All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.

There are far better data access patterns. In the case of US gov data, I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query. It could even be obfuscated in some way to protect citizens' identities.

This isn't true. Mainframe COBOL systems commonly store data in VSAM files, or DB2, or IMS, or sometimes some more obscure non-IBM database (e.g. CA/Broadcom's Datacom/DB or IDMS, or Software AG's ADABAS). But whichever one they use, there are multiple ways of granting read-only access.

For example, if it is VSAM, you can configure RACF (or TopSecret or ACF2) to allow an account read (but not write) permission to those VSAM datasets. Or, you can stick DB2 in front of VSAM (on DB2 for z/OS, CREATE TABLE can refer to a pre-existing VSAM file, and make it look like a database table), and then you can have a readonly account in DB2 to give you access to that database schema. Or, there's a lot of other ways to "skin this cat", depending on exactly how the legacy app is designed, and exactly how it stores data. But, probably this is already implemented – most of these apps have read-only access for export into BI systems or whatever – and if it happens for whatever reason not to be, setting it up should only be a modest amount of work, not some multiyear megaproject.

Given that neither of us knows the actual systems in question, what is more likely, that it's a well-designed system or one that has organically accreted over time? It seems like you tend to believe the former, and I the latter. I suppose my view is based on the fact that, like in statmech, you enumerate all possible systems that can do a particular job, the vast majority of those solutions will not have any organizing principle and will not be amenable to surgical analysis or change.

Whereas, you don't seem to know anything about that topic, and are speculating based on parallels with completely different disciplines (such as statistical mechanics).

We both are speculating due to lack of details about the specific systems under discussion, but wouldn't you expect the person whose speculations are based on greater relevant knowledge to be more likely to be correct?

But now you are shifting the goalposts: from getting readonly access to the data, to understanding what it actually means. Yes, I totally agree, a lot of legacy COBOL systems, it can be very hard to work out what the data actually means - even though you probably have a COBOL copybook telling you what the columns/fields are, they can be full of things like single letter codes where the documentation telling you what the codes mean is incorrect. And likewise, you are right that seemingly simple tasks like adding a field can be monumental work given the number of different transaction screens, reports, batch jobs, etc, that need to be updated, and the fact that many mainframe programmers don’t know what “DRY” stands for

But simply getting read-only access to data? Most mainframe COBOL systems would already support that. Could there be some really badly maintained ones in which it was never configured properly and they just give DOGE read-write access because DOGE refuses to wait for it to be done properly? I doubt that’s the norm but it might be a rare exception. Such a system would likely violate security standards for federal IT systems, but agencies can get exemptions.

20,000 hours is 10 years of full-time work for a single person. If you "didn't work with this system for long," it is quite simply statistically impossible that you could have witnessed enough projects to have anything resembling an accurate "average".

Or, while we're mythical man-monthing it, 6 months of work for 20 people? Or merely a single sprint for 240 people!

And the reason is they don't understand the specific domain & context well enough to know what the actual hard problems are. Instead they're just pattern matching to things they do know and extrapolating. And it usually doesn't go well.

Dealing with a system that's replicating 50 years of regulatory rules is going to be that times infinity.

What percentage of people who know how to make a "website" do you think could make an automated tax system?

>the tech industry has been the beating heart of this country

Agriculture? Construction? The heart means something without which you can't function. How did people in the 1950s survive?

Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays to the point that what someone says their goals are and what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these systems.

> Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays to the point that what someone says their goals are and what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these systems.

Your comments throughout this thread have a lot of baked-in assumptions (again in your reply with the bit about "tech people having earned enough trust" and reducing the whole tech industry to that of a "whiz kid who just doesn't fix websites anymore". Seriously? You really don't grasp how reductionist of a thought process this is?) and a closer examination on your behalf is warranted. Complex questions never have simple one-liner answers.

Even in this very thread there is stuff like this [0] being posted.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...

How do you combat this kind of bad-faith propagandizing? How do communities maintain some level of connection to reality and decency? It seems to infect every online space I visit.

You’re acting like DOGE is about turning the U.S. into some libertarian paradise. But look at what they’re actually focused on. Foreign aid is completely optional, but PEPFAR (an effective foreign aid program) promptly got a waiver. What’s been targeted for cuts? Stuff that detracts from the core mission, such as meddling with elections in India. The federal government is full of this shit—and full of people who care about distractions rather than the core mission.

I’m no libertarian, just a citizen who lived in Baltimore and rode Amtrak and has been to functional countries like Germany and Japan. I like government. But our government sucks at governance. And I’m fine with someone taking an axe to all the distractions so government can refocus on maintaining order and providing fundamental services.

I'm a libertarian. I will be overjoyed to admit I was wrong if we somehow come out of this with an intact democratic government bound by the rule of law and keeping the corpos somewhat in check. But all signs point to our country being well and truly fucked.

This is the mechanism by which this administrative coup (declared here in https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu...) is being enacted. None of this is legal or constitutional in any way.

The rule of law is not a partisan issue nor a matter of "government efficiency". Those who aid this coup should be considered traitors.

Isn't that exactly what the popular vote is though? Maybe people weren't passionate about it, but my loose understanding of the US popular vote is it's quite direct unlike preferential voting, so the people who chose him actively chose _him_.

I'm not saying there aren't regrets, but it seems to me defintively that the majority of voters selected him as the president they wanted.

You might recall that at the end of his first term, he tried to overturn the results of the election he lost, calling up the Georgia attorney general to demand the vote total be blatantly altered, and even siccing a mob against the Capitol to physically prevent the certification of the results.

That's why many people don't trust him.

When one of your threat vectors is a massive ball of nuclear fire right on top of the federal government in DC, your offsite backup policy is going to be absurd overkill by the standards of any other organization on this planet. That doesn't mean it's flawed.

> ...many of the people in charge don't even know how to use a website. Now for the first time, tech industry people have the opportunity to help run these computer systems, and you're afraid they're the ones who'll be incompetent and accidentally break everything?

Are you honestly suggesting that the people who built these systems, maintained them, and updated them to reflect often significant changes in rules and regulations over the course of decades somehow don't know how those systems work? If they were so damned clueless, those COBOL systems would have sputtered out and died decades ago. The fact that they've continued to run for all this time is practically prima facie evidence that the system works just fine by industry standards for that kind of legacy code.

No doubt there's plenty of stuff buried in the codebase that bugs the hell out of the developers working on it, but you get that with any complex legacy code. It's the nature of the beast. Do you think there's nothing in Google's monorepo that some of their engineers don't quite like but doesn't rise to a big enough issue to warrant refactoring right now? Any other FAANG company? Or large tech company in general?

You're writing as though a bunch of junior developers--and that describes pretty much all of the publicly known DOGE employees so far--are wizards who can just waltz right in and magic up a better solution just because they're from the "tech industry."

Setting aside the unlikely chances that those juniors--no matter how skilled or talented--have any experience with COBOL, mainframes, or even just decades-old legacy code, is anyone going to suggest that something like the federal government's payment system isn't defined by an immense amount of complex business logic so as to comply with legislative requirements? It's not something you just start playing around with.

I can't think of any tech company that would take a junior developer, toss them overboard in the middle of the freezing Atlantic, grant them sudo access, and tell them to do whatever the hell they want with critical systems before they drown and--somehow--take the ship with them. Worse yet, those juniors were chosen for ideology fervor and/or purity, so what happens when the normal review processes and experienced senior developers are pushed aside because they're in the way and part of the "deep state conspiracy" that doesn't want them to "[fix] the government" as you put it?

Not only is that a recipe for disaster for the company itself, it's a damned good way to take an otherwise talented junior developer and permanently ruin them. Instead of mentoring them so they can work well as part of a team, you're basically creating a toxic working environment that's going to turn them all feral. By the time they crawl out the other side and the public hears all about what they've been up to, what company is going to be stupid enough to a developer with "DOGE" on their resume? Beyond that, you're conflating a whole bunch of different issues here with federal software contracts and IT, while putting the tech industry on a really peculiar pedestal.

Besides, if the goal is to discover waste/fraud/abuse, the obvious answer is to hire a bunch of forensic accountants and let them dig into everything. Those are the people who actually find that kind of stuff, and they're incredibly skilled at their job. If it's there, given the time, they'll find it. But it's a slow-going process, so we instead see a bunch of engineers focusing on random transactions so they can ask themselves (1) "do I like that one?" and (2) "do I think it's legitimate?" because it's faster.

That's not exactly how you fix anything, least of all a country.

The DOGE workers are already legends in their own lifetime, having saved $55 billion, and they haven't even gotten started. That's like 20% of Google's yearly revenue, all in a few weeks, and without needing to write petabytes of code in a monorepo.

I don't think it's accurate to mentally model these payments as though they were counter intuitive algorithms in a deeply embedded software system. Waste fraud and abuse can be painfully obvious. So it's not the complexity of the problem that has prevented it from being solved. It's the political cost. Senior people have spent a lifetime accruing political capital. They're afraid to lose it. They're only going to spend political capital if they get something in return. They know and have cultivated relationships with the people who will be unhappy if particular instances of waste get solved.

So it makes sense that Elon is unleashing his crackerjack juniors.

They're perfect for the job.

By "tech industry" do you mean the consumer surveillance industry? Maybe your vision of the American dream involves inescapable corporate control, but mine certainly doesn't!

And as far as bringing science fiction to the masses, it seems like he's taken all the wrong lessons from the common theme of corporate dystopia.

And if I was advising the Ukranians I'd tell them to try to exploit it too, hey, if you're fighting 2 superpowers with another 1 quietly backing the fight against you, you need all the help you can get.

  > It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome

  HERE BE DRAGONS

That seems innocuous, but remember then some of the output files might have the character "?" or even "*". So imagine trying to remove these files and going an asterisk too far. All gone!

> I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query.

They shouldn't need more than limited read access. The fact that they have more access, very likely demanded and not accidentally given, is due to their intent to do more than simply query data.

Of course, this involves being honest with yourself about risk and reward, and we all have implicit incentives to disregard the risk until we get burned and learn to factor that in.

When they did decide to lock down the database, the DB admin only locked in down in the sql server client most people used. If you used some other client, you still had access. _sigh_

I'm not make a value judgement on this, it's just how it is. At a startup, the founder ultimately has root access to the database, no matter what the technical controls.

Now, maybe it's stupid, and maybe it should be some other way, but to my mind the other way is that Congress gets together and writes a law saying "the executive cannot get root access to X, Y, Z". In absence of that law, the executive can do whatever they want.

Not to be THAT GUY, but "an append-only database which cannot be modified by anyone" is something HN has spent the past 10 years saying is completely useless...

Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuable as currently possible.

This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame where blame is deserved.

It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.

When was he “slapped down by congress”? He signed the executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day - obviously his transition team’s lawyers had drafted it for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional authorities for DOGE. But it wasn’t like he asked Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they said ‘no’ - he planned to bypass them all along.

Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don’t think either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get passed, and they weren’t seriously trying. Introducing the legislation was just a political stunt to get attention and demonstrate loyalty. “Bypass Congress” was the plan all along

It was a fishing expedition for them to figure out who to threaten and/or actually primary in 2 years...

They're just firing people at random, they haven't discovered any innovative new way to make systems more efficient.

("at random" is a bit generous and ignores the retaliation against political adversaries)

Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere where the last two years of hires were all just completely worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh but understandable if it were said to be done for simple budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable less protected situation, but to call them all poor performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an obvious and transparent lie.

This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them the keys but they cheered them on.

But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being mass fired.

USAID was investigating Starlink

Consumer Protection Bureau has numerous investigations open vs Musky companies

Treasury is involved in regulating Muskys X for Finance thing

I don’t care what happens to Ukraine, just don’t want us to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which is more likely now than it was with previous administration.

Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them if we got rid of the income tax.

As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped, and I’ll check back in a year and see if I’m worried.

Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else, everywhere else in society.

They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them.

Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives, and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites" you're complaining about (and such language indicates a conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error). Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations without proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and corruption.

In this situation, I think that neither the established federal bureaucracy nor DOGE and the current administration have interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an unfavorable one.

No, the biases and incentives are different in government than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but they are different.

The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.

Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.

Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all situations, and while different scenarios lead to those biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the same underlying substance.

> The main attraction of government work is the ability to serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.

No, the main attraction of government work is the ability to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on society (except to convince themselves of the importance of their work, as we all do).

A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully advancing their own particular normative ideology.)

> Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.

