I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not trolling.
3 reasons come to mind -
1. There's a vast and profound difference between trimming inefficiencies ("cutting waste") and eliminating a valuable function. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
2. This entire administration and its main actors have given zero reason to assume what they are doing is in good faith. In fact, quite the opposite they have incited worry that their motivations are not honest.
3. They are doing this with a shocking lack of oversight, on their own terms.
1. The baby in this analogy is not defined objectively. Both sides disagree about which is the baby and which is the bathwater. I can see both sides here. For example, I think USAID is doing a lot of good work all over the world, but I also don't think a country with such a huge deficit should be spending money like that. Put on your own oxygen mask before you help those around you.
2. What type of actions/behaviors would lead you to believe this is being done in good faith? That seems somewhat hard to demonstrate when the other side almost universally assumes you never do anything in good faith.
3. This is the fault of our government structure since always and specifically our Congress over the last many decades, which has ceded more and more of the actual running of government to unelected civil servants who technically fall under the umbrella of the Executive branch. If we wanted to prevent things like this from being done, we should've had an actual civil service ala the UK, which although it falls under their Executive branch, it is not unilaterally controlled by it (e.g. the Civil Service Commission prevents the PM from just doing whatever he wants).
As a secondary note, oversight in this case seems somewhat hard to achieve, given the usual problem of "who watches the watchers?" If you think some part of the government is performing poorly and that this is systemic, who do you trust to provide oversight that might not themselves have ulterior motives to preserve the status quo?
Everyone deserves a presumption of good faith by default. But Trump has a long history of dishonesty and lawbreaking, culminating in an attempted self-coup in 2020. At some point, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith anymore. And he passed that point a long, long time ago.
This is perhaps the single biggest disconnect I see between Democrats and Republicans right now. To Democrats, Trump is "the man who attempted a self-coup", and everything he does is viewed in that light. Whereas Republicans seem to think that it just wasn't a big deal that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
How exactly did Trump attempt a self-coup? What words or actions (on his part) would you say qualify for that description?
There were all sorts of bad intentions on the part of the rioters/coupers/whatever on January 6th, but AFAIK there is very little evidence to indicate these people were directed by Trump in any meaningful way.
The fundamental definition of a democracy is that the candidate who wins the election, gets to be in power. Trump lost the 2020 election, yet tried to stay in power. If Trump had succeeded at staying in power despite losing the election, then America would no longer have met the definition of a democracy. Therefore, Trump tried to overturn American democracy.
Do you recognize that Trump tried to overturn American democracy? If not: which part of the above paragraph do you disagree with?
In your comment, you seem to be referring to the fact that Trump didn't specifically call for violence on Jan 6. Depending on how exactly you define "coup", you could argue that Trump didn't personally attempt a coup, but rather Trump's supporters attempted a coup on his behalf while he cheered them on (and subsequently pardoned them). I think this is an irrelevant technicality; if Trump's supporters' attempted coup had succeeded, then American democracy would be just as dead as if Trump personally committed the coup.
Returning to the original topic: If you consider Trump's entire conduct around the 2020 election (as well as his extensive history of other dishonesty and lawbreaking) do you genuinely believe that the Democrats still owe Trump a presumption of good faith?
Because that is just a lie to give cover for their real goals. Which is nothing less than a coup. Musk and DOGE have absolutely no legal authority to stop payments authorized by congers and no right to access the federal payment system.
Because the current cuts are basically like that joke about the person looking for their lost keys where the light is better instead of where they lost the keys.
Because it’s happening outside of any legal oversight. One man is telling you “this is waste and fraud and abuse”, and you’re just supposed to believe it.
There also happens to be lots of historical precedent to this kind of aggressive purges that aim to install loyalists in government, not least Germany in 1933.
(Nazis also made a big deal out of stopping “sexual deviants.” Studies of trans people and their history were the first books they burned. And now the CDC in USA is removing that information everywhere they can. A strange coincidence.)
