House Chief of Staff?

The default is that congress has to confirm _all officers_ in the executive branch, and it's only by delegation through law that you get other behavior. That's my understanding at least.

To my knowledge the Chief of Staff does not have the power to coerce other people to do things directly. Any "actual" coercion would have to go through someone like the President, right?

And my dumb thought is if DOGE is going around telling OMB and Treasury what to do (and seemingly is willing to call the US Marshalls on people who stand in their way) and the head of the OMB requires senate confirmation... well what are we doing here?

There's a bunch of nuance you can play at a micro level (for example, Musk messaging Trump to do a thing and Trump giving an OK), though in that case that's also newsworthy and important, because it properly associates who is responsible for what is going on!

Right now we have somebody who seems to be running rampant doing whatever he wants, and this lack of explicit association with the rest of the executive make it unclear who is actually calling the shots here. And if Trump isn't calling the shots... again, where's the confirmation?

the chief of staff clearly has managerial discretion over other executive staff? they also have top level security clearance and afaik none of that is in any law. ultimately all of these staff serve at the pleasure of the president.

The president, yes, not the chief of staff.

The chief of staff can relay orders from the president to cabinet members and department heads, but cannot make decisions of this scope.

I don't really know how any of that is relevant, though. Musk is not Trump's chief of staff, and as far as we can tell, is not even employed by the federal government. He is not empowered to give (for example) orders to the head (confirmed or acting) of the OMB.

>things like the Manhattan Project are downstream of the will of an entire behemoth

Plus that project in particular was more about destroying things exponentially faster, than it actually was about building things somewhat faster.

The faster building process was achieved in a relatively linear way at best, and the only thing built was a tool for destruction, no comparable efforts were made toward building things of lasting value which would need to more than compensate or the tech effort is a net loss.

Or, after destruction is induced, a recovery can not be made since the time required for building has the time it took for destruction in the denominator.

what are you talking about? All the locations used for Manhattan Project continued after the war- for example Los Alamos, Hanford, Oak Ridge, and more. Tons of long term infrastucture and it was built quickly. Much of the credit for that goes to Leslie Groves, who was an organizational genius and highly effective leader.

That's false, the average age was 29.4: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/L...

Here are the ages of the senior scientists: Oppenheimer: 38 Teller: 34 Lawrence: 41 Rabi: 44 Szilard: 44 Ulam: 33 Bethe: 36 Fuchs: 31 von Neumann: 39

So the younger people would have had plenty of supervision.

These are not the only 6 engineers working for DOGE, just the youngest. They have supervision as well.

They are all breaking the law.

Evidence? There is no evidence of that. Broad allegations that it is illegal doesn't cut it. Even Schumer is not making that claim. All he is doing is complaining. The executive branch has the power to police themselves it's not that difficult to understand that you can audit your own agency. There's nothing illegal going on.

Schumer literally said what they’ve done to USAID is illegal.

> …we know that unilaterally closing USAID is illegal.

[0]: https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/lea...

Which law, specifically?

First, I was showing that the specific claim being made (that Chuck Schumer has not said any illegal activities have taken place) was false. Nothing more.

Second, as I’m sure you know, and are being deliberately obtuse about, the separation of powers doctrine, which has been upheld by SCOTUS; one example [0] is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. USAID is codified by law, regardless of its genesis, and as such, only Congress is able to revoke the law.

[0]: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...

The actual US constitution which gives Congress and ONLY congress the power to spend tax money. Musk has absolutely no legal authority to unilaterally stop payments approved by congress. What Musk is doing is a very intentional effort to usurp this authority illegally. Musk should really end up in prison or deported for what he is doing right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_the_purse#United_Stat...

In the federal government of the United States, the power of the purse is vested in the Congress as laid down in the Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 (the Appropriations Clause) and Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 (the Taxing and Spending Clause).

The power of the purse plays a critical role in the relationship of the United States Congress and the President of the United States, and has been the main historic tool by which Congress has limited executive power.

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/not-confident-trump-...

Not confident Trump will prevail: Scholar on his attempts to take Congress' power of the purse Professor Deborah Pearlstein joins Morning Joe to discuss her column for the NYT outlining some of Trump’s actions implemented in his first few days in office and why she says Trump is hardly the first president to claim broad executive power, but the difference is not just the enormity of his claims, it's that the administration mostly doesn't try to craft legal justifications for its actions.

https://www.marketplace.org/2025/02/04/congress-president-tr...

How Congress — and not the president — controls how taxpayer money is spent

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/trump-e...

‘It’s an Illegal Executive Order. And It’s Stealing.’

>the power to spend tax money

But they're not spending; they're kind of doing the opposite of spending. And reducing waste is a previously known (for a long time) goal of theirs.

They are... not spending tax money? If so, that would still be the only entity given power by the US Constitution to decide what to do with it.

Which is a direct violation of the constitution. Only congress the authority to control spending and Musk has absolutely zero authority to stop any payments congress has authorized. It is a naked power grab and musk should spend the rest of his life in prison for it.

>Only congress the authority to control spending

You changed your wording to fit your argument. "To spend" became "to control spending", implicitly acknowledging that the two phrases have different meanings.

The executive branch does not have the authority to cut off congressionally appropriated spending. Congress specifically passed a law (Impoundment Control Act) to make that as explicit as could be

You must realize attacks made by political opponents are always exaggerated and many times false. First of all doge can’t close USAID. What “they” aka Trump did was pause payments for review.

That isn't what they are actually saying.

I'm sure all of the people who depended on those payments and whose lives are now ruined will appreciate that subtle difference.

Which is illegal

If you are finding the government is sending money to terrorists as they have indicated and need to stop it there are quite a few emergency powers. Pausing is the first step.

If you believe they found that I have a bridge to sell you

How do we have any freaking clue what is going on with doge

By who, other than Elon Musk, in turn accountable to no one?

That's incredibly young for senior scientists! 31 years old? Nobody over 45, let alone 50?

I can’t speak to the second half of your comment, but it’s worth pointing out that 31 corresponds with a software engineer who received a BA/BS in four years after high school, started working and hit senior at 3-5 years (a lot of us). That gives a couple years of wiggle room to lead projects after that too.

TBH the 31 year old was Fuchs who spied for the SU. So not really the best pick.

And they all regretted their short sighted work didn’t they?

many senior scientists are around 30-35 years old (by that time they have completed grad school and postdoc and are starting to get their first grants). And in nuclear physics most of these folks were young but had worked in key labs and their bosses were advisors on the project.

Why did you choose to restrict your data to "senior" scientists? What is that supposed to prove?

A lot of progress in many fields largely moves in the direction of inertia. Pretty much always.

That of course means drawing upon experience, work and ongoing contributions of people who are around for long. Obviously they would be old.

Getting old is a part of life no? Unless of course some one is planning on dying early.

'senior' is only a 6 character prefix that can be attached to any name/position as an accolade. It means nothing out-of-context.

Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making? I feel like the history books show it's emphatically indecisive.

> Oppenheimer was smart, no doubt, but did he have the life experience to warrant 'senior'-level decision making?

You're questioning whether the person chosen to be the director of weapons development could be called "senior" or not? What? Or are you hindsight-second-guessing the decision to make him director? It's wild to me that you would choose the director of one of the most important and ambitious (not to mention successful) programs in world history to make the point "senior is just a title".

First, there's hardly any evidence that these are anywhere near "brilliant engineers" let alone 1%. Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects. Some might be interesting, sure. But it's hardly relevant to operating in a complex organization.

But more importantly, the real issue is regardless of how old they are an unelected individual is doling out hyper-privileged access to sensitive data to folks without any kind of oversight. It's a total mess.

It's hyperbolic to the n-th degree to call these "the best of nerds" as well.

> Their claims to "fame" were being interns or working on tightly scoped greenfield projects.

And there's that one guy whose entire work history is as a summer camp counselor.

Who is that?

He's talking about Edward Coristine, aka "bigballs", though it's not the only thing on his résumé: https://bsky.app/profile/jsweetli.bsky.social/post/3lh5hr3hs...

Sure, and there's a sprinter who can outrun Usain Bolt who just happened to become an accountant instead

Probably still better than the non-technical people usually governing things.

As many issues as we have, I’d rather have somebody who understands the consequences of a security breach having access to sensitive information than someone who does not.

Think what you will about who came before or after, but everyone involved here should have experience or training in how to handle and secure sensitive information.

One of the dude literally solved a hundreds years problem and won a prize. He coded an AI to decipher an ancient manuscript AIUI. I certainly wouldn't look down on the achievement of that young programmer.

Can you explain why this makes him a good fit for doing government payroll?

None of which qualifies him for anything he’s doing here.

Being smart is a qualification.

There is no such thing as "being smart". You can be arbitrarily good at some things, and arbitrarily bad at anything else. Even the greatest physicists can have laughably naive philosophical positions. Linus Paulding, one of the greatest minds in chemistry in history, was convinced that you can cure virtually any disease with a large enough dose of vitamin C. Expertise, even the extreme peak, in one field doesn't give you expertise of any kind in another field.

This is factually wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

IQ is mostly BS. And even if it's not, it only measures the ability to learn, not the actual skills. What I wrote remains true: just because you have skills in one area (AI deciphering of hieroglyphics scroll), doesn't mean in any way whatsoever that you have skills for something entirely unrelated (administrative matters).

IQ is a grift. It is not a measure of intelligence, but "not stupidity".

Any score over 100 means no discernable difference in intelligence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...

Well... there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease

Ho we got a random link to a irrelevant article.

Pack it up boys.

I'd rather have people who are smart with experience handling our inner government workings. ;P

Yes it does. He knows how to solve hard problems. Ending the vaste waste, fraud and abuse is a huge spagetti code problem.

To Actually fix the embedded structural problems of an established system requires at least as much wisdom as intelligence. So far I have not seen Elon and his young minions demonstrating deep levels of wisdom

You are being impressed by irrelevant credentials. This is what tools people into a sens of confidence while totally misplaced. he is not helping to solve hard problems or deal with corruption. He is aiding in destroying democracy and enabling corruption and collusion.

You have it backwards.

So would you say that the first step of detangling spaghetti code is to start deleting huge chunks of it without knowing what it does or why it was coded that way?

There is no control-z in physical systems, especially ones that rely on human constructs and tradition

This is not a code problem, and I guarantee none of these kids know COBOL

https://xkcd.com/793/

What a load of nonsense. Expertise in one field does not mean you're going to excel in a different field. There are plenty of people with relevant expertise and equal problem-solving abilities, but these traitors actively don't want them, because they aren't going to say and do what they want.

What would constitute qualifications in your view?

Advanced knowledge of the inner workings of governmental oversight, government funding, and the ability to understand what they are doing is illegal and dangerous.... Enough to know that whatever they have been promised is not worth the unintended consequences of their actions.

Pause any spending $X on a Foreign Nation is not aligned with making America Gooder.

The better question is why hasn't anyone done this before?

Ooh, he won a prize?? Why didn't anyone say so, he's clearly qualified!

None of that prepares him for the things he is working on now, and they have blatantly flouted the law and all security rules to get access to the treasury payments system

or the achievements of the thousands of people who worked on ML before him to help set the stage.

I've worked with a wide range of brilliant people of various ages in my life. Nothing I've seen about these kids makes me think they are significantly smarter than the somewhat-above-average folks I've worked with. Historically, the government has hired people like this (for example the NSA pulls in some number of mathematically inclined graduates every year; NIH has brilliant interns, etc, etc).

And none of these kids skills mean they are particularly well suited to the subtle job of reforming the establishment.

100%

I mean, Garry Tan has already been on Twitter with his stupid take that there are “brilliant” so it surely must be true. /s

The Treasury has been taken over and barricaded, but please enlighten us Garry with fables of their 10x brilliance.

Government employees are never elected. They are hired by the elected officials. In this case the general public in the US was aware of DOGE before the election and chose to vote for it.

Where specifically was it spelled out that DODGE would remove the free tax filing system?

Did they delete it? Elon said 18F, the group that developed DirectFile, was deleted. DirectFile appears to still be available.

https://directfile.irs.gov/

Right. Why are people suddenly confused about this?

I don't understand the "unelected" aspect - he funded Trump and Trump got elected. Trump said Elon would get to run a wrecking ball through the ship of state and the magas cheered. He derives his authority from Trump. A lot of people work at the white house and only one of them was elected.

He’s surely the most public bureaucrat in history.

Bureaucrat is a misnomer. Think of him more as a reaper of souls

He's more of a lobotomized Jack Welch imo

I think it's really cool they have the Herculaneum Papyrii guy working for them!

It's a shame Wired is behaving this way.

[flagged]

> The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.

Wheres the evidence of their brilliance? A few projects in GitHub isn’t impressive.

Seriously if they’re brilliant this is the perfect PR opportunity to highlight the highly talented people making a difference. But instead we have secrecy.

I suspect the real reason for these choices is they needed people who are young and naive, will not ask too many questions, easy to manipulate, and coerced to work long for little pay.

Wheres the evidence of them not being brilliant? Just because they have fewer github projects, they are not talented?

Also please point to the last federal employee in IT sector who were highlighted for their "Talent and Brilliance".

Asking for people to prove the negative? I swear these posts are now being flooded by X types who only comment on these kinds of posts - and what a surprise, looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff, solely on politics - this level of reasoning used to be absent from here regardless of political inclination.

Burden of proof lies on GP for his claims

> looking at this user's profile shows 0 comments on tech stuff

As opposed to yours, which is even more politically charged with clear bias and scarce technical posts? You must be an ideal HN user with "no bias" and "high reasoning" I assume...

Never mentioned "no bias" or "reasoning", great job making things up there. It's not about bias, it's about being a real, actual HN user instead of coming here with a particular goal. HackerNews, a tech/startup community. I have and continue to comment plenty on tech/startup stuff that interests me, as well as other random things that aren'tUS politics. The last few weeks in particular there's been a flood of US political posts so I've commented on those as well. Your history shows being here for a different reason, only engaging with that single topic.

If you have some evidence of their brilliance you can post it now.

You are the one who made the claim. Burden of proof lies on you. Provide evidence for their "lack of brilliance".

The post you're replying to has a link to a video in which one of the guys talks about how he decoded the Vesuvius scrolls. It's literally a PR video highlighting a highly talented young person.

One of them transcribed an ancient Greek text from Vesuvius. So idiots buy into the idea this qualifies them to become unelected arbiters of THEIR OWN opinion of justice and decide who the Treasury pays or does not.

Considering the projects that USAID pays for, what they are doing is just and correct. The US executive bureaucracy is bloated beyond belief and needs to have major cuts. We are spending almost 2 trillion dollars more than we are bringing into the government. So many things need to stop being paid for.

And 2/3rds (and growing) of the Federal Budget is mandatory entitlement spending (Medicare, SS, etc), which Trump explicitly stated he won’t touch.

And don’t forget interest payments on the debt (~$800 bil?), which will keep increasing year over year as well.

It’s certainly not correct: the FY24 deficit is $1.9T, and the remainder of the ~$6T budget that isn’t DoD, Medicare/Medicaid, SSA, or interest payments is around ~$2.3T. To make a meaningful dent in that deficit, the cuts would have to be of the size that a modicum of checks, balances, and oversight is needed.

Or, instead, we could stop tinkering around the edges as a nation and think about the structural reasons why current spending on pensions and the healthcare safety net in the US isn’t sustainable, despite providing less to citizens than other comparable countries.

this "small" agency woefully mis spent its $47B budget. it should be completely razed and nothing put forth to replace it. It's employee's owe their full and total political allegiance to the democratic party, as shown by 97% of their political donations going there. It harms the world by existing and it is fully democrat. It needs to go. Its funding of the democratic party needs to end.

Your other suggestions are good! we should raze those things to the ground as well. They are bankrupting this country, and the second order fiscal and demographic effects far outweigh their first order beneficial effects. We, as a country, need to realize the limitations of government, and our current policies place us well beyond what we should be doing. We need to harden our hearts to the demands of those who chose not to build a life for themselves and live on the public purse instead. We need Seniors to voluntarily decrease the amount of money they receive so that young people can afford to buy houses and start families. Cutting social security etc would also increase pressure to sell housing to cover the costs of being elderly, which directly benefits the housing market, lowering costs. But it will anger the voting population.

I know you want to believe this is principled, but...

- the Social Security Administration, in the first MONTH of 2025, has outlaid $395 billion of spending. - the Department of Defense, in the first MONTH of 2025, has outlaid $250 billion of spending. - USAID's annual budget is $38 billion annually, so we could realistically estimate that, if they've outlaid $3 billion this year thus far, they've spent 0.4% of what those other two departments have.

Let's call this like it is: USAID is a bogeyman to Trump and Musk and is a threat to the administration's efforts toward becoming a "hard power" country. If they really cared about spending, they would have gone elsewhere first.

Source: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Thankfully it took less than a month to save its 38 or 47 billion dollar budget, whichever is the case. I am 100% certain that more extreme measures will be taken after this small, quick victory to address the deficit.

Their priority is well placed: This org sent a lot of money to shell corps, chosen political operators, and other intelligence operations that was a clear and net negative to the tax payers. It establishes bona fides that DOGE is serious and capable. It gives them experience cutting through the bureaucratic morass on a small target. It's supporters are outed as being in on the take. You are correct that they should move to bigger targets at some point, but those outlays you mentioned are far more favored in the public eye and should be approached much more cautiously and with planning. In the meantime, the intelligence operatus of the American Empire has been off its leash for some time, so cutting its funding will hamper its ability to harm the American people further.

Please have an excellent day.

"This org sent a lot of money to shell corps, chosen political operators, and other intelligence operations that was a clear and net negative to the tax payers."

As someone whose organization has benefitted from USAID grant funding, I should make it explicit that not everything is as you see or hear through Elon's Twitter feed.

It is deeply unwise to eliminate an organization entirely without exploring its net effects.

Oh? Was your org in charge of overthrowing small governments or was it charged with spreading feminism, atheism, or other American propaganda to people who do not want it? USAID was as close to objectively evil as it is possible to be. Show me otherwise if you'd like but there doesn't seem to be much to hold up as positive from that org.

This notion alone does not grant you the powers of the Congress which apportioned the money to the groups. Moreover you and I do not possess the national intelligence to make the assessment of “corruption.” If you have a complain there are mechanisms for Congressional investigations. What you are conspiring to is the overthrow of the democratic processes that ensure that no one group claims to act in the public good, while acting on their selfish behalf behind the scenes.

You have to realize that’s not how it works right? First of all “idiots” aka voters don’t need to be convinced because these people are hired not elected. You mention them being “unelected arbiters” already. However while unelected they are not arbiters. They report to the president who is the arbiter and was elected. Lastly, the president can decide how to implement lanes until his control. If the govt was buying a hammer for $100,000 instead of Home Depot for $10 then yes it can buy the hammer at Home Depot instead.

So you are saying this is a team developing a tool to nuke the government?

You cant compare manhattan project, NASA to a bunch of good software techs ripping apart the government. The first two projects required high levels of intelligence and new concepts.

These guys are the modern equivalent of name any destructive revolutionary group looking for stuff they don't agree with.

I don't however refute that you can be a brilliant mind and active contributor at any age. Just that these guys aren't anywhere close to the same page as our greatest minds.

Not to mention, NASA famously has incredibly strict coding standards and guidelines [0]. I somehow doubt there’s anything along those lines at DOGE.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_10:_Rules_for_Dev...

They may be brilliant engineers, but they’re adults who’ve decided to become enemies of the state.

Wait, what?

The great thing about young people is that they haven't had much time to develop a moral compass. I'd say that makes them perfect for the roles they've been given

Interestingly, I see it the other way.

Young people tend to be more ideological and ready to fight for what they care. The older you get, the more problems you have (bills, health, children, etc) the less you care imho.

The older you get the more discerning you become around what is worth caring about.

I think there's a middle ground. Very young people are inexperienced but old people are also manipulable too. Probably the most fruitful average ages for doing the right thing are between 40 and 65. I think there are a lot more exceptions for older people than younger ones.

To put your sentiment a different way: The older you get, the more you realize you're a surgeon who should potentially only 'cut once.'

The age is irrelevant. What IS relevant is the fact that the engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project were all qualified and legally hired and authorized to do what they did. This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right to the federal payment system and no legal authority to stop any payments congress has approved.

Hilarious irony here, given that these qualified and legally hired people built the most morally reprehensible weapon in history

Likewise what Musk is doing is also morally reprehensible. It is the most unconstitutional power grab any US Citizen has tried is a very long time.

Please explain that to me? Where is the illegality and unconstitutionality? Agencies are part of the executive branch. This particularly agency was created by executive order. The executive branch can police itself. Just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it's illegal. What is illegal is USAID spending money that is violating the current president's executive order. Bringing that to light is not illegal. In fact it is the duty of the executive to make sure that his orders are being carried out.

I dont know if people are lying and/or intentionally gaslighting. DOGE brings information to Trump, Trump acts on it. The illegal part is made up by their political opponents who have apparently being using governmental agencies use to influence other countries to also influence the US - that’s where they went wrong.

[flagged]

You keep saying Musk and you are right Musk has no power, he just reports information to the President Trump who makes any call. So that part is irrelevant. The government can say we want to spend $1,000,000 on hammers but it doesn’t mean you have to spend $1,000,000 on one hammer. If the president finds you can buy a hammer for $10 then he can direct to 100,000 of them there instead. Also, if he finds government agencies are not performing on their obligations he can get rid of them. And lastly, a lot of changes are going to take effect until the next budget, which will be ratified by congress. Just because he says “we’re cancelling X” it doesn’t mean he’s stopping it now but once a new budget it passed.

If congress passes a law to give X dollars to Y department or organization than it is blatantly and utterly illegal for the Executive branch to just say "Nah" and not do so.

"The government can say we want to spend $1,000,000 on hammers but it doesn’t mean you have to spend $1,000,000 on one hammer."

This isn't the level of detail we are concerned with. Congress says that USAID gets $5 billion a year then the Executive branch HAS to transfer that money or else it is in direct violation of the US constitution. Your entire argument is nonsensical and irrelevant.

There must be some confusion because they aren’t cutting programs approved by congress. They are literally cutting funds that were NOT explicitly approved by congress only.

"There must be some confusion because they aren’t cutting programs approved by congress."

Yes they are

"They are literally cutting funds that were NOT explicitly approved by congress only."

This is false.

You really need to realize that Musk is a liar who lies all the time and he is lying about what DOGE is doing.

That's not how our government works. The executive branch does not get to pick and choose what parts of the budget approved by Congress it wants to execute. [0]

Also, a later act of Congress (The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.) established USAID as its own agency.[1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_...

[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/107267/can-president-dissolve-u...

Congress controls spending and no one person can just decide not to transfer the funds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_the_purse#United_Stat...

https://www.marketplace.org/2025/02/04/congress-president-tr...

How Congress — and not the president — controls how taxpayer money is spent

>built the most morally reprehensible weapon in history

That’s obviously arguable. Did the weapon and its usage cause more or fewer deaths and destruction than without it?

By that logic killing all humans now would be better than letting future generations die

"Let's not hire experts. Experts built the bomb, ya know."

Funny that this comment is in defense of DOGE disregarding all expertise and handing keys over to a bunch non-experts.

It is unironically DEI for nerds.

It was a sarcastic comment disparaging DOGE and the comment above. How did you get that it defends DOGE?

They weren’t the only ones building it, for what it’s worth. They were well aware of that.

If you knew a country wanted to build a weapon to cripple your own country, and you had the necessary skills to build that weapon, would you feel come compulsion to try and build it first in order to protect your family and friends? To protect yourself?

Making war between (certain) nations unconscionable and apocalyptic may have done more for peace than anything created for the purpose of peace

>This is NOT true for DOGE which has no legal right

DOGE and the Treasury Department are both part of the Executive Branch and derive powers from its head, aka the President.

This is essentially President Trump telling President Trump to hand President Trump the keys to the payment system so that President Trump can check WTF President Trump is spending money on.

Except it’s Congress spending the money, and Congress is the one who has the authority to hand the keys and do the checks (called “oversight” in that boring old world of government).

Maybe you see the inherent problem with the setup where President Trump is in charge of checking up on what President Trump is spending money on.

You seem to have forgotten that the power of the purse is Congress.

Power of the purse rests with the House with consent from the Senate, but the execution of the purse is ultimately vested with the Executive.

Congress as the Legislative Branch has no authority to Execute.

Congress has passed laws requiring the executive branch to disperse money in a timely fashion, with a few limited exceptions. USAID was also created in response to a law, which requires the executive branch to perform these functions.

And? Congress can impeach the President if they feel the law isn't being executed. The law also extends nearly limitless benefit of doubt to the President when he is executing his Constitutional duties.

This feels like circular reasoning. In order to execute his (or her) Constitutional Duties, the President must execute laws faithfully. However, the President is extended limitless benefit of the doubt if he decides to not execute the laws put forth by Congress, which means he's not executing his Constitutional duties. So which one is it?

You may, unfortunately, thank the Supreme Court for that bit of circular reasoning, rather than GP. Executives since Nixon have been pushing the line that "if the president does it, it's not illegal", and they finally got a SCOTUS to accept it.

> The law also extends nearly limitless benefit of doubt to the President when he is executing his Constitutional duties.

It does not. In fact, limiting this benefit of the doubt has been a major goal of the conservative legal movement in recent years. If what you say was true then Biden would have had no trouble forgiving student loan debt and requiring generation shifting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_the_purse#United_Stat...