No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as participating in it here. None of the parties involved have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again, there's a chance that things will work out in the balance.

Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission. But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging.

There is already a government agency who has been working to overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't even talking to them.

The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.

The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.

When systems fail, people step in to fix them. Sometimes, the failure is a person, and their supervisor or colleague is the safeguard. Replacing that with AI/ML is political offloading -- shifting responsibility from elected officials to code that can’t dissent, negotiate, or care. You’re lucky if it can even explain itself.

I know I’m on HN, where this isn’t the prevailing mindset. But public systems aren’t startups. They don’t get to fail. The common good isn’t about efficiency; it’s about endurance. It’s about ensuring society functions for everyone -- not just those with money, power, or influence. Public systems safeguard the commons, whether it’s infrastructure, social services, or even the basic principles of justice. They exist to serve not just the people you identify with, but those you ignore, fear, or even condemn. Bureaucracies, with all their flaws, aren’t meant to be efficient, they’re built to endure.

It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive should have minimal power over them. The president's job is to implement the laws of the legislature.

The American system of government is based on checks and balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements them. In many cases, the high level positions are presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules governing what they’re allowed to do and how they do it, as well as oversight and transparency for their actions.

What we’re seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans deciding that following the law is too hard and creating conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply that the people charged with protecting that data do not have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this hasn’t been a problem because people just waited a few weeks to get clearances.

Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector generals it isn’t that there’s no way for him to do that, he just didn’t feel like giving Congress 30 days notice.

In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real disagreement about how one of the independent agencies operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.

The whole problem can be sidestepped by pulling back on the excessive levels of discretion and rule-making that have been delegated to executive agencies in the first place.

And so much reeks of a Watergate like situation, except done publicly instead of in secret, with Congress and the Judiciary refusing or unable to hold any of these people to account. "We will now gather all information about our adversaries and fire anyone who doesn't give us the keys to the vaults, and if anybody doesn't like it, good luck, because the courts are going to be VERY busy, indefinitely, as we proceed to break every law the Legislature has issued, and is unlikely to have time to hear your case for a few decades."

But let's take at face value the idea that the Executive doesn't need to follow or even acknowledge the decisions of the Legislature, and that they can tell anyone to do anything whenever they feel like it. There's a pragmatic issue, not just a separation of powers issue: How can you possibly accumulate domain expertise, and what motivation would you have to accumulate that expertise anyway, when every agency is going to be dismantled every 2-4 years?

Besides, these bureaucrats are "elected" in a way similar to the Electoral College. We vote in the Legislature, and the Legislature votes on the appointments. If we don't want "lifers" then we should be voting on term-limits for these positions, not allowing the wholesale remodeling of our bureaucracy every election, where "just anybody" can come in and walk away with whatever they can loot each cycle.

Also, what's important to understand is that inefficiency in a corporation is a bug, but inefficiency in government is a feature.

Government needs to have checks and balances at every stage, which by definition is inefficient. Which in the case of government is a wonderful thing.

There is a word for a perfectly efficient government: dictatorship

Some examples of "stupid" ineffiency: delegating tech support outside government. Meaning no technician could fix a laptop on-site, their role was to notify a private company to come one day to take the device and come back later with a fix. The delays were bad, and compounded rapidly, the employees couldn't work, citizen wasted days off and had to reschedule a month later.. really bad. Plus technicians skills were unused/wasted, they hated their jobs, and communication with partners was mostly hostile/red-tape adding more friction. They didn't have enough money to change LCDs but didn't allow you to give some even though there were plenty of working ones for free. Same for printers.

This is the kind that needs to be pruned.

Also I believe there's another form of "perfect" government, that is not a mechanical human grinder like a dictatorship: harmonious. It might be a naive dream but .. maybe not.

Is a system and everyone here knows what Moore's Law is.

Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society. As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the worst exploitative behavior.

But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.

Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human intentions and choices, just like every other organizational model in society.

Attributing specific moral inclinations to an organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions than printed ones.

* The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980 on a per capita basis. It’s not the largest per capita it’s ever been.

> The federal government’s workforce has remained largely unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S. population has grown by 68% and federal spending has quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology and contractors in filling the gap.

> Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in 2019, or 6.6% of that year’s total spending

So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal budget while a complete government collapse for a number of reasons including that the government won’t have anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes.

[1]

* The largest discretionary spending area is the military at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the government’s spend each year. Even [2] which is a right wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and just hand-waves the pension improvement as “significant”. But cuts aren’t focusing on the biggest employer within the government like the military.

* The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who haven’t been on the job long enough to have protections. This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost certainly across the lowest bands since the government pays based on seniority.

This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you think the actions he’s taking, because they’re highly visible, are solving the problem when in fact he’s not actually making any meaningful dent. That’s why he made a big show about the deportation flights but not talking about how the places he’s sending them to aren’t the places the people are from - he’s bullied Costa Rica into accepting whoever he send [3].

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-big-ref...

[2] https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/fi...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-deportation-fl...

never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting automation and as such efficiency.

Bureaucrats consider, implement, and modify the structured, rules based systems our society comes up with.

in theory, laws and policies are crafted by elected officials or experts, and bureaucrats are just the executors. but in reality, bureaucracies interpret, refine, and sometimes even reshape these rules through policy implementation. this is where a lot of inefficiency, red tape, and unintended consequences creep in.

The people writing it are not necessarily subject experts in the area and even if they were or consulted such experts they can't foresee all eventualities. So those laws would need to be constantly updated all the time which is simply infeasibly (especially in the US where the legislative branch is stuck in a near permanent gridlock by design). IMHO that would make the system much, much more inefficient.

you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits, or business licenses?

you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private companies can process global transactions in seconds, why does it take months to approve basic permits?

if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare mismanagement don’t scream 'zero downtime'. in reality, bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient.

other industries use automation and streamlined processes to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'. why should government be any different?

I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take / the approvals required and make things as streamlined as possible. But if those things are small fires, having the current Republican majority with DOGE in support is asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed to all government spending, the infra will never be improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of employees that are maintaining the current system to save costs.

Could you give a concrete example of what you're describing there?

I can't see their original comment anymore though, so, who knows.

Pick any pro-1984-esque smart city article that normal people would recoil in horror at the implications of yet HN generally endorses. The author is your example.

Now repeat for every industry and its own insane trends. Manufacturing people endorsing green regulation because they know it gives them a competitive advantage over their competition despite causing off shoring and making the world worse on the net. Lawyers, legislators and law people peddling inequality under the law but dressing it up as DEI. Lead people at regulatory agencies advocating for expansion of their own scope and mandate. Etc. etc. the list goes on.

It's like a stupid reverse gell-mann amnesia effect where people can spot stupidity outside their own industry but lack the ability to be a disciplined adult with self awareness and ability to see consequences when something benefits them.

But of course outsiders don't make decisions until things are so insane that the public weighs in so what happens is the tech industry peddles pervasive surveillance, manufacturing off-shores to countries that belch pollution, etc, etc, until it reaches a critical mass and a populist gets elected on promises to kill all of it no matter what it is.

If you want me to literally cite an example I'll do that but we all know that doesn't really matter because no example will satisfy everyone.

The upper middle/professional class is the problem (this is a theme, there's a reason that every time there a real good bloody revolution in history they do poorly). They have pushed ideas that are grounded in sound principles (diversity and inclusivity are good, the proliferation of high tech communication is good, sustainable environmental practice are good) to the point of absurdity and recoil from the general public. They take these causes of the moment and run with them to absurd levels because that is a reliable way to make a quick buck with the way we've structured our society.

It's like telling a rookie engineer the priority to lighten the part and he shaves so much mass that it will obviously, even to him too readily in real world conditions despite passing in the simulation. He justifies it in his own mind in various ways but at the end of the day the reality is he DGAF. He got his bonus for hitting the metric and moved on. The upper middle class is that rookie engineer. The upper middle class decision makers got that bonus for increasing DEI (in a bad way that makes people hate it), making the production greener (if you don't measure what's offshored) and so on and so on. And of course such behavior comes around to cast shade upon those goals even if the goals are noble. Eventually management says "stop lightening things" in the same way that the populist leaders say things like "no more DEI crap". Such moves aren't the right answer per-say, and even they know it. But they do stop the bleeding enough to not be a serious existential problem for a little while until a new fad comes around.

I don't know how you get a whole society of people to give a crap generally and give a crap about the big picture impact of what they're doing. If I did then surely enough other people would and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

This is incorrect. The actions of wealthy people speak for themselves; they don't need to be demonized, they are plainly wrong on their face. That said, we're in agreement that these people don't have power without the less-wealthy people who enable them.

That is what I asked for, yes.

Be clear about what you're saying. If you hesitate to to just say what you believe, that's probably a good indication that some introspection would be worthwhile.

FWIW, I think I agree with you and I think it is possibly the biggest weakness of our system that it is vulnerable to these types of manipulations from various angles: campaign finance, regulatory capture, disproportionate power given to unelected members of the executive, etc. That being said, those same weaknesses really open the door for the power-tripping Musks and Bezoses to get in and do a lot of damage, which is what I believe we are witnessing in real time.

It's just that the abusers are the only ones who make an effort to talk about it, because talking about it provides them cover.

Otherwise it's a regular part of the daily job.

You have everything to hide by default and the onus is on every actor to prove why they need information and how it's isolated from other information.

I have no idea how to investigate this empirically, though.

Online it works like most things. Everybody pretends it's a partisan food fight, even if they have to lie.

Also, blackmail isn't the only way to have personal or intimate information used against you. As the absolutely massive advertising industry can tell you, knowing more details about people makes them easier to influence and manipulate.

2. I think the federal government executive branch should be able to control itself and inspect itself.

Privacy clearly is valuable for it's own sake.

That's quite different to Musk's minions taking a DB dump onto a USB stick.

I’ve seen both high and low-performing teams in .com, .edu, and .gov and there’s nothing magic about any sector: you get what senior management sets the incentives to get. The NSA gets really good hackers because they don’t leave that to chance, just like how NASA or MIT hire really good scientists and engineers, and the places which just trust the big consulting companies usually get taken to the cleaners.

He’s been able to buy some good companies but nobody has a magic trick for being good at everything and the man is stretched really thin between all of his CEO positions and spending hours per day on politics.

Elon qua SpaceX and possibly xAI and Neuralink is an A. Elon qua Boring Company, X and DOGE is very, very clearly a B player. (Idk what's going on with Tesla, he seems to be treating it more like a piggy bank to be raided to get to Mars (A) and indulge his impulses (B).)

You want obedient lackeys as #1 rule, it means reasonably little threat and no resistance to molding from above. Competences are sometimes even frowned upon. Look at how potus literally demands that others lick his boots to keep it polite.

This is how russians run their dictatorships for example, including those they exported elsewhere under their iron hand / military bases. Talking from first hand experience.

Of course that part of the system is very ineffective. Regardless of what you think about government and its bureaucracy, that fascist manchild aint gonna end up with success story here, he lacks (any genuine) emotional intelligence to understand underlying reasons. This isnt technical problem to solve where he sometimes excells.

The C-suite never bring in hatchetmen? What world do you work in?

> Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.

Isn't the difference here that in the private sector you have to do all that loyalty shit from day one, not just whenever the board restructures and you want to keep your job?

They somehow managed to do it without a bunch of firings, though it doesn't explain the mechanisms (I didn't have time to dig in further):

> A variety of mechanisms have been used to accomplish this, thereby keeping the use of involuntary terminations to a minimum. In fact, of the 239,286 person reduction, only 20,702 have been involuntarily separated.

from https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/statement-the-buyo...:

To reduce the work force by 102,000 positions by the end of fiscal 1994, we offered about 70,000 buyouts. Several non-DOD agencies have offered deferred buyouts that will take place between now and March 1997. Defense will be using buyouts as it continues to downsize through 1999. Counting those, we expect to buy out another 84,000 workers through 1997 as we reduce the work force by a total of 272,900 positions.

edit: I realize now that the first link i sent upthread was too early as it only goes to Jan 1996. I've seen elsewhere that the total reduction got to 400,000+.

Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of telling the population "No"?

I think such a body (which exists in some system) would obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced that it would be a net positive in general.

If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this administration, and are going to need to basically erect a strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like 5% of the population in the streets can topple an authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.

There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled, also by the same type of processes that put it there. Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily dismissed for following the law and regulations even when they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails that can't just be swept aside by an administration that rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing a lot here, of course...)

*Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the population's vote is suppressed, and another significant percentage of the population is not yet old enough to vote...

So when a political question arises like "should we have net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass legislation.

That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the executive was granted discretionary power over net neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be net neutrality.

It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages. Many of the questions around statutory power look like someone trying to do something under existing rules because they see a problem which isn’t going away but legislative attempts have failed.

Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say is true of republics, which the USA is. However no republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all just human beings. In this case the president is plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely on the same page, therefore all the institutions in question are not going to stop him unless he does things that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".

Democracy as a term has been defined to include represtative Republics for at least a century. Stop being a retrograde pedant.

“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”

James Madison

I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of the prior elected presidents truly threatened the Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.

Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college had been working as intended when it was envisioned by the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better suited to implement his (rough) ideas.

I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar demographic divide that would could exist in a pure popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a single monolithic country. And while I might place my bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like a majority of the time, I believe broad representation that at least aids towards unity is better than an outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the majority".

I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might fix all of this. It may not even be something our "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as prior instances.

What about simply winning all of the rural areas? Cause that's literally what happened.

It's impractical to check everything, do I tend to do deep dives spot checking a small number of things.

For readers, I'd suggest the same thing here. Disregard claims on the Internet, or even court rulings, and just look at primary evidence. Pick a small number of issues.

I make this statement generically, without prejudice to the outcome here.

Ms Daniels said she "blacked out" despite consuming no drugs or alcohol after Mr Trump prevented her from leaving the room by blocking the door. She said she woke up on the bed with her clothes off.

"I was staring at the ceiling and didn't know how I got there, I was trying to think about anything other than what was happening there," Ms Daniels testified.

Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she did not tell Mr Trump to stop. "I didn't say anything at all," she said and that she left the hotel room quickly afterwards.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-08/stormy-daniels-testif...

Allegations mean little, and for celebrities they tend to pile up proportionate to their fame. We live in a society that has absolutely no disincentives for false allegations of rape, and that has only grown more true the last few decades.

Instead of disregarding 26 allegations, one has to wonder why anyone would regard them in the first place. Furthermore, for many people, their regard/disregard is highly selective and comes down to the politics of the accused.

However, I've seen both credible and less than credible allegations even against him.

I have no idea about this specific one, but we live in a disinformation sphere on just about everything these days....

1. Elon Musk - 1

2. Donald Trump - 26

3. Kanye West - 0 known

4. Greta Thunberg - 0 known

5. Joe Rogan - 0 known

6. Jordan Peterson - 0 known

7. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - 0 known

8. Andrew Tate - < 10

9. Vladimir Putin- 0 known

10. Mark Zuckerberg - 0 known

The idea that just being famous and polarizing attracts false allegations, is false.

The simpler correlation is that most of the people on that list respect the law and do not consider themselves beyond reproach. Mind you, Tate was fleeing Interpol on human trafficking charges when he was arrested. These men know what they did wrong which is why they lash out when accused instead of respecting due process.

And Vladamir Putin (0), seriously? Good luck to anyone who attempts to make a public accusation against him. There will be a fatal fall through a window in their future. He could have raped 200 women and nobody would say a thing.

But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do it.

That's the problem with the argument that Republicans need to be careful about setting precedents that Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes that any Democratic president will actually do this. In fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that there will ever be another Democratic president.

He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE employees is child's play -- but it would never get that far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not fully subservient to Trump.

Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.

Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time, Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his bounds—I have already seen this talking point privately from GOP operatives. They’ll both have gotten what they wanted, and we’ll all be stuck footing the bill.

Would be interesting to know if the poster would financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to, you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?

They're also responsible liable for keeping the data safe, which has already been broken at least once:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43052432

Possibly violating:

> Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— […]

* https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798

> continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;

> develops plans for coordinated, Government wide activities that address these problems and promote economy and efficiency in Federal programs and operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit, investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or entity;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Inspectors_Gene...

That's as valid of a reason as you can get in the executive branch.

Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist, rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.

You're effectively says Congress should mandate every detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which medicines are useful and safe, etc).

The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith. And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system, even more so when they convince ~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.

The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the EPA (to name one example) probably should have been giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science." They already pass laws of unimaginable length and complexity, so I see no reason why Congress can't pass a huge omnibus "these chemicals are bad" bill every year, even if that bill is 5000-10000 pages.

By the way, speaking of the EPA, there's a lot of whiplash in that arm of government based on which party holds the presidency. If the EPA's rules were actual laws, they would need a much stronger mandate from the people to change. IMO this would be better for both environmental protection (since you don't have the party of "drill baby drill" arbitrarily changing things whenever they want) and for business because there is more certainty.

> The whole premise of our system is that the people within the system operate in good faith.

The whole premise of the American system of government is that power corrupts and a functioning government needs a series of working checks and balances. One arm of America's tripartite government has ceded most of its real power to another arm. This mostly works because the people who get into that other branch (presidents) want to play an iterated game, where burning things to the ground doesn't benefit them. We are seeing what happens when you have someone in power who is playing to win this round without regard for the iterated game.

All that would do is transfer power from bureaucrats within the executive to bureaucrats within the legislature. No Congressperson is fully knowledgeable on all the areas on which they pass laws. Maybe it is a better approach than what we have today, but I'm unconvinced. At least with the system we have today, the bureaucrats are generally experts within their areas. Congressional staffers have no such experience and generally rely on lobbyists.

Think about this in good faith and try to make it work in your head, and you will see that this proposal is actually not that different from how the executive branch rule-makers work today from a day-to-day perspective, while carrying very different legal implications.

That only applies to political appointees. The rank and file are permanent employees (or were until a few weeks ago).

Anyways, not saying your idea couldn't work, only that it's not easily implemented and needs a lot of consideration to do well. It's a wholesale change to how we've governed ourselves for ~150 years. But, the idea of a permanent set of legislative experts has some appeal.

It very much is not.

It is, however, that the people will not simultaneously elect sufficent majorities in both houses of Congress and a President who all fail to do so, such that the systems by which the political branches check eachother continue to function in a way which constrains those actors in either that do act in bad faith.

> I would posit that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the system,

Electoral reforms to the legislative branch that could be done through statute could go a long way to reducing the probability of a sufficient concentration of bad faith actors to overwhelm the system, and electoral and structural reforms to the executive branch to make it less unitary, which would take a Constitutional amendment, could increase the necessary concentration to achieve a total breakdown.

This doesn't even require bad faith actors for it to become a clusterfuck. It's a scaling issue. Things that used to work at smaller scales accumulate cruft and other issues, until things ultimately fall apart. 200 years is of course a good run, but it wasn't going to last forever. Actually 200 years is such a long run, one doesn't have to bring "bad faith actors" into the equation at all to reach this conclusion, but I guess when things start to fall apart some people need someone to blame. Ask yourself this though... if the system was doing so great, how would it have allowed someone like Trump to ever win in the first place (let alone in the second place, as he did in 2024)? That's not a healthy system. Too many were disillusioned, and that's not their fault.

>~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground" is a reasonable take.

They are disgusted with what they see, and have for a very long time felt powerless to change it. Not really just "felt", but were powerless to change it. Trump ran for office, they saw an opportunity. It's not exactly unreasonable, it's just inconvenient to a class of people who have grown comfortable because they're a little closer to the spigots of graft that pour forth. Being "reasonable" in the way you'd use that word hasn't really ever worked for those people, and they waited quite a long time for it to do the trick.

The tradgedy of Trump's first term was that the House of Representatives undermined the legitimacy of that check by using it in partisan, ambiguous and non-compelling circumstances, and failing as a result to obtain a conviction. Using the heavy machinery of impeachment ineffectively made it harder to use should the executive take the tremendous steps you're suggesting.

Anyway, Trump just mocked the leader of a foreign ally for refusing to hold elections. Viewed together, his comments sound like an extended troll of the political opposition.

Say what?!

It's Congress keeping the President in check. BTW, the President is not directly elected by the people and doesn't actually [directly] represent them. The President is elected by the state governments (legislatures) and is supposed to be chosen because the States belief the President will faithfully uphold the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress. It may happen the the States use a popular election to choose their electors that elect the President, at least for now, but the President isn't supposed to represent "the mob" (majority or the populace). It's also why the electoral college is used for electing the President rather than straight popular vote.

It's this kind of contempt that got him elected. You have no empathy or interest in the will of the people. Maybe if you talked with some of them, you'd understand their grievances. But something tells me you'd sooner ironically prejudicially dismiss them all as racist bigots.

Norms, are basically the way laws work in the real world.

I despaired, because this is natural to lawyers, and alien entirely to the layperson.

No one is going to think Justice, and then accept “Oh, our norms are how laws work”.

Even the concept of independent executive agencies is probably more vulnerable constitutionally than more people think.

I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch, as informed to me by the other comments. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.

In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera saying as much.

Look at AirBnB, Uber, Lyft.

All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state legal counsels.

It might rarely be admitted openly, but it sometimes is alluded to... e.g. Eric Schmidt's Stanford talk where he said:

"I want to say that if your product becomes popular, you can hire a bunch of lawyers to sort everything out. If no one uses your product, don’t worry -- no one will care that you stole someone else’s content."

I don't believe that anyone who has worked in any official capacity would make such claims. The distortion of such well-defined practices is an attempt to gloss over the illegality of unprecedented events in progress right now.

They are sincerely following Project 2025, decimating government, and very likely to fire A LOT more federal workers over the summer, then they will install Loyalists throughout.

Billionaire Musk .. aka "The Auditor" .. is "primarying" or threatening to fund opposition candidates for Senators who fight him on this.

It's an autogolpe.

Change the data, Firing everybody , leave no way to contact them, this is not auditing.

The president needs the Senate's "advice and consent" to hire principal officers, and does not need the Senate's "advice and consent" for certain other officers as specified by statute. The US Digital Service ("DOGE") is an agency where he did not need the Senate's advice and consent.

The president does NOT need the Senate's advice and consent to fire anyone in the executive branch. For principal officers this was established by the failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson for firing a confirmed cabinet secretary nominated by Lincoln. For other officers this was established by judicial precedent fairly recently when Biden terminated two Trump appointees to minor offices and they sued (and lost).

Similarly the president needs the Senate's advice and consent to enter into treaties. The Constitution is silent as to terminating Senate-confirmed executive officers, officers whose appointments did not require Senate confirmation, or treaties (abrogation). It's essentially settled law that the president does not require the Senate's advice and consent for any of those kinds of terminations.

Therefore, under the Constitution and the political and binding judicial precedents, there can be no law "onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests."

Copying what I typed elsewhere, I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history when the president has such an absolute authority over the executive branch. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it remains like this.

> I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural history that no coup has occurred in American history

The various assassinations of presidents were kinds of coups, don't you think? Soon we'll find out if the CIA did or did not kill JFK. Suppose the CIA killed JFK -for argument's sake-, surely that would have been a coup, no?

For instance, there is no law allowing the president to do a SELECT * in the income tax database. So an honest government worker can just say f-off when he is requested to do so.

It's not often you're asked to do something that could break the law, with the whistle-blowing chain being potentially broken at the top.

> Advisors with unlimited power

Apparently they have the power to fire people, ignore access clearance rules, get full read/write (this was already confirmed and documented by multiple sources) access to data, terminate federal programs and agencies. Or at least there's no executive opposition to them trying to, so... in practice they do have the power. So far a few judges are still holding the ground, but we'll see how long that is allowed. Musk announced a few big changes as done before they were officially confirmed by Trump.

> and endless conflicts of interests

Musk practically leads the efforts to cut government spending while receiving government funding in defence and comms spending. And with weird procurement entires appearing https://www.ttnews.com/articles/armored-teslas-government Those are conflicts of interest.

> with zero obligation for transparency?

There are no obligations for transparency. The agencies being reviewed don't get a report of things to implement and we don't see any of the audit reports.

I get you may like how this unfolds, but denying it happens is weird.

That's certainly a material conflict.

If justice is important to a democracy, these scientists did the right thing. That takes real courage.

I see no difference in what’s happening in the American public service. The processes occurring now are not democratic in nature. Musk’s role is extremely unorthodox and only ostensibly voted for ‘by the people’.

In the weeks since Trump took office, I see no hard evidence to support any kind of deep state corruption. I see inefficiency, and yet, I see that in how DOGE dismantles things as well. I see it in every organization I work in, in every industry, in every home. It’s inevitable.

