Comment by akamaka
2 months ago
> I should work for Elon and Vivek at DOGE and help America get off its current crash to defaulting on its own debt
I’ve got an idea: take some good economics courses so that you learn how government spending actually works.
I don't fault this guy for wanting to join DOGE and make a difference. The fact that he was able to make a few phone calls and actually get hired into an influential position despite having zero background in government, civics, economics, finance etc. should, however, tell you everything you need to know about the department and its brain trust.
I wonder what will happen to all these Signal conversations when the inevitable scandals/lawsuits/inquiries happen. Surely the public will be able to scrutinize them right?
Yeah I find that anecdote incredibly revealing as to the way wealthy people move through political spaces. No offence to the author of the blog post, but he was the CTO of a company that sold video conferencing software—what on Earth would he know about public governance? Pick a random student with a BA in public policy & administration off the graduating class of 2024's honour roll, and I bet they'd do a better job at doing whatever "DOGE" is supposed to do than this guy would.
You don't have to be convinced, but to present an argument -- He knows how to lead a team with disparate skills and motivations towards a complex, poorly defined end-goal. That might sound like corporate B.S., but I truly believe that's a useful skill that not everyone has. Of course I expect he is relatively weak in his understanding of law, the dynamics of different government organizations, etc, but I expect (hope?) they're hiring others to fill in these gaps.
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We've tried that for decades, and look where it's gotten us.
Policy wonks and lawyers have run America into the ground with reckless spending and forever wars.
I would venture that introducing fresh ideas and technologists with first principles thinking will yield better results.
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Maybe we'll get some funny "Elon Musk: please set the self destruction timer to 30 seconds" in court documents just like Google.
Related :
Scottish Government bans use of WhatsApp for official business (2024)
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-government-b...
> The decision follows a fierce backlash over the mass deletion of messages by ministers and officials during the Covid pandemic.
You mean, what will happen when we get to Episode 5: The Deep State Strikes Back?
> The fact that he was able to make a few phone calls and actually get hired into an influential position despite having zero background in government, civics, economics, finance etc. should, however, tell you everything you need to know about the department and its brain trust
I have no interest in defending Elon, but this assessment is unfair. Recall how during the Obama transition, a bunch of Silicon Valley'ers got hired in to help modernize government tech (and doubly so after the disastrous obamacare website rollout). Very few of those people had experience in govt, civics, etc.
You can listen to their own description of their strategy and tactics. It was every different from the contemporary counterpoint. They reformed one system one subsystem at a time by working with the current owners and tech staff and teaching them their approach.
https://changelog.com/gotime/154
I knew contractors in their wake working at companies that grew out of their work in CMS, such as Ad Hoc (a name of the original team to not be called WHITE HOUSE HOT SHOTS or DOGE or something similarly jarring to thereby take agency away from the people who had to you know do the work once they knew they'd roll off) and Nava as they expanded beyond that one system 5 years later.
Let's see how the braggadocios we'll solve all the problems at once flavor of the moment goes, then judge the healthcare.gov teams.
There's a difference between "building tech for the government" and whatever governmental cosplaying DOGE is doing.
Slight difference between asking techies to modernize government tech and asking them to retool the entire federal government.
Yeah and it was probably equally craven and opportunistic to bring them in as well.
don't worry, he's starting with physics and will invent economics from first principles on his own because he's a genius
You gotta admit, building a desktop recording app is only a few short hops away from building our civilization.
Crazy idea: work for DOGE but secretly just do whatever the most educated (and compassionate) people on the topic say to do. Don’t let Elon know you’re poisoning his well with good ideas.
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when this went from calling coworkers "NPCs" to "working" for DOGE, to "studying physics" and I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmJI6qIqURA
Came here to post this and am happy to see that's already been done.
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Those people are so exhausting. I work with one.
No, he is about to invest in longevity research, like all other cool non-NPC billionaires do
Shouldn't he start with math for the most valuable results? https://xkcd.com/435/
this part was disturbing. this guy cant run his own life but wants to dictate how others will live and get involved in government. the US is going to have to deal with real consequences from idiots like this.
I think running successful companies and making lots of money like this is just random luck sometimes. how did a person with no ability to introspect, surrounds him self with people that like and cant critically think manage to make so much money.
most of the startup CEOs I've met / worked for are actually comically inept as people lol. often their business success is clearly more luck than they want to admit, and they love to give lectures/post tweets [1] about things they know nothing about (e.g. ever notice how every CEO is also an enthusiastic authority on the future of population growth and space travel and the like? they're all Elon wannabes nowadays)
[1] often ghostwritten
It either favors or breeds sociopaths
This is a facile dunk. Economics literature is filled with examples of debt destroying countries’ economies either through hyper inflation or default. Since the US controls its currency, it is very likely to take the inflation route, but if you get enough hawks they might choose to default.
