Hacker News Reader

Comment by _9za9 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Your answer has two parts. The first part is easy to agree with. The second part is contestable, but you obviously beleive it, and so it is easy to tie it to the first part, but really? They are two points not one.

The reality or otherwise of the press, does unfortunately (for your line of reasoning) affect motivations and outcomes. Tesla leadership will be reflecting on the sales trends. Most of their direction stems from forces outside their control in the classic sense: its market forces. But the other ones stem from politics, and like it or not, the leaders position in world politics IS affecting market views of his associated products.

It's interesting that its in cars, not batteries. The battery control logic and the stacks, the virtual power-plant models, they're too good. No amount of painting this IBM as a collaborator with dictators will prevent the sales there. But in the car space, it's not so clear.

Timing is everything. Starlink has leadership. Europe is reacting because of concerns from being excluded from the LEO marketspace. The news will be used, to influence investment, and attract staff to move. Not all staff who move will be the dumb rejects. People move for all kinds of reasons. It may include, dislike of the leadership.

Good catch.

Looks like the media controversies are driven more largely by false narratives from the "right" than anything that's really liberal or conservative in favor of America itself.

Definitely less basis in reality from that direction than from what's ill-defined as "liberal" today.

I'm not working for Musk, but the way I see it, he's funding a lot of research that someone couldn't get access to if they worked with say, BMW or NASA. So it makes sense that someone could be there to just learn and fail on someone else's dime before they do their own thing.

Little basis in reality? Elon has been lying about Tesla features for years. Tesla is massively overvalued almost exclusively due to his antics and pumping up the stock. And on and on

Reminds me of people in abusive relationships. From outside everyone wonders why they are not getting away from their abusers. But inside, the victims believe there is nowhere else to go.

If you consider what Philip Low said about him liberal narrative, sure, ok.

Just look at the evolution of the Autopilot page on Tesla.com over the years.

Talk about lies stacked upon lies.

So legitimate concerns about how democracy functions are 'liberal narratives' .... got it.

Bend over far enough and you'll be able to see your back at some point. Impressive.

Good one!

You are saying you think his playbook at Doge is "This is fine".

The national debt ($36.22 T) is the total amount of outstanding borrowing by the U.S. Federal Government accumulated over the nation’s history.

Doge is doing what every other administration in history has failed to do.

The cost of employees in the Federal gov is less than 5% of the total Federal budget. There are already agencies with oversight of spending and Congress sets the budget usually in the fall timeframe but it varies per department/agency.

Firing/laying off non-political appointee federal employees, aka civil service employees, will do nearly nothing to save money. The Federal government isn't a software company where one of the most expensive things is the cost of people.

If the budget is about $6,000B per year, 5% of that is $300B and if the target is laying off 10%, you are talking $30B. It sounds like a lot of money to a person but that means your federal budget is now $5,970B.

Basic budgeting concepts - if you wanted to save a lot of money you wouldn't be looking at something which only accounts for 5% of your budget. It would be like if your personal debt keeps increasing each year and you have a $800/mo car payment, $4000/mo mortgage, etc. and think eliminating 1 coffee run per week will save you.

Have you seen doge.gov? It is not just about firing the do-nothing remote federal workers.

Have you seen doge.gov? It is not just about firing the do-nothing remote federal workers.

Have you bothered to look up the actual hard statistics that show that federal workers work more and harder than those in private sector companies?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/21/are-feder...

Warning: You will have to exit your echo chamber.

Tell me to exit my echo chamber as you post a liberal source for a liberal narrative, nice! Try finding factual statistics and report back, we will wait.

I ready both sides regularly, in order to keep an open mind. You should try it sometime.

The article contains links to the original research.

Are you lazy, or just afraid of facts?

I provided a reference refuting your assertion that federal workers are lazy. You don't appear to have anything to back up your position, or you world have replied with it. Instead you tried to steer the discussion in another direction. Lame.

Just using this framing for remote workers exposes a bias which makes the conversation pointless.

DOGE Obliterating consumer protection agencies that cost next to nothing shows more about the intentions than any PR.

That and cut to orgs like the IRS that exist to reduce the size of the deficit

This will have major impacts on the deficit. Reducing revenue does not help close the gap when they're not also significantly reducing spending. If we aren't going to raise taxes, then enforcement needs to be maintained. Tariffs do bring in revenue, but at a cost (with the selected tariffs) to industries which will reduce income for companies and individuals so net we're likely to see reduced total revenue, but a shift in where revenue comes from. The deficit will probably go up the next few years with the current scheme between reducing IRS enforcement, reducing economic activity, and insignificant spending cuts.

This leaves only a few "natural" cuts that will be very unpopular, but needed to come close to balancing the budget: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. DOD cuts will reduce military readiness at a time when we'll either need it (Taiwan) or be abandoning our military dominance. But even cutting DOD spending by 100% wouldn't clear the deficit itself so other things have to be cut.

This year's DOD spending is $318 billion so far, and the deficit is $839 billion. Cutting DOD spending by 100% would still have left a $500 billion deficit.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

You know that what Doge is doing is a rounding error compared to the tax cuts the current administration is implementing?

So the net result is a gigantic increase to the already ridiculous national debt.

Everybody agrees the deficit is too big.

The problem people have with DOGE, is that it's in itself a fraud. Musk empire is based on government contracts and subsides. And somwehow, he's now deciding what's being cut.

As for fraud that DOGE is uncovering, can you point to some real fraud they found ? Not some bullshit tweets or their website riddled with 'mistakes'.

If they found real fraud, there should be indictments. There are 0 for now. 0.

For now! 1 month in!

And oh look https://www.americanprogress.org/article/congressional-repub...

The old gut the company, get it more in debt and pay rich person a big dividend trick, but applied go the USA.

Their article doesn't support their headline IMO

That is true, the debt is rediculous. Doge approach to fix it by firing people without knowing what they do is just stupid. It creates more cost long term.

To cut debt why not say... increase corporation tax. Fix healthcare so it isn't a rip off. Deconstruct the various complexes: military, prison etc. Stop giving money to Israel.

Let illegal immigrants stay because they pay tax without getting social security.

I don't think Trump and Elon are serious people.

> Deconstruct the various complexes: military, prison etc

This is more-or-less (part of?) what DOGE purports to do. Just not the "complexes" that you want.

The ones I want are a twofer: ethics and savings!

> I don't think Trump and Elon are serious people.

I still can't get over the stupid name. "DOGE".

Stupidest name, I truly hate it.

Especially if we pronounce it "dough-ge"

In conversation, I feel forced to use the entire (non-acronym) name.

"illegal immigrants stay because they pay tax without getting social security."

Why not just make it global? Shouldn't social security should be a human right. Also, why make laws around citizenship if you do not want them?

Because it is a complex world of contradictions.

Doge is doing what every other administration in history has failed to do.

Here's a fun exercise: Go look up how much of that debt was incurred during the previous Trump administration.

Go ahead and look. We'll wait.

We are in 2025 now. DEI has been born and died since the administration you refer to, let alone there was no DOGE at that time. Have another hot take?

So we can't look at the presidents track record because it's different this time TM

I'll take that as an admission that you didn't even bother to look.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com