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Comment by mharrig1 | Hacker News Reader

So Mark Cuban wants to lean into exactly what DOGE is pushing by putting himself in the middle of the Governmental to Private shift?

That doesn't surprise me and gives more evidence that Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

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I don’t think they’re similar at all.

Musk is cutting things left and right, creating large messes and giving himself hand outs. He is making things less efficient (vs more).

Cuban sees the mess, and an opportunity to make some money while also providing value to the government.

I guess they’re similar in taking advantage of the moment and looking to make money, but I don’t see how Cuban’s proposal is destructive, unlike Musk’s actions.

An opportunity to provide value to the government by replacing their own service with an inevitably more expensive one which can be recontracted out to whoever suits the interests of a specific administration with minimal pushback.

It's not Musk's ideal scenario I'm sure, but he'd be an awful lot more happy with it as the new status quo than what was there before.

"Replacing" sounds like he's taking it away. It's already gone.

He's resurrecting it.

I meant in terms of what people expect this kind of service to be.

If his vision is a privately-ran for-profit contracted agency he's not resurrecting anything.

Cuban isn't in charge here, in fact he literally campaigned for Harris.

Trump and Musk destroyed USDS and 18F. At worst Cuban is trying to salvage something from the wreckage.

It's called a "shadow government" in European (?) parlance[0], though not to be confused with the term "deep state". That is, the opposition basically prepares a shadow government to signal to the public that, despite not being power, they have the qualified personnel ready to go on day 1 if they come back to power. The down side for MAGA when firing all these workers in all these agencies is that it gives the opposition the opportunity to organize a "department in waiting" for every agency that is gutted by gathering the most-qualified of the fired employees.

But just another billionaire doing this instead of an organized opposition is not ideal, to say the least. ex 18F workers should get someone they trust more in the mix.

[0] https://www.yourdictionary.com/shadow-government

I’d propose a slightly different reading:

“The government just tried to screw you, but they need you so you should join together in a way that when they inevitably come calling, they no longer have the power to screw you again.”

How many people have said they wished to be in the same position over things like RTO? Or employees unionizing after managerial and corporate abuse?

Once somebody proves themselves untrustworthy, it’s not wrong to protect yourself from them in the future.

Different or not, we need fewer billionaires involved in government.

Reality: someone incompetent will underbid and get the contract, then spend years flailing, failing and overrunning their budget.

But their investor will make some nice change!

There really isn’t another option. They aren’t going to get those government jobs back, so they might as well go private. Otherwise, they’ll just be unemployed and have to find work doing some other thing somewhere. Short of becoming President and reinstating this stuff what else is he supposed to do?

The question is what would you do if you were Cuban?

Live my best life in the wilderness and never have to hear about politics again

Until someone gets mineral rights to your wilderness and goes to strip mine away

Speaking of which, https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/06/climate/trump-logging-nationa... because, of course.

Buy back the Mavericks (probably for less than he sold them for), fire Nico Harrison and trade to get Luka Dončić back.

Oh, you mean about 18F? I’d just keep trying to draw public attention to what appear to be hasty decisions made by this administration that aren’t actually beneficial to the country.

> I’d just keep trying to draw public attention

This does nothing. It did nothing in 2016 and would do even less now.

I think it's disingenuous to see what Cuban is doing as the thing that anyone would do because I would assume most would prefer to have more wealth if they could.

My issue comes from the fact that Cuban is then directly aiding and abetting the process that Musk is putting in place with DOGE, thus my concern.

With that in mind, asking "Well what would you do?" to justify the actions of putting a generally well regarded and good service into the hands of the private sector is a fundamental lack of scope on what's continuing to happen.

Cuban AFAIK is not advocating for what is happening. His statement seems to acknowledge that Musk is fucking things up.

The point of asking you "what would you do in their position" is to see if you have an honest alternative for what a wealthy, high profile person could do to help the laid off 18F workers (and the country) in the short term, or if you're throwing stones at Cuban because it's an easy dunk.

I think there are good answers to the question like "Publicly fund and back anti-Trump politicians in Texas" or "Advocate for changes to the constitutional structure that enshrine the existence of independent agencies" or "buy a newspaper and go against the other demigods of America" or "buy every liberal in Texas a gun". That last one is a joke. Kinda.

I think the best would be if billionaires would stay the f** out of meddling with governing countries.

Perfect my rope vieja recipe and open a sandwich food truck as a side business.

Yeah, I would much rather he put money into supporting constitutional amendments to make crystal clear the executive branch does not set spending and Citizens United is explicitly rejected.

You could call it a Big Beautiful Amendment.