> Perhaps one reason startups work so well

As a veteran of startups, this puzzles me. I assume it's a perception that successful startups are the majority of startups. (They are not.)

Good grief, don’t identify me and the rest of HN with then. I don’t want to be “us” with people in government who make a virtue out of being unaccountable solely because they’re successful engineers.

They are violating many, many laws. They should be named.

Yes, name the laws.

> The Privacy Act of 1974 generally, and the Internal Revenue Code with respect to taxpayer information, make it unlawful for Secretary Bessent to hand over access to the Bureau’s records on individuals to Elon Musk or other members of DOGE.

Among numerous other laws listed in

https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/1-Complaint-7.pdf

If I’m not mistaken they just may have received authorization from the President. Could be, I don’t know.

Not that that is sufficient for allowing legal access to all data in every case. But see the next part.

There’s no evidence that the wild claims about improper access to data are justified. Claims from people who have proven to be the opposite of truthful. For instance to shut down payments temporarily you don’t need to access data; you just need a cable snipper to cut the right wires. Reference the Twitter Sacramento data center solution implemented after the Twitter purchase. Or it can be done any number of other ways with changing passwords, etc.

Don’t believe everything you hear and read.

> Claims from people who have proven to be the opposite of truthful.

Interesting you say that.

All I know is that confidential payment data is apparently being handed to specific individual(s?), known to be partisan actors, who lost a bunch of lawsuits in court of law recently. Am I to just ignore that?

The point is not to shut payments, but to use it in information warfare, Twitter Files Redux.

Not just* to shut payments.

Yes there are multiple things happening at once.

Information coming out is a good thing, luckily.

>>Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency.

As some one who just turned 40. This does make sense. Perhaps the biggest deal about aging especially in the downswing is the countdown to death keeps getting closer as you go. You do tend to care less about things around you.

Im beyond the point I would take offence on anything, but Im also beyond the point I would do something to impress somebody. There is no trying twice from here. Things either work with something/somebody or you move on to something/somebody that does/do.

I definitely was more tenacious as a young man, with projects and relationships. I'd move heavens to make something work. Now they have work or something new is sought. As an aging person I care more about less noise, bullshit and more stability. Guys like me are needed for continuity of life. Whereas younger men are needed to bring about big leap frog changes.

The world needs the young and old for both progress and sanity.

I don't care how smart they are. They are committing crimes in service to fascism. Speak for yourself in your use of the word "us".

All the bigger shame they're illegally seizing government systems.

They are all beneficiaries of affirmative action, for libertarians, in case you are wondering why these guys and not more competent or mercenary people, which are both abundant.

It is legal to make a federal government employee’s name, role, and salary publicly accessible because taxpayer-funded positions fall under the scope of public interest and open-records laws, which promote transparency and accountability in the use of government funds. You can find this information on official databases like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) website, which routinely publishes data about federal employees’ salaries and positions, as well as on other government websites that provide access to public records.

There were at least a couple of guys on the Manhattan project giving information to Russia as well.

   > Perhaps one reason startups work so well…

If you take any individual startup its probability of success is very low. Most startups fail. There is a very extreme survivorship bias at work when people say startups work well or that particular tactics are why startups are great etc (pointing at a successful startup).

Startups as a whole produce a lot of innovation because there is this extreme Darwinian process where the vast majority fail and a few succeed but you have a huge amount of risk-taking in parallel in a very compressed time frame.

Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme. So by definition government is going to be slower-moving and more risk-averse. They are essentially paying to reduce the standard deviation of possible outcomes because they can’t afford the risk of the extreme negative tail.

>>Government generally doesn’t have the luxury of failure because the consequences for people’s lives are too extreme.

Im guessing they will eventually discover why bureaucracy even exists. That is to move slow enough to ensure big mistakes become impossible and provide stability for newer things to happen at their own pace.

Im guessing any chaos inside bureaucracy for as little as a decade could cause a lost century to a country. The cost of stabilising, course correcting, recovering and then going on upwards could take decades.

Civil society is a precious gift, one that is hard to build and easy to destroy.

Perhaps you don't realize how badly run the government is and how much of a problem that is in real terms.

Education, physical and mental health, cost of living, healthcare, wealth inequality. They've all gotten worse the past few decades, would you agree?

The NYT just reported that the federal government lost $236 billion to apparent fraud ("improper payments") in 2023 alone.

The US GAO says "2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud"

USAID literally set up fake AIDS prevention workshops to topple foreign governments https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/0...

This is a small sample of the extreme waste, fraud and abuse, while we have very serious issues here on the ground that are systematically ignored. For DECADES. Unaddressed.

Fixing this is what the majority of voters voted for and are rightfully thrilled to see these brilliant young tech nerds untangle the beurocratic leviathon. There will be, and have been, mistakes, things deleted that shouldn't have been. Anything important and that the people actually want, will be added back in. DOGE was upfront about this process.

But doge doesn't want to improve fraud, it only wants to make the department efficients by somehow firing their workers, how does this improve fraud detection?

Furthermore, why should i trust a billionaire who has spouted lies more and more times?

What about data protection? We're giving billionaires and their team access to federal workers data. Project 2025 emphatizes replacing federal workers for loyal one, why shouldn't an american feel threatened by this? https://www.muskwatch.com/p/musk-associates-given-unfettered

And why should i care about saving all these money if the middle class is gonna get screwed with higher taxes?

In fact if you listen to what they actually say, at least half of what they're doing isn't even about efficiency, it's about ideological purity.

Because Republicans refuse to adequately fund and staff the govt agencies that can crack down on fraud, they prefer to allow the fraud to happen so they can scream "see, govt doesn't work!" (and also because some of it is their friends doing the fraud)

See: their demonizing adequately funding and modernizing the IRS

So I've dealt with mental illnesses throughout my life and I can confidently say things are a hell of a lot better now than when I was a kid. They literally understood so little about the subject that there were basically 3 categories with rigid qualifiers. If you didn't fit 100% into a mold you were considered lazy, undisciplined, etc.

Instead of just blindly rattling off a bunch of buzzwords that you know nothing about maybe select 1 or 2 of the things from your list you actually have experience in.

Not just that but you CAN train people. It's possible for juniors to learn >.>

> This is who they are bullying and putting a target on. The best of us nerds.

Wilfully choosing to work for DOGE/ current Musk certainly isn't "the best of us".

Government is not a startup just as pizza is not a vegetable, just as prison is not a vacation from a bad job. It’s more accurate and less toxic to compare molecular oxygen to carbon monoxide. False comparisons do more harm than good.

Inexperienced people imposing disruptions due to lack of experience is why young people may succeed at startups but fail at establishing companies. Likewise, government is not a startup and you really don’t want government to fail.

Probably won't be interpreted as such but this is an honest question; I don't care about their age really but if they are so smart, why are they taking part of an illegal operation? Befehl ist befehl? That's not very smart is it? Or are they picked because they are young and gullible and easily manipulated yet brilliant in some other areas?

As a non-American: What's illegal here?

My understanding is this is DOGE getting some analysis software in place so they can find out where the money goes and start their cuts, which I understand there is an executive order for. And my understanding is that the executive does have the power to do that sort of audit.

Where has my understanding gone wrong?

I am also a non-American so yes, I would like to see your question answered too.

My understanding from online reading (... but we know how that goes ...) is that that executive order cannot be given without approval and that approval was not given. But would love to hear someone with more knowledge to chime in as all the left-ish to even moderate right media are shouting all of this is illegal and overstepping.

As a non-american, my feeling is that it’s just about who signs the order.

If Biden creates a new program by executive order and puts a non elected person in charge, republicans will cry. If Trump does the same, democrats will yell.

It’s just the polarisation of the debate that is higher than before.

I thought so, but they seem have a lot of issues explaining it in a way that makes it seem on the up. On all sides.

Handling personal information of citizens is subject to a lot of laws and protections. You can’t just put whatever software installed by whomever.

It's probably legal, but we will find out in court.

You are pretty much correct. There is a ton of partisan vitriol that is currently obscuring the facts. My understanding is that Elon Musk is an advisor to the president, but not a government employee. Musk and his crew are given authority to do pretty much whatever they want in terms of cutting employees and programs, so long as Trump signs off on it. Is it legal? Probably, but nothing like this has ever been done before. You can very easily see it as private citizens with no official government power taking away power from more legitimate government employees.

Potentially quite a lot, although it is hard to tell with how fast they have been moving and the dubious legal claims they have been making to support it.

DOGE is not a department authorized by Congress to exist. Elon's appointment at the head of it was not confirmed by Congress, usurping its right to 'advise and consent' to the executive. All government employees have strict rules they have to follow about conflicts of interest, which Elon's companies many government contracts would put him in violation of. Congress dictates what and how the government spends its money, and the Executive is tasked with carrying that out; Elon has placed himself in the middle of that, and has been saying he will now be the one that chooses how that money is spent. There are many laws in place on how the government is to handle personal information, and there is no indication or oversight of DOGE to verify those laws are being followed. Elon was locking employees out of their workplace, despite having that authority (since he was not confirmed to Congress to be in charge of that department).

There are probably quite a lot of other ones too. A lot of the strategy seems to be moving faster than the courts can keep up.

Apart from the fact that the analysis software is being installed on insecure computers, to ingest the PII of employees and of Treasury transactions, by people with security clearance granted at the last minute:

The cuts are already preceding the actual analysis, and once the authority of the executive to do whatever they have done is decided in court, the damage will have been done. It is the “stop me if you can, I’ll be done before the Supreme Court stops me” approach that is terrifying.

> Or are they picked because they are young and gullible and easily manipulated

bingo, take developing minds with high risk tolerance to do the illegal work someone older and wiser would refuse.

Smart? Maybe. Wise? Definitely not.

Intelligence isn’t an indicator of ability to navigate huge bureaucracies.

Those involved in the Manhattan Project who were young were doing scientific/technical work.

When dealing with organizing and managing a great number of people or resources, I have never seen a young inexperienced human performing adequately, even remotely.

Old age and presumed experience is not at all a guarantee that someone would be good in such roles, but from what I have seen, young age and the associated lack of relevant experience pretty much guarantees failure in such cases.

Their project literally killed innocent people.

It’s good to read a comment of sanity amidst all this instinctual bellyaching whenever T or E do anything. But in particular when a formerly well respected publication writes a hit piece like this…

I used to scoff when people said “TDS” was a real thing, but having observed the same with Elon over the years and then listening to hours long talks between him and others, I realised “EDS” is clearly also a thing. And lo and behold: Listening to full long-form talks with Trump revealed a person wholly different to what media portrays.

And as a disclaimer, no I don’t agree with everything they do or say. But they’re not the monsters the monsters in the media machinery spin them up to be either.

The real monsters are those that purposefully trim and clip and stitch together falsehoods out of context, and then believe their own lies until they’re willing to throw other citizens under a figurative bus just because they work with or for “those people”.

They may be smart, and may have won awards, but Musk's techno-thugs are not "the best of us". At best, they're misguided and have fallen for Musk's charisma. At worst, they're actively supporting and abetting the subversion of our democratic government.

> At best, they're misguided and have fallen for Musk's charisma. At worst, they're actively supporting and abetting the subversion of our democratic government.

They can easily be both. They're definitely the latter

Let us also consider just how badly this continues to paint tech and tech workers to the general public. To distrust technology such as all the AI hate we see online.

It's the opposite. This paints tech nerds as the heroes.

To fascists. The rest of us are retroactively apologizing to SJWs who were right the whole time and we did not believed to.

They are fixing our non-democratic government that has been wasting trillions of our tax dollars, while we have increased homelessness, physical and mental health crisis, and other problems that have been ignored for decades.

The NYT just reported that the federal government lost $236 billion to apparent fraud ("improper payments") in 2023 alone.

The US GAO says "2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud"

What Musk is doing is what the majority voted for. To finally put an end the unbelievable waste, fraud and abuse. This is exactly what he said he would do and most Americans are relieved and see hope for the first time in a long time.

I am sorry that you took so much flak in this thread. The HN crowd generally pretends to dislike elitism but this whole thread seems to be questioning the abilities of the engineers and conspiracy theories about billionaires. I interestingly don't see a lot of people defending government spending though. If the DOGE program were done under a different party and perhaps to expand government spending, I imagine the HN crowd would be supportive and defend the engineers.

https://xkcd.com/793/ This is what you are doing. You're assuming all problems are variants of a software problem, because you're a software engineer.

Did it ever occur to you they might not be?

Nah, what Musk is doing is attempting to destroy democracy with no regard to harm it causes to American citizens. Oh, while not caring about what is legal or illegal at all. It is ridiculous to call previous governments "non democratic" while being engaged in what Trump and Musk are doing now. There is about 0 chance the people selected by Trump will improve health, especially so as they are trying to destroy the very agencies that used to protect food safety, the air and so on.

If you seriously think Musk of all people is actually interested in improving the lives of regular Americans, I have a bridge to sell you. He's a liar, a narcissist, and the world's richest man. That is who you're cheering on to take over the finances of the richest country in the world?

It's great that there are young, brilliant people in research and engineering and working for business ventures. It's also very cool you remember some who started out young in the past. Hasn't got much to do with the posted article though, as that is talking about the integrity of public policy versus actors personally beholden to unelected officials and their friends reaching into US-governance.

It does not matter. None of that has to do with the requirements of the job which, BTW, should have zero executive power and only make recommendations to Congress, the institution that has power of the purse.

Do you understand that this is just a constitutional crisis? I reckon musk ended up appointing kids because they also did not understand the political and ethical implications of all this.

If they're helping overthrow democracy and the rule of law, they are not the best of us nerds.

Naming and shaming them is good. No one forced them to take this job. With the skills you list they could have done any number of good or neutral things instead.

Putting a target on? They're dismantling the gears that make America run smoothly, and you say putting a target on? This is the point where people should start taking into consideration violent actions

I would be weary of nerds taking care of this nation after all I've seen in the tech industry. AirBNB, Uber, Juicero, WeWork, Theranos, Tesla, crypto...

Agreed. I used to scoff at the hate "techbros" received, but at this point the industry has done more than enough damage to deserve that derision. This is by far the biggest escalation, though.

Wernher von Braun was a brilliant young engineer, one of the best minds of his generation. At age 25 he joined a patriotic party that was full of curiosity and creativity, disrupting the stale status quo of his home country.

For the next eight years he did groundbreaking work in developing rockets. In 1945 he and his youthful engineering team were actively recruited to continue their work for another country with great ambitions in space. A tremendous success for his personal career, even though the party he served fell a bit short of their goals.

He was clearly "the best of us nerds". Never mind that his genius was built on slave labor and oppression. He disrupted some governments, made good money and got to work on awesome rockets! That’s what counts in life.

This has shades of Robin Williams’ bar rant in Good Will Hunting.

Haha I think the irony here will fly over some heads, this is great though.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun.

Tom Lehrer - Wernher von Braun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

No you’re supporting treasonous actions and you must be taught and discouraged from such actions that violate the will of the people in favor of expeditiousness. Your views are a danger to a stably growing society.

I figure more 25 year old nerds who dismantle the US government ought to be bullied. Signed, a 25 year old nerd.

(While I'm at it, there's nothing special about age here. Plenty of 25 year olds are actually doing productive things for humanity. But many 40 year olds are doing it too. The difference is that they are competent and empathetic, not random guys who Elon happens to like.)

> The guys featured in this gross and irresponsible hit piece by Wired, by all accounts, are brilliant engineers. Top 1%.

Their youth and technical ability isn't the problem. What are problems are their inexperience and recklessness and evident lack of awareness. Government and the administrative state are serious undertakings. Move Fast and Break Things is extraordinarily dangerous in this context.

“Move Fast and Break Things” really does only apply to the scenario where you have to clean up your own messes.

> Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency.

So, who's the VC that will fund the 4-9 failed governments we'll have to go through until we get a unicorn?

Maybe we'll get a solid Somaliland in the ensuing chaos after this current unmanaged Chapter 11 leads to a messy Chapter 7.

The “problem” with youth isn’t intelligence, it’s that early twenties you are at your most confidently ideological and you’re most willing to break things. I bet the average age of a terrorist is pretty low too.

The danger of the vision is the power of the vision, fix what’s broken in the bureaucracy, it’s not being fascist it’s just easier to ask forgiveness than permission!

We’ll see!

> one reason startups work so well

Since when do startups "work well"? Some startups work well, but famously >90% of them fail. Imagine if 9 out of every 10 fires was just left alone because the fire brigade was replaced by a startup, or if 9 out 10 bridges fell down within a few years. Startups are just one of many models of running things, but they are not appropriate for everything.

Treating the government like a startup is gambling, the difference is startups are intentionally disposable while a Nation State... it's a fucking Nation State.

>Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status quo.

Counterpoint - they don't have the wisdom and experience in the domain they are working in that older, wiser heads do. I've seen a LOT of stuff from both 'tech bros' and programmers who are new to a domain where it's clear they are 100% confident they are right, despite consensus to the contrary. And when their plans are implemented, all the things they didn't think about come into play - such as Tesla service which is terrible.

These people may all be brilliant engineers. But not all problems are engineering problems, and while these people may be able to engineer a system to reduce costs drastically, they may not understand where to cut costs and where efficiency can actually be achieved.

Don't forget that most of the new tech economy that people harp on about (Uber, Amazon, Tesla spring to mind) is built on the erosion of workers' rights and lowest-common-denominator treatment wherever possible.

You need a mix of naive enthusiasm and grizzled experience.

It feels a bit like that famous Joel on Software post - when faced with an existing code base - it looks over complex and you can't understand it - so you decide to re-write - only to discover during the process why it's so complex in the first place.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

Sure it's important to challenge the status quo - but it's really important to approach it with humility and to seek to understand why things are the way they are, not just to assume you know it all.

The Cultural Revolution was led by China's smartest students too.

Even If I take everything you said here to the T, being brilliant in making tech startups does not AT ALL mean they'll be brilliant understanding government processes and structures.

This over arrogance of us techies thinking because we're good with computers we're the best at everything is what people are annoyed and, justifiably critical of.

You're going to be responsible to assess and dismantle a government agency with thousands of employees and billions in budget being in your twenties with ZERO gov experience is indeed a huge red flag and not merely putting a target because they're young.

We've all met incredibly accomplished people who are not to be trusted with sharp objects. Expertise in one area does not translate to another easily.

Well, even if they are, brilliance isn't everything in a human... And it shows.

When the very first sentence of your premise is false, why read the rest?

LOL.

I’m some sort of off-brand late comer Scots Canadian so my opinion is essentially alien and invalid to people like you but I’ve got to ask:

Why does the incestuous name dropping qualify anyone especially?

Peter Thiel is expressly trying to (and vocally so) speed run everything into the apocolypse and is very worried about the anti christ (apparently). He’s also running a massive surveillance dragnet and wants power and money above all. Again, his words.

How in the global fuck does working for or being awarded by a person with those ambitions qualify anyone for anything?

You may as well have said they attend church every sunday as their qualification.

If you said, well he has spent 10 years developing high availability systems and invented novel algorithms or implementations for managing high volume data flows or something then maybe there would be something to talk about.

But I’ve seen baby faced juniors elevated to senior and management roles and bungle them SO badly that it alienated all the actual engineering talent again and again because they were little more than virtual blood boys.

It sounds more like this latter scenario is the most likely.

Its just all goddamned hype men and their blood boys up and down this grotesque beast of what was once an industry.

With those words you don’t work in an industry, you serve a new segment of technolords and their only goal is to eat everything.

All those credentials and yet they lack the wisdom to see what is really happening.

Maybe that had something to do with why they were chosen?

There's some real irony here.

What I'm hearing from my friends - many of whom have helped build and scale some of the most successful tech companies on the planet - is that no engineer is an exceptional one without a modicum of ethics and wisdom.

These seem to be in short supply at DOGE.

Don't startups fail at a very high rate though?

You work on a team named after a meme.

Such rhyme. Much knowledge. Wow.

Smart is not the same thing as qualified. None of these qualifications you've listed have anything to do with running a government agency.

People around here love to talk about the Dunning–Kruger effect, but seem to be of the mistaken belief that it is about smart vs dumb people rather than people with domain expertise vs people without.

Let's see their Pull Requests. Then you won't need to make assertions about their ability. We can have public accountability in the light of day.

> Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25.

The youngest scientist or engineer was Richard Feynman who was 27 years old at the time.

Average age of scientists/engineers on the Manhattan Project was closer to 37.

25 sounds so absurd I don’t know how you didn’t double check your sources. The rest of your post makes some claims about NASA but stopped reading as it has to be BS as well.

The attributes of young men have always made them convenient to put on the frontlines.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s In the Shadow of the Shadow State, which discusses the concept of the anti-state state.

https://sfonline.barnard.edu/ruth-wilson-gilmore-in-the-shad...

To the people talking about how "Zelenskyy said that he only got $75 billion of the $175 billion in foreign aid we sent them, where'd that $100 billion go??? That's right, it went into the pockets of the Deep State!" and then deleting their comments:

According to https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine, "It’s important to note that of the $175 billion total, only $106 billion directly aids the government of Ukraine. Most of the remainder is funding various U.S. activities associated with the war in Ukraine, and a small portion supports other affected countries in the region." Of that $106, about $70 billion is weapons, $33 is budget support. So it makes sense that lawmakers would claim that "We sent Ukraine $175 billion!" and Zelenskyy would directly see less than $175.

The the line from Zelenskyy is an attempt to clarify to the world that $X billion in a bill somewhere doesn't equate to $X billion on the ground in Ukraine directly; he's not saying there was some kind of corruption involved and that the money mysteriously disappeared.

To relate more to the HN crowd. It's like opening a new project and the initial reaction is everything is terrible. Then as someone understands the project better they see it's not terrible, but the problem is much more complex than they initially understood. Basically classic engineer hubris.

Let's open their repos and see their PRs. Then nobody will need to make assertions about their brilliance or irresponsibility.

D.O.G.E.: Make your repos public. Let's see what you are doing. And if you don't have repos, write a script to mirror the codebase and your diffs.

Luke Farritor Deciphered an ancient scroll using AI, he seems to be pretty smart.

Cool.

So anyway, let's see what he (allegedly) is doing with the codebase. Given that these systems are part of the public trust, we should all want to see the code and the DOGE team's PRs as they make improvements.

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ijbtqf/this_i...

What would that prove? Great coders are not necessarily competent leaders of the civil service.

We can all watch the DOGE team in action and not speculate as to their brilliance or irresponsibility.

Move fast and break thousands of Chesterton's fences.

And here I thought they'd actually consider my resume. They didn't even bother looking. When DOGE first called for people to apply, they did it on X and said we can send a message to their account on X.

So I actually got excited about tackling waste, and wrote this cover letter:

https://magarshak.com/resume-cover-letter.php

Little did I know this admin was going to be shutting down datasets from data.gov and other crap. I really tried to bring something positive into it, but it's just more of the same. They sidelined Vivek too.

> Little did I know

You should have, had you done any research. This was long after Elon’s slide into anti-democratic, far right ideology. And as we now know merely weeks before he did multi Nazi salutes on stage.

This feels like people who are surprised that Trump is ticking boxes on Project 2025 despite it being out for multiple years.

There’s a pizza shop in NW DC with a basement you should investigate.

Well, it's refreshing that you're doing an "I told you so" about Musk, rather than getting on my case about my suggestion to use Blockchain to "increase public transparency and accountability", which is what I thought was more likely to happen on HN.

I think there are actually good use cases for blockchain and smart contracts, and DOGE was finally going to be one of them.

I didn’t think any of your suggestions were worth evaluating on their merits.

Did you find a legit use case for blockchain? Nice work bro!

What evidence do people have that anything damaging is happening? Because these people are assumed to be conservative and not progressive? How is this any different than an internal audit whose work would be kept confidential? Or even a third party vendor who presumably would be covered by confidentiality agreements? The allegations in these comments are completely without evidence and are outright politically biased. All the wired article can say is there are a handful of young presumably conservative engineers doing their job. That about sums up the scandal.

Nothing about this is normal, goes by standard practices or procedures, and is being led by a capricious man-child who wasn't elected to office, nor confirmed by the senate, with extraordinarily dubious intentions and conflicts of interest, who has brought in a bunch of near-children to clandestinely infiltrate huge swaths of our government, none of which have the appropriate security clearances, training, ... to engage in any of these activities.

Have they explained what they are doing? No. If you ask them, would they tell you? Is there any kind of oversight available? No. As a matter of fact, prior to these actions, Trump dismissed the inspectors general responsible for this oversight, in violation of the law which was passed to prevent him from doing just that, again.

Who in their right mind would assume that everything "above board"?

We have his last "audit" of Twitter, where he repeatedly and publicly embarrassed himself with half hearted explanations for his clearly personal firings as he carved the platform into a racist hellhole.

Some of us know people that work for him, confirming he is that boss that will fire anyone giving him bad news on the spot because he wants to push his dumbass unreachable deadlines. And mostly because he thinks it's cool and has reveled in his ability to fire people like any small human would.

We have the evidence of the family, that everything Musk says about his presence in raising his own kids is a lie. He was not around, and seems to only push the narrative because he knows being an absentee father would be unpalatable to the conservatives he's courting.

They're hiring interns to fire people because they're molding their ride or die sycophants. It's completely natural to assume when they're telling us they're being thoughtful, they aren't. That when they say it's for you, it's for them. It always has been. That you choose to stick your head in the sand is your problem.

The rule of law is dead. Is that not damaging enough?