Civil servants ultimately work for the President. That's how it works. There have been many reductions in force prompted by Presidents over time (my own grandfather took one in the seventies). I appreciate there is some disagreement about whether Trump is tripping over any specific laws, but to the degree he's not (the courts will answer that), then he's well within his right to take the direct advice of his advisors, and to act within the scope of his authorities. The President also has the power to get access to even the most confidential information (how could he not?), and to share that with his advisors who have the requisite security clearances (which in many cases he can dictate).

I'm just stunned by all the hand wringing about access to "government data." They're government employees!

Sure, I agree he has no authority. He's only an advisor that seems to have any advice rubber-stamped. And he announces the changes personally before the executive action is announced. And opm employees get an email with basically the same wording as Twitter employees about a leave offer which legally cannot be offered to them.

We can pretend that "actually it's not Musk making those changes" but it's obvious he's telling others what to do. And not in an "advice" way. (He's obviously shielded from legal responsibility in this case.)

> The team aren't accessing data they don't have appropriate security clearances for.

You're arguing against a federal judge. Do you know something they don't? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjw4g2q62xqo

Even if they were allowed access, we know they disregard the access rules by posting NOFORN level data publicly https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-doge-posts-classifi...

> They don't have write access to data, only read access.

Are you arguing that both Ron Wyden is incorrect and the treasury secretary is lying about granting write access? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/02/elon-musk... And that the staff didn't remove the access later on with audit note of that change? https://archive.is/s5myG

> Musk is not authorised to review any agency or program where he has a material conflict.

Yet he's involved in the review of treasury which he has conflict with.

(from the score jumping up and down, I'm guessing people don't like seeing receipts...)

He's an advisor with no lawful power to fire, no lawful security clearance for the DOGE team*, no lawful authority to terminate programs.

De facto, anyone standing in his way gets pushed.

Which is why nuclear weapons teams were let go.

* unless President said so. I think the office of President can do that, but has Trump actually done so, or is this like those classified documents he refused to return?

That's not conducive to good government and is not the current precedent set by the Supreme Court, but it's been the conservative legal view since the 1980s and to be fair again, is again what the Constitution actually says. It will pretty much certainly be the prevailing view after this returns to the Supreme Court.

If that legal theory is true then Congress cannot create independent executive power and so it is not illegal for the President to fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason, including inspectors general, the chairman of the Fed, etc., regardless of any law to the contrary. Again, to be clear a third time, the effects of this will be bad, but the constitutional language isn't really ambiguous.

I don't like Musk. That's true. The reasoning is irrelevant.

Let's take someone I do like. Linus Torvalds. If Trump (or Harris or ...) appointed Linus, unilaterally, to do what Musk is doing, I'd still have a problem with it.

Now the two responses you might have are:

- I don't believe you.

- Linus wouldn't be bad either.

Both of which completely miss the point. Nobody should have singular, unilateral, unsupervised access to governmental systems like this.

It's objectively true no sane person would have cared about that issue.

I'm saying that focusing on an incorrect zero ($8b) distracts from the fact that $8m is easily spent wastefully by people (and systems) whose job it should be to be accurate.

Surely the people doing an audit should be just as accurate no? If they can't keep track of (several) zeros how can you trust them to accurately work through all the documentation involved in figuring out what is waste, what is fraud, and what is legitimate spending?

I'd actually support this effort if there was evidence any care was being taken. Instead I see wild statements like this, 100 million spent on condoms, people in the SSA database being too old with no discussion of if they are actually receiving payments or not (oh look they aren't!)

A real audit take time, discipline and attention to detail. I see none of that.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you refuse objectivity and spend all your time getting high on your own farts.

Yet teslas are still selling like hot cakes. If there were actual humans struggling we’d see an obvious decrease in sales.

Yes they should. These are not auditors though. They have an axe to grind with confirmation bias driving the zealotry.

The plus side is that they are publishing information in real time so we can all judge it, which one could argue is an improvement over not publishing.

A counter argument would be that this is just to create the illusion of transparency, but I suspect they are not playing 5D chess.

Beyond that, you're not going to make the Federal government efficient by cutting $8 million at a time. Musk's goal is $2 trillion in cuts. He said he thinks there's a good shot at achieving $1 trillion. The deficit in 2024 was $1.8 trillion. If your top item is $8 million, your task is utterly hopeless. Imagine being a family drowning in debt, with expenses exceeding income by $330,000/year, and a financial planner comes in and says that your top priority is not to buy that hot dog at the Costco food court this weekend. Not even that you should stop buying hot dogs weekly, that you should not buy one. They make you a list of things you should stop spending money on, and "One Costco hot dog combo planned to be purchased sometime in the coming year" is top of the list. Oh, and they also have it listed as saving you $1,500 because they didn't actually check the cost of a hot dog before they gave you the list.

No we can’t because they control the narrative. There should be more transparency in an objective manner without using the qualifiers like “wasteful” so that readers can decide for themselves. Or at the very least express both the arguments for and against, similar to how voter guides often come with a listing of arguments from both sides of the coin.

They're claiming to cut $16b and actually only cut like $6b and none of it was actually fraudulent it just literally matched grep trans or something.

I know this is how I and my definitely not a bot liberal friend want our country to be governed, fellow humans. beep boop bzzzzzzt

Meanwhile we are actually losing vision and dying of obesity.

There is plenty to do to get more healthy for real; but that's not where we are heading with these initiatives so far:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-01-27-we-found-the-2-trill...

There is no rhyme or reason, other than stripping off the parts.

I'll bet you. Once the stripping is complete, Musk and Trump have the brilliant idea of replacing the old, "bloated" government functions that were cut with private for profit contractors (that are obviously "more efficiently" run because they're for profit).

For example, when the NLRB was crippled by trump firing a member and losing quoroum, they forgot an important part of union history.

Prior to a proper process of grievances, the old answer was to basically wage war, guns and all, against the bosses and their families. The companies also hired Pinkerton's and every so often had the national guard also fight for the companies.

Union history is a bloody and murderous affair.

The NLRB was the compromise to "go to the bosses house and shoot it up to leave a message". With the NLRB effective destruction, the next logical devolution for worker rights is violence, and a lot of it.

As for me, I'm looking at what it would take to get out of the USA. Already interviewing with a few places in EU. The USA is basically an invaded country at this point. And I really dont want to be around when the violence picks up.

By denouncing this right of peaceably assembling and negotiating at a table of law, means that you're wanting the old solution of mass widespread violence against workers and management. Because this is exactly what happened before. But dont believe me - go read how unions were formed.

Most civilized countries have good worker protections. The USA is speedrunning the elimination of worker protections. And it doesn't take too much history knowledge to figure out how that works out.

I think the zoomer term is "fuck around and find out". We're in the 'fuck around' stage. I dont want to be here during the 'find out' stage.

The problem is that they benefit workers not through productivity increases, but via collective bargaining, i.e. at the expense of society. Consider that when unions go on strike, they reduce economic productivity and disrupt the economy. Likewise, when unions fight to prevent factories from closing to protect the jobs of workers, this causes an inefficient allocation of resources - so now companies must bid up the prices of raw materials to produce things that nobody wants just to keep some people employed. Unions oppose automation for similar reasons, which is why we have the most inefficient ports in the world (worse than Africa!).

So in sum, unions do literally nothing to make society better off. What benefits unionized workers receive come at cost of society (including other unionized workers!)

>If you could come up with an equitable and non exploitative system that works for everyone, suddenly you no longer have a need for unions.

Capitalism is working great, actually. It would work better without unions.

"Economics" in the sense of "any sort of understanding of how the world works", not so much.

Drain the rot from your brain. Ew.

Doubt anything short of a military coup that dismantles maga can stop this. Hopefully neither party survives and the US will have an actual democracy.

This is peak ostriching. They haven't turned up anything so far, they've just been making monumental messes and lying about progress.

You are either delusional or purposely misrepresenting facts

That's not what I'm seeing happen. I'm not seeing cost benefit analysis, I'm not seeing the use of existing experts.

What I am seeing... well perhaps we'd have different perspectives. To pick an example, look Musk saying that people who are over 200 years old are marked as alive.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891557463377490431

If you assume the worst of Elon Musk, you might think he's an idiot who doesn't understand how COBOL represents dates in the SSA system, nor how large government databases deal with missing data.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/new-social-security-chie...

I've worked, not for the SSA, but with public health data. Real people and historical records and old databases are messy as fuck.

The SSA neither throw out data, nor do they add data they haven't received, except when there is funding appropriated for it.

So these old people are simply actually people they never got death info on.

Could they just add a date? Well you have to consider the data integrity issues around date of death. If you pick a nonsensical date, can you assume that the SSA, department of commerce, and other orgs, not to mention the internal SSA progroms that rely on processing SSA data can handle it? Nope, an engineer can't assume that, there's an implicit API.

Oh yeah, agencies for state governments deal with that data too. https://www.ssa.gov/dataexchange/documents/sves_solq_manual....

But the fact is, this has been looked at. Per this 2023 audit the SSA estimated it would cost 5.5 to 9.7 million to mark people as deceased in the database when they don't have death date information. They didn't do that, probably because no money was appropriated for it.

https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf

Does that mean there's massive SSA fraud of dead people? Nope. back in 2015 they decided to automatically stop giving benefits to anyone over 115. The oldest living American is, in fact, Naomi Whitehead, who is 114.

In other word, Musk is acting like saving the government 5.5 million minimum is a "HUGE problem".

Now, I don't think Elon Musk is an idiot who doesn't understand COBOL or how messy data can be from real people. I also don't think he thinks that 200 year old benefits fraud is really an issue.

Which begs the question, why bring this up at all?

My interpretation is perhaps less charitable than yours, but I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

But they tend to say reality-based things like “no, your tax cuts won’t pay for themselves, in fact they’ll cost $1.2T over ten years” or “no, this war won’t pay for itself, lol, what the fuck even” or “no, you can’t make meaningful progress on cutting the deficit by attacking benefits fraud, because there’s not very much of that.”

All things Republicans would rather pretend aren’t true, and certainly don’t want to act on. So what do you do when you need to show progress but are constrained by operating based on fiction? You tout tiny wins and hope the numbers seem big to people who don’t know much; you make things up; and you cause harm or even incur long-term costs or cause waste and call that savings by doing bad accounting.

Where can I vote for these changes??

#1 status quo complacency which does things like congressional insider trading, identity politics, is completely ancient, and useless and ineffectual in identifying or implementing any actual changes that would improve people's lives.

#2 is a wing of the party ready to take a wrecking ball to things (bravo), but thinks taxes are the solution to everything.

We need more wrecking ball type options than just #2. We need a diversity of wrecking ball options that are energetic, smart, able to identify the places where the system (both private industry & governmental) isn't functioning properly and have the guts to actually push change through.

...yeah.

What is worrisome is the overreach in claiming that power for institutions that are not in the executive's purview with the argument "everything is in the executive's purview". No, it is not, and there are reasons why institutions are spread over the three basic powers of a state, one is called "checks & balances". Ah, well.

President of France is probably the most comparable, but in France you also have the prime minister, selected by the president but supported by the parliament.

In Sweden we have a separation of powers within the executive branch. Government agencies are independent of the cabinet.

DOGE’s audit wouldn’t be possible in Sweden, that would have required legislation or even constitutional changes.

Sweden has already an independent government agency that audits the rest of the government, but it has support in the constitution for that and it is technically administered by the parliament and not the cabinet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_National_Audit_Offic...

My personal opinion is that the US system of government is vastly inferior to Sweden’s.

The audit might be unconstitutional because it's coming from a department which is wielding a great deal of Article II power even though it's not led by a cabinet official who was confirmed by congress. In other words, unconstitutional for organizational reasons that are unlikely to land any one person in criminal trouble. I wouldn't want to argue that point either way, but I bet the question of DOGE's constitutionality will be considered by a federal court in the coming years.

The notion that the audit is illegal because of "technicalities" is a lot more sympathetic. The handling of secure information in the government in unorthodox ways can be deemed to violate the law, or not, in some surprising (or maybe even arbitrary) ways. The last really big time this played out politically in the US was probably Clinton's email server.

As I hinted at above, I don't think anyone here is really conversant with that area of the law. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain even if DOGE has broken the law, the current DoJ will not find that DOGE has done anything requiring legal action, for the obvious political reasons.

Apparently the president can appoint temporary advisors that does not need approval from congress. If Mr Musk qualifies for such appointment I guess is that something for the courts to decide. I guess that implies that the audit itself is time framed.

