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US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

bbc.com

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Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#801

Post by throaway89 »

rayiner wrote: post #754
insane_dreamer wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While American, I've lived most of my life abroad, and share with your world view of the US. But after having spent years living in China, and being very familiar with the political situation there and their global ambitions, I'm afraid that the alternative to the US is even worse. Have a democratic system has somewhat of a moderating effect on the worst impulses of the US elite. China has no such guardrails.

What “democratic system?” American are checked by anti-democratic forces at every turn, from a judiciary that overturns duly enacted laws based on “emanations from penumbras” to an executive branch that is run by the same people regardless of who wins the election to institutions that are captured by people that abuse their positions to peddle their fringe ideologies. At least China’s unelected bureaucrats are compet…

The US is a paragon of (domestic) democracy and (domestic) human rights next to China, and I say that as a HARSH critic of the West.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#802

Post by danpalmer »

kamaal wrote: post #780
danpalmer wrote: post #622

Musk will see this as working as intended. There’s a segment in one of his many Starship interviews with Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, where he talks about simplifying the machine. He says you’ve got to cut and cut and cut some more until it’s radically simple. His rule of thumb is that if you’re not adding back 10% of the stuff you got rid of, you didn’t get rid of enough in the first place. This might be fine fo…

>>His rule of thumb is that if you’re not adding back 10% of the stuff you got rid of, you didn’t get rid of enough in the first place. Mao moved farm labor into factories using this logic, and then a apocalyptic famine followed. He tried to add back the people from factory back to the farms, and then discovered labor wasn't as elastic as he had thought. Be careful before making big scary changes, especially before t…

Exactly. Move fast and break things only works well when it doesn't matter if you break the thing. That's true at the beginning of a startup, or the early stages of a product. It's not true of things like the welfare state or medical care.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#803

Post by mindslight »

rayiner wrote: post #772
mindslight wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "disloyal" administrative state for trying to perform their boring congressionally-designated jobs in response to a pandemic, rather than falling in line with supporting the president's personal business interests by saying everything was fine and telling people to continue going to hotels? Uh-huh. The government is not a corporation and the president is not a unilateral dictator. You're right about other cultures…

> congressionally-designated jobs in response to a pandemic But sanctioning riots because their ideology tells them “racism is a public health problem?”

So is your argument about "disloyalty" or about poor official actions resulting from personal bias? Because the indications of each would seem to directly conflict.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#804

Post by insane_dreamer »

OK, not related to the DoE, but in the same vein:

has anyone noticed the irony of firing a large number of agents at the IRS, whose literal job it is to find fraud (by auding tax returns) while claiming that some DOGE engineers need access to all of our tax data in order to "root out fraud".

(Not) coincidentally, Trump has repeatedly criticized the IRS for being too aggressive with its tax audits and is trying to overturn recent efforts to make the IRS more effective ;)

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#805

Post by ICameToComment »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #538
enraged_camel wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit pales in comparison to the damage that has _already_ been done to the US federal government. The dust just hasn’t settled yet so most of it not visible right now.

Not sure about that. Brexit was irreversible. We can potentially begin to reverse this in 4 years time. But yes it could take decades.

You sure there will be a change allowing a reversal in four years? I doubt that this kind of steamrolling power will be contained by law or institutions. They came into office while blatantly disrespecting law and institutions in the first place. There will be not enough left to get back to last year's state of affairs. This is not going to be a short hiccup. This is changing the world and the path of the future and I hate to witness it happening.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#806

Post by machomaster »

drawkward wrote: post #503
machomaster wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same vain and USA's politics it driven by Unabomber. Dugin's influence on Putin/Russia is a total fake news. Aleksandr "Putin's favorite political/historical/cultural icon/advisor according to Western media" Dugin, has NEVER even met with Putin, as in not a single time. Don't spread fake news.

You do realize that ideas can be spread by other means than face to face conversation, right? Your argument is super goofy. David Foster Wallace is my favorite author, and I've never even met the guy!