Yeah let's let them continue their coup until we can assess all the consequences and determine whether dismantling the whole country was a good or bad thing

laws are not about evidence and punishment. they are just as much, if not less, about preventing the apparition of evidence. oftentimes, evidence means you’re too late.

i meant “not more.”

i very much lack sleep today.

some different takes:

https://www.crisesnotes.com/elon-musk-wants-to-get-operation...

no matter political affiliation, this should be alarming the level of access these people have been given without security clearances etc.

this is a national security issue.

This has to be a bad faith argument. DOGE was not signed into law by congress as an official executive department, Musk was not officially appointed with a congress hearing and approval.

They are operating outside of their circle of competence, because they are not working on an engineering problem.

I don't understand why the editors allowed the engineers' names to be made public. What did they hope to gain by doing this other than making them magnets for harassment and possibly threats?

The identities of the engineers are now unambigiously in the public interest as they now have an impact on the government. These aren't scrappy hackers trolling on internet forums.

They're public servants. Most public servants have their name, position, level, salary, etc listed in public datasets. There is no "doxxing" of public servants. This isn't a usenet.

Now do @libsoftiktok.

Or Musk himself: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858916546338590740 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858914228624924963

The American people deserve to know what is happening in their government.

Isn't it free speech? Yes, that is a comment in style against the guidelines of this forum, but you've got to admire the irony.

In normal circumstances, e.g. as contractors I would agree. However, they are not, as far as I can tell they are operating as federal employees. No federal employee name is private.

I do see this (article) as mostly retaliation though. Maybe deserved or not. Hard to tell at this point. But these people are public employees nevertheless, they never had the option for anonymity.

History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. Komsomol/Soviet, Red guards/China. Ideology fan the flame of youth into fanatic. Who/what is providing the necessary guardrail? God speed America. Future belong to the young. Make good/long term decision.

The similarity with Red Guards is too uncanny to ignore.

I guess we should be thankful that the new Red Guards aren't beating federal employees to death. Yet.

The Trump-supporting Red Guards might be the Michigan Militia? Or the marchers at the disastrous "Unite the Right" rally? Those are tiny fringe groups orders of magnitude too weak to carry out a Cultural Revolution. Maybe the 1500 people who got pardoned for the January 6 riot?

You may not be aware of this, but the Red Guards were over 10 million people.

I sincerely hope my analogy is just me being chicken little/sky is falling.

In the physical world, inflicting large-scale harm requires a significant number of people wielding fists or basic weapons. The digital landscape not so much.

Most techies belong to as Terry Pratchett put it "'skilled artisans', the people too low down the social scale to be movers and shakers but slightly too high to be easily moved or shook."

I think I will be ok but empathized those who will be negatively impacted.

Elon is stealing any and all data to train AI. His padawans are AI guys. At least he's going in personally with a crew like a proper heist.

It is AI related, but I don't think it's only "train". I believe Musk is a real visionary (villain?), and he's going to replace the whole government apparatus with AI. POTUS included.

in the RFPs, they are gonna replace DEI clauses with AI clauses. which reveals what they think about labor and people

There's probably going to be a flood of lawsuits, complaints, etc. following this. Cleaning up inefficient gov processes and waste would be good, but this is the completely wrong way to go about it. A single team, made up of extremely young people, some of which haven't even finished college yet, is not qualified in the slightest to do so. This is on top of them having no gov experience, and experience with how things work on the individual teams they're trying to clean out.

Not to mention they've probably already accessed Secret and up levels of classified data without a clearance, which would get any normal gov employee fired and potentially thrown in jail depending on the offense.

I also want to highlight that OPM is the backbone of workers rights for the government. Most skilled positions working directly for the gov are already underpaid. OPM was one of the few pros they had to offer; robust worker rights that are required across the fed.

Lawsuits take time, the authoritarian takeover of the government is completed in days.

bureaucracies essentially never reform or reduce themselves through their own processes and by their own hand. they have not the incentive, perspective, nor means to do so.

"Bringing in young talent with new skills is literally 'what can be unburdened by what has been' if that's a thing anyone on the left still wants" -- Lulu Cheng Meservey

Is anyone surprised? It's not like it was a secret, and a majority of voters still voted this government in. Maybe most thought it'll be better for inflation and chose to ignore or belittle the crazy. It seems we're getting the crazy now - and not, yet anyway, a single action of inflation.

In Trump's first term he had one of the lowest rates of fulfilling campaign promises of any president. I was caught off-guard by him actually appearing to go through with this.

He tried, but he wasn’t well prepared.

Kind of. He also spent $120m in taxpayer money to spend nearly a quarter of his first term golfing. He wasn't the most active president I've ever seen.

Say what you want, but if we don't drastically cut spending, our way of life will collapse. It would be nice if Congress itself would reign in spending and downsize the government, but everyone knows that has a 0% chance of happening.

This is better hyperinflation or a violent revolution, at least, which is what it avoids for us. Anyone who doesn't see that hasn't done the thought experiment of extrapolating out our spending for a few more decades. It can't continue, period. Period. Our only choice is how to change it and our democracy (congresspuppets controlled by lobbies) fundamentally cannot fix this. Does anyone have a better idea that will actually work?

I would agree with you if the people slashing spending indiscriminately on things that poor people rely on, also didn't have a history of and weren't currently planning to yet again give the rich and corporations massive tax cuts that have and will balloon the federal deficit.

My idea? Raise taxes. I know, it's radical and literally no one has ever thought of it, but we tried lowering taxes and the deficit goes up. So maybe if we raise taxes the deficit will go down.

Do you see a popular mandate for raising taxes materializing? Do you see Congress enacting that? I don't. Like you said, you're not the first to think of it, but it never happens.

As imperfect as DOGE is, its the only measure I can see actually happening that has a shot at cutting the deficit. I would love to think of another one.

Yes, I see a popular mandate materializing, absolutely. There are very few but absurdly rich people standing in the way. It's happened in the past, and it will happen in the future.

I am more cynical. Congress is controlled by lobbyists which are controlled by oligarchs. Voters are controlled by the media which is controlled by oligarchs. I don't see us raising taxes significantly. Wishful thinking.

I also think we should try to cut spending BEFORE raising taxes. What seems better? Less waste and less tax or more waste and more tax? What is better for the economy (for the organization of labor and capital) in the long run? What will attract foreign investment? What will allow accrual of consumer savings?

DOGE is positive because we need a wrecking ball to come in and cut spending because the system is rotten and Congress and the media don't serve the people anymore. They plumb won't do it. I honestly couldn't think of a better personality profile than an idealistic 25 year old engineer who is young enough to hate the government and resent being born 100k in debt as much as I do. Who hates housing prices and health care and the MIC. Someone relentlessly logical whose raison d'entre is optimizing complex systems. At least they'll do something about all of this. Waiting on Congress to do something against the will of their masters is a losing game.

I think that we should cut the amount of money going towards superyachts and 10,000 dollar bottles of wine, rather than education, infrastructure and healthcare. Which do you imagine will lead to a healthier economy in the long run?

Because when you cut taxes on the super wealthy, you are effectively taking money away from education and infrastructure and allocating it towards superyachts.

Ok so let's raise taxes on the wealthy. I think that's great and am in total agreement.

How long do you think we should wait for Congress to significantly raise taxes on the rich? How confident are you that will ever happen? Have you seen a graph of the national debt? How long do you think we have to wait? Why oppose cutting spending now? That's not in conflict with raising taxes for the wealthy, both should be done.

If we start by cutting services to the public, the tax hikes on the rich are 100% guaranteed to never happen. And then after several years the economy declines, and inequality increases, and tax revenues go down, rinse, repeat and eventually you end up where we are now.

Why is making the public suffer considered fair game but making the super wealthy pay their share politically inconceivable?

Can you give me examples of services you think DOGE will cut that the economy depends on? Genuinely asking. I assume we have different mental models of what will go away.

When I think of spending cuts, I think of: USAID (23B), that rural fiber project (42.5B) and the electric charging stations (7B), stuff like that. I have a hard time imagining that these are net economic positives, but I am sure you have different services in mind that would be worse to cut. My impression is that the government is actually full of waste. I certainly don't feel like the citizens receive 8T of value in return for the taxes we pay.

Ah, I see. You ignore my question and answer as if I had asked a different one more to your liking.

https://youtu.be/CaPgDQkmqqM?si=2yOYdn0aYAOcsYvv

I suppose this could be considered a type of gish galloping too.

https://youtu.be/FK4RHzNHZXY?si=leCItVHw2OkZzZjr

At any rate it doesn’t matter what you or I think or say anymore. Politics in the sense of the people debating and voting is dead now, because democracy is dead. Trump is replacing the whole federal bureaucracy from the top down with loyalists, including the justice department- he no longer has to listen to congress or the courts. Democracy lasted 249 years; we had a good run.

No, politics is dead, there is only survival now. Trump will continue to yank our chains, keep us guessing, suppress free speech, target minority groups for extermination- and we have to endure, or run.

Im sure as you read this article, they're already dumping TBs of classified documents and storing it on Musk's servers.

HN Comments have really deteriorated. Dang is AWOL i guess.

They really really have deteriorated. I’m not sure that dang’s efforts alone would be enough to hold back the tide though. I worry this is a culture shift :/

Not necessarily a culture shift - assuming you mean IRL culture, not HN culture - but rather a sign of HN's much increased popularity in recent years, outside the thoughtful nerd circle.

I did mean HN culture, but you make a really good point either way. Maybe I need to find a yet-more-secluded corner, where the rest of the world can’t encroach so easily

The moderation team does a good enough job already; they will and should continue to stick to their guns about "good faith" discussions and that will be enough of a frustration to people repeatedly posting thoughtless or incurious comments that most discussions will continue to be reasonable and sensible. There are still pockets of that here. I think the other commenter nailed it about this being a result of increased popularity but I also think that will cool down as the less curious learn to prefer different communities.

- Youth-Led Implementation - Bypassing Traditional Authority Structures - Loyalty-Based Appointments - Institutional Disruption - Limited Oversight - Information Control

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

Interesting inversion of priorities? In the age of huge increase of abuse of power by secrecy over-classification and already unearthed arguably up to criminal abuse of power and waste of our money (with all crimes that it caused here and in the world), invasion of the country and countless other hybrid attacks how does secret clearance of few efficient engineers look compared to all of the results already shown and more to come? Is it ideal, no but there was not other known way or all would be open to hear it and cutting the power of executive branch is bureaucratic dream where they could grow like cancer up to killing the host, which they were arguably close.

>https://archive.ph/QYBhK

why is this redirecting to lifetips.it ? did archive.today get hacked?

This one is working:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250202235355/https://www.wired...

what's your dns?

This seems broadly good. If you told me a democratic admin had recruited these people, I would think "wow! what a positive signal for the current admin!"

How could you not trust a 19 year old who goes by bigballs?

I for one trust Mr.BigBalls to make smart and effective cuts to get our government back on track!

You should probably pay more attention to what people do rather than their credentials as it’s a more powerful signal.

The Obama admin created the US Digital Service — i.e. the unit that “DOGE” has now reappropriated — which attracted and hired folks like Google’s Matt Cutts [0]. The USDS did not, as far as we know, try to sneak in fresh-out-of-college-grads by bypassing the normal hiring process.

[0] https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/the-next-chapter-...

I found Bukele's comments to be eye opening, https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1886059275174506850

> Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.

> While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.

> At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.

> Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.

Their funding has been hard for Congress to vet, and it seems like they do some shady things. Kudos to Elon and his team for cutting us more than $1b/day so far!

This was basically Open Society Foundations but using taxpayer funds.. of course leftist groups will complain, this is expected.

It’s not Elon Musk’s place to make spending allocation decisions for the US government. The Constitution assigns that power to Congress. It is not hyperbolic to say that if Elon/Doge can arbitrarily cut spending, then Congress has effectively been abolished, and the US Constitutional order is over.

Now, if Elon wanted to review spending allocations and recommend cuts to Congress, that would be fine. I would be in favor of that, provided he accessed the data in a legal and privacy-respecting way.

if it's not Elon's place even though Trump literally ran on Elon doing this, and they not only won the electoral college but also the popular vote too, then it's not USAID's place to do so either

the money they give away tends to fund extremism and terrorism, and never goes to where it's needed

- Haiti: Post-2010 earthquake, $1.14 billion was spent on a port and power plant project promoted by President Bill Clinton. The project never built anything. - Cuba: A 2006 audit showed $74 million in “democracy promotion” funds vanished without oversight. - Afghanistan: Millions squandered on health scams; hospitals never built. - Nigeria: Chemonics, a major USAID contractor, was linked to a subcontractor's overbilling scandal. Hundreds of millions lost. - COVID 19 Funding: USAID sent over $40MILLION in taxpayer money to a scientist located in Wuhan to do gain of function mutations. This directly led to the creation and release of COVID-19 - $2.5 MILLION to DEI in Serbia - $70,000 onan Irish DEI musical - $47,000 on transgender operas in Colombia - $32,000 on a trans comic book in Peru - Iraq: $20M for an Iraqi version of Sesame Street to promote LGBTQ Agenda - Egypt & Tunisia: $56M for “tourism” - Jordan: $40M for “schools” - Vietnam: $11M to fight “trash burning” - Central America: $27M for deportee gift bags. - Trump Lawfare: $27M to fund left wing prosecutions of populist political opponents around the globe, including Donald Trump. Patently illegal.

It is contrary to the foundational document of our country. The president does not have that authority because he is a president, not a king.

Nope, the president has the power over federal agencies. You might argue this wouldn't be something he could do if he didn't specifically campaign on this issue, which is usually where the line is drawn. But the fact that he DID campaign on this, and that the president DOES have the power to such a thing, means he can and has every right to.

Again, Congress has the power to allocate spending. If you think the president, or Elon Musk, has absolute power over the entire federal government, then, well, there’s a word for that. You think he’s a dictator.

Congress has the power to create spending, the president has the power to stop spending.

By law, he has no such power. Congress has made impoundment illegal.

No, not kudos!

Before destroying an entire organization, it’s important to know their true impact and how much it’ll hurt to have them gone. So far, I’ve seen zero evidence that deep thought or analysis went into these decisions. In other words, it’s objectively a careless decision. If it’s not careless, then Elon should be sharing evidence, lengthy discussions on his decisions, etc. Plus, there should be a public comment period because Elon sure as SHIT doesn’t have enough context to understand the full impact.

I, for one, do not like the fact that the richest man in the world, who still owns multiple companies in conflict with our government, gets to unilaterally make these decisions with no input from the public. Not only is it undemocratic, it’s objectively corrupt! You know, that thing where we expect our federal decision makers to not have severe conflicts of interests?

So no, don’t fucking give kudos for shit like this. And a single tweet from one president isn’t enough to justify decisions of this magnitude.

If those allegations are true, sure, reform or shutter the department. But do it democratically. Move fast and break shit is not the correct problem solving model to apply to geopolitics or even federal policy, and it’s absurd that this isn’t self evident.

USAID is reputedly the tool of the CIA.

> Before destroying an entire organization, it’s important to know their true impact and how much it’ll hurt to have them gone

I have to prove my impact every 6 months as an engineer. I expect an entire organization can do the same - the fact there is not a clear impact people can point to speaks volumes.

They release a yearly impact report.

Every right-wing comment on this page is just asserting stuff. There's no information in any of them. No attempts to educate or inform. No breakdown or analysis of what USAID does and the cost-benefit of shutting them down.

Try doing a little research and writing a paragraph on what USAID does and the pros and cons of shutting them down. It would be good for you.

Nope. There's lots of information both on this page and throughout the internet.

You can't reform an institution that's filled with your political opponents when they aim to sabotage you. Many federal employees worked to sabotage Trump in his first term, and how that he has such a strong mandate from the voters he's going after the people who sabotaged him so that the country doesn't destroy itself in a debt spiral.

That's just a regurgitation of talking points, so I guess there's no conversation to be had here.

Nope, they're not "talking points" it's called reality.

It was done democratically. Trump ran for president on abolishing this deep seated managerial class that controls the federal government, he specified Elon to be at the helm of it and here we are.

You have no business pretending this is undemocratic. These offices being shut down are the same people who sabotaged Trump during his first term, they have every right to do this. And if anyone understands large organizations, it's Elon: the man who's proven he's the greatest engineer in the world and that you don't need a PhD to be that.

This is just blatantly false. The 10% number is ridiculous which anyone involved with foreign aid knows. But you can easily tell that the countries want the money from the cases where the US threatens to take away aid over some disagreement and then the foreign countries capitulates. You know these are sovereign nations that can say no to the aid if they don't want it right? You don't just show up without a visa and hand out money without the approval of the foreign government.

This is a very simplistic take.

If they're engaged in doing illegal stuff, at the federal level, I fully expect Trump to just pardon everyone involved.

Maybe they're too deep in the Yarvin / Thield / Musk (Kool-Aid) sauce, but they should know better. This stuff will follow them for life.

> to just pardon

More likely Trump continue to fire prosecutors that try to do their jobs upholding the literal law. No prosecution, no pardon needed.

The check on that is for Congress to impeach and remove a corrupt President from office, but that will be difficult with how many Republicans are complicit.

Based on what we've seen this past week it seems the next administration would have an obligation to fire them all, in much the way Trump is firing anyone who looked into or investigated him. And extrapolating to the next few months I'd say the next administration will likely have an obligation to attempt to send anyone associated with DOGE to prison for the rest of their lives. At least this appears to be the type of government Donald Trump and his voters believe America should have.

A lot of people are acting like the end of history is here.

It seems clear the US turned a page in its history.

Do you remember when Presidents disclosed their finances and avoided things that could look like gifts/bribes? When they didn't fire prosecutors for getting too close to their business? When trial-balloons about becoming "President For Life" were taboo? When their lawyers didn't argue they had presumptive immunity to literally assassinate the other candidate?

This news item is just one more previously-unthinkable line crossed in an unambiguous trend towards more-crazy.

___________

> "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next."

-- They Thought They Were Free: The Germans The Germans, 1933-45* by Milton Meyer, published 1955.

I want to add here that the Holocaust required a war (the Wannsee conference was in 1942), massive censorship (easy during a war) and misdirection like model concentration camps (Theresienstadt), where international agencies could look around and see how "humane" everyone was treated.

There was no Internet, only official propaganda. Sometimes the truth leaked via the Swedish embassy or railway workers, but it cannot spread far if those who spread it are killed themselves.

But I agree that people all over the world have been docile and compliant since 2020 on all sorts of issues, so the danger is there even if it should be harder today.

> Do you remember when Presidents disclosed their finances and avoided things that could look like gifts/bribes?

So quaint. Now bribes are out in the open and no one even bats an eye. Trump coin, Trump media, never released anything about tax returns, selling merch, etc... It's comical to me that his followers think he's dismantling the deep state grifters, when he is a deep state grifter.

I have to give some credit to Trump and the media around him for being masters at the narrative. Hillary's emails and Hunter on a board of a company requires investigations and congressional involvement, but Trump and his family casually take 100's of millions if not billions in bribes and no one thinks twice.

It is the end of democracy in the United States.

yeah, that's what people said about his first administration too. yawn

And a lot of people are downplaying the severity of what is currently happening.

And are thereby enabling it, knowingly or unknowingly becoming part of it.

The goalposts will be moved until our country is a husk of its former self. Thats literally how constitutional republics die.

Quite the opposite, it's a lot of history in the making. But most likely it is the undignified end of Pax Americana.

*Unmaking. But yes. Some real collapse of the republic scale shit, take over by Orban style autocratic political men. Pax Americana & our influence in the world abroad for sure.

This is potentially falling of the Soviet Union bad. Not that we will dissolve the union (still hopefully a very low chance) but that the system of government collapses & the various business-mafias squabble to claim what they can in the power vacuum that follows; a loss of national integrity.

> A lot of people are acting like the end of history is here.

Would you rather:

* 'over react' about the end of history, and be wrong (i.e. things turn out fine), or

* 'under react' and end up with a bunch of thugs in charge?

It's possible this is a situation where you're crying "wolf" when there isn't one, but given Trump's erratic mind, and the stated plans of the political right

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

which side to you want to err of?

And with regards to "over reacting" and nothing happening: a lot of folks said Y2K was an over reaction because nothing happened, but nothing happened because people did a much reacting. That nothing burger was a success, not a sign of over reaction.

> And extrapolating to the next few months I'd say the next administration will likely have an obligation to attempt to send anyone associated with DOGE to prison for the rest of their lives.

If they get pre-emptive Presidential pardons, nothing can be done (unless you go with state-level charges).

Supreme court has made president king. They can just ignore the pardons.

They're directly attacking government infrastructure, including our intelligence apparatuses.

Even if they escape legal consequences they could become targeted for extrajudicial killings by intelligence agencies of the US and allies.

I assume these are US citizens. The US constitution isn't set up to protect intelligence agencies if they attempt that kind of thing on US soil.

What attack?? They are working for our government.

> If they're engaged in doing illegal stuff, at the federal level, I fully expect Trump to just pardon everyone involved.

Not trying to both-sides this, but the fact that Biden did that makes it more likely that Trump will do it too. It's a terrible precedent.

As if Trump cares about precedent. It makes no difference.

Musk could not get US Security Clearance

He cannot enter certain facilities or meetings at SpaceX because of that.

Yet now he is bypassing that requirement.

None of these people are elected or confirmed by the Senate and they are doing extremely sensitive things to the government

That's not how any of this is supposed to work by law.

National secrets shouldn’t have been kept in a bathroom in Mar-a-Lago and, yet, here we are.

Nor in a garage, nor in unsecured university offices

Q: Why are there (still) classified documents at USAID?

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/15/when-is-for...:

"U.S.A.I.D. was created in 1961 to help the United States win the “hearts and minds” of citizens in poor countries through civic action, economic aid and humanitarian assistance. As a cold war policy tool, the agency was, at times, used as a front for C.I.A. operations and operatives. Among the most infamous examples was the Office of Public Safety, a U.S.A.I.D. police training program in the Southern Cone that also trained torturers."

An actual answer (linking to archive.org since usaid.gov has been taken down): https://web.archive.org/web/20250117221701/https://www.usaid...

> The information about USAID’s development and humanitarian assistance programs is intentionally open and public; to perform the agency’s mission, USAID employees work directly with non-government organizations, contractors, United Nations organizations and host country governments. However, in order for USAID employees to effectively and efficiently carry out the agency’s programs, they often must have access to sensitive and sometimes classified information provided by other federal departments and agencies. Such information may pertain to U.S. foreign policy and relations as well as security conditions and threat data.

musk holds TS clearance but not SCI

Musk holding any level security clearance is farcical. It's the type of DEI that they're fighting so hard.

One thing CCP did masterfully is sending very young grads, who are newly admitted to the party, to go to different local communities and evaluate the outcome government project like poverty reduction there (because obviously Xi don’t trust local officials and party members). These young people have a lot of energy to make some impact, also too young to lie or corrupt. The result turned out to be actually effective.

There are quite some admiration for CCP from the american new right like moldbug and musk, It seems either they took a page from CCP, or happen to think alike.

> too young to lie or corrupt

In my experience, youth has little to do with honesty or corruptibility.

I mean their social experience is usually not enough to conduct sophisticated rent seeking or reach some comprise with local officials.

Young grads from big urban usually don’t do well with local mid aged bureaucrats. That type of human nature tension is what’s being leveraged here.

Makes sense, I also imagine the incentives were different. These young grads had no incentive to lie while local gov officials had plenty.

The only one would be for the grads to take bribes from the local gov officials, but if the central government sent enough grads it would be too many to bribe.

It seems that when push comes to shove right now its the young people who are simply removing people who don't kowtow.

Of course it is easy to imagine that the people they are removing are those who made principled stands rather than the corrupt who keep their heads down. As in they are removing the people who thought their job was to serve the public rather than line their own pockets?

It is not clear if that is the effect the chiefs want or not.

> In my experience, youth has little to do with honesty or corruptibility.

It has a lot to do with naivete and not having the confidence to stand up when needed.

There's a lot of easily indoctrinated, exploitable idealistic youth out there. A lot of organizations run on them.

Young people often are hopelessly ideological, in the same way a dogmatic religious person would be. Both are less corruptible than your average person.

But can that also make them more gullible?

> But can that also make them more gullible?

Oh definitely. They often don't have the experience to question what they're told or see the holes and deceptions in it. For instance: they'd be more easily fooled by a fake deadline. Or in this case, they may trust and follow their leader like a little zealot, even when he's wrong and doing bad things.

As fresh graduate at your first job, I suppose you follow the instructions from your boss a bit more and still have faith in your boss and upper management, a bit more than a senior, more experienced employee. Just look at the military, it's quite easy to scream at 18 year old recruits and have them crawl in mud and being screamed insults at. Try the same with a 45 year old.

Enron was staff by young people hired fresh of school. It is easy to manipulate young people into a new set of values. Army knows that, monks know that etc. These likely believe Musk is second coming of god.

It makes them more corruptible. They will perform corrupt acts while believing it the right thing to do. They're too naive to know better.

They won't do graft. They will follow orders. Even and especially when the orders are corrupt.

Exactly; it's not that the young ideological think-they-are-doing-the-right-thing are not serving a corrupt system (perhaps unwittingly). They are effective because the corruption they serve diligently comes from the central party and not from local considerations?

Corruptible is relative to the goal you're trying to achieve.

If you're the king of a nation, anyone trying to convince your knights to overthrow you is a corrupting force. But at the same time you could be a brutal ruler corrupted by power, and it is the knights that are trying to upturn the corrupt system.

>>Both are less corruptible than your average person.

