5 ms·

> Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda I (and many others) have worked for, contracted for, interacted with, and/or closely obs

> Reflexive "ugh govt" is a result of decades of Reagan-ite propaganda I (and many others) have worked for, contracted for, interacted with, and/or closely observed government for decades. The only “reflexive” thing here is your argument that people who disagree with the you are the victims of propaganda. You can certainly quibble with the details on how to deliver government efficiency (and I highly encourage people to sincerely scrutinize any efforts to do so - it should produce better results), but there are good and valid reality-based reasons that the “DOGE” mission has broad support.

alephnerd 2y ago
There's no denying that there's bloat, but going in with a chainsaw is not a conducive or efficient way to reduce bloat in an organization. If you want to use the "private sector lense" (which I do not think is valid for a govenenent bureaucracy), there's a reason why when I've participated in M&A events, we would spend a year doing due diligence and understanding the organizational and financial structure before initiating an event. By haphazardly doing these kinds of initiatives without even understanding regulations and laws means any potential savings will be burnt in litigation and cleaning up messes.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Indeed. The chainsaw approach will only produce an even less effective civil service, and one in constant crisis. If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. You start by motivating people to improve. Which you don't do by accusing them of graft, corruption and incompetence. It's all very disingenuous.
  - blactuary 2y ago
    Every accusation is a confession. Elon and his band of criminals know that if they were in government they would try to get a make work job and grift, direct money to their own businesses and friends, etc, so they assume that all civil servants are like that
    - vpribish 2y ago
      They are also performing for a constituency who like believing that the government is their enemy. It's straight from the authoritarian playbook : claim the government is broken, get into power and break the government, replace it all with your own organization and declare victory.
  - Lionga 2y ago
    How do you "start by motivating people to improve"? Cause all the inefficiency at best, corruption at worst and all in between is there not randomly because it serves the motivation of the people working there.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      If you actually have evidence of corruption, charges should be laid. If all you have is insinuations and hearsay... Well, can't help you. But one does not run a decent poultry farm by putting foxes in charge of the hen house.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    >If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. There are really two type if inefficiencies being conflated here. That of the workers, and that of the organizations. For the organization, firing does nothing. You have to start by reducing the scope and simplifying the legislation of those organizations. E.g fix the tax code, eliminate the department of education, streamline EPA objectives. For the worker incentive, this is really a classic public sector union debate, and should be treated as such.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      For the first time in a long time the GOP has control over all branches of gov't. So if there were policy and organizational changes they wanted to make, they now have the power to do it, through passing laws. But they're not doing that. Which really draws attention to the fact that it's not the manner in which government is being run that is a problem to them. It's government itself.
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        I agree that the GOP has legislative control. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it in the coming years, if anything. Destroying and undermining departments through the executive is easier than redesigning it through the legislative, and I suspect this is why we are seeing the current actions. I'm not sure what you mean by the following statement: >manner in which government is being run that is a problem to them. It's government itself. Where are you drawing the distinction? I imagine someone could disagree with both what government does and what it is.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Reduction of scope is required to decrease cost and waste. Unfortunately, reducing scope and regulation is a legislative problem, not an executive one. Having an government organization underfunded and understaffed to fulfill its mission leads to more waste, both on the public and private side. For example, the solution isnt to fire employees, it is to simplify the tax code.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Unfortunately, reducing scope and regulation is a legislative problem, not an executive one. Exactly!
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    > Reduction of scope is required to decrease cost and waste That doesn't follow at all. Plenty of cost and waste arises while carrying out things that are solidly within the scope of a federal government in the eyes of belief system but anarchism and other forms of extreme heterodoxy. To "provide for the common defense" is literally in the Constitution, yet the DoD is a black hole of funding, while soldiers eat powdered eggs on base.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Fair. I agree that scope is not the only source of waste.
blactuary 2y ago
And so have I. Government is not bad or inefficient by definition, and your anecdotal experience with government does not change that. To believe that government is automatically bad because it is the government is an article of faith, whether or not every single individual has been influenced by propaganda. Government is what we make it. A snapshot in time of your own experience does not define government and its capabilities.
blactuary 2y ago
Also, support for the DOGE mission is entirely orthogonal to DOGE's actual goals and what they are doing so far. Sure, maybe there is broad support for making government more efficient, but that is not in any way what Elon Musk is trying to do. So if there is broad support for DOGE those people are entirely wrong to believe they are aligned with Elon, and entirely wrong about supporting DOGE as the means to achieve their goals. That being the case, these same people cannot be trusted to understand our government and how it functions and where the inefficiencies are. If you support the DOGE mission you do not actually support making the government more efficient, so alluding to that support is a red herring. Worse than a red herring, it shows that their anti-government views are not based in reality and facts.
- dcow 2y ago
  I haven’t seen the main impetus for the layoffs brought up yet: the people let go were unable or unwilling to send an email listing 5 things they accomplished in the last week, twice. People are acting like DOGE is attacking tech support recklessly with a chainsaw. This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals.
  - nosianu 2y ago
    > This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals. What a wild take! Only some of sooo many reports all over the media 5-6 days ago that you somehow missed: "Key US agencies tell staff not to answer Musk email on what they did last week" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo "Elon Musk’s Federal Worker Emails: Agency Leaders Can Decide If Employees Must Reply, White House Says" https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/25/elon-musks-federal-worker-emails-agency-leaders-can-decide-if-employees-must-reply-white-house-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/25/elon-mu... And the latest from today: "Some government employees are instructed — again — to not respond to 5 things email as Musk doubles down" https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-national-security-00002746 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-nati...
tchock23 2y ago
What ‘broad support’ are you referring to? https://www.newsweek.com/doge-support-collapsing-poll-elon-musk-2037140 https://www.newsweek.com/doge-support-collapsing-poll-elon-m...
specialist 2y ago
You're complaining about bureaucrary, not government. All those "seeing like a state" aspects originated in corporations. (Who stole the ideas from the military.) Because corporations had experience governments needed. Is bureaucrary inevitable? A side effect of organizational psychology? I have no clue. But until someone divines a better way to coordinate humans, we just have to suck it up.
nerdponx 2y ago
Recall that we are posting in a thread about DOGE cutting one of the more effective and efficient departments in the federal government. Popular support and good reasons for it notwithstanding, it's clear that the actual mission is not being carried out in good faith.

