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Comment by tmpz22 | Hacker News Reader

Destroy, destroy, destroy. Promise to rebuild but don't. Take it all.

Did they promise to rebuild?

If I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt (which I hate), it's a shotgun approach; cut things relentlessly and see what falls apart. Chaos engineering applied to a country and / or the world.

That’s exactly what it is, and they said as much repeatedly while campaigning. Voters, in their zealotry against the perceived status quo, failed to realize how much of what we have right now you don’t want to cut recklessly, as well as just how reckless the people that they were choosing to do that job were.

> in their zealotry against the perceived status quo,

Perceived, not actual, because spreading lies and misinformation is what makes the most money for the ad sellers that make up 90% of our industry.

There are various glorious futures floating around about how this will make America better, stronger, more independent.

So much for the wunderkinds in DOGE.

@bigballs, please save U.S.

Given that the Kids at DOGE are all computer experts, this reeks of a calculated move.

I think expert is not the right word for what looks like mostly rookies.

Absolutely not. They are not broadly experts, and they are not making these decisions after careful consideration, as evidenced by their continual acts of stupidity and basic errors and cutting things despite having no idea what it is they are cutting. Musk got in an argument with someone who said DOGE cut funding for a cancer treatment program, and Musk was calling the person a liar, and the person provided evidence and Musk admitted it was an accident. They are a clown car of idiots who vastly overestimate their own knowledge and underestimate how much good the government actually does. They think they can just slash and burn and there will be no negative consequences because they think the government is worthless.

Until, like Ayn Rand, they actually need the government. Then they'll be complaining how the government doesn't provide services.

My knowledge of Ayn Rand stops at having read a book (and considered it silly), when did she need the government and complained about it?

She was an Objectivist. She considered social security to be "legalized plunder". Then when she needed it, she decided to take it.

One of her wonderful worldviews was to rejects altruism as a moral imperative, arguing that individuals should live for their own rational self-interest. Social security, based on the idea of supporting others, contradicts this principle.

It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.

Which means anyone whose wisdom matches their self-interest is going to understand that different things have very different efficiencies at different scales.

And some things happen to be dramatically more efficient/person and more effective, the larger the scale they can be coordinated at.

>It takes strong and complex social glue to create a place where millions can safely follow their own self-interest.

This exactly. All of these people who profess to believe in objectivism could easily move to a failed state and do anything they want to with zero government intervention. But they don't do that. They want all of the benefits of a working government with none of the things required to actually create a working government.

Side note: if they wait a little bit, they may end up not needing to move anywhere after all.

It is in your self interest to have a strong social safety net, because one day you might need it too.

Also, even if you don't need it yourself, it's far nicer to live in a society where people's basic needs can be met otherwise we end up living in some kind of Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland where people with nothing and nothing to lose roam the country looking for targets.

> One of her wonderful worldviews was to rejects altruism as a moral imperative, arguing that individuals should live for their own rational self-interest. Social security, based on the idea of supporting others, contradicts this principle.

This position was already pointed out by Plato (in the Gorgias IIRC) as being inconsistent. Political systems are made up by people - if a society, in particular a democratic one, has certain systems in place, then this is probably because it was (at least believed to be) in the people's self interest.

I don't see altruism as being outside of my own self-interest. I think that you get what you give, so having to give up some money to the public good is OK (usually not awesome, but OK).

What's funny, and it might be because of the translation, but I first thought her book where all entrepreneurs are hidden away in a sort of parallel country was a dystopian satire and a joke about some people sense of self importance. Then I learned about her (and when the book was written too) and realised her book was to be read as it was written, 'seriously'. Which makes it silly, but a funny story.

Medicare and social security after a lung cancer diagnosis (from being a heavy smoker)

https://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ayn-rand-collected-...

Sorry, I really should have said "experts" with the rabbit ears. But it still reeks.

They've done their degrees and masters in Computer Science, and many of them dropped out. But they focused on AI, so I'm assuming this makes them great at statistics, but does this mean they are great at security? Given the way they've gone through a variety of departments, I'd say they aren't.

The DOGE crew are incompetent. Witness their firing of all the people who look after the nuclear stockpile and Ebola research.