I honestly believe, cheating is a primal trait. Age has little to do with it. In fact young cheats are likely to cheat with more enthusiasm and energy than elder cheats.

Safe enough to say, age has nothing to do with this.

I completely disagree with you. Very ideological people might be given to lie about or simply ignore things that challenge their ideology.

isn't it more like "too young to speak up" ? How many Snowdens do we have after all.

> too young to lie or corrupt

Too young to have the experience to know what's a good idea and what's a bad idea. Too young to question what they're doing. Too young to push back when things are going wrong. Too young to have life experience and so are far easier to shape and indoctrinate.

Musk pledged his commitment to China's core socialist values: https://www.mediaite.com/news/elon-musk-signs-letter-pledgin...

Musk advocated for the submission of Taiwan to China: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/08/elon-musk...

Musk thinks China rocks: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china-ro...

What Xi/Musk need in these cases is loyalty, not critical thinking. Apparently they both know how to leverage the youth for it.

Yes, they are corrupting the youth for their own purposes. The young are too dumb to recognize what's happening to them.

Many high-ranking Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping (Chemical Engineering) and his predecessors like Hu Jintao (Hydraulic Engineering) and Jiang Zemin (Electrical Engineering), are trained engineers.

They also like economics and finance people. Premier Li Keqiang has a PhD in Economics from Peking University. Zhu Rongji, a former premier, had a strong economics and mathematics background.

I am not a fan of American techno-libertarianism nor the Chinese CCP but Europe needs more engineers and economists (from math heavy programs) in politics.

Not to challenge your conclusion but you might want to examine your examples carefully. AFAIK Xi Jinping is widely believed to be close to illiterate…

The idea that Xi is functionally illiterate beggars belief and is clearly false. It's not impossible his actual Chemical Engineering education was of low quality, but to say he is close to illiterate is actually silly.

Also have you seen the people coming out of majors these days (and by that I mean my own graduation class of ~2010)? Uni access expanded so much that just graduating doesn't mean that much anymore. Especially for career government officials who probably went straight into government from uni with no work experience.

Xi got into Tsinghua not due to intellectual ability, but due to his political connections with the CCP. This isn't the meritocratic or technocratic story one might have assumed to be the case reading the above comment. China is ultimately a poor country on a per-capita basis and essentially a failure when compared to countries with a similar culture and historical circumstance like Taiwan. It's only their massive size that leads people to the faulty conclusion that they have anything worth emulating.

I'm fully willing to accept that he got into Tsinghua from connections, and at the time I'm sure there was mass instability and on top of it I'm sure he would have been able to avoid coursework if he wanted to, leading to the real possibility of low quality education. That's still far away from being almost illiterate.

They should ask the family that hosted him for two weeks in America if he was illiterate.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/world/asia/xi-jinping-of-...

[2]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaW49Ygxo4A

Maybe the difference here, is that those young people seems to already be corrupted and doing illegal stuff

My understanding is that local Chinese municipalities are going bankrupt due to the high amounts of debt that they have?

[1]:https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31/economy/china-local-governmen...

They are going through a real estate crash and their demographic situation bodes a very bleak long term future.

CPC

The CCP also send young agents overseas to infiltrate organisations that don't have adequate security controls.

Like DOGE.

I don’t know how this will shake out, but I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.

Edit: by the way, this post isn’t off-topic. It is about the activities of the US Digital Service (now known as Doge), and the exploits of young hackers who came up through top tech companies. It has implications for information systems security, especially as it relates to Silicon Valley culture.

From a journalistic standpoint, it's entirely fair to report on these 19-24 year olds, and it is not doxxing to do so. They are quite literally now involved in the US government, and are consenting adults making the rational decision to involve themselves in real legal jeopardy.

I guess that's good. It's interesting that we're just now learning the names of the people that hope to disrupt these agencies, but we don't know exactly who, or even how many, of these agencies existed.

In other words, there are these critically important agencies that I didn't even know existed, but they're basically the glue that holds together our democracy. Who runs these agencies is not important, what is important is that they continue to run as they have in the past and anyone looking to disrupt that should be thoroughly investigated.

If you believe things have been run well at these agencies (that you didn’t even know existed), that would explain your position.

Imagine someone who believes that things have not been run properly. Now imagine half the country feeling this way.

The proper forum for reforms is congress, not steamrolling your way through the federal bureaucracy.

> it's entirely fair to report on these 19-24 year olds

Of course it is. As it will be to go after them through the criminal justice system in years ahead. I believe OP’s point is they don’t realise the jeopardy they’re getting themselves into.

"I was just obeying executive orders."

The whole thing is sham, doesn't matter how illegal, apparently presidents can, at alarming rates, and completely openly to the public now just pardon anyone for anything.

The danger is that in a system without any meaningful rule of law, people will turn to violence as a means of achieving justice. This is an incredibly dangerous road we're going down.

> presidents can, at alarming rates, and completely openly to the public now just pardon anyone for anything

It's wild how badly Biden screwed the pooch on this one. Campaigned in 2020 on keeping Trump out of office. Not only failed at that (he's more dangerous than he would have been with a narrow margin in '20) but also blew the precedents he claimed made Trump dangerous.

Alternate history has Biden forcing the Congress and states' hands by issuing a blanket pardon for all federal inmates, effective some time in the future, unless a Constitutional amendment is ratified by X date.

So are public teachers. But I don’t think you would respond the same way.

Yeah, probably. Why does their jeopardy concern you more than the apparent lack of legitimate authority to do what they are doing?

It doesn’t really. Obviously the alleged security breach is egregious and if they’re committing crimes they should be prosecuted. But given that they’re relatively young, part of me wonders if these guys are being exploited by Musk and Thiel and will be scapegoated if the political winds start blowing another way. But that makes no difference to their criminal liability.

Trump pardoned the J6 guys for trying to kill the vice president, surely he'll pardon these guys for whatever bureaucratic rules they are breaking.

I thought Marco Rubio is acting director and has given them authority. Is this untrue? Why do you say apparent lack of legitimate authority?

Some of the key actions taken or threatened by DOGE are at least arguably illegal without permission from Congress, such as dismantling USAID, offering "deferred resignation" firing employees without due process, unilaterally stopping payments to agencies or individuals, and some smaller ones. Beyond that, there is the FACA lawsuit challenging the organization of DOGE itself; the administration has partially mitigated that by making Musk a special government employee, but no word on the rest of DOGE.

Why are you concerned? They're adults and know this is blatantly illegal and are serving their lord anyway. They don't even have the pleasure of deniability since the government officials literally stepped in, physically blocked them, and told them they weren't allowed.

Personally, I hope they get what's coming to them.

> blatantly illegal

genuine question, not sarcastic: what specifically is blatantly illegal, violating what law?

They are (according to the accounts given) accessing confidential government information they don’t have security credentials for.

there’s this guy named Donald who just might pardon whoever is committing whatever crimes are being committed…

I'm sure he will. But that doesn't refute the assertion that what they're doing is illegal. It supports it, even.

All else aside I wouldn’t assume he’s going to. I doubt Trump cares one way or the other if these kids rot in jail.

There’s a long, long list of people who thought “Trump owes me” would be a guarantee and got a rude awakening.

I doubt Trump cares one way or the other if these kids rot in jail

they are doing what he is (in)directly ordering - they ain't going to jail following the orders of the POTUS :)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

thanks : it's oh so HN that the question got downvoted, and you alone had an answer, much appreciated.

Your question was valid and you didn’t deserve to get downvoted. That being said the person who responded to you is wrong. They did have the appropriate security clearance to access the records.

Some people are skeptical on the legitimacy of what some are calling “emergency” security clearances given by executive order[1] but there’s no evidence this is not within the bounds of the president’s power. An expedited clearance could have been granted in 48 hours but presumably the backlog has already lasted longer than that and would hamper plans for the first month in office.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memo...

> They did have the appropriate security clearance to access the records.

That EO says:

    The White House Counsel to provide the White House Security Office and Acting Chief Security Officer with a list of personnel

Where do you see that the CSO has granted access to those specific individuals? For the record, I'm not saying they are or are not on that list, we just simply don't know. If they have not been granted security clearance then there is in fact a law that makes it illegal to access federal systems and those boys are in for some trouble.

I meant to link this tweet [1] from the former Communications Director of the Vice President and active member of DOGE, Katie Miller. There’s no evidence that the members with access had “emergency” clearance and they could very well have gone through the regular process, so I was careful not to say they were granted clearance in that way. I just wanted to mention it as something people have been grouping into this and complaining about.

[1] https://x.com/katierosemiller/status/1886110659097637367

> I just wanted to mention it as something people have been grouping into this and complaining about.

For sure. Fair point.

> they could very well have gone through the regular process

My understanding is that the "regular process" is pretty rigorous (background checks, calls to family members, etc). So, I would take a "former comms dir"'s tweet with a grain of salt.

I’ve been through the regular process for NSA and it is indeed rigorous.

I know many friends with top secret clearance and I would say it’s reasonably rigorous but nothing crazy in my opinion.

> I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.

They 100% are. This is a full blackhat attack on a nation. Did they take no ethics class? (software or otherwise)?

The one kid just graduated high school. So, unlikely.

My experience with ethics classes is that they usually just teach you good ways to justify whatever you want.

If you get your ethics from some class you took in college, you definitely shouldn't be given authority over anything important

They are 19-24. They never completed college.

> I do worry that these 19-24 year olds, some of whom are known to HN for other achievements, are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.

I worry that the law will not hold them accountable.

If not the law, then perhaps social consequences will.

Nah theyll have pardons if they ever get into trouble. That was part of the reason trump pardoned the j6ers, to let all his minions know that they have free rein to commit crimes.

That's why they need OPM: So they can run off a giant listing of DOGE-droids and tear it from the dot-matrix printer and stamp every page with a big rubber stamp saying "Pardoned! D.J. Trump"

I’d go as far as to say that’s the intention here. They’re fall guys and they’re too naive/arrogant to realise it.

People say “oh, Trump will pardon them” but I wouldn’t be so sure, why does he care? Once this is done they’re not of any real use to him so it’s entirely possible he won’t waste the political capital pardoning them. Would be in character for a guy famous for not paying folks who have done work for him.

> I do worry that these 19-24 year olds (…) are putting themselves in real legal jeopardy.

On one side you have a handful of arrogant young adults doing the bidding of a couple of wannabe despotic man-babies. On the other you have an entire nation made up of millions of people and with major influence over the rest of the world.

I’m having a hard time understanding why your concern lies with the former.

>man-babies

If only other babies could launch and land rockets. Call Musk what you want, but he is not a baby.

Musk doesn't do that. He bought a company and claims all the credit for it, he's just a rich brat using daddy's blood money.

> He bought a company and claims all the credit for it

Dude, Musk founded Space X. It's because of these kinds of ridiculous comments that I find it hard to take the Left (at least the ones on the internet) seriously.

I think he's well on the path to reverting to baby status.

A man-baby is an adult man who acts like a baby, e.g. throwing tantrums when they don’t get their way and being overly petty and vindictive, not a literal baby.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Manbaby

It is incredible that I have to explain this and that that is the part you object to. So you’re fine with despots, but “man-baby” is where you draw the line?

Either way, your objection makes absolutely zero difference to the point.

>acts like a baby, e.g. throwing tantrums when they don’t get their way

A man in the emotional state you described wouldn't be able to lead a company like SpaceX -- he would throw a tantrum when a rocket blows up instead of doubling down on perfecting it.

>So you’re fine with despots, but “man-baby” is where you draw the line?

I'm Russian and what's happening in the US government is your problem, we have our own problems. However, I have the respect for a man who has advanced the space industry so much even though it directly hurts my country -- in the end, we all are a part of humanity and the wars will end some day.

> A man in the emotional state you described wouldn't be able to lead a company like SpaceX

Clearly you haven’t been following his actions. This isn’t new. See for example when he called a rescuer a pedophile or when he told companies to not advertise on Twitter, or a myriad of other instances. You can literally search for “tantrum” with his name and find more examples than you’ll know what to do with.

> what's happening in the US government is your problem

Don’t assume everyone you talk to on the internet lives in or is a citizen of the USA.

> we have our own problems

Including a despot. Which is unfortunate. You shouldn’t wish it on anyone else.

> we all are a part of humanity and the wars will end some day.

Indeed they will. Probably because we’ll all die.

Did he actually launch or land rockets? Or did he hire a bunch of people who actually did that?

I'm not saying that there isn't skill involved with hiring smart people, but I don't think it's correct to act like he single-handedly invented self-landing rockets.

He bet his entire fortune on that, for one thing.

I spent my entire life savings on lottery tickets, and one of them wins the Powerball, does that mean that I am somehow gifted in managing my money? Or would it mean I just got lucky?

Elon's stuff might be due to some kind of "skill", but that's not implied by him "betting his entire fortune" and winning.

Just an edit: it was a hypothetical, I meant to write “if I spent my life savings on lottery tickets”. I don’t actually play the lottery.

Lon Horiuchi could not be convicted for literally sniping an unarmed women with a child in her arms, standing in a doorway of her house threatening no one. Supremacy clause for executive federal employees.

They will be fine.

They are not executive employees, they are Musk employees, not the same thing.

USDS is doge. Musk is a federal employee. Presumably they are as well, with USDS?

Lon Horiuchi couldn't be convicted because the state's prosecutor dropped it.

... The feds invoked supremacy clause to squash the case long enough it was too stale by the time it wound through appeals. The special prosecutor did not at all want to drop it and said as much.

The supremacy clause was what ultimately killed it, by being useful enough to delay cases to the point they're dead.

That’s fair.

I don't see why anyone should worry about the people actually committing crimes and being in legal jeopardy. That's the purpose of the legal system. People need to learn that ignorance of the law is not a defense.

I really don't worry at all for these people. They're adults, even if young, and they've made their choice. Any consequences they suffer will be well deserved.

I'm sure Trump will preemptively pardon them at the end of his term anyway. My worry is that these people will never be held accountable for what they're doing.

Save your worry for things that actually matter.

Same like Biden and his crew of folks he preemtively pardoned

Sure, if you want to play the whataboutism card, go for it.

While I understand why Biden did what he did there, I didn't agree with it. At the very least it sets bad precedent and allows people like you to pretend they have a "gotcha!" argument when they really have nothing.

Why worry? They signed onto be one of Musk's sycophants are at this point are clearly aware of their actions. You can have accomplishments and still be on the wrong side of history.

When I was in that age range (five decades ago) everyone I knew of the same age was politically aware and many were politically active. Has that changed so much that they can claim to be naively unaware of what they are doing?

It's going to be a field day for China and Russia state hackers.

I have never seen a thread on this site so full of vitriol, hatred, threats of blacklisting for life, threats of violence and general hysteria. And that kind of rhetoric is entirely coming from one side. (or at least the not dead comments of that nature are coming from one side)

Regardless of where you stand, I think a lot of people who have been commenting on here about blacklisting or worse about the named individuals need to check themselves, these are young men who have lives and families.

Accelerationism, everyone. I'm not excited to see this play out.

Remember, if you can vote, vote the next time you can. Convince your friends and neighbors to vote, too. Apathy has real consequences.

It sounds like you're assuming that if more people had voted, they would have voted for not-Trump. Is there data backing that up? Is there any indication that the result would have been different?

No if anything the data suggests they'd go for trump or it'd be a coin flip

https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/dona...

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/kama...

I wish there was a way to get better options though. A vote for Kamala would have just barely kicked the can down the road

Well, we probably wouldnt be in a trade war right now.

Yeah ik. But the discontent and conditions leading to this sort of moment would still be there at the end of the term was my point

They will be with this one too.

None of this shit is going to help the economy.

Eggs are more expensive already and the current admin has admitted they aren’t going to do anything about it.

But the media won’t be hammering on the egg price story, and people won’t feel like it’s as bad.

im well aware trump is worse and is not solving anything.

Also-

I do wish the gripe wasn't the egg thing - that one in specific is because they're intentionally killing hens to keep us safe from disease. last thing i want is for them to make the egg price go down and everyone gets sick.

when the tarrifs happen we will have plenty of economic disaster to point to.

Also Also-

when the pitch for the two candidates are "things stay bad" vs "i promise to change things to make your life better (lie)", it kinda makes sense

i don't agree with trump voters. frankly i hate them. but it's understandable at least

The trade war pales in the long run compared to the power grab by Musk and supporters (accessing the Treasury payment system, shutting down agencies without congressional approval). It's very bad news for American government and democracy, it looks like a coup.

yeah :c. don't see any way out

i hope they don't end too many species along the way

Politicians look at how people vote to decide how to run and how to govern.

When you vote for Kamala over Trump, you show them your preferences, and they'll run and govern in a more methodical way. The next batch of candidates gets even better.

But Trump winning means the next batch will be even worse.

Kamala did not promise to govern in a methodical way, she promised essentially not to govern, but to keep the system trucking along. The end state of "nothing will fundamentally change" and "I wouldn't have done a single thing differently" is exactly the same as the end state of Trump's accelerationism. It's not clear what other message is going to be sent either way.

> The end state of "nothing will fundamentally change" and "I wouldn't have done a single thing differently" is exactly the same as the end state of Trump's accelerationism.

Pretty wild to suggest that continuing stability, growth, and reindustrialization is the same as tearing everything down.

Real wage growth has been negative in the US for the past decades. Stability and growth was there for us, but it wasn't there for the tens of millions in the precariate who were promised stability in the form of a substantial improvement to the welfare net and didn't get it.

From the perspective of tens, if not a hundred million, what that meant is continued decline, increased instability and broken promises, because that's the long term trend they're living and the one they were promised would continue.

Biden kicked off the biggest reindustrialization in our lifetime, and certain consumer protections were improving. Everything you want was blocked by repubs in Congress and trump appointed judges. The Dems don't pass enough policies because every time they do they get voted out by the people they're trying to help ("Obummercare").

I am well aware of the reasons why it didn't get through. The median voter doesn't. Saying you will do the same means you will do the same, ie, it will be blocked somehow.

By the way, it's not true that it was entirely stopped by Republicans - for every vote there were Democrats that went over the line, and the Democratic leadership failed to whip or primary them, which the voters rightly or wrongly will assigned the blame for the Democratic party.

Additionally, the fact that Trump appointed judges that were able to block them is in no small part thanks to the Democratic party being too ineffectual to do the same in the Obama and Biden administration.

Unless the Democrats make a point of recognizing what they could have done to play the game better and get their campaign promises through, the average voter will, rightly or wrongly, simply interpret this as the Democrats not being willing or able to follow through, and penalize them in consequence. When the Democrats willingly slow down and let internecine fights prevent themselves from helping people while the Republicans just ram their agenda through, voters will inevitably interpret this as the Democratic party making the conscious decision to break their promises, which is not entirely correct but not entirely false either.

To avoid this, Democrats would have had to be candid and say that they would likely not pass their electoral promises even if they had a majority (see: Obamacare), or somehow fix their party and get their shit together.

Right- if the Republicans can upend the entire government without needing congress, it sure feels like they weren't trying when Biden had two years of both houses and could barely accomplish a quarter of Build Back Better.

And Kamala was even more corporate

Please don't misunderstand me. The voters have terrible judgment and understanding of causality. And professional Dems are terrible at messaging, strategy, tactics, and execution.

1. the message being sent is "you did good enough"

the dems are fighting to give as few boons as possible to the people and as much to their donors and we tell them when the line was crossed.

2. we're not getting another batch lol

If Americans won’t vote for centre-right candidates like Harris or Clinton, there’s little hope they will go for any real change.

I think there's some truth to the idea that they don't go for center right because they promise to do nothing useful for their voters.

My take is its less left/right and more useful/useless. Obama won big because people thought he'd do something.

Trump promised a lot of change and boy he's certainly doing exactly that.

At the end of the day though, I think the time of party politics is over. Whatever Americas gonna be like next its not gonna be this

The left/right divide in American politics is a myth. Clinton and Harris are both establishment candidates. The only establishment candidate to have won a presidential election since George Bush Sr. in 1988 is Biden. And that was only because of Trump's first term, and he was losing his election before bowing out.

The Democratic Party has been putting forward establishment candidates since at least Jimmy Carter, the only exceptions being Bill Clinton and Obama. And notably, they both were, like Trump, a bit of a black swan in party politics.

Also both George Bush Sr. and Biden were vice presidents of extremely popular/successful non-establishment presidents (Reagan and Obama). So really, there hasn't been an establishment president winning election since Jimmy Carter.

The reason people didn't vote for these two had little to do with being "center-right". Both of them were very unpopular before they were forced as candidate undemocratically. Democrats would have won with Bernie and their chances in 2024 would have been a lot better if they did a primary to pick a candidate people actually like and want to vote for. Using an candidate people hate will work if the party is far ahead in the poll, not when it's 50/50.

And here's the most important comment!

Vote in a democracy. Do things to preserve voting in a democracy.

Vote with your wallet for representative news stories that matter to you and not just indulgent shock material.

Vote with your mind and know what is truly important for you, your happiness, and your loved ones.

Would it matter much? It seems like the election is fueled on false narratives and outright lies amplified by social media and technology that many of us here helped to build. Apathy is a real thing but at least close to half the population fully intended to and did vote for their choice of leadership. What can we (generalized we in the tech community) now combat this?

We need to use our skills to build platforms that have both high retention and diffuse ownership that uplifts its users. We need to build a media ecosystem that isn't just a toy. My generation treated social media like it was just an amusement, and didn't notice it slowly turn the flow of information back into AM talk radio until it was too late. There have to be genuine alternatives to Tiktok and X and Instagram that are just as obsessive about UX as the proprietary apps are, but can't be owned.

Seems like we need a news 2.0 that isn't something controlled by a couple of entities that can filter and shape narrative at the whim of a political party (either political party). Problem that we don't seem to have a good answer for is, how to make such a thing trust worthy and trusted by the public.

> the election

Which election are you talking about? Because I'm not referring to the election that happens every four years in the States. Every election in-between can, and often does, have major consequences. Or, it could, if enough people made sure of it.

That might actually be related to your question -- what matters is not just one election. If that's the case, then we've already lost.

"Apathy"? How about disgust? The choices were Kamala and the Donald. I read that as a 'f.u. either way' from the political class. So yeah, not apathy.

Many of us here voted for exactly this and we are very happy to see all of these changes.

[flagged]

There is such a thing as a wrong opinion.

I think you will understand eventually.

Of course I could be wrong. So could you. You think you're right. I respect that. I think I'm right. I hope you can respect that.

We'll see who's ultimately right in four years.

> Actually enforcing immigrations laws

Your last administration and congress tried to get a tighter grip on immigration, but it got blocked.

The "concessions" from Canada and Mexico that they made in order to avoid the tariffs were planned since end of last year.

> stop letting countries take advantage of us economically

That's _incredibly_ rich coming from a US citizen.

A country that has been continuously waging war, has been spying on their allies privately and publicly at a massive scale, is living on an ever increasing private and public debt, has been strongarming smaller countries, including allies and including neutral countries, in order to adhere to their economic and legal demands. And is primarily responsible for two of the largest economic crisis in recent history.

Give me a break...

> cut stupid government waste

Cutting waste is always good. That's common sense. Your administration hasn't however proven that they will do that in any meaningful way so far. I would have started with the 100mio in golf outings or the massive "defense" budget.

From here all of this theater looks like regular old corruption.

> cut out the identity politics and DEI wasteful bullshit

I'm not familiar with how "DEI wasteful bullshit" actually manifests. What I'm however familiar with is that this and other acronyms are constantly used to lie, distract and divide. Shortly after recent disasters "DEI" was blamed by your admin before any proper analysis could even be made. That's shameful behavior and not something to be proud of.

[flagged]

American households go into massive debt in order to consume/buy way over what they can afford, while real wages are close to stagnant since half a century. Same for the government, astronomical debt but you still cut taxes. The US' fiscally inept behavior is directly responsible for some of the largest financial crisis, including 2008, which lead to a massive wealth transfer from workers to owners.

You have a trade deficit, because you're spending more than you can afford to a degree that you crashed the global economy. And have the audacity to say that your allies are taking advantage of you.

The reason nobody has been calling it out, is because financial institutions are licking their fingers from the massive debt Americans accumulate. But everyone knows that the next crash will happen and everyone knows where it will originate from _again_.

Trump is probably right when he repeatedly said that the US in in decline. But what he's doing is shifting the blame to foreigners instead of pointing the finger to where it hurts.

> You have a trade deficit, because you're spending more than you can afford

Nope. A trade deficit is when your trading partner buys more of your goods than you of theirs.

> to a degree that you crashed the global economy.

If you're talking about the Great Recession of 2007-2009, then, nope, you're wrong again:

"The causes of the Great Recession include a combination of vulnerabilities that developed in the financial system, along with a series of triggering events that began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble in 2005–2012."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession

That is literally an example of household debt and irresponsible fiscal behavior.

The trade deficit is based on many things. But ultimately the asymmetric purchasing power of one side leads to a higher deficit. If that purchasing power is drastically increased via irresponsible debt, you are creating an imbalance.

> A trade deficit is when your trading partner buys more of your goods than you of theirs.

No, that's a trade surplus, the opposite of a reade deficit.

It's crazy to me that this is the state of hackernews wow

The "state" of Hacker News is that simply it reflects the wider society (or societies, rather, since users are from many countries). Every major subgroup is represented here. How could it be otherwise?

It's true that when one encounters someone with views far from one's own, it can provoke a kind of shock experience. That's how your comment reads to me. If so, I'm sorry—it's not pleasant to realize that (in a way) your neighbors are not who you thought they were.