alephnerd 2y ago

There's no denying that there's bloat, but going in with a chainsaw is not a conducive or efficient way to reduce bloat in an organization. If you want to use the "private sector lense" (which I do not think is valid for a govenenent bureaucracy), there's a reason why when I've participated in M&A events, we would spend a year doing due diligence and understanding the organizational and financial structure before initiating an event. By haphazardly doing these kinds of initiatives without even understanding regulations and laws means any potential savings will be burnt in litigation and cleaning up messes.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Indeed. The chainsaw approach will only produce an even less effective civil service, and one in constant crisis. If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. You start by motivating people to improve. Which you don't do by accusing them of graft, corruption and incompetence. It's all very disingenuous.
- blactuary 2y ago
  Every accusation is a confession. Elon and his band of criminals know that if they were in government they would try to get a make work job and grift, direct money to their own businesses and friends, etc, so they assume that all civil servants are like that
  - vpribish 2y ago
    They are also performing for a constituency who like believing that the government is their enemy. It's straight from the authoritarian playbook : claim the government is broken, get into power and break the government, replace it all with your own organization and declare victory.
- Lionga 2y ago
  How do you "start by motivating people to improve"? Cause all the inefficiency at best, corruption at worst and all in between is there not randomly because it serves the motivation of the people working there.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    If you actually have evidence of corruption, charges should be laid. If all you have is insinuations and hearsay... Well, can't help you. But one does not run a decent poultry farm by putting foxes in charge of the hen house.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  >If you want to actually improve governance (and we really should because it is in fact often quite dysfunctional), you don't come in with the notion that it is intrinsically rotten to the core and the very idea of governance is flawed by nature. There are really two type if inefficiencies being conflated here. That of the workers, and that of the organizations. For the organization, firing does nothing. You have to start by reducing the scope and simplifying the legislation of those organizations. E.g fix the tax code, eliminate the department of education, streamline EPA objectives. For the worker incentive, this is really a classic public sector union debate, and should be treated as such.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    For the first time in a long time the GOP has control over all branches of gov't. So if there were policy and organizational changes they wanted to make, they now have the power to do it, through passing laws. But they're not doing that. Which really draws attention to the fact that it's not the manner in which government is being run that is a problem to them. It's government itself.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I agree that the GOP has legislative control. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it in the coming years, if anything. Destroying and undermining departments through the executive is easier than redesigning it through the legislative, and I suspect this is why we are seeing the current actions. I'm not sure what you mean by the following statement: >manner in which government is being run that is a problem to them. It's government itself. Where are you drawing the distinction? I imagine someone could disagree with both what government does and what it is.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Reduction of scope is required to decrease cost and waste. Unfortunately, reducing scope and regulation is a legislative problem, not an executive one. Having an government organization underfunded and understaffed to fulfill its mission leads to more waste, both on the public and private side. For example, the solution isnt to fire employees, it is to simplify the tax code.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, reducing scope and regulation is a legislative problem, not an executive one. Exactly!
- nerdponx 2y ago
  > Reduction of scope is required to decrease cost and waste That doesn't follow at all. Plenty of cost and waste arises while carrying out things that are solidly within the scope of a federal government in the eyes of belief system but anarchism and other forms of extreme heterodoxy. To "provide for the common defense" is literally in the Constitution, yet the DoD is a black hole of funding, while soldiers eat powdered eggs on base.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Fair. I agree that scope is not the only source of waste.

