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The thing you see as waste from outside might be the most efficient system possible given the consequences and tons of time it had for evolving. These systems

The thing you see as waste from outside might be the most efficient system possible given the consequences and tons of time it had for evolving. These systems contain huge icebergs of knowledge gained, refined and organized over time. Rooting them like weeds which grow in three days flat is a huge mistake.

enlightenedfool 2y ago
Well, let’s find that with DOGE. DOGE had already revealed things that are so unnecessary for a government to do. Humans can do much better governance than what we do now.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  DOGE is working like a governing board which landed on top of a big corporation, and started reaping things down without understanding "why" part of the equation. Ignoring Chesterton's Fences in the short term might look good on paper, but we have seen how companies enshittified themselves for profits (let's reduce the OPEX part). Doing this to a government will have catastrophic results, and we will watch the slow downfall. It'll be dramatic and painful.
- iterateoften 2y ago
  > let’s find that with DOGE. I think this whole logic of letting an unproven entity come in and destroy a working system to just “find out” if it works is negligent and malicious.
dcow 2y ago
I cannot accept that sending 100B to an NGO where 90-95B ends up in politicians’ pockets and 10-5% ends up as actual aid or whatever is the most efficient system.
- bayindirh 2y ago
  That's corruption and is universally bad. That's nothing to do with efficiency (remember the E in DOGE). Let's not move the goalposts, shall we?
  - dcow 2y ago
    I’m not moving goalposts, that’s what DOGE is attacking. It’s 100% part of efficiency. And it’s absolutely happening. DOGE is addressing “fraud, waste, and abuse”.
    - notahacker 2y ago
      This thread discusses DOGE laying off a small agency that made useful online tools for people to access government functions at much lower costs than private contractors were previously charging the government. It is not obvious that this is an example of "fraud, waste and abuse". Other decisions they have made include laying off anyone unfortunate enough to be on a probationary period because they were recently deemed deserving of promotion or someone recently decided their role was necessary and they were the best candidate, and removing people responsible for nuclear safety before grudgingly admitting they might have been premature in firing people without finding out what they're doing first. This is all stuff DOGE is actually attacking, not hypothetical 100B NGO donation of which 95% had gone to politicians which they pointedly haven't discovered. Although given the current track record for "savings" they have published, if they did "discover it" we'd probably find that it was just an error in the output of their GPT-authored PDF scraper...
      - dcow 2y ago
        None of the individuals working for this agency could provide a list of 5 things they did the prior week, either. The subthread here was talking about waste generally I wasn’t intending to move any goalposts. Ignore fraud. I still think it’s unacceptable for government workers to be insubordinate or absent to the point where they can't provide a weekly standup update when asked. That’s inefficient waste in my book.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  What if that 10% of aid that gets to the actual people prevents something like a multi-trillion dollar ebola pandemic?

enlightenedfool 2y ago

Well, let’s find that with DOGE. DOGE had already revealed things that are so unnecessary for a government to do. Humans can do much better governance than what we do now.

bayindirh 2y ago
DOGE is working like a governing board which landed on top of a big corporation, and started reaping things down without understanding "why" part of the equation. Ignoring Chesterton's Fences in the short term might look good on paper, but we have seen how companies enshittified themselves for profits (let's reduce the OPEX part). Doing this to a government will have catastrophic results, and we will watch the slow downfall. It'll be dramatic and painful.
iterateoften 2y ago
> let’s find that with DOGE. I think this whole logic of letting an unproven entity come in and destroy a working system to just “find out” if it works is negligent and malicious.

dcow 2y ago

I cannot accept that sending 100B to an NGO where 90-95B ends up in politicians’ pockets and 10-5% ends up as actual aid or whatever is the most efficient system.

bayindirh 2y ago
That's corruption and is universally bad. That's nothing to do with efficiency (remember the E in DOGE). Let's not move the goalposts, shall we?
- dcow 2y ago
  I’m not moving goalposts, that’s what DOGE is attacking. It’s 100% part of efficiency. And it’s absolutely happening. DOGE is addressing “fraud, waste, and abuse”.
  - notahacker 2y ago
    This thread discusses DOGE laying off a small agency that made useful online tools for people to access government functions at much lower costs than private contractors were previously charging the government. It is not obvious that this is an example of "fraud, waste and abuse". Other decisions they have made include laying off anyone unfortunate enough to be on a probationary period because they were recently deemed deserving of promotion or someone recently decided their role was necessary and they were the best candidate, and removing people responsible for nuclear safety before grudgingly admitting they might have been premature in firing people without finding out what they're doing first. This is all stuff DOGE is actually attacking, not hypothetical 100B NGO donation of which 95% had gone to politicians which they pointedly haven't discovered. Although given the current track record for "savings" they have published, if they did "discover it" we'd probably find that it was just an error in the output of their GPT-authored PDF scraper...
    - dcow 2y ago
      None of the individuals working for this agency could provide a list of 5 things they did the prior week, either. The subthread here was talking about waste generally I wasn’t intending to move any goalposts. Ignore fraud. I still think it’s unacceptable for government workers to be insubordinate or absent to the point where they can't provide a weekly standup update when asked. That’s inefficient waste in my book.
ceejayoz 2y ago
What if that 10% of aid that gets to the actual people prevents something like a multi-trillion dollar ebola pandemic?