[HN Gopher] US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety sta...
___________________________________________________________________
US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off
days ago
Author : niuzeta
Score : 408 points
Date : 2025-02-16 07:45 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| ch33zer wrote:
| This is LITERALLY the twitter layoffs playing out again. They
| fired people who had credentials and other things they needed so
| had to hire them back. Everything else aside why repeat the same
| mistakes? Just go a little slower and give agencies time to
| compile accurate lists of necessary employees
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| It's the tech bro way
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Problem is, it's not backfired - the example you cited
| "worked", because it rapidly identified key personnel without
| weeks or months of subjective analysis and political posturing
| by workers and their supervisors.
|
| I think in federal government the risks are much higher, and
| Musk is being an idiot by exposing the America public to those
| risks, but the feedback loop for him on these previous
| experiments has been positive, not negative.
| d--b wrote:
| Move fast and break the nuclear weapon arsenal.
| PakG1 wrote:
| Move fast and break the nuclear weapons arsenal.
|
| edit: OK, so parent edited to match what I wrote and now
| I'm being downvoted because I look like I copied parent?
| d--b wrote:
| I am being downvoted too if that's any consolation
| boricj wrote:
| It only "worked" because the key personnel decided to come
| back. Had they decided to move on to greener pastures, the
| end result would've been very different.
| vasco wrote:
| That isn't much of a point because federal employees are
| much more likely to return than Twitter technical staff.
| Interesting approach, specially because it's not my
| country.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> federal employees are much more likely to return
|
| Not necessarily. It's generally understood that federal
| employees accept a lower salary in exchange for career
| stability. If a career as a federal employee now has
| higher risk then at least some people will be expecting a
| higher salary.
| glimshe wrote:
| The advocates of Musk's firings will say that if these
| people could command a higher salary, they should be in
| the private industry producing goods and services for the
| population rather than the inherently wasteful government
| positions.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > [...] _they should be in the private industry producing
| goods and services for the population rather than the
| inherently wasteful government positions._
|
| In this particular case, the government positions were
| maintaining the US's nuclear arsenal. Not sure how
| "wasteful" having a nuclear deterrent is.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Could we privatize the arsenal to increase efficiency?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If you're not joking: what private entity would you trust
| to not start WW3?
| pfdietz wrote:
| The profit-making part is when we pull back from being
| world policeman and instead sell nuclear weapons and
| weapon systems. Sorry, we won't go to war for you, but
| how about some H-bombs, Taiwan?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| We're really going to pull a Cuban Missle Crisis again?
| but x10? I guess they'll be cheered on this time.
| drawkward wrote:
| Government work is _literally_ goods and services for the
| population.
|
| This is some serious 1984 war is peace shit.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Thankfully this isn't the case or you would get the least
| talented people in government, making it even more
| ineffective and wasteful.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| I think that incentive is part of the problem. Federal
| employees should get paid more with a reasonable
| expectation of being fired. The amount of people I know
| in government positions who give 0 consideration to the
| quality of their work because they know they won't be
| fired astounds me.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| How is firing large amounts of people on a whim going to
| solve the problem of people not caring about their work?
|
| From what it sounds like (w.r.t. Agenda 47 / Project
| 2025) DOGE is fund seeking for massive planned programs,
| not returning money to the citizenry or restructuring for
| efficiency.
|
| It sounds like they are illegally looting agencies and
| programs that congress already funded, so they can fund
| the admin's proposed plans (virtual social cleansing,
| mass deportations, homeless relocation, freedom cities,
| etc).
| roenxi wrote:
| It doesn't look like DOGE is trying to fund anything; at
| this stage my guess is they're trying to hack off the
| propaganda arm of the CIA/NSA and the web of NGOs on the
| theory that it is funding anti-Trump messaging. Otherwise
| targeting USAID for savings early is a bit pointless;
| what is $50 billion a year to the US government? They're
| $36 trillion in debt with no plausible path out of the
| hole. Annual deficit is around $2 trillion.
|
| Or it might be a propaganda effort to make Team Trump
| look busy. Hard to say without more visibility into what
| they're doing.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| There are some hints toward this, like with recent
| reporting :
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-gop-
| panel-ap...
|
| > Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said she has expressed
| "concerns" to leaders about the prospect of steep
| spending cuts and told reporters that, before she agrees
| to vote for the budget resolution, she wants "better
| clarity" about the next stage -- especially when it comes
| to cuts. "$4.5 trillion doesn't leave a lot of room for
| the president's priorities," Malliotakis said
|
| ---
|
| Also, why else would you directly reclaim funds as the
| executive? As a party, if you wanted to correct spending,
| you would do it in a budget. As the executive, if you
| wanted to get money without congressional approval, you
| would reclaim money that has already been appropriated.
| There are other ways (emergency orders), but they might
| not be popular with the party or a target voting base (in
| this case, more net spending).
| atq2119 wrote:
| Most likely the whole point is to destabilise and
| eliminate government structures with the goal of filling
| the resulting power vacuum with privately owned services.
| That's what Thiel and his ilk are all about.
|
| The first part of this plan - destruction - is easier
| than the second half - creation. If they're successful
| with the second half, people will be worse off because
| it's a big step towards neofeudalism /strengthening
| oligarchy. If they fail, people will be a lot worse off
| because the structures they're destroying are actually
| doing important work.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > it might be a propaganda effort to make Team Trump look
| busy
|
| this. the optics are important for the Trump base
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Hard to say without more visibility into what they're
| doing.
|
| They want to fund corporate tax cuts. the cut from 22 to
| 15 percent is estsimated to be worth 100-200b dollars of
| income for the government per year. That's about the
| yearly funding of the DoED.
|
| So we aren't saving money nor paying off debt. we are
| just funding corporate profits.
| jjk166 wrote:
| None of these people were let go because of the quality
| of their work. What incentive would they have to do their
| job well if their continued employment is not based on
| merit?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| They don't get paid more because the government is not a
| profit center. It gets money from the citizens and then
| appropriates those funds. raises and promotions need to
| be a strict process because all government workers have
| public salaries. They can probably pay a little more, but
| not anything close to competitive.
|
| >The amount of people I know in government positions who
| give 0 consideration to the quality of their work because
| they know they won't be fired astounds me.
|
| blame the incentive structure, not the players.
| Government being efficient and saving money results in
| less budget next time. They are punished for their
| improvement. If Musk wanted governent efficiency, that's
| the angle to approach. Protecting against lower budgets
| after a high performance review would do wonders.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The problem with ongoing US "experiments" is how much the
| rest of the planet is dependent on American companies,
| related economics and politics, regardless of it not
| being our country, the schockwaves will be felt.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| And this is the thing, the rest of the world has _agreed_
| to be dependent on American companies, because they
| believed in the legitimacy of the US and free
| international trade. If belief in that legitimacy goes
| away, we will see that dependence shift quickly. Let us
| begin with Mastercard and Visa where the US taxes every
| payment transaction in much of the world. Do we really
| believe that Europe couldn 't run its own card schemes?
| Aromasin wrote:
| The European Payment Initiative, the EPI, abandoned its
| plans for a card scheme and decided to focus on an
| account-to-account instant payment solution (A2A) for all
| kinds of use cases, all through a wallet. There is an
| interesting synergy here with the European moves to
| develop a common digital identity service and euro-wallet
| infrastructure.
|
| They're not just trying to get rid of the US middleman,
| but the middleman altogether.
| numpad0 wrote:
| IMO, to me as layman non-American, it's not an if. The
| USA is done-for-except-not, just like Twitter has been
| for a while. This might be able to be undone,
| hypothetically, but is not being undone. Online armchair
| generals are already starting to discuss things like
| escalation strategy for European nuclear forces and so
| on.
|
| I guess we'll be seeing Mastodon/Bluesky/Threads
| phenomenon across worlds, both horizontally and
| vertically in the coming decades, this time in real life
| with (more)real consequences.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Starting with this year, Germany has legally mandated
| free and instant (few seconds) direct account to account
| transfers. For some shops, you can now either pay by SEPA
| (for free) or agree to pay a 3% fee for using VISA. They
| already started cutting out the US middleman.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| There's going to be major efforts especially in Europe,
| to de-couple from the US. We saw this to some extent in
| Trump 1.0 but he didn't actually do much due to the
| ineptness of those around him and a Senate that was still
| dominated by the anti-MAGA GOP "old guard". This time it
| is much, much worse.
| adtac wrote:
| > Had they decided to move on
|
| Why didn't they?
| ch33zer wrote:
| H1B
| adtac wrote:
| _All_ key personnel were immigrants? Why did the others
| come back? Also, since the H1B were key to operations and
| therefore smart, couldn 't at least some of them have
| found a new employer? 61% of the H1B population switched
| jobs that year, so why did all key H1B come back?
|
| I think key personnel came back because they wanted to.
| It's the simplest explanation.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| With h1b i think you have 60 days to find someone else to
| sponsor you or you have to leave the country. 60 days is
| no time at all to find and start a new job. Even if
| you're smart.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Even in the best markets, I still had a 6 week interview
| to offer stage (5 stages). 45 days and if they decided
| someone else is better I may be out of luck restarting
| the process.
|
| With a Visa, I would not take such a risk. Given the job
| market, they either need to extend the period, or somehow
| mandate companies decide on a full time candidate within
| 30 days of first conact. It's gotten beyond out of hand.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| What a giant scam the whole program is. Corporations need
| a good finding out phase again
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I don't live there, but weren't other tech companies
| laying off at a similar time?
| kelnos wrote:
| Right, but that's all Musk sees: they came back, and so it
| worked. He seems like the kind of person whose ego would
| make him believe that any other time he tries this, it
| would work too.
| adra wrote:
| I'm still waiting for file upload API v2. V1 was only made
| EOL like what, 9 months ago.. Its totally fine to gut your
| company when all you need is maintenance mode.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| America won't even have maintenance mode when these guys
| are done. Except for the billionaires.
| cgcrob wrote:
| This is horribly naive. It's not twitter. There are safety
| outcomes which need to be considered in safety critical
| agencies.
|
| I mean can you even claim to make the assumption that the
| actual key staff were rehired? Can you make the assumption
| that they are working safely with the resources they need?
| Can you make an assumption that they have covered the entire
| scope of the organisation?
|
| Probably not.
|
| Chess is played one piece at a time, not smashing all the
| pieces off the board.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Unless you are playing against a selfish child who can't
| bear to lose.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| It only works because you allow yourself to sorely disrespect
| human beings, their livelihood and their feeling of safety.
|
| A strategy that seems to be hot in the US, but is an utter
| ethical abomination and shameful.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| That is sadly life in private sector for a majority of all
| workers.
| xg15 wrote:
| Yeah, I mean that's pretty much at the core of Musk's (and
| Trump's) philosophy.
| m_fayer wrote:
| I thought that a reasonably free, vital, innovative, and
| prosperous society was compatible with a fundamental
| respect for human dignity. That's why I moved to Europe.
| Now it seems I was overoptimistic, but that doesn't mean we
| should wholly embrace backsliding right into the 19th
| century version of "progress".
| surgical_fire wrote:
| It is the same reason I moved to Europe.
|
| I don't think I was overoptimistic. It was literally the
| best decision I ever made, in every aspect I can think
| of.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _I don 't think I was overoptimistic. It was literally
| the best decision I ever made, in every aspect I can
| think of._
|
| A lot of folks mention the lower salaries in Europe
| (generally, and especially for tech): has mattered much
| in your (personal) experience for quality of life and
| happiness?
| holowoodman wrote:
| What imho matters more is culture. There is less of a
| salary, but a culture of safety and stability.
|
| However, this is not for everyone: While you can be more
| sure of keeping your job in rough times, you can also be
| sure that the lazy idiot 2 desks over will keep his job.
| And you can be sure that any change will be resisted
| because change is seen as inherently bad and threatening,
| and reasons will be found to shoot down your new-fangled
| fancy ideas. YMMV, to each his own, etc.
| yurishimo wrote:
| For me, the lower salary has not affected my daily life
| too much. I saved a lot of money in the US, but now
| making about 100k between myself and my partner in the
| Netherlands, we are still living a comfortable life. We
| own a car, bought a house in 2024, and we are saving
| about 1k per month into various sinking funds with a net
| savings closer to 500/pm. No kids yet, but hopefully with
| raises and generous family leave policies, I think we
| will be okay.
|
| My quality of life is insanely better. I live in a
| walkable small city in the south. I walk to the grocery
| store a few times a week. I bike to the library or to the
| train station. My job turns off at 5pm and I don't work
| on the weekends unless I want to. Even then, that weekend
| work time can be substituted for work during the week.
|
| The biggest downside for us has been the cost of
| traveling back to the US to see family. It's very
| expensive for us to fly home since we also need to rent a
| car usually. Even saving 1k per month, that's a
| significant part of the yearly savings just going to buy
| plane tickets for one big trip per year. After we have
| kids, I suspect grandma and grandpa will be coming here
| to visit more often because we can't afford to fly with a
| family of 4 or 5 more than once every other year. Not to
| mention the tax implications of spending too much time
| abroad.
|
| If you can afford to try it out, take a 90 day visa and
| just chill and see if the lifestyle works for you
| (including remote work). Worst case scenario, you go back
| to the US after a year if you hate it.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| I took the "overoptimisim" to mean that the parent
| thought Europe could defend and maintain this outlook
| well into the forseeable future, an assumption that is
| being tested by Europe's own rightward slide. The way
| things are right now in Europe, to say that it might have
| been overoptimistic to think that Europe will continue as
| it has makes sense to me. At the moment, it is unclear to
| most people who live there how much of their way of life
| (if any) is subsidized by the US.
| m_fayer wrote:
| This is exactly what I meant, thank you. I'm not sure why
| you're getting downvoted.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Before the election, Vivek or Elon or one of the galaxy-
| brains floated the idea of firing every other employee in
| the federal government based on the last digit of their
| social security number.
|
| The cruelty is the point.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a difference between cruelty and arbitrariness.
| It isn't cruelty.
|
| They're going up against a world-class bureaucracy; a
| human powered machine that is excellent at dragging out
| changes beyond the term of any politician. Something like
| "Yes, Minister" is a comedy show except a lot of it is
| fairly true - they aren't going to get anything done
| without doing something drastic like cutting a lot of
| functions and seeing what happens. Otherwise it'll keep
| growing.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| It's not arbitrary, though. He's attacking CFPB because
| he wants to launch financial features on Twitter without
| oversight. He's attacking USAID because they helped end
| apartheid in his native South Africa. It's really all
| just a bunch of petty vendettas and looting.
| roenxi wrote:
| > It's really all just a bunch of petty vendettas and
| looting.
|
| Yeah. The technical term for that is "arbitrary". It
| isn't ideologically motivated; it is based on some dude's
| opinions based on who-knows-what internal dialogue.
| Although this financial features on Twitter sounds like a
| pretty good idea and I'd like to see it in the wild.
| theossuary wrote:
| You can't recognize DOGE as an extreme ideological
| endeavor simply because it aligns with your ideology.
| jkubicek wrote:
| A financial institution created by the very person
| responsible for dismantling our most effective consumer
| protections against malicious financial institutions
| sounds like an extremely bad idea.
|
| I'm very curious how _anyone_ could think this is a good
| idea (for consumers, obviously it 's a good idea for
| Musk)
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| No it's not? "Arbitrary" would be if he were, like,
| picking names out of a hat, or the first one that he sees
| on Twitter in the morning. He's attacking agencies for
| extremely personal and ideological reasons. Literally the
| opposite of arbitrary.
|
| _> Although this financial features on Twitter sounds
| like a pretty good idea and I 'd like to see it in the
| wild._
|
| Kind of a jaw-dropping reaction to the fact that he's
| dismantling the very agency that would be in charge of
| regulating those features. Honestly, I really struggle to
| understand the mindset that's not merely okay with but
| _excited by_ this sort of egregious corruption.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| I think being fair is the point. Instead of using any
| metric that might infringe on a protected class, let's
| use math?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| (Curious what the last digit of Vivek's SS is.)
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| In another time it was called decimation, and was used as
| collective punishment.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| Ah, thank you, I didn't know.
|
| Seems like a stretch to compare executions and layoffs,
| no one else is immune to layoffs
| psb217 wrote:
| The people deciding to execute layoffs are generally
| immune to those layoffs.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| It was Vivek and his plan was to randomly (lottery) fire
| half of all federal employees the first year and then
| randomly fire half of those who remain the second year
| get to an overall 75% reduction.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Talk is cheap. These idiots.
| b_davis_ wrote:
| at least it would be known when it starts and when it
| stops with this solution. the current 'audit' will take
| years....
| tremendoussss wrote:
| Government employees shouldn't be immune to layoffs. If the
| government goes bankrupt, everyone is much worse off. The
| longer these systems stay down the worse things can go,
| this is the most humane way to do what needs to be done.
| Which is take away the power (money) that the parasitic
| relationship between business and DC is built on and make
| sure we don't go bankrupt.
|
| They will be able to collect unemployment, do we know if
| they are getting severance?
| tossandthrow wrote:
| This comment definitely appear to be written a bit too
| fast and with disregard to the context.
|
| Firing is not an issue. The issue is fire to rehire.
|
| It is not only indicative of poor leadership, but also
| does it break down institutions - one of the key values
| government provides.
|
| to contextualize: Do you think you can get people to go
| to war for the US if you can not make up your mind on
| whether or not to keep them on payroll?
|
| But we will see how the US will fare with broken down
| institutions.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| I am aware that it is about the fire and rehire. If no
| one can say why something should exist, then yes, the
| quickest solution is turn it all off and see what breaks.
| You might not agree with it but it is a valid strategy
| given all the dynamics at play. Your definition of
| leadership isn't my definition.
|
| I don't think we should go to war at all.
|
| I don't think you understand why Trump was elected or
| middle America culture. The popular vote was a vote
| against deterring and corrupt institutions that already
| exist
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Did the twitter employees come back at the same pay or did
| they ask for much more expensive packages since they'd been
| identified as crucial to operations?
|
| Sounds like the kind of thing that could end up increasing
| costs rather than reducing them.
| setr wrote:
| If it ends up being something like 80% non-crucial and
| stays fired, the other 20% return with double-pay, you're
| probably still running a net-positive with better resource
| allocation
| joshstrange wrote:
| Except in reality the 20% coming back are probably not
| the best. Some will be but at least some of your best
| employees are going to be smart enough (or have enough
| self-respect) to go elsewhere. And/or those are the
| people skilled enough to find a new job quickly (or know
| they can find one quickly) and aren't willing to come
| back.
| jeltz wrote:
| I don't know about Twitter but for the companies I know of
| that have done this people generally can't vack for 1.5x to
| 2x their old pay.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Getting bureaucrats to fire each other is met with every
| delay tactic possible. Might be able to put it off for two
| years which is all they need.
|
| Going in crazy like they are doing now, may serve the
| administration if they start having department do their own
| layoffs in a hurry, because they know otherwise it will be
| done for then.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Did it work? Is Twitter profitable now?
| dralley wrote:
| No.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| [delayed]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Makes sense. And isn't this the ol' military trick, that in
| software dev / project management parlance is now called a
| "scream test"? I.e. if your unit feels like it's doing
| nothing but endlessly filling out all kinds of reports, and
| no one knows which ones are important, the solution is to
| _stop submitting any reports at all_ - and wait until calls
| and angry letters from higher-ups begin. That will quickly
| reveal which reports you need to keep filing, and which you
| can ignore.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| The Scream test is very valuable for time efficiency, in
| general. In this application though, I think they're
| realizing sometimes it's difficult to reverse, such as
| firing the new blood who just moved to DC and have been
| there only a year... like I would feel so abused, why go
| back?
| cloverich wrote:
| If they tell you it was a scream test, and it turns out
| your team was actually pretty important and also gives
| you a raise, you might. Especially if you have nothing
| else lined up.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And especially if you're not a tech worker, so you can't
| exactly chill out and wait for a better gig to fall on
| your lap.
|
| (Though recently, even in tech changing jobs is _much_
| more precarious than it ever was.)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah that's the thing, the government can't unilaterally
| give raises like that. reason #20 this was a horrible
| move.
|
| >Especially if you have nothing else lined up.
|
| Sadly, yes. I do find the irony here that the FEDS said
| the economy was recovering and Trump promised to fix
| inflation and make jobs. Then he's taking advantsge of
| the bad market to force people he abused back.
| msie wrote:
| Yes, using this tactic in the govt is much riskier than a
| private company. And we won't know in this case if it "works"
| until after many months. And then deciding whether it "works"
| is very subjective depending on whether the collateral damage
| on human lives is acceptable or not.
