This is it. What we're seeing is a Bourgeois coup: The silicon valley PayPal guys have become the wealthiest people in the country. Now they are trying to use that wealth to usurp political power.
I agree, as you said in another comment, money is a form of power. The current actions seem to distribute the power amongst wealthy people through money and weakening the government instead of direct power like threatening congress or something like that. But the means don't really matter to me or to them so that is splitting hairs to me.
I'm just saying it's not that deep. There is not a meaning or moral that needs to be understood, there is no reasoning that could make them change their ways.
Part of this is a crusade though. There's very much a desire to rip out anything that is considered "woke" or "DEI". But the rest of it is just burning things down for the sake of burning things down.
I think the ripping out of woke stuff is mostly marketing for the political base. Sure, Trump and Musk have some personal stake in it too, but it's not the point.
I wouldn't say they're "burning things down for the sake of burning things down", though. The truth is somewhere between what you and gp are contending. There's no moral framework, but there is a framework. They're burning things down so that "the free market" can replace the things they burn down and capture the money that used to go towards doing those things for the public good, and instead do those things for a private profit.
No, it is something more sinister than that. Trump is a puppet and his statements are flat out fabrications. Musk and DOGE do outrageous things which just happen to benefit foreign superpowers. Everything the two co-presidents do openly is a red herring meant to mislead and waste time.
Who in their right mind opens up RDP and Citrix servers to public internet in DoE and nuclear research laboratory networks?
Time is running very short. Foreign powers must be assumed to already hold all possible information about the US government, including nuclear secrets, warfare capabilities, emergency plans, and kompromat of all personnel and political oversight.
It won’t be long before the US nuclear arsenal mysteriously disappears.
Like sure I’m not familiar with the value of these programs, but you get that these programs are literal pennies compared to the government’s budget right? It’s not even worth talking about these. DOGE cuts aren’t going to add up to shit and you bet we’re going to hear “mission accomplished” in six months, meanwhile Russia and China and are going to grab global influence in the absence of USAID and we won’t experience the repercussions for years after these clowns have left office.
> The incentives don’t even make sense, these people have hundreds of billions of dollars already, they do not have an incentive to try to get rich from government because they are already rich.
The evidence is they are proposing another $4.5T tax cut that will eat up whatever purported saving you are excited about. They’re canceling these programs, taking the savings for themselves, cutting Medicaid, and ratcheting up the debt another $3T. These are not the behaviors of someone concerned about decreasing the debt, but accurately reflect the behaviors of someone trying to distract you with hot-button cultural issues while they rob the treasury. Watch what they do, not what they say.
A few things. Why not copy these systems onto a separate server to prevent tampering.
Second, spending is done by Congress. If you don’t like the spending cut it through proper channels we don’t get to decide not to fund something once’s it’s been allocated.
"Men who have sex with men" is a crazy framing of HIV presentation, which by the way, helps everyone, not just LGBT people. Uganda and many other countries regularly prosecutes people for being LGBT, so maybe its not such a bad idea to support those communities by advocating for them.
All of DOGE is just "I don't like these programs, so I am going to call them waste". None of those programs are wasteful that you listed, you just don't like them. How about you substantiate how any of these programs are corrupt or wasteful.
In Uganda as of 2023 you can get life imprisonment or even the death penalty for being gay. They've even restricted freedom of speech when it comes to discussing gay rights. Even Republicans have condemned it. Does that paint it in a different light?
Also, you think that rich people won't use the government to get more money? Seriously?
Why make it easy for people to submit their tax return - when the government already has the bulk of that info since their employer, their banks, etc, already reported it - when INSTEAD you can let rich people hawk their paid products to get money from people for it instead? While still requiring more effort.
The corruption era is very simple: the government won't be allowed to directly provide a service that someone else could make $$$$ by being a middleman for.
It's somewhat ludicrous to have to "file taxes" in the computer era in the first place, but there's a large ideological resistance to both taxes and the government that in some of the more paranoid wings of the country that is well-exploited by the rent-seekers here.
They only just launched Direct File after years of lobbying to prevent such a system by a consortium of accounting software companies[0]. If it falls apart people will continue to be forced to pay money to these companies just to file their tax.
