Remember: if anyone supported DOGE or still supports DOGE, they (both DOGE and their supporters) were not ever serious about the debt or government efficiency.
The whole point of Doge was to fire the agencies that were investigating all of Musk's companies that were breaking laws. That and getting rid of competent people who might stand up to the orangefuhrer.
This is a nice story but just doesn't hold up to the evidence of what was "cut".
The reason people lie it as a story is because it makes everything have a logical sense to it. It brings reason to the disorder, and people hate chaos so cling to this Machivaleian mirage of a plan. An evil plan is better than chaos. Even if it is not true.
However there _is_ an underlying reason to _some_ of the DOGE vandalism, and that is that Elon Musk's personal social media feed is a brain destroying fire hose of far right racism and conspiracy theories. One of the big boogey men of the far right racist conspiracy theories was USAID. So that is why USAID was shut down with the consequent loss of thousands upon thousands of lives. Because Musk believes bullshit he reads on the internet.
For those curious about a more thoughtful model of government reform--which is still sorely needed--the original US Digital Service team just published a bunch of interviews:
https://usdigitalserviceorigins.org/interviews/
I was working for a federal contractor when we had a release go out that had a problem. Some digital service folks got sent in, arriving about the same day we figured out the environmental problem planted by the previous contractor for the program. The digital services folks were extremely useful in getting us in contact with other gov folks to speed up releasing the fix, but otherwise they didn't do anything. They took all the credit afterward though.
In many ways, the fact that Digital Service intervention was useful/necessary there, and the fact that you thought that other than liaising with other feds they "didn't do anything" is indicative of a major--perhaps the major--issue with the government's overreliance on contractors for technical projects: since the contractors are tasked with building, and the non-contractor feds are tasked with approving/releasing/delivering, nobody wins.
Contractor teams end up staffed largely with builders who are held accountable for what they build not shipping, but it usually isn't shipping because it's held up by approval processes outside of the sphere of influence in which the contractor operates. Outside that sphere, feds tasked with releasing on a timeline end up frequently confused by perceived reticence on the part of the contractor--"why aren't they getting this bugfix out the door ASAP?" (answer: they are only often staffed for/limited in authority to building the thing and throwing it over the wall, not making sure it goes live).
What you get as a result is a situation where a cross-context group like the Digital Service is often the only way to speed up those bottlenecked processes. In other words, the problem was the failure at "getting us in contact with other gov folks to speed up releasing the fix", not the coding of the fix itself.
The larger solution to that failure mode is to fix the accountability matrix (I'll never stop linking to this article, which sums it up so well: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/understanding-the-cascade-of-...). That can mean a lot of things. It might mean that contractors are staffed/expected to work with fed shareholders running the release/approval processes to get their changes actually shipped. It might mean that federal departments bring more "build" or "technically own product delivery" expertise in-house. It might mean fixing/streamlining approval processes (this is lot harder than it sounds).
What's certainly not going away is that Government waste and bloat is a home-run bipartisan issue where the size of the government has vastly and consistently outgrown the private sector in both times of feast and famine.
Everyone left and right instinctively knows this is, that it's a problem that they're both taxed directly for and (I hope) many people know they're also indirectly paying for it through inflation caused by government borrowing beyond their actual tax income.
DOGE may not be the right answer, but it's the first actual reduction in spending in my lifetime.
I often find myself guilty of not reading the article but only the comments here myself, so in case this is you: Go take the time and read it, even if it's painful.
I read a lot of heavy stuff, but this collection of quotes makes me sick to my stomach.
And even more so: how this inhumane, perverted treatment of fellow human beings, regardless of whether you fantasize/reason that DOGE does net good for the planet, finds no mention yet in the comments here, at all. To add to that, these are people who have spent much of their life in public service, for the benefit of society.
To be honest, I don't even know what is worse; the quotes, or that.
I personally feel like I have done net good for society through my work and and how I’ve treated people and it felt like a slap in the face when Joe Biden personally said that I would be getting fired from my job at a federal contractor because I disagreed with him. I won’t ever forget what he did to me and I feel like people should be talking about this just as much as they talk about DOGE. I won’t speak too much about DOGE but I feel that it’s important to say my truth about the matter and that I feel a form of catharsis and justice in the dismantling of bureaucracy that infringed on my rights as a human being. I welcome anyone who would like to discuss this with me because I have much more to say on the topic.
