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The disruption is (part of) the point. Degrading the ability of government employees to do their jobs leads to greater inefficiency and more failure, which can

• infinghxsg 2y ago
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• bloomingkales 2y ago
  I think people didn’t want to believe it when they blamed DEI for the helicopter crash. The algebra looks like this: Privatize FAA = x + y Where x is any discovery or event related to the FAA, and where y is any red meat justification (dei|immigration|trans). There are many such equations: Strategic bitcoin reserve = x + y. Long two years, just going to leave this here. They will always find x and y to complete their equations: https://www.cato.org/commentary/privatize-faa https://www.cato.org/commentary/privatize-faa
  • SecretDreams 2y ago
    > Long two years Probably a lot longer than two at this rate :/.
  • rob74 2y ago
    Since you mention the FAA, I wonder what will happen if the NTSB's report on the Washington disaster doesn't match Trump's preconceived conclusions, e.g. by placing most of the blame on the (female) helicopter pilot. If he interferes there, that will be the final straw convincing me that the US is unfortunately no better than the "banana republics" it used to make fun of anymore...
    • mschoch 2y ago
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    • exe34 2y ago
      > If he interferes there, How will you know at this point? Would he need a sharpie this time, or will he just shout at them over the phone and change the conclusions?
    • wat10000 2y ago
      I doubt he'll care at that point. It’s already been (subjective) years since that crash.
      • rob74 2y ago
        Not sure if he'll care about the specific accident, but he always cares when someone contradicts him...
    • myvoiceismypass 2y ago
      I mean he changed the path of a hurricane via sharpie in the first term. He is incapable of admitting being wrong ever.
• adapt_and_laugh 2y ago
  And if more federal employees quit because of the poor conditions, it’s just more people they don’t have to worry about laying off.
  • Etheryte 2y ago
    The Twitter playbook, except for the government.
    • drivingmenuts 2y ago
      At this point, anyone remaining at Xitter has to be aware that they are working for a neo-Nazi. And anyone using Xitter in a country that has a history of fighting Nazi's in WWII has to be aware of who they're supporting. It's maddening how many people just don't seem to give a shit.
      • ponector 2y ago
        Not only a neo-Nazi, but also for Russians as well.
      • baggachipz 2y ago
        Lots of people (in the US and abroad) were pretty ok with the Nazis the first time around, until they weren't.
        • motbus3 2y ago
          The narrative is more complex than that if I am not mistaken. It seems the general public outside the affected regions were not completely aware on what was going on with concentration camps. This does not mean they were not aware of at some level. It is quite common for old people to say that they only became aware of many of the atrocities months or years later the war was over. The US was not keen on putting pressure to concentration camps as, well, they had their own full of "japs and n*"
      • alxjrvs 2y ago
• _aavaa_ 2y ago
  It is the whole point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBH9TmeJN_M
  • therealdrag0 2y ago
    That’s Depressing
• selykg 2y ago
  Absolutely insane that this is what we've come to. It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. We are regressing this country so rapidly that we are likely to become one of those shithole countries the president so loudly proclaimed Haiti, El Salvador and others were.
  • Larrikin 2y ago
    Getting into government to make it worse to show that government is bad has been a pillar of the Republican party since Reagan. They just used to pretend about it.
  • Aurornis 2y ago
    > It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll). Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praising Musk and Trump. People who get their information from Trump are being fed lies that are obvious to anyone not inside the bubble. They don’t know what’s happening because their heroes are telling them it’s all necessary and good. When you start polling people on the actual actions taken, things being cancelled, and consequences the approval is very low. Anecdotally, I have some extended family who were very pro-Trump. One of them recently discovered that her job was funded through a federal grant, and now it’s likely going to be cut even though she doesn’t work for the government directly. They also discovered that one of their family members is covered by Medicaid through an avenue that’s looking like it will be cut. They went through a stage of disbelief, but now they’re in a phase where they’re sure everything will be fine and Trump will get it fixed. It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage.
    • silverquiet 2y ago
      > It’s only a matter of time until they realize that they were the intended targets of the cuts, not accidental damage. I suspect that other scapegoats can be found to blame for their problems; as you say, their news sources will offer them all sorts of filters to deflect blame from the obvious source.
