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I contend that there existed too much incompetence across what the government has been funding. I’m looking forward to a ‘change’ for more competence, efficienc

I contend that there existed too much incompetence across what the government has been funding. I’m looking forward to a ‘change’ for more competence, efficiency, innovation, accountability, etc

einrealist 2y ago
The process is the problem. There is no oversight and accountability for Musk and his "DOGE". That's pure poison to Democracy and to a functioning society. Musk is neither competent nor efficient. He looks at line items and makes stuff up. He destroys a hundred useful things to destroy a bad one. Details don't matter to him. Its the same con man mentality that feeds off the works of his workforce. People who think he is a genius are gullible.
- justanotheratom 2y ago
  Can you give specific examples to back up your comments about Musk? I am quite gullible otherwise.
  - throwawaymaroon 2y ago
    [dead]
  - einrealist 2y ago
    - He claimed the US funded bio-weapons when they found payments for gain of function research. - Calling payments to non-profit organizations fraudulent on a whim. - The sweeping condemnation of what USAID was doing. - His call for a blanket drop of regulations. Either he knows better or he is totally lost in his sauce. Hard to say what's worse for where he is right now. I believe, he does not care. He only cares about his conception of the world and how AI and Mars are more important than those tiny tiny human problems. Society has to serve him and his god complex. He was told to find his subsidies and tax cuts by himself. That's what he is doing.
    - justanotheratom 2y ago
      Evidence is being presented in real-time on X for each of the things you mentioned. Suggest you do some homework instead of gleaning headlines from old media, who btw, was getting money from USAID - the latest series of evidence coming out on X today. You really need to take a hard look at who is gullible here.
      - yibg 2y ago
        Can you point me to some of the evidence being presented? I know elon's been posting claims of fraud and abuse, but I'm only seen his claims, without any evidence.
        justanotheratom 2y ago
        way too many to list: Govt money going to NYTimes, AP, Reuters, Politico: https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887191056074350690 https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887191056074350690 https://x.com/Austen/status/1887179699874304210 https://x.com/Austen/status/1887179699874304210 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1887179349440290883 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1887179349440290883 https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887184877197410455 https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887184877197410455 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1887147866688213254 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1887147866688213254 This guy has been providing evidence for a decade: https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber Long list of questionable funding by USAID: https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1887151291895267553 https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1887151291895267553 ...
        yibg 2y ago
        Thanks for the info, I'll read into it more. EDIT to make my current position clear, I do think there is probably waste in various government agencies. My objection with the current approach is mainly 2 folds: 1. The lack of transparency and accountability 2. Some of the statements from the administration that are false or misleading. e.g. the 50 million on condoms. The 2 combined makes it difficult to have trust on what's happening.
- pizlonator 2y ago
  His manage-by-trolling technique is demonstrably effective in industry. It’s just that government isn’t that.
  - frickinLasers 2y ago
    > His manage-by-trolling technique is demonstrably effective in industry. Or are his companies successful despite that? The impression I get is that his direct reports are exceptionally good managers and shield the companies from his dumbest moves. Except at Twitter--that's lost, what, 75% of its value? (still works as a political platform for him though)
    - Vilian 2y ago
      Considering that twitter never profited since he took over, nah
      - ganoushoreilly 2y ago
        "Twitter" wasn't profitable when he bought it so I'm not sure this is a fair comparison.
    - pizlonator 2y ago
      That’s exactly what I mean by manage by trolling. He forces his directs to be good by trolling them with idiotic ideas. I don’t condone manage by trolling; it’s not how I want to manage or be managed. But it seems to have worked out for his industrial complex.
      - jhloa2 2y ago
        So he fosters competence with his incompetence? Seems like it would work just as well without him except for marketing. I'm impressed with Tesla and SpaceX as a whole, but from what I've heard, he hasn't been heavily involved with day to day decisions for more than a decade. From my perspective, his role is to be a hype man that consistently over promises and under delivers.
- cbracketdash 2y ago
  It's easy to dismiss eccentric people as conmen. But you have to consider, he has been at least partially instrumental in at least 2 impossible companies: electric cars and rockets. Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes ! An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as possible. When things break, re-add those necessary parts.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as possible. When things break, re-add those necessary parts. This might work sometimes for companies (surprisingly, often it doesn't) - it has far more significant and wide-reaching consequences when you're doing it to an entire country and its institutions, particularly one as influential as America.
  - callc 2y ago
    > Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes ! And? Getting people whipped up into a frenzy through fear, us vs them mentality, narcissism, to do good work is toxic. Musk is toxic. We should stop elevating leaders as extra-ordinarily capable. Especially leaders who employ a negative leadership style instead of one founded on empathy, trust, respect, and importance of the group over leader.
    - newsreaderguy 2y ago
      ask yourself who is doing the whipping into frenzy the media + bureaucratic class + democrat leaders who all have a vested interest in these un-audited institutions remaining in the shadows, or the people doing exactly what half the country asked them to do: clean up the government in an unprecedented way
      - nmz 2y ago
        There's no media here, just people talking about the jobs they lost and the jobs they're going to lose, everyone can see it. For better or worse, there is no media, only social media mobs.
throwfgtpwd234 2y ago
What "competence"? What "efficiency"? What "innovation"? What "accountability"? There is no accountability or efficiency in unelected technocrats blowing up what was working without a plan or subject matter expertise.
sanderjd 2y ago
This is hopelessly naive.
- avs733 2y ago
  With a focus on the hopeless part. I feel more and more like a large portion of the American public exists at the weaponized intersection of the subbing Kruger effect and Chesterton fence. They hear so many vague platitudes about waste that it’s just taken as dicta without evidence. That somehow provides a global mandate to break anything. If we survive this I hope that the government workforce starts to get more respect of the hard work they do on complicated problems to make fair processes and that they stop getting just blanket accused of incompetence for ideological gain.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    I've worked for the government before and have personally witnessed a very large amount of waste. It's absolutely there, and it's disgusting. Waste needs to be cut back - that is morally required to happen, because it's not waste of some private company's money, it's the waste of other peoples' money - the only problem is that you can't take the Office Space "What would you say you do here?" approach of randomly cutting people, but have to address the systemic issues that result in tens of billions of dollars lost yearly. Some of these include: - literal incentives to waste money in the form of "if you don't use your whole budget every year, we'll cut it next year" (which applies to large parts of the military and defense, which happen to be some of the biggest spenders) - massive bureaucracy that takes processes that should take a day and turns them into multi-week-long nightmares - terrible office cultures that encourage single-points-of-failure...and then gives those people lots of vacation time - large policy sub-orgs that focus on evaluating requests against hundreds of thousands of pages of policy instead of trying to help the workers actually get things done - terrible contracting processes that result in the government paying 2-10x more than private industry does for goods and services (which only a small increase in quality or reliability) ...and many, many more problems. > I hope that the government workforce starts to get more respect of the hard work they do on complicated problems You can simultaneously believe that the average government worker is competent and hard-working, and that the bureaucracy as a whole is extremely inefficient due to systemic issues. Blanket defense of government (in)efficiency actively makes the problems worse. Focus your energy instead on adding nuance when discussing the problems and solutions.
yibg 2y ago
I have no problem with that. I don't even disagree with government waste, we all see it. If what trump and musk did was: - Audit spending (at USAID or wherever else) - Come up with details of where there is waste, being transparent about it for the public to see and review - Use that to recommend change to congress / the president, again in full public view Then I'd have no issues. The problem is, what's actually happening is: - Musk and team are in there with no accountability and no transparency. We don't know what he has access to, what was done - Unilaterally making changes without public review or oversight. It's a "trust me bro" stance. - From the few things that has been published, many seem to be outright lies (50m on condoms) or extremely biased conclusions (IRS direct filing)
- throw10920 2y ago
  Thank you for making an actually thoughtful comment with very reasonable points about the ways in which Musk et al are failing the taxpayers/citizens. I'd add on another one, from the article: > On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. Retaliation is very bad, especially when it comes to trying to protect national security information. As a semi-technical person running several large technical companies, even if he had zero experience with the DoD before, Musk should at the very least understand how important it is to guard your "IP".
  - yibg 2y ago
    Retaliation seems like the norm from the current administration. Calls to investigate and jail political opponents, agents that investigated the Jan 6 “protestors”, to deport the Bishop for calls for mercy. Bullying, intimidation, arrogance. Traits that I would’ve hoped most would be against.
- l0t0b0r0s 2y ago
  >- Audit spending (at USAID or wherever else) I dont need a line item list to know that USAID DEI Scholarships in Burma $45.00M is wasteful spending. >Come up with details of where there is waste, being transparent about it for the public to see and review The waste is right there in the name. Funding DEI Scholarships in Burma is not how the American people want their taxes spent. >- Unilaterally making changes without public review or oversight. It's a "trust me bro" stance. The public review was the presidential election. Making changes without oversight is what an executive order is.
freejazz 2y ago
>I’m looking forward to a ‘change’ for more competence, efficiency, innovation, accountability, etc Where do you see that? What accountability is present?
- infogulch 2y ago
  20% of funding going to study replication is a good start.