It is very plainly visible that society has not been benefited much from the public service of many of those people. In fact, it has declined dramatically.
Lyn Alden had a good, terse analysis of why DOGE was unlikely to be effective in this newsletter[0]. The math was simple, the folks behind DOGE must have themselves known that their stated mission was impossible.
It starts with these paragraphs, if you want to seek to it:
"This is the goal of the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is an advisory commission rather than an official government department. Musk has famously vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending—roughly 30% of last year’s federal budget.
Although this sounds good on paper, achieving such a target will be quite challenging, given the composition of government spending. Last year, the government spent $6.75 trillion, with $4.1 trillion (61%) classified as mandatory spending."
>She was literally wailing, inconsolable, because she could not get into a childcare facility she could afford on such short notice. She literally had to choose between her little child and working.
People need to understand that the world doesn't revolve around themselves. Your employer doesn't have to bend to your every will and need. She also had the opportunity to get 8 months of severance if she was that short on money.
These are sad stories but you have to wonder how many such stories you might collect from any mostly-functional organization. Certainly there were people who had unjust firings, toxic interactions before Trump and Musk. People who work at big tech companies also have experiences like this (layoffs while on maternity leave, while getting treated for terminal illnesses etc.). This isn't a sign of any grave malice and is inevitable in a large org. What I do wonder is whether DOGE achieved any significant savings, and that is not addressed in the article.
I hit my senator very hard with information when this happened. It was clear to anyone with a brain and understanding of physics that they had no plans of doing anything other than installing crawlers and access control permissions.
I still feel like people are missing the deeper problem with DOGE. Yes, they’re dismantling the government, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s stupid, reckless and cruel. But most Americans want the government reduced, and so we end up arguing over “effectiveness”. Notice how half the comments here follow that track.
The deeper problem is that the richest man in the world bought his own department of the federal government of The United States and was allowed unchecked power within it. Nothing like this has ever occurred before in American history. The only thing that got him out was that Washington isn’t big enough for two egos as big as Musk and Trump, and one had to go. And since Musk’s people are still embedded in there, I would bet that he still has plenty of influence.
For those in the red tribe that support this, would you support George Soros or Bill Gates buying their own department and using it to rearrange the government to fit their will? Well, shit like that is now on the table. Good job.
Elon Musk had the opportunity to demonstrate that, and his track record is negative savings once you factor in the lawsuit losses, economic shrinkage, and vast inefficiencies DOGE cost. For that matter, I note that there’s a direct line from the DARPA grand challenges two decades ago and Waymo’s L4 self-driving cars while his purportedly magic touch has Tesla stuck at L2 for over a decade despite frequent claims that they’re about to make some advances. I bet the DARPA people wouldn’t have nerfed the sensors to save ~1% per vehicle.
There are two major drivers for talking about government inefficiency. One is the laws Congress passes, which agencies have to follow: requiring use of private contractors instead of hiring staff significantly increases costs and lowers efficiency, for example, and things like the Senate Launch System only make sense when viewed from the perspective of maximizing jobs in home states. The other is that a lot of the inefficiency is really differences in service: when people look at how much the post office, VA, SSA, etc. spend one of the things which is easy to forget is that they can’t reject people who are harder to serve so a comparison to companies who can stop serving unprofitable regions or demographics are going to be really misleading.
Still looking for the people on hn who eight months ago said that this would be a good thing to come out and admit not only that they were wrong, but the model of the world and their way of absorbing info that led them to such a conclusion is also wrong. Looking at you, geohot.
But I suspect for most them their real desire was simply long lasting harm to the federal government and pain and suffering inflicted on those who work for the government.
I'm not sure why you think any of them would believe they were wrong. I don't think any of them were hoping for some kind of transformation other than destruction.
I thought it was a good idea in spirit although I wasn't sure how effectively it would be done. To be honest I'm still not sure how effective it was. Almost all criticism I've seen of DOGE has been from those biased against it already. Obviously federal employees will be negative about a program designed around reducing their scope and funding...
geohot has/had a weird obsession with Elon for a few years now. He copied what Elon did a lot and is sort of like an Elon Stan. Which led to him agreeing and competing with Elon a lot. However, after geohot interned at Twitter/X I think he moved on from Elon and liking his views etc.