I've written about this dynamic in the past, in case you (or anyone) are interested:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It makes me think of the nazi bar problem and the classic paradox of tolerance. You are the moderator, you obviously thought about this. I understand your position, but I don't agree with it.

I worry about how the online forums will evolve in the coming years. I'm quite pessimistic, since so many people are now ennemies.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nazi_bar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Neither side wants to give us affordable healthcare or education. Everything good comes from those two things imo. Voting doesn't matter anymore. Only money. The oligarchs have won (for some time now) and the government is their puppet.

I don't know anyone that voted democrat in this election.

If you're looking someone to blame, blame the idiots who engineered the blue ticket, not the voters who couldn't stomach it

Blame is generally unproductive. What is productive is realizing wrongs and doing what you can to right them. That said, I was raised that it is the responsibility of a citizen to always vote. If more people had voted, I believe the US would be in a better place.

I believe it's the responsibility of every citizen to _use_ their vote. Sometimes, the best way to use it for a given political outcome is to abstain.

There will be no new elections. At best we’ll have a Russia-style farce.

Good. These guys, in addition to obviously being very smart, are young and don't have a lot of baggage in government or industry.

I think they are perfect for tracing down what has been going on and finding where inefficiencies and/or corruption has been occurring. Anyone who has issue with rooting out corruption and inefficiency isn't in the right.

Of course what is done with what they find will not be in their hands.

I think part of the concern is that Elon Musk is still the CEO of or has strong financial interest in a lot of companies, some of which get government contracts (e.g. SpaceX).

Finding out corruption and inefficiency is fine, but I think a lot of people are skeptical that that's the actual goal of this "advisory board". How likely is it that Elon is going to find anything inefficient about SpaceX? Tesla? What's to stop him from using this data to haggle better deals from the government paying for his projects?

It's entirely possible that SpaceX is efficient enough, but it's still a conflict of interest. I don't think a guy who owns and runs a company that competes on government contracts should be in charge of determining which parts of the government is efficient.

Ok, but what does that have to do with the nature of the young guys charged with the analysis?

I read through your past comments. It's obvious to me what you believe. And I don't agree with your worldview but not sure that matters. If you don't like Musk and don't like Trump, fine, I get it. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like either of them in person either, and, they both have vested interests on that we can agree. You know who else has vested interests? The people benefiting from waste, fraud and abuse. The people who have been directing public funds into propaganda and a black hole. I'd like to see western civilization persist. If you feel differently that's a value judgement and it's fine. But hearing kveltching and ridiculous statements from liberal midwits on every single policy article is getting really really old and it's shitting up this site. This is what is going to happen. And it's long overdue.

> Ok, but what does that have to do with the nature of the young guys charged with the analysis?

Because the only reason they are doing it is because they don't know enough about their legal exposure to know they should not. They aren't qualified to handle this data. I thought the whole thing was we were going to have a meritocracy.

And we do! Also, I don't think the court scam will work this time. Even Marc Elias realizes the implications at this point.

Ok, so you acknowledge that there's a conflict of interest, and you still think that Elon Musk is the only human who can possibly find government inefficiency?

I have some less polite ways of saying this so I'll keep to myself, but that seems like a profoundly ignorant viewpoint. There are 330 million Americans, and the only person that could possibly find government inefficiency is a guy with extremely clear and obvious conflicts of interest? Ridiculous, I do not believe that you actually believe that.

I personally think that it is extraordinarily stupid to get someone who routinely gets government contracts to be in charge of determining what is "efficient". I personally wouldn't choose any active CEO, but even if you believe that somehow a businessman is going to be better, couldn't you choose a CEO that doesn't have federal contracts? Even if it was a conservative, even if it were someone who I absolutely despised, it would still be a better choice than Elon Musk. I genuinely cannot think of a worse choice for this project than Elon, honestly.

My distaste for Trump and Musk has nothing to do with whether I'd "like them in person". I already dislike most people and I am quite confident I would not like any politician if I met them in person. I do not make my political decisions based on "how much I would like hanging out with them".

I think Trump and Elon are profoundly stupid people, and they're kind of a match made in heaven, which I find very dangerous.

"Western Civilization persisting" shouldn't start with an dubiously-legal "department" with clear conflicts of interest. This shouldn't be controversial.

I think it would be great for the federal government to be more efficient and less corrupt. For example, let's talk about USAID. It would be great if DOGE could make USAID more efficient, to accomplish the most possible good with the money allocated by Congress.

So far, that's not what DOGE appears to be doing. Rather than "rooting out corruption and inefficiency", DOGE appears to be cutting government spending that Musk disagrees with.

And that's unconstitutional! The executive branch doesn't have the constitutional authority to unilaterally cut a program established by Congress. If Congress allocated $X billion for foreign aid to country Y, the executive branch must disburse that aid.

Furthermore, speaking of corruption: Both Trump and Musk have major conflicts of interest. Prior to Trump, presidents were expected to divest business interests and put their assets in a blind trust; but Trump refused to do so. And SpaceX is a major federal contractor; if the head of a major federal contractor is _also_ the biggest supporter of the incoming president, the conflict of interest is obvious.

As you said, anyone who has an issue with rooting out corruption isn't in the right. So surely you're alarmed by these conflicts of interest, right? Don't you agree that Musk should either fully divest from SpaceX, or step away from politics?

How would they know?

I've worked on billion dollar defense projects, and have supervised plenty of smart junior consultants from top consulting firms (McKinsey, etc.) - guiding them through processes, while they're digging through data.

Believe it or not, but you don't know what you don't know, and domain expertise is absolutely crucial. Slashing things you think are inefficiencies can lead to some serious footguns.

And I fully expect Musk to value speed over precision.

Peter Theil is running America

There are people in this thread claiming that Wired "doxxed" these engineers working for Musk dismantling things they don't understand; however didn't Musk publicly mock individual federal employees on his twitter account, drawing the eyes of millions onto random government functionaries for no other reason than to capriciously taunt them about being fired?

I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.

People who work at the highest levels of our government are public figures. It is the job of reporters to report on who they are and what they're up to.

Well if they are working on those systems I think they count then right?

Yep, that's what I'm saying. They don't get to take these jobs and then complain about being "doxxed". They are public servants now.

Any public servant is open season for doxxing? (Teachers, soldiers, IT feds)

Essentially yes, because they work for you and me. Why would you expect that people who serve the public could remain unknown to the public ?

I actually don’t think 60k workers are public figures to be doxxed. In the same way I do not represent my employer to the media or shareholders.

Well, you're wrong. The US has a government of by and for its people. It is not the same as your employer.

Ok. I look forward to your support when Elon starts tweeting the names of individual employees he wants to cut.

He’s already done that

And I think that’s bad. This individual thinks it’s holding public servants accountable.

The issue isn’t whether or not their names are public.

The issue is that Elon Musk is highlighting them specifically in a negative way that will lead to very predictable, very personal, very negative outcomes without any recourse.

Is that different when Wired does it?

So, to be clear, I do think "who people in government are and what they do" is appropriately public record.

But yes, there is a difference between media reporting on what high-level government officials are doing and government (or quasi-government) officials singling out low level employees for ridicule. It's the difference between punching up and punching down.

But this is not among the worst things Musk is doing, and if it were a right-wing magazine doing reporting on employees in the federal government rather than someone using their role within the government itself to do it, I might find it distasteful but would have no real qualms about it.

It depends if you think there's a difference between a self-formed likely illegal group, doing likely illegal things for ideological purposes getting reported on by a reputable news source, and a civil servant who has been doing their assigned job getting picked on personally and publicly by one of the most powerful people in America who owns the media site he is using to attack them.

I see those as different in reality. We can argue that semantically they can get twisted around as the same thing (government employees getting publicly named in a critical way), but that ignores extremely relevant real-world circumstances.

I think this is a false equivalence. Announcing to the world that you are being fired is different from stating that you work somewhere.

I mean, I don't want to claim to be an expert on this, but I'm pretty sure who works for the government and what they do is public record.

I do think it's bad to "doxx" people in the sense of sharing their addresses and phone numbers. But that's not what the article we're discussing does.

This article simply strikes me as normal reporting that is no different than "Treasury Secretary Bessent has hired so and so as an undersecretary for such and such, and this is what so and so has done and said in the past". These people seem to be working essentially at that undersecretary level. We always know who such people are, and we should.

You're conflating several things.

- Public figures are public by influence; public servants are employees and can/should have their information revealed when necessary.

- Revelation of information of employees under public pay is not 'doxxing'. Making it seem as if it's 'doxxing' is stretching the definition, like saying someone merely touching you has committed 'violence'. Your intentional use of a more serious concept for a less serious one is misleading.

- Your private employer has no duty to the public, they answer only to the end stakeholders. In contrast, public servants must be accountable and known to the public - it's literally in their name, 'public' and 'servants'. Why you should confuse your status with that of public servants is bewildering.

No, just the ones violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act like Musk and DOGE employees are doing right now.

So if an administrator in a school district allegedly violates policy all their employees are open season? (We are also talking about no trial to determine whether your claims are true)

What Musk is doing with DOGE is the most unconstitutional power grab any US Citizen has tried is a very long time. The normal rules do not apply anymore.

Actually, the point is that the normal rules _do_ apply, and the normal rules very much encourage the publication of the names and likenesses of civil servants.

I'm kind of surprised that no one has made the argument that there is something special about these individuals, the work they're doing, or the circumstances of their work. There are, after all, exceptions to the "normal rules." But the fact that no one is making this argument is, at the end of the day, quite telling.

It has nothing to do with whether they are doing anything wrong. They're high level federal employees. Hundreds of years before anyone invented the word "doxxing", newspapers would have printed their names and likenesses. They have chosen employment which puts them into the public interest. No more no less.

If the administrator of a school district brings in his goons to destroy the schools systems then yes they would obviously be named?

Why on earth do you think the people destroying the system would be excluded from criticism?

It’s relevant here that “doxxing” here just means “exposing their names and internet posts”, right?

In that case, yes, the OPM already “doxxes” most federal employees, even making their salary data public. It’s seen as a worthwhile tradeoff to give taxpayers transparency into how their money is spent.

There is a difference between 5 names in an article and 100k names in a database.

The names of all public employees are public records (unless some exemption to do with say, national security, applies).

I really hope we can all agree it is an extremely shitty thing to do for the worlds richest person, somehow entrusted to go in and supposedly save the government some money, to publicize random individuals information he stumbles across in the process because he personally doesn't like their job title. Fuck off with whether it is 'legal' or not, that isn't the issue.

These 5 people are our employees. We pay them with our tax dollars to assist in delivering services to ourselves and our fellow citizens. Unless secrecy is a distinct function of the service they deliver, I expect their names to be public. Transparency and accountability is owed to the taxpayer, if that's not acceptable to people then they are free to lend their talents to the private sector instead.

> These 5 people are our employees.

Part of the problem is we're not sure who is paying them and who ultimately they report to. Are they doing what's best for Musk and his business interests or what's best for the US? Even Altman has called out Musk in a similar fashion.

What's happening now is the exact opposite of transparency and accountability.

5 names are causing untold damage on the federal government. It isn't "doxxing" that we all know about Fauchi because of COVID.

These aren't low level federal employees doing menial work with the Medicare claims.

> It’s relevant here that “doxxing” here just means “exposing their names and internet posts”, right?

No, it quite obviously does not. "Doxxing" specifically involves information that was not intentionally public to begin with. If you write "John Lee Ratcliffe works for the CIA", that's obviously not doxxing, because he's the director of the CIA, which is a public title.

> In that case, yes, the OPM already “doxxes” most federal employees, even making their salary data public.

...which is clearly and categorically different than anything happening here, as OPM is the agency responsible for part of the management of said employees, and the rules that constrains it are decided by the President and/or Congress. That is categorically different than an individual, whether it's Elon or a Wired writer, going out of their way to publish private information that was not already intentionally made public, and who is not in a position of authority to have rightful custody of that information and has the ability to release it - especially if the intent behind publishing the information was to cause the individuals harm out of a political agenda, as in the Wired case.

Federal salaries are public information.

Indeed. One of the highest paid people in my local school district is a librarian who teaches no classes and gets paid 275k. Do you think it would be a good idea to get a wired article published with his name address, and 4 similar teacher profiles?

Are you suggesting that the article we're discussing is "weird"? Does it list anyone's address? I feel like it just says their names and provides some basic bio info. Seems like pretty normal reporting on an important story at the top levels of the federal government.

Yeah I’m not suggesting anything weird either. I just think the community might want to know which teachers are really well paid. They have chosen employment in the public interest. Are you with me?

I suspect they read "wired" as "weird".

Yo there’s literally articles regularly published on the names and pay of all local city employees in my city with specific call outs to the top paid ones.

While it seems you are implying that is not cool, it’s actually unremarkable and common government transparency.

Yep. I feel like we should probably be taking more of a "you're one of today's ten thousand!"[0] approach to this thread. I think this person is probably just actually unfamiliar with the history of public interest reporting on government.

0: https://xkcd.com/1053/

This is public info in many states, by law as far as I am aware,

https://cthrupayroll.mass.gov/#!/year/2025/card/1

Federal pay is already supposed to be public knowledge and is highly regulated based on role https://www.federalpay.org/. Although who knows if that's true anymore. Seems like all precedent is up in the air nowadays

I mean, I don't love it because of my political ideology, but it wouldn't strike me as weird if I saw this kind of story in my local paper...

I got all pissed in college when I read a magazine article about how the football coach at the state school I attended was the highest paid state employee that year. There was nothing weird about that article, and I think it's very similar to your hypothetical.

I do, ideologically, think that it's much better for reporters to focus on powerful people near the top, but I don't think it's weird to report on government employees, in general.

Wow, I chose the wrong profession. $275k damn.

It’s certainly not typical - he just minmaxed the credentials to get into the top bracket.

Just unfortunate that the resources are going there.

That sounds like a job better suited for your local paper. The scope of national politics is far greater.

But even if Wired did, it still wouldn't be "doxxing", which used to imply publishing not just names but addresses and other PII (like SSNs) for non-public, non-governmental figures.

New stories routinely come out about the highest paid people in colleges typically being the head football coaches. The conservative media has been railing on academic administrator salaries for years.

Federal employees working at the level these guys appear to be currently working are always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting, yes. This is not "doxxing", it is just reporting on the government. Even if there was an effort to keep this information secret, it would almost certainly be subject to FOIA requests. These aren't spies, they're public servants.

> Federal employees working at the level these guys appear to be currently working are always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting, yes. This is not "doxxing", it is just reporting on the government.

It absolutely is doxxing according to the dictionary definition[1] of "to publicly identify or publish private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge".

These are also not high-level senior officials or elected officials or those with public-facing personas - these are technical engineers whose positions do not mean that they are "always ripe to have their names and photographs in public reporting".

> Even if there was an effort to keep this information secret, it would almost certainly be subject to FOIA requests.

This is just factually wrong. Exemption 6 to FOIA[2] is "Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual’s personal privacy." - which in practice means personnel names, among other things.

That's three falsehoods in a single paragraph.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doxxing

[2] https://www.justice.gov/d9/what_are_the_9_foia_exemptions.pd...

Are you referring to this Wired article as "doxxing", or to something else?

I think the article we're discussing only reported their names, right? That is not "private information" about people who are public employees. And it is the role of journalism to report on public employees, not "a form of punishment or revenge".

They are high level officials! That's exactly the problem. They probably thought they were just taking technical roles, and I'm sympathetic to that, but that's not what they are doing, by the reporting in, again, the article we're discussing. (Did you read the article?)

They are reportedly joining high level meetings and have high level clearances in the agencies where they're working. Again, I'm sympathetic if they got there and were thrust into this stuff and are thinking "this isn't what I signed up for! I'm in way over my head!", but if that's the case, they should have said that and bowed out of this as gracefully as possible. Again, I'm sympathetic that this is a very difficult thing for a very young and ambitious person to have the wisdom to do, after taking what appears to be a dream job with a person they have probably looked up to their whole lives. But that's both exactly why they shouldn't have these high responsibility roles, and exactly why they are such useful patsies for the powerful people using them. This is why powerful people like to use young people (especially young men) to do their dirty work!

Your link on FOIA contains the quoted text, but not the claim that it "in practice means personnel names, among other things". I don't believe that is accurate, but would be interested in further citation.

I can look up every single public employee in my area, and find out what they make. It's not hard to find out where they live. It's called government transparency.

Musk appears to have thought so, quite recently.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858916546338590740

Public servants name and position and pay are already generally public; major media have published entire state databases of this.

That's not doxxing, that's accountability of the government to the people. Doxxing is when a person is doing a participant in an online discussion group and information they haven't made public about their real world identity, etc., is made public, it is not when people are performing high level government management functions and their identity is attached to their actions.

Sources:

When Musk does it:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858916546338590740

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858914228624924963

When others do it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/1igw3cs/elon_m...

The X post in that last link is in response to a suspended account. Screenshot for those wondering is here:

https://x.com/jessesingal/status/1886479301081522599

(The names it includes are already in the Wired article)

Seems pretty misleading for the screenshot to leave out the text that suggested fired government employees should pay them a visit.

More of the tweet: https://x.com/clanp007/status/1886540244524392804

How exactly is this doxxing? When you're backchanneling cabinet-level access to a sizable chunk of the country's personal data (and a nontrivial amount of classified information to boot) you're now essentially operating as a public figure.

This is reporting in the public interest. Nothing they revealed isn't available already as verifiable public information.

It's still doxxing because these are not elected officials.

But then again... these are people outright breaking the law and I sure do want to know who's potentially tampering with my data. If the courts won't do it, someone has to put names and faces to this.

What law are they breaking?

IANAL, but at a glance:

U.S. Code § 1924 - Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material

U.S. Code § 371 - Obstructing or Impairing Legitimate Government Activity

Executive Order 14117 of February 28, 2024, “Preventing Access to Americans' Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern” (“the Order”) (though this may be rescinded by Trump)

If any of those BS Crypto plans[0] have any weight to them That's a straight out constitutional overstep

Article I, Section 8, Clause 5: "The Congress shall have Power . . . to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . ."

I'm probably only scratching the surface here. I'm not surprised if there's a dozen other laws with legal ledger around this. You don't want any one man messing with the economy.

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2025/02/02/this-...

>Now, as fears emerge Trump’s administration is “dangerously” undermining the U.S. dollar, Musk has confirmed he wants to put the U.S. Treasury on a blockchain, the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies—including Musk’s pet project dogecoin.

> It's still doxxing because these are not elected officials.

They're acting in official capacity. I've lived in towns where the mayor is not elected. They're still public figures.

Elon Musk isn't an elected official either. This shitshow needs to be brought to light, as it is the best disinfectant.

>not public officials

They chose this approach. No one is under any obligation to abet and protect them.

They're public figures... is it doxxing if I tell everyone the members of One Direction?

He's not a public employee though. Well, wasn't when I posted the comment. News moves fast.

I'm still not sure if the kids were actually hired though.

> This is reporting in the public interest.

This might be true, however...

> Nothing they revealed isn't available already as verifiable public information.

... collating publicly available information and publishing it in one place would still meet my definition of doxxing.

(In this case, the doxxing _might_ be entirely justified and be in the public interest. I don't know.)

Whether trump can legally create a whole new government department by executive order is up for debate, but he did it and hired these people into roles within it. By my math they have 0 right to hide from the expected scrutiny of any other public official.

> By my math they have 0 right to hide from the expected scrutiny of any other public official.

Yes, I explicitly did not challenge that. (Though I have no clue whether I should agree with it, either.)

I challenged the justification of "Nothing they revealed isn't available already as verifiable public information."

Something being a good thing (or true or whatever), doesn't automatically make all arguments in favour of that thing good arguments.

What government organization in the US federal government hides the names of their leaders? Can you name one? Even our security agencies make those names publicly known.

I don't see what that has to do with anything in the discussion so far?

It looks like you can't believe that there are bad arguments for good causes; and instead want to keep arguing that the cause is good, and thus all arguments must be good?

Journalists reporting on people abusing government power is good. These people should be deeply scrutinized and shouldn't be able to hide while they destroy the machinery that hundreds of millions of people depend on.

So? I explicitly expressed no opinion on that.

> ...the doxxing _might_ be entirely justified and be in the public interest. I don't know.

No, you did express an opinion. Reporting on people carrying out unconstitutional and illegal orders is clearly in the public interest and framing that as "doxxing" reveals that opinion.

Reddit - "Pink mist them all" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrYxMsWmrjk (Screen caps on Twitter etc. if someone wants to find and link them)

Mocking != doxing.

Musk was horrid to do that, but it's a different thing.

Did you seriously just link Asmongold?

is Asmongold wrong? the WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit is now banned for 72 hours.

"This community has been banned

This subreddit has been temporarily banned due to a prevalence of violent content. Inciting and glorifying violence or doxing are against Reddit’s platform-wide Rules. It will reopen in 72 hours, during which Reddit will support moderators and provide resources to keep Reddit a healthy place for discussion and debate."

https://old.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/

Yes? Clearly lol.

Reddit banned it because they were threatened by Elon. And the 'doxing' everyone is talking about is the naming of Elon's rightwing goons who took over federal systems lol. He said the same 'tHeY aRe cOmMItTinG a CrImE' bullshit against wired and other outlets who reported on his goons.

As for violent content on reddit lets be real please. If you want to talk about violence open a Israel-Palestine thread not /r/whitepeopletwitter lol..

Two wrongs make a right. OK

There’s a difference between mocking the general function of government employees and specifically calling for violence against individual engineers.

These are not "individual engineers". They're government officials with seemingly vast powers which aren't yet fully understood by the public. As the article details, they seem to have the authority to demand access to most if not all of the government's computer systems; we don't yet know which of them have this authority, or what limits there are, or what review processes are in place.

That doesn't mean it's OK to call for violence against them! But Wired isn't doing that. It does mean that news outlets need to report on who they are and what they're doing, even if they fear (even if they know) that third parties might issue death threats.

Arguably, they aren't government officials, because DOGE isn't a legitimate part of the executive branch.

I've seen that argument, but I don't understand it. The President has decided that executive agencies should operate according to certain new standards, charged the USDS with enforcing that, and put Musk in charge with a new meme name. Perhaps one or another of those standards is unlawful, but it's hard to see how the entire idea could be. What extra step is required to make DOGE legitimate?

The president is allowed to set standards for executive agencies. But his job is to faithfully execute the laws, and in doing so, he can't just shut down executive agencies by trying to fire everyone, and take them over with random people he appoints as advisors. Those agencies exist not for him to wield power over, but to implement our priorities as authorized by the Congress.

The way it's supposed to work is the executive sends an aspirational budget to congress that embodies his policy agenda, our representatives vote on the budget, the congress appropriates the money that we send the government to the executive branch, and then the executive branch spends that money, again, faithfully. That's the oath he took. What that means operationally is that he can't just defund things we voted for in the budget that doesn't match his political agenda. Doing so should be impeachable, because it would represent a breach of his oath. It doesn't matter that he has a different agenda, he's the president for everyone.

Since he's not doing it this way, that's why people are pointing it out as unconstitutional, and illegal.

For DOGE to be legal what it needs to operate in just an advisory capacity. It should recommend things to cut, but there has to be reasons, an auditable process, transparency, and meaningful oversight. For starters, Musk has a massive conflict of interest in that he's a recipient of government contracts. So he himself shouldn't even be part of this process without first answering to that. If we keep going down this path, the people advocating for it now will not like being on the receiving end when that level of capriciousness is directed against them.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever dealt with the US government, but people that work there are famously unmotivated. This isn’t about replacing people with AI, it’s about people that can be replaced with grep. I’m not sure what you mean by people advocating for reducing government spending being on the “receiving end” of reducing government spending.

Finally, this is not capricious, this is absolutely well considered. If you haven’t realised the government has spent vast quantities of money, printed advanced quantities of money to do it, and caused record in inflation.

Trump said that musk is a special government employee, so yeah they are officially part of the executive branch.

It's created by renaming U.S. Digital Service that was created in 2014 by President Obama within the Office of Management and Budget. So it's a part of executive branch.

They are absolutely individual engineers. And yes, Wired is targeting them but needs to show some awareness of what the effects of doing so may be.

They are individual engineers. They are named individuals, and they are engineers.

>I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.

Why? Its ok when our betters engage in such behavior and who could be better than the rich?

When some poors like "journalists" try to do this, they're just upending the system for their own gain. It would really be tolerating corruption if you just tolerated them ripping up our current system of governance just because they preferred a different set of rules. Elections have consequences and its just gauche to ignore the results like this.

I mean "mr free speech absolutist" has already tweeted that anyone complaining about the government would have their account suspended. Kind of on brand for a nazi.

Suspending an account on a single service has absolutely nothing to do with fascism.

There’s no reason to look for logical consistency. Some people like the government employees, some people like the kids taking them down.

It’s a fundamental matter of opinion driving the discourse - not the misappropriation of some objectively correct morality.

The hypocrisy of Musk once again in full effect. Anyone who still thinks Musk is out to help anyone but himself, I have a bridge to sell you. It's sitting right next to 'free speech'.

When it comes to these people specifically, they need to be publicly called out. What's happening is unprecedented and possibly illegal. I know most of the press has been bought off or strong-armed to look the other way by the new administration, but at least someone is still doing reporting.

Anyone have any guesses as to why "Both are quite bad. I expect better from Wired." would be flagged?

Sometimes HN really confuses me.

