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Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also be

Reporting on this is terrible. There are also senior (in age and experience) people, but much of the focus is on the youngins for obvious reasons. Musk also believes (either arrogance, or true belief) that much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts.

fumar 2y ago
What do mean by stuff?
- amazingamazing 2y ago
  > not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?
default-kramer 2y ago
I hope this is true. Can you name any senior people and/or financial auditors who are overseeing "the youngins"?
- jdross 2y ago
  I know a number of them but they’re rightfully not looking to be especially public about it now on the internet — life is hard enough just doing the job they’re trying to do. Which is frankly a lot of banal accounting and auditing type work. They’re in their 30’s and 40’s with prolific backgrounds in PE, as entrepreneurs managing nine figure budgets and thousands of employees, etc. Politics vs policy, or something like that?
  - apical_dendrite 2y ago
    I'm having trouble reconciling the backgrounds of the people that you're describing with the effects of the work they're doing. When they suddenly closed USAID, vulnerable people around the world instantly lost access to food and medicine with no recourse. There were people enrolled in clinical trials who had devices implanted in their bodies and then suddenly all support was cut off. Even if you believe that America shouldn't fund these things, how can you possibly justify shutting it down in such a way that food for hungry people rots in warehouses and clinicians have to decide if they're going to defy orders to vaccinate a pregnant mother? I can understand how a 23-year-old can get so enamored by all this sudden access to power that he completely loses sight of the effects of what he's doing. I don't understand how someone with decades of experience in positions of responsibility doesn't ask the most basic questions about the consequences of taking drastic action.
    - Spooky23 2y ago
      The policy people like Stephen Miller who are the brains here question the humanity of others. The expression of power by inflicting suffering is seen as a flex. USAID and its mission are in opposition to their aims — you are to be cowed by power, not be look kindly upon the kindness and mercy of the US.
      - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
        Full on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
    - Jiro 2y ago
      Google up "hostage puppy". I could give you a link, but I'm not trying to claim that any particular person who said it is an authority. The idea is that your organization may be doing inefficient or horrible things, but it also has one cute puppy who depends on it. Any time someone wants to shut your organization down, you just point to the cute puppy and say "you wouldn't want this puppy to die, would you?".
      - apical_dendrite 2y ago
        Which is the hostage puppy? Half the HIV treatment in the developing world? The people clearing landmines? The malaria treatment? Or is it tuberculosis? Or security and economic aid to our allies, particularly allies that are fighting wars? Or funding the groups that are standing up to our authoritarian adversaries? Feeding people facing famines? Economic assistance to bolster employment in countries to reduce the demand for people to migrate to the US?
        timacles 2y ago
        Yeah I can’t believe what I’m reading on this site. The intellectual dishonesty is staggering. This is truly the post truth world. I wouldn’t be surprised if many here who are making counter arguments either hate the US and what it stands for or are outright malicious actors
- n2d4 2y ago
  A larger list of DOGE employees is on Wikipedia. While there are a variety of members, most of them don't have the experience you'd expect someone to have in the respective roles. The average age is definitely higher than 25 though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...
  - 9283409232 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - throwaway894345 2y ago
      I would love to know what Trump supporters think of all of this, but the usual places where Trump supporters hang out online (e.g., r/Conservative) don’t seem to talk about anything of the current administration’s controversies at all. I guess I was hoping they would at least talk about why they think they’re good or not that bad, but the mere mention of them seems to be suppressed. :sigh:
      - 9283409232 2y ago
        I'm sure they don't care. Means to an end.
        nonchalantsui 2y ago
        This is the part quite a lot of people seem to not grasp. While there is certainly a portion of them that are regretful and feel misled, a lot of them actively wanted this. The cruelty is the point, the end is the cherry on top.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        I don't even mean this as an insult, but these people are quite literally in a cult. MAGA has all the hallmarks of a cult, and accordingly, you will not find the contrition or self-doubt you're looking for penetrating deeply into the movement whatsoever. They chose long ago to block out negative thoughts and information, today is no different.
tootie 2y ago
I think that's generous. He is chopping entire departments after scooping up all their data. He doesn't seem to be doing any analysis at all. And a lot of his public statements have been patently false.
- theGnuMe 2y ago
  So an endgame is grok runs the government. I’d be worried about real spies gaining access in person given the confusion of who is doge or not.
baxtr 2y ago
As a side note: that is very similar to how a consulting team would operate. Very young (inexperienced) team on the ground + senior people flying in from time to time.
- rcpt 2y ago
  "flying in from time to time"? I'm sorry but what are these guys working on that's taking precedence over this?
  - baxtr 2y ago
    It’s usually several projects they’re overseeing, so splitting time at different locations. PS: I’m just guessing here. I have no clue how DOGE operates.
  - dcl 2y ago
    Running/managing the firm, doing pitches, sales, schmoozing, etc.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > I'm sorry but what are these guys working on that's taking precedence over this? Their day-jobs at other various Musk enterprises.
  - Etherlord87 2y ago
    Valuable experts are typically busy on long-term commitments.
  - robbiep 2y ago