IMO, I think they're really just glorified accountants being propped up by a mix of Musk's ego and the left's seething hatred of Musk and anything trump touches:
Because of Trump's history. Trump attempted a self-coup in 2020 by trying to overturn the election. This attempt was foiled because many judges, public officials, etc. resisted it, including many Republicans. Now Trump is back in power, and Democrats are very nervous about anything that looks like "Trump packing the government with loyalists" or "Trump trying to gain more power over public officials", because that would make it easier for Trump to attempt a future self-coup.
In short: Framing this as "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" is assuming good faith, but given Trump's history, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith.
(Secondary to that: There's a difference between "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" versus "shutting down entire functions of government without a replacement". Look at Musk trying to shut down USAID, for example. If Musk wanted to "cut waste, fraud, and abuse", that would mean "reforming USAID to achieve the same outcomes while spending less money". Instead, Musk is proposing to eliminate USAID entirely. Even if not for the self-coup angle, that's clearly not just "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse". Foreign aid is established by Congress, and only Congress has the constitutional authority to eliminate that aid.)
If you believe there's any cutting of waste, you are woefully misinformed. This is a kleptocracy. The only thing that will happen here is mass looting of the public purse by the wealthiest and the elimination of any form of progressive taxation or wealth redistribution to those that aren't wealthy.
If we were really concerned about waste, the first and only place to look is the $1T+ we spend every year on the military.
>It has been a kleptocracy for decades and they've been looting all of us with no resistence or accountability.
And yet, the average life in US has gotten better and better under democratic rule, while worse under republican rule.
The problem with people like you is that you are so bought into a narrative of "government bad" that any sort of mistake or non optimal that the government does is seen by you as corruption.
And then when you have people like Musk, Rogan, Hotz, and other prophet wannabes that amplify that messaging, it solidifies that in your mind and you move become farther and farther from reality, until you are solidly in MAGA land where anything liberal is automatically bad, even if your side does the exact same thing.
There is a shitload of government bloat and inefficiencies, but these things need to be trimmed over a long period of time, not by Musk style of breaking things without giving a fuck about what he breaks.
Most of the metrics that matter have gotten worse over the past decades. Under both democrats and republicans. Education, physical and mental health, cost of living, healthcare costs, wealth inequality, I could go on.
When you see all the smart people like Musk, Hotz, Andreesen, Ackman, getting involved and changing their minds, maybe it's time to reconsider your priors too.
People like Musk and Andreesen getting involved are evidence that you're about to see fraud and overreach that concentrates power and resources in their hands instead of the American people. No matter what you think about Trump and whether he's actually trying to do a good thing, those people getting on board are not a good sign.
Here is the problem. You say this like a blanket statement, because you are parroting a popular talking point, but they and you intentionally leave it blank, because to any counter anyone gives you, you always have a response.
For example, I can say "well more people are graduating with college degrees", to which you reply "well the degrees are worthless because the actual education sucks". To which I reply "well data clearly shows that people with college degrees are making more money", to which you reply "yea because its all just fake money, those people aren't doing anything of value". To which I reply "yes but money still gets exchanged and economy keeps on going", to which you reply "but this is not sustainable"
So now, its not that education has gotten worse, you just think that the education is not correct for what you personally believe the future society is going to require. But you will never state that point directly, because you know it makes you sound dumb since you have no way to actually prove what the future society will look like.
>cost of living
Not really. Houses have gotten more expensive, but thats a supply issue. Average cost of living for the same standard has gotten better - you get more things for about the same money after inflation. Lots of places you don't need a car to get around, remote work is a lot more prevalent, saving people a shitload of money, and access to goods and services has gotten better (Amazon delivers to a lot of places now, giving access to acceptable quality goods for low prices)
>wealth inequality
So perhaps the worlds richest man shouldn't have power over the Treasury?
The other stuff has issues, but again just because there are issues doesn't mean you have to tear it up.
This is what I mean, you just repeat these talking points without any sort of critical thinking. Its the actual "woke" mind virus that they ironically talk about - it feels good to believe that you know what the actual problem is and think that you know the right solution. But you don't and neither to they.
