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It is really really concerning to me how seemingly thoughtless these cuts are to the actual stated goals. As stated below, this org ran at a $0 cost from full c
by carlgreene 2y ago
It is really really concerning to me how seemingly thoughtless these cuts are to the actual stated goals. As stated below, this org ran at a $0 cost from full cost recovery through consulting services to other orgs. Sure you could argue that's not truly $0, it's not. But it is not a bloated cost-center that needs to be cut.
Just today on the All In podcast I heard Jason Calcanis suggest that the USPS go down to one delivery day per week because no one uses it? The unbelievable part is he was genuine and thought it was an intelligent thing to say. For reference the USPS delivers over 100B, yes billion, parcels per year.
The disconnect between the people who are running the show, and those who are in the ear's of those running the show is scary.
- blitzar 2y agoIf you have only just noticed that the stars of the "All In Podcast" are intellectually deficient then you haven't been paying attention.
- imadierich 2y ago[dead]
- gigatexal 2y agoYup. They’re as out of touch as any other willfully arrogant rich guy. It’s pretty depressing because tech billions seem to be the king makers now so we gotta listen to what they have to say. SMH.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- naijaboiler 2y agoOnly people who have never read history sign up to be kingmakers. Just about every single time in history, the made king when he has consolidated enough power will turn against the “kingmakers”. It is inevitable
- ncallaway 2y agoThe thing is they aren't intellectually deficient. They are deliberately spreading propaganda, to try and make an oligarchic takeover of the United States seem more palatable to the masses. They are working to secure the conditions for themselves that the French royalty and elite had in 1788, while preventing the masses from reacting how they did in France. So, no, I don't believe that they're intellectually deficient. They're just liars.
- imadierich 2y ago[dead]
- iyn 2y agoI've too been thinking along these lines lately. A month ago I would think it's an alarmist/overblown to frame the situation in such a way but simply looking at the actions and ignoring the "justification"/propaganda must result in updating the model - it's indeed oligarchic takeover.
- groestl 2y agoCould be both?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- afavour 2y agoI think they’re intellectually incurious rather than deficient. They’re not dumb people. But they’re so convinced of their own genius that despite knowing nothing about how government actually works they are still convinced they know how to fix it.
- disgruntledphd2 2y agoI mean, it's like a pastiche of naive startup founders meeting the reality of the industry they're trying to disrupt.
- bearjaws 2y agoI have been telling a friend of mine for 5 years that these guys are not that smart and actually borderline grifters. He recently admitted he stopped listening 6 months ago due to how out of touch they were...
- encomiast 2y agoThis is so true. I recently listened to Lex Fridman's Marc Andreessen interview and all I could think was, this guy doesn't actually know how government, laws, and regulations work. Like _totally_ clueless and he's pontificating on the subject like he's a founding father.
- arp242 2y agoMarc Andreessen said that anyone putting brakes on AI is guilty of murder. Completely coincidentally, Andreessen stands to make billion from AI. He is a deeply unserious person not worth listening to.
- scarab92 2y agoMarc is extremely intelligent, and he is an idealist. Idealists can run into implementation difficulties, but having listened to his interview, I don't recall anything that would be impossible to implement given the current make up of the three branches. Can you elaborate on a proposal of his that you think is unworkable?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _r4nc 2y agoI found Marc to be totally insufferable in that episode too. It was blatantly obvious that everything he said was a weak, nonsensical attempt to justify his (and Elon’s) obvious goals of destroying government infrastructure to enable privatization, and removing any and all regulatory oversight so the billionaire class can further exploit America’s labor and natural resources. Both of which do nothing to help the ordinary American but do a lot to enrich the billionaires.
- soared 2y agoIf anyone believes the cuts were for efficiency and cost reduction, that belief simply cannot be true anymore.
- dmd 2y agoThe goal is to dismantle the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- sneak 2y ago[flagged]
- someoldgit 2y agoIn its governmental guise, Patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business. Trump is the capo di tutti capi, the overboss of all overbosses, the Godfather. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption...
- kentm 2y agoYou only have to look at a high level breakdown of the budget to know that DOGE is not serious. You are not going to get trillions in saving by cutting administrative overhead in various departments.
- 2y ago
- ronbenton 2y agoThe way to square this is to realize that the stated goals are not the real goals. USDS and 18F were doing the work that DOGE purports to want to do. Less than 2 months into the administration, they have been gutted and terminated, respectively.
