Perhaps because disrupting things was the actual goal, rather than saving money. DOGE was highly effective in harming the entities meant to oversee Musk's companies, stealing information about union organizing and labor complaints, reducing the government's ability to collect taxes, and destroying its regulatory capacity.
I don't understand how people don't get this. There's a list of such agencies being gutted, but because it's compiled by democrats, the maggats just claim it's "biased".
There is a certain class of American that rides the knife edge between credulity and contempt in supporting and accepting the activities and intent of bad actors who pledge to get rid of the things they don't like and they people they detest. They're ever-ready to believe the barest of excuses and to hand-wave the worst excesses in this regard. Today's anti-woke are yesterday's McCarthyists, and history will note the echo.
The selfish kind. Unfortunately that seems to be the end goal of the American dream: "I got mine, fuck you." I can't tell you how many times I heard the "protect my family" argument from people I never thought would vote for that clown.
Because there wasn't that much to save, compared to the sheer size of the budget? Because it's much easier to destroy than to build, generally? Because it's always been more of an ideological exercise and a revenge vehicle than a real cost-saving venture?
Basically irrelevant to taxpayers. Their salaries or triple their salaries will add up to a difference of a couple dollars on the average tax bill. Doge didn't actually cut any of the big expenses. It was only intended to cut the effective things.
consulting company i work at hired a grip of these people for construction and public land projects. struggle with guilt that our success is the result of capitalizing on incompetence and lies
we certainly charge at least 3x cost for gov to employ them on top of whatever severance they might have received. the work still needs to be done and specific people know how to do it. sort of becoming a staffing agency because theres so much profit in it. makes my stomach sick writing this out
> We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.
It took me a while to learn this lesson about complex systems.
First week at a new job? It’s easy to identify all the ways things are done wrong. Six months later you begin to understand why they were done “wrong”.
Power respects power, ultimately. If you have wealth and power, those in power assume it was earned, because otherwise it's admitting that their own power could be through luck.
I will say that there are a few billionaires out there that do not get respect because everybody else assumes they "got lucky," but it's certainly not many billionaires. And those that people assume "got lucky" have mostly had terrible PR management on their way up, and not bothered to try to clean up their image. I have taken investment from one such billionaire that people would tell me "he got lucky," and though I don't think he got lucky to make his billions, he was also really terrible in his judgement and could not make the switch to investing even in similar industries successfully.
Why do you presume they can’t? Musk failed phenomenally to sell DOGE to the public, the President or the Congress. The expectation was that he’d have been better at that.
The way most of our governments are set up, the people in power typically arrive on the backs of the people with money. Elon Musk has a great deal of wealth, so everyone in power is going to listen to him.
Systematic of so much clown techbro thought; idiots only see the obvious nicks and problems -- and even occasional absurdity -- in large institutions, and think they can come in fix everything.
It's just an extension of good ol' Chesterton's fence.
The intent was never savings. Hackers and Accountants are completely different specialties. If you send in hackers, the intent is obviously to hack, not conduct forensic accounting. (The inverse would also be true of course)
I remember people citing the All-In podcast about "you can always cut 10% without affecting things negatively" or something silly like that. Or thinking that $1T/year of cuts is something that's possible without taking out social security and medicare and tons of defense spending.
I can not tell you how much respect I have lost for anybody involved with the All-In podcast. They sold out all credibility for political wins for wanna-be fascists.
These jokers all got lucky, obviously. They can not perform basic analysis of organizations, clearly. What a joke of a result!
PJ O'Rourke had a line in his book "Parliament of Whores" when he, as a layman, ham-fistedly cuts a bunch of stuff from the federal budget, and then just subtracts 10% from it at the end. Probably not the originator, but a quote I think about often.
"Add it all together, and I've cut $282.8 billion, leaving a federal
budget of $950.5 billion, to which I apply O'Rourke's Circumcision Precept: You can take 10 percent off the top of anything. This gives me another
$95 billion in cuts for a grand total of $337.8 billion in budget liposuction."