And penultimatey, here is the real thing to think about. Both Musk and Hotz are very much into AI/ML. They both understand that their brains are neural networks. They both understand that to have a well performing neural network, you need to have good training, and specifically discriminant training on errors. A neural network cannot point out its own errors. It needs an external source. With humans, this looks like conversation with opposing side where you end up either reinforcing what you know because you are able to show factually that the other person is wrong, or changing your own beliefs and views when the opposite happen.
But none of them do that. They just like to preach ideology without ever anyone challenging it. They get facts wrong all the time, make baseless predictions that hardly ever come true, and never own their mistakes. Badly trained neural networks.
So in the end, they are literally the exact thing they hate - "woke" people preaching in their echochambers. Horseshoe effect. Or alternatively, they are just straight up lying to the likes of you and anyone gullible enough, so that they can gain more power. Those are the only 2 possibilities.
Generally, you are correct about one thing, and that is mental health. The reason why these people have power is because when people, especially young men, don't have anything in their life to feel proud about, they tend to attach themselves to an ideology. It works like this for both left and right, again horseshoe effect. The physiological reason why some college students feel the need to go to Pro Palestine protests and justify Hamas acts of terror, ignoring the reality of the situation, is the same reason why you feel the need to call Musk smart. So this is definitely problem that needs to get solved. But not by anyone on either end of the horseshoe.
Go read Trump's sovereign wealth fund announcement from today. The plan is to take all the money from the tariffs (and other unspecified actions he takes, probably including the stuff DOGE does), and then spend it on private investments of his choosing.
So, he's already announced you'll be paying 10-25% tax on all imported goods moving forward, and that he'll personally loot the revenue.
They just create new accounts. But anyone who thinks sending home all the inspector generals is cutting waste/fraud is clearly arguing in bad faith. Unfortunately, I've argued this was the case well before the election -- but everyone told me, "only Trump seems to know this is about grocery prices!".
If Biden created a branch of the government called "Freedom, Liberty, and Happiness for America" with enormous funding and filled it with his allies and sycophants with dubious goals, would you say its critics are "against freedom and liberty"? Why would anyone be opposed unless you hate America?
You're reading an extremely biased view on the topic by perusing the comments. Anything that seems slightly non-left-leaning is generally dismissed and ridiculed here.
Decrying a billionaire unelected oligarch putting his greasy fingers on the inner workings of the entire American society is not necessarily liberal. Constitutional conservatives certainly can’t be happy about that either.
Elon Musk is the quintessential Silicon Valley poster child, who believes his limited domain knowledge is enough to fix all of the world’s issues. No surprise that people that think alike and populate this corner of the internet, wouldn’t see no problem there.
What he’s doing is technically and formally a coup. See how Mussolini took power in Italy.
If you can’t see that, you’re definitively part of the problem.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with (such as for ideological battle). We ban such accounts and it will eventually get your main account banned as well.
The person I responded to asked an honest question, and I gave an honest answer. You can feed the entirety of HN into AI, and it would come to the same conclusion: it's not a secret.
But I wasn't aware that ideological battle is off-limits. It seems like every thread is full of it, so it's hard to walk away with that impression.
The reason for a separate account is because proposing ideas that don't fit the HN mainstream can result in people trying to track you down and "punish" you for having opposing views. Unfortunate, but that's where the world is.
That's far from the case, and keeping things that way is critical to HN's future. Even now, when we're at a high-water mark because of the political externalities, it's far from the case.
It may be the case that people inclined to do ideological battle on the internet are more likely to overestimate its presence, simply because that's where their attention goes.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Please don't post like this, and please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN. The guidelines say:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Since this topic is as divisive as it gets, so your comments on it should be at maximum thoughtfulness and substantiveness right now.
Dang, as much as I understand the point, what's happening is of the utmost gravity, and ignoring it or pretending that these people can be reasoned with is like giving them a free pass. Especially explicitly trolls account like the one attacking me first. I am certainly passionate about the topic maybe more than average, and I'm certainly more political than what this community might want to be. Nonetheless, my name is out there and I'm not really hiding or trolling, just expressing strong views.
I understand and respect that HN thinks this won't lead to good conversations, and will just try to avoid the blood-boiling responses.