- dagelf 2y ago[flagged]
- frostburg 2y agoDid they have unfettered power? This is obviously a non sequitur.
- kristjansson 2y ago"I've pinned the gas and feathered the brakes but I'm not slowing down. Clearly my brakes are broken" Also US national debt is literally on live billboards, get your numbers right if you're going to be a troll.
- pton_xd 2y ago[flagged]
- api 2y agoThat's mostly from benefits, defense, unfunded tax cuts, and entitlements, not the type of spending DOGE claims to be addressing. Go look at a broad summary of Federal spending categories, then look at the history of the deficit under the last four or five Presidential administrations. DOGE is about conducting an ideological party purge of the government bureaucracy. Overall I predict it will cost money, since it'll cause a lot of things to break and/or be replaced by more expensive contractors.
- exe34 2y agosounds like something for Congress to work through isn't it?
- 2y ago
- woah 2y agoI would love to only receive one delivery of junk mail per week
- kristjansson 2y agoYes of course, your personal, subjective experience of the USPS is exactly and entirely representative of everyone's experience and use of the USPS.
- School-Cotton 2y agoThe point of the cuts is not cost reduction. It’s to punish the federal bureaucracy, which the populist right perceives as ideologically opposed to themselves.
- rayiner 2y ago[flagged]
- bearjaws 2y agoYeah hes the victim, definitely didn't do anythin to warrant the reaction in 2017...
- School-Cotton 2y agoTheir effective resistance is why the damage done by the first Trump administration was limited. Democracy is not an end in itself. We’re better off with more power in the hands of the bureaucracy and less in the hands of populist politicians.
- rayiner 2y ago[flagged]
- sympil 2y agoYou think Citizen’s United was a good ruling. You think the Voting Rights Act hasn’t been gutted despite thousands of polling stations shutting down. You think there was some bureaucratic state plotting against the executive despite no evidence. Your link is an article about people taking Project 2025 and Trump at their word and trying to plan accordingly. You have no objecticity. Your logic is horribly flawed. You are the problem.
- rayiner 2y ago> You think there was some bureaucratic state plotting against the executive despite no evidence. What more evidence do you need than a WaPo article talking about federal workers that declared they would resist Trump’s policies? > Your link is an article about people taking Project 2025 and Trump at their word and trying to plan accordingly. The article is from February 2017. And “trying to plan” what? > You have no objecticity. Your logic is horribly flawed. You are the problem Let me ask you a question. You agree that, since Trump won the election, federal employees should work just as hard implementing Project 2025 as they did for Biden, including coming up with creative legal theories like Biden did for student loan forgiveness. Right?
- mullingitover 2y ago> Jason Calcanis suggest that the USPS go down to one delivery day per week because no one uses it It seems like there are two possible reasons he could've made a statement like this: - He is utterly detached from reality and how the world works, shocking for someone who is at such an elevated position in industry. Borderline disabled. - He is stating this dishonestly, not because he believes it but to signal to other right-wing reactionary zealots in his peer group that he would support dismantling the most critical institutions in his society in order to enrich members of his tiny class at the expense of everyone else. I'm inclined to believe it's the latter.
- itsanaccount 2y agoYou ever wonder if it is a specific ...I'll call it "business" culture for lack of a better term, like the one around posting on this site, that leads you to have to give credit to these people presuming good faith? Its almost like to exist in the tech space is to cultivate an intentional naivety about how power works and who has it that is being exploited to run cover as truly bad actors accomplish their goals.
- miltonlost 2y agoOkay, now that these are clearly against the stated goals, you must then ask and answer for yourself: what are DOGE's unstated goals? By looking at Musk's tweets about it being a "far-left" group (plus his two Nazi salutes) and DOGE's emphasis on cutting DEI/sexual and racial minority programs, the unstated goals are clear and loud. If you don't look for the unstated goals and only listen to people's words rather than their actions, you're going to be blindsided by a lot more cruelty and not see it coming.
- reaperducer 2y agoDOGE's emphasis on cutting DEI/sexual and racial minority programs And now gutting the agency that enforced basic employment laws. Say goodbye to the 40-hour work week.
- invig 2y agoYou can make up absolutely anything and call it an unstated goal.
- gkoberger 2y agoThe goal isn’t to make financial cuts. If it was… well, you wouldn’t start here. I bet 18F easily pays for itself in shared eng resources, reduced support and similar things. The goal is to destroy the US government, so it can be privatized and sold off. Same as what happened in Russia.