    Consulting is a sales job where senior partners need to hit numbers which affect their compensation, so they will sell anything and everything in terms of the projects that they leverage their (balkanised, aggressively dysfunctional internal politics) firm’s weight to achieve credibility to perform a massive turnaround or implementation or some other such project, and then sic a bunch of people ranging from fuck all experience to just learning to play the game onto delivery. The partner will appear at key points to ensure that the executives who approved the contract are happy and hopefully sell the next round of work. If they shit the bed, which they do frequently, no worries, they’ve already sold the next deal elsewhere and now their firm may be out from that organisation for a year or two and one of the others will come in and screw up for a few years and then they’ll be back. Incidentally and because this should be a basic competency of government, the Australian government, owing to a huge number of significant scandals including one in which PwC used the information in crafting taxation law and then sold it to international corporations to fucking obliterate any sense of Chinese walls (in which no one has gone to jail and most careers have emerged semi intact, if with a bunch of egg that any self respecting person would go and take a long hard look in the mirror at themselves for having been involved in) - the last 3 years has seen a modest relocation of these basic functions of government internally. Which one of our political party leaders is now campaigning on removing, in order to bring back the gravy train to the incompetent consulting fucks. (Both our primary party leadership need to have a stern talking to because one side is actively trying to channel MAGA energy, and the other seems unwilling to do anything useful. So turns out I had a bit to get off my chest, I hope no one found that too boring
SoftTalker 2y ago
Well he has done pretty well with that belief so far. Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink…
- tzs 2y ago
  All of those were full of traditional experts.
- jodrellblank 2y ago
  Curiously both Tesla and SpaceX benefit enormously from government spending[1] to the tune of almost $5Bn of taxpayer money. And then Tesla paid zero income tax last year[2] and none in 2021 either[3]. And now Musk is taking the position that the government spends too much taxpayer's money and needs to be torn down. Musk also did very well by plainly lying (which I would call market manipulation) about Tesla products; the Cybertruck video where Musk claimed it was faster than a Porsche while towing a Porsche was a lie[4]. A 2016 video demonstrating self-driving was faked[5]. Musk's statements about what the Tesla Semi can do were not just generous marketing, they are impossible[6], claiming 500 miles range and PepsiCo reports they can't even carry a load of Lay's potato chips for 500 miles and on heavier loads they can only travel 100 miles. Faked self parking videos, faked SolarCity videos, faked Optimus humanoid robot videos, faked CyberTruck towing an F150 video[7]. The Optimus robots at the October 2024 event were remote controled and remote-voiced by humans[8]. They walk like Honda Asimo robots walked 25 years ago but they're being spun like they are Boston Dynamics killers. Musk's talk of tentacle arms to recharge Teslas never turned into anything (though BYD in China has had public automated electric-car battery-swap stations for years now). Musk's talk of full self driving first promised, what, 2017? turned out to be misleading with cars not even having the hardware to do a good job of it. Musk's early plans for completely automated Model 3 factory faded very quickly with them reverting to humans in marquees. Yes Musk has done pretty well with investors letting him get away with a lot of broken promises and taxpayers letting him get away with a lot of subsidies and customers letting him get away with a lot of shoddy products. Lucky for him the Tesla engineers were competent true believers(tm) and delivered decent Model 3 and Model Y but that should only give them a similar valuation to other car companies, shouldn't it? [1] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201... [2] https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2024/ https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2... [3] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla-zero-tax-bill/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla... [4] https://www.insidehook.com/autos/no-one-exposes-elon-musk-lies-like-jason-fenske-engineering-explained https://www.insidehook.com/autos/no-one-exposes-elon-musk-li... [5] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-promoting-self-driving-technology-report-2023-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-pr... [6] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-semi-gets-debunked-again-this-time-on-youtube-twice-207056.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-semi-gets-debunked-... [7] https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstration-videos/ https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstrati... [8] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/13/24269131/tesla-optimus-robots-human-controlled-cybercab-we-robot-event https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/13/24269131/tesla-optimus-r...
firstlunchables 2y ago
Touting “first principals” is a way of revealing “I’m too dumb to understand other people’s work.” Like if you can’t understand higher level concepts and have to start on your own from Euclid, it just means you aren’t very smart but think you can be another Maxwell just by thinkin’ real hard. It’s a joke.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Not necessarily. Other peoples' work can assume what "everyone knows"; starting from first principles can (sometimes) show up where that's the case. That doesn't mean you're not very smart; it means you're aware enough to know that some limitations that aren't real creep in to the body of knowledge of a field. Or it can be just arrogance. (In fact, even when it's reasonable, it probably also contains some arrogance...)
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    I am in agreement with you. The OP is overstated. I have heard Musk interviewed a few times. When asked to explain more about his phase "first principles", he usually talks about (paraphrase) "delete as many things as possible". It is an interesting way to think about project planning. At a bare minimum, he has created several incredibly successful businesses in his lifetime, so he must be doing something right.
    - beeforpork 2y ago
      > At a bare minimum, he has created several incredibly successful businesses in his lifetime, so he must be doing something right. No, this is a common fallacy. The main reason to get crazy rich and successful is statistics: be lucky. I.e., accidentally do the successful things. And usually starting rich helps, so you have the opportunities. Crazy success is not a measure for capability. There is no correlation. Yes, it is sad, so despite this, the fallacy is a great motivation for many.
- meowkit 2y ago
  Principles. Its about assuming most people operate on dogma and heuristics. This is extremely true in my opinion. By making this assumption, you dispel bad practices and behaviors that might have built up within an organization. Even more importantly you can reveal why certain chesterton’s fences exist.
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts. I agree with him. Corruption often get a pass when covered in layers of legalize.