| mesk wrote:
| Yes, and the personnel rapidly identified that their new boss
| is a jerk that has no respect to their work and their life,
| so why should they work for him, when any boss in random
| fastfood is probably more capable to their job better that
| this one idiot, plus private sector pays more...
| samus wrote:
| That's like popping your tires to figure out that you need
| them for driving, and then discovering there is only one
| spare in the trunk.
| riffraff wrote:
| Valid point, but Twitter's development post acquisition
| stalled and the company was massively devalued, so I'm not
| sure that can be considered a positive case.
| bigbaguette wrote:
| The point was never to turn it into a profitable venture,
| but to acquire a widely adopted and established
| communication channel, turn it into an echo chamber and
| make it run with the least cost possible. It became what
| was expected of it.
| ok123456 wrote:
| There's a big difference between a website that shows you
| posts, and the federal government.
|
| Degrade the service of a website, and maybe it loads a little
| funny; degrade the services of a government and people die.
| vharuck wrote:
| >Rapidly identified key personnel without weeks or months of
| subjective analysis and political posturing by workers and
| their supervisors.
|
| This doesn't make sense to me. The federal government isn't a
| company making Widget X, where you can gut, tweak, and repair
| it until you minimize the cost per widget and maximize the
| number of widgets sold. The government does a lot of things,
| often in the hopes of results in one or more decades, and
| there's rarely an easy and immediate way to measure success.
|
| For example, the Surgeon General announced tobacco's link
| with cancer in 1964. It wasn't until the 1990s that smoking
| rates really started to fall in any significant way. The
| federal and state governments have spent decades and billions
| of dollars to reduce smoking rates, and they've been wildly
| successful. The tax revenue generated by any person-years
| alive which were won through that effort will never make up
| for the billions spent. But those people will contribute more
| to the economic and social life of the US, and the tobacco
| settlement deterred other companies from causing so much
| harm.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "works" implies that they are able to a) find those personnel
| and b) win them back over. It seems like they shokingly
| cannot do either.
|
| It's also still weird because a lot of the firings focused on
| probationary workers.Very few would prove themselves in a
| year, so they did have to defer to key personell in he end to
| figure out "hey, he needed those people". Except he may not
| get those worers back.
|
| > but the feedback loop for him on these previous experiments
| has been positive, not negative.
|
| Sure, positve for his ego. He didn't care about recovering
| the supercharger conractors, he didn't care about repairing
| his adverts' relationships on Twitter and even threatened to
| sue as if they are obligated to advertise on his plaform.
| Call me treachorous but I don't think he really cares about
| making an efficient government. He's just funding his tax
| cuts.
| adtac wrote:
| People should read _Elon Musk_ by Walter Issacson. Here 's an
| excerpt from the chapter on his "algorithm":
|
| > [Step 2] Delete any part or process you can. You may have to
| add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back
| at least 10% of them, then you didn't delete enough.
|
| He thinks this is a feature, not a bug. Is he wrong? I don't
| think so.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| I was going to mention this as well. This is pretty standard
| musk, delete large swaiths of stuff, see what breaks, and put
| the essential pieces back. It's supposed to be much faster
| than meticulous planning.
| nobunaga wrote:
| Yes all with no regard for the impact on people, families
| and their needs. Lets just make sure to focus on the need
| of a billionaire to create more wealth. The only reason you
| think like this is because you think it wont happen to you.
| Oh boy, I hope it does, then I hope you remember this
| comment. I so hope the people in here defending this bs end
| up on the street and impacted like the many innocent people
| are today. I love hearing the stories of regret from MAGA
| people, only more to come.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Web company world
|
| 1) Delete a system
|
| 2) 404 error
|
| 3) add the system back with a simple git command
|
| Nuclear world
|
| 1) Delete a system
|
| 2) Nuclear meltdown causes the abandonment of the Atlantic
| coast
|
| 3) Add the system back over the next 20 years
| TZubiri wrote:
| Move fast, break things.
|
| Didn't facebook end up changing that?
|
| There's some things you can't undo once they break.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Once at a certain size didn't Facebook say move fast but
| don't break the infrastructure. Maybe they learned
| something about being at a certain scale.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Infrastructure and countries if I recall
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| surely a nuclear arsenal isn't one of those things.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It could also be the motto of an ICBM
| AlecBG wrote:
| If anything ICBMs are better at moving fast and breaking
| things than the tech industry
| sureglymop wrote:
| And also, what if a nation state is different than a tech
| startup and shouldn't be run quite the same?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Next you'll tell us sovereign debt isn't the same as
| personal debt!!! /s
| TZubiri wrote:
| It is if you have your own personal currency
| ben_w wrote:
| > He thinks this is a feature, not a bug. Is he wrong? I
| don't think so.
|
| Twitter lost 84% of its revenue.
|
| Do you want the USA GDP to shrink that much over the next few
| years?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The US's GDP isn't based on the amount of bloat in its
| government. Sure spending finds its way into the economy,
| but tax dollars saved also will. As for Twitter/X - the
| goal isn't revenue but profit, and Twitter was not in a
| good shape before Elon. Musk recently noted they are barely
| breaking even now, and the recent sale of X debt was just
| above original pricing. Considering big advertisers are
| coming back to X, that's probably only going to look
| better.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| The twitter deal kind of worked out for Musk because
| Trump won the presidency. It's a way to buy favors from
| the US government now. Basically a corruption vehicle.
| From a end user stand point, twitter is terrible now.
| Lots of bots, full of life hack and crypto scams and a
| lot of scientists and other interesting people completely
| abandoned the platform.
| cr125rider wrote:
| Control the media, control the narrative. A tale as old
| as time.
| ben_w wrote:
| > The US's GDP isn't based on the amount of bloat in its
| government. Sure spending finds its way into the economy,
| but tax dollars saved also will.
|
| "Bloat" presumes. "Tax dollars saved" would only be
| relevant -- still incorrect, but relevant -- if you were
| matching tax cuts with spending cuts, rather than trying
| to balance budgets.
|
| If the USA balances its budget in a way that _*somehow*_
| has no side-effects, the GDP shrinks 7% just from that
| cut alone -- but these cuts do have side effects so it
| _is_ worse than that.
|
| And doing using layoffs as a discovery mechanism is going
| to have Chesterton-fence type mistakes, where you only
| find what's wrong when the stuff you stop paying for is
| maintenance whose absence takes a while to become visible
| to non-domain experts. Dams will fail and flood valleys,
| bridges will fall into rivers, that kind of thing has
| gotten into the news in other countries when maintenance
| was forgotten.
|
| The infrastructure that your government is responsible
| for is the backbone upon which the wealth of the rest of
| your country is built. You can eliminate the entire
| Federal Highway Administration and Joe Average won't
| notice anything for nearly a year... but if and when you
| do hire them back, you may have to hire back a lot more
| than you fired just to catch up with the damage done.
|
| And so it goes for many other aspects of your country.
| CDC's also in the news now. OK, until you get your next
| pandemic... oh, wait, you're already having one. Nukes?
| You won't notice the problem until other governments no
| longer fear your nuclear deterrent. Armed forces in
| general? British didn't see any problem with shrinking
| their forces until the Russian invasion of Ukraine and
| realising how close they were to not being able to defend
| themselves if invaded. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials
| Safety Administration? Getting rid of that means a lot of
| companies can get away with skipping safety processes, so
| it might even seem like the economy goes up... until you
| get some equivalent of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal.
|
| > As for Twitter/X - the goal isn't revenue but profit,
| and Twitter was not in a good shape before Elon.
|
| They made a profit in two of the years before he took
| over; an 84% revenue decline means that the company
| cannot even service the debt he saddled the company with
| during the purchase, even if he fired all remaining staff
| and reduced server, utility, real estate, and insurance,
| and all other costs to zero.
|
| > Musk recently noted they are barely breaking even now,
| and the recent sale of X debt was just above original
| pricing.
|
| Do you trust him?
|
| According to this link, they sold more of their debt than
| they were expecting to, for more than expected to, but it
| was still less than they paid for it.
|
| Going from $1b to $5.5b and from 90C//$ to 97C//$ is
| _less bad_ rather than _good_.
|
| https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/morgan-
| stanley-...
| jimnotgym wrote:
| >Sure spending finds its way into the economy, but tax
| dollars saved also will.
|
| Tax savings too a $40k a year person immediately find
| their way into the economy. Tax savings to multi-
| millionaires and billionaires tend to result in ever
| higher asset prices. They have too much spend
| effectively, so they hoard it.
| kelnos wrote:
| So essentially the process here is:
|
| 1. Buy Twitter.
|
| 2. Fire most of the staff.
|
| 3. Piss everyone off so all the advertisers shun you.
|
| 4. Barely get the company breaking even, mainly due to
| all the cuts, even though the platform itself is barely
| limping along.
|
| 5. Cozy up to a wannabe dictator that dupes (slightly
| less than) half the country to elect him as president
| again.
|
| 6. Make the advertisers realize that their continued
| prosperity depends on bending the knee to you, due to
| your political connections. Not to mention your platform
| is now a way for people to buy favors from the
| government.
|
| 7. Profit.
|
| (No need for a "???" step before "Profit", well done...)
|
| We truly live in the darkest timeline.
| NewJazz wrote:
| The good news is that GDP is positively correlated with
| greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. Lower GDP,
| lower temp. I mean the famines will certainly "help"... I
| don't think the Senate will let it get that far, though.
| Only takes a few Rs in the House to impeach. 67 senators is
| a hard climb but 0% YoY GDP decline could do it... Or it
| could give Trump the stimulus he so badly craves.
| bagels wrote:
| They won't go hungry. I don't think famine will stop
| them. They don't want to lose their dictator that is
| willing to advance their agenda.
| NewJazz wrote:
| But they need to have a strong economy AND strong,
| consistent revenue to fund their defense budget. Don't
| forget that...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Twitter lost 84% of its revenue._
|
| How much of that is because of politics? Already at the
| point of takeover, Musk was _so_ hated by half the US for
| various reasons that it became profitable for major
| publishing platforms to abandon Twitter /X "on principle".
| When you're in that situation, nothing on the object-level
| can help you - neither good management nor technical
| competence. Revenue depends indirectly on the public
| opinion, and half of it wants nothing to do with you.
|
| US nuclear arsenal is _not_ in this situation.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Is it politics that people don't want to do business with
| shitty people? I'd call that being human.
|
| If I owned a bill board space, and set everything around
| it on fire, wouldn't you think it was my fault that
| advertisers didn't want to pay to use it any more?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| No, but then burning everything around the billboard
| doesn't necessarily make you a shitty person, and also
| opinions of people siding with advertisers aren't somehow
| the definitive ones.
|
| I mean, why do people who hate what Twitter is now care
| about it's lost revenue? Especially given what it was,
| and where the revenue came from, this isn't exactly an
| argument that generalizes well.
| roenxi wrote:
| The real question is why people think Twitter's lost
| revenue is linked to Musk's management. There doesn't
| seem to be a theory about a causal link. If anything the
| argument is "Musk is a bad person -> Twitter lost
| revenue" which suggests his management practices had no
| effect on the company's operation.
| ben_w wrote:
| FWIW, I absolutely blame his management of Twitter rather
| than his political alignment or questions of morality.
|
| Reason being, look at Tesla stock price: Musk's gaffes
| have a short term impact, but overall the price is way up
| since buying Twitter.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Tesla is not in advertising business, though. They _are_
| affected by the whims of public opinion, but not as much,
| as they 're established company selling a quality product
| worldwide.
|
| Musk used to dabble much more in Tesla directly than he's
| now, I wonder whether the ups and downs of the company
| correlate with his involvement, especially _before_ he
| started going off the rails so badly? That would be
| informative and help separate object-level impact from
| political hysteria.
| LunaSea wrote:
| > Tesla is not in advertising business, though.
|
| Tesla is absolutely in the advertisement business.
|
| Their marketing and image is the only thing holding the
| company up (for now).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What I meant is: they buy ads and care about their
| opinion. They're _not_ a platform selling ads, and they
| 're not an ad delivery vector (like e.g. publishers)
| either. The latter two kinds of businesses have
| particular dynamics that are highly sensitive to public
| opinion, much more so than for any other kind of
| business.
| ben_w wrote:
| If Musk was so _politically_ toxic as to drive an 84%
| revenue decline, the Republican _politicians_ wouldn 't
| have allowed him to support them or their party.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Why? That entirely depends on political alignment of
| revenue sources, and I bet that (before the takeover) the
| balance was heavily on the US left-wing side, as that's
| also the overall bias in tech industry _and_ social media
| _and_ news publishing. And all that is amplified by
| advertisers in general, regardless of political leaning,
| being very touchy about controversy.
|
| I can easily imagine this to alone be responsible for
| wiping 84% revenue.
|
| Real world has a different political distribution than
| the Internet. "Politically toxic" on-line in particular
| is a knee-jerk reaction that is great at generating
| consistent revenue streams for publishers and social
| media on-line, but doesn't translate well to how the
| entire population of a country actually thinks or votes
| in the real world.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Real world has a different political distribution than
| the Internet.
|
| 5% different, almost everyone is online.
|
| But, thinking about your oft-quoted blog post about
| advertising bring a cancer, I guess if the top ad
| spenders cut themselves out entirely, then the bidding
| system could result in the runner-up bidder finding their
| ads are now almost arbitrarily cheaper.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Already at the point of takeover, Musk was so hated by
| half the US for various reasons that it became profitable
| for major publishing platforms to abandon Twitter/X "on
| principle"
|
| No, Musk became hated by half the US __because__ of the
| way he took over Twitter. That lost him a great deal of
| good will.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > How much of that is because of politics?
|
| The US government is a lot more affected by politics than
| twitter will ever be.
| almog wrote:
| If we take Twitter/X as an example of this process, my
| personal experience has been that it has been degraded to a
| spams and bot hell shortly after Musk took over. But my
| personal experience isn't quantifiable, what is quantifiable
| is X valuation which, according to Fidelity, has been
| depreciating and back in Oct. 2024 was estimated at nearly
| 20% of the original acquisition price.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The Fidelity valuation is old news. All the most recent
| debt sales were either just below or just above 100% of the
| original price. Example article:
| https://www.afr.com/technology/banks-offload-8-8b-in-debt-
| li...
| XorNot wrote:
| Ah yes, sold Feb 15 2025[1]...right as the CEO took over
| running the US government and raided the US treasury
| department.
|
| I'm sure this is a completely above board sale that
| definitely does not represent a legal-if-you-don't-look-
| at-it way to bribe the de facto head of the US government
| / the expectation of massive corruption (ala: Tesla's
| stock price rising on the news Elon Musk was running DOGE
| - weird right? The CEO is apparently going to be too busy
| to run the company because he's now running the
| government so the stock price goes up...to be fair,
| technically that's not a bad bet)
|
| Because we know the new administration _definitely_
| wouldn 't take bribes in the form of financial
| instruments[2]. Definitely no history of it[3].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/banks-sell-
| down-mor...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/trumps-
| meme-coin-...
|
| [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/08
| /02/tru...
| mlindner wrote:
| If you invent reasons to dismiss what people say then
| there's nothing anyone can say to convince you otherwise.
| ben_w wrote:
| There's a gap between "no you can't see the dragon in my
| garage, he's invisible, intangible, emits no body heat,
| and has no gravitational field" and "here's some
| citations to back up my belief".
|
| Are the citations sufficient? Dunno. Just saying this
| isn't what you call it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > a legal-if-you-don't-look-at-it way to bribe the de
| facto head of the US government / the expectation of
| massive corruption
|
| How does the sale of the debt help Elon Musk or Trump?
| They don't own that debt, they don't make money off that
| debt. Do you expect the fund managers to forgive the debt
| as a bribe? That would clearly be a bribe, but until that
| happens, it isn't and I don't think it is terribly
| likely.
|
| There are plenty of real things to be upset over, you
| don't need to make up imaginary ones. All that does is
| dilute the real concerns and make your opposition less
| effective.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm saying when you see a lot of smoke coming from a
| house, the neighbours probably didn't just buy an
| industrial sized BBQ and suddenly decide to have a huge
| cook off after some kids threw a bottle through the
| window.
| shkkmo wrote:
| So you think a debt purchase is blindongly obvious
| example of bribery? Then it should be easy to explain how
| it is bribery.
| immibis wrote:
| You comply, we buy your asset for 5x its value. You don't
| comply, we don't. Simple.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| [2] seems like a grift, not a bribe.
|
| [3] is an unnecessarily verbose story with practically no
| substance. In 2017 a $10m cash withdrawal was made to a
| Research and Studies Center said to have a "relationship
| with the Egyptian General Intelligence Agency."
|
| Using those facts, and the fact Trump was friendly with
| Sisi at a UN event, an entire investigation was launched
| to see if Trump was the final recipient.
|
| If you look at it with the counter assumption of Trump
| being innocent, there still seems to be a reasonable
| motive for all this.
|
| The FBI wanted information about an Egyptian cash
| withdrawal from one of Egypt's own banks, subpoenaed them
| by bringing up presidential relevancy, and punished them
| $50k a day until the bank sent the documents.
| almog wrote:
| While it shows investors aren't concerned about X ability
| to pay back its loan term, it isn't a proxy for
| valuation. Banks usually sell issued debt to investors
| soon after the debt is issued. In this case it took 2
| years.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| I think there is a tiny difference if Twitter is not working
| or if the nuclear arsenal is malfunctioning.
| adtac wrote:
| Yes, so it's a good thing the first step is:
|
| > [Step 1] Question every requirement. Each should come
| with the name of the person who made it. You should never
| accept that a requirement came from a department, such as
| from "the legal department" or "the safety department." You
| need to know the name of the real person who made that
| requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how
| smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are
| the most dangerous, because people are less likely to
| question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came
| from me. Then make the requirements less dumb.
| operationcwal wrote:
| I REALLY doubt the recent high school graduates "yes
| boys" he brought in are even capable of providing the
| "name of the real person who made that requirement."
|
| come on bro, you _must_ know somewhere deep inside that
| this is more complex and consequential than fucking
| twitter of all things.
| adtac wrote:
| I know that the US government is more complex than
| twitter lol. I just think it's stupid to automatically
| invalidate an idea because it was tried in a less complex
| system.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| ... and failed to turn that less complex system into a
| more profitable company
| kelnos wrote:
| Unfortunately Twitter is now a machine that allows people
| to buy favors from the US government, so I expect it to
| become profitable pretty quickly.
|
| Pretty messed up way for that to work out, though.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| This is not quite as innovative as you might think, I
| guess you are advocating for the Chernobyl approach:
| "Let's turn all safety features off and see if it
| breaks!"
| rightbyte wrote:
| They turned off the safety features to test a safety
| procedure. I don't think it is a fair analogy.
| jjk166 wrote:
| They weren't testing a safety procedure, they were
| testing whether they could _get rid of_ a safety feature.
| Specifically they were checking whether the plant 's
| turbine could provide enough power to keep coolant
| flowing without the help of a counterweight system.
| tailefer wrote:
| It's clear from the speed at which these changes are
| going in place that step 1 is _not_ being followed, nor
| is it being encouraged.
| risyachka wrote:
| Yeah this works for processes.
|
| Doesn't work in with people though. You will be deemed as
| unreliable.
|
| Alliances will form without you as no one needs a partner
| that can leave you standing at any moment.
|
| Running the company is the very opposite of running a
| country.
|
| The feedback loop is weeks vs years/decades.
| IndrekR wrote:
| I have seen it before. This is the "Coffee is for closers"
| scene from Glengarry Glen Ross: https://youtu.be/elrnAl6ygeM
| suzzer99 wrote:
| If we fired 25% of the federal govt workforce, it would save
| 1% from the federal budget.
|
| This has nothing to do with trimming waste and everything to
| do with replacing the government with loyalists from top to
| bottom. What comes after that isn't going to be pretty.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| The effects are going to be felt for a good couple of
| decades to follow.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Is that staff costs only? Or including the things those
| staff would spend money on too?
| rcxdude wrote:
| Overhead for staff isn't that much more. And even one
| person can spend money like it's going out of style if
| they have a budget that says they can and the implicit
| threat it'll be cut if they don't. They'll just spend it
| in dumber ways.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The "federal budget" is something people often mention, but
| it's quite misleading. At least in terms of what we think
| of.
|
| The reason is that the overwhelming majority of the budget
| is spent automatically - pensions, medicare, social
| security, and all of these expenses are unavoidable and in
| a mandatory expenses category. The remainder of the budget,
| including military, is considered discretionary. That
| discretionary spending is the thousands of pages that
| Congress creates (and fails to read) each year. And it's in
| that budget that most of the things we associate with
| government came from - everything from education, to roads,
| to infrastructure, and also the military.
|
| So by the numbers in 2024 the discretionary budget was
| "only" $1.7 trillion and after military spending "only"
| $900 billion was left. "Only" obviously needs to be in
| quotes but that's indeed only about 13% of the e.g. $6.7
| trillion total budget in 2024. And so each time you cut
| something the amount of money left for the things we
| generally associate with government skyrockets. So for
| instance USAID was "only" $50 billion, but that was more
| than 5% of the entire discretionary budget!
|
| US Federal Workers cost $293 billion [1], and contractors
| amounted to $760 billion. This is excluding secondary
| costs/benefits, which are extremely high for government
| workers, and only direct payments. It also excludes
| budgeted expenditures that would have been performed by
| those employees. So that's already $1.05 trillion and we're
| clearly substantially lowballing the figure. Yet that's
| already more than the entire discretionary budget excluding
| military, and certainly _far_ more than 4% of the entire
| budget (as would be required for cutting 25% to only result
| in a 1% cost saving, as proposed).
|
| [1] - https://www.afge.org/article/afge-continues-to-
| debunk-miscon...
| suzzer99 wrote:
| If I spend 90% of my budget on mandatory items, and I cut
| 10% of my discretionary spending, I've shaved 1% of my
| total budget. Have I really accomplished that much? Is
| that going to keep me out of the poor house if something
| goes wrong? Is it worth a massive sacrifice to obtain?
|
| Probationary employees means not just the new hires, but
| any federal employee who changed jobs internally in the
| last year. Who's going to want to work for the Federal
| government after this bloodbath? No one with any talent,
| which I'm sure is either the goal or a happy by-product.
|
| This is about Trump and Co. destroying govt institutions
| they don't like, and weaponizing other institutions with
| loyalists. Just look at what's happening in the DoJ.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| Most mandatory spending is on healthcare, social
| security, interest payments on debt. For anyone who
| values anything other than those things, _every_ penny
| should be accounted for. The percentage of the total
| budget now becomes irrelevant.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It's important to note though that the goal is not to
| reduce debt. The goal is to cut taxes (largely for the
| rich).
|
| I mean if debt was an issue why vote for the guy who has
| increased the national debt by the most in history and
| whose spending plans were going to increase the debt by
| almost twice of his opponent?