I have never worked for the government, but have worked in industry that deals with government employees. One thing that is very different in industry than in government budgets is that industry budgets do have that 10% of waste. But the budgets of all government orgs I have seen are incredibly lean, especially on the salary side. The government gets mission-driven folks that are willing to give up income in order to accomplish the things they want in the world. I saw this most clearly at CDC, all the scientists I interacted with could double their salary over night by going to private industry, but they stayed where they were because they were more interested in doing meaningful and impactful work. And when it came to the budgets that CDC used to accomplish scientific work, they were even more frugal and effective than the most penny-pinching academic labs I saw. Industry is awash in waste in comparison to how effective the dollars were that were spent at CDC.
And the CDC work is all pre-competitive work that boosts the efficacy of everything else in the economy. A tiny amount of money that results in so much more economic activity and savings than could be imagined in most private industry. And all the numbers for the public savings on, say, food safety are all clearly laid out in long reports. Reports that nobody at DOGE would ever read because they don't believe than anything good could be produced by people who accept lower salaries for higher impact.
I've seen private companies cutting down on logging expenses that would completely fund my friend's whole research department at Stockholm's University.
There's absurd waste in private companies which always makes me laugh when people say the government is inefficient.
If musk, Trump, or any of their allies had any interest in cutting spending, they wouldn't have passed budgets increasing the deficit every chance they've had.
Must got what he wanted: some minor disruption to agencies that regulate him personally, the fear of god put into thousands of federal employees, and ostensibly federal data to help him bust unions.
The side effect of disrupting thousands of normal hard working people's lives it's just icing on the cake for a miserable prick like him, even if he did have to hire most of them back.
But if they could destroy the regulatory state while ALSO doubling the deficit with federal spending on defense, space, and oil, i don't doubt for a second they would do so.
For a long time, the US government has spent $4 for every $3 it takes in. The debt is now large enough that financial markets are beginning to factor it in, raising borrowing costs and threatening a death spiral.
It’s likely tax increases will be needed besides cuts.
Addressing the problem is much better done sooner than later.
Perhaps, if reviewing and reducing spending is the goal, it should be an actual earnest effort. One that starts with collecting data, analyzing spending, and making recommendations instead of knee-jerk attempting to cancel things and lay off workers before understanding what they do.
There are also ways to reduce spending or improve spending efficiency without simply cutting spending on existing programs. A major point of spending is on health care, and I have seen analyses that the US spends much more per capita for health care with worse outcomes than some other western countries.
Careful, considered, data-driven healthcare reform that focuses on improved outcomes and reduced costs could make a much bigger impact than whatever it was that DOGE was trying to do.
no, it wasn't even a real effort. A REAL effort would have been to collect what all is being done, and seeing where things should be removed, processes changed, etc. This was a slash and burn.
One thing about being the world reserve currency is that there needs to be enough currency out in the world to circulate. When there's not enough currency of a certain type, people switch to other things. As the world has become much richer, it has a huge demand for US dollars, mostly in the form of T-bills. That's "free money" for the US government to take from others in the world.
The USD as reserve currency has enabled lots of extra spending and growth in the US, in a virtuous cycle of being the reserve currency because the US has the strongest and greatest economy, and then the reserve status increases our economic strength. Over the past 75 years the US spent a huge amount of effort to place itself into such a privileged and lucky position.
There will be some point where the currency might be devalued on the world stage because of spending. But what is happening right now because of Trump is a huge devaluing of the currency because of loss of trust in the US:
The true death spiral will happen when the rest of the world fully loses trust in the US. Right now we are too big to fail, but it doesn't have to be that way if we keep on pulling back from the rest of the world. The biggest losers from this pull back is the US itself, and the enormous economic privilege it gave us.
That big spike in deficit spending came from the initial Trump tax cuts in term one, and it looks like we'll be getting an even bigger spike in deficit spending now in term 2 with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest in the US, with zero relief for regular people (except those in real estate.... let me tell you about all the special tax benefits for real estate investors you see when you start doing your taxes as a sole proprietor, whew....)
Anyway, we will have to wait for another Democratic president before there's any addressing the deficit, if history is any guide. We only see deficit reduction under Democratic presidents and massive deficit increases under Republican presidents. But as I started, it remains to be seen if deficits are a bad thing inherently; it's more about the quantity of the deficit and whether we lose power or gain power economically from the deficit. Military spending is mostly "dead" money that does nothing to expand the economy, but research and funding the poor ends up increasing economic activity and growth.