fumar 2y ago

What do mean by stuff?

amazingamazing 2y ago
> not a team of financial auditors if he really wanted to cut government spending?

default-kramer 2y ago

I hope this is true. Can you name any senior people and/or financial auditors who are overseeing "the youngins"?

jdross 2y ago
I know a number of them but they’re rightfully not looking to be especially public about it now on the internet — life is hard enough just doing the job they’re trying to do. Which is frankly a lot of banal accounting and auditing type work. They’re in their 30’s and 40’s with prolific backgrounds in PE, as entrepreneurs managing nine figure budgets and thousands of employees, etc. Politics vs policy, or something like that?
- apical_dendrite 2y ago
  I'm having trouble reconciling the backgrounds of the people that you're describing with the effects of the work they're doing. When they suddenly closed USAID, vulnerable people around the world instantly lost access to food and medicine with no recourse. There were people enrolled in clinical trials who had devices implanted in their bodies and then suddenly all support was cut off. Even if you believe that America shouldn't fund these things, how can you possibly justify shutting it down in such a way that food for hungry people rots in warehouses and clinicians have to decide if they're going to defy orders to vaccinate a pregnant mother? I can understand how a 23-year-old can get so enamored by all this sudden access to power that he completely loses sight of the effects of what he's doing. I don't understand how someone with decades of experience in positions of responsibility doesn't ask the most basic questions about the consequences of taking drastic action.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    The policy people like Stephen Miller who are the brains here question the humanity of others. The expression of power by inflicting suffering is seen as a flex. USAID and its mission are in opposition to their aims — you are to be cowed by power, not be look kindly upon the kindness and mercy of the US.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      Full on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
  - Jiro 2y ago
    Google up "hostage puppy". I could give you a link, but I'm not trying to claim that any particular person who said it is an authority. The idea is that your organization may be doing inefficient or horrible things, but it also has one cute puppy who depends on it. Any time someone wants to shut your organization down, you just point to the cute puppy and say "you wouldn't want this puppy to die, would you?".
    - apical_dendrite 2y ago
      Which is the hostage puppy? Half the HIV treatment in the developing world? The people clearing landmines? The malaria treatment? Or is it tuberculosis? Or security and economic aid to our allies, particularly allies that are fighting wars? Or funding the groups that are standing up to our authoritarian adversaries? Feeding people facing famines? Economic assistance to bolster employment in countries to reduce the demand for people to migrate to the US?
      - timacles 2y ago
        Yeah I can’t believe what I’m reading on this site. The intellectual dishonesty is staggering. This is truly the post truth world. I wouldn’t be surprised if many here who are making counter arguments either hate the US and what it stands for or are outright malicious actors
n2d4 2y ago
A larger list of DOGE employees is on Wikipedia. While there are a variety of members, most of them don't have the experience you'd expect someone to have in the respective roles. The average age is definitely higher than 25 though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Effic...
- 9283409232 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway894345 2y ago
    I would love to know what Trump supporters think of all of this, but the usual places where Trump supporters hang out online (e.g., r/Conservative) don’t seem to talk about anything of the current administration’s controversies at all. I guess I was hoping they would at least talk about why they think they’re good or not that bad, but the mere mention of them seems to be suppressed. :sigh:
    - 9283409232 2y ago
      I'm sure they don't care. Means to an end.
      - nonchalantsui 2y ago
        This is the part quite a lot of people seem to not grasp. While there is certainly a portion of them that are regretful and feel misled, a lot of them actively wanted this. The cruelty is the point, the end is the cherry on top.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      I don't even mean this as an insult, but these people are quite literally in a cult. MAGA has all the hallmarks of a cult, and accordingly, you will not find the contrition or self-doubt you're looking for penetrating deeply into the movement whatsoever. They chose long ago to block out negative thoughts and information, today is no different.