Imagine if this was a male journalist snooping through newly appointed young, female engineers' histories, e-stalking them the same way and writing an article of his findings. You can justify it as "it's technically still reporting", but it's very creepy that they thought of this and then continued to think this was a good idea throughout the process.

Would be fucking terrified knowing that my personal employment records were in reach of these children. Who's the responsible adult in the room stopping them from "losing" a backup they've made or maintaining the non-compliant equipment they'll have brought in.

The next four years are going to be a test of the US Constitution. But when they are up -- and they will be, and people are more angry at Trump than the last time around the pendulum swings wildly back again, as it always does, what is going to happen to Musk and the rest of them?

I expect we’ll see more Italian plumbers coming out of the woodwork before 4 years is up.

I too am a fan of mario brothers!

OP was making a veiled reference to Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering the UHC ceo.

And I was making an (apparently) even more veiled reference that I approve of the comment to which I responded.

It's not a test of The Constitution, it's a test of our constitution, and we're being exposed as we speak.

I think it is going to be much harder to get Trump to leave after these four years than the last time. I imagine there will be an amendment on the table soon to do away with the two-term limit, if there isn't already. Or, he may just say "come and get me" and if the military is on his side, he can just continue to rule as he sees fit.

Key word here is "cannot be elected more than twice". So as long as there is no official election, he is not technically violating the constitution by remaining in power. I'm playing devil's advocate here.

Trump is old and is not the leading example of a healthy person. I think there's an entirely reasonable chance that nature takes care of this one for us.

That said, I don't think it matters at all. This isn't a Trump problem. Sure, he's the figurehead, but there are ample figureheads waiting in the wings, just as malleable to the alt-reich's needs. They will be more than happy to step in and allow the current dismantling of the USA to continue, and for Something Very Else to be built in its place.

Yup, exactly. Hell, even if Trump were to die of a heart attack tomorrow, Vance would happily continue the cureent trajectory, and he might even be better at doing so.

The cult of personality would die though, with a considerable impact to the regime. We've been predicting the death of orange man for years considering his diet, and yes it's a miracle he's lived this long, but an often understated asset of his is that he doesn't drink an once of alcohol. That can help him survive way past his 2nd term, I think.

That assumes this will end.

From the outside (that is europen view) it looks like they're planning that this change in four years - or even two - will not happen. We'll see.

A good read would be Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

I worry more about what will happen to the US then. The backlash is going to be very tempted to fight fire with fire, to fight unconstitutionality with unconstitutionality.

Can we get back to a functioning rule of law and a limited government at the end of this? I'm... hesitant.

The problem is that the optimistic approach requires that there's enough left of the government in order to use legal means to stop the catastrophe. I really really hope there will be, but right now I'm worried that's a losing proposition.

This assumes there will be a next time. Sometimes once momentum is allowed to build it's very hard to stop or even slow things down.

The reason trump won is that is he authentic. He is following through on his promises. He doesn't have 20 speech writers corralling his every word to be completely neutral and say nothing at all.

It's insane to me that the so called left are going to bat to defend the status quo, when the status quo is multi-national corporations lobbying gov for their own goals of super globalist trade. Isn't "buy local" a left position? Obviously trump is a flawed character, even the most ardent supporters will admit that. But he is not a cookie cutter straight of the factory line politician.

The same goes for Elon, he is an idiot a lot of time, but he is not a lobbyist just sitting in the shadows, he is public about being an idiot for better and worse.

These are all left wing ideas, f the corruption, that's what doge is supposed to be doing, it supposed to be cutting out inefficient spending, which lets be honest, will go to friends of friends, but the left are losing their shit because they got their funding for dressing up as the opposite sex cut off.

> The reason trump won is that is he authentic. He is following through on his promises. He doesn't have 20 speech writers corralling his every word to be completely neutral and say nothing at all.

I find it absolutely incredible that people believe this.

Trump LIES about everything, all the time. He just lies in all directions. He lies that the sun is blue, he lies that the sun is red, he sometimes that the sun is pink.

Then a decent chunk of the population chooses the lies they like and ignores the rest.

They are adults. They work for the federal government. They deserve no privacy protections.

I keep seeing a contradiction that I’m having a hard time explaining. On one hand, there are numerous comments saying that what these individuals are doing is illegal. On the other hand, there are comments saying they work for the federal government and so doxxing them is fair game.

If they work for the government, how is what they are doing illegal?

They don't actually work for the federal government. That's a big part of the problem. Trump has just given them access.

I don’t doubt what you are saying about Trump giving them access. Do we know how he did that? I guess I’d like to understand how we know if it was legal or not.

It's the other way around. It's not legal unless these people are under an executive branch department or agency, with department heads appointed by the president, and confirmed by the Senate.

These people have not all been vetted, hired, and granted security clearances appropriate to the level of access they've obtained.

All of this is illegal.

Being an employee of the federal government doesn't give you access to everything. There are laws, passed by Congress, about who is allowed to do what.

[flagged]

Obviously

The Founding Fathers had 18, 20, 21 and 25 year olds in much more important positions.

And just like DOGE, they were working in a team with older people too, but that sort of rational framing just doesn't get clicks.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_Fathers_of_the_United...

Thank you! I was looking to see if anyone made this point.

You are exactly right. "Inexperience" just means someone younger than you.

(Note I am middle-aged)

It is very strange idea to equate life experiences gained before 18 of people born in 21st century in 18th century.

Also, as outsider, I would never understand US fascination with "Founding Fathers". Some folks born about 300 years ago and somehow having answers to all the questions for all the times. Back than this country was a backwater colony which barely started industrialization. Overwhelming majority of population lived out of sustenance farming and majority of trade goods were products of slave labour. I mean, it is what it is, but where this yearning for glorious past which never existed comes from? Like, life in USA became more or less good only several generations ago, after the country became giant economical winner of WW2. And it did it by investing heavily into helping allies, not building isolationist policies.

> I would never understand US fascination with "Founding Fathers"

Have you read any of their writing? A lot of it is timelessly insightful and they were very intelligent men.

> having answers to all the questions for all the times

This gives away that you haven't read them, because they themselves explicitly denied having answers for all time, and stated that the government needed to evolve with the governed.

Perhaps you should read their comment again: they never said the "Founding Fathers" claimed to have eternal answers, rather they pointed out the odd ritualised deference by people today to things written hundreds of years ago by people who (by your own admission) explained that the things they wrote would likely not be entirely applicable to the future.

> Like, life in USA became more or less good only several generations ago, after the country became giant economical winner of WW2.

This judgement of course depends upon the standards of the observer and where in the US you look. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, many elites in the Empire of Japan had spent time in America and came to view America as spoiled, decadent, and too soft to fight a long war.

I'm no expert in US history but just looking at the signers list, 3/4 of them were >30yo.

The Founding Fathers were responsible for a population of... just under 3 million though, as opposed to the US' current ~350 million.

So you would agree with this comment if the US were smaller?

Most of the founding fathers were old. Benjamin Franklin was in his 80s. The young ones were the exception.

hahaha you think any part of this is rational? Ignorance must be bliss.

No way a 19 year old could be tricked by a pretty woman into giving her secrets and access codes. Real level-headed and clear-eyed age

Though is true of a lot of fully grown men - especially in DC.

ah, classic whataboutism

No, you are the one that pointed out the "19 year old" bit as if it mattered.

I'd wager that a 19yo is MORE likely than a 29yo, which is also relevant. Also, properly trained individuals are less likely to fall into this trap. How much training have these completely non-vetted children had?

Yeah I mean Zucc was only 20 when he started Facebook and popularised the adage "work fast and break things", which was a great strategy for Facebook and its burnt out staff (or those that couldn't hack it) so of course it'll work for the biggest economy in the world too, it's basically the same as a startup, right?

nations were lead into greatness by 17yo. It's a dumb idea that this can't be done here.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/02/03/elon-musk...

"They have apparently installed sofa beds in the office of the OPM."

"Government employeees in various agencies report that staffers from DOGE are turning up at this offices, plugging in servers and running "code reviews"."

"What the DOGE people seem most keen on is access to personnel records and as much information as possible about what employees actually do. According to one civil servant interviewed by DOGE personnel, the questions include, "Which of your colleagues are most expendable?""

Sounds like a scene from Office Space.

Some context for USAID

https://youtu.be/qe47hTyUh5g?feature=shared

That's a hell of a stain to have on your résumé.

> So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.

... and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Checks and balances have been neutralized.

Checks and balances were never tried in the first place. There must have been some assumption of decorum and decency, so strong that whatever loopholes are, have been left wide open.

Without a competent or impartial FBI and AG, there's literally zero chance these people will be investigated.

With a house and senate that fears the president, there will be no impeachment.

And even if they successfully manage to impeach the president, I'm 100% sure Trump will challenge it.

Yeah, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Gonna be 4 very, very long years.

4 years? Trump has been talking about a third term.

“It would be my greatest honor to serve not once but twice,” Mr. Trump told an audience on Saturday. “Maybe three times.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/us/politics/trump-boundar...

I didn't think he would live this long, but he certainly couldn't survive another 8 years, right?... right?

So basically we are down to relying on the cycle of life as the ultimate check and balance. Hopefully he won't appoint one of his sons as his successor like in North Korea.

> Checks and balances have been neutralized.

That seems somewhat inverted - the elected government is creating checks and balances on unelected bureaucrats.

Elon Musk was elected? News to me.

Trump was elected, and Elon was appointed by Trump?

Given the unprecedented power he is wielding he should have been confirmed by congress.

So Musk is one of those unelected bureaucrats you're railing against?

This is proof that people will downvote to silence things they don't like. This is a gross abuse of the spirit of HN. The statement above was factual.

A radical improvement in the national debt at the hands of the world's most competent entrepeneur? I think many people were voting specifically for this. Things are going exactly as advertised.

You are assuming that there will be a radical improvement. That is yet to be seen. I personally doubt it.

They're already projected to save hundreds of billions through the voluntary redundancy scheme implemented last week.

This sounds like a number pulled out of Musk's ass.

It’s wages per year with IIRC 8% of the workers taking the deal.

You are conflating debt and deficit. Cutting the deficit by a few hundred billion dollars will barely impact the rate of growth of the debt, it's not a "radical improvement in the national debt", it's a modest reduction in spending.

"Checks and balances" is a phrase that applies to the ability of the three coequal branches of government to hold one another in check.

By sending in their own unelected bureaucrats

You're in the wrong place for a comment like that. Don't even bother.

Nothing to me shouts the absolute failure of AI technology than needing this team and also in some kind of emergency way.

Given how useful USAID has been for the CIA, if the “deep state” was a real thing, Elon would have at best a few more days to live.

As someone from the developing world where USAID regularly funded organizations that were often divisive and insidiously subversive, can’t say that I’ll be unhappy to see this thing dismantled.

But that has to be an act of congress. Congress creates and funds government departments. The president can't just dismantle them by fiat.

That he's (apparently) tasking people to do so who don't even have the requisite experience or clearances is just adding insult to injury.

But don't you get it? From his point of view, the Constitution is upholding bad things; he couldn't care less about it.

The constitution is not meant to uphold the citizens of foreign nations. Dont you get it?

It seems more like a CIA civil war to me, CIA cut outs on both sides.

The recent events should finally put to rest all the JFK conspiracies. Messing up with the government at this scale should indeed put you into some 3-letter agency hitlist.

> if the “deep state” was a real thing

If it wasn't, he made it real. Elon is the deep state. An unelected individual who has set up a no-oversight machinery with hands on the levers of state power, and using them to his own ends, independent of public benefit. Every accusation is a confession.

The moral arguments against what the left or right do are exactly the same.

Suddenly the left is all concerned about doxxing or unelected bureaucrats in government.

Truthfully politics in America is not about any moral compass - it’s about individual preference to see certain political ideas win or lose.

Instead of pretending politics is based on a set of moral issues, just accept that it’s a set of opinions. Some simply like certain causes, people, or businesses more than others do.

The old experienced are staying home or surviving with aids of non-engineering skills. LOL.

What naive person does anything voluntary for the richest man on Earth?

I see things done by DOGE are getting noticed. I vaguely remember that DOGE will be decommissioned around 2026 independence day I believe? I have no confidence in judging what the outcome might be at this point, so I will wait till the last day of DOGE.

I'm concerned about my US bonds, as the way to access them is through a government website. Are these people going to block my access and steal my money?

>> “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”

They are going to make it easier to get your money by making it available via X!

I'm trying to download my 1099 forms from TreasuryDirect and it's coming back as unavailable. Probably unrelated to everything going on now, but the fact I thought that it could be related for a second is crazy.

>>> TreasuryDirect is unavailable. >>> We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you try again later.

Investors' faith in US bond and equity markets is, unironically, the most powerful immediate-term check on the current administration. The longer-term check is the midterm elections in 2026. If they really screw things up, as they appear to be doing, that's their deadline for fixing them.

The republicans purged a lot of people from voter rolls. They're going to do the same in 2026.

If you want to vote, anticipate dozens of hours over several months making sure you weren't removed from the register.

Why are they so against people voting? The number of actual fraudulent vote cases prosecuted was very, very small, but the measures taken against voter fraud have been disproportionate.

They benefit from more people voting, not fewer. The valance of that issue flipped over the last few cycles.

There's a good amount of evidence that more turnout would help Republicans in general, even before (at least if you applied the "socio-economic voting preference determinism" logic that one tends to apply).

It's good to be against voter suppression because voter suppression is bad, even if in theory it doesn't help "your side". One would hope that doing that work would convince some people you're on "their side", but it's quite nebulous.

Agreed.

The question is who is suppressed.

There was an effort to purge minorities from rolls in swing states. It matters where the more votes come from.

I think that's bad, but I also think it is less likely to be an effective strategy for the current regime than a lot of other things.

Then why did they purge a lot of voters in 2024? And take other actions to suppress voter turnout?

Does blocking non citizens from voting count as “suppressing voter turnout”? It’s all just politics and words, and we’ve picked our side and so we use the language that best supports it. Is someone pro-life, or are they anti women’s rights? Is someone pro-choice, or are they pro-baby-murder.

How does one actually convince someone of the “rightness” of their side? It somehow starts with love your enemies, though if I say that to my more right wing friends it means capitulate to whatever the progressives want. All I know is the spirit of the age is evil.

That is not what they did: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

Passing laws to make it harder to vote, and easier to challenge a persons voter registration and ballot, and then running an operative campaign to specifically target voters on the other side of the political spectrum is a bit different than "just politics". Legal, sure. Ethical, moral, fair, absolutely not.

Eh, it’s all politics. I’m sure they are trying to win however they can, don’t sit there and be so naive to think the other side wouldn’t be perfectly happy to let illegal immigrants vote if it benefited them.

I’m all for fairness. For example I think we should weight votes, where everyone gets one vote for each dollar of taxes they pay.

I also want to see all landlords structure rental contracts so that the renter pays the property taxes, if rent was 2k a month but there are $500 in property taxes a month, rent would become $1500 plus $500 property taxes. That way the immediate effects of voting for tax increases is felt acutely and their blame can go on themselves instead of their “greedy landlord”.

> I’m all for fairness. For example I think we should weight votes, where everyone gets one vote for each dollar of taxes they pay.

You are joking right? Honest, question, what life experiences have you had that make you think that this would be a good idea. It would effectively mean a handful of billionaires would control the country.

> I also want to see all landlords structure rental contracts so that the renter pays the property taxes

It is a free market. Outside of a handful of places with rent control, nothing is stopping them from doing that. And if you think splitting out property taxes as a separate line item will somehow make tenants think that landlords, the vast majority of whom increase their rents to the absolute maximum that the market will bear, are somehow not greedy, I think you have a pretty bad handle on what it is like to be in the renter class.

> It would effectively mean a handful of billionaires would control the country.

Is that not what we have already. Do you really think your vote matters?

I don’t think my tenants ever thought I was greedy. And I don’t think a vast majority of landlords who aren’t some big corporation are. Though people will think they are regardless, so just want them to sure the accusation of greed with that of the bureaucrats, and the public schools who simply flush money down the toilet.

I think if landlords structured rental contracts that way (and maybe give a $50 discount if you choose that option), you will see a huge amount of school levies fail which is a net win for society.

> Is that not what we have already. Do you really think your vote matters?

At least in the current setup, they are required to maintain and fund a vast propaganda apparatus, lobbying efforts, and political organizations in order to secure their power. And even with all that effort, they still only have a tenuous control over our institutions. Your proposal would literally just hand the keys over to them.

> I don’t think my tenants ever thought I was greedy

As a lifelong renter, who has for the most part had relatively good relationships with my landlords over the years, I can assure you that they do. At the very least, they probably don't have a very positive opinion of you, even if they are nice to you in person. After decades of financialization of our housing market, we now have an entire swath of our population locked out of the housing market. And if you think these folks like handing over a significant chunk of their income each month to a bunch of rent-seekers, I think you are solely mistaken.

So when I kept guy in the detached studio as a tenant when I bought the house, and just kept his rent what he was paying already and didn’t raise his rent over the 4 years I had the place, when I could’ve easily gotten 30% more in the market, he still thought I was greedy? Or when I liked the idea of just giving him every December free for Christmas he thought I was greedy. Or when he asked if he could pay half rent and then two weeks later pay the other half cuz his baby mama got arrested and he had to take care of his daughter and instead I just said why not just have a free month, he thought I was greedy.

Dang, I guess I should’ve just gotten all the money I could’ve if tenants feel that way regardless.

Non citizens cannot vote for presidents.

Oh but they have tried. And if you listen to the progressive left, if we try to make sure that remains true, then we are suppressing the vote.

Why are you bringing up nonsense hypotheticals when there's real voter suppression. Trumps stolen election ignited states to create many new restrictive voter laws and threw out millions of votes in swing states alone.

You sound like those who voted for Trump in 2020. But you might be right, but then so they may have been.

Trump won because enough people were sick of the garbage they heard from the progressive left being crammed down their throats.

How people can think a billionaire like him relates to the average guy, is quite crazy, but just shows how incredibly bad the democrats are at actually relating to the people.

I didn’t vote for him the first two times, but after I saw his immediate response to the assassination attempt, I knew I would this time. There are millions like me.

I’m all for making it more difficult to vote. Let’s just be ruled by a set of elites like we already are, but at least be honest about it.

If I get what I truly want it won’t really matter as much who is president because the federal government would have like a 1/10 of its power and a 1/10 of its budget, and states and local municipalities would have far more say. Ultimately I think the 18th century anti-federalists were right. I hope Trump just lays waste to the federal government agencies and completely neuters it.

> I hope Trump just lays waste to the federal government agencies and completely neuters it.

That would be completely illegal and unconstitutional. If that's the way things are going to go, you're definitely not going to like what will happen when the power is wielded by someone who doesn't align with you politically.

And I've got a brand new shipment of bridges to sell you if you think Trump is out here about to neuter the power of the federal government. He is consolidating power.

So no different than Biden and Obama and Bush. Oh well.

At least it is enjoyable to see progressives squirm. And to gut dept of education and usaid, both very solid ideas so far.

I don't think your comment fully considers the recent history of presidential power. Biden argued in court against Trump to not consolidate power at the executive level. He was against Trump's idea of presidential immunity. Then he refused to use the power given to him, and on his way out of office implored the country to reconsider.

He also signed into law bills that were passed explicitly to reduce the president's power because of the way he saw Trump abuse it.

> And to gut dept of education and usaid, both very solid ideas so far.

You may agree with these ideas now, but you should go through thr proper channels to get rid of them. Otherwise, things you like will just disappear by fiat the first time a progressive is in office.

https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won...

Numbers are published by U.S. Elections Assistance Commission. Read it if you want.

They'll dismantle the federal state alright. But not for the reasons you think or want.

https://www.vcinfodocs.com/venture-capital-extremism

https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no

> why did they purge a lot of voters in 2024?

Because the GOP isn't a monolith. Lots of them are still operating under a playbook 2024 proved obsolete. Race is no longer an almost-perfect proxy for partisan affiliation [1].

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/22/nx-s1-5199119/2024-election-e...

They're not removing people randomly.

Is there a source on this? I haven't heard of it and it sounds undemocratic

This is a link I stumbled on earlier today: https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/

Just voter ID finally and lets forget this blame game.

When government IDs are universal, we can require them to vote.

Here's a study from about a year ago: [0].

Upshot is that 21% of Americans 18 and older don't have an ID that matches their name and address. Disenfranchising a fifth of Americans isn't something I'd accept.

Note also that it's 23% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans, and 31% of independents. You can see why Democrats are anti-ID-check while Republicans are pro-ID-check as a general rule.

[0]: https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20I...

I am totally fine with disenfranchising people who don't have up to date IDs. The cost of a perception of illegal ballot stuffing is high and the benefit of these voters is marginal at best.

I'm not from the US, but all the countries I've lived in require some form of ID. As far as I know, US is the only country in the world that doesn't. So, I have an honest question: why would you want people who don't bother to have a valid ID to vote at all? Do you expect them to be responsible people, good members of society? People who pay more in taxes than they receive from the government?

I don't know enough about US to be sure. But in any country I've lived in, the answer would be no.

That’s a super good point.

Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50. There’s a long history of poll taxes used for voting suppression in the US, so any kind of pay-to-vote concept is tough. (The easy answer, of course, is to make ID issuance free.)

Then there’s the issue that states have widely different levels of competence regarding ID issuance. The REAL ID Act [0] required states to start issuing IDs based on more robust requirements by 2008. That deadline has been delayed through 2025, and is likely to get pushed back again.

When I lived in Kentucky (stereotypically poor and rural), there was a major issue that birth certificates were handwritten and never digitized, and existing driver’s licenses had been issued based on what you claimed your name was. When they started validating birth certificates as a part of REAL ID, people ran into issues when the name they had been using for their whole life didn’t match what was handwritten on their birth certificate.

Basically, identity documents are local (and often hyper-local; my own birth certificate is certified by my county, not even my state). Dragging the whole country into something resembling modernity is a major project that will exclude big chunks of people that are otherwise “responsible”.

Making the right to vote dependent on that whole system happening to work out OK for you just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act

> Part of the issue is that ID’s are expensive. When I moved from one state to another a couple years ago, a new driver’s license was $50.

That doesn't sound that expensive at all. It's actually on par with other countries across the world, if you account for difference in average income. I wouldn't want a person who doesn't have $50 for a proper ID to be able to vote anyway.

However, I agree that (1) tying id to driving is weird, and (2) random circumstances completely out of your control should not stop you from voting.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

It appears to me that Trump is doing phenomenal, and my I didn’t like the other side vote for him, is turning into I kind of like him and would more actively support him. He seems like a strong president, especially compared to his predecessor, and the promise to “make America great again”, seems like it might becoming more of a reality.

If he can negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, in a relatively soonish timeframe, I will be very happy. But it’s kind of a game of chicken, a high risk high reward type gamble, that could be very dangerous and lead to worse things, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

Ultimately I read comments here and I think the “other side” is blind, which they likely think of me.

This has to be a joke

Because you found a person with opinions different to your own?

I think most of what Trump is attempting will work out poorly, for America, Trump, and the world in general. I can't prove that and there are so many presumptions in my world view, my estimation might be incorrect.

Trump was elected. I think a lot of that support came from people who had been voting for either Kang or Kodos for years and knew the outcome of that wasn't going to be what they wanted. I believe those people know exactly what kind of person Trump is, but that Trump acting in his own self interest might cause government action that is at least not-as-bad as the alternative of a perpetual status quo.

I don't think that is the case, but I think it would be unreasonable to declare that someone who believes something different is wrong simply because I think my opinion objectively carries more weight.

Disclaimer: not an US citizen.

I appreciate your post, and I think there is some truth to what you're saying. The problem is that... It's hard bordering on impossible for me to process what these people see good in what he's doing. I've tried, mind you, I've really truly tried. But this whole thing sounds insane to me. There is no way for me to erase the bigger picture from my mind that I get to the point... "yeah, he's doing a good job."

The second point is I feel a lot of these people are NOT arguing in good faith. If someone is not arguing in good faith, being "understanding" would just embolden them.

Honestly, this whole thing makes my head explode.

I have a hard time expressing why I like what Trump is doing. It might just be to see those squirm who put us through Covid lockdown hell, or just someone who is so willing to do whatever openly.

An example I like: they deport a bunch of Colombians here illegally, Socialist Colombian President refuses to let the plane land, Trump immediately says we are going to hammer them with tariffs and other things, Colombian President apologizes and says they won’t get in the way.

He is just exerting American dominance openly. He took us out of the WHO, ends the dumb climate accord. The idea that we should put our own people first.

Now it all might blow up in our face as the world gets sick of the American bully, and that will crush our empire, but I’m also ok with that, because it might be the only thing that will allow us to rebuild from the ground up.

Well, at least you're honest about it, it's somewhat refreshing. How do you feel about the way he is treating your traditional allies? Canada, the EU...

Well I don’t like Trudeau so I’ve enjoyed his trolling of him as “the governor of the great state of Canada”. For the most part I don’t mind, but we will come to regret it if war actually breaks out. I think for the most part it is all superficial, and yes tariffs (which are terrible for an economy), will not do well long term, but have already forced Mexico and Canada to act at least, and I think that was the intent. Essentially saying you need us more than we need you. If/When that is no longer true, it is going to come back to bite us if we’ve completely burned all the bridges with our allies.

As it is the United States military is so dominant around the world, NATO should just be considered an overseas American army for example, and Trump is essentially just exerting the us dominance in a blunt way, but it has always been wielded, but is always prettied up to not sound like what it is. A giant military empire of force. Trump is just showing us what has always been behind the curtain of the US government, and the US use of power.

