What evidence do people have that anything damaging is happening? Because these people are assumed to be conservative and not progressive? How is this any different than an internal audit whose work would be kept confidential? Or even a third party vendor who presumably would be covered by confidentiality agreements? The allegations in these comments are completely without evidence and are outright politically biased. All the wired article can say is there are a handful of young presumably conservative engineers doing their job. That about sums up the scandal.
The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#662Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
> Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? With the debt ceiling ever increasing, approaching a trillion dollars in interest per year, nearing $6k/year per working individual, I would say the correct time to put any effort, whatsoever, into reducing spending, was 20 years ago. I think the fundamental problem is we lack adversarial systems within the government: it doesn't like to hurt it…
The US government owes about 2.5 years of median salary to every American, but when an average work lifecycle is 40 years, it isn't too bad.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#663If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective. Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset vo…
They don't want to be effective. They want to punish and humiliate anyone they don't like, and lie about it because claiming "efficiency" is an easy way to get overly credulous American moderates to look the other way.
Musk also thinks it's funny we all have to say "DOGE" because he is a petty moron with the sense of humor of a spoiled 13 year old gamer from the year 2000.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#664If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective. Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset vo…
Trump and almost all of Congress doesn't want to touch the entitlements. Bush Jr tried to reform social security and got trounced for it. Since then no one seriously tries to change it because the other side will beat you over the head with it, even if they are half truths. Voters like to vote themselves "free" things, even if it might destroy the economy.
This has been a known pattern for millennia. Democracy as it is today in the US suffers from the same ills Plato discussed. It is not a good nor sustainable system. It is not the system the founding fathers put in place.
That none of our rulers question it nor propose alternatives is very telling about who runs our society and what their end goals are. The only reason society appears to be improving (and it is on the whole) is due to our incredible technological advancement. That being said, we should be living in a utopia by now if our rulers weren’t parasites.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#665Curious european here. Do you think we will see some serious mass protests in big USA cities if this continues? By this I mean "reckless" action by Musk and Trump.
Yes. Lots of people in this thread have collective amnesia about 2020.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#666What evidence do people have that anything damaging is happening? Because these people are assumed to be conservative and not progressive? How is this any different than an internal audit whose work would be kept confidential? Or even a third party vendor who presumably would be covered by confidentiality agreements? The allegations in these comments are completely without evidence and are outright politically biased…
Nothing about this is normal, goes by standard practices or procedures, and is being led by a capricious man-child who wasn't elected to office, nor confirmed by the senate, with extraordinarily dubious intentions and conflicts of interest, who has brought in a bunch of near-children to clandestinely infiltrate huge swaths of our government, none of which have the appropriate security clearances, training, ... to engage in any of these activities.
Have they explained what they are doing? No. If you ask them, would they tell you? Is there any kind of oversight available? No. As a matter of fact, prior to these actions, Trump dismissed the inspectors general responsible for this oversight, in violation of the law which was passed to prevent him from doing just that, again.
Who in their right mind would assume that everything "above board"?
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#667Are such drastic action appropriate given the current state of the US? The US probably hasn't been this economically dominant since after WWII. Feels like Chesterton fences are getting torn up left and right by people too young and incurious to possibly understand why those fences might be there.
The U.S. national debt has been increasing at a rate of approximately $1 trillion every 100 days, which equates to about 10 days to add $100 billion. When do we hit the panic button?
Trump's first term is responsible for a large portion of the debt. He should take accountability and step down.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#668Posts here talk about the legality of this, that what they are doing is not allowed, or that they're doing something naively without understanding. But what is the goal? Maybe what goal to they think they're pursuing? This is hacker news, so I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric.
The goal is to overturn the system. The electorate is mad that nothing changes regardless of Dem or GOP in charge. They want something to change. They've wanted it for so long that at this point they're okay seeing it burn down.
Until there social security checks stop coming. Then they will riot.
Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#669Re: The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
#670If DOGE wants to be effective it really should be going after the big ticket items like medicare or defense, some estimates have medicare at 40% fraud and waste and the DoD can't even pass an audit so no one really knows what %. And that is just getting what we've paid for, not even evaluating if what we've paid for is effective. Of course to do that would require actual coalition building, hard choices that upset vo…
They don't want to be effective. They want to punish and humiliate anyone they don't like, and lie about it because claiming "efficiency" is an easy way to get overly credulous American moderates to look the other way.
You don’t really need to get moderates to look the other way when you have crazed MAGA going at this gung-ho.