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 believe the old-money establishment countered the Occupy Wall Street movement by pushing wokism as a divide-and-conquer strategy. For about a decade, they had support from most of Silicon Valley, but this alliance weakened as global events forced some to reconsider how a divided America could face the challenges ahead.
Following Trump’s second term, the fresh-money establishment saw an opportunity to challenge the old guard. Setting aside their differences, they chose to unite.
>The group, which could announce strategic partnerships next month, would seek to bring Silicon Valley-style disruption to an industry dominated by so-called "prime" contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
They were soon joined by other tech moguls—Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Gates—who once opposed Trump but now see AI as their chance to wrest power from the old establishment.
The difference between sports and politics is that sports are always a duel, while politics, despite appearances, is always a three-player game.
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.
This was too deep for me. Pretend we have a system that works differently than intended. I could say it does not meet its purpose. This quote means something else. Am I wrong?
Let me give it a try. Is the purpose of USAID to promote the liberal world view and fund its political allies? From what we’ve learned, that’s what the system does.
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.
They're getting rid of things that stand in Elon's way. CFPB was actively investigating complaints about Tesla and financing, for instance. It was also reportedly seen as a roadblock to turning Twitter into a payments platform.
Yeah, it is like the so called "Shock therapy" imposed on failing countries (like Russia in 1991 and some South american countries in the 2000s). The goal is to break down institutions so that more can be privatized.
That's yet to be seen. Going for a limited government would require closing a lot of these agencies down, that requires congress.
If the fear of fascism raised by some is accurate, it seems more likely we'll see these agencies gutted and rebuilt as whatever the Trump administration wants them to be instead. No smaller government, just a different one.
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.
It's like pulling a heist 101. The best way to steal something is to create a distraction (like taking away people's rights and creating government chaos), and while everyone's paying attention to that, you run in the back a grab what you want. I don't know about giving it away, but taking it for one's own personal gain could be a very attractive proposition, stealing what you can't buy. Just some additional (scary) food for thought.
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.
This is the false tool that bureaucrats use to justify there excesses. "this is just pennies...no one is going to notice it?
If you look at the budget, everything is "just pennies" yet somehow it's 2T deficit with 7T total expenditures. If you were to drill into the big programs (Medicare, Social Security, Defense, etc) there are thousands of programs nested within those.
Like it or not someone will need to do the hard work of going line-by-line and accumulating savings to make the budget make sense. There also needs to be a culture shift in gov't. It's not monopoly money---something obvious no?
> 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?
Democrats and Republicans have different definitions of waste. The programs you are calling waste others call necessary aid. If you give Democrats carte blanche to cancel what they consider waste, maybe Musk’s rockets would be on the chopping block, or some program you consider crucial. That’s the problem with unilateral decision making of this sort, we live in a society of 300 million competing priorities. Can’t you see the problem with having one person decide how all our money is spent? Why can’t trans people fund trans priorities?
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.
Not to mention the whole Eric Adams quid pro quo. 7 prosecutors resigned when ordered to sign the dismissal! 7! Including people who were put in their jobs during the first Trump admin! It was finally signed by...a new DoJ appointee who was most recently employed as one of Trump's own lawyers. Holy shit!
It's barely started and the corruption is everywhere. It's blatant and out in the open, and it's disgusting.
I'm going to a protest today. I encourage others to do the same.
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 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.
I believe the old-money establishment countered the Occupy Wall Street movement by pushing wokism as a divide-and-conquer strategy. For about a decade, they had support from most of Silicon Valley, but this alliance weakened as global events forced some to reconsider how a divided America could face the challenges ahead.
Following Trump’s second term, the fresh-money establishment saw an opportunity to challenge the old guard. Setting aside their differences, they chose to unite.
https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-defense-contr...
>The group, which could announce strategic partnerships next month, would seek to bring Silicon Valley-style disruption to an industry dominated by so-called "prime" contractors, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
They were soon joined by other tech moguls—Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Gates—who once opposed Trump but now see AI as their chance to wrest power from the old establishment.