They are clueless kids at their first job, following the orders of their hero. You think they’ll resist when the boss tells them, “cut everything”?

No. [0] I wouldn't say they are computer experts. [1][2]

[0] https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355895/doge-musk-nlrb-...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-14/doge-staf...

Hang out around here for a while and you will realize quickly that us tech bros mostly just know tech stuff. Our perceived intelligence in topics which we don't spend our time on is called hubris and we are swimming in it at all times.

Soon to be powned, by their own extreme short sightedness. Duh.

Maybe "they" want to do the pwning with less coordinated resistance. Doing away with CVEs would help with that objective.

No, they are not skilled enough to hack anything. These are just a bunch of average junior engineers with hubris.

Soon to be? They already failed to deploy a website safely by exposing the db. https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-...

I think you mean wonder kids.

wunderkind is a loanword, it's one of those cases of a German word being used but being odd in English since it's so similar. Like kindergarten which is often speller as "garden".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderkind_(disambiguation)

"tariff as wunderwaffe" often comes to mind these days.

Many of these terms originate during the Nazi regime and thus aren't used lightly in Germany anymore.

Other example includes: Endgegner (final boss) or Endlösung (final solution)

I would suggest to avoid such terms.

> Endgegner

I did not know about this, thanks for die Vorwarnung. In context, I'd assume "ultimate enemy" (Gegner=opponent) as "final boss" sounds videogame.

Many did in the golden age of German research, then to be destroyed by those mentioned.

Either the philosophers or the mathematicians/physicists likely coined them.

Wunderkind and Endgegner are used lightly in Germany.

The parallels to Nazi Germany's striking but impractical weapons seemed intended every time I heard or read Wunderwaffe in English.

Wunderkind predates the Nazis so it doesn't have that much baggage.

Endgegner originates from Endlösung and while it indeed often is used without thought, the question if it should be used lightly.

You stated Endgegner was not used lightly in Germany when it was. You seemed to think Wunderwaffe was used lightly in English when it was not. And searching for Endgegner and Endlösung found our comments and a few opinions they sound similar. No evidence or claims of origin. I conclude Endgegner does not originate from Endlösung probably.

I think the GP was making a reference to the Apple TV show “Ted Lasso”.

“Wunderkind” mispronounced as “Wonder Kid” is a running joke in that show.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TedLasso/comments/132rw9v/what_the_...

I'm pretty sure this is a joke reference to Ted Lasso.

Same thing.

They were able to eliminate all open CVE's while cutting costs at the same time. Amazing!

Vampire capitalism. They want civilization to break down so they can offer a solution for profit. The enemies of all people and life on the planet are a tiny group of oligarchs and their supplicants.

Not unlike the manga Berserk

This isn't capitalism, any more than arson, burglary, or extortion is capitalism. Get some new material.

To be fair, we don't yet know how capitalism ends.

We know how everything else does, though.

I agree, given the right definition of “capitalism”.

Unfortunately “capitalism” has two quite different meanings. Which are rarely clarified in use.

Capitalism with a big C, a too common overarching ideology, gets bent to mean whatever the greedy, unethical and rich want it to mean so they can get more money.

But small c capitalism, evolving from both practical and ethical foundations, is a system so useful it has multiplied the benefits of civilization. But it is just one such system.

It can’t do everything, it needs other independent systems (justice, dispute resolution, rules of clarity, risk & trust limiting systems, for starters) to work, and extending it to places it doesn’t work causes great harm.

(Like when perversely applied to those enabling systems, in big C form, as is happening now.)

> any more than arson, burglary, or extortion is capitalism

Indeed.

Hah. I’ve been hearing this No-True-Scotsman for Capitalism for decades now. It’s what we’ve got and is widely understood as capitalism. I won’t repeat your last sentence but the sentiment is similar.

It's no different from what apologists for Communism and any number of other -isms will tell you. "B...b...but it's never really been tried." Capitalists are as entitled to that excuse as anyone else.

It's almost as if no economic, social, or political system known to mankind will stand up for long under a determined onslaught of corruption.

It's malicious rent seeking. Is that capitalism? Once you run out of easy problems to solve, you create problems for yourself to solve.

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