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A bit tangent, and since I’m an outsider who doesn’t live in the states and have no skin in the game — my understanding is, they will do literally anything to m

• kelnos 2y ago
  > Good luck to you, guys! Unfortunately I think we're going to need a lot more than luck. But I appreciate the sentiment.
• maxerickson 2y ago
  Succeed at what? For example, they canceled invasive species control programs for the Great Lakes. Is it a success that they saved a modest amount of money, while letting the condition of the lakes further erode?
  • PartiallyTyped 2y ago
    Didn’t they cancel some cancer treatment research projects? I am sure the Head of the health department — one that doesn’t consider measles a problem — has given his stamp of approval for that, after all, he has a whole 0 years in all tangentially related fields combined!
    • dragonwriter 2y ago
      > Didn’t they cancel some cancer treatment research projects? “Cancel” suggest more decision-making than appears to have happened, at least in the research projects I am aware of—a number had to be canceled by those running them because the unprecedented blanket payment pause notionally to evaluate programs existing programs made it impossible for them to continue operating.
      • PartiallyTyped 2y ago
        No. They actually cancelled it. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/doge-cuts-911-related-cancer-research-funding/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/doge-cuts-911-related-c...
        • dragonwriter 2y ago
          Okay, yeah, the multiple ones I had heard about were NIH-funded, I had missed this at CDC (there’s been a lot of stuff going on.)
  • tokioyoyo 2y ago
    Whatever they promised and people voted for by believing in those promises. People wanted a strong man, and they basically got it. I understand markets can be irrational blah blah, but still surprised how people with money aren’t shipping it away or storing it somewhere more safe looking at the current situation.
    • maxerickson 2y ago
      I would frame that as being motivated to satisfy their base, vs being motivated to succeed. Success usually has a positive connotation, and they don't seem to be doing a particularly good job if you take the "reduce the size of the government" goal at face value (they are making messes everywhere they go, with the government shrinking slower than normal attrition...).
      • TwoPhonesOneKid 2y ago
        Their bases in this context is also one or two men, not voters.
        • EasyMark 2y ago
          Their base is the MAGA gestalt. They like you imply do follow the will of one man however, so that's not far from the truth, but they also have a guaranteed 30% of the voting population no matter what the gestalt Prime does to them or the USA
      • tokioyoyo 2y ago
        Success is subjective and is defined by common people’s expectation in this scenario.
    • drivingmenuts 2y ago
      They also wanted people who wouldn't spend money on "stupid programs", which is basically anything there isn't an immediately obvious reason for. A lot of work that government programs do is data-gathering and preparation for other, more obviously helpful programs. But these clowns don't seem to understand that, at all. They also don't seem to understand that a lot of work isn't profit-oriented (which is the only thing the Trump administration believes in). Some programs exist because they were a benefit at the time (and yes, those need review) and may still be of use, but they always were intended to be a service for everyone, even if some people didn't use. them. No one seems to understand the concept of government service. It's government business or nothing.
  • throw0101c 2y ago
    > Succeed at what? Dismantling government. Look up the "network state": * https://thenetworkstate.com/preamble https://thenetworkstate.com/preamble > All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work. > The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said. […] > The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.” * https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration-broligarchs-musk-zuckerberg-bezos-thiel https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration... Also: * "Why big tech turned right": https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezos-zuckerberg-democrats-biden https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezo... * "The crypto bros who dream of crowdfunding a new country": https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo Have you ever read cyberpunk, especially William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (starting with Neuromancer) where corporations are the government? Basically that.
    • rwyinuse 2y ago
      Yep, here's a pretty good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no Indeed I believe that the current administration's end-goal is the collapse of the US as we know it. Thiel and other billionaires need the collapse to create their own cyberpunk states inside current US territory. The remaining territory will be probably taken by Project 2025 guys, who want to rule it as a Christian theocracy / far-right utopia.
      • deltarholamda 2y ago
        Another possibility is that the uber-rich techbros can see that, if we keep heading the way we're going, the whole thing comes crashing down. We've been speedrunning a far-left utopia for quite a while now, and it's not going well. Whether it's some kind of currency collapse, internal civil war, or something else, this is a death slide towards something bad. Assuming that's the explanation, then radical change isn't surprising. How radical can be argued, but turning the rudder on the ship of state can't be.
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Succeed at what? Being a distraction from the fact that Trump is raising taxes on average Americans (tariffs) while trying to blow out the deficit to the tune of $2 trillion to finance tax cuts to the rich.