I think long term it will weaken the American empire, but will also make us less reliant on globalization, but I think if all the individual EU countries took a mindset of “our citizens first” like Trump it will be a good thing.

Trump put us through Covid lockdown hell. Awfully strange to re-elect the guy responsible for the worst of Covid.

What happened with the Colombians was the President said "you cannot land them here in chains and handcuffs" and Trump threatened tariffs, then cancelled the tariffs, then caved into the Colombian President's demands and removed the handcuffs from the Colombian citizens. Fox News and conservative media spun this as a "win" because Trump made a threat and also because they misunderstood why Colombia refused the plane.

Well, I’m on the other side of the Atlantic, so probably not the other side you meant so take it for what it’s worth.

Your president has threatened war on Denmark, a close ally to my country (think your relationship with Canada until he started threatening them with war too). If I knew nothing else about him that would be enough.

I’ve been using American web hosts since the ’90s. I’m currently in the process of moving away from Digital Ocean to a European host. I’m cancelling as many other services (Netflix, Strava, etc) as possible. Not much, about $300-400 less per month from me to the US.

I’m happy I got to visit New York a few years ago.

Saw a big deal with a US supplier recently fall through because of US instability. It's all insane.

Yeah I don’t get the Greenland thing. I think it is all grandstanding.

But I appreciate dictator Trump. If they wanted to go to war with Denmark they would just crush them openly, rather than as they do today with countries who disagree with them, where we covertly undermine them to get what we want.

Though maybe I’m a bit of an enigma, I don’t think the US should’ve declared independence from Britain, and wish we still had a monarchy. Problem is kings need to be noble, which none of our politicians, including Trump, seem to be.

Oh well. Peace to you on the other side of the pond.

The rule of law is more important than your specific policy preferences. If leaders you like can do whatever they want without following the law, leaders you don't like can do the same thing. We have a solution to that problem in this country. We have a legislature that passes the laws that everyone is subject to. Whatever you like in the current administration is less important than their lawlessness.

Laws they’re subject to unless the president pardons them.

Mostly we pass as many laws as possible, then only enforce them when it is politically expedient.

The government in passing so many laws has made the law a joke. Maybe the right wing are the progressives now and they’re just going to tear everything down?

I’m enjoying the show. Can’t wait to see what Musk digs up.

Imagine if the US misses bond payments and defaults because of bureaucracy problems (not lack of money). It would completely explode the interest rates of any loans they have and completely tank the US government for years.

I don't think Treasury Direct could get much worse without just being completely broken.

At least they don't force you to login with a virtual keyboard any longer.

They'll steal it via inflation. Trump's already announced a few programs that involve him siphoning federal dollars into the pockets of his cronies (including the tariff revenue).

Blocking your access to any sort of "sell my bond back" button while they do it seems prudent.

The last two admins already "stole" it via inflation. Do you have any idea how many dollars were printed in the last 5 years?

Cutting federal spending is obviously not the thing that will lead to more inflation (though tariffs certainly might, but that is not really the subject of the current discussion).

And what caused that inflation? I seem to remember some sort of worldwide health issue.

The existence of a pandemic does not require printing an unprecendented amount of currency.

It does when people can't work.

Yeah man, theyre using them to buy weed as we speak. Sorry.

Two sentences? This is the whole article or am i blind?

Are they the cause of the rumored fire in a NIH server room?

It's time to read The Great Leveler. Maybe...

the dogs bark. but the caravan continues on. -- proverb

"move fast and break things"

just imagine how insecure and fucked up their solutions will be? waiting for the S3 bucket that has global read permissions on a literal "select * from usa_citizens" dump of data.

This article appears to be a fictional piece that imagines a scenario where Elon Musk has gained control over certain federal government agencies through a project called the "Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)." (c) Claude :)

of course Musk recruits young ambitious kiddos - they work hard, for not much money, and don't question authority (because they're blinded by their ambition)

it's only when you get older that you see how rife this is for abuse. as a simple example, if DOGE knows influential Treasury recipients, then they could find ways to extort them. help us and you'll get your money on time. oppose us, and...

heck, I'm a treasury recipient (albeit a very small one), so if I take to X and start criticizing Trump or Musk, is my money at risk? Maybe not today but maybe within his term. Scary times.

It's also only when you get older that you see how rife the existing system is for "abuse" (if you want to call it that). Maybe the young upstarts have other motives for dismantling the existing system than simply blind ambition, especially if the existing system is set up with entrenched patronage networks that are basically inaccessible to the "young ambition kiddos".

Your example is pretty unpersuasive. It is already that case that "influential Treasury recipients" are called upon to "help" those in power. How else can you explain the various volte face moves by seemingly apolitical economic actors. I think the kiddos might finally be getting wise to how the game is played and how it is rigged.

These "kiddos" are committing crimes.

so were some folk that did some bad things on Jan 6… :)

That's so naive. "Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."

Who knows. If you happen to mention any words that are on the CDC's new forbidden words list, maybe you will fall victim to the next Ctrl+f search these guys run.

Everyone likes to throw the "1st amendment" in the conversation, when it suites them... but I agree given the recent retaliatory tendencies, it is difficult to criticize the current administration, and effectively leaving it in its own echo chamber.

I am wondering if that partially explains how Musk radicalized himself lately. While I like the idea of absolute free speech, it kinda falls when the powerful are retaliatory... and kinda loose with the rule of law.

While I get the idea of "the bureaucracy" having its own life sometimes getting in a way of change, and the President willing to get more done, faster. But the fact that the bureaucrats do not carring on sometimes is because they follow a due process.

Now with those young men taking the control of the $6T/yr, this is a tremendous power. Even unintentionally, a mistake could have dire consequences.

Dictators always liked to exploit the idealism of young people. The Nazis had the Hitler youth, China had the Red Guards, most prison guards for the Khmer Rogue were teenagers. They happily did the dirty work and could be discarded easily once not useful anymore.

I would all be for scrutinizing what government does but you can't just go around and cut everything you don't understand within 15 minutes. And I bet they will keep the moon and Mars programs going.

For sure, Musk and his friends will keep their billions of dollars government contracts. No inefficiency there, surprisingly.

They're already being abused. They're being made to sleep at work.

How high are the chances of these young engineers getting highly lucrative offers from China and Russia just to tell them what they saw? They are set for life, and Elon Musk does not recognize that he enabled this.

Do people know age of founding fathers or USA?

If your point is that Elon Musk is overthrowing the government and these are his pals, then this statement makes sense. If you were trying to make any other point then this makes zero sense.

Between 26 and 81.

"between 19 and 24" - that would mean not even college educated?

JFC, I was a complete dumbass in my 20s.

As is very nearly every person, including these children.

Advance Publications needs to be stopped.

I wonder how much of this is "I don't want to sell this Tesla I couldn't afford, so instead I'll change my whole political ideology"

Naming these people this way is a blatant invitation for harassment by signal-boosting their identities, even if technically their names are already known. This is one step away from doxing and we should not support it.

Save America: don't buy Tesla.

Gosh, many of the folks at HN seem to be deeply invested in things remaining status quo with the administrative state.

Have Elon Musk and all these engineers sworn oaths as required to be a federal employee? https://federalnewsnetwork.com/commentary/2019/10/the-oath-o... If Elon is "just advising", under what statute or directive does he have specific authority?

If they are accessing TS/SCI information and places like SCIFs have they filled out their SF-86? Are any of them dual nationals and do they have any ties or vulnerabilities to hostile foreign states?

Basic questions given the enormous access they are being given, far beyond frankly any handful of people have generally had in US government history.

Also, they have apparently plugged in their own private server at OPM. Has this already been compromised by Chinese/ Russian agents? Has the NSA had a look?

There are class action lawsuits being organized on behalf of federal workers against this egregious data breach and let's hope to god they succeed.

Simple answer: No.

> If they are accessing TS/SCI information and places like SCIFs have they filled out their SF-86?

Did the Mar-a-Lago workers who moved boxes fill out those forms?

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/05/25/...

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/06/surveillance...

Would contractors need to do any of this? Is DOGE using federal funds?

I'm not exactly clear on the situation but if they are just doing this for free and don't have access to confidential information, I could see that potentially being the key loophole here.

Man, these are some seriously impressive motherfuckers—my resume looks absolutely shameful compared to any one of them, and I'm over a decade older than they are.

It is deeply telling that DOGE is relying on inexperienced anyone.

Can we please call it DGE so as not to pump the crypto coin?

I find the whole discussion around power of government branches and what different events mean and how will this or that branch react a bit surreal.

The guy has been impeached twice, exposing it as laughable, which it is. He has then been convicted as a felon, which hasn't slowed him down a bit in becoming a president again. He has then installed people of ridiculous backgrounds as some of the highest ranking officials in the country. He has then let Elon run amock within the government, accessing confidential data and doing things with absolutely no scrutiny or oversight. He has then already started nibbling at FBI, CIA and dozen other government agencies. It's been THREE. WEEKS.

I'm just not sure what mechanisms, checks and balances, and measures some people expect will be employed or will have any effect to control this. The government as was known up till now is no more. As long as people STILL try to frame Trump within traditional accountability mechanisms of the government, they will be floundering around the scandal or crime no. 3232, while he's committing no. 12768.

Once this slows down, there will be maybe 5% of tools and power left to revert things (and it would take decades), control the rich to any extent, and have any semblance of democracy, if they even bother to maintain it.

> and have any semblance of democracy, if they even bother to maintain it.

Isn't this democracy? People voted for Trump and this is pretty much what he ran on.

Watch some leftist billionaire now cut them blank checks to get them away from DOGE. The Cyberpunk future is here.

Curious european here. Do you think we will see some serious mass protests in big USA cities if this continues? By this I mean "reckless" action by Musk and Trump.

The vast majority of Americans either voted for this, or don't care.

Will there be some protests? Sure. Nothing will come of it, though. The only thing that will enact any real change is if big corporations start losing any profits due to all this upheaval, in which case they may put pressure to get things settled down.

A lot of voters didn't turn out, so it's not accurate to say most Americans voted for this. There's also the issue of Trump saying Musk helped him win two key states during his inauguration speech, which some consider just short of an admission to rigging the election.

Only something like 3% of the population needs to actively strike and protest to start affecting corporations.

Abstaining from voting means "I am ok with whatever the rest of you decide". While that's not an active vote in favor, it's close enough.

I don't care about non-voters. If they don't care enough to vote, they're not worth considering when we try to assign "blame" for the current situation.

The American public voted for this, full stop.

This is exactly the type of thing that Trump said he wanted to do. Who is protesting that who wouldn't be unconditionally protesting Trump anyway? Plus, with the federal NGO money spigot cut off, a lot of the NGOs that organize protests are probably having operational problems.

Only if there's inflation. If there's no inflation then people won't do anything. Most people don't know what's going on because they get their information from social media echo chambers. Truly a dystopia in the making.

Maybe. The first test will be on February, 5, when there are scheduled protests in all state capitols. There's also https://generalstrikeus.com.

I'm a pessimist sometimes so I can't imagine any real uprising coming out of this. At the end of the day, people in the US have to pay the bills, people live beyond their means whether they know it or not, no one can afford to sacrifice any of their time to a real revolution save for a small minority.

Everything you say is true. But it was also true in many other countries in which real uprisings happened. Ukrainians had to pay the bills etc back in 2014 as well.

Oh sweet, we're at the honeypot general strike stage of a Trump presidency. Glad we're just hoping trade union consciousness springs forth from the lowest union rate in american history.

No one cares about protests even if they happen. Remember all the women's march / pussy hat protests? What a great instagram opportunity that was. They are chances for people to cosplay as "members of the resistance" as they live their day to day lives as urban PMC drones.

I marched in NYC against the war in Iraq; they didnt care then either.

Yes. Lots of people in this thread have collective amnesia about 2020.

Elon Musk and all of these DOGE employees should be arrested and charged with multiple violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. They have no need or right to access the federal payments system and no authority whatsoever to stop payments congress has approved.

There doesn't seem to be anything interesting in this article, it's simply a Red Channels style blacklist against young people who are auditing a government program. The only reason this was published is because Wired is an intelligence outlet (and has always been.) Otherwise, the publishing of random government auditors' uninteresting resumes would obviously be considered harassment (if not doxxing, like Musk barked.)

Really, all this article says is that if you are an auditor for the commission appointed by the president, we will make sure that this comes up in an aggressively negative way when somebody who you want to work for googles you. It's pure intimidation, masquerading as journalism. It's somehow worse than Bill Ackman hiring trucks with the names of college students protesting a genocide being blasted as antisemites. At least Bill Ackman isn't pretending to be a journalist.

edit: every single article by this "disinformation expert" has been an anti-Trump or anti-Musk article. She has no other beat.

> if you are an auditor for the commission appointed by the president, we will make sure that this comes up in an aggressively negative way when somebody who you want to work for googles you.

You just archeologically unearthed the dictionary definition of accountability. If the people doing the auditing are a goon squad from corporate, what reasonable person should accept their results?

so musk re-invented mckinsey?

Interesting note:

> On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The AP reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

It's attracted a lot of attention that killing USAID has been such a high priority for these guys despite only being 1% of the budget and having a seemingly innocent humanitarian mission. But what's USAID doing that involves classified data? Distributing humanitarian aid shouldn't require any information whose disclosure would seriously disclose national security, should it? Presumably this means USAID has been used as cover for covert operations around the globe.

Paranoid conspiracy theory? Maybe, but it's also a well-known fact; see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Int...:

> William Blum has said that in the 1960s and early 1970s USAID has maintained "a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover. (...) From 2010 to 2012, the agency operated ZunZuneo,[199] a social media site similar to Twitter in an attempt to instigate uprisings against the Cuban government. Its involvement was concealed in order to ensure mission success. The plan was to draw in users with non-controversial content until a critical mass is reached, after which more political messaging would be introduced. At its peak, more than 40,000 unsuspecting Cubans interacted on the platform.[199]

(There's a lot more there. Check it out if you haven't heard of this.)

So, if it's been a key part of the US's overseas covert operations for decades, why did it go into the wood chipper in a weekend? Did Elon Musk just fail to realize its importance to the US's worldwide influence?

With no evidence beyond the above, I think USAID was targeted because it's been a nucleus of the Intelligence Community's resistance to Trump consolidating his power.

[flagged]

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is ridiculous. Any disagreement gets flagged and downvotes. Get control of your site, dang.

That's not close to true, but even if it were, it doesn't make it ok for you to break the site guidelines. Commenters here need to stick to those regardless of what anyone else is doing. Otherwise, we just end up in a downward spiral, since everyone always feels like the other side started it and did worse.

HN has fallen. It's infested with operatives and shills. Waving the site guidelines at me for offering a modicum of balance is the wrong way. Either ban all political commentary or let 'em cook. Putting me in a timeout for mild snark? It wasn't always like this.

HN's standards haven't changed. I think it's just that everyone underestimates their own provocations ("mild snark") and overestimates the provocations of others. This leads to an "objects in the mirror are larger than they appear" kind of effect - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

"Infested with operatives and shills" is a feeling that a lot of internet users have when they encounter views that are different from their own. It feels like these can't possibly be in good faith, so they must be "operatives and shills". But there is a much simpler explanation: the range of differences between people is just a lot larger than one expects it to be. I've written a lot about this over the years—here's one example, with links to others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851.

This is why the HN guidelines ask people "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Strong disagree. I don't think the standards have changed, I think they have become obsolete. I personally believe the HN community have taken over the self-censorship role with the downvote mechanism, like a kind of digital Red Guard policing anything that smacks of wrongthink. It's a way of disappearing contrary opinions by abusing the moderation tools. I'm not arguing for parity. There really is no expectation that there would be political balance when the audience is global but the politics are heavily US-centric. But should people who think opposition voices are not to be platformed be given censorship powers? Please fix the downvote problem.

I don't believe that "shills" or "operatives" need necessarily be a large percentage of posters to influence the discourse towards their ends. If the overall discourse is already biased, then the role of operatives is simply to suppress dissent by demonstrating that some comments are simply to be dismissed and downvoted. This talk of "evidence" is outdated and will not fix this particular issue. HN has some kind of acquired autoimmune disease. Fix the downvote mechanism.

If dissent were allowed to survive the downvotes, then the risk is that the fence-sitters or those without political or other interests might see the "majority" view is a paper tiger. Some combination of true believers and bad faith actors can easily suppress other voices. The result is that heterodox opinions aren't allowed even to be read. Other voices are driven out. If it isn't fixed or if politics isn't banned outright, then HN will fade into a parody of discourse. I urge you to fix the downvote mechanism.

These rules about tone are all well and good when diversity of opinion is permitted. But understand that 99% of the time I am responding TO one commenter but AT another (potential) reader with a more open mind. Provocations and heretical opinions must be allowed in order to attract THAT reader's attention.

Many people can see the range of political opinion on HN is heavily skewed. If you want to argue your data says otherwise, your data or your method is flawed. Fix the downvotes, the rest will follow.

Speaking of which, do these DOGE-drones go thru drug testing ? Does Elon ?

Please don't cross into personal attacks on Hacker News.

Can't believe this is flagged.

Honest question: how do things get unflagged? Do users at some level gain vouch privileges?

They 99.99999% of the time don't. I think only dang has that ability and he won't really step in unless there are some truly rouge actors.

> unless there are some truly rouge actors

It's more a question of the article. What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative? that kind of thing.

Here's a subthread from yesterday where I went into this in depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011. Past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

If anyone has a question that isn't answered at those links, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.

Can you tell if there's a concerted effort to flag Musk and DOGE related threads? I've seen threads go from nothing to [flagged][dead] in the course of 30 seconds after being up for 40 minutes, suggesting very spiky flagging behavior. This has come up a few times recently, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904148

(Of course, I could just be misunderstanding how flagging works on the site... maybe the state machine has to transition in order from regular -> [flagged][dead] -> [flagged] after vouching?)

I haven't looked specifically at DOGE stories but from my general perspective, this is the same as what we see with all the hottest/most divisive topics—that is, it's the same with Musk in general, Trump in general, and Israel/Gaza, to name perhaps the 3 most in-that-category topics.

If you use the vouch feature much, eventually they take it away from you. Same with upvoting and downvoting, but it all happens silently so most people don't notice.

That’s funny, I thought at one point I saw vouch link for comments, but no longer. I doubt I used it more than once. Does that mean it got taken away?

I couldn't say for sure but... I think so? It's the same for me, I used to have it and now I don't.

In your case that was true. General explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902318.

I didn't see much misuse of vouching in your recent history so I've removed that penalty from your account now. But please make sure that the comments you're vouching for are respecting the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Why don't you make such things transparent and clear on a user's account so they can see what you've done?

You're keen on reviewing a user's recent history, but provide no corresponding transparency to the user on what you've done.

Because I'm scared of how much extra work it would create, and because it's the sort of frog-boiling bureaucratism that it is in the spirit of this site to avoid. It's easy for me to imagine that one day I would wake up and be horrified by the systems we had inadvertently let sprout up around ourselves.

HN works best with informal systems, not formal ones. The informal contract around transparency is: people are welcome to ask questions and we always answer them, but we don't formally publish a moderation log or anything like that (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

> I call it frog-boiling because it's easy for me to imagine that one day I would wake up and be horrified by the systems we had inadvertently let spring up around ourselves.

You're already removing the ability of users to vouch. That frog is boiled.

I'm saying tell them on their user page. Include a line that only they can see which says "can no longer vouch" or similar. That way they know what's happened instead of having to guess what's happened.

I have been trying to bring Musk and DOGE topics to light all week and have lost the ability to vouch as a consequence.

You haven't lost the ability to vouch.

Meta note, but seriously thank you for being so transparent about this! It's a big part of why I love and trust HN

It didn't get taken away. Not sure why you didn't see it where you expected to but there's no issue with your account.

Thank you.

I didn’t realize the vouch link doesn’t show up in the main threads.

You have to go to the specific comment (click on the timestamp) and vouch is available there.

If a post is flagged-but-you-can-still-comment, then it can't be vouched.

If a post is flagkilled w/ comments disabled, then you can typically vouch.

It's possible to vouch for stories and comments.

You can also email moderators at hn@ycombintor.com to request unflagging. I do that occasionally, with mixed results. (I've come to know which are long shots, and typically concede the point, but at least make the attempt.)

Correction: vouch only works on comments. For stories, email mods as discussed elsewhere and in both the HN FAQ & Guidelines:

FAQ: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

Guidelines: <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Both are linked at the bottom of most HN pages.

It looks like there are people flagging literally every story related to DOGE.

I'm not. Pretty sure at this point that anything about Musk that doesn't involve Tesla or SpaceX is just being impulsed flagged.

Time to flag SpaceX and Tesla too...

SpaceX would be a shame, but it's not like any tesla news these days makes did productive discussion.

Not sure that’s necessary. I don’t recall the last Tesla story I saw that was positive.

Well, they brought the turn signal stalks back. That should count as a positive change.

All stories about Musk’s coup are. Disgusting. Where is dang?

Of course it's flagged, this site is an altar to worship at the feet of the American oligarchy. It's as rotten as the rest of Silicon Valley.

As JWZ put it:

"A venture capital company's fan club, finance-obsessed manchildren making the world worse"

Slightly NSFW source: https://cdn.jwz.org/images/2024/hn.png

I turned the flags off on this story 24 minutes before you posted this.

Care to revise your view?

that's not gonna salve their persecution complex, unfortunately

Was anything in my comment untrue?

was anything in mine untrue?

No, you might even be right that I have a "victim complex", given that my country is currently being victimized by the current US administration's pointless desire for a trade war. I'm especially hot under the collar at the moment.

But I would still maintain that this site's culture reflects the Silicon Valley finance culture it came from, and it's not a pretty culture.

Thanks for unflagging it Dang, I wish I could have seen it yesterday.

I didn't see it yesterday either, otherwise I would have turned the flags off sooner.

But thanks for the kind reply—I confess I was expecting something else!

Edit: incidentally, (and not directing this at you personally!), if even one of the commenters spending their time complaining about flags on HN had let us know about this submission at hn@ycombinator.com, this would probably have happened earlier. I say "probably" because I haven't processed all the emails from the last 12 hours yet.

For those sending emails:

- Include the post item in your subject line. That would be "42922647" for this particular story.

- Include some idea of what the problem is. For example, for a flagged story I'd have "vouch" as the first word of my subject, followed by the article title.

- I typically include the full article link (in body) and title (in subject) as insurance against my own fat-finger-fumbling.

- A brief description of the problem. E.g., "I'd like to vouch for this article".

My own typical emails are for titles (frequent), link indirection, preferred sources, and occasional mentions of flagrant violations of HN comment guidelines (flagging tends to pick those up most of the time).

For the latter, you can use the "replies" endpoint to see if a mod has previously responded to a given userID, e.g.:

For dang replying to me: <https://news.ycombinator.com/replies?id=dredmorbius&by=dang>

(Yes, there's an admonishment in there if you dig back far enough, and I remember it.)

Addition: Comments also have IDs (and are essentially the same as posts), and if you're referencing a specific comment or thread, that should similarly be highlighted in the email subject.

dang, for my clarification, why are you so clearly in favor of this being unflagged?

I haven't been flagging these topics, but I have defended those who do, on the grounds of "not politics" and "leads to flamewar discussions". On the politics front, you have deliberately allowed more politics recently (or at least that's my perception) when you thought it was of general interest, or of tech interest. But the discussions are, perhaps less flame-full than expected, still somewhat incindiary (not least the discussions around flagging, with accusations up to being full-on fascists aimed at those who just don't want HN to be overrun by this).

So: What made it clear to you that this was something that should not be flagged?

HN's guidance is that most but not all politics is off-topic:

<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>

It may have come to your attention that 1) there's been a fair bit of political activity of late 2) with impacts on YC, startups, and many of HN's readers, and 3) involving some notable individuals within the tech world.

Much of that argues to facilitate some discussion of at least a sampling of these stories. And this particular item has garnered a large number of both votes and comments. Slightly over the "flamewar" threshold (> 40 votes, comments > votes), but not in the extreme. The flamewar-detector heuristic is surprisingly accurate (I've gone through much of HN's front-page archive a couple of years ago), but not perfect. High-profile political discussions are among the more notable exceptions. Self-discussion of HN is the other (and AFAIR the most highly-ratioed high-placed story was one such item early in HN's life).

I turned off the flags on this one because there hadn't been a thread specifically about DOGE personnel and there is a clear intersection between the people in the article and the interests of HN. I mostly mean the type of people, not the specific individuals, but at least one of them (the Vesuvius prizewinner) did work which was the subject of major threads here.

I would rather the article had been more neutral and more informative, but beggars can't be choosers.

Btw, you do realize that not all politics is off topic on HN, yes? I'm pretty sure you must have seen some of my explanations about this over the years, but if not, please take a look at some of https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....

All of the following can be (indeed are) true at once: (1) most political stories are off topic here; (2) we don't want the frontpage to be dominated by politics; (3) some political stories are on topic; (4) significant and interesting things are going on right now, even though it's hard for most people to stay curious about them.

Have I clarified sufficiently?

Yes.

That is, for the moment. You're trying to walk a balance, and I tend to drift, over time, off on one side or the other.

Heya! You had some excellent points earlier:

> What we're looking for includes: is the article not too repetitive of recent discussions? does it contain significant new information? is there a reasonable chance that it could support a substantive, thoughtful discussion, or is it too flamebaity/provocative?

This article is a personal attack on individual engineers that are evidently very talented.

There's now a bunch of people using HN for personal insults in the comments.

