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Comment by hallole | Hacker News Reader

Although it seems to have been a flop in practice, I do appreciate the spirit of making good use of tax dollars. I only wish the program was more carefully guided, since the motive behind it did seem genuine.

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That's why the GAO already exists, and what its job is! There's even an international association and conference of these bodies across countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_of_...

If GAO was half serious, it'd have set an expiry date on itself. We know exactly what happens with these things, they eventually just make problems to try to assert a reason for their own existence, and never materially move towards fixing them.

That's one of Congress' responsibilities: the GAO is in the legislative branch, it's Congress' job to exercise oversight. (And it's all US citizens' job to elect people who they trust to exercise that oversight. If the GAO isn't closed down when it should be, that's a failure of Congress, no more, no less, and nothing else. But they seem to be doing their job just fine, unless you have some indications otherwise?)

(I don't think the GAO could set an expiry date on itself even if they wanted to, they exist by power of Congress, so only Congress could put an expiry date on them.)

>they seem to be doing their job just fine

No one believes that. If it was true, DOGE would not have been necessary.

Now with DOGE's mission having been blocked for a good part, US is in an even worse situation. But can't blame an actual well calculated attempt.

>>they seem to be doing their job just fine

>No one believes that.

We're having an objective discussion here, please bring receipts, not beliefs.

I argued my point. If you don't agree water is wet, that's on you.

Can't argue anything without arguments. Let's not discuss water, at this pace we'd end up proving it's dry.

Well, if you dehydrate it first...

Getting it cold enough would probably do the trick too ;D

> If GAO was half serious, it'd have set an expiry date on itself.

While I get where you are coming from, but the government isn't just a static thing that once you've done something it will stay like that. New procedures and jobs come and go all the time and will always need some form of optimisation.

It doesn't matter to keep something if you know for a fact it will go bad from the simple act of it staying around for too long, and/or having an incentive to keep itself relevant, by complicating/fueling the problem it was made to solve.

You probably want to have milk one year from now. That doesn't mean you keep a jug/carton of milk for a year. That way, you'd really only reduce the chance, taking space from something valid.

> You probably want to have milk one year from now. That doesn't mean you keep a jug/carton of milk for a year. That way, you'd really only reduce the chance, taking space from something valid.

I always crave milk. That is why I always have milk on hand and if I for some reason need more milk one day I get more milk than usual, but I will still always have at least a little bit of milk on hand.

Yes, but you don't buy an year's supply "just to be safe". Because you know it's only good fresh.

DOGE was putting the fox in charge of hen welfare. The “spirit” was just a bare minimum facade so they could redirect funds towards billionaires bank accounts.

> the motive behind it did seem genuine

put down the Kool-Aid my friend

I mean I surely disagree, but also I don’t think the motive really matters - the decisions made and actions taken very much speak for themselves.

Sure there were some people involved in DOGE that had good motives, but overall they assumed that history began yesterday and that they were the only people that had thought about reducing the size of government. This was a recipe for disaster.

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