Oddly, they failed at the time, on direct questioning by the judge, to identify who the Administrator of US DOGE Service currently is.

The question here is just BS. The President created organizations to enact the executives will.

The executive is now saying they want the power to come back to them. Which it always was - they had to work through the structures they created.

Apparently they dont want the institutions.

> the Constitution also provides for subordinate officers to assist the President in his executive duties.

> Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.

And of course: > President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch. The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties.

> The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution …

The dismissal was eventually signed and filed by Emil Bove, a very recent Trump appointee, whose former job was as one of Trump's criminal defense lawyers.

The stink of corruption is heavy around Trump and Musk.

There are reasons behind some processes. Such as getting a security clearance to access sensitive data.

He can't lead a government department without being confirmed by congress. If he's just an advisor, he and his Musk Youth army can't actually give orders to government employees the way they've been doing, much less fire them.

If someone keeps lying every other breath for years and years, at some point you should stop taking their word at face value.

I'm really at a loss how anyone still believes or supports these people.

We don't have to respect anything, except the law. Trump and Musk's actions are neither legal, ethical nor sensible. If you're of that mind then removing Musk and Trump via any legal or political means is not only acceptable but, if you care about your country, an imperative.

The biggest problem America has is how readily it normalizes incompetence and evil, to its detriment.

Trump ordered Mike Pence to overturn that election. Is that respecting the result of an election? When Pence refused the order, Trump sent a mob to have the VPOTUS assassinated and to stop Congress from doing its job. Not at all respectful.

This is a political party that went apoplectic about Obama wearing a tan suit, while insisting he was illegitimate, i.e. the racist lie of birtherism.

And then they elected a pussy grabbing rapist, felon, and vile insurrectionist.

I think they're getting all the respect they deserve.

We should all have "root access" to everything but the most national-security sensitive topics.

DOGE has nothing to do with deficits, they're not even bothering to count it properly [1]. DOGE will remake the federal government for Musk's benefit. That's why he's using cannon-fodder DOGE bros instead of his best and brightest. That's why the collateral damage isn't of principal concern, and why they're moving quickly: they need to finish their work before checks and balances start swinging.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...

Musk will honestly probably be fine. These kids will get hammered, as they should, at the very least with a decade+ of litigation and possibly prosecution.

The only consequences that might last will hit Tesla in the form of tariffs and bans. But he seems to be fine raiding Tesla as a piggy bank to fund his ambitions on Mars and in politics.

Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every level of government, but if not through a drastic measure like this, what else can be done? Relying on the status quo, the courts, and current processes hasn’t yielded substantial results—if it had, corruption wouldn’t persist.

Still, I can appreciate the creativity here. Sometimes it takes an outsider to think differently.

That said, I’m not naive enough to assume this is done entirely in good faith. The prevailing opinion—both in this community and the media—seems largely negative; I’ve yet to see a single positive headline. Even so, I find it intriguing.

So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Inspector_General_(U...

They are independent of the things they review, they find inefficiency, overspending, fraud, and embezzlement. They make their reports public and work with transparency. There are also other similar departments like CIGIE. There have been very substantial results.

What DOGE is doing is not finding inefficiency. They are doing two basic things. 1) Completely eliminating programs they don't think the US should be spending money on. And 2) Reducing headcount. Both of these actions may reduce costs, but may end up costing the US more money in the long term.

Governments with central banks can mismanage their currency, but they can't run out of it.

Which is what happens when bond yields go so high that governments default. To my limited understanding, US Treasury bonds are used to determine the 'risk-free rate' of return because the US government reliably pays its bills.

Why not spend all 500 trillion today? What are we waiting for?

I am entirely certain you do not believe in your own position.

1) How long do you think it takes to perform a comprehensive audit of an agency in order to accurately determine waste, corruption and fraud. If you've ever audited a large corporation, you know what that takes -- it is not something you whip up in a week or two.

2) Who do you think is qualified to audit government entities? Some "young Turk" DOGE engineers? We're not talking about determining whether computer systems are well architected or should be refactored (though that also takes time to do correctly). We're talking about financial transactions and whether they were legitimate and legal (because if not, that would be "corruption" or "fraud").

Which Fortune500 company would hire a team of (relatively inexperienced) software engineers to audit its books?

I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.

As for the idea of nickle and dimming, everything adds up and they're no where near done yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we need a lot of it. Nearly every person that has run for president in modern years has stated they would go after excess spending and fraud, yet none follow through. This time someone is. If years of doing nothing gets us further down the debt rabbit hole, what harm is being done?

I don't see how this can be blamed on DOGE. If anything it shows that DOGE employees are closely monitored, and their access is minimized and audited.

https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-ligh...

Do you think Nixon did something wrong by creating this team?

If not, then we have an answer for why most people see this whole thing differently from you — most people see the Nixon presidency as clear overreach and abuse of power.

If so, what is the significant difference between Nixon's plumbers and the DOGE team, in your view?

This was campaigned on, The election was won. In this instance the outcome is what the majority elected. You don't have to like it, some may change their mind, but this was made clear as a goal from day 1.

I've also not been cagey in my support. I fully support what is going on. If you see overreach follow the processes in place and litigate. That's how the country works. There's two distinct issues people have here, the "WHO" and the "WHAT" no one questions the "WHY", because no one can stand here and say we don't need to have cuts across the board. Ignoring the "WHO", the "WHAT" so far has been pretty clear. It's things that socially are supported by one party and not the other. This is the outcome of an election and it's going to keep going until someone proves they are outside of their authorities and the courts agree.

It sucks to have a narrative perspective for years and then see everything supported under that narrative cut back. I get the emotions, but ultimately none of that matters if we can't afford to keep the proverbial lights on.

You can’t with a straight face call the party of small government pro authoritarian. Unless you’re purposely skewing reality.

And don't say Trump because he is currently asserting federal authority over NY for the laws they passed, and claiming he is a king. In his last term he spent more money than all other presidents combined. He argued in court he had the right as President to use the military to assassinate his political opponents. The Biden administration argued against that idea. I forget, is murdering your political opponents an expression of authoritarian or democratic values?

As far as Democrats, they didn't storm the Capitol and beat police when they lost this year, so that's a false equivalence. One side is happy to burn down the Capitol if they don't win, the other grumbles but accepts the results of the election. One response is authoritarian, the other is democratic.

Ronald Reagan (1981–1989): Fiscal Year 1981: Federal spending was approximately $678 billion. Fiscal Year 1989: Federal spending increased to about $1.14 trillion.

George H. W. Bush (1989–1993): Fiscal Year 1989: Inherited a federal budget of $1.14 trillion. Fiscal Year 1993: Federal spending rose to approximately $1.41 trillion.

George W. Bush (2001–2009): Fiscal Year 2001: Federal spending stood at about $1.86 trillion. Fiscal Year 2009: Federal spending increased significantly to approximately $3.52 trillion.

Donald Trump (2017–2021): Fiscal Year 2017: Federal spending was around $4.1 trillion. Fiscal Year 2021: Federal spending rose to about $6.8 trillion.

Can you explain how the Republican Party is the party of small government, if Republican Presidents in my lifetime have always increased federal spending?

The left had their turn to "fix things" they didn't. The right are trying now, and maybe their methods are wrong, but they're trying. What you're seeing is a power struggle playing out, the people who've been king of the hill are being throw to the side and don't like it.

It’s not their fucking luxury. It’s our fucking government being dismantled before our eyes by a handful of complete amateurs.

Mind you, my reply was to your statement that they “course corrected”. They didn’t course correct. They reaffirmed that that they’re happy for the insane and wildly destructive course they’re on to be piloted by open and avowed racists.

The average American is surprised to learn that Obamacare and the ACA are the same piece of legislation. It says nothing that they’re equally surprised by the existence of a 60+-year old government agency, and that those same uninformed bozos are outraged by aid programs of which their entire understanding stems from a single maliciously-crafted Fox News headline.

Do better.

There are numerous projects that should not be funded. There is bloat, waste, and fraud through out the government. If you don't see that or know that, you've clearly never worked within it.

Your projection against fox news viewers could be turned back on you and argued you're doing the same thing. The difference is, that those fox news viewers for better or worse, voted for this and they get what they voted for. You can be mad, you can be sad, you can vote, and you can try and bring it up with the courts, but bottom line is it's happening.

Do. Fucking. Better.

Come on man, are we really at the level of just letting that slide and pretending this is a legit operation? That Musk has only the best intentions, as his track record clearly shows right?

I can't believe what I'm seeing, the world has gone fully crazy.

They're firing people's, seeing the repercussion and the publishing a list of program names. Not evaluations, not analysis. Nothing substantial, just gotcha out of context strings.

Do you think the entirety of USAID was "fraud" and waste? What about the US park service?

I am not American and the only time I saw my country do this kind of action in this manner was during its military government.

> I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.

Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.

> This time someone is.

Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something about it? I see several people supporting these actions that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.

As for an actual audit, those have been done left and right. Audits only validate where the money is going not why.

Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good programs will likely be impacted, things will be course corrected and brought back where appropriate.

It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your way up.

Progressives weren't defending the status quo, they were trying to improve the lives of people who were at the bottom of social order for centuries.

I am sharing my personal opinion

The opposition will always employ fear tactics like socialist, marxist, fascist, science denier etc

Yes. Many big bipartisan bills, immigration crackdown that Trump can't even match now.

I'm not a leftist, and I mostly don't care about the groups, the right can have them. I care about things like medical research, nuclear energy and the food supply, which are all at risk because the regime's only tactic seems to be to unplug everything and see what breaks, and then decide if they even want it to work. They're not trying to run the country efficiently, they're trying to punish federal employees.

Most people are like me - they want real solutions for housing and health, not the impotence we get from the neoliberals or the kayfabe we get from Trumpism.

You are embracing those clear, simple answers. You are going to pay dearly for it.

Sorry you feel threatened by people not wanting to be pigeonholed into your tiny tidy restrictive categories.

    Sex: A person’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.

    Female: is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).

    Male: is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.

    Woman: an adult human female.

    Girl: a minor human female.

    Man: an adult human male.

    Boy: a minor human male.

    Mother: a female parent.

    Father: a male parent.

You can argue what you want, but they are enacting actions against what they have defined as truth. That's the by product of winning an election, you get to make the changes you ran on.

So maybe the President's special boy shouldn't be tweeting that 150 year olds are receiving Social Security payments because he doesn't understand cobol's datetime system. That only way I take these people seriously is the way I would take a toddler with a lit torch seriously.

If you said "He's making statements without any data to back up his claims" I'd respond, at this point you're correct, we do not have the data to verify. Collectively we could ask for more transparency. The result is we agree more data is needed.

> "Fraud has already been posted everywhere ($55b and counting)"

I'm looking for some evidence to support your $55 billion fraud claim, not just $55 billion in waste. If it's been "posted everywhere", please link to it!

"Just" lol. After a month.

Replace the fraud w/ waste if that makes you feel better about the audit.

I'm sure investigations will reveal fraud, it takes awhile to build a case.

But even if there is zero fraud (fat chance), gotta love the savings from waste cuts!

Please let me know when you find the evidence!

Also, I never said I dislike the audit. I do, however, dislike dishonest framing.

An actual cherry-picked example of DOGE's potential fraud finding is at the SSA where Musk showed his query of "DEAD" = "FALSE" (I am paraphrasing a bit) yielded a huge number of folks over ages 115. Context is what is scarce. Are they receiving payments, are there other reasons for why the query returned those results, what other context do I have to interpret these results? Again, I have no idea.

I think the safest way of couching what is going on, is a drastic curtailment of government programs and employees. Equivalents to this? Maybe Gorbachev. I am sure there are other historical parallels, but they are probably apples to peaches comparisons at a certain level.

And to your last question, I am not sure if anyone really knows the problem/s that are being addressed right now other than debt and the capability to pass a tax cut.

While no doubt that brazen bribery occurs at all levels and in a large range of dollar amounts, I do not think this is such a serious problem that it requires the nuclear option he is employing. There is a bribery-adjacent phenomenon that is far worse. I don't know what to call it. Favor-trading? But there is no quid pro quo sufficient to prosecute in most cases, and any attempt to do so would look like (and probably actually become) a witch hunt.

If a civil servant is just being extra cozy to some private entity knowing (but without anything that would amount to evidence) that they'll be able to sail into some nice lobbyist gig in 3 years, where is the bribe? It was never promised. It's not guaranteed (circumstances could well change before that becomes possible). How much is that shit costing us? And while I'm sure that some would call that bribery too, it's juvenile to do so and counter-productive.

