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Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

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Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#421

Post by dralley »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #164
xivzgrev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they’re similar at all. Musk is cutting things left and right, creating large messes and giving himself hand outs. He is making things less efficient (vs more). Cuban sees the mess, and an opportunity to make some money while also providing value to the government. I guess they’re similar in taking advantage of the moment and looking to make money, but I don’t see how Cuban’s proposal is destructive, un…

An opportunity to provide value to the government by replacing their own service with an inevitably more expensive one which can be recontracted out to whoever suits the interests of a specific administration with minimal pushback. It's not Musk's ideal scenario I'm sure, but he'd be an awful lot more happy with it as the new status quo than what was there before.

Cuban isn't in charge here, in fact he literally campaigned for Harris.

Trump and Musk destroyed USDS and 18F. At worst Cuban is trying to salvage something from the wreckage.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#422

Post by conception »

ljm wrote: post #376
plagiarist wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory of capitalism leading to efficient markets makes a great deal of assumptions that are simply not true in the real world. Even for elastic goods that nobody needs to participate in at all, let alone an inelastic good like healthcare where people will pay pretty much anything for themselves or their family members to continue living.

The concept of perfect competition describes what capitalism in its purest, most ideal form should be, and everything after that is a description of what happens when humans get involved.

That’s free markets.

Capitalism just means private people control the capital, rather than the state. Beyond that and you’re in different forms of capitalism. There’s no requirement of competition.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#423

Post by ceejayoz »

dcow wrote: post #256
nosianu wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals. What a wild take! Only some of sooo many reports all over the media 5-6 days ago that you somehow missed: "Key US agencies tell staff not to answer Musk email on what they did last week" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo "Elon Musk’s Federal Worker Emails: Agency Leaders Can Decide If Employees Must Reply, White House Says" ht…

Sounds like insubordination.

A judge has ruled otherwise.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/27/opm-firing-probatio...

> A judge ruled Thursday that the Office of Personnel Management — the central human resources office for the federal government — broke the law when it ordered other federal agencies to terminate thousands of “probationary” employees.

> “OPM does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees within another agency,” the judge said.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#424

Post by EasyMark »

modeless wrote: post #68
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #19

Privatization is what a lot of people believe is the answer, thinking that there is so much waste and useless things the Federal government does. These people must have never worked at a large corporation. I have a relative in the federal government and we would share stories because the dysfunctions are basically the same. Any large organization of humans working uses a pyramid organization since like the middle age…

The difference is private companies that accumulate too much waste and useless things can fail and be replaced. The exception is companies propped up by government regulation. The problem with modern big companies is that the exception has become the rule. Regulation is so pervasive it's become a "what the hell is water" situation. People don't even recognize that the dysfunctional companies are protected from failur…

The same thing can be done in bureaucracies with auditing/inspector offices. What DOGE should be rather than Leon and Dump's revenge tour. I don't think people are against an auditing office with a lot of power; they're against a billionaire who will only be enriched by it and a President who is using it to get revenge on imagined slights. That's why we're angry at the clown circus that is DOGE. Also they are doing things that only Congress has the power to do. The only thing saving them is the blitzkrieg tactics. All of it will be undone by courts, but a lot of damage will be have been done already by Big Bawlz

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#425

Post by shinryuu »

LocalH wrote: post #222
hk1337 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I key difference and qualifier is a private company CAN have the same amount of waste but not necessarily and like modeless mentioned, private companies can fail and we can move the services to another. It's guaranteed the federal government is going to have waste and be very difficult to change because you cannot let it fail.

Why do we need to stamp out "waste"? A bit of waste is inevitable, and is human . Excessive waste, sure. But I think Musk's DOGE goal is to stamp out all waste to 0, and that is simply impossible. For example, the only way not to waste any food whatsoever, is not to eat. It is inevitable there will be some small portion of food wasted. Chasing perfect efficiency is a fool's errand, since humans are not perfect.