As a comparison, in my country you could submit your own tax return using government supplied desktop software since 1999, and in 2015 that software was replaced with a web product. 1 in 3 people submit their own tax returns using this product.
Let’s pretend to think that through a bit as an exercise. While it might not be Musk himself, who could possibly benefit from firing all the people who developed direct file?
Time will tell but there's evidence that some government staff grew inexplicably wealthy while in office which would suggest corruption. Corruption in government is terrible for the average citizen, ask anyone from a country that suffers from a lot of it.
I really fail to see why auditing government spending is a bad thing?
> there's evidence that some government staff grew inexplicably wealthy
Those are a bunch of weasel words. You're giving a certain impression yet being vague enough that it's impossible to assess, argue or discuss the validity of that claim.
What evidence? Who are those 'some' staff? What's inexplicably wealthy?
There's a vast difference between government high-ups getting paid well and making money (as high-ups in any large organization might) and government organizations and their leadership and staff being generally corrupt.
Of course corruption is never impossible, partially because it can take forms that may be difficult to discern as such. But it's again impossible to assess that claim without substance.
I agree that in principle, it's great that spending is being checked and payments "audited" (I have no clue if thats actually what is happening, I assume it's no KPMNG audit). However, are they really being audited? Is this the manner in which this should be done?
I am not a Trump voter. I agree with the outcome they have stated - reduce stupid spending - but I have no idea thats the true motivation, the true goal and I disagree with the manner in which they are doing it. Just because you agree with the dictator doesn't make it right?
There's nothing moral about it. The profitability of the tax prep industry depends on taxes being hard to file. Lack of official free e-file is regulatory capture. Any associated blather about making taxes cumbersome to keep people mistrustful of taxes is a fig leaf, as is this case with most "conservative" viewpoints.
They are because they have an interest in keeping tax filing difficult and unapproachable, to keep public animus against taxes at its maximum. Coincidentally this is 100% in alignment with the tax prep industry whose entire existence is based on products which solve and handle the complicated tax situation.
The balance of actions taken by the Trump administration suggests it generally is in favor of doing whatever people who suck up enough and donate enough money want.
The history of lobbying on behalf of the tax prep industry is easy enough to find.
Is drawing a line through Trump's well-professed love of sycophants and people who make him money and that lobbying and motivation, to their current actions, so far fetched to you?
I think taking a wait-and-see approach to things like "Trump wants to get rid of income tax entirely" would be wise until we see where the implementation ends up. In the meantime lets talk about what has actually been done to date.
The possible moral argument, is the government is funding a service that costs businesses revenue.
However it would be pretty insane to argue that a citizen of a country should need to pay money for someone to fill out a basic tax return to pay taxes…
I've had someone on this site say to me that it's because America embraces the free market, as well as it being the only country to have granular enough taxes to require a third party to handle it. It's incredibly hard because you can point to any other country to show examples of good (not perfect) implementations but then American exceptionalism takes over and they simply dismiss any advice.
American conservatives view governments as inherently evil: if the government can make it more convenient for people to pay tax, people might be willing to pay more tax (or at least object less to tax), allowing the government to spend more money, and since the government is inherently evil, it allows for more evil.
On the other hand, creating an office whose sole objective is to destroy other functioning parts of the government and make it less useful to people? Totally moral.
You're arguing in the right direction, but you have the wrong basis.
American Conservatives don't believe the government is evil, they believe that not having control over the government is evil. The slash and burning of agencies and departments isn't just due to a deep seated hatred, it's a need for control. And in order to have control you need consolidation.
American Conservatives have no problems with state governments vastly overreaching their authority or punishing cities. They have no issue with potentially taxing workers more to issue tax breaks for corporations. And they have no issue using the government to punish, stalk or harass dissidents.
Morals are a collection of ethics. Their ethics are that people who aren't billionaires are parasites, and that rape and overthrowing the country and murdering politics are acceptable, it's what everyone voted for. The guy in charge of the military has white nationalist tattoos and an unelected foreigner gave white power salutes behind the presidential seal, get used to it.