It's up to the owners and their management how they run it, right? So it's more about discrimination than government-style corruption.

Beyond that, yes, large-scale government audits have been done before. In fact, we already have institutions designed to do exactly that. The GAO, the Office of the Inspector General, and even bipartisan commissions have uncovered fraud and inefficiencies without letting an extremely partisan private individual with massive conflicts of interest connected to his businesses arbitrarily rip apart government agencies.

Your claim that the continued existence of fraud means the system does not work is also specious, it's obviously not possible to eliminate all fraud, statements like that make me doubt that your comment is made in good faith.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-scores-win-suit-chall...

FTA: In her decision, Chutkan wrote that the states "legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight." But the judge said the states had not shown why they were entitled to an immediate restraining order.

That doesn't mean Elon was exonerated, it just means that an immediate restraining order won't be issued.

> So in good faith, i'd ask you, what is your solution to solve the fraud issue?

The question cannot be asked in good faith because it frames the discussion in a manner that suggests the concern here is one of fraud, however what we've witnessed by DOGE instead is arbitrary and partisan firings, as well as brazen falsehoods and mischaracterizations about the nature of what is being cut and the total numbers of what is being saved (by several orders of magnitude in some cases).

I don't feel the need to discuss an earnest plan about cutting fraud and waste because that is not what is on the table right now with DOGE. Further, I don't see any evidence presented to explain why the GAO and other bipartisan efforts to curtail fraud are regarded as ineffective. Simply stating "fraud still exists" is not an honest rebuttal, since fraud will always exist.

There is excess spending on what the admin sees as bullshit, they're going to remove it. Just as Biden pushed to forgive student loans and it played out in the courts, this will play out as well, though it seems to not be in favor of the "losing parties".

In other words, it is partisan but you, more or less, agree with it.

> The president isn't in alignment with Gender Ideology or "wokeness" as is often put. The large majority of these programs support those ideas

The VA is woke? The FAA is woke? Cancer research is woke? Nuclear weapons security is woke? Bird flu researchers are woke?

If it were just some DEI directors getting fired most people wouldn't care, but the haphazard blowing up of the government is not about "waste", it's an obvious political agenda.

When you say "large majority", do you have any evidence or data to point to that isn't just Elon going "Look at all this fraud I found!!!" and then none of it turns out to at all be fraud?

I would start by not firing people doing jobs I don't understand. They do that a lot, even for very, very important jobs.

So if I was in charge, I would start by making sure I did the math right and didn't blindly trust my database scraping scripts as they appear to be doing (and that's the most generous interpretation). I would also make sure that before recommending that I fire any group, I at least have a high level understanding of what that groups works on. So I don't, say, fire the people who oversee the nuclear arsenal, or a group of researchers working on the current bird flu outbreak (both of these have been done). Rehiring takes money and time because upon firing their contact information is apparently deleted, and you aren't going to get a 100% return rate.

I also have some experience working with giant bloated blobs of legacy code managing critical systems, where many variables are arcane acronyms because they were written in a time where compilers had character limits. Moving fast and breaking things in that environment is just a good way to break a lot of things and not even understand how you did it. Which is fine if it's twitter, and a little more important when you're managing aircraft, nuclear weapons, disease outbreaks, entitlement payments that people depend on, etc.

It's possible it will, but not without a lot of false positives and innocent bystanders.

At the scale of the federal government, there are plenty of things that appear to be fraud but actually have a reasonable justification.

In the Dunning-Kruger world we unfortunately seem to live in now, I don't think having every single yokel personally analyzing every line item on a budget as large as the federal government's, especially when those yokels don't really understand any of it, is the best way to go about this.

This admin isn't trustworthy either. They'll sit here an cry about 0.01% of the federal budget being "wasted" on a bunch of National Park probies, and meanwhile the self-appointed king is out golfing on the taxpayer dime.

They are 't reviewing and publishing shit, it yes there is historical moments when those types of things happened, usually after coup, dictatorship, or just any authoritarian government everyday dismantling everything, that's why everyone looking outside of USA with a bit of history knowledge see as a very bad precedent

For one, with responsibility and care for the public. Not with reckless abandon. Not with malice. Not with a child-like perversion towards breaking things because it’s fun.

Politics aside, this has been an extremely unsettling disruption in the faith we have in our institutions. Trust and stability are the backbones to societal and economic growth. The unseen costs Trump/Musk/doge have wrought are massive, are spread equally among all people (globally, in US, minus the wealthy class), and is hard to see on a spreadsheet

I think the negatives could have been easily minimized to more-reasonable-level without affecting the positive ones, if it wasn't headed by hothead Elon.

I would not do it differently. Well, probably it's going to be worse (but most measures). DM and EM are being too nice in my opinion.

Is doge actually doing this in a meaningful way? What is the website? Thus far I'm only aware of them celebrating partisan victories like chopping funding for trans theater etc.

These agencies all have Inspector Generals, who are outside of the agency and responsible for auditing their particular agency. And they do, there are reports on this sort of thing.

Most of the IGs, if not all, were fired by Trump first thing.

> corruption wouldn’t persist

We still haven't seen any evidence of corruption, by the way. Yeah, I'm sure there's some gov employees here and there doing fraudulent stuff, skimming off the top or getting gov contracts to their buddies. But there has been zero evidence of any widespread or systemic corruption in a single agency. Nothing.

The agency that did get axed the most -- USAID -- was because of "woke ideology" that they were supposedly pushing (though there wasn't any evidence of that being widespread either), not corruption/fraud (breaking the law).

It's like the WMD excuse to invade Iraq.

I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.

What the hell? Like this shit didn’t happen back home in INDIA, and that’s a nation which is comfortable with a stronger state.

It’s NOT OK, and you can very well acknowledge that fact because you can just imagine what eviscerating a legacy code base without a replacement looks like. It looks like the disaster you wish on your worst enemy while you quit the firm and look for a new job.

This isn’t beyond the project execution and technical ability of most people here to grasp.

ask yourself how many consecutive miracles would it take for this to go off without a hitch. Then ask yourself if you are that lucky.

Come now. Good faith is earned. They MAY be doing it correctly. But show the damn receipts. This is the basic ask when someone comes to any firm and promises to fix everything and then runs away once the project fails.

And if they ARENT showing the receipts - then make a noise about it.

>the last thing anyone at DOGE wants is for personal data to leak

Theres a great article which was shared here:

"Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/

The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing.

or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive"

> Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field.

and

> More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.

Why should a government agency run by a random unelected tech ceo even have the option to be blasé with personal data? Like I thought this website was pretty vehemently against things like the Patriot Act giving the NSA granular personal data and backdoors into communication, that at least had the guise of "national security" backstopping it. Giving a new department personal data access for no reason other than "government efficiency" (no actionable goals given by the department btw) is significantly more tenuous than "national security".

Their site was hacked? And given the overconfidence that some of the people involved seem to display, I think it's reasonable to ask for at least checking of what's happening... which isn't occurring.

Are you asking why it's any different a non-American billionaire who has multipole government contracts having access to your data any different than Joe Bob who was hired and vetted by those same people unlike the other guy?

The only thing that protects that data is professional ethics, and in extremely paranoid (i.e. airgapped) environments, metal detectors.

Sincerely, God Mode on x DBs, where x > 1.

Isn't this title clickbait?

There's an implication this is access to all government data - but the article doesn't explicitly state that but would lead you to believe that.

Given that I highly doubt all government data is in a single data store ... this is probably more like - GOGE has access to all GSA contracts (just one department) ... which is way less sensationalized (and appropriate for a government agency looking review contracts for efficiency)

Note: I'm not taking a political stance on this.

There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer.

This may turn into one of the most significant IT incidents in world history.

Perhaps it's cheaper to assume everything leaked or will leak soon.

Thinking of it objectively, almost nobody here can say they would stand for this at any company they worked at or ran. This is not an acceptable IT practice no matter which side of the fence you are currently sitting on - allowing an unvetted entity to modify your internal systems without audit or oversight is completely absurd.

This is what leaves me incredulous about so many people here defending this. I've been on this site daily for how many years I don't know but the one thing that has been consistent is the security idea that an outside entity gaining physical access to your server means that it is irreparably compromised, and that it should be treated as a liability and re-built from the ground up. But somehow it's fine if it's public data in a federal database?

Also, just because he was duly elected it does not give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants, especially when he's running afoul of the law and firing all of the inspectors general and independent monitors.

Electing a felon that notoriously managed to bankrupt several casinos and pretty much every business they've ever run is definitely not electing a smart man or even a vaguely competent businessman.

This has always been about racism and wanting to punish "other" people because you failed at life and want a handout.

GP: They absolutely will make something good out of it, but for their benefit not the average American.

At this point Musk is Wile E. Coyote. He's run out of road, so he's attempting to improvise an Acme Degovernmentizer to levitate.

He's not interested in "cutting waste" but in covering his ass so US Gov can't Enron his doughy face into prison, where it belongs.

But it's going to explode, like everything else he's ever been solely and personally in charge of.

Continuing: the solution is "people power". Everyone should join a union, for starters.

Kind of the key issue dontcha think? Maybe woulda been good to know that before burning down the government?

"ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that" is exactly what the government is for. We had a bunch of smart people thinking about a lot of our problems. They're fired now.

Tearing it down and replacing it with something leaner, faster, better (fingers crossed) is just nonsensical libertarianism all over again.

The kid wouldn’t be an unpaid intern at most companies. He wouldn’t pass the HR screen.

Regardless of politics, they don’t have the credentials.

It's amazing to me how every time DOGE is challenged its supporters come back with "I'm sure they're doing the right thing" despite all evidence to the contrary.

I'm starting to think this ends with DOGE cutting like a few hundred million dollars of random stuff, taking out even more debt to cut everyone $5000 checks, swamp every media channel with bogus "WE CUT FIFTY TRILLION DOLLARS TO GIVE BACK TO THE PEOPLE!!!" and you guys will just lap it up without question.

The debt will go up $3T, the savings will never come (again), poor people will lose healthcare, and when people wisen up, Republicans will revert to talking about how Democrats just want to “tax and spend”.

This has Musk's name stamped on it. No amount of lying and misdirection is going to change that.

- A multitude of errors in basic math in the claimed savings, like claiming 55 billion in savings when the "receipts" posted on their own site to back up those numbers did not add up to 55 billion even assuming they were accurate. Diving deeper, they clearly misunderstand how government contracts work, claiming they saved the full value of contracts they cut despite said contracts having been partially paid out. In one case they claimed 8 billion in savings for a contract that was worth 8 million, and then apparently tried to change the data to cover up their mistake when called out.

Here's a twitter thread with some more specific examples: https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1892432354016202831

- And here's all the contracts they claim to have canceled: https://doge.gov/savings No verifiable reasons have been given for why these specific contracts were chosen. What made these more wasteful than other contracts? How will canceling them improve efficiency? Nothing more than "Trust us bro", I doubt they know themselves; they certainly haven't had the time or the staff or the expertise to investigate anything with any detail.

- Elon's companies are recipients of massive government contracts and were under investigation by some of the agencies he is attempting to cut. An insane conflict of interest that has not been accounted for beyond "trust us". There is no politically independent oversight of any nature.

- The shutdown of USAID was done so incompetently that employees were left stranded overseas locked out of government networks without support.

- The wholesale gutting of the CFPB, a program which actually made more money for taxpayers than it cost, while claiming to care about financial efficiency.

- Avoidable accidental firings of critical personnel across government agencies. Re-hiring is a non-trivial cost on top the immediate disruption and you won't get a 100% return rate. Complete waste of time of and money while disrupting mission critical activities.

These are not the actions of serious people trying to curtail government waste, fraud and abuse. If they are, they're a sign of rank incompetence. These are the actions of people who, even if given the benefit of the doubt, are falsely convinced that the government does no good whatsoever and they can cut programs and grants with no consequences that matter except to their political enemies.

This isn't even getting into the legality of what they're doing, but DOGE supporters have made it quite clear at this point that they view the law as the enemy, or at the very least irrelevant.

Having been thoroughly investigated by the FBI to not be an enemy or a threat to the United States.

The fact that there isn't any transparency about their hiring process is a big flashing red light that there was no hiring process.

These people are against DEI "because we should only be hiring the best, not focusing on race/etc."

So be transparent and show the damn receipts to prove you hired the best. Who did they screen. How was it that Big Balls beat out a pool of qualified applicants.