Edit: and destroying small things like USAID greatly lessens trust in the US, and costs us far far more in dollars than we spend on it. And that's ignoring all the good for humanity that feeding starving people does.
It is 100% necessary, but without the backing of Congress to enforce the spending cuts and reductions in administrative bloat, the efforts will matter little in the grand scheme of things. Trump himself really didn't get behind the DOGE stuff the way he needed to to influence real lasting change.
It is not "100%" necessary. Worst case, we just print dollars to pay off the debt. The US Government is not a business in the sense dollars, it's a business in the sense of issuing equity out in the world. And just as a company can print more equity at any time, the US government prints equity, equivalently, by either printing dollars or by issuing Treasury Bills (debt), which are merely more complicated dollars. T-bills are more complicated dollars in two ways 1) they throw off a small amount of interest making them more attractive than regular dollars, 2) their value can be retroactively changed whenever the US changes interest rates. That second point, they dynamic revaluation of previously issued T-bills by interest rate changes, is what gives a lot more monetary control than if we just printed dollars.
But if we are in a situation where there's been a bond investor revolt, and there's nothing else to be done, we just give dollars to everyone as T-bills mature rather than issuing more debt, and we retract from the world stage, and become like other countries in the world.
We are a loooooong ways away from that position, but this presidential administration is behaving so erratically that the US dollar is closer to losing its privileged status than I ever thought possible. It's such irrational, damaging, and erratic behavior going on right now that everything could topple if it continues for much longer.
As long as we're in fiat, debt-based, race to the bottom, universally-enshittificate mode, that's a big ol' fart nothingburger. Call me when the Fed ends.
Doge dealt well-deserved shocks to the comfy bureaucracy and revealed corruption in the NGO's. The bureaucracy, the military/IC, the media, the banksters, the bought and paid for reps - it's all one of a piece. Doge helped a lot of people come to that conclusion, so that's helpful. I think Trump's people are all acting to mask whatever they're really doing anyhow. It's absurd WWF kayfabe nonstop and has been for years.
Why would you believe any numbers coming out of DOGE? The entire article is about their clear lies about their own numbers. Posting a number from the DOGE website and believing it is not rational behavior.
Further, there is nothing that will make the US poorer than ending the Fed or fiat money. The US has blown past all other economies in the world because of fiat money and its special status.
> revealed corruption in the NGO's.
No, it absolutely did not. DOGE revealed the corruption of DOGE. It's all political corruption, eliminating the regulators for Musk's empire, cover it up with lies about other things.
> Doge helped a lot of people come to that conclusion, so that's helpful.
The only thing that DOGE convinced people of is that Musk is a fraud. Nobody lost trust in the government because of anything Musk did, nobody thought "Oh I used to think that USAID was good, now I think it's bad!" Musk's popularity has hit rock-bottom, he has ruined some of the most valuable consumer brands in the world.
It's odd to see so many words that are directly contradicted by plain reality. One must be in a very very very deep information bubble to see your post
> It's all political corruption, eliminating the regulators for Musk's empire, cover it up with lies about other things.
I just don't see the world this way, and I don't think my being argumentative about it is healthy for either of us.
> deep information bubble
The same could be said for you. You've left very little room for nuance.
I am not a direct investor in any of his businesses, and my opinions are my own. Musk was and is the largest military contractor, bought and paid for. He's a genius marketer, autistic, and gets his hands dirty on projects technically. He's not an idiot and he is socially awkward. I believe whatever big projects Musk starts are at the urging and partly the direction of the US military.
It seems clear (to me) that Musk is crushing it in most of his businesses. It's clear (to me) that the on again, off again relationship he has with the Trump administration was just pro wrestling kayfabe. It is impossible for me to impute motives to Musk, he says pro-human things and he works (potentially) very anti-human projects. I am apprehensive about everything he has his paws in.
My worldview is to pursue truth above all else. If that results in arguments, fine, it's a price I'm willing to pay for honesty and reality!