But perhaps people supposedly becoming in charge of material results should in fact at least have a sketch of an actual nuanced understanding of things.
People who watched Europe through the Great Recession and walk away thinking "I guess austerity works" are not people seriously consuming information, they are ideologues.
The US is transitioning from being a dominant superpower to being one in a herd. Saying that the current approach is works is also difficult position to sustain. They probably should try something different.
The basic position is that a government should raise enough taxes to cover its expenses. You can call that ideological and suggest there are superior options if you want to. Maybe there are, a little debt can be a good thing. But to suggest it won't work is a bit out there. It works. It is one of those simple strategies that is too boring to fail.
Also, if the strategy switches from spending more than you earn to less, obviously there will be a period where people are worse off. It is the same with paying back any obligation. Overspending foolishly obviously increases living standards while it is happening - the problem is the part where people no longer fund the debtor and said debtor didn't invest in productive capital. You need an argument that accounts for that to claim austerity fails. It is expected to do worse than the status quo for a while. Saving money isn't much fun on Day 1 either, it can take a decade to pay off.
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A good economics education would let someone be specific about what they think the problem is. What year will the US default on its debt? How much money needs to be cut from the budget to avoid that? To what extent will those cuts slow down the economy and be self-defeating?
If he arms himself with the right mathematical tools, he might just discover that the default he’s expecting is actually not imminent.
To me the elephant in the room is the cost of servicing the debt.
Even if the US has a bunch of runway before shit actually hits the fan, 2024 saw over a trillion dollars servicing the debt. That could be funding a lot of government programs instead.
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This is insane. Most countries are in debt and there's nothing wrong with that unless it becomes too high. Choosing to default is a choice with no benifits that would crash the world economy for no reason and permanently hobble the country
A default would be a silly thing on a national scale. You'd essentially reset your debt and piss off a lot of foreign powers, but the economy would continue working as before, since you'd immediately print a whole bunch of new (virtual) money. Chances are a great deal of countries will just go along with it to not grind their own economies into pieces when they suddenly can't buy/sell from/to the US any more.
This is assuming you never get to the stage of hyperinflation, but you can probably just print a whole bunch of new physical currency as well.
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a country debt is not like household or business debt. the only way US can default on its debt is if a bunch of idiots in washington DC decide to do so.
You don't have to have a PhD in macroeconomics to have useful policy insights.
For example, I wish someone could convince my city to stop planting a specific high maintenance tree on my street that constantly clog sewers and crushes cars.
Policy is far from perfect and there is plenty of room for improvement.
Assuming that you are correct, you have observed (a) one or more problems (b) a proximal cause of the problem(s) (c) a potential solution. Congratulations!
None of that can be said for making a facile observation about US government spending.
I can think of dozens of similar examples from my local government where entrenched local incentives or disinterest lead to completely wasteful outcomes. All of my friends in government have stories of egregious waste, 8-9 digit programs where not even the people working on them think they are effective.
I think the salient observation is that there are abundant opportunities for improvement and cost saving if there is a stakeholder that actually cares about cost savings.
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On the other hand, you need empathy and common sense. And a good understanding of humanity.
Which I doubt many politicians have it.
I don't fucking understand these people. They built a startup of questionable value which can be replicated with open source software, which is debatable if it even solves real world problem, somehow got a huge payday from freely printed VC money, and now they made it their life's calling to fire a bunch of people who don't make that money even it they worked for 10k years, but their livelihoods depend on getting paid.
Not just him, but the other 'smart people' who he mentions in the post who also work at DOGE (for like the 4 weeks he can dedicate his brilliance to solving the worlds burning issues, sorry world, if it takes longer than that).
Not just "smart people." The smartest people on the planet, the smartest people he met in his life, maybe ever!
Isn’t it convenient how the last people to be hurt by austerity are the ones arguing for it? Crazy how that works, not predictable in any way.
Wouldn't this be the equivalent of telling someone "before you try and build a business, try to take some business courses and learn how business works. Perhaps even an MBA".
Most of the business is in the not-numbers stuff. If DOGE is specifically trying to fix the numbers, then it's far more important that they specifically are experts in numbers.
Not quite, because a successful business could be as simple as a lemonade stand. Government finance, on the other hand, is an exceptionally delicate game of safely maximizing spending to stimulate economic growth (and therefore future tax revenue).
The vast majority of government spending is not about growth and isn't an investment. It is about placating voters and interests groups.