I'll wager they can't show their receipts because they don't have them. These anti-DEI people really just want to lazily revert back to a good ol' boys network, hiring only from their in-group or just hiring the very first candidate they personally like, regardless of their actual qualifications. The hiring process went something like this: "this kid was recommended by some billionaire's brother-in-law, and he went to an elite school so obviously he's qualified. The End."

We criticize engineers who drop into a code base and try to make changes without understanding. You can be forgiven for doing it a few times, but after that you're doing it intentionally. And if they hired engineers that didn't know this, that's incompetence at both levels.

Not only is this different code bases and IT products, it's across organizations and done very rapidly.

I am also not convinced that they don't simply have malicious intent most of the time.

The "140 year old people in social security DB" post is just the latest example of bad-faith. Either there is actually >>$100B of social security fraud and that's the story or he wants to pretend like that's the case when he knows full well that presence in the DB does not indicate eligibility or payouts.

What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial? As a statistical anomaly who is often that corner case, I'm glad you're not the one making the policy. I wish Elon wasn't as well, and I'm sure there's going to be a giant mess at the end, but using government power (which Elon has, whether rightly or wrongly) to publish personal information about people (which they get by force giving their monopoly on government power) especially without trial or due diligence is very wrong IMHO.

Unless you don't actually care about the truth and want to send a convenient lie twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Then you should act like Elon is acting.

Elon usually has doesn't have any compunction about throwing innocent people under the bus if he thinks he gains something even if indirectly.

But that aside, you can show evidence of massive fraud, without revealing private information to general public. Can certainly reveal it to relevant authorities.

To steelman the argument though, it seems reasonable to audit these recipients so that we can get their true birthdate entered. The number of recipients who lack a valid birthdate because they found a way to fraudulently claim benefits is likely non-zero, but probably low. But in any event, cleaning up the data can’t be a bad thing.

  We acknowledge that almost none of the numberholders discussed in the 
  report currently receive SSA payments. However, SSA issued each of these 
  individuals a valid SSN and these SSNs could allow for a wide range of 
  potential abuse. 

  [...]

  We also note we initiated our 2015 review upon the receipt of information 
  that a man opened several bank accounts using SSNs belonging to 
  numberholders born in the 1800s who had no death information on the 
  Numident. In addition to being used to obtain employment or open bank 
  accounts, identity thieves can potentially use these SSNs to create 
  synthetic identifies, obtain credit, government benefits, or private 
  insurance.

Poor record keeping and bad policies about data validation tied to sending money to people if not today will eventually result in massive fraud.

Furthermore the notion you put forth is trash lazy thinking. Cost or no cost you do things the right way. But I don’t even buy you can calculate the cost of doing it wrong correctly to even have a sound conjecture that fixing it is more costly.

Cost was not the only factor. They seem to be trying to handle missing data the right way rather than use a kludge.

They did not want to add inaccurate death data to Numident records, for a variety of reasons, one being that it could cause release of information for living people when they're accidentally added to dead people records. The SSA also thought adding annotations would legally require a new regulation and would have impacts on other consumers of the data (ie. states, etc).

How to handle missing death data in this case does not appear to have a clear and simple solution. But it also does not appear to be evidence of poor record keeping for modern records or a major cause of concern for "eventual massive fraud".

“The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero

He was talking about the banking system. But he was also hinting at something bigger. There is a game theory problem often referred to as the meter maid problem. What is the optimal amount of meter maids in a city, where optimal can be defined in at least a few different ways, but roughly means the cost to revenue optimal. You end up with a couple of obvious extremes, no parking enforcement means no cost, but no revenue (plus parking may end up out of control if charging for parking is more than just revenue generating). The other extreme is thay you have enough people policing parking that no one ever fail to comply, this is the highest cost, but not the highest revenue, because you don’t get revenue from ticketing. So the answer is that the optimal number lies somewhere where the number of meter maids allows some percentage of people get away with failing to comply with parking rules (whether deliberate or accidental can further complicate the problem since both will happen).

So back to your steelman. Cleaning data is most certainly a desirable thing, but it is likely not the optimal thing, especially if the cost is high. And unauditable access to systems is a very high cost. Seems to me much of this auditing could be done in a much more acciuntable way.

Or, as is really common with the federal government, the agency is actually underfunded and hasn't been able to modernize because the Republicans in congress have been trying to starve the administrative capacity the classic, slow way until now.

Like with the IRS. I've made mistakes in filing, and gotten a notice from the IRS about it, but sometimes years later (!). In the meantime, if you "audited" the IRS records, you'd see that my records are out of compliance and could claim "See, there's fraud!". In reality, the IRS just has slow antiquated systems, and is barred from giving taxpayers direct access to their records. Which is by design from the rich and anti-government.

Imagine the brouhaha these same folks would be raising about "wasting your tax dollars hiring historians" if that other direction was in their self-interest.

Yet audits of individuals making < $25k per year is over 5.5 times higher than those in all other income brackets (1.27% vs 0.25%). So we chase down citizens when likely they probably don't even had a tax burden anyway. Maybe they misfiled some taxes and should be taxed a few hundred or even a thousand dollars more. But the manpower to chase down these little checks is a net negative on the department.

Sure, it is possible you find fraud in some of these low income cases. Someone claims to only make $25k but really they run a cash business and make $80k. But these are likely so limited thanks to other validations the IRS has access to, that the number of cases that reveal this is extremely tiny. So back to another argument on here, there an expectations that fraud is non-zero, and we accept that because getting fraud to zero is not worth the cost.

The “super old person” SSN numbers are in the DB mostly because non-citizens are using them to pay into the system. If you delete those numbers, the next payroll run will inject them right back in.

And you would remove important accounting metadata for each payment. Metadata that is consumed by the systems that prevent fraudulent payments from going out.

The only way to stop the fake/bad SSNs is to go into the field and address each instance with employers. This is time-consuming and expensive, which is why no one has done it much.

The no administrative benefit bit checks out with napkin math. Of the 18.9 million entries for people age 100 or older they are paying out benefits to 44,000. The total number of people in the US age 100 or older is around 90k to 100k, depending on time period for comparison.

There's an Inspector General audit report in a nearby comment for source.

That's like saying null columns in a particular database table must be filled in (or have the row entirely erased) because someone, somewhere, somehow, might infer the wrong thing about them, if they completely ignore all the other tables and business rules.

___

"Hello, I am Oldy McOldperson. Give me money."

"...Sorry sir, but that person would be almost 150 years old now, and that's well past our Impossibly Old threshold of 115 years. Furthermore, one our other databases says that person was reported as missing 90 years ago."

"But Oldy's--I mean, my precise confirmed date of death is still blank, therefore I'm alive, so give me money!"

"Sir, only a complete moron would believe that's how it works."

There is certainly a level of incompetence that requires active ignorance to one's naivety. I'd certainly consider a stubborn person who arrogantly ignores concerns of experts malicious. The active nature certainly matters.

I'd rather the government keep the money and use it to pay for the many services that it provides. Like ensuring that I have clean water, unadulterated food, clean air, a functional banking system, healthcare, safe vehicles, making sure that unemployed people don't starve, researching infectious disease remediation, performing scientific research, maintaining national parks, making sure that kids have a baseline education, doing humanitarian work around the globe, and a thousand other things I don't have the time to enumerate.

I'm sure I'm missing something, I'm no expert by a long shot, but government spending isn't a secret. Budgets get approved by congress and spent by the executive out in the open. Maybe someone interested in curtailing waste could start by auditing budgets? Making sure that the money allocated got spent where it should have and that the budgets weren't padded with unnecessary spending? But that takes a lot of time, effort, and energy, is kind of boring, and wouldn't generate dozens of headlines every day.

It's not an either/or situation. You can have responsible spending and also services to benefit everyone. Cutting me a check to give me back some of the money I've paid into the system doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you only got the money by destroying the CDC or whatever.

It would be kind of like the gas company tearing my house down because my windows aren't insulated and then giving me a couple hundred bucks because they technically eliminated the source of the wasted energy

Of course we don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water, but it's high time for a major course correction. In our government it is very hard to turn the ship around, and motivate people to serve.

I'd much prefer if we could magically motivate the 3/5 of govvies who are in cruise mode to try harder.

This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue.

It will create inefficiency. In the best case because it's not how the decades of built up institutional knowledge knows how to get stuff done. If the worst (and most probable) case, because what you're removing is actually needed... and we'll get an "oops sorry" later when the damage is done.

Sometimes there are no shortcuts: You have to know what you're doing. The "This is 'something', therefore we must do it" bit only gets you so far.

There isn’t enough money to be saved to give you back anything.

"That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention."

It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.

There should be little to doubt at this point, however. "Dismantling of the administrative state" was a mantra for many who are now in positions of power.

Then: "Prices will come down on day 1!" Now: "It's hard to get prices to come down once they're up".

At some point, there's not much reason to doubt someone's goals, regardless of what they say. You can look at past say/do combinations and make reasonable predictions.

Stop giving 'benefits' to people with years of documented track records under the aegis of 'doubt'.

I would implore you to develop the skill of judging one’s character overtime. Some folks have proven they don’t deserve the benefit.

Otherwise, I fear that your good nature will become a vulnerability instead of the strength that I can be.

What will you do when they break your benefits of the doubt. Wait for the next time for more of the same words?

Deciding at which point that gift was misplaced is a learned skill and one I cannot claim to have expertise in.

I may credulously assume that our poster friend is sincere. However, as I read replies that the poster has made to sincere responses, I observe:

  * a claim of mutual empathy via mutual distrust "I've criticized Musk!" ... "I've been contradicting DOGE on things since they became a thing"

  * a surrender of high-ground via tenuous appeal-to-authority "Bibi says he's not a nazi"

  * a veneer of emotional maturity over others: "we don't have to be so stressed about needing to trust DOGE's changes"

Buffeted yet calm, our poster friend claims the high-ground while having-and-eating cake.

Our poster is in an incredulous superposition of:

"So yeah, I don't trust him." and "I was shocked"

or

"I don't think they'd renege on it. I'm certainly not naive!"

I've wasted too much time discussing our mutual friend. I should not have done my drive-by, and I apologize to you both for the energy consumption of my this and my previous post. I shrink away cowardly from responding anymore.

I do not apologize for lacking credulity.

My interest in having any kind of "superposition" is simply to be impartial and accurate to the greatest degree possible as to get the greatest results possible. That is it. In any case, you got it wrong when you said:

> * a veneer of emotional maturity over others: "we don't have to be so stressed about needing to trust DOGE's changes"

There is nothing like that at all in my posts. What I was saying is that DOGE should operate with such a level of transparency and controls that would eliminate needing to simply trust DOGE's changes. Tthus the stress that goes along with that level of trust would fade away.

> * a surrender of high-ground via tenuous appeal-to-authority "Bibi says he's not a nazi"

That is not an appeal to authority. It is saying that the people who are most equipped to answer the question, because it is a matter of their own history and hide, are the ones saying that it warrants overlooking or good faith. By all means, continue that line of investigation on your own if you want.

> I should not have done my drive-by

I agree! Because it's poor faith and on top of that you're questioning my own consistency and integrity to boot, even though it's clear that in one case X has premium features warranting a credit card...whereas there's no reason at all to blast my bank account details on here...

Anyway, to summarize it all...CAT should audit DOGE and DOGE should be on a tighter leash or quarantined if they cannot be trusted to make changes.

Also, the capital gains taxes ARE low and the income taxes ARE high, so just paying down the debt isn't nearly so "even-handed" as it seems.

Personal income taxes are the larges revenue source for the U.S. Government, so it is the main way we have decided to tax ourselves. Arguably it is one of the most steerable, and we have long health that progressive taxation is for the common good (as much of a mockery as some high-income individuals have made of that).

So with that as the background, the U.S. ranks towards the bottom of the OCED countries in taxes vs. GDP. Yes we get less than the citizens of the countries paying the most, but not that much less.

https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-co...

Like.. we could just personally tax Elon a little bit more while changing nothing else and recover more money, most likely.

Elimination (or indefinite pause) of the CFPB that was a trade of 21 billion in consumer savings for like 750 million in expenses.

If they wanted to improve efficiency, there's an easy place to start: the IRS. And you wouldn't start by firing, you'd start hiring lots and lots of people.

Perhaps you should simply announce an investigation, then deliver findings of the investigation and recommendations.