1. To people saying that the government should have a direct way to file taxes. This is an outdated way of thinking. Most ordinary people shouldn't have to file taxes at all. Withholding is sufficient for income taxes and taxes on liquid investments.
2. 18F was an openly partisan organisation. They were likely disbanded not to kill the products they produced, but rather for their inability to remain politically neutral.
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there is no crusade or moral framework.
If you go to the doge website right now, there's a Libs of TikTok tweet shown on the main page. It reads:
The US government only recognizes two sexes: Male and Female. This needs to be changed immediately
There is absolutely a crusade going on, but I certainly wouldn't call it moral.
They have money. What they’re getting is political power.
This is it. What we're seeing is a Bourgeois coup: The silicon valley PayPal guys have become the wealthiest people in the country. Now they are trying to use that wealth to usurp political power.
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I agree, as you said in another comment, money is a form of power. The current actions seem to distribute the power amongst wealthy people through money and weakening the government instead of direct power like threatening congress or something like that. But the means don't really matter to me or to them so that is splitting hairs to me.
I'm just saying it's not that deep. There is not a meaning or moral that needs to be understood, there is no reasoning that could make them change their ways.
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oh how i wish more people would avoid becoming lost in the details and see this system for what it very simply is
Time for my favorite intersection of critical theory[1] and systems theory: "The purpose of a system is what it does[0]"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
[1] Ok, I admit, nobody but me has actually made the intersection between the two yet.
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If you think money is the motivation you just don’t understand politics. Money is a means, and the weakest form of power.
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Part of this is a crusade though. There's very much a desire to rip out anything that is considered "woke" or "DEI". But the rest of it is just burning things down for the sake of burning things down.
I think the ripping out of woke stuff is mostly marketing for the political base. Sure, Trump and Musk have some personal stake in it too, but it's not the point.
I wouldn't say they're "burning things down for the sake of burning things down", though. The truth is somewhere between what you and gp are contending. There's no moral framework, but there is a framework. They're burning things down so that "the free market" can replace the things they burn down and capture the money that used to go towards doing those things for the public good, and instead do those things for a private profit.
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I think it's more Libertarian extremists feeding the public an excuse to execute the Libertarian dream of minimal government oversight
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Musk is such a tumour of a human that I think “it’s just money” is such a sloppy abdication of analyzing the situation.
No, it is something more sinister than that. Trump is a puppet and his statements are flat out fabrications. Musk and DOGE do outrageous things which just happen to benefit foreign superpowers. Everything the two co-presidents do openly is a red herring meant to mislead and waste time.
Who in their right mind opens up RDP and Citrix servers to public internet in DoE and nuclear research laboratory networks?
Time is running very short. Foreign powers must be assumed to already hold all possible information about the US government, including nuclear secrets, warfare capabilities, emergency plans, and kompromat of all personnel and political oversight.
It won’t be long before the US nuclear arsenal mysteriously disappears.
Doubtful. You have to squint your eyes really hard to see this "foreign agent" conncetion. Most likely, there are just greedy idiots at work here.
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Can you link to some sources / information here because I have no idea what you're talking about
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Like sure I’m not familiar with the value of these programs, but you get that these programs are literal pennies compared to the government’s budget right? It’s not even worth talking about these. DOGE cuts aren’t going to add up to shit and you bet we’re going to hear “mission accomplished” in six months, meanwhile Russia and China and are going to grab global influence in the absence of USAID and we won’t experience the repercussions for years after these clowns have left office.
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> The incentives don’t even make sense, these people have hundreds of billions of dollars already, they do not have an incentive to try to get rich from government because they are already rich.
Have you… have you ever met a wealthy person?
The evidence is they are proposing another $4.5T tax cut that will eat up whatever purported saving you are excited about. They’re canceling these programs, taking the savings for themselves, cutting Medicaid, and ratcheting up the debt another $3T. These are not the behaviors of someone concerned about decreasing the debt, but accurately reflect the behaviors of someone trying to distract you with hot-button cultural issues while they rob the treasury. Watch what they do, not what they say.
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A few things. Why not copy these systems onto a separate server to prevent tampering.
