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Reading every thread related to something DOGE is doing reveals the same pattern. Commenters instantly seem to reach two conclusions (or bring them to the tab

Reading every thread related to something DOGE is doing reveals the same pattern. Commenters instantly seem to reach two conclusions (or bring them to the table from preconceived notions): 1- Republican = bad, evil 2- You cannot/should not touch anything in government I won't get into the first because it is objectively stupid. This is just as stupid as people on the right concluding "Democrat = bad, evil". Both polar opposites need to stop being bigoted and use their brains. Living in their respective glass houses they throw stones and shit all over half the country, painting them as evil, stupid, incompetent, etc. This simply isn't true. On the second point. Well, that's an unreasonable position. It say that government is perfect as it is and none of the hundreds of organizations that comprise it and millions of people who run it should ever be expected to do better. Ever. Again, utterly unreasonable. Government should be obligated to go through an audit every N years. You cannot just keep throwing money at it and growing it. That does not solve problems in the private sector and it sure as hell does not in government. I have worked with and sold product to various government groups. From White Sands Missile Test Range to city local entities. Anyone posting comments without having had experience engaging with government entities has no idea what they are talking about. None. I have seen contracts awarded to companies charging double the street price because the person making the decision is so incompetent that they went with the company they thought would cover their ass. These are lazy and expensive decisions made by people who are not qualified to do the job and should not have that job. In other words, they would not have been hired to do that job in the private sector in a million years. The US has serious problems. We need a restructuring of priorities and how we do things or it will be hell in a decade or two. The reason we have to be so assertive today is that this work should have started 25 years ago. It did not. And so the problem is now an order of magnitude greater. This week I spent five days cleaning our area drains. I should have done this ever five years or so. I did not. I have not touched them in 25 years. That's why it took five days. The accumulated crap in those pipes was amazing to see. Solid sticky mud, roots, tennis balls, rocks, lego pieces, garbage bags, etc. This required renting a powerful machine to just rip through stuff as well as a powerful 5000 PSI pressure washer with a 100 ft snake and a nozzle to shred everything in its path. In other words, when you don't keep an eye on things for a long time, the solution tends to be far more "violent" than the case of having kept thing in order with regular checkups (this applies to your health as well).

notahacker 2y ago
Reading every thread related to DOGE reveals the same pattern. Defenders of DOGE, being unable to amount any defence for actual actions the thread is highlighting, have to construct the straw man of arguing that anybody suggesting those actions are spectacularly inept and counterproductive it is thinks that government is unimprovable. P.S. Have plenty of experience selling to inefficient public and private sector entities. Many of them could have used some better decision makers empowered to remove unnecessary barriers. None of them could have benefited from those decisions being made by script kiddies with no professional experience that lack the ability to tell the difference between a million or a billion never mind understand how budgeting works, what a nuclear safety operative does or whether "recently promoted" maybe shouldn't be a firing criteria...
- robomartin 2y ago
  The straw man is pushing the idea that nothing should ever be touched because all of it is essential. Somewhere between don't touch anything and destroy it all is the truth. Finding and fixing problems of this type, whether it is in the private or public domains is difficult and ugly. It never looks good. It never feels good. That's just reality. BTW, I keep reading and hearing derogative terms like "script kiddies" and "20 year olds". What's happened to diversity and inclusion? So, they have to be of a certain age? What's the magical age? And, do they have to come from the same place that created the problems as well? This isn't sensible at all. Here's a reality: The US has been on a self-destructive path for decades. You could argue the number is somewhere between 25 and 50 years. Staying on the same path isn't going to make things better. Changing paths is not fun. It's dirty, messy and painful. Welcome to reality. I remember having discussions here on HN many years back, when the national debt was in the $20 trillion range and annual deficits below a trillion dollars. I remember asking a simple question: Where is the limit? $25 TN, $30 TN, $35 TN ... $50 TN? Where? Where is the limit on annual deficits? 2, 4, 8? Where? Nobody ever answers this question. Nobody. And yet reality is that this is a nation destroying itself from the inside while others around the world are taking advantage of our fiscal incompetence. We can't make anything here any more. Not one thing (unless gov/mil and corner cases). This has been a slow-rolling tragedy building up over 50 years. And we absolutely cannot turn that clock back, ever. Some of this is cooked and done and can never be recovered. We can't build a friggin high speed train in CA with over $100 billion while, in China, they built them at a rapid pace during the same period of time. So, I ask you, and others: When? When are you going to say "enough"? Is there a threshold or limit? The same issue applies to this stupid Ukraine thing. When? What's the limit? A trillion dollars and ten more years? Sending our armed forces there? What the hell does "security guarantee" mean? I am blown away that no journalist at any media outlet seems to care to ask this term means in practice. Does it mean we, the US, commit to engaging with the full force of our military to protect Ukraine? Nuclear? Building a base in Ukraine? What the hell does it mean? Where are the limits? Do I, as a US citizen, have to accept having my children go fight this war in Ukraine? Fuck no. Do I, as a US citizen, have to accept gifting Ukraine a trillion dollars, with no limits on time and spending? Money we do not have, we have to borrow and will add to the deficit. Money that could and should be spent internally to fix our many problems. Fuck no. You see, it is easy to take a side until you have to live with the consequences. Not one person who pushes for the ridiculous continuation of the Ukraine war would be willing to go there and fight for them or send their kids there. Not one. And nobody who is critical of the very necessary process to get our national finances in order would be willing to, today, right now, this moment, send a check for 20% more money to the federal government (which you can do, you don't need a law to donate money to the government). Nobody. So, what we are talking about is hypocrisy. Talk is cheap. Write a check right now for $50K to the federal government to keep the employees being fired. I won't do that, because I believe there's waste that has to be fixed. If you, anyone, believe this not to be the case, start a GoFundMe and donate money to keep people employed, pay their substantial benefits and do so every year forever. But you won't do that. You'll come here and go on social media to comment on how wrong this is, because that's free and it does not affect you.