If there was nuance, please provide it. I don't see any in your comment at all, but I dos see lots of generalizations and a very narrow take on the world and where wealth comes from.
I would love nothing more than to improve my world view through argumentation, but that requires providing facts rather than trafficking in the falsehoods of others, like those of DOGE.
I agree fully on the prosecutions. It's long since time for scoundrels to be frog marched off to jail.
I am of the opinion that there was corruption (waste and fraud and abuse) in pre-doge government. If you think everyone was clean and good, well ... I disagree.
IMO, post-doge things are "better" only because we saw some of the inside of the sausage factory. Nothing got materially any better.
We all knew this would fail. Any leader worth their salt would know massive reorganizations are failures even when they aren’t unconstitutional and worthy of the death penalty.
Perhaps because disrupting things was the actual goal, rather than saving money. DOGE was highly effective in harming the entities meant to oversee Musk's companies, stealing information about union organizing and labor complaints, reducing the government's ability to collect taxes, and destroying its regulatory capacity.
Or maybe the unelected moronic clown running it went in with a chainsaw like when he took over twitter.
Giving zero f*cks for the massive harm caused or the legality of it.
The purpose of a system is what it does
This is disturbing.
They actually had competence at something..?
This is the right take
I don't understand how people don't get this. There's a list of such agencies being gutted, but because it's compiled by democrats, the maggats just claim it's "biased".
There is a certain class of American that rides the knife edge between credulity and contempt in supporting and accepting the activities and intent of bad actors who pledge to get rid of the things they don't like and they people they detest. They're ever-ready to believe the barest of excuses and to hand-wave the worst excesses in this regard. Today's anti-woke are yesterday's McCarthyists, and history will note the echo.
> There is a certain class of American
The selfish kind. Unfortunately that seems to be the end goal of the American dream: "I got mine, fuck you." I can't tell you how many times I heard the "protect my family" argument from people I never thought would vote for that clown.
Because there wasn't that much to save, compared to the sheer size of the budget? Because it's much easier to destroy than to build, generally? Because it's always been more of an ideological exercise and a revenge vehicle than a real cost-saving venture?
Many of the people they cut were able to negotiate a full year severance, then were hired back as contractors effectively earning double pay.
They will also be paying somewhere around 50k a year soon for heath insurance because contractors don't get benefits. Fun!
Good for them.
Not so good for taxpayers.
Basically irrelevant to taxpayers. Their salaries or triple their salaries will add up to a difference of a couple dollars on the average tax bill. Doge didn't actually cut any of the big expenses. It was only intended to cut the effective things.
Which is also them
It was never about saving money for the tax payers! They voted for this.
consulting company i work at hired a grip of these people for construction and public land projects. struggle with guilt that our success is the result of capitalizing on incompetence and lies
we certainly charge at least 3x cost for gov to employ them on top of whatever severance they might have received. the work still needs to be done and specific people know how to do it. sort of becoming a staffing agency because theres so much profit in it. makes my stomach sick writing this out
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Because of the sheer idiocy of all involved.
There was no plan, no thought process behind any of the cuts.
Unless they thought appearing to be complete morons would distract from their actual mission of stealing all the Federal data they could.
The whole operation of black hats need to be investigated.
Immune systems of all interested triggered.
Because it was about Elon musk’s companies getting out of being investigated. His pay off for helping Trump.
Because what they wanted was to "disrupt" and "saving" wasn't what they wanted.
We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.
The problem is that Elon Musk has power (in the form of money) and was able to buy his way into the government.
Elon Musk is a smart salesman but that's about it. He has little deep knowledge in a lot of what he does.
> We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.
It took me a while to learn this lesson about complex systems.
First week at a new job? It’s easy to identify all the ways things are done wrong. Six months later you begin to understand why they were done “wrong”.
> Elon Musk is a smart salesman but that's about it.
How is it that most people here can see through it, but people in power can't?
Power respects power, ultimately. If you have wealth and power, those in power assume it was earned, because otherwise it's admitting that their own power could be through luck.