Second, spending is done by Congress. If you don’t like the spending cut it through proper channels we don’t get to decide not to fund something once’s it’s been allocated.
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They did spend 400 million now on armored tesla cars.
All the cuts are going to the right place :)
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"Men who have sex with men" is a crazy framing of HIV presentation, which by the way, helps everyone, not just LGBT people. Uganda and many other countries regularly prosecutes people for being LGBT, so maybe its not such a bad idea to support those communities by advocating for them.
All of DOGE is just "I don't like these programs, so I am going to call them waste". None of those programs are wasteful that you listed, you just don't like them. How about you substantiate how any of these programs are corrupt or wasteful.
Sometime really rich people lie. Maybe their actual goal is different from their stated goal?
The 2024 federal deficit was 1.8 trillion I am willing to bet a donation to GiveWell that 2025 will higher. You want to take the other side?
In Uganda as of 2023 you can get life imprisonment or even the death penalty for being gay. They've even restricted freedom of speech when it comes to discussing gay rights. Even Republicans have condemned it. Does that paint it in a different light?
Also, you think that rich people won't use the government to get more money? Seriously?
Sounds like an anti-gay crusade to me!
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How does deleting 18F translate into rich people taking money?
Why make it easy for people to submit their tax return - when the government already has the bulk of that info since their employer, their banks, etc, already reported it - when INSTEAD you can let rich people hawk their paid products to get money from people for it instead? While still requiring more effort.
The corruption era is very simple: the government won't be allowed to directly provide a service that someone else could make $$$$ by being a middleman for.
It's somewhat ludicrous to have to "file taxes" in the computer era in the first place, but there's a large ideological resistance to both taxes and the government that in some of the more paranoid wings of the country that is well-exploited by the rent-seekers here.
They only just launched Direct File after years of lobbying to prevent such a system by a consortium of accounting software companies[0]. If it falls apart people will continue to be forced to pay money to these companies just to file their tax.
As a comparison, in my country you could submit your own tax return using government supplied desktop software since 1999, and in 2015 that software was replaced with a web product. 1 in 3 people submit their own tax returns using this product.
[0] https://thisisunpacked.substack.com/p/irs-direct-tax-filing-...
Let’s pretend to think that through a bit as an exercise. While it might not be Musk himself, who could possibly benefit from firing all the people who developed direct file?
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A failing/failed state leads to more corporate power and control. I think it’s that simple.
In what way is it rich people taking money?
Time will tell but there's evidence that some government staff grew inexplicably wealthy while in office which would suggest corruption. Corruption in government is terrible for the average citizen, ask anyone from a country that suffers from a lot of it.
I really fail to see why auditing government spending is a bad thing?
This is not an audit and this is not how you audit. Just about anyone could support doing an actual audit.
But you know what? All of these agencies are regularly audited. Every year, reports are all published. This is how it works https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial...
Elon is operating an ideological mission conducted unprofessionally and with complete contempt for any public oversight.
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> there's evidence that some government staff grew inexplicably wealthy
Those are a bunch of weasel words. You're giving a certain impression yet being vague enough that it's impossible to assess, argue or discuss the validity of that claim.
What evidence? Who are those 'some' staff? What's inexplicably wealthy?
There's a vast difference between government high-ups getting paid well and making money (as high-ups in any large organization might) and government organizations and their leadership and staff being generally corrupt.
Of course corruption is never impossible, partially because it can take forms that may be difficult to discern as such. But it's again impossible to assess that claim without substance.
>Corruption in government is terrible for the average citizen
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/trump-orders-...
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What evidence?
I agree that in principle, it's great that spending is being checked and payments "audited" (I have no clue if thats actually what is happening, I assume it's no KPMNG audit). However, are they really being audited? Is this the manner in which this should be done?
I am not a Trump voter. I agree with the outcome they have stated - reduce stupid spending - but I have no idea thats the true motivation, the true goal and I disagree with the manner in which they are doing it. Just because you agree with the dictator doesn't make it right?