tootie 2y ago

I think that's generous. He is chopping entire departments after scooping up all their data. He doesn't seem to be doing any analysis at all. And a lot of his public statements have been patently false.

theGnuMe 2y ago
So an endgame is grok runs the government. I’d be worried about real spies gaining access in person given the confusion of who is doge or not.

baxtr 2y ago

As a side note: that is very similar to how a consulting team would operate. Very young (inexperienced) team on the ground + senior people flying in from time to time.

rcpt 2y ago
"flying in from time to time"? I'm sorry but what are these guys working on that's taking precedence over this?
- baxtr 2y ago
  It’s usually several projects they’re overseeing, so splitting time at different locations. PS: I’m just guessing here. I have no clue how DOGE operates.
- dcl 2y ago
  Running/managing the firm, doing pitches, sales, schmoozing, etc.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > I'm sorry but what are these guys working on that's taking precedence over this? Their day-jobs at other various Musk enterprises.
- Etherlord87 2y ago
  Valuable experts are typically busy on long-term commitments.
- robbiep 2y ago
  Consulting is a sales job where senior partners need to hit numbers which affect their compensation, so they will sell anything and everything in terms of the projects that they leverage their (balkanised, aggressively dysfunctional internal politics) firm’s weight to achieve credibility to perform a massive turnaround or implementation or some other such project, and then sic a bunch of people ranging from fuck all experience to just learning to play the game onto delivery. The partner will appear at key points to ensure that the executives who approved the contract are happy and hopefully sell the next round of work. If they shit the bed, which they do frequently, no worries, they’ve already sold the next deal elsewhere and now their firm may be out from that organisation for a year or two and one of the others will come in and screw up for a few years and then they’ll be back. Incidentally and because this should be a basic competency of government, the Australian government, owing to a huge number of significant scandals including one in which PwC used the information in crafting taxation law and then sold it to international corporations to fucking obliterate any sense of Chinese walls (in which no one has gone to jail and most careers have emerged semi intact, if with a bunch of egg that any self respecting person would go and take a long hard look in the mirror at themselves for having been involved in) - the last 3 years has seen a modest relocation of these basic functions of government internally. Which one of our political party leaders is now campaigning on removing, in order to bring back the gravy train to the incompetent consulting fucks. (Both our primary party leadership need to have a stern talking to because one side is actively trying to channel MAGA energy, and the other seems unwilling to do anything useful. So turns out I had a bit to get off my chest, I hope no one found that too boring

