I think that they are having a good think about what they are doing, but I believe that, in cutting key agencies that protect consumers from corporations, their personal goals are simply not aligned with the goals that would be helping the country.
When people express worry over superhuman-AI alignment on forums like this, I find myself wishing they'd shift focus to the fact that we actually already have a problem with the mis-alignment of super-human entities in the form of large corporations and the billionaires who control them. (And yes, governments too; the whole point of our democratic form of government is that it's supposed to keep that behemoth better aligned with the values and will of "the people".)
To me it seems obvious that keeping a misaligned super-AGI from destroying humanity and keeping billionares and large multinational corporations from destroying humanity with climate change in the long-term or just degrading our quality of life (via pollution, wealth inequality, etc.) in the short term are really just differences of degree and not of kind.
But we actually have the latter problem right now, and, as a bonus, if we can figure out better ways of aligning our carbon-based and economic-legal system "overlords" in the present maybe it helps point us toward a better way of aligning our potential silicon-based "overlords" in the future.
He's just going to plant himself at the end of the conveyor belt of fresh cookies with his mouth open, and get rid of everything else.
Musk is going to try and entrench himself so much, that he'll never be able to countenance his opposition winning and removing him. Unless Trump dislodges him first, he's going to be a permanent problem.
I'm pretty sure I would pay 2 dollars to not have to deal with any of those consequences.
Those 'costs' to society are 'profits' to the banks. You don't get to have a choice about it. Elon is in charge and he's going with the banks.
We have, in no particular order:
- The FDIC
- The SEC
- The Federal Reserve Board
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Those agencies regulate banking. Then we can go further and we have:
- The National Credit Union Organization
- The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
- The Financial Insurance Office (part of Treasury)
- The Office of Foreign Assets Control
- The Securities Investor Protection Corp.
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- EBISA, ERISA, PBGC for retirement plans...
And we need an additional agency because...?
We don't need the CFPB.
Until someone can answer me that question with a link to a form I can fill out with an agency that has a track record of actually fixing these problems, you've made no progress on convincing me we don't need the CFPB.
It's not obvious to me that some other agency will pick up the same responsibilities. If it happens without a budget change elsewhere then obviously DOGE would be right in cutting this particular agency.
For a recap: https://youtu.be/ovcno7tiZas
oh wait
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_...