I said it would be a good thing and still do. Dismantling USAID alone was worth it. It's easy to spend taxpayer money, it's harder to make cuts, no matter how you do it you'll be the bad guy. But government needs to live within its means.
There are multiple generations of folks who've been trained to believe that Ronald Reagan was delivering divine wisdom when he said "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" / "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
I know many folks that don't have any animus to individual people. They just have been brainwashed since early childhood...
One of the strange joys of this site is reading the insane takes of otherwise intelligent right-wingers as they try to bend reality to fit with their beliefs.
At the very best you'll get "the left forced them to do it" but blank denial of reality and invention of entirely fake parallel worlds is much more likely.
They've been doing that for climate, renewables, COVID, Trump etc. far longer than for DOGE with no sign of giving up.
One thing that really disgusted me about DOGE is that we did have a very successful reduction in the scope of the federal bureaucracy 30+ years ago, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Rei... . But we didn't want a thoughtful, respectful plan for reducing the scope of government, we wanted a WWE bomb thrower.
Side note, I think Al Gore was one of the most effective politicians of the last 50 years who wasn't president and he got tons of shit for it: 1. He never said he "invented the Internet", but he did give critical federal support to the Internet in its early days when he was a Senator, and technologists who actually know what they are talking about credit him with this, 2. He implemented the most successful reduction in the federal bureaucracy since WWII, 3. He conceded the 2000 election for the good of the country - he did not foment an uprising to try to fulfill his narcissistic supply, 4. He made many people aware of the dangers of climate change (though this may have admittedly backfired as some people interpret anything that comes from a Democratic voice as a "liberal hoax").
The comments here are crazy. Excuse me if I don't find Wired and a bunch of disgruntled ex-fed employees to be a credible unbiased source. The US Govt is so clearly bloated and inefficient it had to be trimmed and optimized. At least some here recognize that cuts in the 90's also worked. And I'm old enough to remember people crying bloody murder then too. People hate to be pulled off government's gravy train.
The honest real question is what to do? We are at a turning point in history. Right now you are either polarized or asleep. The question is not only what can you do but what will you do. Now, not tomorrow. I personally am starting to get active locally in my city government. Commenting on the downfall isn't enough. Do something.
Did anyone figure out about the social security fraud claim? I figure the 135 year old people were a dumb mistake, but surely they must have found a bunch of people who were cheating? We didn't hear anything so maybe not, but would be good to know.
Made me sick to read that. It really makes me despise Musk, and Trump, and Vought, for their psychological violence towards our federal employees, and causing so much destruction that will take a long time to rebuild and restore.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 65.1 ms ] threadThe reason people lie it as a story is because it makes everything have a logical sense to it. It brings reason to the disorder, and people hate chaos so cling to this Machivaleian mirage of a plan. An evil plan is better than chaos. Even if it is not true.
However there _is_ an underlying reason to _some_ of the DOGE vandalism, and that is that Elon Musk's personal social media feed is a brain destroying fire hose of far right racism and conspiracy theories. One of the big boogey men of the far right racist conspiracy theories was USAID. So that is why USAID was shut down with the consequent loss of thousands upon thousands of lives. Because Musk believes bullshit he reads on the internet.
Contractor teams end up staffed largely with builders who are held accountable for what they build not shipping, but it usually isn't shipping because it's held up by approval processes outside of the sphere of influence in which the contractor operates. Outside that sphere, feds tasked with releasing on a timeline end up frequently confused by perceived reticence on the part of the contractor--"why aren't they getting this bugfix out the door ASAP?" (answer: they are only often staffed for/limited in authority to building the thing and throwing it over the wall, not making sure it goes live).
What you get as a result is a situation where a cross-context group like the Digital Service is often the only way to speed up those bottlenecked processes. In other words, the problem was the failure at "getting us in contact with other gov folks to speed up releasing the fix", not the coding of the fix itself.