blactuary 2y ago

And so have I. Government is not bad or inefficient by definition, and your anecdotal experience with government does not change that. To believe that government is automatically bad because it is the government is an article of faith, whether or not every single individual has been influenced by propaganda. Government is what we make it. A snapshot in time of your own experience does not define government and its capabilities.

blactuary 2y ago

Also, support for the DOGE mission is entirely orthogonal to DOGE's actual goals and what they are doing so far. Sure, maybe there is broad support for making government more efficient, but that is not in any way what Elon Musk is trying to do. So if there is broad support for DOGE those people are entirely wrong to believe they are aligned with Elon, and entirely wrong about supporting DOGE as the means to achieve their goals. That being the case, these same people cannot be trusted to understand our government and how it functions and where the inefficiencies are. If you support the DOGE mission you do not actually support making the government more efficient, so alluding to that support is a red herring. Worse than a red herring, it shows that their anti-government views are not based in reality and facts.

dcow 2y ago
I haven’t seen the main impetus for the layoffs brought up yet: the people let go were unable or unwilling to send an email listing 5 things they accomplished in the last week, twice. People are acting like DOGE is attacking tech support recklessly with a chainsaw. This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals.
- nosianu 2y ago
  > This appears to be a targeted cut of insubordinate or redundant individuals. What a wild take! Only some of sooo many reports all over the media 5-6 days ago that you somehow missed: "Key US agencies tell staff not to answer Musk email on what they did last week" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0qrj20g5vo "Elon Musk’s Federal Worker Emails: Agency Leaders Can Decide If Employees Must Reply, White House Says" https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/25/elon-musks-federal-worker-emails-agency-leaders-can-decide-if-employees-must-reply-white-house-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/02/25/elon-mu... And the latest from today: "Some government employees are instructed — again — to not respond to 5 things email as Musk doubles down" https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-national-security-00002746 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/5-things-email-nati...

tchock23 2y ago

What ‘broad support’ are you referring to? https://www.newsweek.com/doge-support-collapsing-poll-elon-musk-2037140 https://www.newsweek.com/doge-support-collapsing-poll-elon-m...

specialist 2y ago

You're complaining about bureaucrary, not government. All those "seeing like a state" aspects originated in corporations. (Who stole the ideas from the military.) Because corporations had experience governments needed. Is bureaucrary inevitable? A side effect of organizational psychology? I have no clue. But until someone divines a better way to coordinate humans, we just have to suck it up.

nerdponx 2y ago

Recall that we are posting in a thread about DOGE cutting one of the more effective and efficient departments in the federal government. Popular support and good reasons for it notwithstanding, it's clear that the actual mission is not being carried out in good faith.