I will say that there are a few billionaires out there that do not get respect because everybody else assumes they "got lucky," but it's certainly not many billionaires. And those that people assume "got lucky" have mostly had terrible PR management on their way up, and not bothered to try to clean up their image. I have taken investment from one such billionaire that people would tell me "he got lucky," and though I don't think he got lucky to make his billions, he was also really terrible in his judgement and could not make the switch to investing even in similar industries successfully.
> but people in power can't?
Why do you presume they can’t? Musk failed phenomenally to sell DOGE to the public, the President or the Congress. The expectation was that he’d have been better at that.
"Why do companies hire consultancies?"
The way most of our governments are set up, the people in power typically arrive on the backs of the people with money. Elon Musk has a great deal of wealth, so everyone in power is going to listen to him.
Money and power are all that matters. Musk is a dipshit but he's a rich and powerful dipshit and that's all that matters
Systematic of so much clown techbro thought; idiots only see the obvious nicks and problems -- and even occasional absurdity -- in large institutions, and think they can come in fix everything.
It's just an extension of good ol' Chesterton's fence.
The intent was never savings. Hackers and Accountants are completely different specialties. If you send in hackers, the intent is obviously to hack, not conduct forensic accounting. (The inverse would also be true of course)
Seemed like it was more about an ideological purge and possibly exfiltrating data than saving money.
I predicted it would net cost money if you did a full accounting. May end up being true.
I remember people citing the All-In podcast about "you can always cut 10% without affecting things negatively" or something silly like that. Or thinking that $1T/year of cuts is something that's possible without taking out social security and medicare and tons of defense spending.
I can not tell you how much respect I have lost for anybody involved with the All-In podcast. They sold out all credibility for political wins for wanna-be fascists.
These jokers all got lucky, obviously. They can not perform basic analysis of organizations, clearly. What a joke of a result!
PJ O'Rourke had a line in his book "Parliament of Whores" when he, as a layman, ham-fistedly cuts a bunch of stuff from the federal budget, and then just subtracts 10% from it at the end. Probably not the originator, but a quote I think about often.
"Add it all together, and I've cut $282.8 billion, leaving a federal budget of $950.5 billion, to which I apply O'Rourke's Circumcision Precept: You can take 10 percent off the top of anything. This gives me another $95 billion in cuts for a grand total of $337.8 billion in budget liposuction."
Parliament of Whores, page 103.
I have never worked for the government, but have worked in industry that deals with government employees. One thing that is very different in industry than in government budgets is that industry budgets do have that 10% of waste. But the budgets of all government orgs I have seen are incredibly lean, especially on the salary side. The government gets mission-driven folks that are willing to give up income in order to accomplish the things they want in the world. I saw this most clearly at CDC, all the scientists I interacted with could double their salary over night by going to private industry, but they stayed where they were because they were more interested in doing meaningful and impactful work. And when it came to the budgets that CDC used to accomplish scientific work, they were even more frugal and effective than the most penny-pinching academic labs I saw. Industry is awash in waste in comparison to how effective the dollars were that were spent at CDC.
And the CDC work is all pre-competitive work that boosts the efficacy of everything else in the economy. A tiny amount of money that results in so much more economic activity and savings than could be imagined in most private industry. And all the numbers for the public savings on, say, food safety are all clearly laid out in long reports. Reports that nobody at DOGE would ever read because they don't believe than anything good could be produced by people who accept lower salaries for higher impact.
I've seen private companies cutting down on logging expenses that would completely fund my friend's whole research department at Stockholm's University.
There's absurd waste in private companies which always makes me laugh when people say the government is inefficient.
If musk, Trump, or any of their allies had any interest in cutting spending, they wouldn't have passed budgets increasing the deficit every chance they've had.
Must got what he wanted: some minor disruption to agencies that regulate him personally, the fear of god put into thousands of federal employees, and ostensibly federal data to help him bust unions.
The side effect of disrupting thousands of normal hard working people's lives it's just icing on the cake for a miserable prick like him, even if he did have to hire most of them back.
But if they could destroy the regulatory state while ALSO doubling the deficit with federal spending on defense, space, and oil, i don't doubt for a second they would do so.
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Succeed or fail, such an effort is necessary.