They're starting with the end in mind - the dismantling of the administrative state - then making cuts. Then finding out what the impact might be, then continuing cuts.

There is no good faith here, and there is nothing in 'doubt' that someone should benefit from.

They didn't even try to formulate an understanding. All of their actions show willful and deliberate disregard for how the system works. That's not "incomplete understanding" or a good faith effort.

How many times do you need to be lied to by the exact same person before you realize that facts don't mean anything to them?

At this point, I'm surprised when I hear something from Musk that is verifiably true.

Wasn't that actually "if you agree to resign and leave next September we'll continue paying your salary until then and you wont have to RTO if you work remotely" rather that actually 8 months of severance?

> then recalibrate as more information becomes available.

So you are waiting until they will start actually lying when they have more information (instead of "just" being incompetent)?

Giving someone who has proven time and time again to be exceptionally dishonest (Trump but also arguably Musk) the benefit of the doubt seems unwise. Why would they suddenly stop lying?

The fact alone that they have promised a huge tax cut to high income earners will will inevitably outweigh any potential savings by DOGE means that any claims about reducing public debt are inherently dishonest.

It won't be, unemployment benefits are a fraction of what the severance benefits are. Its disingenuous to bundle them together due to that fact alone.

It's what authoritarian populists do when they get control of governments. They "hack" the economy with short-term stimulus and giveaways to keep the rubes content and happy while they dismantle civil society and the rule of law and entrench themselves.

Economic stagnation and decline usually follow within a couple year, but if they've entrenched themselves well enough, they don't have to care about public opinion very much and can shift to repression.

The core issue is the idea that they are incentivized to act in good faith.

Theres a great article which was shared here: "Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing. or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive" > Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field. and > More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.

Trump has no interest in increasing good faith. He doesn't need to. He can't run for office anymore, and even if he could, there's literally nothing he could do to lose voters. And he certainly doesn't give a shit about the future of the Republican party.

The people that voted for Trump fully support everything that's being done.

> increase good-faith in the masses big time

What incentive is there for anyone in the Trump administration to care about that? I don't see one.

> I don't think they'd renege on it.

Lower prices on day 1. Stopping Ukraine war on day 1.

Trump just says things in the moment to play for approval, then says something contradictory later if need be. There is no fallout, pushback or consequence from his supporters, and they have control of ... all branches of government right now.

Perhaps you could read their statements? DOGE communications are filled with ill intent, and their publicly stated goal, and the goal for which their supports seem to support them, is the destruction of the bureaucracy. That's ill intent.

That's before we look at their actions.

Whether it benefits from being in a single datalake idk. We really don't know how the operations are being done, we're mostly just reacting to news reports and outside guessing.

I'm assuming it will be basically how Palantir works in government health care and intelligence agencies where they aggregate multiple data sources from a bunch of old and new databases and have complex analytical tools on top.

Furthermore, another comment went in depth about how boosting the irs and following other agencies guidelines would have had a positive return, but none of this happened. On the contrary, we're seeing agencies such as the irs being infiltrated by this thing that resembles a metastasis

In fact, their operations -- in as little as they've been made public -- have been pretty opaque and sweeping (i.e. not detailed, as in transparency), and what little we have seen of their analysis techniques seem to be shallow and unconventional (i.e. not formal and measured, as in auditing).

I'd warn you not just take what public figures say at face value. Transparency and auditing are indeed virtues to strive for in governance (and we have many running systems for those already), and maybe they'll someday reveal that they're actually contributing to those virtues themselves. To date, they have not done so.

Doge is using a sledgehammer when they need to be using a scalpel. There's already been so much chaos with things like federal disbursements being frozen then unfrozen, firing and rehiring employees, moves being blocked by courts due to being unlawful, etc. You can't "move fast and break things" with a trillion dollar bureaucracy, people's lives are at stake and something might break catastrophically.

I also don't trust Musk with so much power because (1) he's an ideologue and (2) there are numerous conflicts of interest. I am skeptical he would be held accountable for any potential wrongdoing in this political environment.

We all should know the way this is being done is wrong and it will either have to be removed or redone, which is equivalently costly and might as well be the same thing at the end of the day.

I would expect the same practices from all of you in your own day to day work. We expect it from each other.

The lack of transparency is enough for anyone here to worry. It bucks every best practice and is a red flag in itself. We do not accept this in our work - it is what we all value and that has to be the north star.

This is why I do suspect their intent. They are not walking the talk.

Where are the forensic accountants? Who uses CompSci-track college kids to audit billion-dollar orgs?

Whereas the regulation in your context pertains to regulations that are codified as laws or rules to follow.

Audits measure compliance to an process or objective. They require that you have written down the process or objective, and retain sufficient information to measure whether you achieved it or not.

In this case, the DOGE boys do whatever Elon says. What is said isn’t recorded or written. People who attempt to do their duty who are seen as obstructive of the whim of the DOGE “agent” are fired.

But remember, Elon doesn’t follow the rule of law, and has no doubt engineered things in such a way that his little minions are accountable.

Also what's with the blue non-link links? Never seen that before on HN.

It really is. There have always been 'third rail' topics that get rapidly flagged despite community interest, but I've never seen so many.

> what's with the blue non-link links? Never seen that before on HN.

No idea; all the links seem to work for me anyway.

A quick search will show that it used to be fine to talk about Curtis Yarvin on here a decade ago but now that he's more relevant than ever it's suddenly taboo?

Did Curtis Yarvin and the ideas he espouses suddenly become less interesting or are a group of people working together to prevent critical discussion of his ideas?

That isn't even what your link is saying. To begin with, it's citing a Treasury Department document requested by the Biden administration to do an analysis comparing the proposed tax cuts with a contrived alternative.

If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts, not targeting any particular income group, everyone's taxes are reduced in proportion to how much they were paying to begin with. Obviously then the people who make more money and pay more taxes have them reduced by the given percentage and that is a larger absolute number.

The same thing happens even if you target only the brackets for people who make less money. Suppose you lower the rates by 2% for every bracket below $400,000. That's not even enough to be in the 1% (for which you'd need to make ~$800,000), much less the 0.1%, but what happens in that case? Well, everyone's taxes go down by 2% of their income up to $400,000. If you make $40,000, they go down by $800. If you make $400,000, they go down by $8000. If you make $4,000,000, they also go down by $8000, from your first $400,000 in income. The absolute amount of the reduction is still highest for people who make more money, simply because it's a percentage of higher number.

The analysis the Biden administration requested was to do the tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 and then raise the tax rates on people above $400,000 to make sure they didn't get any net reduction, and their contrived example would have people making $400,000 paying a higher tax rate than people making $500,000+. Basically the purpose of the analysis was to generate a large number to put in a headline rather than compare it to a real proposal to lower taxes in general. This is also why they announced the cumulative total over a decade rather than listing the annual number as you would when comparing it against an ordinary government budget. Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less than "trillions of dollars".

You can find any number of links talking about how unequal the tax cuts are. No one in the bottom 60% is going to be better off. The .1% are benefiting the most. That's an insane thing to do in an economy that's already breaking records for inequality.

> If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts

That's not what these are. The reaction of every billionaire to Trump's admin ought to tell you that on it's own.

> Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less than "trillions of dollars".

Trillions of dollars are trillions of dollars.

A million seconds = ~11.5 days A billion seconds = ~31.7 years A trillion seconds - 31,710 years.

We're not talking about play money, or monopoly money. Musk bought the election for a fraction of a billion dollars, ffs.

And again, America is already on record inequality, about the same or more as right before the French Revolution.

Money IS a zero sum game, and when too much of it is going to the 0.1% it inflicts massive harm to millions of people. If you want to learn more about this, and what's about to happen to the US economy, you can listen to one of the world's best traders talk about it here [0].

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCnImxVWbvc

All of those links are comparing dollars rather than percentages. It's obvious that a given percentage of $400,000 is more than the same percentage of $40,000.

> That's an insane thing to do in an economy that's already breaking records for inequality.

The cause of inequality isn't taxes, it's market consolidation. Rich people are rich because they own a large fraction of a megacorp. Under the existing system, higher corporate taxes, if anything, increase market consolidation because massive international corporations can use cross-border avoidance mechanisms whereas smaller purely domestic corporations can't, so they're effectively a tax on businesses too small to get out of them.

> That's not what these are.

It's essentially what they are, and the rate reduction in the lower brackets was slightly more. The highest bracket was lowered by 2.6% whereas the brackets from ~$12k to ~$100k were each lowered by 3%. And as a percentage of taxes paid, 39.6% was only 7% more than 37% at the top, whereas for the working poor 15% had been 25% more than the current 12%.

> Trillions of dollars are trillions of dollars.

You can turn any annual amount into trillions of dollars by multiplying it by an arbitrary number of years. And the only reason it can get so big so fast is that the US government spends a stupefying amount of money, so if you reduce it by even a small percentage it's a big number.

> Money IS a zero sum game

This is definitely false and is one of the major fallacies in the taxes vs. inequality problem.

In general people don't actually store wealth as money. Rich people store it as stocks and things. So if you tax them, you're not causing them to have less cash, or even causing them to sell their car or mansion. You're causing them to sell stocks.

If the person you transfer the money to is doing anything with it other than buying the same exact stocks, you're reconfiguring the economy, which is very much not zero sum and could be negative or positive sum depending on who gets it and what they do with it.

But Wall St. and Main St. are somewhat isolated pools of money. Making a transfer from one to the other has effects not entirely unlike printing new money and handing it out, because it gets spent very differently than it would have otherwise. And this is the nasty part: The sources of inequality are money sinks.

If you're paying high rents because there is a housing shortage as a result of captured zoning boards inhibiting new construction, and all the tenants suddenly have more money, the rent is going up. That's one of the reasons you can't solve it with taxes. You have to address the actual causes of inequality -- market consolidation and regulatory capture. Otherwise the incumbents just take the money right back out of your pocket.

In this case Musk reckons he can save $2tn which some (better informed) analysts are saying is bollocks.

In fact, it's cover to let him destroy/neuter agencies they don't like and get endless material to pressurise any opponents.

One positive though: if there is any alien tech, Musky will find it. You can bet that's high on his list, as improbable as it may be.

A lot of this depends on how you measure. For example, there are a lot of social assistance programs that provide in-kind benefits (e.g. you get subsidized housing) and those programs both require a bureaucracy to administer them and are less efficient than cash transfer payments, so they could be converted into refundable tax credits. Then the program costs somewhat less (you eliminate the administrative bureaucracy) and is more efficient and with better outcomes, but you can count the entire cost of the program as a reduction because it's now a tax credit (i.e. a tax cut) instead of a government budget item.

Do that with the entire social assistance system and you could get a sizable budget reduction before you even get into overpriced government contracts etc.

That tech has been handed over to the private sector as a precaution and also as a method of keeping the politicians' hands off it. Gives them cover to honestly say "I know nothing, I was briefed on nothing, we have nothing". Plausible deniability.

Elon Musk is also quite possibly the last person I'd ever want to touch world-changing technology. let alone be the sole arbiter of who gets to get near it.

If on DOGE, that is ill intent.

So yeah, I don't trust him. Ever since he reneged on interns, I noticed that...he has a tendency to think about things as if they're entirely meat and to worship the false god Scarcity. He's been gargling Ron Paul's gold coins so much that he completely fails to comprehend basic nation state financing and why deficits are manageable and our debt is also manageable given our $160T+ net worth and climbing...

You should read more about the things he says, does, and the way he treats people, especially from those who are close to him. The picture it paints is something I'd consider "cruel, bordering on inhuman" (and thats before the nazi salute.)

Alternatively, I have a lucrative investment opportunity I'd love to get you in on.

The ADL doesn’t want to get sued out of existence so… of course they going to say it wasn’t a Nazi salute.

This is the same chilling effect that Trump suing ABC and ABC settling so yeah nobody feels comfortable enough to speak truth to power because nobody has the money or the army to back it up

But those of us with ears to hear and eyes to see know what we saw. He might not want to exterminate Jews but he knows what MAGA likes and he like they loves the power a fascist dictator like Hitler wielded

Eh, they are going in like a bunch of bloodhounds smelling blood.

Musk killed USAID because he had a personal axe to grind.

What about security reasons now? The federal government includes the military. Giving DOGE “God mode” on the federal government is a national security risk right now.

Not to mention the open question of whether we will ever arrive at later.

As a concrete example, if you have read-only access to someone's email inbox that's enough to steal most of their accounts on other services since you can request a password reset link and then click on it.