There's nothing moral about it. The profitability of the tax prep industry depends on taxes being hard to file. Lack of official free e-file is regulatory capture. Any associated blather about making taxes cumbersome to keep people mistrustful of taxes is a fig leaf, as is this case with most "conservative" viewpoints.
The fact that you need to pay to file taxes it's so distopic that only USA could have invented it
Without evidence that the Trump administration cares about protecting the tax prep industry, this is just a conspiracy theory.
Heck, the Trump admin wants to get rid of income tax entirely, so they're hardly the natural allies of the tax prep industry.
They are because they have an interest in keeping tax filing difficult and unapproachable, to keep public animus against taxes at its maximum. Coincidentally this is 100% in alignment with the tax prep industry whose entire existence is based on products which solve and handle the complicated tax situation.
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The balance of actions taken by the Trump administration suggests it generally is in favor of doing whatever people who suck up enough and donate enough money want.
The history of lobbying on behalf of the tax prep industry is easy enough to find.
Is drawing a line through Trump's well-professed love of sycophants and people who make him money and that lobbying and motivation, to their current actions, so far fetched to you?
I think taking a wait-and-see approach to things like "Trump wants to get rid of income tax entirely" would be wise until we see where the implementation ends up. In the meantime lets talk about what has actually been done to date.
All this good work by 18f destroyed by this maniac.
It's not a moral crusade, it's just a kleptocracy that uses a moral crusade as a fig leaf.
What's moral about it?
The possible moral argument, is the government is funding a service that costs businesses revenue.
However it would be pretty insane to argue that a citizen of a country should need to pay money for someone to fill out a basic tax return to pay taxes…
I've had someone on this site say to me that it's because America embraces the free market, as well as it being the only country to have granular enough taxes to require a third party to handle it. It's incredibly hard because you can point to any other country to show examples of good (not perfect) implementations but then American exceptionalism takes over and they simply dismiss any advice.
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"Moral" can mean "of or relating to morality", not necessarily "exhibiting goodness".
American conservatives view governments as inherently evil: if the government can make it more convenient for people to pay tax, people might be willing to pay more tax (or at least object less to tax), allowing the government to spend more money, and since the government is inherently evil, it allows for more evil.
On the other hand, creating an office whose sole objective is to destroy other functioning parts of the government and make it less useful to people? Totally moral.
Don't ask me, I'm not a conservative.
You're arguing in the right direction, but you have the wrong basis.
American Conservatives don't believe the government is evil, they believe that not having control over the government is evil. The slash and burning of agencies and departments isn't just due to a deep seated hatred, it's a need for control. And in order to have control you need consolidation.
American Conservatives have no problems with state governments vastly overreaching their authority or punishing cities. They have no issue with potentially taxing workers more to issue tax breaks for corporations. And they have no issue using the government to punish, stalk or harass dissidents.
> American conservatives view governments as inherently evil:
Governments don't have a particularly good track record, so why give them the benefit of the doubt? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide
According to Rummel, democide surpassed war as the leading cause of non-natural death in the 20th century.
A government that is as weak as possible at least possesses less organizational capacity for murdering you when things inevitably go off the rails.
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The mistake is to assume our concept of morality is shared by the oligarchs.
Morals are a collection of ethics. Their ethics are that people who aren't billionaires are parasites, and that rape and overthrowing the country and murdering politics are acceptable, it's what everyone voted for. The guy in charge of the military has white nationalist tattoos and an unelected foreigner gave white power salutes behind the presidential seal, get used to it.
Two things:
1. To people saying that the government should have a direct way to file taxes. This is an outdated way of thinking. Most ordinary people shouldn't have to file taxes at all. Withholding is sufficient for income taxes and taxes on liquid investments.
2. 18F was an openly partisan organisation. They were likely disbanded not to kill the products they produced, but rather for their inability to remain politically neutral.
I, too, was born yesterday.
What do you mean?
It’s normal in many countries to not have to file until your tax situation becomes more complicated.
For most people, your employer handles your income tax on your behalf, your stock broker handles your capital gains tax etc.
It’s an XY problem, and direct file is like the faster horse.
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Please tell me how 18F is openly partisan. Also explain how most of Trump's hires are NOT openly partisan?