And where is the evidence for such influence, on the only person that matters (Putin)? There is none.

Are you a powerful dictator? Is Wallace living under your rule? Is Wallace's writing influencing your policy? Is Wallace proclaiming everywhere that he is close to you, that he is your advisor (you can't advise without the connection), that you are worshiping him?

Don't be goofy and intentionally misunderstand my arguments.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#807

Post by Erem »

throaway89 wrote: post #799
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a lot of times over the past couple weeks where I've thought "OK, is the US toast now??", and the thing that finally did it for me was Trump's prominent post "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." Trump announced the rule of law is dead and there has been basically no pushback . I mean, sure, it may have just been bluster, but the Republicans used to put the idea of the Constitution on a…

The whole issue with the idea that "Trump is destroying democracy," isn't that what Trump is doing is NOT damaging to democracy, or corrupt, or what have you. It is. But Trump will be gone in 4 years. There will be a new Republican nominee. Whatever (and I mean, whatever) that nominee says will be the new party line. And the idea that the Republicans are willing to continue an actual overthrow of law and order in the…

> the idea that the Republicans are willing to continue an actual overthrow of law and order in the US is...close to a fantasy

No, imagining them continuing to do what they have been doing in the open is not fantasy.

Imagining them somehow "snapping back" to supporting constitutional order is much more fantastical. Especially in the face of the anti-judiciary salvos of JD Vance -- a leading candidate for the next nominee.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#808

Post by NikkiA »

totallynothoney wrote: post #621
trescenzi wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like the “fish don’t know they are in water” saying. As an American if you weren’t educated to be aware of Pax Americana you very much struggle to understand it. The current world order is far from perfect and many suffer as a result but the people in charge of this effort absolutely benefit from it far more than they seem to understand.

As a non-American cinemagoer, I wonder who will be the Chinese equivalent of Michael Bay.

Jackie Chan?

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#809

Post by bbor »

Spooky23 wrote: post #664
bbor wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…youre saying that life was good from 1870-1910? Reconstruction and the gilded age?? I mean, there was technological and medical improvements, sure, and continued urbanization. But that’s… those are some of our nations most shameful, inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal government as it exists now was just getting started after we realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local democ…

Many are very much in favor of cutting these services. As President Musk said, “that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity”

I am so confident that that is untrue, I don't even feel the need to link studies; questioning whether the American voting public supports SS and Medicare is like questioning if they oppose slavery or endorse family values & apple pie. An extraordinary claim in need of extraordinary evidence, for sure.

And, sadly, I won't take "Trump won the election and then put Elon in charge of cutting stuff, so clearly Americans support that decision" as evidence instead of direct, scientific surveys. For one thing, much less than half of the voting public voted affirmatively for Trump; for another, I hope we can all agree that people on all sides very often vote for reasons very loosely related to the candidate's actual positions on policy.

Apologies if I'm rude, really grateful that such convos are happening on HN in the first place! Separate from "would we be better off with or without the New Deal welfare state and/or the entire federal government", I think this is an appropriate place to agree on empirical facts about the current situation. And "that idea is extremely unpopular" is such a fact, IMHO.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#810

Post by emchammer »

rayiner wrote: post #754
insane_dreamer wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While American, I've lived most of my life abroad, and share with your world view of the US. But after having spent years living in China, and being very familiar with the political situation there and their global ambitions, I'm afraid that the alternative to the US is even worse. Have a democratic system has somewhat of a moderating effect on the worst impulses of the US elite. China has no such guardrails.

What “democratic system?” American are checked by anti-democratic forces at every turn, from a judiciary that overturns duly enacted laws based on “emanations from penumbras” to an executive branch that is run by the same people regardless of who wins the election to institutions that are captured by people that abuse their positions to peddle their fringe ideologies. At least China’s unelected bureaucrats are compet…

Would this be the same China where jaywalkers' portaits are automatically shamed on electronic billboards and fined social credits? Is that a worthwhile trade for universal single-payer healthcare?
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