Arguably positive budget categories like Education, research, and infrastructure make up a miniscule part of the overall pie.
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Yet nobody with an economics degree is in control of government spending. Funny that
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You would not learn this in an economics course. Source: someone who has taken economics courses. Maybe a civics course.
Didn't make it to grad school?
damn bruh...
This stood out to me as well.
A pitfall for experts in one field to assume their skills are transferable.
>experts in one field [assuming] their skills are transferable
That appears to be the premise of DOGE.
This sentence also killed me:
>working on various projects I’m definitely not able to talk about
It's not because they're classified. It's because a bunch of unaccountable private citizens are plotting behind closed doors to tear down the government.
And they’re doing it while unironically shouting about the tyranny of unelected bureaucrats
It is a mark against our system that someone can get this rich without seeing a problem with all of this. We are told that capitalism makes smart people rich, but it does not appear to filter out gullible people.
Defaulting on the debt is not going to happen but the consequences of avoiding default will not be good.
Of course, DOGE isn't really going to do anything to fix this either. Complete theater that the fixes will low and behold happen to work in the financial interest of those running DOGE.
The young who don't think the debt matters are almost guaranteed at this point to have to deal with US fiscal dominance in their lifetime. That is going to be a brutal lesson in youthful ignorance and stupidity.
How will it be a brutal lesson in youthful ignorance and stupidity when the youth have nearly no political power? We have a full-on gerontocracy and the problem is youthful naivete?
This is so blatantly obvious it hurts. This person lucked out (of course most likely due to talent, opportunity and effort inclusive) in exactly 1 (one) thing and now believes he "can".
He states he learned that hiking without training was dumb and acknowledges it was dangerous. Good. Lesson learned?
No. Still has no clue GOVERNMENT - y'know, the most complicated thing in the world to do right - may be, bear with me here, just a tad bit more complicated than elementary hiking safety training (recall: the very basics of the thing he just learned he should have learned, and risked dying for not learning)
I'm sorry if I'm a bit harsh but god damned if this doesn't sound like a completely clueless person.
He pulled millions from the economy and now wants to work with the oligarchs towards having even less redistribution. He is a small part of the reason why his country is going to s***.
How did he pull millions out of the economy? How is his money not in the economy?
I don't believe in trickle down economics.
Is this about the impossibility of a government defaulting on its debt if that debt is payable in currency that same government can print? Or is it some stimulus thing?
There is no upper bound on how much debt the US gov can carry as long as they're paying their interest and people still have trust that they will. Its the TRUST part that is at most risk right now.
> There is no upper bound on how much debt the US gov can carry as long as they're paying their interest...
Get it? There is no limit... so long as we don't go past the limit!
We already spend ~20% of federal revenue on debt service. How high would that percentage need to get before you would consider it a problem?
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Yeah but that’s almost a tautology. This has been true for every government that ended up in hyperinflation (Germany in the 20s, Russia in the 90s, etc. etc.).
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DOGE hasn't done anything yet, so this is purely expressing prejudice.
Those steering the ship have track records. I don't see anything prejudicial about evaluating the leadership of a government group w.r.t. their previous merits and shortcomings.
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The people running it have track records we can assess, and have signaled their goals and in some cases stated them outright. This is simply judgement.
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Elon Musk has done plenty worth judging already. Am I supposed to give every single venture of his the benefit of the doubt?
How is DOGE a grift? We need to curb our government’s absolutely excessive waste.
When you name your enlightened government-saving organization after a memecoin you own a mountain of, only bootlickers are going to think you're in it for altruistic reasons.
This is similar to elon's tendency to dump boatloads of money in politics to beat the people he claims are cheating by... dumping boatloads of money in politics.
If he wants any of this to be taken seriously by anyone other than his horde of bootlickers he needs to make "earning people's trust" a priority, even when it's opposed to his own interest. Instead he acts as though he's entitled to the public's trust because (he's sure) he's such a good guy, and he's (he's sure) actually acting in their interest. Doesn't work that way. Trust is earned by listening to people and by taking seriously what you hear from them—not by egoistic paternalism.
Furthermore, these business people constantly talk in terms which reflect basically-wrong beliefs about how money works at a national level. A country is not a company. A dollar spent by a country can return to its coffers as taxes many times over, and this basic fact breaks any analogy between the two.
Because of the messaging, like cutting regulations, entire departments - things that have impact on the entire country and not just a company and its customer base.
I believe, there is certainly a lot of room for improvements in government functions. But I also believe, those improvements are hidden in details and require actual work, other than just slashing funds, regulations or entire departments. Things are how they are for reasons. And those reasons will probably withstand deeper scrutiny, but not populism and conflicts of interest.