The larger solution to that failure mode is to fix the accountability matrix (I'll never stop linking to this article, which sums it up so well: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/understanding-the-cascade-of-...). That can mean a lot of things. It might mean that contractors are staffed/expected to work with fed shareholders running the release/approval processes to get their changes actually shipped. It might mean that federal departments bring more "build" or "technically own product delivery" expertise in-house. It might mean fixing/streamlining approval processes (this is lot harder than it sounds).
Everyone left and right instinctively knows this is, that it's a problem that they're both taxed directly for and (I hope) many people know they're also indirectly paying for it through inflation caused by government borrowing beyond their actual tax income.
DOGE may not be the right answer, but it's the first actual reduction in spending in my lifetime.
I read a lot of heavy stuff, but this collection of quotes makes me sick to my stomach.
And even more so: how this inhumane, perverted treatment of fellow human beings, regardless of whether you fantasize/reason that DOGE does net good for the planet, finds no mention yet in the comments here, at all. To add to that, these are people who have spent much of their life in public service, for the benefit of society.
To be honest, I don't even know what is worse; the quotes, or that.
Do your life perspective a favour and read the article.
If you're a US tax payer, do the future of your country a favour and read the article.
It starts with these paragraphs, if you want to seek to it:
"This is the goal of the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is an advisory commission rather than an official government department. Musk has famously vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending—roughly 30% of last year’s federal budget.
Although this sounds good on paper, achieving such a target will be quite challenging, given the composition of government spending. Last year, the government spent $6.75 trillion, with $4.1 trillion (61%) classified as mandatory spending."
[0] https://www.lynalden.com/full-steam-ahead-all-aboard-fiscal-...
And yet with what he's done, federal spending has increased $400B this year.
People need to understand that the world doesn't revolve around themselves. Your employer doesn't have to bend to your every will and need. She also had the opportunity to get 8 months of severance if she was that short on money.
If haphazard, cruel dismantling of state capacity bothers you, avoid raising money from venture capital firms that supported it.
They achieved something impossible: More federal spending even after reduction in work force.
Our leadership is so inept it hurts.
The deeper problem is that the richest man in the world bought his own department of the federal government of The United States and was allowed unchecked power within it. Nothing like this has ever occurred before in American history. The only thing that got him out was that Washington isn’t big enough for two egos as big as Musk and Trump, and one had to go. And since Musk’s people are still embedded in there, I would bet that he still has plenty of influence.
For those in the red tribe that support this, would you support George Soros or Bill Gates buying their own department and using it to rearrange the government to fit their will? Well, shit like that is now on the table. Good job.
The long game is going to be brutal, and the country bumpkins will suffer the most.
There are two major drivers for talking about government inefficiency. One is the laws Congress passes, which agencies have to follow: requiring use of private contractors instead of hiring staff significantly increases costs and lowers efficiency, for example, and things like the Senate Launch System only make sense when viewed from the perspective of maximizing jobs in home states. The other is that a lot of the inefficiency is really differences in service: when people look at how much the post office, VA, SSA, etc. spend one of the things which is easy to forget is that they can’t reject people who are harder to serve so a comparison to companies who can stop serving unprofitable regions or demographics are going to be really misleading.
It reminds me of Ancient Greece and the Sophists: they mastered persuasion as an art at the expense of reason, logic, and truth.
I'm not sure why you think any of them would believe they were wrong. I don't think any of them were hoping for some kind of transformation other than destruction.
I know many folks that don't have any animus to individual people. They just have been brainwashed since early childhood...
At the very best you'll get "the left forced them to do it" but blank denial of reality and invention of entirely fake parallel worlds is much more likely.
They've been doing that for climate, renewables, COVID, Trump etc. far longer than for DOGE with no sign of giving up.
Side note, I think Al Gore was one of the most effective politicians of the last 50 years who wasn't president and he got tons of shit for it: 1. He never said he "invented the Internet", but he did give critical federal support to the Internet in its early days when he was a Senator, and technologists who actually know what they are talking about credit him with this, 2. He implemented the most successful reduction in the federal bureaucracy since WWII, 3. He conceded the 2000 election for the good of the country - he did not foment an uprising to try to fulfill his narcissistic supply, 4. He made many people aware of the dangers of climate change (though this may have admittedly backfired as some people interpret anything that comes from a Democratic voice as a "liberal hoax").