einrealist 2y ago

The process is the problem. There is no oversight and accountability for Musk and his "DOGE". That's pure poison to Democracy and to a functioning society. Musk is neither competent nor efficient. He looks at line items and makes stuff up. He destroys a hundred useful things to destroy a bad one. Details don't matter to him. Its the same con man mentality that feeds off the works of his workforce. People who think he is a genius are gullible.

justanotheratom 2y ago
Can you give specific examples to back up your comments about Musk? I am quite gullible otherwise.
- throwawaymaroon 2y ago
  [dead]
- einrealist 2y ago
  - He claimed the US funded bio-weapons when they found payments for gain of function research. - Calling payments to non-profit organizations fraudulent on a whim. - The sweeping condemnation of what USAID was doing. - His call for a blanket drop of regulations. Either he knows better or he is totally lost in his sauce. Hard to say what's worse for where he is right now. I believe, he does not care. He only cares about his conception of the world and how AI and Mars are more important than those tiny tiny human problems. Society has to serve him and his god complex. He was told to find his subsidies and tax cuts by himself. That's what he is doing.
  - justanotheratom 2y ago
    Evidence is being presented in real-time on X for each of the things you mentioned. Suggest you do some homework instead of gleaning headlines from old media, who btw, was getting money from USAID - the latest series of evidence coming out on X today. You really need to take a hard look at who is gullible here.
    - yibg 2y ago
      Can you point me to some of the evidence being presented? I know elon's been posting claims of fraud and abuse, but I'm only seen his claims, without any evidence.
      - justanotheratom 2y ago
        way too many to list: Govt money going to NYTimes, AP, Reuters, Politico: https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887191056074350690 https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887191056074350690 https://x.com/Austen/status/1887179699874304210 https://x.com/Austen/status/1887179699874304210 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1887179349440290883 https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1887179349440290883 https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887184877197410455 https://x.com/stillgray/status/1887184877197410455 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1887147866688213254 https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1887147866688213254 This guy has been providing evidence for a decade: https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber Long list of questionable funding by USAID: https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1887151291895267553 https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1887151291895267553 ...
        yibg 2y ago
        Thanks for the info, I'll read into it more. EDIT to make my current position clear, I do think there is probably waste in various government agencies. My objection with the current approach is mainly 2 folds: 1. The lack of transparency and accountability 2. Some of the statements from the administration that are false or misleading. e.g. the 50 million on condoms. The 2 combined makes it difficult to have trust on what's happening.
pizlonator 2y ago
His manage-by-trolling technique is demonstrably effective in industry. It’s just that government isn’t that.
- frickinLasers 2y ago
  > His manage-by-trolling technique is demonstrably effective in industry. Or are his companies successful despite that? The impression I get is that his direct reports are exceptionally good managers and shield the companies from his dumbest moves. Except at Twitter--that's lost, what, 75% of its value? (still works as a political platform for him though)
  - Vilian 2y ago
    Considering that twitter never profited since he took over, nah
    - ganoushoreilly 2y ago
      "Twitter" wasn't profitable when he bought it so I'm not sure this is a fair comparison.
  - pizlonator 2y ago
    That’s exactly what I mean by manage by trolling. He forces his directs to be good by trolling them with idiotic ideas. I don’t condone manage by trolling; it’s not how I want to manage or be managed. But it seems to have worked out for his industrial complex.
    - jhloa2 2y ago
      So he fosters competence with his incompetence? Seems like it would work just as well without him except for marketing. I'm impressed with Tesla and SpaceX as a whole, but from what I've heard, he hasn't been heavily involved with day to day decisions for more than a decade. From my perspective, his role is to be a hype man that consistently over promises and under delivers.
cbracketdash 2y ago
It's easy to dismiss eccentric people as conmen. But you have to consider, he has been at least partially instrumental in at least 2 impossible companies: electric cars and rockets. Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes ! An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as possible. When things break, re-add those necessary parts.
- squigz 2y ago
  > An inevitable characteristic of his algorithm is chaos: delete as many constraints and parts as possible. When things break, re-add those necessary parts. This might work sometimes for companies (surprisingly, often it doesn't) - it has far more significant and wide-reaching consequences when you're doing it to an entire country and its institutions, particularly one as influential as America.
- callc 2y ago
  > Regardless of what you think of his intellectual capacity, he has a proven track record of organizing people to produce exceptional outcomes ! And? Getting people whipped up into a frenzy through fear, us vs them mentality, narcissism, to do good work is toxic. Musk is toxic. We should stop elevating leaders as extra-ordinarily capable. Especially leaders who employ a negative leadership style instead of one founded on empathy, trust, respect, and importance of the group over leader.
  - newsreaderguy 2y ago
    ask yourself who is doing the whipping into frenzy the media + bureaucratic class + democrat leaders who all have a vested interest in these un-audited institutions remaining in the shadows, or the people doing exactly what half the country asked them to do: clean up the government in an unprecedented way
    - nmz 2y ago
      There's no media here, just people talking about the jobs they lost and the jobs they're going to lose, everyone can see it. For better or worse, there is no media, only social media mobs.