  • breckenedge 2y ago
    Source? The only news I’ve heard is that they fired 12 of 85 staffers and prohibited hiring seasonal workers, which was then rescinded a few days later. https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/federal-firings-could-wreak-havoc-on-great-lakes-fishery/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/federal-firings-coul... Not to attack you personally, but I’ve noticed there is a lot of hyperbole here based on dramatic headlines, extrapolation based on feeling rather than facts, so important but difficult to stay informed.
    • maxerickson 2y ago
      Oh good, they are just arbitrarily risking it being ineffective. My bad. I read a similar article to the one you link that I think didn't have the numbers, just talked about cutting the staff of the two locations.
    • brookst 2y ago
      From that article: > Cutting back the control program by one-sixth would allow over one million lamprey to survive, McClinchey estimated. Those lampreys would eat nearly 5 million pounds of fish, equalling $105 million in lost economic output and potential, far outstripping the cost of the workers’ salaries.
    • jmull 2y ago
      Where's the hyperbole you're complaining about? The comment you're responding to says "...while letting the condition of the lakes further erode", which the article you linked to supports. > ...extrapolation based on feeling rather than facts... 12 of 85 is a fact. It's basic logic to estimate the effect of this. The administrator in the best position to understand the impact of this has provided an analysis: "Cutting back the control program by one-sixth would allow over one million lamprey to survive, McClinchey estimated. Those lampreys would eat nearly 5 million pounds of fish, equalling $105 million in lost economic output and potential, far outstripping the cost of the workers’ salaries." What's your basis for dismissing this as feelings? It appears irrational.
      • zamadatix 2y ago
  • asnyder 2y ago
    It's obvious isn't it? Owning the Libs!!!
• philistine 2y ago
  A conservative movement has no end goal. The dismantling of the government will never be over for them. The point is destroying progress, not a specific government size.
• EasyMark 2y ago
  I think they will declare mission accomplished. MAGAs will swallow it like it's ambrosia of the gods, people who voted didn't support him as a messiah will shrug and hope for tax breaks, the rest of us know it's a grift.
• Aurornis 2y ago
  > my understanding is, they will do literally anything to make sure DOGE succeeds, because a failure is basically unacceptable They have shown over and over that they are after a good story, not good results. They’re going for shock factor and they’re pumping out propaganda at an alarming rate. We’ve seen so many hyperbolic claims of rampant fraud with zero evidence. At the same time, they’ve had to remove the biggest wins from their public DOGE leaderboard because they were found to be incorrect (some might say fraudulent claims). One of their biggest wins was discovered to be an error because someone put it into the DOGE leaderboard as billions instead of millions. On off-by-1000 error in one of their top claims to success is no small matter. Numerous other claims have been shown to account for entire contract amounts, even though they only cancelled the remaining balance of the contract. They don’t care about facts. They care about what they can convince enough people to believe without getting caught.
  • qgin 2y ago
    They know what they want to cut and are counting on finding enough seuface-level-bad-sounding sound bites to justify what they were already going to do.
  • TrapLord_Rhodo 2y ago
    >Numerous other claims have been shown to account for entire contract amounts, even though they only cancelled the remaining balance of the contract. They are building this live and it's been a month as a side quest. They have fixed those issues that you have said, and have been updating the website, fixing different pricing, etc. etc. every single day. They have not been preparing for months... that's not how system integration works... They post literally daily about their savings. https://doge.gov/ https://doge.gov/
    • hobs 2y ago
      You're right we should give the people slashing budgets without thought or care more space to build their website showing they have no idea what's going on.
    • tokioyoyo 2y ago
• rsynnott 2y ago
  > my understanding is, they will do literally anything to make sure DOGE succeeds, because a failure is basically unacceptable. Not sure I buy that. My general expectation is that once there’s a big, major problem which annoys the general public, Musk will be thrown to the wolves. See Trump’s previous go round; very few of his people stayed in favour for the whole administration.
• jmull 2y ago
  What's the benchmark for success, I wonder? It's not that hard to spend less money, but will the government still be doing the things we want it to do effectively? There doesn't appear to be a plan, just a bunch of actions. It looks like we're achieving chaos, not efficiency.
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > Targeting ex-employees of successful product companies and putting them in charge (especially the ones with a lot of money, but a bit lost because they want can’t find meaning in life) there was a post a couple of months back on HN from such a person who worked with DOGE for a bit
  • throwaway173738 2y ago
    And?