4 ms·

Meanwhile the DOD will continue vaccuuming up taxpayer money and doing god knows what with it for god knows what reasons

Analemma_ 2y ago
Yeah, any talk about “reigning in government spending/waste” that doesn’t start and end with the military is totally unserious. The DOD wastes more money every day than all the usual suspects in this kind of talk do in a year.
- wat10000 2y ago
  The major suspects this time around are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those agencies are very efficient by normal measures. But Elon/Vivek are coming at it from a perspective that considers their entire mission to be 100% waste. From that perspective, they waste many times more than the DoD spends. I don’t think they’ll get anywhere with it, but they’re very serious.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > From perspective, they waste many times more than the DoD spends. I don’t think they’ll get anywhere with it, but they’re very serious. It's extremely difficult to take anyone who suggests introducing a profit margin to reduce waste as acting serious. (I realize you were probably indicating they weren't bluffing; just saying.) Plus, they can account for their spending and the DOD cannot.
    - wat10000 2y ago
      The main point seems to be to cut spending on these programs. If one sees them as nothing but waste then that’s automatically a reduction. It’s a pretty extreme view, but I think it’s serious. Destroying these programs has long been a dream of the more libertarian extremes of the Republican Party. Fortunately for the people who depend on these programs, “DOGE” isn’t real and has no power to do anything.
      - lovich 2y ago
        It’s as real as Trump decides it’s real. All he has to do is instruct his administration to not disburse the money and the Supreme Court has already ruled that Presidents have presumptive immunity for official acts, i.e. you can’t even bring the administration to court over it as the act of questioning their action inhibits the presidency These 4 years are not going to be normal just like most of 2016-2020 was not normal
        20after4 2y ago
        No, not just like 2016-2020. It's going to be far more abnormal than that.
- icegreentea2 2y ago
  Waste and inefficient spending in the DoD sphere is incredibly difficult to tackle. The article highlights two anecdotes/situations that are shared by the DoD and wider federal enterprise - that knowledge and power is generally actually incredibly diffuse across an organization, and therefore all changes require touching and gaining approval through a monstrous about of stakeholders, and that vendors can be giant dicks. DoD challenges are compounded by being tasked to do relatively unique things for the American public. What is a reasonable price to pay for a training exercise where Marines actually get to deploy a anti ship missile battery onto a lonely Pacific Island? Is the incremental cost of 3 versus 2 of these exercises a year worth while? Valuing many of things the military does, both in terms of what their positive value is, as well as what their costs -should- be is difficult, since we have so little analogous scenarios to draw on. Without confident and broadly consensus (or at least with sufficient top level cover and firepower) valuations on benefits and costs, any attempt to reduce spending just slams into resistance (both truly well meaning, as well as reflexive and self-serving). Another major DoD challenge is that outside of the IT field, the DoD asks for industrial competency and competitiveness that frankly the overall US industrial base looks to barely be able to meet. And so not only is it inflicted by vendors acting like dicks, they're inflicted by incompetent vendors acting like dicks.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    > Waste and inefficient spending in the DoD sphere is incredibly difficult to tackle Not really—cut their budget and force them to compensate. > and therefore all changes require touching and gaining approval through a monstrous about of stakeholders Notably not the people footing the bill, though.