I mean Musk is carrying out a coup, and Cuban is trying to invest in some programmers. I think there's some day light here.

but the core problem to me feels like “billionaires in charge of what should be government functions.” this is still that bad for that reason even if Cuban is funnier on Bluesky

The core problem to me is that we're going through a successful coup.

I'm here for it if we're proposing redistributing the wealth of everyone with 9 figures or more.

This is the category / degree fallacy. We don’t get to choose a world where billionaires have no special power. The choice is whether to accept some good from billionaires, or to reject what good they can do because of the harm they do.

> This is the category / degree fallacy.

I have been reading about what this is (I have not encountered it before) and earnestly fail to see how.

> We don’t get to choose a world where billionaires have no special power. The choice is whether to accept some good from billionaires, or to reject what good they can do because of the harm they do.

If we're discussing fallacies, I'm getting tasting notes of False Dilemma. We, participants in society, can shape, define, and reject what "special powers" means. Not totally, and I imagine the royal we of HN commenters might disagree on how much or in what ways, but I believe it is possible.

We sure can choose that world. Not individually, but as a people.

Sure, but that isn't going to change in the USA unless the political system changes, so it will be more of a democratic system like in many western countries where billionaires have little to no influence. I see that as unlikely to ever happen there. Funding for candidates has been crazy in the past few decades.

that's not true. the core problem is "billionaires destroying government functions"

in that light, cuban is doing the literal opposite by trying to save one.

> Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

Pretty sure they have the same PR. Remember when Musk was getting all those cameos and references in various media?

Elon's problem is he's terminally online so he couldn't just let his media manager run his twitter like a normal billionaire, and at this point I think he's on a trip.

One guy burns down a shop. A capitalist comes in buys the ground, builds a hotel.

Unless they were coordinating this, how on earth is it the same?

Conspiracy theory: this is a coordinated publicity stunt intended to demonstrate that wealthy individuals are better positioned to serve the American people by way of altruism (funded by business profit) than a large federal government (funded by taxes). No need to starve the beast: just slaughter it and present your alternative as an improvement.

The fact that this is your conclusion made about Cuban offering this as a gesture to how talented and critical these people are, says more about you than Cuban

To assume only altruistic intentions from Cuban, yes I would say it's a very good thing to support the people doing actually great work in the government.

My point is just that Cuban is supporting the problem that Musk is creating, albeit without putting himself entirely in a position where he could receive the ire of the public.

And just to reiterate, 18f has done great work, and if this is the only way for them to continue for the time being I guess so be it. I just don't agree with the chain of events that led here.

yeah I had to step back from this when I saw it* on my feed because I was so disenchanted by how positive the replies were. Not even sure what their issues with DOGE are if they think this is a great solution...

ETA: I'm on about his bluesky post, to be clear, not this thread

the issue with Elon Musk's involvement is the WAY these things are being done. If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars -- can be funded through voluntary charity of a billionaire that is 100% a good thing and we can still be upset about the rule of law and all that while being happy that billionaires are stepping up to pay their fair share when the tax money is taken away.

HOWEVER Congress has NOT reduced the budget so everything I just said is bullshit and hypothetical until some of that money starts coming back into our pockets.

But I am trying to remain optimistic. These are challenging times.

Hate to tell ya, but unless you’re already pretty rich, the money won’t be coming back to you

Where did he mention voluntary charity in his tweet?

It most definitely not a good thing. It makes these reliant on that billionaire rather than the public.

> If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars

Guess it's a good thing we are in the US and there is no tax dollar coercion considering you are free to renounce citizenship and leave the country.

Thus never having to pay the fees required to participate/live in US society. Kinda like if you don't want to pay monthly gym fees, don't--but don't expect to use their gym equipment whenever suits you.

Uh, Washington thinks you still have to pay income tax after renouncing your citizenship and bullies governments into collecting it or even extradicting you if you do not pay.

What percentage of the world's countries will still respect the US's extradition treaties in 4 years?

Approximately the same percentage that respect them now IMHO.

No you only have to pay if you keep your citizenship and leave the country. If you are no longer a citizen you no longer pay.

We disagree.

I am stating a fact. There is no opinion.

If you have no ties (current citizenship, located within US territory or work) to the US, you do not pay US taxes.

I don’t think anyone who “likes” this solution thinks “it’s a great solution”

I reckon approximately 100% of those people would prefer 18F stay how it is

> I don’t think anyone who “likes” this solution thinks “it’s a great solution”

It's not a solution.

If we're talking about the current administration, there's no way in hell they're going to contract with a consultancy made up of gov't employees they just fired. If they do hire consultants they'll be ones who are loyal to Musk.

If we're talking about a future administration that wants to show intent to repair the damage done to gov't workers and services, why in the world would that admin start by privatizing 18F?

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