• VoodooJuJu 2y ago
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• rob74 2y ago
  Not sure if they even think they need to prove their assertions, after all Musk (same as his "boss"/BFF) has made the most outlandish claims without a shred of evidence (the "radical-left Marxist vipers" at USAID). To me it looks more like they are already 100% convinced that any work done by federal employees is completely worthless, so they can indiscriminately fire anyone they wish without doing any harm. Same for the attrition tactics - they tell people to return to the office and at the same time end leases for offices etc.
• stronglikedan 2y ago
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  • snozolli 2y ago
    I have no doubt that it can be cut down by 50% without adversely affecting anything long term. As long as you don't care about American soft power, or the many lives we save with our humanitarian programs, you may be right. If you do care about these things, then you're already demonstrably wrong. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-terminations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/health/usaid-contract-ter... More children are going to die, around the world, in the immediate future. Sorry, eggs, this guy has an omelette to make.
  • natosaichek 2y ago
    Can you point to some of the stuff (presumably doge) that you particularly approve of? Id like to better understand this perspective
  • AlecSchueler 2y ago
    > I have no doubt that it can be cut down by 50% without adversely affecting anything long term. Is this percentage based on anything more than vibes? Does it matter to you which eggs get broken and do you agree with the methods being employed to choose/break them? And sorry for all the questions but how do you feel about the conflicts of interests with people like Musk overseeing so much of this?
  • mordae 2y ago
    JFYI federal government headcount of 2M people has stayed constant over last 100 years with ever increasing population and things to take care of. I wouldn't call that bloat, honestly. What has been growing a lot are mostly municipalities, which I guess boils down to more people helping disadvantaged kids in schools, which I guess is nice and more policing, which many are calling to shrink and replace with something less violent. US government is not bloated. It's corrupt by the revolving door policy, which definitely won't be fixed by letting people go. But even with revolving doors some things have worked for you. Such as predicting weather, fighting diseases, disrupting or bribing competing nations, opening new markets and protecting your fucking imaginary property everybody in the world fucking hates.
• Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  But they should've shown their assertions and proof thereof beforehand. It's been pointed out that they say organizations are wasteful, but those are vague weasel words; show some numbers, do a root cause analysis and fix what is broken. But the goal is not to fix what isn't working, it never was - it's a diversion and an excuse to dismantle the federal government, checks and balances, and move to an unchecked oligarchy/autocracy. Taking the whole country with them, of course.
• mihaaly 2y ago
  And there will be lots of people pretending that this is a beliveable assertions. Basically all will either pretend believing or refuse believing above the mental level of this old infant elected as president, so almost everyone.
• everdrive 2y ago
  I'm starting to think the "government is inefficient" folks have never actually worked in any corporate job. I've worked in two companies since I left the federal government 5-10 years ago, and both were significantly less efficient, and less effective than the federal agency I worked for. I'm sure that's not _always_ true, but it just seems like any large organization full of people is difficult to keep efficient.
  • everyone 2y ago
    That's my experience too.. When the public sector wastes something its an error. For a corp, its business as usual. As long as number-goes-up it doesnt matter to them what they are doing.
  • stvltvs 2y ago
    Same experience. The "government = inefficient" propaganda has been repeated ad infinitum for decades so that now it feels like a law of nature to people. My experience is however that every large org is inefficient in its own unique way, no matter which sector.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      It's parroted by people who see the government as "inefficient" at generating profit, not as inefficient at providing a service. Why should plebs be entitled to clean water without an 80% margin?
      • consteval 2y ago
        Profit in it of itself is an inefficiency. It's a bandaid for the fundamental problems of the private sector. The fact the public sector isn't burdened by a requirement to make profit isn't a downside, it's a super power.
        • onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
          It's only a super power if you're buying those services instead of providing them for a profit (99.9%). It's anathema if you're competing against someone who doesn't need to make a profit - when you're trying to make an 80% monopolistic margin (0.1%).
• deadbabe 2y ago
  I have to ask with all this disruption, what if we were hit with a massive 9/11 scale attack right now?