The premise is correct, but the trust in the executors is misplaced. One made money via government so there is a certain conflict of interest, another one is an ordinary American businessman with a questionable track record on the edge of ethics. That's right off the bat, on the merits, not even going into the politics.
What they're going to end up cutting (and have) is children cancer research and infectious disease teams. Such "excessive waste!"
DOGE is not an official government department, it’s a presidential advisory committee. It’s not going to have taxpayer funding, oversight and no far-reaching powers over other official departments besides shit-stirring and distraction.
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When the debt surety payments are higher than our national security budget i agree wholeheartedly. We are spending more than we are making and it's growing every year. We cannot continue like this or our surety payments will be higher than all distretionary spending by 2032.
I never understood the hate for Elon, vivek, trump. They aren't perfect people, but i'm really excited about the team he's been able to put together. Like who else has been able to hire every single person who ran against him? David sacs, elon, other extremely smart people....
Other people here seem to act like going to school and doing economics to be at Doge are just so incredibly niave... We need a huge diversity of people.
Despite all of trumps faults, he has built a powerhouse team that trancends party lines.
We need to raise taxes, specifically on the people in charge of DOGE. You think that's what the plan's going to be?
I think you missed the point of DOGE. This isn't a problem about navigating and optimizing a complex bureaucracy, it's to call out that massive bureaucracy exactly where it comes at a high cost and little, perhaps even negative, value. This is a managerial problem and a political problem at its core. We should all be rooting for them to succeed and table their findings, in plain speak for all the public to see. Then it will be up to the elected officials to act on it.
Cutting funding to the IRS will increase waste; nobody outside of DOGE seems to think that spending more on enforcement will fail to pay for itself by finding more tax fraud. It's not a large leap to infer that at least some of those behind DOGE are doing this to enrich themselves.
DOGE is BS.
Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget.
By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence.
Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one.
By American standards, Medicaid and Medicare are pretty efficient. So any cuts are going to mean that either doctors get paid less or fewer health services are provided. Yes, politically, Republicans can get away with cutting Medicaid, but it’s the much smaller piece of the pie compared to Medicare. Good luck with either one of the options above with Medicare.
As for defence, procurement is a giant money tree for defence contractors, but a large part of the reason why it remains a giant money tree for contractors is that they build plants in every single congressional district there is, so trying to apply some sanity to the defence procurement process is politically untenable. Beyond that, are you going to be the one to tell the Marines they don’t need their own aircraft carriers?
Of course, tanking the American economy by removing a significant chunk of its labor force (undocumented immigrants) and increasing costs (by putting tariffs on things) is just going to make the problem harder by crunching revenue.
The right of politics has forever claimed that they can painlessly cut taxes, and it’s always nonsense.
> DOGE is BS. Civilian bureaucrats - in fact pretty much all discretionary spending - are line noise in the federal budget.
It took me years to understand that this line of reasoning is why Trump won (twice). I noticed in my own job, that whenever someone would propose an moderate but still-obvious improvement, someone else would smack them down saying "that's not the highest priority!" In the end, nothing ever gets fixed.
I think people see Trump as that guy who steamrolls the naysayers and gets shit done.
Now, I disagree that Trump really gets any useful thing done, but I definitely recognize that constant naysaying against any improvement is a real actual problem.
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>Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one.
Some ppl collecting SSI have other income over $400k. They won't miss $30k of SSI. The dem's plan was to tax that overage - not even remove it altogether - to maintain SSI, but "they're eating the dogs and cats" won and now the unelected guy who made his fortune on government contracts is in charge of choosing who to cut off from that government money supply.
> DOGE is BS.
Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?
That seems like an extreme statement.
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> Cutting social security means that old people get less money in their retirement, no ifs, ands or buts. Good luck with that one.
But surely that’s the only way out? Figure out some sane taper scheme by age or something. Social security was created when the old people population was a tiny fraction of what it is now, no way it would have ever passed it with today’s numbers. We’ll have to rip off the bandaid or face the consequences.
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> By far the largest components of spending are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and defence.
Sure..and all hidden waste projects can be fit into those 3 categories. Things like federal funding on hotels for illegal immigrants, including many millions on unused hotel rooms. ~$400 per person per night for illegal aliens. ~$80+ million USD in a few months.
> DOGE is BS.
Basically DOGE is only BS if you think fraud and waste are not BS. Why don't you actually look at the large number of waste projects on https://x.com/DOGE before saying it is BS ?
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That is transparently not the point of it at all. Musk in particular is a proven self-interested liar and there's no reason to believe his stated intentions here. It's another right wing campaign to dismantle the parts of the state that benefit anyone other than investors.
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