    - icegreentea2 2y ago
      I see your point. The challenge is that the US establishment firmly believes that American supremacy is both good for the world, and good for America and Americans. No president (including Trump the first time) has yet been able to bring in enough true outsiders who were willing to gamble on this proposition to force through this type of change. Consider if you really wanted to cut down on DoD spending, but you also believed that on a whole, American force projection was a good thing, but you just wished we could do so more cost effectively. If you're the big guy at the top pushing down these types of "30% budget cut, go figure it out", you're going to get push back from every corner saying that it's not possible without conceding on some critical capability. As a single person, you could run down some of these claims and figure out which ones are bullshit, and ram your changes through. But you can't manage them all. So now you need more and more helpers to help you sort through the bullshit. As long as you are hamstrung by the belief that maybe, just maybe, it's useful (or worse, vital) to have 11 carriers available (btw, that's a law, not just DoD policy) so that you can have 2-3 at sea at any point, you're going to run into problems trying to ram through straight budget cuts.
ok_dad 2y ago
When I was in the Navy, we had $X to spend at the end of a quarter, and by god did we fucking spend it! Anything under the sun with any shred of argument that it was needed would be purchased. I was personally responsible for a huge department and I recall we had to spend an insane amount one quarter. I'm talking almost Brewster's Millions levels of trying to spend money, but let's call it Brewster's Hundred Thousands instead. Spare parts for the Whizz-Banger which we would probably never use because you only need to replace that part maybe one time in the ship's life? Yea, buy ten of those! Fancy pocket tools and knives for every human onboard the ship, even the guys who sit at a desk ordering supplies? Sure, get two of them each, so they have a spare! I always wondered why they did that "reset the budget to the lowest quarter" type of thing, just set a budget and if there is a surplus then next year the taxpayers don't have to pay as much. I don't know who ran the budgeting system, but it was fucked how badly we wasted money during quarters where nothing broke on the ship. I don't read the news anymore to save my mental state, but I hope that this DOGE is a positive influence instead of just more oligarchy in action, though I am not holding my breath.
- exe34 2y ago
  there's approximately zero chance that the department of dodgy will go after this sort of thing.
  - jpadkins 2y ago
    why?
    - exe34 2y ago
      much easier to cut Medicaid, social security, education, and similar non-essential stuff. corporate handouts will increase, not decrease, when you have two billionaires in the white house.
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        How so? My expectation would be that budgeting process and can be reigned in by decree much more so than an official enshrined in law system like Medicare.
umvi 2y ago
We pay more on debt interest than DoD. Pretty soon debt interest will be "vacuuming" the lion's share of all government income
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  Eh I'm not too concerned about this given the last forty years of incompetence assuring that we obviously won't budget in any sort of rational manner.
- dtauzell 2y ago
  True, but what options do we have to lower those payments?
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    Based on previous performance, not electing Trump would have helped. But Elon's first act as efficiency co-czar was to get get Trump elected and he'll now need to trim Trillions just to come out even.
  - umvi 2y ago
    Austerity measures (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity) People will be unhappy though
FactKnower69 2y ago
[dead]

