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Comment by ty6853 | Hacker News Reader

>social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face

Who says I don't advocate cutting those too, if you're asking? And I am grey haired, not sure about the ageism.

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I think defense _spending_ could be cut dramatically without changing our defense _posture nor preparedness_, simply by modernizing inefficient systems, reducing waste, renegotiating contracts, etc. Our defense spending is relatively insane. We should look at Medicare and Medicaid in the same way. I wouldn’t want to see benefits reduced, but we certainly should be optimizing costs. I really hope the idea of reducing government waste hasn’t become a partisan thing just because the folks doing it right now are doing it very badly.

Well, all I'll say is this then: you are a tiny minority.

Yet the public voted for someone openly stating they'd carry out DOGE.

Majority is just a collection of tiny minorities, in this case my minority opinion partially aligns. As it turns out minority isn't aways what you think.

This RMG survey reports 19% of all voters knowing what DOGE was in December of 2024.

https://napolitannews.org/posts/19-percent-of-voters-know-wh...

(PDF) https://napolitannews.org/assets/pdfs/67633dc0cced7-gcm24-12...

Less than 19% knew what the nuclear safety team was, so be careful with the point you're making. There was probably more informed consent for DOGE than many eliminated positions.

> so be careful with the point you're making

I was attempting to find evidence for your claim, and I found that survey. If you can find other surveys, please share, as I am seeing this being repeated a lot.

You were finding evidence for a different goal post you shifted to, that when applied applies even more harshly to the nuclear team.

Shut up, Jesus Christ...

The dude is insufferable.

I don't follow. Is there a constituency in favor of eliminating governmental nuclear safety?

I don't follow. Are we moving the goal posts yet again from the above of what % knew what something was? Because the constituency generally did not know of the nuclear safety team. I don't even know their was a constituency calling for their creation, although there is an argument as to why reps might make them exist anyway.

Are you suggesting their creation was improper? Or suggesting constituency advocation would make it proper?

Either way you might draw uncomfortable conclusions.

You're moving the goalposts. People did not, in fact, vote for DOGE.

I said 'the public voted for someone openly stating they'd carry out DOGE.'

They moved the goalposts to what fraction of voters were questionably polled to know about DOGE, because my claim is pretty much irrefutable. Then when I use their own criteria suddenly we cry foul that I used their own goal posts that they shifted to.

You are single handedly making this discussion unbearable. Congrats I guess?

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