I think the flags were warranted and turning them off was unnecessary.

Flags are applied by users in virtually all cases, not mods.

Contentious topics, regardless of how merited a discussion might be, tend to draw flags inordinately. But again, you generally can't blame mods for this.

(HN does systemically penalise, or outright ban, numerous sites. I strongly doubt Wired is in either category, though if you want to know for certain, you can email mods. For a number of fairly evident reasons the full list isn't publicly disclosed, though pg provided some lists and extracts early in HN's histoyry, notably <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4984095>. There were 38,719 banned sites as of the end of 2012, a number which has doubtless increased.)

I didn't even mention mods in my (admittedly flamey) comment, I actually don't think the moderation of HN is a problem as much as the larger culture that comes with being tied to a SV finance company. But thanks for the info.

Fair enough. The topic engenders much confusion.

Follow-up: There were 67,000 banned sites as of August 2023:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130147>

Why? The article is provably false - these are demonstrably not inexperienced engineers.

Please elaborate? I define experience in terms of mostly "time" spent on something. And I consider any engineer with less than 5 yrs of experience as "inexperienced" regardless of whether they are talented or not. I've met many talented, but inexperienced engineers who still needed redirecting.

What amount of time do you think it took to divise a combination of advanced imaging techniques and machine learning to decode the Herculaneum scroll?

Pure political posts are usually flagged. Go to Reddit.

You just got here last year. This place has always been political.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's in the guidelines that politics is not on topic here

This is evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. I encourage you to use the search function or one of the various semantic tools built on top of HN to see how these issues are discussed historically.

We are watching a coup in real time.

There's no two ways about it.

Sigh...

I would love just one year of this decade to be uneventful / boring...

I used to think people were over-doing it in their criticism of Trump – I thought he was dreadful, but ultimately a contained / containable force. I was even a little optimistic that he might be a disruptive force (inadvertent) that would make other politicians return their focus to everyday, working class concerns.

I was naive and stupid. And many people are kidding themselves even now about what's going on. There's nothing normal or business as usual about what's happening in America right now. I'm not qualified to predict where this all ends, but I don't think any of it's good and I don't think this ends after Donald Trump's second term.

To the people thinking DOGE is about cutting "wasteful spending", I can only shake my head. What will it take for people to see clearly what's right before them?

Each of us feels that we belong to some tribe. If your tribe supports what you see going on, you won't be alarmed by it. Reality is less important than the discourse's impact on your tribe.

Besides, maybe everything is fine and the Muskovites are right.

One has to take in the broader picture. The DOGE events are one piece of the puzzle. It was only last week that far-right thugs were pardoned unconditionally by the President.

Some people hold conservative views, some liberal and others a mix. People have "tribes", but that's not what this is about.

What is happening is not good if you view rule of law and liberal democracy as being good things.

Tell me exactly how I will miss USAID and the billions wasted to foreign governments? Be specific please.

> Be specific please.

I have never seen a genuine person end a request like this. It's always to bait someone.

Tell me exactly how I will miss your right arm and the thousands wasted on feeding you. Be specific please.

As the saying goes, "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people."

How can someone miss things like forced sterilization of indigenous women[0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...

1. So, don't do that? The fact that an organization was involved 30 years ago in something bad doesn't mean we need to take it apart. It may do good things too. Every branch of government has done something bad. You've done something bad. We don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's work on improving the world around us, not destroying it.

2. You're answering a question that wasn't asked. The question was, essentially, what USAid did for the OP, and why he would miss it. Food kitchens haven't done anything for me either, so why not get rid of them?

3. This wasn't the reason given for shutting USAid down. No concrete reason was given, just vague references and accusations that could refer to anything or nothing.

>The fact that an organization was involved 30 years ago in something bad doesn't mean

  There is a long-standing history of ties between USAID and the CIA. During the Cold War, they worked together in training police forces all across the world, notably in Latin America, where the exercises allegedly included techniques of torture. USAID also served as cover for various covert activities, especially during the Vietnam War. After the Cold War, according to Weiner, the agency funded democracy-building programs in the former Soviet Union, “sometimes on its own, sometimes in concert with the CIA.” As recently as 10 years ago, it used its pro-democracy rubric to help foment anti-regime propaganda in Cuba.

  Throughout this period, as was the case with U.S. embassies generally, USAID was used as a front for CIA officers, though, Weiner says, “much less frequently now than in the old days.” [0]

[0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/usaid-donald-tru...

Sounds like a problem with the CIA, not USAid. But that quote is self-defeating for your argument if it happens "much less frequently now than in the old days." Obviously it shouldn't ever happen, but like, just make it never happen. It's so obvious that these post-hoc justifications are just a smokescreen for what's really going on, which is the looting of the state for private interests.

>But that quote is self-defeating for your argument if it happens "much less frequently now than in the old days."

And how does he know that? Not enough time has passed for the things to get leaked or declassified. I included this sentence just for the sake of completeness of the quotation.

My argument was that forced sterilization was not an isolated incident, but just one of many cases of CIA's operations under the cover of USAID. One might argue that other CIA operations were benign, but I think it would be a hard point to make.

> I was naive and stupid.

No, you weren't. People on every angle of this are tired of the government not working. It's easy to have that glimmer of hope that maybe he really will make a good change. The problem is, he's a salesman - a grifter. His art is to latch onto that glimmer of hope and sell you on it while never delivering on it.

Are you going to do anything about it?

Yes

This is like crypto, or rewriting the whole code from scratch. Re-learning all the lessons

They're not going to learn anything. They're subverting the system for personal gain at the expense of everyone else.

why was this flagged?

Having the word “Elon” seems to bring out the worst in us. I still believe we can have civil discussions about topics that might be considered taboo.

[flagged]

And yet..... almost all your recent are related to Musk...

If you look at only one page of my posting history, that's likely true.

Given who is involved this is as relevant as it gets here.

> Yeah, we know, tech is bleeding over into politics, but... how many Musk stories do we need in one day?

You should Ask Musk to cool down then. We didn't vote him in. We didn't ask him to break the law and compromise american security. We didn't grant him access to the US treasury. "We" voted this in. Those who didn't want this are 3 months too late.

And I see this excuse on every platform. I see a story I don't want to engage with... I just move on. Maybe you browse new, but I've never seen politics be "the dominant topic on HN".

> Some of us are sick of politics all over HN all the time.

That was never the situation.

> how many Musk stories do we need in one day? However many the number is, we're past it.

So the number is zero. Having one story for each major separate event is one story too many. This is still what it is. The longer the rationalizations for it get, the more sad it gets.

Why is this flagged?

“Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, just like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on…”

- The Handmaid's Tale

Fortunately we have an enemy this time, Elon Musk. He's it. He's also really bad at hiding what he's doing.

I don't think that Elon Musk can be singled out as the source of these changes, he's didn't just magically appear lur of nowhere and start doing what he's doing.

But he literally did

He bought the election and then gave himself an unelected role with extensive and unchecked power.

I don't think he cares? Seems like he's happy to fill the role publicly. It appears to be on purpose like a wrestler turning heel or a gamer drawing aggro on a mob. Society of the spectacle indeed.

I think he is very bored an finds this very exciting.

Vacuous cliches this painfully stupid need to stay in high school theatre clubs where they belong.

This is like a Christian quoting scripture to an atheist, there are real world parallels of current events to draw from which carry substantially more weight.

>How did they get in, how did it happen?

Over half of US was apathetic and didn't vote.

You can blame the MAGA for everything that is happening, but they literally said this is what they were gonna do. Over half of the US, implicitly said, "Given all of that, and Kamala, it really doesn't matter who is the president".

Which is worse than MAGA IMO

Voter turnout hasn't significantly changed in 100 years, how is that the cause to point to?

let us not forget all the attempts at disenfranchisement, destruction of ballots by MAGA, voter intimidation, and all that.

> Over half of US was apathetic and didn't vote.

Not true. Voter turnout was between 59% and 64%.

That is still terrible.

This is part of the strategy. The GOP has continually been disenfranchising voters.

Both parties engage in gerrymandering.

> The GOP has been....

> Both parties engage...

Seems weird to blame the GOP and then immediately point out that this is done by everyone.

They are talking about two different things.

One is gerrymandering, which is drawing district boundaries to build in an advantage for your party. Both parties do that.

The other is trying to disenfranchise people. The GOP have been the ones doing most of that.

How has the GOP been disenfranchising voters beyond gerrymandering?

And please don't say voter ID, nobody is disenfranchised by voter ID.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict...

Reducing the number of polling places in districts that tend to not vote Republican causing very long lines for voting. When it takes hours standing in line, often outdoors in bad weather, it discourages voting. Add to that laws in many states that criminalize providing food or water to people in such lines and it is even more discouraging.

Prosecuting people for innocent mistakes while voting. E.g., Crystal Mason [1]. Or Hervis Rogers [2].

In the Rogers case he was convicted of burglary in 1995 and was in prison until being paroled in 2004. His parole ended in June 2020. He didn't know that he was ineligible to vote, and voted in the Democratic primary in March 2020. The Texas legislature did pass a bill in 2007 that required the Department of Criminal Justice to notify people who had been in custody of their voting rights situation, but Governor Perry vetoed it.

Texas attorney general Paxton had him arrested and prosecuted. Bail was set at $100000. Eventually the case was thrown out because the attorney general does not have the authority to unilaterally prosecute voter cases. He has to get approval from local country prosecutors.

In nearly all these cases the prosecutors are very disproportionately prosecuting minorities and women.

Same with processes to restore voting rights for felons. See Rick Scott's handling of petitions to restore voting rights in Florida [3].

> And please don't say voter ID, nobody is disenfranchised by voter ID.

There are in fact a lot of US adults without an ID that works for their state's voter ID laws and would have a hard time getting such an ID because of cost (monetary and/or time). Here's a relatively recent report on the number who lack ID [4].

Yes, I know that most state voter ID laws require there to be no cost or fee to obtain the ID from the state but there are often significant costs to obtain the documents required to apply for the ID. Furthermore the offices that can process the application are often far away from where the people without ID live, and only accept applications during limited weekday hours. That can mean having to take unpaid time off from work and finding a way to get to that office. In reality that all can add up to over a $100.

If it was actually about election security and not intended to disenfranchise legal voters the voter ID laws would include provisions to make it easy to obtain ID without those burdens described above.

Here's a link to a comment that contains a dozen links with a lot more detail [5].

EDIT: I missed a disenfranchisement tactic. Election officials should go through the voter rolls occasionally and purge people who they have good reason to doubt are still eligible. But that can be turned into a disenfranchisement tactic by doing that just before an election possibly without trying to notify the purged voters that they have been purged so that the purged voters who are still eligible don't find out until it is too late to get back on the rolls in time to vote.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Mason

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/21/texas-voter-fraud-ca...

[3] https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/elections/...

[4] https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Voter%20I...

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42116609

This is the part I'm curious about. Trump may be many things, but lacking transparency around his motives and actions is not one of them. As you say, he is doing basically exactly what he said he would.

So what I'm curious about is whether anyone who voted for Trump, and especially not the hard core MAGA folks but more the "The Dems suck, prices are too high" folks that shifted toward Trump in 2024 vs previous elections, are surprised/angered/scared by his actions. If so, what was their thought process?

I'm especially curious how they feel about Musk's role in all this. I just can't wrap my head around people that were "drain the swamp" nativists are cool with an unelected foreign-born billionaire having free reign, essentially unaccountably, to do whatever he wants to any federal department. If somebody told me in 2010 that this would happen in 2025 I would tell tell them that they are nuts. If the Dems had done anything 1/10th as egregious, Republicans would be apoplectic, and rightfully so.

> I just can't wrap my head around people that were "drain the swamp" nativists are cool with an unelected foreign-born billionaire having free reign, essentially unaccountably, to do whatever he wants to any federal department.

Go on Twitter or any other site that doesn't ban a certain flavor of discourse. Observe how much glee is being expressed towards negative emotions of others (such as "libs" or marginalized people). That's the point.

Again, I don't think that's really the whole story. For the 35-40% of the electorate that is hard core MAGA, sure, and for the smaller percentage of "terminally online" Twitter people, moreso. But for the folks who really were just unsatisfied with the direction of the country, didn't like the Dems, wanted to send a protest vote over Gaza, etc. - what are those people thinking/feeling?

I'm thinking the same thing that I was thinking when Biden was president, that Israel has corrupted our entire government. Nothing that's happening here even approaches what we've been enabling in Gaza, so if you weren't upset about that, it seems strange to be up in arms about what Trump is doing. I'd say it's a double standard that places way more value on the lives of Americans than those outside our borders.

> Go on Twitter or any other site that doesn't ban a certain flavor of discourse.

I just don't understand where people even get this idea. Is it the repetition and perpetuation of it that makes so many people believe it? We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others (so there's a line at racism, calling for violence, and advertising for scams for example). There has never been a "flavor ban" unless one's flavor is KKK

> advertising for scams

> racism

these are examples of flavors I'm talking about. I should have said "flavors" instead of flavor.

> We are and have always been allowed to have whatever opinions we wanted on any of the regular platforms, so long as it doesn't affect the rights of others

If only it were that simple, because that's demonstrably not true. I'll give you a perfect example that was made clear by recent events.

Before last month, it was against Meta's rules to say that being LGBT was a mental illness. Similarly, you couldn't say people had a mental illness due to their religion.

But by this point I think it should be pretty clear that, in many respects, what we define as a "mental illness" is not some hard and fast rule, it's largely what we see as beyond the norm of socially acceptable boundaries at any given time.

I am gay. For someone else to have an opinion that being gay is a mental illness is a perfectly valid opinion, and it doesn't infringe on my rights (as long as they're not advocating for locking me up or whatever). I literally see no need to prohibit people from expressing the valid opinion that my being gay is a mental illness (I may think you're an asshole, but being a jerk certainly isn't banned on the Internet).

So when Meta announced their policy change to allow more "free speech", at first I was like "Ok, cool". I only became livid when I read the policy and saw that it's still against their rules to say people in "protected groups" have a mental illness except for a specific carve out for gay and trans people. F that. So I have to pretend all of the completely absurd religious nonsense about believing some sky fairy is out there and randomly does things like performing miracles (but for some reason never obvious enough to actually be miraculous) is not a sign of mental illness, but being gay is? Yeah, free speech my ass.

Point being, in your comment you have basically made an arbitrary division between what "whatever opinions" are valid, and what counts as e.g. racism, and pretend that it's a clear line.

> Trump may be many things, but lacking transparency around his motives and actions is not one of them.

That's not the perception I have. Between changing opinions 180° for no discernible reason (besides reports/speculation of money changing hands, but it's not given as the reason so that's hardly transparent) and most actions being in the short-term interest only of himself, it doesn't strike me as though everyone is aware that voting for him is going to make their future worse (exceptions may include some of the ultra rich affected by the same short term gains as himself). What I hear on this side of the pond is that he also e.g. denies knowing the people who wrote project 2025 and the plan being ridiculous, then (I checked Wikipedia to see what came of it) "nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his administration" and it was found that "nearly two-thirds of his executive actions 'mirror or partially mirror' proposals from Project 2025." (Wikipedia, last paragraph of article lede on project 2025)

I'm curious how you see it, since you might be more into USA politics than me (most people are). Doesn't he change opinion most of the time and am I just hearing of the exceptions? Are his denials regarding project 2025 seen as obvious lies and thus deemed transparent that this open-secretly is the plan known to everyone? Or do you see it this way for another reason?

Sure, Trump flip flops all the time (in his previous term he negotiated the most recent trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that replaced NAFTA, touted it as a uniquely awesome trade deal, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/pr..., and now is the one ripping it up), and he lies every other word.

But my point is that behavior is completely predictable at this point, and if anyone is shocked by what he's done so far, they haven't been paying attention. Stuff like:

1. His extreme narcissism, and the fact that loyalty is a one-way street with him.

2. His desire for revenge

3. 0 respect for any governmental norms

4. His ability to bend (or break) the law to suit his needs. Since the Supreme Court granted him complete immunity for any official acts, and since it's so obvious that Congress are completely feckless at this point, he is essentially unconstrained by law.

When you ask "Are his denials regarding project 2025 seen as obvious lies and thus deemed transparent" I would say absolutely. But of course, when people are angry about the direction of things, they tend to want to believe the stuff they want to believe ("Trump will get in there and shake things up!") and minimize the things they don't ("Trump will shut down programs and departments I depend upon").

It basically comes down to ignorance. Most people don't have the time, inclination, and/or capacity to evaluate political platforms or the competence of individual politicians. They just decide based on heuristics or "vibes". Trump seems confident and strong. Harris doesn't seem to stand for anything much besides the status quo. They don't like that there was inflation under Biden, and Trump is the opposite of Biden. They don't necessarily like Trump's attitude, but figure they don't have to like him as long as he gets the job done. That's roughly the level of thinking that's happening, in the cases where there's much thinking at all, and people aren't just voting the way their friends, family, and neighbors all vote.

Basically this is a fundamental flaw of democracy, that you leave the most important decision in the hands of the median citizen, who has no particular aptitude for making it. Of course, other systems of government have their own flaws. Like Churchill said, democracy's the worst form of government, except for all the others. (Though I would argue that the particular structure of the American democratic system is especially flawed.)

There's no point in wondering this. Soros is swamp but Musk is not? There's just no rational, two neurons connecting there. It's just their side bad, my side good brainwashing.

"Gradually and then suddenly" is how it always happens, whether that's the collapse of democracy or the collapse of dictatorship. You can't take it for granted just because it hasn't happened yet. And that 'suddenly' almost did happen on January 6th 2021 if not for the moral courage of Mike Pence. That same moral courage will be absent this time around given the lesson they learned on that day. Appoint loyalists.

My experience working for Tyler Technologies in the Courts and Justice division opened my eyes to the absolutely arrogant and basically consequence-free mismanagement of public data in the hands of private enterprise. The fiasco with JudyRecords.com is absolutely important to keep in mind. If anything, I find stressing "efficiency" in government is simply a cover for "gutting functionality" because anytime something doesn't fit in "the model" of services then it simply gets dismissed.

Is this a technology equivalent to burning the libraries of old? Once the data is gone, come on, do you think any reasonable efforts will be made to restore it? Frankly speaking, is the course DOGE taking a mandate by the people to be enacted by representatives in the government or is it vice-versa, that "we are changing your society whether you like it or not" is the fundamental principle.

Then again, I just got out of jail after a year on a made-up Terroristic Threat charge politically motivated, so my perspective is likely skewed regarding motives and actions of those who have unchecked power at their disposal.

I mean, these "kids" are rockstars. Why are they being juvenilized by the Wired writer?

Jealousy.

The institution of journalism is all partisans.

disappointing to see so many “hacker” news comments complaining about lack of credentials or system-specific expertise.

yes, existing government systems are insanely complex - that’s part of the problem! the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.

we don’t even know what these kids’ mandate is (also disappointing). but if your general premise is “smart outsiders who are good at engineering are always the wrong people to rework complex, inefficient systems,” i’d like to think you’re on the wrong site.

The problem with these types of comments is your filtering reality through some sort of weird hero-complex you're clinging to. It's not realistic and it's harmful.

The people involved in this are not qualified or capable in _any_ manner to be doing what they're doing. They are sycophants.

Worse, it's putting an entire nation in jeopardy.

This isn't "smart, young spirits defy all odds and save the day!" it's really "hitler youth comes in and starts thrashing about until daddy gets his way."

Yep. You can move fast and break things in a SAAS startup or some dumb LLM as a service startup.

But the stakes are much higher in what they're touching. And the way they're being brought in is selecting for loyal sycophants, nothing else. If they disagree musk will axe them in seconds.

You're making swathing character attacks and claiming that you are qualified to know who is qualified. If anyone has a hero complex its you with your emotional argument and alarmism.

Very compelling argument, definitely not partisan rhetoric.

I'm open to outsiders improving inefficiencies. The concern is that these are kids, barely out of college. They don't have the domain-specific knowledge required to rework these complex systems, no matter how smart they are. Plus, given Musk's track record, they were likely chosen more for their loyalty to Musk than for their technical acumen.

> the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.

Sorry, but that's such an absurd comment. These kids don't even know anything about rocket building, let alone they're able to build a rocket from first principles. Second, the US government is much more complex than a rocket; it cannot be understood by a single person. Third, you can waste rockets, but a whole nation depends on one goverment. You can't just experiment with it. Fourth, there are lives at stake. It's not just a payload, or one or two astronauts who know what they signed up for, that are at their mercy.

> yes, existing government systems are insanely complex - that’s part of the problem! the essential complexity is not higher than that of a brain-computer interface, or an interplanetary rocket.

Yeah, and why don't we build concentration camps again? They're super efficient in term of work per unit of food. Colonies are also super nice, lots of free stuff!

Some people should open history books, life isn't about refactoring everything, making things as simple as possible, &c. It would be comical if it wasn't the very first thing you learn as an engineer

If you think a rocket is more complex than hundreds of years of infinitely complex people making decisions and compromises through democracy you're completely out of touch with reality, and if you genuinely think we can just burn it all down because some nerd unilaterally thinks he found a better way to do it you're just plain dumb.

"Smart" isn't enough when dealing with systems like these. I want smart and experienced.

There is zero evidence that any of these guys are even average.

Thank you!

Disappointing seeing so many "smart" people on this site thinking that a government shoild be run like a business.

Qualified or not, it's crimes, unconstitutional, and fascist.

[flagged]

How is this different than any other private company?

“Inexperienced.” Reflexive deference to credentialism and tenure coming from Wired is wild.

ngl when they said trump 2024 musk 2028 in 2022 i thought it was far fetched but now i'm kinda curious to see what happens

If you have ever spoken to a 16-20yo you will understand just how good these people are.

What? Unclear whether you're trying to say they are very good or not very good.

Very good. Able to absorb information so much quicker than people their senior. Also incredibly eager to learn and please.

Oh this sounds like it'll be a balanced, well researched article based on merits.

I'll then leave a comment here about a guy that knew a guy that heard from another guy that Elon almost ruined a company his aunt worked at.

Young people should be happy to see more representation in the federal govt. Among roles of authority it's probably 65+ . They're spending your & your grandkid's prosperity every minute.

People under 55 should be happy about this situation.

I applaud these guys and the work they're doing. Any bureaucracy, public or private, with access to a guaranteed income stream will grow like a tumor. The entire federal govt needs to be audited and gutted. The time for committees, reports and similar half measures is over.

Not sure why this is being down voted. I don't want my tax money being wasted to no end

Even taking your statement at face value, as a non-troll, this makes no sense.

Have you ever optimized a slow program? How do you do that? A popular approach is with a flamegraph. It shows the hot parts of the execution; what is burning CPU cycles. If we profiled federal government, we'd find 4 big areas of spending [1]. Social security, medicare, the military, and debt interest. In our flamegraph, these are big fat sections. If you're profiling a program, would you look at this and say, "oh i'm going to spend my time optimizing this function call which takes up .01% of the execution time?" no, you wouldn't (unless you're an intern).

But that's hard, which is why elon isn't doing it. Nobody wants to cut social security because then a bunch of old people would starve to death. Same with medicare. Defaulting on our national debt would be a bad look. And god forbid we give the military less money. So where does that leave us? Even if you truly believe elon cares about making the government more efficient, the approach doesn't make any sense. In the absolute most charitable reading of it, he's just incompetent and he's doing this for show to get some widely supported easy wins (let's get rid of the penny and save $86M/y!) so people will like him. But the more realistic viewing is that he's gutting programs in order to further his own agendas, which is literally the definition of corruption.

There's a saying "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence" but you don't become the richest man in the world by being incompetent. You become the richest man in the world through malice.

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

There is still a sensible positive interpretation. It's possible that the distortionary economic and geopolitical effects of this spending both domestically and abroad has just as severe or worse negative externalities as items with larger budgets. Those externalities could range from inflation, displacing local industries and organic fundraising mechanisms, enabling rent-seeking corruption, overproduction of idle elites, instilling self-crit degrowth ideation, and political polarization/backlash abroad (My Japanese relatives now have a very dim view of Rahm Emanuel and Biden due to their USAID type activities and strings-attached diplomacy of paternalistic progressive cultural imperialism).

A reverse Keynesian effect you could call it - where there are second-order deadweight loss effects from "NGO" grift make-work complex, rather than a synergy.

I fully support young folks being put in those high pressure situations. Lets them learn and showcase what young people can do.

I think there are huge benefits when you put together a team of people that usually don't have distractions like kids, intimate relationships, health problems etc that can hinder productivity.

Even more beneficial to a team when you combine the wisdom and experience of older folks with the passion and energy of the youth.

or young folks are passionate, idealistic, lack real-world experience, and idolize heroes, which makes them perfect foot soldiers for carrying out tasks without questions.

This is exactly what happened when Obama was elected, btw. Cult of personality is a dangerous thing from either end of the political spectrum.

Let them create some startups, not coup the government.

This is where we are, we need to stop complaining and deal with things as the actually exist. I am doing this in my own way, my fear is Elon and Co. hitting Medicare/Medicaid so I am making my own: https://medicare.dev. I think this is going to become more and more common as fed become less and less stable/reliable.

This is a prime example of a social problem that does not have a technical solution.

Re-think your approach.

I don't understand what you mean? Healthcare process efficiency is a "social" problem?

Are you referring to Moral Hazard?

How come your website doesn't even explain what it is?

Apologies, I am at the "embarrassed" by how early I am phase. I will update ASAP, but here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/@CodifyHQ

It's pretty much what the name indicates. A new medicare.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com