3 ms·

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

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.

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.