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/democrats-vs-republicans-
| who-ha...
| guelo wrote:
| Also to cut regulations, aka the police for corporations
| and the rich.
| somenameforme wrote:
| The person who wrote that article is remarkably ignorant
| of essentially all topics that she covered to the point
| I'd consider that lower quality than an average internet
| shitpost. I don't know where to start so I'll just bullet
| point things in no particular order:
|
| - The US parties almost entirely ideologically swapped
| sometime in the 19th century. Some claim it happened with
| FDR in the 30s, others claim it didn't "really" happen
| until LBJ in the 60s. Everybody acknowledges it happened.
| What a "Democrat" did in 1913 is irrelevant.
|
| - Congress dictates budgets, not the President. The
| President has veto power (which can be overruled by
| Congress), but nothing more.
|
| - The modern US economic system enabling us to go
| arbitrarily far into debt only began in 1971, when we
| defaulted on our obligations under Bretton Woods.
|
| - The total deficit under Trump was $5.6 trillion, under
| Biden it was ~7.6 trillion [1]. I assume the author was
| looking at delta debt and then 'inflation adjusting'
| it... ugh.
|
| ---
|
| That's just the basic historic/factual backing. The
| "stats" are even worse, but enough is enough. In any
| case, the issue is not what happened in 1913 or even
| Trump's first term, but what is happening now. Trump's
| first term he promised to do what he's doing now but
| instead just mostly carried on the military machine (at
| least without starting any news wars, which was nice -
| though he was trying his hardest with Iran) and filled
| his entire cabinet with political establishment types who
| did their thing.
|
| Trump 2.0 seems to have genuinely gained some sort of
| messianic delusions, probably from the attempted
| assassinations, and is actually doing what he said he
| would do before. And those current actions are what is
| really changing the game like nothing that's happened in
| decades.
|
| [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD/
| derangedHorse wrote:
| The deficit also doesn't paint the whole picture. The
| debt significantly increased near the end of the Trump
| administration which added to mandatory spending via
| interest payments.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
| cr125rider wrote:
| Trump got saved by the pandemic so we can call his
| policies "unprecedented" for unprecedented times. It
| hides a lot of how poor he did.
| bagels wrote:
| That's great. Congress should be the ones making budget
| decisions, not Musk. Trump has control of both houses,
| why not cut spending and give Musk his tax breaks
| legally?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Congress has not made a budget in many years. They pass
| "continuing resolutions." Why aren't they doing their
| jobs?
| toofy wrote:
| i run into this problem often when building teams, people who
| fail to understand that the real world is not an algorithm.
| the very first people i release are those incapable of seeing
| beyond math.
|
| their failure to see wider context, their failures to
| understand that massive chaotic fractal tier contexts
| interplay will forever be these people's downfalls.
|
| sisyphean masochists.
| vkou wrote:
| By that logic, perhaps we should trim 10% of his wealth.
|
| And then we can stop and check - if he is still fine after
| it, then maybe we didn't trim enough.
|
| It's easy to trim other people when you are completely
| insulated from the consequences.
| nobunaga wrote:
| The only reason you think he isnt wrong is because you think
| it wont impact you. I hope one day you find yourself in the
| same situation, even worse, then I hope you remember this
| comment.
| adtac wrote:
| If I do, whether or not I remember my comment, I'll
| certainly remember yours :(
| nobunaga wrote:
| Sometimes people like you need to go through what others
| do to realise how wrong you were. Some people have
| empathy to know. You seem like the former. Its not too
| late to see that Elon is nothing but a fraud though if
| you wish to.
| pipes wrote:
| Yeah I'd heard this and I think he is right. I'm about to use
| the approach in a coding task in work.
|
| However this is people's livelihoods, mortgages, kids etc.
| being on the receiving end of it through no fault of your own
| must be awful.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| This sounds like a software developers take. I think it is an
| algorithm that can work well in non critical systems. I think
| it is naive in the extreme to apply it to critical systems.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't want to live in a world where it's right. Treating
| people like this, toying with their livelihoods, is wrong,
| full stop. It might "work" for certain definitions of "work",
| but it's morally repugnant.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You could apply the same reasoning to parts of the human
| body.
|
| Or maybe not.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Is he wrong?
|
| When it comes to government, yes.
| vkou wrote:
| > Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes?
|
| Because good governance is not the goal.
| silisili wrote:
| No agency is going to admit to fraud, which is not totally
| different than paying employees they didn't need.
|
| I'm also not a fan of the fire and rehire method, either.
|
| It does feel like more time should have been spent, from an
| outside agency, watching and deciding.
|
| What they're doing now is an old trick, and I'm surprised more
| people don't tell them to screw off.
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, baseless accusations of fraud just to hide own
| incompetence ...
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| the accusations of fraud are probably mirror politics.
|
| Given the lack of respect for process its plausible that in
| 10 or 20 years or whenever we'll find out this government
| was the most corrupt out of any in the past century.
| prox wrote:
| And the lack of respect for process breaks trust. Some
| people might not care about this, but you can't magically
| summon trust. It takes years for trust to rebuild. I
| don't care which party you are from, you have take into
| account the other side, if only for that trust reason.
| Inform them of what you are doing, and your process. This
| is a public institution build upon the foundation of the
| Constitution.
| vkou wrote:
| > No agency is going to admit to fraud
|
| Which is why Congress employs an army of auditors, who audit
| and report their findings to them.
|
| The difference is, they are largely non-partisan
| appointments, who are expected to actually do their job,
| instead of rubber-stamping propaganda pieces. Their work can
| be verified, and there are consequences to _them_ engaging in
| fraud, and there 's a chain of custody for the evidence they
| find.
|
| Which is more than can be said for giving a bunch of
| politically-appointed teenagers read/write access to every
| single system in the government... Paired with a blanket
| immunity from prosecution.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Very similar to the story about the Supercharger network.
|
| Apparently the boss of the team was told to make layoffs, she
| did some but not enough to please Musk, so Musk in a face to
| face meeting demanded she make more. She said they couldn't
| without affecting delivery.
|
| Musk fired her. Then fired the team. Then hired the team back
| because she was correct.
|
| But not before lots of ongoing projects got stalled because
| contacts just disappeared and stopped answering phones.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside...
|
| > The meeting could not have gone worse. Musk, the employees
| said, was not pleased with Tinucci's presentation and wanted
| more layoffs. When she balked, saying deeper cuts would
| undermine charging-business fundamentals, he responded by
| firing her and her entire 500-member team.
|
| and
|
| > The contractor said he had expected Supercharger projects to
| provide about 20% of his 2024 revenue but now plans to
| diversify to avoid relying on Tesla.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Why people think it's a good idea to put this wealthy dickwad
| in charge of one of the most (allegedly) important projects
| in the current admin is beyond me. Move fast and break things
| is a stupid policy to apply to public policy.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Musk's track record suggests it's a very effective
| strategy, especially when he's coming into organisations
| where the existing performance management processes are
| lacking, so you don't have good reliable data to look at to
| figure out who is required and who is not.
|
| The public sector typically has practically no effective
| performance management processes. It's been a big problem
| for a long time. Trying to figure out who should stay when
| you don't have good data was always going to be error
| prone.
|
| Given that, this strategy might actually be the best. It's
| quick, it's objective (did anything break?), and it's
| usually easily undone.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| What do you mean when you say "it's an effective
| strategy"? It's hard to say for certain since Twitter is
| now private, but it certainly seems to have lost value
| since Musk took over. What would "work in the public
| sector" entail for you?
| ty6853 wrote:
| The value wasn't lost, it was consumed. You're looking at
| what it was consumed to achieve, in the election results.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I would actually agree with you on that in the case of
| Twitter, but in what sense is that comparable to the
| current situation? Unless you mean that Musk is
| succeeding by destroying a bunch of American assets (i.e.
| the agencies) and then being lauded for this destruction.
| I could see that value once again going to Musk (and
| Trump), but in what sense would that value not be lost by
| your average US citizen? It's not like Musk bought these
| agencies before destroying them, he's just destroying
| them. He's no longer burning his own house down for life
| insurance, he's burning your house down for life
| insurance.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Operationally, Twitter is performing better than it did
| when it had 5x the headcount.
|
| According to reports, revenue is down, but that's more
| due to advertisers objecting to Musk content moderation
| decisions (plus politics no doubt).
| dralley wrote:
| They are objectively in a worse financial position.
|
| I wasn't getting advertisements for female sex toys (I'm
| male) on Twitter before Musk took over. That's a long way
| to fall.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Neither of us really know Twitter's financial position,
| given it's now private.
|
| The rumours I'm hearing are that EBITDA is now above pre-
| acquistion. The fact that debt is trading hands without a
| haircut suggests that's probably accurate.
|
| There was a lot of waste at Twitter. Given that headcount
| was cut by 80%, and advertisers are returning, I'd
| suggest it's doing fine.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It's wild -- people that look at employment of the
| citizens of this country as just data to feed into some
| kind of profit/waste equation that needs to maximize
| profit, discard any hint of waste.
|
| It's not waste when those employed have paychecks to
| spend in the economy. What would Corporate think if half
| the population of the U.S. were unemployed and/or
| homeless?
|
| I guess that's fine as long as profits have been
| maximized.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Right? I am astounded by these takes. If every corp and
| every job was this way, our country would be a high-
| stress, unemployed wasteland. Any org will drop thousands
| in a heartbeat. Your family would never be safe.
|
| We work so hard already. We already have such high
| stress. I do not believe we need to eke out the last %s
| of profit to pass to shareholders and create crushing
| stress and work on those remaining.
| hobs wrote:
| Literally every valuation shows its worth <10b, at best a
| 25% of its paid for value what, two years ago? a little
| more?
|
| After reading through your posts its like you live in an
| alternate reality where Musk's integrity is bulletproof,
| his decisions are awesome, and he's basically doing it
| for the rest of us.
|
| I don't know how you can sustain this with everyone
| throwing reality in your face that he's a short sighted
| rich kid who lies through his teeth and throws money
| around until he gets what he wants.
| scarab92 wrote:
| It was, but advertisers are now returning which has
| driven it's earnings back up while it's operational costs
| remain significantly below pre-acquisition.
|
| According to https://www.wsj.com/finance/banks-
| sell-5-5-billion-of-x-loan... earnings are now nearly
| twice pre-acquisition.
|
| I'm not going to respond to the ad hominem.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Advertisers are returning because Elon Musk is the long
| arm of the president and literally threatening tech
| companies with reprisal. On Twitter. It's open
| corruption! They're not even bothering to hide it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| paywalled article so this link isn't really worth much.
| And given your credibility I don't trust your analysis.
| Especially when you also seem to be ignoring any
| reasonable responses and focusing on arguing instead.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > Neither of us really know Twitter's financial position,
| given it's now private.
|
| Then why are you making any argument that it was a
| success?
|
| > There was a lot of waste at Twitter. Given that
| headcount was cut by 80%, and advertisers are returning,
| I'd suggest it's doing fine.
|
| Why would you suggest it's fine? Without knowing their
| exact costs, debts, revenues, etc. you know _nothing_.
| Why would you suggest it's doing fine when knowing
| nothing about it's financial position?
| rlupi wrote:
| > Neither of us really know Twitter's financial position,
| given it's now private.
|
| > The rumours I'm hearing are ...
|
| You are literally contradicting yourself in two phrases
| one after another.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's odd you admit you do not know and then make your own
| opinion anyway.
|
| This is one of the few times to listen to Wall Street,
| since it's not public. https://www.ft.com/content/4f44c0c
| 1-0113-4054-be0b-adc119557...
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Revenue is down because they fired most of the
| salespeople and told their customers to f off. Hardly a
| wise management strategy.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| > and it's usually easily undone
|
| Because employees are automatons that have no feelings
| and won't hold a grudge.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Also, all employees are just cogs in the machine. You can
| totally lay off that grizzled senior dev and hire a kid
| fresh out of college, what's the difference? It's not
| like there was any institutional logic locked up in the
| senior's head right?
|
| /s if it wasn't painfully obvious.
| dralley wrote:
| Not to mention the externality of having extra people
| floating around who know intimate details of the nations
| nuclear weapons secrets, who you have now pissed off.
|
| I'm sure anyone who has been entrusted with such a
| position is fairly responsible, but it still seems like a
| bad idea.
|
| Plus our adversaries would know we're hiring, and this
| bunch doesn't seem to care so much about proper vetting.
| scarab92 wrote:
| A grudge?
|
| They've just been put into a strong negotiating position,
| because now both parties acknowledge that these are key
| employees.
| ruszki wrote:
| I would never go back under a boss who thinks even for a
| second that I'm easily replaceable. It would immediately
| indicate to me, that I can't trust in my boss at all.
| Nobody really can work effectively without trust. That's
| the base of our whole society.
| intelVISA wrote:
| If you're not easily replaceable then the company has
| failed on some level.
|
| This is why I think current org structures, and
| incentives, don't map properly to SWE and fuels this
| employment theater of "trust me I'm not a cog" => "trust
| me you are".
|
| Don't know what an ideal arrangement would be, maybe SaaS
| is closer. Even then, still have to convince some 'cogs'
| to build your SaaS corp while you recoup 90% margins off
| their labor which is a fast path to class consciousness
| and we're back at square one!
| ageofwant wrote:
| Yes good, and now because their value is appreciated they
| can be paid what they will be paid in the private sector,
| perhaps ~180k/y instead of 60k/y. So if you fire 2/3 of
| the workforce and pay those that remain what they are
| "worth", you have saved exactly what ?
| scarab92 wrote:
| In your hypothetical scenario, it would be a no brainer
| to proceed.
|
| Your key workers are now paid at market rate, and those
| who were unnecessary will find other jobs.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Sorry, they are servants of the public.
|
| Maybe they ought not have been fired, but their feelings
| are 2nd place when their salary is funded predicated on
| men with guns forcing people to pay up. Maybe my feelings
| are hurt and I hold a grudge for being forced to pay
| their paycheck rather than spend that money on my family,
| but I'm nearly certain most of them don't care nor does
| much of HN.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| These firings will have no impact on your taxes. Instead
| of people having a job, the money will just get given to
| oligarchs and you'll pay largely the same taxes but have
| moderately less government services. Socialism is needed
| to some degree for society to function. Capitalism alone
| is an awful system.
| scarab92 wrote:
| So, basically, left wing conspiracy theories?
|
| In reality, whether taxes fall or not likely depends on
| whether the savings are returned in the form of income
| tax cuts, or whether the savings are used to repay the
| massive debt that has accumulated from decades of
| deficits. Both outcomes are good in the long run.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| I hope you're right, but I suspect you'll be wrong. I
| think Obama was the last president to shrink the national
| debt. Clinton did before that.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| Prediction: when Trump leaves office, the federal
| workforce, budget, and debt will all be higher than they
| were at the start of his second term.
| b_davis_ wrote:
| come on, that was easy. for a challenge, predict how much
| each will go up.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| Whom does income tax cuts help? Median US salary is 62k.
| That person pays ~12k in income taxes. Conservatives are
| going to 'save' that person 1k on their taxes or some
| other paltry sum and then cancel a bunch of services,
| fire a few hundred thousand workers, and raise tariffs to
| make the actual cost go up on everything that person
| buys.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| False dichotomy. They will likely be used to continue tax
| cuts for the wealthiest (and corporations? I don't
| remember), which are set to expire. That is neither
| scenario that you envisioned.
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| They are humans first, public servants second. We are in
| the business of governing and employing humans. A wise
| government would acknowledge this truth.
|
| Emotions are the motivator for everything, the question
| is, which emotion is getting the better of the human
| today? The better angel of their nature, or the other,
| darker one, that ineptitude stoked into relevance?
|
| Everyone has a breaking point, for them, it's losing a
| livelihood, for you, sadly, it's the garnishing of your
| wage for the collective good.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| I take it you'd also be fine paying 100% of the cost of
| the roads you use to buy food for your family? Men with
| guns take money from my family to pay for your roads
| after all.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Absolutely privatize them all. The roads for miles around
| my house are private easement (no tax) that are publicly
| accessible and it works beautifully. I built my own roads
| to access my land and it's great, my property taxes are
| near 0.
| daghamm wrote:
| You are wrong on two accounts.
|
| There are plenty of ways for getting rid of
| underperformers in a goverment organisation. I've seen
| entire teams being sacked, and also some of the hardest
| working people I know work for goverment organisations.
|
| Also, you cannot run the goverment like an startup that
| is always running on the edge. A majority of startups
| fail and that's fine, but one goverment organisation
| failing could cause problems for the entire country.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| You're right it's not a startup. It's an organization in
| a town that voted 90%+ in favor of keeping their jobs,
| not being prosecuted, or some kind of "threat to
| democracy".
|
| You can't run an organization if the ground troops are
| resistant to executing the vision of leadership
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| Pesky things, these laws.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| Honest question, what laws in this context?
