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Comment by nielsbot | Hacker News Reader

replace the old system with what exactly? and why does it have to be done quickly?

Upgrades should be sustainable, incremental, gradual, and reviewed. Especially for governance systems. If there's no existential risk requiring moving fast, then it's a bad idea to move fast on these things. Governments are not companies.

The Curtis Yarvin utopian fantasy is no government coupled with mythical "network states". An uncontrolled experiment that's cynically really to defang the government to lower all barriers for the rich making more money.

It's their goal to destroy the federal government. They'll likely tank the tank the economy and sell federal land to themselves for cheap to set up their network states where they can be their own tech CEO kings.

Before the courts can catch up, they lose power in the Senate or those affected can organise. There's also something to be said for disorienting your opponents. Plus it gets things done faster without dragging it out. It's wins all round.

GP: They absolutely will make something good out of it, but for their benefit not the average American.

Not even.

At this point Musk is Wile E. Coyote. He's run out of road, so he's attempting to improvise an Acme Degovernmentizer to levitate.

He's not interested in "cutting waste" but in covering his ass so US Gov can't Enron his doughy face into prison, where it belongs.

But it's going to explode, like everything else he's ever been solely and personally in charge of.

Sure but I wouldn't even call it "something good" at all. The government is owned by the people and must work for the public good. One critical function of that is limiting exploitation of the people by business and preventing the hoarding of wealth and power by a few.

Continuing: the solution is "people power". Everyone should join a union, for starters.

It has to be done quickly because the administrative state is large and there is a lot to do. Institutions grow old with time and need drastic reform or replacement. I don’t know what they will replace everything with, ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that. Look at how FDR used the Bureau of the Budget to similar effect.

> I don’t know what they will replace everything with, ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that

Kind of the key issue dontcha think? Maybe woulda been good to know that before burning down the government?

"ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that" is exactly what the government is for. We had a bunch of smart people thinking about a lot of our problems. They're fired now.

The idea that government isn’t filled with tons of smart, hard working people is infuriating. Not every smart and ambitious person wants to spend their life in a rent-seeking job, building the next subscription-based app. There’s thousands upon thousands of dedicated government workers that could earn more in private industry, but view the work as a higher calling.

So true. It's a damn shame what DOGE is doing to the government I paid for.

Tearing it down and replacing it with something leaner, faster, better (fingers crossed) is just nonsensical libertarianism all over again.

Yes you just need to reorganize those smart people into a new system. I don’t agree with everything being done.

This is where the libertarian approach always falls apart. "ideally" this and "ideally" that. In the real world however libertarianism is a ridiculous fantasy which will harm everyone except the very rich.

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