Analemma_ 2y ago

Yeah, any talk about “reigning in government spending/waste” that doesn’t start and end with the military is totally unserious. The DOD wastes more money every day than all the usual suspects in this kind of talk do in a year.

wat10000 2y ago
The major suspects this time around are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Those agencies are very efficient by normal measures. But Elon/Vivek are coming at it from a perspective that considers their entire mission to be 100% waste. From that perspective, they waste many times more than the DoD spends. I don’t think they’ll get anywhere with it, but they’re very serious.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > From perspective, they waste many times more than the DoD spends. I don’t think they’ll get anywhere with it, but they’re very serious. It's extremely difficult to take anyone who suggests introducing a profit margin to reduce waste as acting serious. (I realize you were probably indicating they weren't bluffing; just saying.) Plus, they can account for their spending and the DOD cannot.
  - wat10000 2y ago
    The main point seems to be to cut spending on these programs. If one sees them as nothing but waste then that’s automatically a reduction. It’s a pretty extreme view, but I think it’s serious. Destroying these programs has long been a dream of the more libertarian extremes of the Republican Party. Fortunately for the people who depend on these programs, “DOGE” isn’t real and has no power to do anything.
    - lovich 2y ago
      It’s as real as Trump decides it’s real. All he has to do is instruct his administration to not disburse the money and the Supreme Court has already ruled that Presidents have presumptive immunity for official acts, i.e. you can’t even bring the administration to court over it as the act of questioning their action inhibits the presidency These 4 years are not going to be normal just like most of 2016-2020 was not normal
      - 20after4 2y ago
        No, not just like 2016-2020. It's going to be far more abnormal than that.
icegreentea2 2y ago
Waste and inefficient spending in the DoD sphere is incredibly difficult to tackle. The article highlights two anecdotes/situations that are shared by the DoD and wider federal enterprise - that knowledge and power is generally actually incredibly diffuse across an organization, and therefore all changes require touching and gaining approval through a monstrous about of stakeholders, and that vendors can be giant dicks. DoD challenges are compounded by being tasked to do relatively unique things for the American public. What is a reasonable price to pay for a training exercise where Marines actually get to deploy a anti ship missile battery onto a lonely Pacific Island? Is the incremental cost of 3 versus 2 of these exercises a year worth while? Valuing many of things the military does, both in terms of what their positive value is, as well as what their costs -should- be is difficult, since we have so little analogous scenarios to draw on. Without confident and broadly consensus (or at least with sufficient top level cover and firepower) valuations on benefits and costs, any attempt to reduce spending just slams into resistance (both truly well meaning, as well as reflexive and self-serving). Another major DoD challenge is that outside of the IT field, the DoD asks for industrial competency and competitiveness that frankly the overall US industrial base looks to barely be able to meet. And so not only is it inflicted by vendors acting like dicks, they're inflicted by incompetent vendors acting like dicks.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > Waste and inefficient spending in the DoD sphere is incredibly difficult to tackle Not really—cut their budget and force them to compensate. > and therefore all changes require touching and gaining approval through a monstrous about of stakeholders Notably not the people footing the bill, though.
  - icegreentea2 2y ago
    I see your point. The challenge is that the US establishment firmly believes that American supremacy is both good for the world, and good for America and Americans. No president (including Trump the first time) has yet been able to bring in enough true outsiders who were willing to gamble on this proposition to force through this type of change. Consider if you really wanted to cut down on DoD spending, but you also believed that on a whole, American force projection was a good thing, but you just wished we could do so more cost effectively. If you're the big guy at the top pushing down these types of "30% budget cut, go figure it out", you're going to get push back from every corner saying that it's not possible without conceding on some critical capability. As a single person, you could run down some of these claims and figure out which ones are bullshit, and ram your changes through. But you can't manage them all. So now you need more and more helpers to help you sort through the bullshit. As long as you are hamstrung by the belief that maybe, just maybe, it's useful (or worse, vital) to have 11 carriers available (btw, that's a law, not just DoD policy) so that you can have 2-3 at sea at any point, you're going to run into problems trying to ram through straight budget cuts.

ok_dad 2y ago

When I was in the Navy, we had $X to spend at the end of a quarter, and by god did we fucking spend it! Anything under the sun with any shred of argument that it was needed would be purchased. I was personally responsible for a huge department and I recall we had to spend an insane amount one quarter. I'm talking almost Brewster's Millions levels of trying to spend money, but let's call it Brewster's Hundred Thousands instead. Spare parts for the Whizz-Banger which we would probably never use because you only need to replace that part maybe one time in the ship's life? Yea, buy ten of those! Fancy pocket tools and knives for every human onboard the ship, even the guys who sit at a desk ordering supplies? Sure, get two of them each, so they have a spare! I always wondered why they did that "reset the budget to the lowest quarter" type of thing, just set a budget and if there is a surplus then next year the taxpayers don't have to pay as much. I don't know who ran the budgeting system, but it was fucked how badly we wasted money during quarters where nothing broke on the ship. I don't read the news anymore to save my mental state, but I hope that this DOGE is a positive influence instead of just more oligarchy in action, though I am not holding my breath.

exe34 2y ago
there's approximately zero chance that the department of dodgy will go after this sort of thing.
- jpadkins 2y ago
  why?
  - exe34 2y ago
    much easier to cut Medicaid, social security, education, and similar non-essential stuff. corporate handouts will increase, not decrease, when you have two billionaires in the white house.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      How so? My expectation would be that budgeting process and can be reigned in by decree much more so than an official enshrined in law system like Medicare.

umvi 2y ago

We pay more on debt interest than DoD. Pretty soon debt interest will be "vacuuming" the lion's share of all government income

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
Eh I'm not too concerned about this given the last forty years of incompetence assuring that we obviously won't budget in any sort of rational manner.
dtauzell 2y ago
True, but what options do we have to lower those payments?
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Based on previous performance, not electing Trump would have helped. But Elon's first act as efficiency co-czar was to get get Trump elected and he'll now need to trim Trillions just to come out even.
- umvi 2y ago
  Austerity measures (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity) People will be unhappy though

FactKnower69 2y ago

[dead]