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Management is as much about convincing people you're
| right as it is about getting your way always. Sometimes
| your subordinates are right and a good manager can still
| work with that situation. Even in a professional army
| like the US military there is disagreement and
| negotiation. This idea that we are all troops in some
| kind of militia who should blindly follow one person's
| will is the bottom half of fascist ideology.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| The term "ground troops" was just used as a metaphor for
| people at the bottom who do a big chunk of the actual
| work. Every organization would rather have people at
| least be pro "big picture" vision, and, yes, there should
| be dissonance and compromise on the "how" we get there
| part
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You can say that but you could also have called them
| "workers." Calling them ground troops is intended to
| evoke the image of people being shelled in foxholes and
| then running away. It is a bad euphemism that is meant to
| suggest we are fighting a war. You have to ask yourself
| ---when someone evokes the imagery of war, do you not
| think they are spoiling for a fight?
| akudha wrote:
| I can't say if you're serious or just trolling. It is
| beyond stupid to compare government institutions with
| private sector.
|
| Let's say (just for discussion purposes) that some
| government agency (USAID, for example) is wasting 100% of
| their budget on parties (again, just for discussion
| purposes). What is the right way to fix it? Step one -
| you hire an auditor and collect proof of any misconduct
| or wrongdoing. Step 2 - find out the people who did
| wrong. Ask for an explanation. Show the public your
| proof. And so on.
|
| You don't shut down departments without a shred of
| evidence, overnight. It is just cruel and stupid. But
| then, cruelty seems to be the point here.
|
| You don't set fire to your entire face because you got a
| pimple on your nose. You just treat the pimple
| rainsford wrote:
| Whether or not it's a good strategy for either companies
| or the government, _this_ particular case involved
| randomly firing a bunch of folks who build and maintain
| nuclear weapons and then almost immediately trying to un-
| fire them. There wasn 't enough time to see if anything
| broke (not that you'd see that with nuclear weapons until
| it was way, _way_ too late) but now you 've managed to
| piss off a bunch of people who are likely only going to
| come back long enough to find a new job, if they come
| back at all, and you've probably also damaged your
| ability to retain even the people you didn't fire or
| attract new prospective employees. It's basically all
| damage with zero value and it certainly isn't going to
| fix any performance management problems.
|
| I think it's a questionable strategy anyways, especially
| when applied to government, but carrying out the strategy
| in such a ham-fisted way seems unlikely to be the secret
| to making it successful.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >it's objective (did anything break?
|
| Did you even try to read the article?
|
| >The US government is trying to rehire nuclear safety
| employees it had fired on Thursday, after concerns grew
| that their dismissal could jeopardise national security,
| US media reported.
|
| It hasn't even been one business day. We don't know how
| much this will break. The titanic took 4 hours to sink;
| these things don't instantly show its aftereffects.
| Clearly, the administration thinks something will break
| if they are reversing course.
|
| > usually easily undone.
|
| article:
|
| >A memo sent to NNSA employees on Friday and obtained by
| NBC News read: "The termination letters for some NNSA
| probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not
| have a good way to get in touch with those personnel."
|
| We are definitely in unusual times.
|
| You also responded 2 coments downstream to another story
| where this strategy cost a company an entire division and
| utterly missed its goals.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Whether or not it's a good idea depends on what outcome you
| desire. If the aim is to weaken the U.S. then putting a
| foolish unelected billionaire in charge of things that he
| has no idea about is a great idea.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > If the aim is to weaken the U.S.
|
| Say if you're China and Russia...
|
| > then putting a foolish unelected billionaire
|
| With ties to both...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I don't think Trump's aim is to weaken the US. I don't
| think here's some big secret Russia conspiracy.
|
| I think the situation is much simpler. Trump wants to be
| king. What happens to America in the future is
| immaterial. And a king needs a kingmaker, who in this
| case also wants to be MOTU.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Putin and Xi know this too, and help out making it happen
| - good for them with a clown begin the king of the US.
|
| (Not sure if any help was needed this time though.)
| jononor wrote:
| One goal is to get rid of any critical voices. Only yes-men
| (or women) will be left standing. It is a test of allegiance,
| and those that care more about the mission of the
| organization, or team, customers, users, general public than
| the boss - are considered to fail. It is core to
| authoritarianism. Kneel before the king :/
| bagels wrote:
| As it was at Twitter.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| Imagine the lack of empathy one would need to fire 500 people
| for being challenged, sociopath antics (assuming the
| reporting is accurate)
| jeltz wrote:
| Such a fragile ego. A mature manger should be able to handle
| a subordinate disobeying without throwing a temper tantrum
| and firing the whole team and damaging the whole company out
| of spite.
| akudha wrote:
| lol, there are "managers" making 40k a year (with 3 people
| reporting to them) that have huge egos. It isn't surprising
| that world's richest man child has the ego to match his
| wealth.
|
| Something wrong with society as a whole. People being cruel
| to each other for no reason, people can't think/plan beyond
| the current quarter etc. Everywhere I look, people seem
| stressed, and they lash out in whatever way they can. Seems
| like a much bigger problem than Trump/Musk, though they are
| a big contributor to society's stress for sure
| bix6 wrote:
| When I spend time outside without my phone for a few days
| it's amazing how much better things are.
| jeltz wrote:
| These people that parent mention do not live in people's
| phones. They live in people's offices. Not all people
| have the luxury to just quit working.
| ben_w wrote:
| Can confirm, can't say where or when, NDA + non-
| disparagement.
|
| Nice walks help, even so. Absolutely doesn't solve
| everything, but does help nonetheless.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I haven't had th misfortune of having such managers myself.
| But I've been right next door to other managers like this
| and it's the absolute worse.
|
| Even then, a power trip that actually fired hundreds of
| people on the spot is just ficticious levels of stupidity.
| It's the exaggerated evil businessman that everyone would
| laugh at. And musk fits it to a T.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Everyone seems to think they know Musk, it sure does look
| like Musk himself is included in this list.
|
| What is he thinking how this will turn out?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't know him, but as a programmer I hope I'm at least
| half decent at identifying a pattern. Musk's business
| acument is horrfying consistent, if nothing else.
| scrapcode wrote:
| In that case I'd say it seems to have proven effective for
| Musk multiple times now, so why stop now? In his experience,
| he can just keep shit-canning feds until something
| immediately bad happens - say he is sorry and give them a job
| back.
|
| As others have already pointed out, the real damage is
| silent, has already been done, and will be suffered by
| generations to come while being able to blame others.
| timewizard wrote:
| > fired people who had credentials
|
| I agree. Federal credential management and safekeeping is not
| particularly well crafted.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| It's to let people fear that they could lose their job, so they
| won't speak up.
| belter wrote:
| Expect this story to be flagged soon...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43061481
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| i don't see how this is (technically) related to the twitter
| layoffs - and even less how it could be "literally" given that
| the twitter layoffs where about LAYOFFS and this news item is
| about reHIRING ... or are you maybe a little challenged with
| language and what you actually want to say is that in both
| cases Elon Musk is involved?
| krapp wrote:
| https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/96439
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Everything else aside why repeat the same mistakes?_
|
| "Move fast and break things." /s
|
| Then try to move fast to fix the things you just broke.
|
| (Perhaps government tend to moves slowly for a reason: when a
| company breaks things customers can go to a competitor, when
| government breaks where can you go?)
| thisisnotauser wrote:
| Almost all government employees are necessary.
| rsanek wrote:
| > Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to
| emphasize a word or phrase, put _asterisks_ around it and it
| will get italicized.
|
| more guidelines at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| gdhkgdhkvff wrote:
| Why is that a guideline?
| theli0nheart wrote:
| My bet is that using using all-caps looks like you're
| yelling, and yelling isn't exactly conducive to effective
| conversation.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Just go a little slower and give agencies time to compile
| accurate lists of necessary employees
|
| It's not about achieving results primarily, it's a public
| perception game. Trump and Musk are going for the perception of
| "they do what they say from day 1" - it doesn't matter if what
| they plan succeeds at all (and if it's struck down by judges,
| it's just additional fodder for "un-American judges!!!"
| propaganda), or if what they do actually has the outcome they
| promised.
|
| The GQP voter base no longer cares about anything but the
| appearance of "winning", and it's aided by completely off-the-
| rockers media and influencers.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| It worked with twitter though. The site did not implode like
| all the naysayers predicted, it's at least as good, if not
| better than it was, just going off of usage statistics.
|
| This is basically 0 based budgeting, where you get rid of
| everything and then only add back what you deem to be
| absolutely necessary. I expect good results.
| _Microft wrote:
| The headline shown here is:
|
| "US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid
| off days ago"
| clort wrote:
| Also, I don't really understand how they delivered letters
| letting people know that they had been fired but were
| struggling to rescind the letters because "we do not have a
| good way to get in touch with those personnel"
|
| Did they just hand them a note saying "your fired" and escort
| them out of the building?
| Hamuko wrote:
| Well, obviously you can't have them hanging around in an
| office that manages the nuclear stockpile. It's a far too
| critical of a role to have a bunch of fired people around it.
| bbarnett wrote:
| From what I read elsewhere, resignation letters were sent via
| corporate email. Once "escorted out" of the building,
| naturally their corporate accounts were cancelled.
|
| This article says:
|
| _Attempting to reach the workers, the email, which was sent
| to current employees, said: "Please work with your
| supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to
| people's personal contact emails."_
|
| (FYI, your != you are. use you're for this)
| blooalien wrote:
| > Did they just hand them a note saying "your fired" and
| escort them out of the building?
|
| My understanding (from reading this and other articles on the
| topic) is that they blasted out mass emails to those who were
| fired and promptly disabled all their access and accounts
| (thereby preventing many of them from even _getting_ the
| notice that they were fired).
| intermerda wrote:
| Surely this thread is going to be nuked off the front page,
| right?
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, I am pretty tired of what seems like Musk fanboys
| flagging everything negative about Musk. A government agency,
| DOGE, not caring the slightest about security and getting
| hacked definitely did not deserve to be flagged like it was a
| few days ago.
| NewJazz wrote:
| _Look, having nuclear -- my uncle was a great professor and
| scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very
| good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very
| good, very smart -- you know, if you 're a conservative
| Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a
| liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people
| anywhere in the world -- it's true! -- but when you're a
| conservative Republican they try -- oh, do they do a number --
| that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good
| student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune -- you
| know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because
| we're a little disadvantaged -- but you look at the nuclear deal,
| the thing that really bothers me -- it would have been so easy,
| and it's not as important as these lives are -- nuclear is so
| powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the
| power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of
| what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought?
| -- but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners
| -- now it used to be three, now it's four -- but when it was
| three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger;
| fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they
| haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the
| men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years
| -- but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great
| negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us,
| this is horrible."_
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/
| franczesko wrote:
| Cringe. How on earth this guy was elected again?
| NewJazz wrote:
| I don't know I got distracted. He did the weave!
| mckn1ght wrote:
| I saw this comment earlier in another posted article that I
| think will explain it pretty well. We simply have a lot of
| these kinds of folks running around. Don't forget to check
| out the YouTube comments for more examples!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43065052
| fsh wrote:
| The recession due to COVID made it pretty much impossible for
| an incumbent party to win an election in 2024.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Because we are a profoundly stupid nation.
| grandempire wrote:
| "They are my enemies because they are evil and stupid" is
| why we are here a second time.
| lgdiva wrote:
| If you can explain how firing the nuclear experts _isn
| 't_ utterly stupid, I'm all ears, bucko.
| grandempire wrote:
| If you think this decision is dumb, that's ok.
|
| The implication here is that people vote for trump
| because they are stupid. Which is a political non-
| starter. If you can't explain what they think in words
| they would agree with, you just don't understand them.
|
| But sure I'll try to take the other side. Is every person
| in an organization associated with the word "nuclear"
| essential? Will nations start blowing up if a single one
| is fired?
|
| So we need to know who got let go and what their
| responsibility is. Otherwise we are just word associating
| ("nuclear safety people = good", "reducing safety =
| bad"), which is probably what the authors of this piece
| hoped for.
|
| But come on, this is just a nerd fantasy that appeals to
| HNers (the smart people doing important science are
| untouchable and will automatically do what's right).
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I'll give the people deep in the cult a pass. I'm more
| thinking about the normies who saw Jan 6th, saw Trump
| repeatedly say Covid was going away with one or two
| cases, saw Trump lie about the election being stolen, saw
| 90% of campaign ads be nothing but attacking immigrants
| and trans people, and saw a million other things--and
| said, "Yes please, give me more of that."
|
| That takes a level of willful ignorance I can't
| comprehend.
| grandempire wrote:
| Being able to explain what this group of Americans think
| would make the world less confusing and less frustrating.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| More accurately, the least stupid nation on earth.
| kelnos wrote:
| Half the people in the country either a) want to watch
| everything burn, because the system has served them poorly
| for too long, or b) are stupid enough to believe that Trump
| actually wants to help them. Or both.
|
| Many (most?) Americans don't seem to have ever learned how to
| think critically or question what authority figures tell them
| to believe.
|
| On top of that, COVID was rough for lots and lots of people.
| Even though it started under Trump, he somehow managed to
| avoid blame for the government's missteps early on. Biden did
| what he could, but even an absolute perfect response would
| have caused a lot of strife for a lot of people, and his
| administration's response was definitely not perfect. In a
| way I think it's impressive how well Harris did; even had
| Biden decided not to run at all for a second term, it would
| have been an uphill battle for the incumbent party to stay in
| power after COVID.
| computerthings wrote:
| Mind you that not even a quarter of Americans voted for
| Trump.
| grandempire wrote:
| This is normal in every election so you can use the same
| logic to dismiss any president. Do you only respect 100%
| sampling rates in other statistical situations?
|
| At a certain point this line of thinking is just saying
| you don't think elections work, or that there should be
| some non-democratic supervisor to undo bad ones.
|
| There is also an older idea that getting people out to
| vote is part of the game. An election is when citizens
| back leaders from their community. It's not taking a
| survey of every 18+ human life form with a pulse.
| kelnos wrote:
| Sure, and not even a quarter of Americans voted for
| Harris.
|
| But if you really want to be pedantic: there are around
| 75M non-citizens living in the US, so that means there
| are only 265M Americans in the US. A quick search
| suggests that the number of American citizens living
| outside the US is under 5M. 77M out of 270M is 28%, so
| Trump _did_ get more than a quarter of _Americans_ to
| vote for him.
|
| (For the record, I said "of the country", and didn't
| restrict my comment to only US citizens as you did.)
|
| At any rate, I don't find these sorts of takes all that
| useful when it comes to electoral math. 77M people voted
| for Trump. Around 100M people in the US are ineligible to
| vote (under 18 years old, non-citizens, felons denied
| voting rights, etc.). That leaves around 90M people left
| who could have voted, but didn't: to me, that's either
| "I'm fine with what the people who vote decide" (so a
| tacit vote for Trump) or "I don't care at all, screw
| this".
|
| So that's 167M votes either explicitly for Trump, or
| implicitly for watching things burn. That's about half
| the country.
|
| But sure, if you must be pedantic, amend my comment to
| "nearly half the people who voted in the election". It
| doesn't change the meaning or outcome or implications of
| the rest of what I said.
|
| So let's stop playing dumb number games. Half of the
| country either actively wanted this, or was fine with it.
| atq2119 wrote:
| > Half the people in the country either a) want to watch
| everything burn, because the system has served them poorly
| for too long
|
| I believe this as well, but it still baffles me. Don't
| people have a sense that things can always get worse?
| Aromasin wrote:
| No, they don't. Most people don't seem to get beyond 1st
| order thinking. At best, it's cause and effect -
| 3rd/4th/5th order effects are just not computable. If X
| then Y is the best they can manage.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Nope. "Nothing could be worse than this" is _really
| common_ even though it 's a complete failure of
| imagination.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Absolutely. In part it's a privilege to believe this.
| Many of us have had such remarkably and almost impossibly
| easy lives.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Canada has this problem too. We've been coddled for a
| long time and many Canadians think they've got the
| government's boot on their neck. The reality is the
| inverse. The worst things our leadership has done in the
| last ten years are, all things considered, very bearable.
|
| I've been thinking for some time that both our countries
| need some kind of wake up call. I'm very sad that we seem
| to be getting one simultaneously, yet it might not be a
| reversible event. At least not on any short order.
|
| But yeah, the lack of truly bad experiences seems to have
| made us all very soft. I know some of us experience
| poverty or immigrated from horrible governments so we
| know firsthand how much worse things can be, but on
| average I get the sense that people typically have no
| idea.
| krapp wrote:
| Price of eggs went up -\\_(tsu)_/-.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > How on earth this guy was elected again?
|
| Through the repetition of statements like: "illegals commit
| more crime," "illegals are eating your dogs," "Trump - Low
| prices, Kamala - High prices | 2024."
|
| Those things are not true, but having no proof does not
| matter any more. You just need to "flood the zone."
|
| They don't even attempt to hide this technique at all. This
| philosophy was openly confirmed by multiple people in the
| current administration, including the Vice President.
| glitchc wrote:
| The Democrat Party failed to field a credible candidate that
| was democratically elected.
| lgdiva wrote:
| Democratic* Party.
| slicktux wrote:
| Nuclear workers go where the work is...they are not going to wait
| around when there's plenty of jobs out there needing their
| skills.
| usui wrote:
| Can you explain? I must have the wrong impression, but isn't
| nuclear-related work specifically in the USA a declining or
| dying industry? Are there really plenty of jobs when Americans
| keep posturing away from nuclear? I knew no one from university
| interested in doing nuclear-related engineering for industry.
| throwaway_95283 wrote:
| That's why there is work, no supply of fresh grads.
| bbarnett wrote:
| There's a lot more to such skills than bombs and power
| plants:
|
| https://natural-resources.canada.ca/climate-
| change/medical-i...
| lithos wrote:
| Data centers will pretty much absorb any person with military
| nuclear power experience, even cases of people who completely
| washed out of the program.
|
| As for nuclear missile programs in this case, I'm pretty
| positive that field will still have similar desirable high
| points. Reliability, understanding procedures, actually
| understanding procedures to know when/how/why scripts are
| broken in some cases, and having such socially toxic work
| environment that even an Amazon job feels like fresh air.
| infthi wrote:
| > Data centers will pretty much absorb any person with
| military nuclear power experience
|
| Could you elaborate why is that? They seem to be unrelated
| areas.
| Febra33 wrote:
| Funny. Who would've thought that a shitshow of an administration
| will bring instability?
| TZubiri wrote:
| What's the biggest difference between a startup and a country?
|
| Aside from the obvious distinction, Musk has no experience
| running existing corporations with lots on the line to lose, he
| comes from move fast break things, great for a social media app,
| who gives a shit, great for literal moonshots, go big or go home.
|
| However when you manage something big, any upside from improving
| is weighed against its risk of degradation.
|
| What I find confusing is that this is not typical of
| conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political
| outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I
| don't think that's a controversial statement. And I truly believe
| that's what (at least half of) the people voted.
|
| My best estimation is that they are conservatives in that they
| want to conserve power that they hold, and they see the
| government not as a foundation for their corps, but as an enemy,
| not state as a literal creator of money, but as its dilluter or
| robber (through taxes), not the state as the basis for the
| fiction that is a corporation, but as a taxer of them. And their
| emnity is mostly due to the redistributive role of their state.
|
| And I believe that people vote out of aspirational belonging to a
| rich class, they think they are rich, or they want to aspire to
| become rich, or they buy into the establishes morals that
| entitles the rich to power.
|
| So that's how I wrap my heads around the conservative right
| overthrowing and destroying the government, they see it as a
| threat to their established power, or their chances to rise to
| power.
|
| But I'm just some idiot on hn who hopefully will come back to
| delete this later
| michaelscott wrote:
| The American right has (always?) been anti-government overreach
| traditionally. I don't actually think Trump or Musk are
| particularly conservative or right wing (they'll say and do
| what gets them the support) but on this topic they are actually
| very much in line with political tradition.
|
| I think they're overshooting here and will need to correct, but
| I get the impression as an outsider that the American people
| who voted Trump in are sick and tired of a social structure
| that isn't benefiting them and seems to give them no "out" or
| way forward. They will take the wild and crazy
| antics/experiments because hey, it wasn't exactly working
| before anyway, was it?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Grover Norquist, 2001:
|
| > _I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to
| reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom
| and drown it in the bathtub._
| XorNot wrote:
| > _Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to
| wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does
| not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does
| not protect._
|
| Frankly I don't see how you read Norquist's statement any
| other way: he doesn't want to abolish the government, he
| just wants to be sure it holds no dominion over him
| personally.
| watwut wrote:
| American right was always pro government overreach when it
| comes to cops, military and so on. The are anti government
| when the government is helping someone they dont like. They
| are against public schools, public health care, consumer
| protection, safety rules.
|
| Trump or Musk are very much American right as it always was,
| except without pretension of respectability.
| michaelscott wrote:
| Yeah this is exactly my impression as well
| eesmith wrote:
| The American left has also (always?) been anti-government
| overreach too.
|
| It's all a matter of who gets to define the "over" in
| "overreach".
|
| Laws which enforce racial segregation are overreach, for
| those in the American left who support equality.
|
| Federal laws which override state segregation are overreach,
| for those in the American right who support structural
| racism.
|
| Marijuana prohibition laws - overreach, or not?
|
| Anti-mask laws - overreach, or not?
|
| Required prayer in school - overreach, or not?
|
| Anti-pollution laws - overreach, or not?
| kelnos wrote:
| Please stop with the false equivalencies. I'm incredibly
| tired of these types of bad-faith arguments.
| anon7000 wrote:
| It's not a false equivalency. The right frequently claims
| the government over reaches, and then enact their own
| Christian policies which have a tendency to overreach.