- geoka9 2y agoThe goal is to dismantle the system (of checks and balances) so that it's not in the way of becoming an authoritarian regime. When this is your goal, you realize Russia is not your enemy, it's your biggest ally.
- rayiner 2y agoThere’s no “checks and balances” within the executive branch. What we have now is an undemocratic regime where the executive branch is permanently controlled by a city that voted 91-6 for the losing candidate. It’s like those crosswalk buttons that aren’t connected to anything. No matter how people vote, the government just gives us more immigration and more globalism. E.g. No presidential candidate has ever run on a platform of more immigration. Support for increasing immigration hasn’t topped 35% in decades. Yet the foreign born population has grown from 5% to 15% since 1970. Nobody voted for that. Who did it?
- geoka9 2y ago> There’s no “checks and balances” within the executive branch. My comment was more general. > What we have now is an undemocratic regime where the executive branch is permanently controlled by a city that voted 91-6 for the losing candidate. The alternative will be an undemocratic regime where the executive "branch" controls all the other ones in perpetuity. EDIT: Sigh... To me, this is obvious, as I've personally witnessed it happen in several different countries, not to mention historical examples. Worrying about H1B and similar right now is like worrying about hanging the family portrait in the best way possible while the house is on fire. Note: I would be happy to be proven wrong and I hope you revisit these threads in a few years to see if you have changed your opinion about MAGA (I will surely do).
- api 2y agoNot broadly a fan of what this admin is doing, but re: USPS: my family gets one, maybe two important pieces of mail a year. We get several pieces of worthless junk mail every day. Virtually everything the USPS delivers goes instantly into the trash. The same is true for my company. In fact I'm not sure we received one piece of physical mail in the past year of any consequence. Obviously this isn't true for everyone, but some reduction in frequency of delivery could save a lot of money. Either that or raise the cost and kill junk mail.
- Eisenstein 2y agoDo you think that the USPS pays deliver junk mail?
- rkagerer 2y agoDo you live in a rural or urban area? How many Amazon packages do you get, and items from other carriers?
- matthewdgreen 2y agoIf the USPS is delivering junk mail below the cost of delivery, that would be bad and they should immediately stop that. But I would be willing to bet that's not happening. I don't like junk mail one bit, but it's obviously a profit center and I assume that revenue defrays the cost of other services.
- rufus_foreman 2y agoThis is hilarious where people get to the point that they will defend junk mail because it suits their political purposes. Junk mail is bad. Full stop.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoJunk mail is bad. But voters going around thinking that taxpayers are funding junk mail is much worse. If large fractions of the citizenry can’t apply common sense and develop a working mental model of how the world works, we’re all dead. And I don’t mean that figuratively.
- robmerki 2y agoMy most prominent memory of Jason was seeing him park his Tesla in the “no parking” zone in front of the building where his startup conference was happening. My boss at the time thought it was “so badass”, but it was so obviously an arrogant elitist LARP by an insecure man. The older I get, the more I see through this awful behavior.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- steezeburger 2y agoThat's such a dumb thing to think is badass too haha
- insane_dreamer 2y agoI attended a bigwig event where Jason gave a speech; I’d heard of him but hadn’t followed his podcast or seen him talk before. I was dumbfounded by the arrogance and lack of concern for people. It left me with a very negative impression of the tech bro scene and Musk (who he mentioned he was buddies with this) and this was pre MAGA-Musk.
- robmerki 2y agoExactly the same reaction. I realized these kind of people don’t actually care about technology. They’re not engineers. They don’t love the industry or the impressive human achievement. They see tech as a vehicle to power. It’s all a power game.
- furyofantares 2y ago> For reference the USPS delivers over 100B, yes billion, parcels per year. This must be pieces of mail per year? To me "parcel" means more like a package. Some web searching confirms this and also says a little over half of that is marketing mail. 60B pieces of spam per year. And I don't know about you, but excluding marketing mail, I'd say about 90% of the remainder still goes directly in the bin for me. And even though I open probably less than 5% of what is sent to me, maybe less than 1%, STILL much of that could have been an email. I don't doubt the USPS provides a whole lot of value and I don't want them to go down to 1 day per week or anything. But that 100B number looks like it includes a whole lot of negative, zero, or low value items.
