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Comment by hirsin | Hacker News Reader

Is this something like inverse gell-man amnesia? You're aware of the value noaa provides so you're skeptical about removing it, but when we turn the page to talk about another agency removal makes sense again?

Not attempting to dunk, I should say, but wondering how this gets modeled and if there's actually a discrepancy there

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Right, I think we're going to find that a test of "Does this sound like a waste to an uninformed person who has thought about it for five seconds" is a pretty poor framework for making sweeping changes.

Not a fan overall of what DOGE is doing, but I disagree with your line of reasoning here. Obviously not all government agencies provide comparable amounts of value to the general public based on the resources they consume. Does one have to be an expert on the inner workings and initiatives of each of these organizations to have an opinion? Maybe, but that doesn't seem practical, outside of having some large oversight body employing many people to review this... which is just what DOGE purportedly is.

Now, is the current DOGE proceeding to do this in a reasonable way? No. But that largely comes down your assessment of the people running it, not anything implicit

>Maybe, but that doesn't seem practical, outside of having some large oversight body employing many people to review this... which is just what DOGE purportedly is.

The oversight body is Congress. They hold hearings, call on experts, issue subpoenas, and represent the will of the people. Plus, because Congress defines the agencies and apportion budgets for specific projects in those agencies, they're the perfect group to do oversight.

DOGE could abide by the Constitution if it had simply conducted audits, compiled findings with suggestions, and presenting those at a Congressional hearing. They should not interfere with agencies carrying out legally required duties.

It's insane how these days the "crazy leftist" point of view is that we should stick to Article I of the Constitution. We have peaceful transitions of power because the losing side knows there are still rules the winners can't break. If either side makes Constitutional crises their go-to tool, there are only two awful end-states: entrenched tyranny or violent revolution. Maybe both.

We have an existing oversight body, the OIG, which is a couple orders of magnitude larger than DOGE. And a reasonable statement you could defensibly make is that OIG isn't doing enough to curtail spending, the same way you or I aren't doing enough to prevent bugs in the code.

The only thing DOGE does, that OIG doesn't, is _not_ attempt to understand the value of the work being done.

The people in DOGE are of course a problem, but the process they're following is flawed from the get go, namely "judge programs based on the opinion of some uninformed outsiders".

> Obviously not all government agencies provide comparable amounts of value to the general public based on the resources they consume.

This doesn't seem obvious to me.

As it turns out, the government actually has… the Government Accountability Office (GAO) as an agency to do just this. Agencies also have inspector general offices that focus on each of their respective agencies, too (Trump has tried to fire most of them, illegally). Congress also has the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which provides Congress with budgetary advice independent of the Executive branch.

The US Government is too large to be perfect. But I suspect it probably works far better, at scale, with less variance, and more nuance, than many HNers imagine.

>But that largely comes down your assessment of the people running it, not anything implicit

Nonsense. The very WAY doge is doing things is bad. You cannot safely shut any large body of human effort down in just a few days and not end up causing damage.

Same thing with deportations. You cannot do deportations en masse without people losing their rights or innocents being hurt.

Scale matters. Timelines matter.

(EDIT: My mistake; I missed what hirsin was referring to.)

"generally pro doge" would imply they support what doge is doing, namely shutting things down

I somehow overlooked that. I'll fix my comment, sorry.

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