| Heard of those book bans? That's conservative Christian
| overreach into state policy, which takes away freedom.
|
| What's bad faith is claiming that more social restriction
| is not a form of overreach.
|
| Edit: pollution is actually a very good example. In my
| view, polluting my property via air or water pollution is
| a violation of my property rights, and is therefore
| unconstitutional. Companies doing so are overreaching. I
| would like the government to reach out and stop that.
| Certain Conservatives somehow don't share this view, and
| think businesses should have the freedom to pollute, and
| wish to abolish the EPA. The government would be
| overstepping, to them.
| eesmith wrote:
| It isn't a false equivalency. I'm undermining the entire
| assertion by pointing out the 'over' in 'overreach' is
| entirely in the eye of the beholder.
|
| By definition, "overreach" must be beyond the point of
| acceptable action, so if you're going to use that term
| you need to say _why_ it 's overreach.
|
| I think michaelscott, as an outsider, has bought the
| propaganda the right has pushing for decades, without
| realizing it's a falsehood.
|
| By recasting it I mean to provide context about why it's
| a falsehood.
|
| Some nudists think it's overreach for the government to
| require clothing in public? That's not really a
| left/right thing.
|
| Is it government overreach to have Daylight Saving Time?
| That's another one that seems equally pro/anti.
| TZubiri wrote:
| No, I agree that checks and balances are bipartisan.
| diputsmonro wrote:
| I think you hit the nail on the head.
|
| The president is a con man who larps as the richest person on
| the planet and his biggest accomplishment last term was a giant
| tax cut for the rich. The "actual" president _is_ the richest
| man on earth and has a vested interest in destroying anything
| that can tax him or hold him / his businessess accountable in
| any way.
|
| Awfully convenient that the richest people in the world think
| that the proper way to balance the budget isn't by raising
| taxes, but by burning the whole government to the ground. They
| have the resources to live in a walled garden for the rest of
| their lives and they don't care who else gets hurt.
| zitsarethecure wrote:
| > The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich
| man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor
| have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich
| have always objected to being governed at all.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Worse, the very rich have a stake in the country degrading.
| Institutional collapse and chaos represent opportunities.
| The Yarvin-ites believe that they will be the god-kings of
| the new state while the poor are turned into biofuel.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe "reactionary" or "accelerationist" is the word you want?
|
| Please let's not popularize the label "progressive right," our
| political labels are already a mess in the US but that is just
| too much.
| everdrive wrote:
| I don't have a strong opinion here, but I am curious. What
| don't you like about the term progressive right?
| jhbadger wrote:
| Because it's contradictory. By definition, the Left is
| progressive -- they want society to progress and see a
| future where the problems of the past and present are
| solved by moving forward. The Right is regressive by
| definition -- they believe that modern society is inferior
| to some past "Golden Age" that needs to be returned to to
| make things great again -- the 1950s, the 19th century, or
| even the 18th century.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree, but I appreciate your response. I
| think the question is whether "left" always means
| progressive, and whether "right" always means
| conservative. For instance, I would not claim that the
| American right is very conservative these days, but they
| also don't feel "leftist" whatsoever. I don't want to
| really delve into political topics, however I feel
| strongly that what is currently going on with executive
| orders and gutting the executive branch workforce is not
| conservative whatsoever. It's more closely matches an
| unfamiliar kind of progressivism than it does
| conservatism in my mind. I could definitely understand
| how and why someone wouldn't agree with this, of course.
| I also think it could potentially be argued that leftist
| programs, such as entitlements, social programs, etc, are
| not necessarily "progressive." There could be ways these
| programs were strictly regressive. (and by that I mean
| "past-looking" rather than "bad.")
|
| Now, I would also agree that terms like left, right,
| conservative, and progressive are not really strictly
| defined a lot of the time. With such loose definitions it
| might be hard to claim that I've got the definitions
| correct. In other words, they may just be no strict
| definition, and I think you could also argue that _I'm_
| the one taking a minority definition.
|
| Progressivism itself is an interesting topic in general.
| I think there is a lot of progressive thought which is
| strictly apolitical, but is definitionally progressive.
| An easy example would be video games. Is Doom 2 better
| than Doom 1 because it added more gameplay elements? Is
| Doom 2016 even better because it added so many more
| systems, and has more advanced graphics? In my opinion
| "apolitically progressive" gamers would almost always
| claim yes; things _advanced_ and having advanced the
| older media is inherently inferior. They would claim that
| the older Doom games are "janky" which is shorthand for
| "the older games have not adopted or anticipated modern
| conventions." Other folks take a different tact; they
| tend to dislike any newer advances in gaming, and get
| "stuck" preferring older games. Others take a more
| balanced approach; they appreciate both new and old
| games, but don't necessarily prefer something merely
| because it's newer.
|
| I think movies are another interesting example. I think
| it could be argued that there are potentially objective
| improvements when it comes to movie making;
| cinematography would be one example. The movie Citizen
| Kane and the Director Alfred Hitchcock created totally
| novel approaches to cinematography which been widely and
| thoroughly adopted by filmmakers of all skill levels. (in
| other words, nearly everyone agrees that these are
| objective advancements) Even some of the worst movies
| nowadays may have more competent cinematography than some
| of the best movies from the 50s and 60s. On the other
| hand, there are clearly a lot of stylistic aspects to
| film-making which cannot really be said have to improved,
| but merely changed with the fashions of the times. I
| would argue that strongly-progressive-minded folks would
| not be able to see this; they'd see any older movie as
| inherently inferior, and see movies through a lens of
| progress. In other words, movies were always going to
| "advance" to where they are now, and anything older is
| inherently inferior. (and this is true even if they can
| still appreciate the movie.) Now, this is what I might
| call "hard apolitical progressivism," and is not
| necessarily the most common view out there. It's a useful
| example because of its explanatory nature.
|
| It's easy to see how this mentality _could_ map to
| politics, but I guess my point is that it doesn't
| necessarily do so. And, even when it does map to politics
| it doesn't necessarily follow that people on the left are
| always progressive and people on the right are always
| conservative. (although I'll obviously admit that this
| trend is _usually_ true; the left tends to be more
| progressive on average, and the right tends to be more
| conservative on average.)
| shkkmo wrote:
| So the crypto currency people who support Trump aren't
| progressive or does it only count as the progress is in a
| direction you like? If this is an unprecedented
| constitutional crisis as so many keep claiming, how is
| that 'conservative'?
|
| The 'left' isn't a rigorously defined term, so it is
| pretty hard to make a tautological argument like you are
| implying.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Libertarian capitalists like crypto currency fans idolize
| capitalism without any government regulations. That isn't
| anything new -- that was what we had in the late
| 19th/early 20th century when "robber barons" like John D
| Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie had free reign and
| workers had few rights. It's regression to return to that
| "Gilded Age".
| bee_rider wrote:
| Because these things aren't rigorously defined it is
| helpful to follow the convention rather than to go to the
| dictionary definition of a similar word. I mean surely
| you wouldn't say something along the lines of "I often
| see socialists who aren't invited to many parties, so are
| they really social?"
| bee_rider wrote:
| Progressivism is a particular set of political beliefs.
| Progressives is a noun. Adding a new meaning that is sort
| an adjective, even if it is similar to the dictionary
| definition of the word progressive, will be confusing. Can
| we have progressive Progressives? (People who want to hit
| the Progressives' goals, but faster).
| StefanBatory wrote:
| "What I find confusing is that this is not typical of
| conservatism, it's like a progressive right of political
| outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government, I
| don't think that's a controversial statement"
|
| I think it'd be fair to call them populist right? I think they
| couldn't be further from classical conservatism. Chesterton's
| Fence is a concept that seems foreign to them.
| computerthings wrote:
| Destroying government and rule of law and replacing it with a
| violent movement, giving people implicit permission to be
| brown shirts ("he who saves the country cannot violate the
| law") isn't just "populist right" in the same way "cancer"
| isn't an "inconvenience" -- yeah sure technically you could
| say that, but you probably wouldn't.
| krapp wrote:
| But Trumpism is literally a right-wing populist movement.
| It's directly influenced by the alt-right/Tea Party and
| right-libertarianism, accelerationist white supremacy and
| the Christian right.
|
| It would be incorrect to call it a "progressive" right
| movement, because it stands in direct opposition to what
| progressivism is commonly understood to be. Doing so would
| be the same kind of category error as calling the Nazis
| socialists because the word "socialist" is in their name,
| ignoring the fact that they hated socialists. The Nazis
| weren't socialist, and Trumpists aren't progressive.
| computerthings wrote:
| Oh, I didn't disagree that they're populist right, and
| not progressive. I just think it's so much worse than
| that. Or maybe I don't associate enough "weight" with
| "right-wing populist"?
|
| For me it's the difference between someone who has a
| different opinion on the same facts, as wrong as I may
| find that opinion (and they mine) -- and a movement that
| just destroys and creates facts ad-hoc, believes what it
| wants, and smears and attacks anyone not aligned. It's
| the difference between someone who disagrees with or even
| fights me -- and someone who attacks me while they're
| basically wrestling with the voices in their head,
| without seeing or hearing me, at all.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _What I find confusing is that this is not typical of
| conservatism, it 's like a progressive right of political
| outsiders whose express goal is to destroy the government_
|
| Right, these people aren't classical conservatives in any sense
| of the word. I would think of most of these people more as
| libertarians: small government, little regulation or oversight,
| let the market sort it out.
|
| The striking thing is that the _actual_ conservatives in
| Congress are sitting on their thumbs, letting this all happen.
| But I think that 's because actual conservativism in US
| politics is mostly dead, and has been so for a while.
| Republicans would rather play at culture wars, and cry about
| spending (that they themselves never rein in, even when they
| have the power to do so) and taxes (for the rich and
| corporations of course, that need to be cut).
|
| It is pathetic that it seems like the only prominent Republican
| that has a problem with all this now is Mitch McConnell, when
| he's the one who enabled Trump in the first place during his
| first term, and failed to shut him down when he actually had
| the power to do so. Be careful what you wish for, Mitch.
| daemonologist wrote:
| There's a good 538 article on this subject:
| https://abcnews.go.com/538/gop-trumps-party-
| now/story?id=118...
|
| 59% of Republicans in Congress are newly elected since Trump
| began his first term (which saw the highest attrition among
| members of the president's part in modern history). Those who
| remain are the most aligned with Trump, or at least willing
| to appear so in order to retain their office.
| itronitron wrote:
| related discussion from yesterday >>
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43061481
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43055119
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43063512
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43061481
| drawkward wrote:
| It is as though the community wants to discuss this, but bad
| actors keep shutting down the conversation.
| mimd wrote:
| Of course they are. Any rational person not blinded by
| partisanship would be infuriated by this development and
| immediately demand that DOGE be restrained. Even most
| partisans would blanch and demand accountability. DOGE
| advocates know this. Their only recourse is to try to hide it
| or distract everyone with tangential arguments like they are
| doing in this thread.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| The community is and has discussed this days old news. Lots
| of comments, upvotes and eyeballs. Over there. Not all of
| those stories is flagged. This is a dupe.
| drawkward wrote:
| I think the marketplace of ideas is showing that the HN
| community has not had enough of the discussion, because
| when these get reposted after being flagged, there is yet
| more discussion!
|
| You are free to _not_ participate if you prefer. Let those
| of us who wish to, continue.
|
| Free speech absolutism, right?
|
| Right?
|
| ?
| watwut wrote:
| > The nuclear security officials who were laid off on Thursday
| helped oversee the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons. That
| included staff who are stationed at facilities where the weapons
| are built, according to CNN.
|
| So now, the question is which country will benefit from this the
| most. Russia or Saudi Arabia? Maybe Iran?
| lawn wrote:
| Russia and China are the big winners of course.
| nobunaga wrote:
| Its hilarious. Americans dont realise they are being played. All
| this BS from the MAGA people and trump are just shift attention
| away from the conversation to tax billionaires. You guys had been
| going in the right direction when it came to having the rich pay
| their fair share. Now look at what you are all talking about?
| Your fighting each other. What a shitshow.
|
| I really dont think America will recover from this and while the
| world will suffer as a result, I think in the long term, things
| will work out. There will be some major suffering but thats the
| way the world works. WW2 happened, a lot of suffering then peace.
| We had peace for too long, people forgot about suffering and now
| look at the world. Thanks America, you played yourself and are
| now bringing the rest of the world down with you. Rather than
| focusing on the right things, you are being played to argue with
| each other.
| chakspak wrote:
| Trump got a plurality of the popular vote, not a majority.
| There are lots of people who didn't vote for this. Many people
| are now doing whatever they can to limit the damage, but it's
| an uphill battle and plenty damage will be done in the
| meantime. It's been very hard to watch this unfold.
| krior wrote:
| Not excercising the right to vote is a form of voting.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Not necessarily. Disenfranchisement is very common.
| tim333 wrote:
| I don't really see that re the tax on billionaires. It wasn't
| tightened up especially during the Biden admin and it would be
| surprising if the Trump lot went all lefty and cracked down. It
| seems much more of a culture war thing.
| dannersy wrote:
| Here we go again, let's watch HN users bend over backwards to
| tell everyone how this is a good thing, or clever, or a master
| stroke of finding inefficiencies.
| lgdiva wrote:
| I mean, yeah, this place invented Elon Musk and Sam Altman and
| every last Silicon Valley grifter. It's not all JavaScript and
| cute GitHub projects. I really do hope HN is at least a
| footnote in the history books that talk about the collapse of
| the United States.
| drawkward wrote:
| SV produces tacit fascists.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| I find it sad that the US is confused about what a work contract
| is. If you can tell someone to take unpaid leave whenever you
| feel like it then they don't really need to call you back or
| explain why they won't be in next week.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| how the turn tables
| someothherguyy wrote:
| If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how
| confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are
| stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations,
| institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on.
|
| I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation
| in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the
| rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after
| acting wantonly.
| baq wrote:
| Uppers have this effect on people.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| You think Musk is on uppers all the time? This would indeed
| explain a bunch of things related to his behavior
| Aromasin wrote:
| Use your own judgement, but he looked like he was rolling
| during the inauguration...
|
| https://x.com/Dreamshockcom/status/1881383073495048599
|
| Some might say he was just stretching his neck, but
| personally I love an electronic music gigs, and I've seen
| that behaviour enough times before. He's not quiet about
| his ketamine usage either (not an upper per-se, but close
| to an alcohol-like hallucinogenic from my experience).
| scarab92 wrote:
| He had neck surgery just a few days before the
| inauguration.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nystagmus
| would be more of a call out than neck stretching, and
| both are pointless supposition.
| bergeyboy wrote:
| Hey I think I might have this. Thanks!
| yadaeno wrote:
| The way he rolls his eyes and facial expression suggests
| MDMA or possibly adderall.
| rzz3 wrote:
| "Uppers"? I thought the leading theories were MDMA and
| Ketamine (and recovering from neck surgery), neither of which
| are best-described by the word "uppers", nor is that behavior
| an effect that "uppers" generally have (e.g. cocaine,
| (meth)amphetamines).
| Aloisius wrote:
| The MA in MDMA is methamphetamine.
|
| That said, it's also an empathogen that promotes prosocial
| behavior, which isn't the word I'd use to describe the
| behavior happening.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I don't think it has empathy-promoting properties when
| abused heavily and chronically. As I recall, the empathy-
| promotion is highly dose-dependent to begin with, and can
| even reverse due to extended misuse.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| I think the more important point is that most people were
| not born yesterday. Some very rich people are either
| mentally ill, or on drugs, or both. Or enough drug abuse
| (off camera) caused long term ego/brain changes.
|
| You can barely tell a poor person to change their life,
| imagine the discussion with a multi billionaire. There's
| no discussion.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| "unmoored" is the word. Not or no longer attached to reality.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Sadly true, the wonder is that the idiot has been showing his
| hand since at least 2015 and he still was been given another
| term!?! My guess, the first two years will be a type of
| cringe humor/horror. Mid-terms will be a political slaughter.
| Never, ever underestimate the ignorance and naivety of the
| American voter, especially my generation, the boomers.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| How are you so sure how the midterms will shake out? We
| seen to be seeing a withering of dissent.
| b_davis_ wrote:
| they are holding their powder. 18 months until it is time
| to get serious about electing the next congress.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > We are stumbling fools without systems and rules
| (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely
| on.
|
| The wide masses yes - the 1% who is looking to profit immensely
| from the upcoming chaos not.
|
| DOGE is not about trimming government costs, it is about
| allowing the large companies to rip off the masses without
| repercussions (e.g. the planned demise of CFPB or OSHA/DoL) and
| it is about preparing the transfer of what used to be
| government-provided services at cost or subsidised to
| privatised for profit enterprises where the 1% profit (e.g. the
| dismantling of public schools).
|
| The end game is obvious, neofeudalism: _everything_ that the
| 99% do shall generate profit for the 1%. We shall own nothing
| and rent /pay for everything. It begins with five to six
| figures medical bills at birth and ends with our funeral costs.
| chinathrow wrote:
| The rich are endangering their riches in this experiment. The
| pitch forks will have their field day eventually.
|
| 2014 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-
| pitchfor...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| That's the insiduous thing we're seeing - when you have to
| work two jobs just to make rent on a dilapidated shack for
| a slumlord you don't have time to protest, and when your
| healthcare insurance depends on having a job (because there
| aren't charity-run hospitals around any more) you can't
| afford the risk getting fired for going on a strike, much
| less actual "direct action".
|
| On top of that, mass media controls the narratives way too
| hard - just look how fast Luigi Mangione got out of the
| news.
| afavour wrote:
| > just look how fast Luigi Mangione got out of the news.
|
| What news would there be? He was arrested and locked up,
| his court case hasn't started. Should we have "Luigi
| still in jail" headlines?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'd have expected a debate about healthcare cost and
| actual reforms resulting out of it because the momentum
| clearly was there, but hey, here we are... For a while,
| until he was caught, there was a debate beginning to form
| what drives someone to execute a healthcare executive on
| the street - but the day he got caught, the debate got
| suppressed and no one is talking about it anymore.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I 'd have expected a debate about healthcare cost and
| actual reforms_
|
| It was all show no thought. The big questions remain
| unanswered. Where are costs inflated between
| pharmaceuticals, providers, hospital administrators,
| insurance administrators and patients seeking unnecessary
| care? How do we reform insurance when most people hate
| our healthcare system while simultaneously liking their
| own coverage?
|
| Luigi didn't add anything substantive to the debate.
| Instead, his role was in facilitating venting. Someone
| still has to come up with an idea beyond "I hate this."
|
| > _there was a debate beginning to form what drives
| someone to execute a healthcare executive on the street_
|
| On Twitter, maybe. For most people, it was another
| Manhattan mental-health case murder. The chase and his
| good looks provided salacious intrigue, but only for so
| long as he was on the run.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >The big questions remain unanswered. Where are costs
| inflated between pharmaceuticals, providers, hospital
| administrators, insurance administrators and patients
| seeking unnecessary care?
|
| Pharma costs are inflated by R&D costs and promotion.
| Insurance overhead is actually relatively lean, but base
| cost is primarily driven by cost of goods, and to a
| lesser extent admin. Provider costs are inflated by high
| legal and regulatory liability, shortage of qualified
| staff to offset liability, and high admin.
|
| At a the highest level, cost is driven by an inability to
| discover and set prices at market clearing rates.
|
| Manufacturer dont sell fixed price product into a market,
| but negotiate complex bulk deals with PBMs, pushing some
| prices up and others down. Similarly, hospitals/providers
| dont set prices at clearing rates, but negotiate 1:1
| pricing, with some products above and below cost.
|
| Last, and I suspect most significantly, health plans cant
| meaningfully vary in provided care, only cost sharing.
| That is to say, a bronze plan must include the same
| medications and procedures at a gold plan, differing only
| in copay. This breaks the price feedback on COGs. (e.g. a
| generic only insurance plan is illegal, so name brands
| face reduced competition).
|
| If I were Medical Czar, I would look at banning
| preferential pricing/institutional rebates for goods and
| services.
|
| I would allow more heterogeneity in policies (e.g.
| generics only, no implants, limited oncology, ect). This
| would crush innovation, but also greatly reduce pricing
| as it moves from cutting edge, to 10 year old technology.
|
| Provider shortage is a tougher nut to crack, but I think
| it would require radically altering the residency program
| as it exists today and loosening requirements for other
| healthcare professionals.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| If you had to pick one policy that maximises impact and
| messagability, what would it be?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont know that they work well in isolation, as there
| are multiple market failures at play.