- shermantanktop 2y agoIs the USPS creating that junk mail? Or are they just delivering it? Put another way, if you kill the USPS, don’t you think that junk mail will still find a way to get to you?
- wat10000 2y agoIt would become substantially more expensive and thus substantially less in volume. Which indirectly shows the efficiency and value of the USPS. The fact that they can get stuff to people so cheaply is something nobody else can replicate.
- reaperducer 2y agothat 100B number looks like it includes a whole lot of negative, zero, or low value items. Clearly not an American, or an adult, or he would have needed the mail for things like: - Receive unemployment tax statements from the state - Life insurance forms. Especially converting a group policy into an individual policy. - IRS notices - Utility company refunds - Receive insurance policy documents - Receive notice of security breach at hospital - Receive bills for unexpected services like ambulance and medical - Receive license plates - Receive vehicle registration - Auto and homeowners insurance policy documents - Receive checks for credits from utilities after you move - My company got a check for $95 million in the mail from the IRS - Reimbursement checks from insurance companies - Certain correspondence with the I.R.S. can only be done by letter. No phone calls. No online. - Get hurt at work? Paperwork from insurance and from the state comes in paper form, not TikTok.
- usaphp 2y ago> For reference the USPS delivers over 100B, yes billion, parcels per year. 90% of my mail lately is spam coupons and credit card offers.
- asveikau 2y agoGreat for you. Back in the real world, businesses rely heavily on the mail working.
- amlib 2y agoI don't know what the actual share of junk mail is for physical or even e-mail, but let's suppose 90% of most people's e-mail in the entire world is spam, should all e-mail providers only deliver email, be it spam or not, once a day?
- WD-42 2y agoThat’s what it’s always been. That’s what pays for you to have the ability to send a letter across the country to some rural area for 30 cents. That’s how it works.
- rsynnott 2y agoThat’s nice. Largely irrelevant unless you’re the only person who exists, though.
- fhdkweig 2y agoYou can add yourself to the opt-out prescreen list to remove credit card offers for a 5-year period. If you change your mind, you can opt back in at any time. https://www.optoutprescreen.com/ https://www.optoutprescreen.com/
- jltsiren 2y agoIf you have dealt with countries like Russia, one idea that can be useful for understanding them is oligarchic capitalism. That the purpose of the economy is to benefit the elites. That the share of wealth that goes to the common people is an overhead necessary to keep the system running. Which, like all overheads, should be kept to a reasonable minimum. Oligarchic societies do not try to maximize the overall economy. They try to maximize the wealth the elites can extract. If there is an alternative where the overall economy is 2x bigger but the elites receive 10% less in absolute terms, it's clearly a worse outcome from their perspective. From that perspective, government services should not be evaluated based on their outputs or their impact on government efficiency or economic growth. They should be evaluated based on their impact on the elites. If they don't benefit the elites, they are overhead that can be cut if necessary. Oligarchs do not care about the economy in the sense it is traditionally understood in the West.
- ghthor 2y agoBecause the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama chain of governments wasn’t oligarchy capitalist… y’all are so programmed I can’t with this
- insane_dreamer 2y agoSure they were. But this is much more overt; if you can be open about it then you can do so much more.
- nodesocket 2y agoHe also had a good idea of making people who want USPS pay a very minimal surcharge (a few bucks a year) to stop the hemorrhaging of tax payers money by the USPS.
- Cornbilly 2y agohttps://www.uspsoig.gov/focus-areas/did-you-know/do-my-tax-dollars-pay-postal-service https://www.uspsoig.gov/focus-areas/did-you-know/do-my-tax-d...
- nodesocket 2y agoIn 2024, the United States Postal Service (USPS) reported a net loss of $9.5 billion, an increase from the $6.5 billion loss in fiscal year 2023. So, who's paying for the losses then?
- Cornbilly 2y agoThe take loans from the Treasury to cover the shortfall.
- jkestner 2y ago80% of this hemorrhaging is due to the prefunding pensions requirement that Congress put upon the USPS. And it’s a service! It’s not supposed to make money. The government is not an investment firm for taxpayers. You might as well ask when we’re going to scale back the military. We hardly use it and it’s running at a loss!
