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Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

What a long gallop.

> If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.

Yup, that endpoint is fine and can be agreed with.

People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though. And if a few percent of the money their program spends is wasted or benefits other people through fraud-- that's not corruption either.

And the blanket cuts, layoffs, offers for voluntary separation /early retirement, and contract cancellations don't seem to be aimed at the thing we agree is corruption.

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> People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though

I didn't say anything about that; I don't think I know enough yet to have a fully formed opinion.

But I do think that the overly powerful DC bureaucracy, DC NGOs, and corruption that holds it together is a worthy common enemy for all of us - that's what I'm trying to point out.

I'm actually amazed at Democrats' position on this. I grew up in a Democratic family... We used to be the anti-establishment party! JFK was a Democrat - and he's the one who was apparently taken out by the CIA because he said he was going to destroy it. It used to be Republicans who wanted to keep the institutional status quo in DC.

Either way, I think a pro-Democracy attitude will oppose growing power of unelected officials, regardless of political leanings.

> Either way, I think a pro-Democracy attitude will oppose growing power of unelected officials, regardless of political leanings.

DOGE is headed by an unelected official, from a party with not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now.

DOGE headed by Elon Musk was one of Trump's foremost campaign promises.

In terms of democracy, that is about as direct of an electoral mandate as possible.

> not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now

How about having been duly elected in the ballot boxes? Being pro-democracy means accepting and implementing the will of the people.

(Trump disputed the election results in 2020 because he believed there was widespread election fraud. That may be evidence he was deluded, but I don't think it's necessarily evidence of being anti-democracy in his leanings.)

> > not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now

> How about having been duly elected by a landslide majority in ballot boxes?

How is 49.8% a "landslide majority"?

I stand corrected, thanks. Edited my comment.

> I don't think it's necessarily evidence of being anti-democracy in his leanings.

This is either willful ignorance or something else.

It's a complete distrust in the media and all they say.

What about your own lying eyes?

I'm not sure what you mean... could you elaborate?

It was a sideways reference to an old line from a detective movie.

I'm trying to say that the emperor is nude, and you are arguing that the threads might be so small as to not see them - or, rather, that the Media said he was naked, so while the president claims that he is wearing clothes, and that might be evidence he is deluded, his open ass in the wind not evidence of his pro-nudity leanings.

(This ignores the fact that he rose from the republican party, one that has been operating in full defiance of open democracy since bush v. gore. Republcans don't want "the will of the people", otherwise they wouldn't push so hard for voter suppression.)

It's a claim so baffling that it makes me assume you aren't operating in good faith.

Moreover, where do people think corruption comes from?

The human desire to be richer and the power to make it happen.

Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?

And worse, that the poorly-vetted people who have attached themselves to this administration don't?

The idea that getting rid of fraud in a chaotic fashion is going to lead to less fraud is laughable, unless the assumption is also 'All of the people who are doing this are altruistic and moral.'

If you create chaos at scale, you simply end up with different fraud.

And you can quote me on this in 6 years when investigations begin to lead to trials...

(Which, naturally, Republicans will claim are politically-motivated? But you know who complains loudest about the rule of law? People who do illegal things.)

Musk has talked explicitly about unwinding portions of NASA and replacing it with SpaceX to "improve efficiency."

Which honestly should happen to some extent (I'm not a fan of SLS). But we shouldn't become beholden to one vendor, and it's sure looking a lot more like removing options for the future and competition than a play for efficiency.

And anyone doing this for their own companies in the past would be a textbook example of corruption.

People forget that Boeing space was an excellent engineering company at one point.

One of the things that fucked it up was decades of cost-plus government work.

Companies become the most profitable versions of themselves the market allows them to be... which without competition usually doesn't bode well for excellence.

>Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?

FYI, lots of dumb people actually DO believe that. "Oh they have so much money already" they say. They don't even attempt to square that with collecting more resources than some Gods, for, reasons.

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