791–800 of 1001 posts
Posts 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.
Sadly, based on the comments here and elsewhere, HN is not immune to political rhetoric.
One thing CCP did masterfully is sending very young grads, who are newly admitted to the party, to go to different local communities and evaluate the outcome government project like poverty reduction there (because obviously Xi don’t trust local officials and party members). These young people have a lot of energy to make some impact, also too young to lie or corrupt. The result turned out to be actually effective. T…
Good. These guys, in addition to obviously being very smart, are young and don't have a lot of baggage in government or industry. I think they are perfect for tracing down what has been going on and finding where inefficiencies and/or corruption has been occurring. Anyone who has issue with rooting out corruption and inefficiency isn't in the right. Of course what is done with what they find will not be in their hand…
So far, that's not what DOGE appears to be doing. Rather than "rooting out corruption and inefficiency", DOGE appears to be cutting government spending that Musk disagrees with.
And that's unconstitutional! The executive branch doesn't have the constitutional authority to unilaterally cut a program established by Congress. If Congress allocated $X billion for foreign aid to country Y, the executive branch must disburse that aid.
Furthermore, speaking of corruption: Both Trump and Musk have major conflicts of interest. Prior to Trump, presidents were expected to divest business interests and put their assets in a blind trust; but Trump refused to do so. And SpaceX is a major federal contractor; if the head of a major federal contractor is _also_ the biggest supporter of the incoming president, the conflict of interest is obvious.
As you said, anyone who has an issue with rooting out corruption isn't in the right. So surely you're alarmed by these conflicts of interest, right? Don't you agree that Musk should either fully divest from SpaceX, or step away from politics?
I'm concerned about my US bonds, as the way to access them is through a government website. Are these people going to block my access and steal my money? >> “We really have very little eyes on what's going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what's happening because these aren't really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the ri…
Investors' faith in US bond and equity markets is, unironically, the most powerful immediate-term check on the current administration. The longer-term check is the midterm elections in 2026. If they really screw things up, as they appear to be doing, that's their deadline for fixing them.
Posts 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.
They're literally accelerationists: They're shooting the gov in the face, so they can enact more emergency powers, and then it's one step to pure, raw fascism. > I'm asking for an answer without political rhetoric You need to start caring about politics real fast if you care at all.
From here in Canada it looks a lot like the fascist takeovers I’ve read about since middle school. The playbook is bizarrely tight to Hitler, Mussolini, hints of Stalin, etc. I didn’t expect this in my lifetime. Or rather, I imaged I’d see it coming sooner.
There are people in this thread claiming that Wired "doxxed" these engineers working for Musk dismantling things they don't understand; however didn't Musk publicly mock individual federal employees on his twitter account, drawing the eyes of millions onto random government functionaries for no other reason than to capriciously taunt them about being fired? I hope people condemning the former also condemn the latter.
Sometimes HN really confuses me.
One thing CCP did masterfully is sending very young grads, who are newly admitted to the party, to go to different local communities and evaluate the outcome government project like poverty reduction there (because obviously Xi don’t trust local officials and party members). These young people have a lot of energy to make some impact, also too young to lie or corrupt. The result turned out to be actually effective. T…
> too young to lie or corrupt In my experience, youth has little to do with honesty or corruptibility.
Are 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.
You said it! How long before a lot of small countries start leaving treaties like the Berne Convention? Why would they bother protecting other big countries copyrights when they're no longer getting support through programs like USAID and there's no longer any guarantee that the US will protect them in any way. The first country to pull out has the chance to make like $100 billion by creating the next TikTok competit…
Average age of engineers and scientists in the Manhattan Project was 25. Our current gerontocracy is ahistorical. Perhaps one reason startups work so well is they are one of the few places that still let young people exert agency. The average age of NASA’s mission control team during the Apollo era was 27— they put humans on the moon. Young people bring a force of curiosity and creativity that can disrupt the status…