- rezonant 2y agoFirstly, since 1971 the Postal Service has operated independently, receiving no taxpayer money (other than about $100 million allocated by Congress to offset the cost of providing free mailing for blind people, overseas mailing, etc). Until 2006, the Postal Service was entirely self sufficient, with no debt and no need for taxpayer funding. However, in 2006 Congress passed a law requiring the Postal Service to prefund future retiree's health benefits (75 years in advance), which costs $5.6 billion per year. By 2012, the Postal Service hit its $15 billion debt limit, directly because of this. The Postal Service itself does not lose money, and does not require funding, because it sells postage-- mailing is not free. The insane policy that Congress has foisted on it does lose taxpayer money, by requiring it to do something as far as I know no other organization does or is required to do. If you want to fix the budget deficit at the Post Office, simply get that law repealed.
- laiwejrtilawj 2y ago[flagged]
- imgabe 2y ago> For reference the USPS delivers over 100B, yes billion, parcels per year. What percentage of those are things people wanted or needed? The USPS is a valuable service, but it is largely funded by spam. 99% of mail goes directly into the trash.
- steego 2y agoYour claim doesn't seem to reflect the reality. Marketing mail only accounts for 19% of total revenue. Shipping and packages account for 41% and First-Class mail is about 32%. https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2024/1114-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2024-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2024/1114-... Feel free to reply with your sources.
- imgabe 2y agoThe source is called open your mailbox and look at what’s in there. There is a massive industry designing, printing, shipping around pieces of paper that just get thrown away for no purpose. Some of them are outright scams (“Important Information! Open Immediately!” and it’s just an ad). This is tremendously wasteful.
- blitzar 2y agoWhen a individual or a company is not free to pay to post anything they please I am concerned that Americans are retreating from freedom.
- Breza 2y agoNow I'm imagining someone mailing postcards to a dozen friends every month saying "We live in a totalitarian dictatorship!" Once the postcards stop appearing, you know you're on the way to the message becoming true.
- steego 2y ago[flagged]
- hayst4ck 2y agoThe head of the office of Management and Budget said on video, that you can watch: We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.
- danny_codes 2y agoHe’s a Christian nationalist. He thinks the Feds doing normal things like science, environmental protection, etc, are not “Christian” enough, or at least somehow are in support of an anti-Christian movement. He therefore wants to dismantle the government so as to reduce the anti-Christian elements of government. A If that sounds like conspiracy level crazy, it’s because it is.
- vunderba 2y agoHe's also on the record as suggesting that the US should effectively prioritize "Christian" immigrants. Just a super compassionate person who really embodies the spirit of The New Colossus.
- jcgrillo 2y ago> If that sounds like conspiracy level crazy, it’s because it is. Stating the facts of this situation makes one sound like a conspiracy nut, which is strategic. It's part of the fascist project of reshaping the perception of reality. We're all supposed to (and over time we will, if it's left unchecked) question our own lying eyes and begin believing it when they say things like "the sky isn't blue in fact it's green".
- usernomdeguerre 2y agoDo you have a source for that video? I'd like to share it.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nunez 2y agoJason probably means he doesn't use it for large deliveries, which isn't reality, since I believe they move the most parcels in the US (and probably the world). Because of this, suggesting a single delivery day doesn't scale at all, even if you regionalize these days, unless USPS moves to delivery hubs, which would further erode quality of life for rural people (many of whom have limited mail service as it is) and probably make deliveries to really remote locations (some parts of Alaska; mountainous areas; etc.) impossible. If he suggested this to make it easier for his FDX and UPS stonks to go up, he probably isn't aware that these carriers often use USPS for last-mile delivery because they are the ONLY carrier that have the infra to deliver to the aforementioned destinations. No private company will attempt to replicate this infra, as doing so would require billions of dollars of investment for very little ROI, and why spend big money improving the lives of citizens when the AI furnace needs more fuel? USPS is fucking incredible for the value, and it sucks that conservatives are so invested in destroying it.
- yummypaint 2y agoIt's also directly constitutionally mandated. Given how important free communication has always been understood to be, I would argue the intention behind that would extend to telecom/internet as a utility as well. Yet we keep getting collectively burned by gifting for-profit companies taxpayer money to build infrastructure that should by all rights be public.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fishcrackers 2y ago[dead]
- nektro 2y agoit's almost like they were never fit to govern
- dragonwriter 2y ago> It is really really concerning to me how seemingly thoughtless these cuts are to the actual stated goals. That's because the actual goals are not the stated goals; the whole thing is part of a well-documented plan to destroy the federal civil service and much of the government so it can be rebuilt as a partisan patronage operation.
- mnewme 2y agoWe got tricked into thinking those billionaires are smart, they are not