Federal spending to try to get rid of federal spending! You have to spend more to spend less!
But it did achieve the actual goal, which is that it created a cloud of confusion where a lot of money was moved around and huge amounts wound up in the private pockets of oligarchs, who laughed while hundreds of thousands died.
Do more less with more more! Efficiency doubled!
Dude in 3 of the 70 EOs trump did in his first week he gave at least 1.5 billion to AI companies, about $500 million to each.
Spending always goes up under republican administration. They only know how to steal. Their supporters are too ignorant to notice.
Is our government efficient yet?
It’ll get there, we just have to spend more money first. Any day now!
Bernie Madoff was ahead of his time
Yes, but the money was probably directed at the “right” type of people.
That’s the point. With the government nearly broke, he’s trying to pump out the last of the wealth there by gutting the welfare state to free up more capital for his investments. He’s since been mostly sidelined, but the corporatist wing of the MAGA coalition are working on a lot of the same plays behind the scenes still.
Even if DOGE was acting in good faith (it wasn’t), saving money for any organisation is really hard.
It’s obvious hubris to assume that everyone who has been managing something before you is an idiot and that you have some special ability to solve problems (which you don’t understand) more cost effectively.
Regardless, in government you can easily “down size” by firing everyone and hiring consultants which are way more expensive. Usually it’s politicians wives who own the shares in the companies providing the consultants.
Sadly, while you can cancel Tariffs, take Trump’s name off things, and even demolish the Epstein Ballroom, the damage that DOGE did probably can’t be reversed in any sensible timeframe.
The type of hubris that creates these situations seems far from obvious to the average person. Voters, over and over, want an outsider because the experienced and knowledgeable people are viewed as idiots. The wave of states enacting term limits in the 90s died down as data came out showing they were unhelpful at best and in some circumstances harmful to the legislative process, but legislative term limits still poll as hugely popular with American voters.
At my work, we have a seemingly endless parade of managers and consultants who have to repeatedly learn why our long-running challenges are, well, challenging. And they all try to apply the same 6sigma, lean, etc. tools. And the corporate managers keep buying new people selling them the same solutions that have repeatedly been shown to not fit our specific problems.
It’s something inherent to human psychology. My hope for mitigating it with elections is ranked choice voting. Not the part at the polling station specifically, but the way it changes the incentives for campaign strategies I believe promotes more thoughtful and less fear- and hate- driven messaging. If we aren’t constantly being bombarded with ads about how awful our politicians are, I think we would be less eager to jump on the anti-intellectual bandwagons.
At my work, we have a seemingly endless parade of managers and consultants who have to repeatedly learn why our long-running challenges are, well, challenging. And they all try to apply the same 6sigma, lean, etc. tools. And the corporate managers keep buying new people selling them the same solutions that have repeatedly been shown to not fit our specific problems.
That sounds depressingly similar to the last place I worked.
I agree that it’s inherent to human psychology.
I’m not “a coder” in a professional sense but I’ve derived great joy from playing around with code in my spare time over many years. When I come back to a project I’ve created over many hours, but several years in the past, such that I’ve forgotten why I’ve done things the way I’ve done them, there’s a very strong desire to just discard everything and start over. As though this time around I’ll be able to find perfect solutions to problems where last time it was all kludges hacks and work arounds.
I’ll acknowledge that yes, each iteration of a thing one builds is an incremental improvement on the last. However, I don’t think that really explains whats going on here.
My best guess at an explanation is that the process of building or creating or implementing something is far less mentally taxing, or perhaps more rewarding, than the process of trying to understand something.
I agree what you brought up of bigger rewarding feelings from new things compared to maintaining existing things is a significant component. Politicians are more reliably elected by running on a new highway, new strip mall, new water treatment plant, etc, even when that money would provide more service to more people if spent keeping up existing infrastructure instead.
My guess is now agencies are having to pay out a fuck ton in overtime and temp/traveler positions. …which was an expected outcome from day one. Don’t think of this as a blunder: Elon, Trump, etc are enemies of the United States, and crippling our mission while simultaneously making it even more costly was their goal.
No, for the most part, those agencies are prohibited from paying overtime. A lot of what was supposed to happen was jobs being replaced by AI. That doesn’t mean the AI works or is effective. It just means it replaced.
A lot of the “cuts” were for programs that had already been funded… the money was already spent. Agreements and contracts were cancelled. Some of those surely had penalties involved. Some were for things they actually needed, and so they’ve had to renegotiate again with worse terms because the government just proved it can’t be trusted.
They’re trying to prove the government doesn’t work by making the government not work.
It’s what MAGA and progressives have in common.
the fuck?
He means they’re sabotaging and kneecapping the systems in place so at a later date they can say “see it doesn’t work” and their base is so smooth brained that they won’t connect dot 1 to dot 2.
Autopen! Signatures don’t count!
I feel like this is missing the point. What did ‘doge’ accomplish for musk, and others, what was the value of that, and what is the value of the harm done in cancelling those very specific programs? Firing all those people, etc etc, it’s straight up crime. Somebody , pretty obvious who, is making out like a bandit, giggling to the bank.
People are certainly making bank, but I think a significant amount of these people are ideologically driven. Look at tpusa and the Heritage Foundation
I think a lot of it, especially SSA, was probably covering up how they stole the election.
That’s my pet conspiracy theory, anyway.
Gotta wonder how many of those 125 year olds that they purged voted Trump 3x.
