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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
And thank you :)
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
Sometimes they put their finger on the scale a bit, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Hopefully you don't get to power yourself, with that kind of username, and all your book knowledge.
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.
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.
[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.]
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.
> 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 literally are, though
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So you might not want to take that bet, they have a good track record predicting Trump.
This is an opinion held by the Left.
I can't see how that is a good thing either, even if you are somehow credulous enough to believe their claims.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=1...
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.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-usaid-c0c7799be0b2fa7c...
Does the Republican Party have any humans with brains left, or is it all slime molds now??
https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-forei...
This stuff is also what breeds hate against US world wide. People are tired of foreign government mendling in their country.
Hiring a bunch of guys who work at companies he or Thiel owns definitely counts as nepotism.
They might care about other things more than that though...
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric
You need to start caring about politics real fast if you care at all.
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.
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
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.
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".
Sadly, based on the comments here and elsewhere, HN is not immune to 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"?
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...
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/11/patchwork-2...
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.
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...
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?
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/
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.
LMAO. That's like going to Reddit and asking for relationship advice.
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.
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.
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.
This is politics. All parties are presenting messaging that supports their goals.
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.