Also where some people see waste, other see redundancy and slack in the system, which creates resilience.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#426

Post by nerdponx »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #281
alephnerd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no denying that there's bloat, but going in with a chainsaw is not a conducive or efficient way to reduce bloat in an organization. If you want to use the "private sector lense" (which I do not think is valid for a govenenent bureaucracy), there's a reason why when I've participated in M&A events, we would spend a year doing due diligence and understanding the organizational and financial structure before ini…

Reduction of scope is required to decrease cost and waste. Unfortunately, reducing scope and regulation is a legislative problem, not an executive one. Having an government organization underfunded and understaffed to fulfill its mission leads to more waste, both on the public and private side. For example, the solution isnt to fire employees, it is to simplify the tax code.

> Reduction of scope is required to decrease cost and waste

That doesn't follow at all. Plenty of cost and waste arises while carrying out things that are solidly within the scope of a federal government in the eyes of belief system but anarchism and other forms of extreme heterodoxy. To "provide for the common defense" is literally in the Constitution, yet the DoD is a black hole of funding, while soldiers eat powdered eggs on base.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#427

Post by nerdponx »

mharrig1 wrote: post #3

So Mark Cuban wants to lean into exactly what DOGE is pushing by putting himself in the middle of the Governmental to Private shift? That doesn't surprise me and gives more evidence that Cuban is not dissimilar to Musk, just that he has much better PR.

Conspiracy theory: this is a coordinated publicity stunt intended to demonstrate that wealthy individuals are better positioned to serve the American people by way of altruism (funded by business profit) than a large federal government (funded by taxes). No need to starve the beast: just slaughter it and present your alternative as an improvement.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#428

Post by zeagle »

kierangill wrote: post #229

I’ve seen a lot of positivity surrounding login.gov on HackerNews. I’ve never used the service and am unfamiliar with the quality of its implementation. Many commenters here point to login.gov as an example of the US government shipping good software. [1] 1. From the end-user’s perspective, what makes this a quality service? Is it simply better than other government alternatives, or does it compete with equivalent mo…

As a Canadian end user with a nexus card, it just works, and it works with less errors and issues than my revenue canada login which has poor UI and steers me towards sign in partners with by making that the natural login with dark patterns. Come to think of it, I'm surprised the nexus program hasn't been cancelled yet.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#429

Post by 1659447091 »

dingnuts wrote: post #18
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I had to step back from this when I saw it* on my feed because I was so disenchanted by how positive the replies were. Not even sure what their issues with DOGE are if they think this is a great solution... ETA: I'm on about his bluesky post, to be clear, not this thread

the issue with Elon Musk's involvement is the WAY these things are being done. If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars -- can be funded through voluntary charity of a billionaire that is 100% a good thing and we can still be upset about the rule of law and all that while being happy that billionaires are stepping up to pay their fair share when the tax money is taken away. HOWEVER Congress has N…

> If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars

Guess it's a good thing we are in the US and there is no tax dollar coercion considering you are free to renounce citizenship and leave the country.

Thus never having to pay the fees required to participate/live in US society. Kinda like if you don't want to pay monthly gym fees, don't--but don't expect to use their gym equipment whenever suits you.

Re: Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees

#430

Post by hollerith »

1659447091 wrote: post #429
dingnuts wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the issue with Elon Musk's involvement is the WAY these things are being done. If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars -- can be funded through voluntary charity of a billionaire that is 100% a good thing and we can still be upset about the rule of law and all that while being happy that billionaires are stepping up to pay their fair share when the tax money is taken away. HOWEVER Congress has N…

> If what was previously funded through coercion -- tax dollars Guess it's a good thing we are in the US and there is no tax dollar coercion considering you are free to renounce citizenship and leave the country. Thus never having to pay the fees required to participate/live in US society. Kinda like if you don't want to pay monthly gym fees, don't--but don't expect to use their gym equipment whenever suits you.

Uh, Washington thinks you still have to pay income tax after renouncing your citizenship and bullies governments into collecting it or even extradicting you if you do not pay.
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