throwfgtpwd234 2y ago

What "competence"? What "efficiency"? What "innovation"? What "accountability"? There is no accountability or efficiency in unelected technocrats blowing up what was working without a plan or subject matter expertise.

sanderjd 2y ago

This is hopelessly naive.

avs733 2y ago
With a focus on the hopeless part. I feel more and more like a large portion of the American public exists at the weaponized intersection of the subbing Kruger effect and Chesterton fence. They hear so many vague platitudes about waste that it’s just taken as dicta without evidence. That somehow provides a global mandate to break anything. If we survive this I hope that the government workforce starts to get more respect of the hard work they do on complicated problems to make fair processes and that they stop getting just blanket accused of incompetence for ideological gain.
- throw10920 2y ago
  I've worked for the government before and have personally witnessed a very large amount of waste. It's absolutely there, and it's disgusting. Waste needs to be cut back - that is morally required to happen, because it's not waste of some private company's money, it's the waste of other peoples' money - the only problem is that you can't take the Office Space "What would you say you do here?" approach of randomly cutting people, but have to address the systemic issues that result in tens of billions of dollars lost yearly. Some of these include: - literal incentives to waste money in the form of "if you don't use your whole budget every year, we'll cut it next year" (which applies to large parts of the military and defense, which happen to be some of the biggest spenders) - massive bureaucracy that takes processes that should take a day and turns them into multi-week-long nightmares - terrible office cultures that encourage single-points-of-failure...and then gives those people lots of vacation time - large policy sub-orgs that focus on evaluating requests against hundreds of thousands of pages of policy instead of trying to help the workers actually get things done - terrible contracting processes that result in the government paying 2-10x more than private industry does for goods and services (which only a small increase in quality or reliability) ...and many, many more problems. > I hope that the government workforce starts to get more respect of the hard work they do on complicated problems You can simultaneously believe that the average government worker is competent and hard-working, and that the bureaucracy as a whole is extremely inefficient due to systemic issues. Blanket defense of government (in)efficiency actively makes the problems worse. Focus your energy instead on adding nuance when discussing the problems and solutions.

yibg 2y ago

I have no problem with that. I don't even disagree with government waste, we all see it. If what trump and musk did was: - Audit spending (at USAID or wherever else) - Come up with details of where there is waste, being transparent about it for the public to see and review - Use that to recommend change to congress / the president, again in full public view Then I'd have no issues. The problem is, what's actually happening is: - Musk and team are in there with no accountability and no transparency. We don't know what he has access to, what was done - Unilaterally making changes without public review or oversight. It's a "trust me bro" stance. - From the few things that has been published, many seem to be outright lies (50m on condoms) or extremely biased conclusions (IRS direct filing)

throw10920 2y ago
Thank you for making an actually thoughtful comment with very reasonable points about the ways in which Musk et al are failing the taxpayers/citizens. I'd add on another one, from the article: > On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. Retaliation is very bad, especially when it comes to trying to protect national security information. As a semi-technical person running several large technical companies, even if he had zero experience with the DoD before, Musk should at the very least understand how important it is to guard your "IP".
- yibg 2y ago
  Retaliation seems like the norm from the current administration. Calls to investigate and jail political opponents, agents that investigated the Jan 6 “protestors”, to deport the Bishop for calls for mercy. Bullying, intimidation, arrogance. Traits that I would’ve hoped most would be against.
l0t0b0r0s 2y ago
>- Audit spending (at USAID or wherever else) I dont need a line item list to know that USAID DEI Scholarships in Burma $45.00M is wasteful spending. >Come up with details of where there is waste, being transparent about it for the public to see and review The waste is right there in the name. Funding DEI Scholarships in Burma is not how the American people want their taxes spent. >- Unilaterally making changes without public review or oversight. It's a "trust me bro" stance. The public review was the presidential election. Making changes without oversight is what an executive order is.

freejazz 2y ago

>I’m looking forward to a ‘change’ for more competence, efficiency, innovation, accountability, etc Where do you see that? What accountability is present?

infogulch 2y ago
20% of funding going to study replication is a good start.