|
| If I had to pick one, I would say heterogeneity of
| insurance plans as most fundamental.
|
| Consumers must have some exposure to cost savings or
| liability for downward price pressure exerted and
| inferior substitutes to be selected. People will never
| pick a $20 treatment over a $20,000 unless they have skin
| in the game, even if it is 99% as effective.
|
| I think this has to be instituted at a insurance policy
| level for a number of reasons. Charges are stochastic and
| in the future, while policy premiums are predictable and
| immediate, allowing consumers to see cost or savings
| across the entire policy and pre-commit.
|
| Measurability is tough on this because it amounts to
| allowing inferior treatment, and I dont think this could
| be papered over, even if it brings down the price of all
| care and allows more treatment in aggregate.
|
| Uniform pricing is much better on the messaging. It is
| adjacent to collective bargaining, just mediated by a
| market instead of a technocrat. It can be sold to the
| left as an attack shadowy rentseekers. It can be sold on
| the right as a free market reform. On the pragmatic
| front, it can It has a transparent pricing angle, where
| you could see prices, which current transparency
| legislation seems to fail. I also think there is a lot of
| negative will pent up about negotiated pricing and the
| idea of companies paying drastically lower prices than an
| individual because they can throw their weight around
| when bargaining.
| DANmode wrote:
| Not who you asked, but:
|
| "Remove the people between you and your doctor."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'd have expected a debate about healthcare cost and
| actual reforms resulting out of it because the momentum
| clearly was there
|
| No, it wasn't; if the momentum was there, the debate
| would have been self-sustaining and not dependent on new
| news events relating to Mangione to sustain it.
|
| > but the day he got caught, the debate got suppressed
| and no one is talking about it anymore.
|
| The debate didn't get suppressed and didn't need to be;
| the "debate" in the major media wasn't a real debate, it
| was just a way to stretch attention to Mangione news for
| a few more commercial breaks, and once there were no more
| news events for it to leverage for that purpose, it was
| abandoned by the same people who had been driving it.
| And, to the extent that there were people engaging in
| social media and elsewhere who saw the debate as genuine,
| they didn't need to be suppressed, as they never had
| momentum, they just mistook cynical commercial
| manipulation for opportunity.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is the failure mode of the anarcho-liberal awareness
| premise.
|
| "Awareness" is almost never the limiting factor to policy
| change.
|
| This is why awareness based movements such as occupy,
| BLM, and climate protests go nowhere. Everyone is aware
| of climate change, police brutality, or inequality.
|
| Organized opposition with leverage and a compelling
| alternative is the bottleneck. Awareness isn't a policy
| position and doesn't advance debate.
|
| Luigi did not have a thesis capable of changing minds. I
| dont know and haven't seen a single example of someone
| having their mind _changed_. Just people more fired up on
| their priors.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Wasn't the thesis that can change minds behind Luigi
| basically "If we don't fix the system then this could
| happen to me"?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think that is a policy proposal, nor do I think it
| is compelling to the voters and policy maker that would
| need to implement the change.
|
| My point is that acting out until someone else comes up
| with a solution and someone else implements it almost
| never works. You have to change minds en masse.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > On top of that, mass media controls the narratives way
| too hard - just look how fast Luigi Mangione got out of
| the news.
|
| People say this a lot, but it seems just as likely to me
| that the media is simply reflecting what we care about.
| Coverage fades because, broadly speaking, people have
| moved on from the story. Even more "intellectual media"
| like the Atlantic has moved on from it. I get that it's
| uncomfortable to acknowledge, but an equally plausible
| explanation is that the public is far more interested in
| Blake Lively's lawsuit than in Mangione or the state of
| healthcare in the U.S.
|
| Yes, it's a symbiotic relationship, but I think people
| are often too eager to blame a shadowy cabal rather than
| recognizing that it's often just a reflection of what
| society actually values. Probably because, as stated,
| dismantling mass media seems like something that could
| possibly happen while changing the entirety of a nation
| is essentially impossible.
| DennisP wrote:
| Healthcare doesn't depend on a job, and I don't
| understand why this rhetoric continues. Except in certain
| red states that refused federal funds, anyone below a
| certain income gets Medicaid and anyone above it can get
| ACA insurance, complete with a subsidy based on your
| income. Preexisting conditions are irrelevant.
|
| Republicans might make big changes but this has been the
| situation since Obama.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Everyone I know with ACA plans can't actually afford to
| go to the doctor because the copay is too high.
| bix6 wrote:
| Almost 10 years later and still no pitchforks?
| scarab92 wrote:
| We're seeing a significant rise in left-wing conspiracy
| theories though, which is not a great sign for the
| future.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| Conspiracy theories? Can you elaborate?
| Jensson wrote:
| There are a lot of conspiracy theories around Trump and
| Musk etc.
|
| Just remember that not all conspiracy theories are wrong,
| but there being so many popular ones from the left now is
| not a good sign regardless if they are right or wrong.
| tim333 wrote:
| There's probably a lot of conspiring going on with those
| guys, just a question of the details.
| lwhi wrote:
| Trump and Musk are working according to their own fickle
| natures and whims.
|
| All anyone can do is guess and imagine, because of this.
|
| Everyone has to be a theory. Reason is extinct.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Trump and Musk are working according to their own
| fickle natures and whims.
|
| The effect of network organizations like Heritage
| Foundation or the decades-long work of the Koch brothers
| or the Murdoch clan on what Trump is doing is not to be
| underestimated.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| No need for conspiracy theories with those two! They make
| it easy, their tweets and actions speak for themselves.
| el_jay wrote:
| A health insurance CEO was shot dead in the streets. It's
| only one pitchfork but it's still a pitchfork.
| EasyMark wrote:
| and they are shocked when someone snaps and such things
| happen.
|
| "for are we not generous gods?" --Most Billionaires
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _health insurance CEO was shot dead in the streets_
|
| Middle manager from Minnesota scraping in at the very
| bottom of the 0.1% wealth line, in a system with power-
| law dynamics, is a high-profile mugging.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yeah, there's a good quote about how they don't trust
| people to "eat the rich", because what they'll _actually_
| do is come at a bunch of doctors and lawyers while the
| _real_ rich gets away relatively unscathed.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In the French revolution, mobs would smash textile shops
| to the dismay of the workers, string up the middle class
| owners, then drink the reagents and die.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _rich are endangering their riches in this experiment_
|
| The history of modern revolutions is that the rich are
| fine. Hell, even in the French Revolution, most of the
| aristocracy fled with their lives and moveable riches. In
| the intervening centuries, mobility of both people and
| wealth has substantially increased.
| tremendoussss wrote:
| I think if you looked at the history of the global economy
| and geopolitics since 1970 or 1900 pre Federal Reserve, I
| think you could make an argument that the dystopia that
| you're worried about already exists.
| gcr wrote:
| The point is that it's worth fighting, not whether the end
| goal is attainable.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yes but there are still degrees of existence.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Feds consumed <5% GDP during most non-war time between civil
| war and WW1. During which time standard of living and economy
| rose about as much during the post WW2 period of massively
| growing government and regulation.
|
| It's hard to take these apocalyptic premonitions about federal
| government reduction seriously.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| I don't think _appealing to the gilded age_ can be taken
| seriously.
|
| See for instance: https://www.investopedia.com/gilded-
| age-7692919
| joyeuse6701 wrote:
| For better or for worse, that GDP boom was enabled by the
| massive spending and outcome of the Civil War, much like
| WW2. To point to these moments and ignore the immediate
| massive historical events that preceded it seems like a
| serious oversight in the analysis.
| ty6853 wrote:
| You chastise the comparison but then admit they're much
| alike, did you think that a complete accident. Obviously
| two different times are two different times but it's
| hilarious the hypocrisy you often see of regulatory
| proponents talking up post WW2 gains as the regulatory
| apparatus spun up -- but when you point out other post
| war periods with lower federal burdens suddenly the
| narrative changes to 'not like that!'
| bbor wrote:
| ...youre saying that life was good from 1870-1910?
| Reconstruction and the gilded age??
|
| I mean, there was technological and medical improvements,
| sure, and continued urbanization.
|
| But that's... those are some of our nations most shameful,
| inequal, racist years in its entire history. The federal
| government as it exists now was just getting started after we
| realized we needed it thanks to the civil war, and many local
| democratic systems were completely broken. More relevantly,
| we didn't have cancer researchers, epidemiologists, the NSF,
| or, _most_ relevantly, nuclear weapons.
|
| Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal
| government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and
| defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on
| here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face,
| unless they're young and don't know anyone older than them,
| and/or advocates isolationism.
|
| Regardless, this exact story makes it clear that the goal
| isn't cutting the size of the government at all -- it's
| politicizing the civil service, and bringing it under the
| exclusive control of a supreme executive. They're not exactly
| ashamed of it!
| ty6853 wrote:
| >social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending.
| I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate
| cutting any those with a straight face
|
| Who says I don't advocate cutting those too, if you're
| asking? And I am grey haired, not sure about the ageism.
| bbor wrote:
| Well, all I'll say is this then: you are a tiny minority.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Yet the public voted for someone openly stating they'd
| carry out DOGE.
|
| Majority is just a collection of tiny minorities, in this
| case my minority opinion partially aligns. As it turns
| out minority isn't aways what you think.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| This RMG survey reports 19% of all voters knowing what
| DOGE was in December of 2024.
|
| https://napolitannews.org/posts/19-percent-of-voters-
| know-wh...
|
| (PDF) https://napolitannews.org/assets/pdfs/67633dc0cced7
| -gcm24-12...
| ty6853 wrote:
| Less than 19% knew what the nuclear safety team was, so
| be careful with the point you're making. There was
| probably more informed consent for DOGE than many
| eliminated positions.
| Hasu wrote:
| You're moving the goalposts. People did not, in fact,
| vote for DOGE.
| ty6853 wrote:
| I said 'the public voted for someone openly stating
| they'd carry out DOGE.'
|
| They moved the goalposts to what fraction of voters were
| questionably polled to know about DOGE, because my claim
| is pretty much irrefutable. Then when I use their own
| criteria suddenly we cry foul that I used their own goal
| posts that they shifted to.
| confidantlake wrote:
| You are single handedly making this discussion
| unbearable. Congrats I guess?
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > so be careful with the point you're making
|
| I was attempting to find evidence for your claim, and I
| found that survey. If you can find other surveys, please
| share, as I am seeing this being repeated a lot.
| ty6853 wrote:
| You were finding evidence for a different goal post you
| shifted to, that when applied applies even more harshly
| to the nuclear team.
| lgdiva wrote:
| Shut up, Jesus Christ...
| confidantlake wrote:
| The dude is insufferable.
| specialist wrote:
| I don't follow. Is there a constituency in favor of
| eliminating governmental nuclear safety?
| ty6853 wrote:
| I don't follow. Are we moving the goal posts yet again
| from the above of what % knew what something was? Because
| the constituency generally did not know of the nuclear
| safety team. I don't even know their was a constituency
| calling for their creation, although there is an argument
| as to why reps might make them exist anyway.
|
| Are you suggesting their creation was improper? Or
| suggesting constituency advocation would make it proper?
|
| Either way you might draw uncomfortable conclusions.
| rzz3 wrote:
| I think defense _spending_ could be cut dramatically
| without changing our defense _posture nor preparedness_,
| simply by modernizing inefficient systems, reducing
| waste, renegotiating contracts, etc. Our defense spending
| is relatively insane. We should look at Medicare and
| Medicaid in the same way. I wouldn't want to see benefits
| reduced, but we certainly should be optimizing costs. I
| really hope the idea of reducing government waste hasn't
| become a partisan thing just because the folks doing it
| right now are doing it very badly.
| amluto wrote:
| > Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal
| government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and
| defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on
| here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face
|
| I think plenty of people would like to cut Medicare and
| Medicaid spending, not by reducing service, but by cleaning
| up the unbelievably broken medical system in the US.
| ericfr11 wrote:
| The issue is not with Medicaid: it's with the Big Pharma,
| their lobbies, and the corruption they generate. For-
| profit companies can't be in control as something as
| critical and universal like human health.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Many are very much in favor of cutting these services.
|
| As President Musk said, "that necessarily involves some
| temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term
| prosperity"
| hobs wrote:
| Reverting to the world of 110 years ago in what way resembles
| today? This sound like you are deeply misplacing your
| confidence in your personal understanding of the world.
| Xunjin wrote:
| Not only he is overconfident about his "history knowledge"
| but is extremely wrong. Comparing that GDP from 110 years
| ago with today is liking comparing the economics of
| indigenous tribes with their colonization people.
|
| It's not like comparing apples with oranges, it's literally
| comparing a bacteria with country.
| James_K wrote:
| So you're telling me that government spending was continually
| going up, and while this happened our quality of life
| massively and suddenly improved? I feel like reversing this
| process is very bad.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Unless nirvana is at 100% it has to stop somewhere. What im
| saying is it didn't continually go up during periods of
| like growth, and it's not clear such high federal spending
| is necessary or helpful in improving the human condition.
| James_K wrote:
| The US government has very low spending (it just appears
| high due to the military budget) and correspondingly many
| people in the US have very poor human condition. It's
| abundantly clear that government spending is a necessity
| to combat inequality. When the functions of government
| are privatised, the poor will lose access to these
| amenities, and the rich will begin to profit from them.
| The result is a system more unequal in both wealth and
| allocation. Likewise the destruction of regulations
| serves mainly to increase the ability for corporations to
| exploit individuals. These are all clear negative
| effects, and I have yet to see a positive case for this
| action. What benefits might there be to decimating the
| government? The only suggestion I've heard is that the
| private sector will magically do the government's job
| better than it can, which is absurd because they could
| already attempt this and have decided it isn't possible.
| lgdiva wrote:
| Dude, maybe just admit that your edgelord libertarian
| fantasy of everything being a corporation is a bad idea.
| It's fine, you're allowed to change your mind.
| intermerda wrote:
| There may be a serious discussion to be had about
| government spending. But it seems that you believe Musk
| and the rest of the GOP are interested in it. If they
| were, the House GOP wouldn't have released a budget that
| asks for 4 trillion debt limit increase while proposing
| 4.5 trillion tax cuts. Or SpaceX wouldn't be awarded
| another $40m contract. While it's a drop in the bucket,
| serious people would at least raise questions about the
| massive conflict of interest.
|
| Musk and his ilk are interested in looting the treasury.
| It has nothing to do with government efficiency.
| Hasu wrote:
| But that growth period also came after the largest Marxist
| redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor that's
| ever happened in America.
| ty6853 wrote:
| The mythos often presented is mass wealth inequality is
| incompatible with raising of living standards of the poor.
|
| The poor can gain something at least temporarily by taking
| it from the rich. Another less violent option is mutually
| beneficial voluntary interactions.
| Hasu wrote:
| I'm talking about Emancipation. So no, this isn't
| temporarily taking something from the rich, or something
| that could have been solved through "mutually beneficial
| voluntary action".
|
| The government told a bunch of rich people that the
| incredibly valuable people they owned were no longer
| their property, and gave money and land to the people who
| previously had nothing because they hadn't been
| considered people. That's what kicked off your Gilded Age
| ty6853 wrote:
| You're literally talking about moving violence enforced
| slavery to something closer to voluntary trade of labor.
| That's far from exclusively Marxian, even most brands of
| ancapism advocate such philosophy.
| Hasu wrote:
| Yes, it's also a wealth transfer, and slaveholders (other
| than in DC) were not compensated.
|
| If you're ignoring that huge economic event in your
| analysis of the economics of the latter half of the 19th
| century, trying to replicate it today is going to be very
| rough.
|
| Given your other replies in this thread, you're not
| interested in arguing honestly and I'm not going to
| continue engaging.
| ty6853 wrote:
| The involuntary wealth transfer of slavery was from
| slaves to the rich, not the other way around. Framing it
| as the slaves taking from the rich when they stopped
| being slaves by no longer providing free labor is
| monumentally disingenuous, and I don't think you really
| believe that.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I 'm talking about Emancipation_
|
| Emancipation isn't Marxist, historically or conceptually.
|
| > _That 's what kicked off your Gilded Age_
|
| Absolutely not. "Railroads were the major growth
| industry," with industrialisation and immigration being
| the era's economic drivers [1]. "The South remained
| economically devastated after the American Civil War" and
| remained a drag on the American economy throughout most
| of the Gilded Age.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're out of your mind and blathering out of ignorance.
|
| Nothing about that era resembles Marxism, and I'd guess
| you'd struggle to tell the difference between Karl Marx
| and the Marx Brothers.
|
| Reconstruction was shut down. Slaves went from assets to
| contract services. Jim Crow ensured that there was no
| movement upward. For the aristocracy, they were hurt by
| the depredation of war but recovered stronger than before
| under the new system.
|
| The gilded age was about railroads. The south with their
| feudalist system was a backwater producing mostly raw
| material. They moved out of irrelevance because social
| control allowed them to control the Senate for decades.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Only in the South, and shortlived. The elite quickly
| regained control of both the land and means of production.
|
| It also had nothing to do with Marxism. There was no
| redistribution of land as in social revolutions in other
| countries (France, Russia, China).
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Maybe best not to invoke the period with the worst economic
| inequality in US history as some sort of example?
|
| You're also forgetting the tremendous amount of social unrest
| during that time because of that inequality (and as a result,
| the workers rights we enjoy today which largely arose from
| that period, and the Great Depression, though there have been
| great efforts to erode them).
| gitfan86 wrote:
| If you got your information from BBC this comment would make a
| lot of sense.
|
| If you got your information from economic facts comparing
| Europe to USA this comment it hilarious
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > If you got your information from economic facts comparing
| Europe to USA this comment it hilarious
|
| I don't understand what you mean. Can you please point me to
| resources to help inform me instead of pointing and laughing?
| scarab92 wrote:
| Much of Europe is in a recession, or has stagnant economic
| growth at best.
|
| They've had left leaning governments for too long, and
| economic stagnation is the natural result of that. You
| can't regulate your way to prosperity.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > They've had left leaning governments for too long, and
| economic stagnation is the natural result of that. You
| can't regulate your way to prosperity.
|
| Left-leaning political ideology implies regulation?
|
| What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-
| capitalism
|
| A more convincing argument for me would detail the
| regulatory frameworks that lead to economic stagnation,
| not bucketing a whole continent in an attempt to
| correlate a glut of regulation with economic stagnation.