For a long time, the US government has spent $4 for every $3 it takes in. The debt is now large enough that financial markets are beginning to factor it in, raising borrowing costs and threatening a death spiral.
It’s likely tax increases will be needed besides cuts.
Addressing the problem is much better done sooner than later.
Perhaps, if reviewing and reducing spending is the goal, it should be an actual earnest effort. One that starts with collecting data, analyzing spending, and making recommendations instead of knee-jerk attempting to cancel things and lay off workers before understanding what they do.
There are also ways to reduce spending or improve spending efficiency without simply cutting spending on existing programs. A major point of spending is on health care, and I have seen analyses that the US spends much more per capita for health care with worse outcomes than some other western countries.
Careful, considered, data-driven healthcare reform that focuses on improved outcomes and reduced costs could make a much bigger impact than whatever it was that DOGE was trying to do.
> such an effort is necessary
DOGE gave cover for the GOP to blow out our deficit by trillions of dollars. The net effect of the whole system was to massively increase our debt.
no, it wasn't even a real effort. A REAL effort would have been to collect what all is being done, and seeing where things should be removed, processes changed, etc. This was a slash and burn.
Yes because government employees are famously good at judging how to spend taxpayer money.
The idea that they aren’t is nothing more than a right wing meme, presented without evidence while corporate wastefulness is ignored entirely.
If I recall, they went after GAO first and cut the people who audit federal agencies for waste and overspending.
One thing about being the world reserve currency is that there needs to be enough currency out in the world to circulate. When there's not enough currency of a certain type, people switch to other things. As the world has become much richer, it has a huge demand for US dollars, mostly in the form of T-bills. That's "free money" for the US government to take from others in the world.
The USD as reserve currency has enabled lots of extra spending and growth in the US, in a virtuous cycle of being the reserve currency because the US has the strongest and greatest economy, and then the reserve status increases our economic strength. Over the past 75 years the US spent a huge amount of effort to place itself into such a privileged and lucky position.
There will be some point where the currency might be devalued on the world stage because of spending. But what is happening right now because of Trump is a huge devaluing of the currency because of loss of trust in the US:
https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/us-dollar-de...
The true death spiral will happen when the rest of the world fully loses trust in the US. Right now we are too big to fail, but it doesn't have to be that way if we keep on pulling back from the rest of the world. The biggest losers from this pull back is the US itself, and the enormous economic privilege it gave us.
That big spike in deficit spending came from the initial Trump tax cuts in term one, and it looks like we'll be getting an even bigger spike in deficit spending now in term 2 with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest in the US, with zero relief for regular people (except those in real estate.... let me tell you about all the special tax benefits for real estate investors you see when you start doing your taxes as a sole proprietor, whew....)
Anyway, we will have to wait for another Democratic president before there's any addressing the deficit, if history is any guide. We only see deficit reduction under Democratic presidents and massive deficit increases under Republican presidents. But as I started, it remains to be seen if deficits are a bad thing inherently; it's more about the quantity of the deficit and whether we lose power or gain power economically from the deficit. Military spending is mostly "dead" money that does nothing to expand the economy, but research and funding the poor ends up increasing economic activity and growth.
Edit: and destroying small things like USAID greatly lessens trust in the US, and costs us far far more in dollars than we spend on it. And that's ignoring all the good for humanity that feeding starving people does.
It is 100% necessary, but without the backing of Congress to enforce the spending cuts and reductions in administrative bloat, the efforts will matter little in the grand scheme of things. Trump himself really didn't get behind the DOGE stuff the way he needed to to influence real lasting change.
It is not "100%" necessary. Worst case, we just print dollars to pay off the debt. The US Government is not a business in the sense dollars, it's a business in the sense of issuing equity out in the world. And just as a company can print more equity at any time, the US government prints equity, equivalently, by either printing dollars or by issuing Treasury Bills (debt), which are merely more complicated dollars. T-bills are more complicated dollars in two ways 1) they throw off a small amount of interest making them more attractive than regular dollars, 2) their value can be retroactively changed whenever the US changes interest rates. That second point, they dynamic revaluation of previously issued T-bills by interest rate changes, is what gives a lot more monetary control than if we just printed dollars.