  • _heimdall 2y ago
    Unfortunately war does tend to have a way of rallying both sides together. Tribalism tends to just need an "other" group to demonize. A 9/11 scale attack would make it pretty easy for supporters of both parties to turn their sights on whoever they think attacked us.
    • rurp 2y ago
      That's certainly true in general but I can't think of an attack that was preceded by such a visible effort to make the country more vulnerable. There would be some rallying effect, but it might be smaller and shorter lived than usual especially if the response is bungled. Then again, things might have become so cultish that reality completely stops mattering and trump skates by once again without any responsibility.
      • _heimdall 2y ago
        Reality isn't simple enough to peg responsibility on any one person. Unless you go with the "shit rolls down hill" approach and ultimate land blame for everything on the person in charge, it'd be extremely hard to find a clear line between 6 weeks of Trump's presidency and an attack on the scale of 9/11. Maybe you could tie it back to connections with his first term, but any attack on that scale takes years to plan, not weeks, and has plenty of facets to consider when it comes to what motivated the attackers to actually do it.
• CivBase 2y ago
  This is too conspiratorial for me. If the point was to make the government less efficient to justify political platforms, why have private companies been doing the same thing for the last 3 years when there's no political upside for them? I'm not saying the RTO policy is good. I'm very skeptical of it myself. But this explanation doesn't seem to hold water - especially when better explanations are out there. They could be using it to thin out their staff without layoffs. They could be propping up real estate values. They could be dealing with sunk costs on office space and looking to justify them. They could be accomidating poor managers who cannoy evaluate employee productivity without seeing butts in seats every day. Not to mention some people really actually do work less efficiently from home. I can't say exactly what proportion or what the overall productivity impact is. It's probably very hard to measure. But it isn't hard to imagine leaders (in both the public and private sectors) genuinely believing the RTO movement will improve overall productivity. It also isn't hard to imagine large organizations doing a poor job when implementing their RTO effort. I saw similar issues with the RTO effort in my private company. The same issues also happened with the WFH effort during the pandemic. Mismanagement is commonplace in large organizations.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    They could just be doing it to be petty and cruel to "government workers" in general. There doesn't always have to be a genius 5D-chess play. It's very possible the administration simply believes the federal workforce is full of their political opponents and just wants to grief them. A major component of the campaign and their base of support is rooted in cruelty to out-groups, so they're technically delivering a campaign promise to their base by just making people miserable.
• red020 2y ago
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  • alabastervlog 2y ago
    I'm not seeing that in either the deportation/removal rates, nor the encounters rate. Which time period 2021-2024 should I be looking at to see this? I'm looking only at annual rates, not month by month.
    • Izkata 2y ago
      It wouldn't show up in deportation rates because they're not talking about deportation, they're talking about people illegally entering the country. That administration was enabling it through the CBP One app, up to some limit per day (which I remember being 2000 but am not sure that's right). https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsheet-fiscal-year-2024-ends-with-nearly-3-million-inadmissible-encounters-10-8-million-total-encounters-since-fy2021/ https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/24/startling-stats-factsh... > However, the end result is the same—tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens being released into the interior every month. This is evident through the number of appointments scheduled through the CBP One mass-parole program, which skyrocketed to more than 852,000 since January 2023. Also there is a massive spike in encounters during those years: https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters https://ohss.dhs.gov/khsm/cbp-encounters
      • alabastervlog 2y ago
        Spike in encounters, and spike in deportations, no? I’d expect to see both drop, but certainly deportations, if what was claimed had happened, but I’m not seeing it. [edit] if the stopped-doing-their-job thing had happened, not CBP One, I’m aware of that.
• clord 2y ago
  I was under the impression these offices closed during the pandemic and the return to office order is bringing people back into those places. If that’s the case I don’t think this is some sort of planned disruption but rather poor planning. Incompetence vs malice right?
• NoGravitas 2y ago
  It's also intended to frustrate people so that they are encouraged to quit.
• agumonkey 2y ago
  Hey, I thought this was a french right thing only, but somehow it's global tradition.