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| If you consider ancap to be a left-leaning ideology you
| should reread "Classification" section on the page you've
| linked.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| It sounds left-leaning? How about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Not sure about that. We had 14 years of right wing
| government in the UK, and stagnant growth.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Your right wing government is left wing by our standards
| garden_hermit wrote:
| Ah, you see, Right Wing government is when economy go up.
| If economy no go up, it no right wing government.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| In this context yes, where left wing is closer to Marxism
| and right wing is closer to capital allocation being done
| by capitalists.
| nindalf wrote:
| Interesting theory.
|
| So the UK with 14 years of right wing rule should be
| humming, but it isn't. Now you're going to claim that
| "oh, the Tories weren't right wing enough". Nonsense.
|
| Then I'll point out that 12 of the last 16 years in
| America have been under left wing governments. All filled
| with policies that a right winger like yourself would no
| doubt abhor. TARP, Obamacare, CHIPS Act, Inflation
| Reduction Act - massively left wing. State subsidies
| handed out left and right, and the American economy grew
| massively during that time. "Oh, Obama and Biden are
| actually right wing by European standards". Sure buddy.
|
| Your simplistic world view leads to wrong conclusions,
| which you'll try to No-True-Scotsman your way out of.
| None of us are buying it though.
|
| Your worship of right wing ideology saddles you with a
| crackpot who fires nuclear safety personnel and then
| attempts to hire them back 2 days later. Spare us the
| lecture.
| specialist wrote:
| Austerity (neoliberal) policy is left-leaning?
| LunaSea wrote:
| UK, France and Germany have been lead by right wing
| governments for the last 10 years.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _We are stumbling fools without systems and rules
| (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely
| on._
|
| There are no organization or institutions or anything else that
| matters: only _people_ matter. If people don 't bother to have
| integrity then "institutions" (or anything based around them)
| are irrelevant.
|
| "There are no institutions, only people." --
| https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395
| (possibly quoting Papandreou)
|
| In the US context:
|
| > _Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a
| wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of
| government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of
| government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue
| in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient
| virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised
| in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on
| their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the
| people who are to choose them._
|
| *
| https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-11-02-010...
| nickdothutton wrote:
| We are told endlessly in the UK that "institutions are
| strong". This is about as foolishly optimistic a statement as
| I can recall hearing, from ostensibly serious people.
| Institutions are not strong. Institutions are made of people.
| People are weak, corrupt, lazy, stupid, and endlessly self-
| serving. Institutions are weak.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _People are weak, corrupt, lazy, stupid, and endlessly
| self-serving. Institutions are weak_
|
| This is partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low-trust
| societies are filled with weak, corrupted, lazy and stupid
| leaders.
| dangjc wrote:
| Institutions try to make people more than the sum of their
| parts. The free market pits businesses against each other in
| a way that harnesses overall economic productivity. We've
| gotten pretty far with our federalized system and balance of
| branches. Something does seriously need fixing now that
| polarized parties lead Congress and the courts not to be
| doing their job checking the executive. And that presidents
| are chosen more for their charisma than from trust built up
| by people who actually work with them. A prime minister is
| chosen by peers, not by a general population that doesn't
| know what they're capable of.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _many in this country are_
|
| It's exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley
| elite. Between the stupidity and kowtowing it has revealed a
| startling amount of groupthink and cowardice, even among people
| I once held as independent thinkers.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| I highly recommend everyone read the Curtis Yarvin NYTimes
| interview [linked below] to see the full extent of the
| intellectual bankruptcy. This guy is apparently seen as some
| meaningful thinker by the Silicon Valley elite (Vance and
| Andreesen have quoted him), but in literally his 3rd sentence
| just straight up lies.
|
| Yarvin's claim: "[In] F.D.R.'s first inaugural address,... he
| essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me absolute power, or
| I'll take it anyway"
|
| From FDR's speech: "I shall ask the Congress for the one
| remaining instrument to meet the crisis--broad Executive
| power to wage a war against the emergency..."
|
| Operative phrase: "I shall _ask_ the Congress "
|
| These people are, at best, dishonest and cowardly. Even more
| disappointing, it's increasingly clear the only indicator of
| _actual intelligence_ is net worth. This is rather lossy
| signal, unfortunately.
|
| Interview:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-
| in...
| kernal wrote:
| Why would any rational person read the rantings of a
| radical far left socialist on a site and newspaper known
| for spreading democrat propaganda? That's like telling
| people to watch CNN and MSDNC to get their news.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Are you referring to Yarvin as a far left socialist? He's
| about as far from a socialist as you can get.
|
| Also: It's a literal interview lol. You get to read his
| own answers to (very light) skeptical questioning.
|
| You can see him completely elide (or forget, or not
| know?) that CEOs are accountable to boards and,
| ultimately, to shareholders. You get to see him dismiss
| his own child's fears about Trump's wall by first
| forgetting (or deceiving, again) that Trump did indeed
| start building a physical, literal wall, _then_ assure
| his child that _his_ life won 't change as he attends a
| fancy private Mandarin immersion school in San Francisco.
|
| The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty just cannot
| help but seep out of this supposedly serious thinker!
|
| Of course the real value of his philosophy is its
| conclusion that the ultrawealthy should rule the world.
| So the ahistoricism, dishonesty, and internal incoherence
| hardly matter to the Silicon Valley elite.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Isn't that more or less the behavior that's normally
| associated with the professional managerial class? That is to
| say: They throw in with whatever side will give them prestige
| and privilege.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with
|
| I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a
| significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is
| based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules
| (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws
| passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both
| conventions and laws is hard to stop. The only mechanism is
| impeachment, and that as we have seen is _extremely difficult_
| to do -- in many cases that has been used frivolously by both
| parties, but even in the case where it should have been a slam
| dunk -- Trump's attempted coup -- the most GOP senators were
| too afraid of their own re-election chances because of Trump's
| ability to "rile up the masses" (look at Liz Cheney). A climate
| of fear is an essential part of authoritarianism because it
| paralyzes those who might be able to take action to ensure that
| the democratic principles are upheld.
|
| When you have an angry mob attack the capitol building and
| threaten to kill politicians, and they are pardoned by the
| person who incited them, that generates a lot of fear.
| nerdix wrote:
| This is correct. I don't think it is possible to design a
| democratic system that is impervious to authoritarianism when
| a large enough percentage of the population is in favor of
| it. After the last election, it is clear that a slight
| majority of Americans are either in favor of outright
| authoritarianism or are at least not turned off by it.
|
| I wonder how much is this is "rational" due to Congress being
| broken as an institution. Hyper-partisanship and an unchecked
| filibuster means that Congress is stuck in permanent
| gridlock. The only way to get anything done is through
| executive power. But the system wasn't designed to work that
| way and so the checks on executive power can seem stifling to
| progress. It seems that many are willing to look the other
| way if they feel like its the only way to get what they want
| done. Concern only seems to come into play when its the other
| side wielding power. And this seems to be true across the
| aisle. Many on the left were frustrated with Biden's
| perceived timidity when it came to exercising executive
| power. And I feel like he was pressured into doing things
| that he wasn't fully comfortable doing unilaterally
| (especially regarding student loan forgiveness). Of course,
| the difference is that Biden spent 40 years in the Senate,
| understands the role of Congress in government, and had no
| intention of "ignoring the rules". Trump isn't limited by
| that type of thinking since he had no experience with, no
| great knowledge of, or respect for American government.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > it is clear that a slight majority of Americans are
| either in favor
|
| Or when a large enough percentage is easy to fool and
| manipulate, too many dumb and uneducated. Lots of failure
| modes
| yeyeyeyeyeyeyee wrote:
| The US is busy making the biggest own-goal one could imagine.
|
| From a position of world-wide dominance and respect, it is being
| destroyed at a rate that is too quick for most to even start to
| comprehend what the outcome of these actions will be. I suspect
| the consequences of these actions will be carried for the rest of
| our lives, as they are not so easy to turn back.
|
| Lots of other countries are standing by watching while the USA
| has seemingly found enough rope to hang itself.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well, Brexit took the spot previously. Not sure if US can top
| it, but they sure as hell trying.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| It's like blood letting, but less effective.
| lokimedes wrote:
| You have go go back to the collapse of the British empire to
| witness anything this grand. And that was driven by external
| factors.
| drawkward wrote:
| This is Russia driven. Its right out of Aleksandr Dugin's
| playbook for Russian political dominance:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
| hrgak100 wrote:
| Dugin had ideas of spheres of influence. Roughly
| speaking, he thought that America should be dominated by
| the US, Europe/Africa by the EU and Asia by Russia.
|
| This however coincides with the much older ideas of the
| technocracy movement, which was championed by Musk's
| grandfather Haldeman:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement#The_Te
| chn...
|
| So it is not necessarily Russia driven, but surely RT has
| recently published an article that defends the Technate
| (RT is blocked, so here is a copy):
|
| https://thepressunited.com/updates/heres-why-trump-
| really-wa...
|
| Europe is a bit slow in picking up on all this: Russia,
| the US and China are carving up the world and Macron
| calls a summit to determine how to make Russia and China
| eternal enemies. The EU (and Ukraine!) have been played
| since 2008/2014.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| > In the Americas, United States, and Canada: Russia
| should use its special services within the borders of the
| United States and Canada to fuel instability and
| separatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony,
| such as, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists" to
| create severe backlash against the rotten political state
| of affairs in the current present-day system of the
| United States and Canada. Russia should "introduce
| geopolitical disorder into internal American activity,
| encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social,
| and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident
| movements - extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus
| destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It
| would also make sense simultaneously to support
| isolationist tendencies in American politics".
|
| It sounds like he's less concerned about the west, but
| knows that there needs to be political chaos in order to
| prevent the US from interfering with Russia's political
| goals.
|
| I guess that seems obvious at this point, but worrisome
| that the US government is now actively supporting of
| those goals.
|
| If you take an objective view that these are geopolitical
| conditions that would be beneficial to Russian
| objectives, and pair it with the concurrency of these
| things playing out, then it's hard to see it as
| coincidence.
| machomaster wrote:
| In the same vain and USA's politics it driven by
| Unabomber.
|
| Dugin's influence on Putin/Russia is a total fake news.
| Aleksandr "Putin's favorite political/historical/cultural
| icon/advisor according to Western media" Dugin, has NEVER
| even met with Putin, as in not a single time.
|
| Don't spread fake news.
| drawkward wrote:
| You do realize that ideas can be spread by other means
| than face to face conversation, right?
|
| Your argument is super goofy.
|
| David Foster Wallace is my favorite author, and I've
| never even met the guy!
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's not Russia driven.
|
| It's driven by Trump and Musk egos. It's Nero watching
| Rome burn, to bring about his new greatness.
| drawkward wrote:
| It does seem quite implicating that both Musk and Trump
| have had multiple reported private calls with Putin. I
| dont recall other ex presidents meeting with Putin so
| frequently.
|
| Missing dossiers of Russian Intel from Mar-a-Lago...which
| of course we never got to hear the full story of thanks
| to Judge Cannon and SCOTUS.
|
| This is so on the nose it would be rejected if someone
| wrote it as a novel or film.
| conception wrote:
| Not to mention all the republicans who had dinner with
| him on July 4th of all dates. I think Stein has visited a
| few tomes as well.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| [delayed]
| grandempire wrote:
| All the catastrophic things that were predicted form Brexit
| didn't really happen though
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yes they did? Is this a joke? Or have you not been
| following the UK's descent into poverty and irrelevance?
| grandempire wrote:
| Here a few that were seriously threatened
|
| - all the major corporations would leave and there would
| be no jobs - collapse of the pound - start of wars within
| the UK and potentially with EU
| rayiner wrote:
| The UK's GDP per capita trajectory diverged around the
| end of the Great Recession. That was before the Brexit
| vote (2016) and long before the actual Brexit (2020).
| France and Italy have been stuck in more or less the same
| doldrums since the same time: https://datacommons.org/pla
| ce/country/FRA?utm_medium=explore...
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| As a fairly regular visitor (for work), what particular
| doldrums are you referencing? Admittedly, the loss of the
| US market will be a big blow for exports, but the anti-US
| (Trump) feelings strongly would put up with a financial
| hit rather than dealing with Mr. Loopy. And Tesla's are
| becoming very unpopular...and unsellable.
| rayiner wrote:
| The per capita GDP of France, Italy, and the UK have been
| flat since 2009.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with your main point (by a host of
| metrics, the UK and EU have stagnated economically
| compared to the US since the end of the great recession),
| but I also don't think GDP per capita is the best metric
| to use here given widening levels of inequality. Median
| income levels taking into account government transfers
| are much more informative in my opinion.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Em. Those aren't inflation adjusted.
|
| - UK - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDGBR
|
| - FR - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDFRA
|
| - IT - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDITA
|
| It would be somewhat unusual if they didn't all look
| similarish given the level of trade between them.
|
| The UK government predicted a 2% reduction in growth over
| 15 years with a soft brexit compared to what it would
| have been otherwise, but seeing it on a graph may be
| difficult given those countries were _also_ hurt by
| Brexit.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I'm as anti-Brexit as they come, but it didn't change the
| UK's direction much. It's still the 2nd richest European
| state (with the 1st declining fast), the 3rd largest tech
| ecosystem worldwide, one of the premier military powers.
| Brexit wasn't great, or even good, but it's not
| disastrous.
| hnhg wrote:
| That's because Europe overall is declining fast. However
| the rest of the world is rising fast and the next ten
| years should be interesting from this alone.
| cinntaile wrote:
| What metrics are you using?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is significantly worse the most pundits predicted.
| coldtea wrote:
| Not tied to failing and increasingly irrelevant EU?
|
| What is significantly worse, is the governing clases
| continuing the same pre-Brexit policies and deals post-
| Brexit, to nullify it.
| redserk wrote:
| The UK is becoming a destination country for hiring low-
| cost services labor. Not exactly an endorsement of future
| success.
| grandempire wrote:
| Low cost compared to what? California and New York?
| That's also true of many states where finance and tech
| companies have smaller offices.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I live in Texas and contract for a company based in
| Europe. Comparable UK software engineering salaries are
| about 1/3-1/2 of what my salary expectations are.
| grandempire wrote:
| I would do a quick google search of Brexit news articles
| with the year 2016.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I was living in the UK at a time. Nobody worth listening
| to was predicting war or famine.
| grandempire wrote:
| So you agree that there was a large amount of hyperbole
| which was intended to create fear but not constructed in
| good faith?
|
| that's what I would conclude from "it exists but wasn't
| taken seriously"
| hermitcrab wrote:
| No.
| grandempire wrote:
| I randomly sampled a few articles. And I think you're
| right and I'm wrong. The economic messaging is aggressive
| and was wrong, but I'm not seeing famine and war.
|
| Here is an article that sampled various expert opinions:
|
| " This event will unleash the kind of uncertainty that
| Keynes had in mind when he said "we simply do not know"
| when referring to the likely effect of war. Such
| uncertainty can only be disruptive for financial markets.
| We will enter a new era of volatility that is likely to
| last until these difficult negotiations are completed."
|
| "it is more likely than not that we will witness
| political instability."
|
| " Such market reactions could sharply contract economic
| activity, further depressing asset prices in a self-
| reinforcing cycle"
|
| https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/brexit-potential-
| financial-ca...
|
| So I agree, the more extreme must have been amplified
| voices from the fringe, on places like Reddit.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >"it is more likely than not that we will witness
| political instability."
|
| We have had 5 Prime Ministers since 2019.
|
| Some of the problems we are seeing are due to the
| pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But Brexit is the
| biggest factor by far. And 100% self-inflicted. It is the
| elephant in the room that the politicians can't even talk
| about it, as it's electoral poison.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Brexit pales in comparison to the damage that has _already_
| been done to the US federal government. The dust just hasn't
| settled yet so most of it not visible right now.
| rayiner wrote:
| What "damage?" All those valuable USAID employees now have
| to look for honest work that doesn't involve destabilizing
| Asian countries?
| MVissers wrote:
| And the Chinese will pick up the pieces in Africa and
| other places.
| rayiner wrote:
| Which is good for those countries. In my home country of
| Bangladesh, China is helping build infrastructure. While
| the U.S. was bankrolling left wing social and activist
| programs to destabilize the government (and ultimately
| contributed to the recent overthrow of the government,
| which will derail a decade of consistent growth).
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| But really bad for American world view, force projection
| and so on.
| rayiner wrote:
| What "American world view?"
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Chinese actions come with the same global political
| ambitions as the US foreign aid has. Don't be naive as to
| their ends.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| It's instructive that you mention only USAID. Based on
| past conversations, you were born and raised in Asia,
| right? So maybe you have an ax to grind. What about all
| the other agencies that are being gutted?
| rayiner wrote:
| It's more than that I'm Asian. The same arrogance and
| disregard for popular sovereignty in other countries that
| you see at USAID/State/NED has metastasized and been
| turned inward. "Deplorables" is how Acela types see
| Iowans and Bangladeshis alike.
|
| As the parent of a kid who got put in a "BIPOC" affinity
| group, I'm thrilled about the cuts to DOEd and the hammer
| coming down on teaching race consciousness
| (https://www.ed.gov/media/document/dear-colleague-letter-
| sffa...).
|
| My dad spent his career in public health. He did things
| like convince villagers in Bangladesh to trust hospitals
| instead of midwives. So I'm thrilled to see cuts at NHS
| and CDC, which torched public trust by making exceptions
| to Covid lockdowns for protests. Those people are just
| bad at their jobs--everyone in public health knows you
| don't do shit like that.
|
| I can't wait to see what Tulsi does to the intelligence
| services that lied us into the Iraq War, and what Kash
| does to the FBI that investigated conservative parents as
| domestic terrorists. These agencies are full of disloyal
| people who think they know better than the public, and
| few people are going to lament them getting canned.
|
| As a train nerd who took Amtrak every day to work for two
| years I hope we fire every manager at Amtrak.
|
| I hope the social security checks keep coming. The FAA
| and FCC generally seems to do a pretty good job. That's
| about it.
| Barracoon wrote:
| The Tulsi that pushes Russian disinformation? That should
| do well for rooting out lying. Also some facts:
| Intelligence services did not lie us into the Iraq war -
| politicians did. Politicians manipulated intelligence
| reporting to fit their narrative. Since you seem to like
| conspiracy theories, it should be obvious that this was
| so Halliburton, the company vice president Dick Cheney
| was CEO of, could profit from government contracts. Guess
| what CEO will now profit from government contracts due to
| all the lying from the current slate of politicans.
|
| And by conservative parents as domestic terrorists, I
| assume you mean the people convicted of crime due to
| their actual criminal actions on Jan. 6?
| rayiner wrote:
| > The Tulsi that pushes Russian disinformation
|
| People talking about all this Russia shit sound like
| Reagan/Bush republicans.
| monetus wrote:
| You sound like a Russian troll...
| tzs wrote:
| > And by conservative parents as domestic terrorists, I
| assume you mean the people convicted of crime due to
| their actual criminal actions on Jan. 6?
|
| I think he means parents who made threats of violence
| against school boards.
| totallynothoney wrote:
| Buddy, Amtrak is gonna be gone in a decade if Trump
| remembers it exists.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1f1vdz8/trumps_
| rec...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The damage to the US's global influence and stature.
| Whether that's morally a good or bad thing is a separate
| question. There is no question the US has screwed over a
| lot of countries. But be aware that the Chinese will step
| into the void as they already have in Africa. And those
| countries may find themselves out of the frying pan and
| into the fire. As bad as the USA is (and it's pretty bad)
| it's still better than China (though at the rate it's
| digressing this may not be true for much longer).
| rayiner wrote:
| But why should Americans care about any of that? Do you
| think the Chinese care what we think of them?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Not sure about that. Brexit was irreversible. We can
| potentially begin to reverse this in 4 years time. But yes
| it could take decades.
| croes wrote:
| Regain trust is hard and the US allies have lost it.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| True. But remember that Bush similarly broke European
| trust with his "war on terror", and Obama was able to
| repair those bridges.
|
| But yeah, it's worse this time around.
| rayiner wrote:
| > From a position of world-wide dominance and respect
|
| Why should Americans care what foreigners think of them? Most
| people in the world aren't Americans and have values alien to
| Americans. We're in the middle of sorting out a disloyal
| administrative state that needs to be brought to heel. Eggs
| will get broken to make the omelet. But outside the Acela class
| (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-are-
| th...) nobody wants to be governed from DC. Many want more
| funding for their local schools or bigger social security
| checks, and they'll caucus with the Acela class because they
| must. But they're not going to worry about personnel changes in
| government bureaucracies. And their opinion is the only thing
| that matters.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Americans should care because America isn't the world. So
| much wealth and power derives from people seeing you as the
| good guy. Blowing that up will make America poorer.
| rayiner wrote:
| The US is far less dependent on trade than the average
| country. We could close our borders to the world entirely
| and be fine after an initial discomfort.
|
| And nobody has has seen America as the "good guy" in my
| lifetime. We're the country that destabilizes Latin
| American and Asian countries, bombs the Middle East, etc. I
| used to think there was at least a logic to all that, but
| it turns out our elites were just ideologues and morons.
| MVissers wrote:
| I can tell you that the non-US west has lost a lot of
| goodwill in the last few weeks.
|
| There are boycott's afoot and I wouldn't be surprised if
| canada and Europe will choose more Chinese and domestic
| in the future.
|
| Basically, the US closing its borders will lead to a
| Chinese world leadership which is not good for the US
| either.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > We could close our borders to the world entirely and be
| fine after an initial discomfort.
|
| I'm no economist but a trade deficit in the hundreds of
| billions[0] suggests otherwise.
|
| [0] Wikipedia says 773B for 2023.
| rayiner wrote:
| Which is just 3.3% of GDP.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Which is just 3.3% of GDP.
|
| Again, I'm not an economist, bear with me and explain
| what that's got to do with the trade deficit being a
| deficit? You could have a GDP of a quintillion dollars a
| year but if you're consistently running a trade deficit
| (which the US has for decades), that strongly implies you
| cannot close your borders with impunity.
|
| If you could supply the goods cheaper than importing
| them, people would, no? Simple capitalism!