But if we are in a situation where there's been a bond investor revolt, and there's nothing else to be done, we just give dollars to everyone as T-bills mature rather than issuing more debt, and we retract from the world stage, and become like other countries in the world.
We are a loooooong ways away from that position, but this presidential administration is behaving so erratically that the US dollar is closer to losing its privileged status than I ever thought possible. It's such irrational, damaging, and erratic behavior going on right now that everything could topple if it continues for much longer.
They claim $1329.19 saved per taxpayer. https://www.doge.gov/savings
As long as we're in fiat, debt-based, race to the bottom, universally-enshittificate mode, that's a big ol' fart nothingburger. Call me when the Fed ends.
Doge dealt well-deserved shocks to the comfy bureaucracy and revealed corruption in the NGO's. The bureaucracy, the military/IC, the media, the banksters, the bought and paid for reps - it's all one of a piece. Doge helped a lot of people come to that conclusion, so that's helpful. I think Trump's people are all acting to mask whatever they're really doing anyhow. It's absurd WWF kayfabe nonstop and has been for years.
Why would you believe any numbers coming out of DOGE? The entire article is about their clear lies about their own numbers. Posting a number from the DOGE website and believing it is not rational behavior.
Further, there is nothing that will make the US poorer than ending the Fed or fiat money. The US has blown past all other economies in the world because of fiat money and its special status.
> revealed corruption in the NGO's.
No, it absolutely did not. DOGE revealed the corruption of DOGE. It's all political corruption, eliminating the regulators for Musk's empire, cover it up with lies about other things.
> Doge helped a lot of people come to that conclusion, so that's helpful.
The only thing that DOGE convinced people of is that Musk is a fraud. Nobody lost trust in the government because of anything Musk did, nobody thought "Oh I used to think that USAID was good, now I think it's bad!" Musk's popularity has hit rock-bottom, he has ruined some of the most valuable consumer brands in the world.
It's odd to see so many words that are directly contradicted by plain reality. One must be in a very very very deep information bubble to see your post
> It's all political corruption, eliminating the regulators for Musk's empire, cover it up with lies about other things.
I just don't see the world this way, and I don't think my being argumentative about it is healthy for either of us.
> deep information bubble
The same could be said for you. You've left very little room for nuance.
I am not a direct investor in any of his businesses, and my opinions are my own. Musk was and is the largest military contractor, bought and paid for. He's a genius marketer, autistic, and gets his hands dirty on projects technically. He's not an idiot and he is socially awkward. I believe whatever big projects Musk starts are at the urging and partly the direction of the US military.
It seems clear (to me) that Musk is crushing it in most of his businesses. It's clear (to me) that the on again, off again relationship he has with the Trump administration was just pro wrestling kayfabe. It is impossible for me to impute motives to Musk, he says pro-human things and he works (potentially) very anti-human projects. I am apprehensive about everything he has his paws in.
My worldview is to pursue truth above all else. If that results in arguments, fine, it's a price I'm willing to pay for honesty and reality!
If there was nuance, please provide it. I don't see any in your comment at all, but I dos see lots of generalizations and a very narrow take on the world and where wealth comes from.
I would love nothing more than to improve my world view through argumentation, but that requires providing facts rather than trafficking in the falsehoods of others, like those of DOGE.
Where are the prosecutions? Where are the announced investigations into this corruption? They don't exist because the found 'fraud' doesn't exist.
I agree fully on the prosecutions. It's long since time for scoundrels to be frog marched off to jail.
I am of the opinion that there was corruption (waste and fraud and abuse) in pre-doge government. If you think everyone was clean and good, well ... I disagree.
IMO, post-doge things are "better" only because we saw some of the inside of the sausage factory. Nothing got materially any better.
The frog marching should start at the top.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil...
Pray tell, what corruption did DOGE reveal in the NGOs?
Here's one of the big public hearings in the aftermath. D's got their digs in if that helps encourage you to watch.
https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/public-funds-private-age...
We all knew this would fail. Any leader worth their salt would know massive reorganizations are failures even when they aren’t unconstitutional and worthy of the death penalty.
Because "government efficiency" is an oxymoron?