notahacker 2y ago

Reading every thread related to DOGE reveals the same pattern. Defenders of DOGE, being unable to amount any defence for actual actions the thread is highlighting, have to construct the straw man of arguing that anybody suggesting those actions are spectacularly inept and counterproductive it is thinks that government is unimprovable. P.S. Have plenty of experience selling to inefficient public and private sector entities. Many of them could have used some better decision makers empowered to remove unnecessary barriers. None of them could have benefited from those decisions being made by script kiddies with no professional experience that lack the ability to tell the difference between a million or a billion never mind understand how budgeting works, what a nuclear safety operative does or whether "recently promoted" maybe shouldn't be a firing criteria...

robomartin 2y ago
The straw man is pushing the idea that nothing should ever be touched because all of it is essential. Somewhere between don't touch anything and destroy it all is the truth. Finding and fixing problems of this type, whether it is in the private or public domains is difficult and ugly. It never looks good. It never feels good. That's just reality. BTW, I keep reading and hearing derogative terms like "script kiddies" and "20 year olds". What's happened to diversity and inclusion? So, they have to be of a certain age? What's the magical age? And, do they have to come from the same place that created the problems as well? This isn't sensible at all. Here's a reality: The US has been on a self-destructive path for decades. You could argue the number is somewhere between 25 and 50 years. Staying on the same path isn't going to make things better. Changing paths is not fun. It's dirty, messy and painful. Welcome to reality. I remember having discussions here on HN many years back, when the national debt was in the $20 trillion range and annual deficits below a trillion dollars. I remember asking a simple question: Where is the limit? $25 TN, $30 TN, $35 TN ... $50 TN? Where? Where is the limit on annual deficits? 2, 4, 8? Where? Nobody ever answers this question. Nobody. And yet reality is that this is a nation destroying itself from the inside while others around the world are taking advantage of our fiscal incompetence. We can't make anything here any more. Not one thing (unless gov/mil and corner cases). This has been a slow-rolling tragedy building up over 50 years. And we absolutely cannot turn that clock back, ever. Some of this is cooked and done and can never be recovered. We can't build a friggin high speed train in CA with over $100 billion while, in China, they built them at a rapid pace during the same period of time. So, I ask you, and others: When? When are you going to say "enough"? Is there a threshold or limit? The same issue applies to this stupid Ukraine thing. When? What's the limit? A trillion dollars and ten more years? Sending our armed forces there? What the hell does "security guarantee" mean? I am blown away that no journalist at any media outlet seems to care to ask this term means in practice. Does it mean we, the US, commit to engaging with the full force of our military to protect Ukraine? Nuclear? Building a base in Ukraine? What the hell does it mean? Where are the limits? Do I, as a US citizen, have to accept having my children go fight this war in Ukraine? Fuck no. Do I, as a US citizen, have to accept gifting Ukraine a trillion dollars, with no limits on time and spending? Money we do not have, we have to borrow and will add to the deficit. Money that could and should be spent internally to fix our many problems. Fuck no. You see, it is easy to take a side until you have to live with the consequences. Not one person who pushes for the ridiculous continuation of the Ukraine war would be willing to go there and fight for them or send their kids there. Not one. And nobody who is critical of the very necessary process to get our national finances in order would be willing to, today, right now, this moment, send a check for 20% more money to the federal government (which you can do, you don't need a law to donate money to the government). Nobody. So, what we are talking about is hypocrisy. Talk is cheap. Write a check right now for $50K to the federal government to keep the employees being fired. I won't do that, because I believe there's waste that has to be fixed. If you, anyone, believe this not to be the case, start a GoFundMe and donate money to keep people employed, pay their substantial benefits and do so every year forever. But you won't do that. You'll come here and go on social media to comment on how wrong this is, because that's free and it does not affect you.