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| More than enough to push you into a recession even
| ignoring the reality that your current growth rate is
| propelled by a very frothy tech sector.
| yndoendo wrote:
| USA exports are idling around 1/4 to near 1/3 of the GDP.
| Our economy is heavily tied to imports from other
| counties.
|
| When it comes to isolation I think of this:
| The word invasion itself is a good example of this.
| A French ironmaster says: "We must protect ourselves from
| the invasion of English iron!" An English landlord cries:
| "We must repel the invasion of French wheat!" And they
| urge the erection of barriers between the two nations.
| Barriers result in isolation; isolation gives rise to
| hatred; hatred, to war; war, to invasion. "What
| difference does it make?" say the two sophists. "Is it
| not better to risk the possibility of invasion than to
| accept the certainty of invasion?" And the people believe
| them, and the barriers remain standing. And
| yet, what analogy is there between an exchange and an
| invasion? What possible similarity can there be between a
| warship that comes to vomit missiles, fire, and
| devastation on our cities, and a merchant vessel that
| comes to offer us a voluntary exchange of goods for
| goods?
| lossolo wrote:
| Who do you think buys U.S. debt (2 trillion this year)
| and props up the U.S. stock exchange and assets when
| recycling USD?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The US is extremely dependent on trade because the US
| needs the USD to be the currency of trade and reserve to
| sustain its debt and deficits, without which GDP would
| drop precipitously.
|
| The US isn't far less dependent, China is at 37% GDP from
| trade to the US's 27% but doesn't have the structural
| dependency on trade from having the reserve currency.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| While American, I've lived most of my life abroad, and
| share with your world view of the US.
|
| But after having spent years living in China, and being
| very familiar with the political situation there and
| their global ambitions, I'm afraid that the alternative
| to the US is even worse.
|
| Have a democratic system has somewhat of a moderating
| effect on the worst impulses of the US elite. China has
| no such guardrails.
| SG- wrote:
| I mean ignoring all the trade that will wither away to/from
| America and slowly be diverted to other countries instead
| (lost American money/opportunity), there's also lost tourism
| money from people not wanting to come spend their vacations
| there (lost money).
| rayiner wrote:
| When I hear people crow about lost "trade" it makes me
| think about this guy from Frozen:
| https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Duke_of_Weselton
| bix6 wrote:
| For anyone else wondering:
|
| The "Acela class" is a term used, often pejoratively, to
| refer to the elite political, business, and media class
| concentrated along the Northeast Corridor of the United
| States, particularly in cities like Washington, D.C., New
| York, and Boston. The term comes from the Acela Express,
| Amtrak's high-speed train that runs between these cities,
| symbolizing the connectedness of this group.
|
| Critics use it to describe a political and economic elite
| perceived as out of touch with the rest of the country,
| especially with working-class and rural Americans. It's often
| associated with establishment politics, bureaucratic power,
| and coastal liberalism.
| rayiner wrote:
| It also refers to a political faction in the electorate,
| comprising about 11% of voters, that has interests and
| values aligned with that group:
| https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/what-if-we-
| had-.... E.g. knowledge workers who benefit from
| globalization and upper middle class people who benefit
| from cheap labor provided by illegal immigrants.
| woooooo wrote:
| The republican core of exurban/rural ownership class
| benefits far more directly from immigrant labor than the
| liberal professional class.
|
| Professionals might have a housekeeper or get their lawns
| done, but they're not employing a kitchen or construction
| site full of people.
| rayiner wrote:
| What percent of republicans do you think employ illegal
| immigrants lol. This isn't 1980.
| woooooo wrote:
| I'm saying that the people who employ illegal immigrants
| tend to be republican small business owners. They're not
| a majority of republicans but they are the heart of the
| party in the way educated professionals are for the dems.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It's funny how hundreds of millions of normal Chinese people
| belong to the "Acela class."[0] Supporting decent public
| infrastructure does not make one an elitist.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China
| vinay427 wrote:
| As another commenter noted, I believe the phrase is used as
| a metonym (?) here to refer to a class of people that is
| largely unrelated to support for public transport.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| It's not embarrassing reversals, that's the problem. People
| who want the government to work well for the general
| population will leave, and those that can't find employment
| in the private sector will stay. So we're immediately left
| with a less capable government.
|
| Those who stay will be doing so with the full understanding
| of the vindictive nature of the current administration. What
| makes you think these employees will stand up to illegal
| requests? What makes you think they'll go the extra mile?
| It's a bad situation all around, and it's going to get worse
| before it gets better.
| throwme0827349 wrote:
| Laws are being broken to make the omelet. Will the executive
| constrain itself to breaking only the laws you don't like,
| and stop when you want it to? Will the legislative branch
| cede it's authority and responsibilities only temporarily?
|
| It might hard to unscramble that omelet if we want the rule
| of law back later.
| rayiner wrote:
| The laws were broken in the 1930s when we created the
| unconstitutional monstrosity that is the modern executive
| branch. If you want to turn that back then I'm on board.
|
| But if not then it must at least be democratically
| responsive. When republicans win the presidency--or a
| progressive or populist democrat--the 90% of the
| administrative state that's comprised of Acela liberals
| should be asking how high to jump. Otherwise you have a
| system that's not worth saving.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _The laws were broken in the 1930s when we created the
| unconstitutional monstrosity that is the modern executive
| branch_
|
| That's bibliolatry, directed to a long-obsolete
| interpretation of the Constitution and the role of the
| federal government. FDR was analogous to Copernicus and
| Kepler, rescuing the country from Ptolemaic
| interpretations of the Constitution that were based on
| outdated data sets. He pushed successfully for a
| pragmatic reinterpretation -- not inconsistent with the
| text -- that allowed effective federal government action
| to deal with a global crisis.
|
| No, FDR's New Deal didn't end the Great Depression (that
| was done by World War II). But the New Deal _did_ help
| hold off what could easily have turned into
| authoritarianism of the Huey Long variety.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliolatry
| mindslight wrote:
| A "disloyal" administrative state for trying to perform their
| boring congressionally-designated jobs in response to a
| pandemic, rather than falling in line with supporting the
| president's personal business interests by saying everything
| was fine and telling people to continue going to hotels? Uh-
| huh.
|
| The government is not a corporation and the president is not
| a unilateral dictator. You're right about other cultures
| having values alien to Americans, and perhaps you need to do
| some introspection there before making political arguments.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Because we're proud of our country, unlike certain traitors.
| trescenzi wrote:
| It's like the "fish don't know they are in water" saying. As an
| American if you weren't educated to be aware of Pax Americana
| you very much struggle to understand it. The current world
| order is far from perfect and many suffer as a result but the
| people in charge of this effort absolutely benefit from it far
| more than they seem to understand.
| totallynothoney wrote:
| As a non-American cinemagoer, I wonder who will be the
| Chinese equivalent of Michael Bay.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _From a position of world-wide dominance and respect_
|
| It already had very low respect (except by paid hacks and
| client states) and declining world-wide dominance for decades.
| And the churn rate for those very dissaponting results,
| reflected in public debt, was huge.
|
| And that's assuming a nation having "world-wide dominance" is a
| good thing to begin with.
| tim333 wrote:
| NYT sub headline just now:
|
| >...concerns that the U.S. will abandon Europe and align with
| President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
|
| Nothing to worry about with Musk doing nazi salutes and Trump
| looking at hanging with the nearest we have to a modern reich.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The US just decided to negotiate with Putin directly, leaving
| Europe out of it even though they're the ones affected by the
| Russia-Ukraine war, not the US.
|
| And Vance explicitly said that Russia can't be expected to go
| back to the pre-war borders. In other words, Russia gets what
| they want (Donbas).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| There have been a lot of times over the past couple weeks where
| I've thought "OK, is the US toast now??", and the thing that
| finally did it for me was Trump's prominent post "He who saves
| his Country does not violate any Law."
|
| Trump announced the rule of law is dead and there has been
| basically _no pushback_. I mean, sure, it may have just been
| bluster, but the Republicans used to put the idea of the
| Constitution on a pedestal. Now the president is saying, loudly
| and prominently, that laws don 't apply to him (or anyone who
| is "saving" the country), and it's crickets.
|
| There is no way the US comes back from this in my opinion. I'm
| not saying something like "collapse" is imminent, but I think
| the decline is irreversible once the rule of law has been
| declared null and void.
|
| Also, while I obviously have my opinions, I honestly would be
| genuinely interested in someone who has a different take (i.e.
| who thinks Trump's statement isn't as catastrophic as I think
| it is) to explain their rationale.
| r4make wrote:
| Musk himself has received billions in social security in the form
| of subsidies, government contracts and stock market rallies
| fueled by nepotism.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/20/business/elon-musk-wealth...
|
| Where will the money he purportedly saves in the bureaucracies
| go? Will houses be built for the Appalachian voters that were oh
| so important before the election?
|
| Will it be use to subsidize another telemedicine scam for all-in
| podcast members, who are also on Megyn Kelly's show now?
| tim333 wrote:
| "social security" isn't really true. If the government offers
| subsidies for electric vehicles and you then set up a company
| making those that isn't really social security.
| yesthis wrote:
| Now that they've been fired, the gov't has lost the
| goodwill/loyalty from the staff. In other words, the gov't is
| competing with private industry rates. Unfortunately for
| taxpayers, rehiring is always more expensive.
| James_K wrote:
| In saner times this headline would be from the Onion, not the
| BBC.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| They certainly can name their new price due to urgency but
| struggles is a bit of an overstretch. They certainly know where
| they live. A knock at the door with flowers and a big bonus check
| will do.
| halJordan wrote:
| Can you just please read the article? The bbc writes to about a
| sixth grade standard.
|
| They literally do not have contact information after they
| deleted the .gov email addresses
|
| Edit: and they cant "name their price" because unlike the
| private sector there is legally mandated pay scale. Which is
| just another reason why firing g-men to save money makes no
| sense
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Did you not read my entire comment? The gov will certainly
| know where they live and breathe. A non-creative approach is
| easier. Paychecks and bonus checks are separately accounted.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| How will they know if they fired the guy who's responsible
| for knowing?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It is unbelievable that they would be unable to figure
| out where these people live. I literally do not believe
| it.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Can we all agree it's absolutely absurd that it's a chore
| at all to find out, let alone to have this need in the
| first place? This is insane.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Their contact information will be in the payroll, assuming
| they know the full names of those they fired.
|
| But yeah, there are pay scales. Anyone who knows they can get
| a job for more elsewhere (the most talented among them) is
| likely to say "fuck this shit".
| wat10000 wrote:
| In the first Trump admin, Rick Perry was picked to head the
| Department of Energy with the goal of shutting it down. These
| cockwombles thought the DoE was about pushing green energy and
| recycling and stuff like that. Once on the job, Perry discovered
| that he was in charge of the nation's nuclear arsenal. To his
| credit, he course corrected and seems to have done a decent job
| once he found out what it was.
|
| It's the same story again, except with even less competence and
| knowledge.
|
| It's incredible that half the voters in this country thought this
| guy was a good choice for our leader.
| deadeye wrote:
| "US media reported"
|
| That's not a source. This is how the media just makes things up.
|
| After admitting that 8% of the BBC media action budget came from
| US taxpayers which has now been cencelled, I wonder if they might
| have an ax to grid.
| sigmar wrote:
| For anyone who has no idea what the "BBC Media Action" is (like
| me, before googling). It's a small international charity-
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Media_Action
| Balgair wrote:
| So, my SO had a fellowship with the NNSA here. As in, the NNSA
| paid for their grad school.
|
| I'll speak to my own experiences here though as the spouse.
|
| The NNSA is, like, bonkers important. I'll just copy-paste
| wikipedia here:
|
| "The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is ...
| responsible for safeguarding national security through the
| military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and
| enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S.
| nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from
| weapons of mass destruction; provides the United States Navy with
| safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear
| and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Nuclear_Security_Admi...
|
| The reason it took until 2000 to make them is tied up with the
| silver tsunami and congress. But suffice to say, we really
| _really_ need them. A lot of their stuff is very classified, but
| the presentation that I was allowed to attend were quite eye
| opening. Most of the presentations are on things like blast
| resistance in microsceonds of a door or some z-pinch magnetic
| experiment. But there were are lot on the national security
| picture at the time too. The main concern is that the nukes are
| aging. Stuffing 1950 's breadboards next to that much radiation
| for 50 years wasn't the plan, we were thinking of using them a
| bit more quickly than that. But now we have them and can't be
| sure if they'll work. There are a lot of other issues too, big
| ones, but I'll let the interested people here discover more on
| their own.
|
| Here's a list of conferences that can get you going on where to
| find more: https://nssc.berkeley.edu/events-and-programs/nssc-
| conferenc...
|
| Youtube also has a lot of them online too:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nnsa+conference
|
| The general side I saw was in my spouse trying to be recruited by
| the NNSA to work for them after graduation. The silver tsunami is
| a big deal in DoD government. And the issue for us at the time
| was the very much lowered pay. One of the main sites was the
| square mile that is Livermore National Labs. But with a PhD in
| the right fields and the NNSA fellowship, my spouse could easily
| just go across the Dumbarton bridge for about 4x the pay and
| mostly just as good benefits (the retirement plans aren't quite
| as stellar, but only a little). So, this is where HN/tech and the
| NNSA merge: employee competition.
|
| Now, I'm not surprised that they're reporting that a lot of the
| fired employees are not coming back. The big thing that they had
| going for them, personally, was 'the mission' and the quiet
| respect and admiration that the government and therefore the
| people of the US had for them and their sacrifices (classified
| work has a lot of sacrifice that is not seen, especially in
| nuclear work, much more so than beyond just pay).
|
| That they were fired, likely by some random 20 something from
| DOGE (read: not a _flag_ rank military officer (Admiral+) or an
| elected official of national office (Senator+)), without notice,
| last Thursday. Man, that hurt the ego a lot, and fundamentally
| altered the bargain that they had with the government and the US
| people in general (from what very little I knew of those people).
|
| It is going to be very hard to get them all back to begin with,
| let alone for that same payscale and benefits schedule. That gap
| for 'fired _with_ cause ' is going to mess up the retirement in a
| way that is currently hard to fix (AFAIK). Many of the NNSA are
| just going to go get a better job, really.
|
| And the US is going to be left behind in the nuclear arms race
| that is still very much going on.
|
| Summary: Pardon my french, but, this is a _big_ fuck up.
| cloverich wrote:
| What if they offer 2x the salary to come back? Some are
| suggesting that is the strategy. I know of one example where
| this was done but in a private company with lower stakes, so i
| know the concept at least exists.
| mlac wrote:
| It's not about money for government jobs. It's about the
| mission and, for many, the previously perceived stability +
| pension. The good ones, the capable civil servants who made
| the commitment to the government, do not need to work there
| but do out of a sense of duty, the interesting work, and
| commitment to the country.
|
| Offering 2x is like going to Thanksgiving dinner lovingly
| prepared by a relative and asking at the end how much they
| want paid. You know, to just square up. It couldn't have been
| more than $20 a head. The social contract has already been
| altered, and there will be a non-zero number of government
| employees looking to the private sector. The capable ones
| will likely leave on their own in the coming years.
|
| 2x is also likely less than the private sector is willing to
| pay. Try like 4x. It is this way for cyber jobs where we will
| see massive brain drain. The only way cyber compensation
| starts to get even is through contracting work, but even then
| it's less than private sector. Which shows the level of
| stupid this policy was.
|
| People in these roles are not fungible. That is a big logical
| error. People who can pass a background check with a PhD in
| Nuclear engineering aren't being pumped out every few months.
| They can't go to a web developer boot camp. There is a multi-
| year lead time and scholarships designed to attract them to
| the public sector. Same for capable cybersecurity talent (my
| field).
|
| This is also a warning shot to all those in the government
| that their jobs, no matter what they are covering, are not
| safe from the stupidity. And if the BS factor gets too high
| they will leave.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Since we are now being governed by the enthusiastic ignorant
| raised in the wake of Reaganism (or for the unfortunate Brits,
| Thatcherism), it would be a really good idea for us to rename the
| Department of Energy to the Department of Scary Nukes We Must
| Keep Secure. Then maybe GOP presidents would stop nominating
| oilmen to be Secretary of Energy.
| lgdiva wrote:
| Department of Immigrants are Bad
| DangitBobby wrote:
| This is a solution I can get behind.
| jakeogh wrote:
| With regard to nuclear security, this is a sourceless article,
| and the comment pointing this out got flagged into oblivion so
| the outrage machine could ignore it:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43066633
| mimd wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5298190/nuclear-agency-...
|
| If even half of NPR's report is true, the way in which it was
| conducted was grossly cruel and with complete ignorance.
|
| DOGE and it's supporters are quiet literally playing like a child
| with the levers that decide if _you_ wake up tomorrow.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Yeah, they're firing all the probation employees and NNSA got
| caught in the net. Probation employees btw include some
| recently promoted senior employees.
|
| And probation is just the first status.
|
| This is a plan designed to progressively cull employees by
| status - there'll be another round after this.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Not shocked at all. The US Gov right now is crazy, and I
| wouldn't go back with a crazy ex without a huge overhaul first.
|
| And yup, it's about as disrespectful a dismissal as you'd
| expect from a Musk "plan". I'm not surprised they are having
| trouble
|
| >"Please work with your supervisors to send this information
| (once you get it) to people's personal contact emails," the
| memo added.
|
| Wait, they don't keep personal emails on record? I have to fill
| that out for every single job I apply to. Pretty sure USAJobs
| and my State job board required it to.
|
| I guess they either aren't answering or these were more senior
| personell than I thought.
|
| >Despite having the words "National" and "Security" in its
| title, it was not getting an exemption for national security
|
| This just gave me a chuckle and I had to share.
| based2 wrote:
| https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-nat... >
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43035977
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| As today's kids say, "whomp whomp." a.k.a. play stupid games, win
| stupid prizes.
| iamleppert wrote:
| They should just pass a law saying these people are essential
| workers and cannot say no to not coming back, and will be paid
| and must accept whatever pay they are told to accept. Done!
| drawkward wrote:
| Poe's law
| lgdiva wrote:
| If only there were something we could have done to prevent this,
| every day, for the last ten goddamn years.
|
| Oh well. Enjoy your extra neutrons.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| To those of you who have pushed back on the arguments that the US
| is heading towards authoritarianism, I hereby present Exhibit
| A:[0]
|
| > "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law," Mr. Trump
| wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then
| on the website X.
|
| > By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the
| top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a
| passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official
| White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
|
| > The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to
| Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
|
| The hallmark of authoritarianism is to be above the law. (Which
| is why the SCOTUS ruling was so damaging and directly
| contributing to this.). If you're not familiar with China, the
| way things work there is "rule by law" rather than "rule of law".
| The difference being that "rule by law" means that those in power
| can do whatever they want since they make up the laws as they go
| (like a monarch ruling by decree). Trump's statement is exactly
| that. And make no mistake this is not a one-off quip like buying
| Greenland. His actions so far have made it clear he believes that
| there should be no restraints on the power of the executive
| branch. In other words , authoritarianism.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/politics/trump-
| saves-c...
|
| Be careful, America, what you wished for.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| I'm sure the market for nuclear safety people is small enough
| that they will tolerate a few days of turmoil as the government
| cuts expenses.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Considering that this criminally deranged nutjob was a high-
| ranking Biden nuclear safety officer, I think they are doing the
| right thing by looking into whether the remaining staff are
| qualified: https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/non-binary-ex-
| biden-...
| bdangubic wrote:
| If I was the one fired I would ask for $10,000,000/week salary to
| come back and then would donate 98% of that
| danjl wrote:
| Or, slightly more realistically, $1M/yr, which is probably 10x
| what they were getting before, and seems realistic given the
| events.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| "The Trump administration has since tried to reverse their
| terminations, according to media outlets"
|
| Why would they cite anonymous "media outlets" and not at least
| find some modicum of an official source to reference?
| drawkward wrote:
| Because the WH no longer deals with legacy media.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Musk will see this as working as intended.
|
| There's a segment in one of his many Starship interviews with Tim
| Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, where he talks about simplifying the
| machine. He says you've got to cut and cut and cut some more
| until it's radically simple. His rule of thumb is that if you're
| not adding back 10% of the stuff you got rid of, you didn't get
| rid of enough in the first place.
|
| This might be fine for greenfield engineering projects, where
| there are no "Chesterton's fences", where there are not yet any
| other people or things depending on success, but it's wholly
| inadequate for people problems or brownfield systems and
| processes. The fact Musk doesn't understand this just suggests
| ignorance, and suggests that it's not an idea he really
| understands at its core. To understand an idea truly, means to
| understand when it applies and when it doesn't, and why.
| yapyap wrote:
| The simpsons
| eksx wrote:
| The last few weeks of government action has shown me one thing.
| When the democrats take over next there will be no reason they
| can't make the health care insurance sector government
| controlled. I think the vast majority of people would support
| them.
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