SoftTalker 2y ago

Well he has done pretty well with that belief so far. Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink…

tzs 2y ago
All of those were full of traditional experts.
jodrellblank 2y ago
Curiously both Tesla and SpaceX benefit enormously from government spending[1] to the tune of almost $5Bn of taxpayer money. And then Tesla paid zero income tax last year[2] and none in 2021 either[3]. And now Musk is taking the position that the government spends too much taxpayer's money and needs to be torn down. Musk also did very well by plainly lying (which I would call market manipulation) about Tesla products; the Cybertruck video where Musk claimed it was faster than a Porsche while towing a Porsche was a lie[4]. A 2016 video demonstrating self-driving was faked[5]. Musk's statements about what the Tesla Semi can do were not just generous marketing, they are impossible[6], claiming 500 miles range and PepsiCo reports they can't even carry a load of Lay's potato chips for 500 miles and on heavier loads they can only travel 100 miles. Faked self parking videos, faked SolarCity videos, faked Optimus humanoid robot videos, faked CyberTruck towing an F150 video[7]. The Optimus robots at the October 2024 event were remote controled and remote-voiced by humans[8]. They walk like Honda Asimo robots walked 25 years ago but they're being spun like they are Boston Dynamics killers. Musk's talk of tentacle arms to recharge Teslas never turned into anything (though BYD in China has had public automated electric-car battery-swap stations for years now). Musk's talk of full self driving first promised, what, 2017? turned out to be misleading with cars not even having the hardware to do a good job of it. Musk's early plans for completely automated Model 3 factory faded very quickly with them reverting to humans in marquees. Yes Musk has done pretty well with investors letting him get away with a lot of broken promises and taxpayers letting him get away with a lot of subsidies and customers letting him get away with a lot of shoddy products. Lucky for him the Tesla engineers were competent true believers(tm) and delivered decent Model 3 and Model Y but that should only give them a similar valuation to other car companies, shouldn't it? [1] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201... [2] https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2024/ https://itep.org/tesla-reported-zero-federal-income-tax-in-2... [3] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla-zero-tax-bill/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/10/investing/elon-musk-tesla... [4] https://www.insidehook.com/autos/no-one-exposes-elon-musk-lies-like-jason-fenske-engineering-explained https://www.insidehook.com/autos/no-one-exposes-elon-musk-li... [5] https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-promoting-self-driving-technology-report-2023-1?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-faked-video-in-2016-pr... [6] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-semi-gets-debunked-again-this-time-on-youtube-twice-207056.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-semi-gets-debunked-... [7] https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstration-videos/ https://dawnproject.com/teslas-history-of-faking-demonstrati... [8] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/13/24269131/tesla-optimus-robots-human-controlled-cybercab-we-robot-event https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/13/24269131/tesla-optimus-r...

firstlunchables 2y ago

Touting “first principals” is a way of revealing “I’m too dumb to understand other people’s work.” Like if you can’t understand higher level concepts and have to start on your own from Euclid, it just means you aren’t very smart but think you can be another Maxwell just by thinkin’ real hard. It’s a joke.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Not necessarily. Other peoples' work can assume what "everyone knows"; starting from first principles can (sometimes) show up where that's the case. That doesn't mean you're not very smart; it means you're aware enough to know that some limitations that aren't real creep in to the body of knowledge of a field. Or it can be just arrogance. (In fact, even when it's reasonable, it probably also contains some arrogance...)
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  I am in agreement with you. The OP is overstated. I have heard Musk interviewed a few times. When asked to explain more about his phase "first principles", he usually talks about (paraphrase) "delete as many things as possible". It is an interesting way to think about project planning. At a bare minimum, he has created several incredibly successful businesses in his lifetime, so he must be doing something right.
  - beeforpork 2y ago
    > At a bare minimum, he has created several incredibly successful businesses in his lifetime, so he must be doing something right. No, this is a common fallacy. The main reason to get crazy rich and successful is statistics: be lucky. I.e., accidentally do the successful things. And usually starting rich helps, so you have the opportunities. Crazy success is not a measure for capability. There is no correlation. Yes, it is sad, so despite this, the fallacy is a great motivation for many.
meowkit 2y ago
Principles. Its about assuming most people operate on dogma and heuristics. This is extremely true in my opinion. By making this assumption, you dispel bad practices and behaviors that might have built up within an organization. Even more importantly you can reveal why certain chesterton’s fences exist.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

>much of this stuff can be figured out from first principals without much need of traditional experts. I agree with him. Corruption often get a pass when covered in layers of legalize.