The difference between sports and politics is that sports are always a duel, while politics, despite appearances, is always a three-player game.
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.
Let me put it one other way. Is the goal here for them to secure material comfort and luxury for them and their family? I don’t think it is.
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.
Out of curiosity, have you checked out these other works?
Design for Prevention (2010) ISBN 978-0-937063-05-7
Friends in High Places (1990) ISBN 937063-06-1
Have Fun at Work (1988) ISBN 0-937063-05-3
The New Plague (1986) ISBN 0-937063-03-7
POSIWID is mentioned in the first three works; engineer William L. Livingston authored the latter three.
This was too deep for me. Pretend we have a system that works differently than intended. I could say it does not meet its purpose. This quote means something else. Am I wrong?
4 replies →
Let me give it a try. Is the purpose of USAID to promote the liberal world view and fund its political allies? From what we’ve learned, that’s what the system does.
3 replies →
If you think money is the motivation you just don’t understand politics. Money is a means, and the weakest form of power.
it’s both. money buys government which then makes you richer.
11 replies →
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.
They're getting rid of things that stand in Elon's way. CFPB was actively investigating complaints about Tesla and financing, for instance. It was also reportedly seen as a roadblock to turning Twitter into a payments platform.
Yeah, it is like the so called "Shock therapy" imposed on failing countries (like Russia in 1991 and some South american countries in the 2000s). The goal is to break down institutions so that more can be privatized.
4 replies →
I think it's more Libertarian extremists feeding the public an excuse to execute the Libertarian dream of minimal government oversight
That's yet to be seen. Going for a limited government would require closing a lot of these agencies down, that requires congress.
If the fear of fascism raised by some is accurate, it seems more likely we'll see these agencies gutted and rebuilt as whatever the Trump administration wants them to be instead. No smaller government, just a different one.
22 replies →
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.
It's like pulling a heist 101. The best way to steal something is to create a distraction (like taking away people's rights and creating government chaos), and while everyone's paying attention to that, you run in the back a grab what you want. I don't know about giving it away, but taking it for one's own personal gain could be a very attractive proposition, stealing what you can't buy. Just some additional (scary) food for thought.
Can you link to some sources / information here because I have no idea what you're talking about
https://cyberintel.substack.com/p/doge-exposes-once-secret-g...
You can use Shodan yourself to verify.
1 reply →
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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.
This is the false tool that bureaucrats use to justify there excesses. "this is just pennies...no one is going to notice it?
If you look at the budget, everything is "just pennies" yet somehow it's 2T deficit with 7T total expenditures. If you were to drill into the big programs (Medicare, Social Security, Defense, etc) there are thousands of programs nested within those.
Like it or not someone will need to do the hard work of going line-by-line and accumulating savings to make the budget make sense. There also needs to be a culture shift in gov't. It's not monopoly money---something obvious no?
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yes but they are my pennies
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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.
Really working as fast as possible before public perception manages to catch up.
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.
Facism has entered the chat…
They did spend 400 million now on armored tesla cars.
All the cuts are going to the right place :)
That was actually granted under the Biden administration and it has since been removed under the new Trump admin.
2 replies →
"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!
Yeah, listing 4 LGBT causes and one DEI one makes it pretty clear what their priorities are.
[flagged]
Democrats and Republicans have different definitions of waste. The programs you are calling waste others call necessary aid. If you give Democrats carte blanche to cancel what they consider waste, maybe Musk’s rockets would be on the chopping block, or some program you consider crucial. That’s the problem with unilateral decision making of this sort, we live in a society of 300 million competing priorities. Can’t you see the problem with having one person decide how all our money is spent? Why can’t trans people fund trans priorities?
5 replies →
Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-pr...
You have been down-voted/flagged(unfairly IMO). Not unexpected though.
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?
Follow the money.
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.
One could argue the Audits were not very effective
2 replies →
> 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-...
Not to mention the whole Eric Adams quid pro quo. 7 prosecutors resigned when ordered to sign the dismissal! 7! Including people who were put in their jobs during the first Trump admin! It was finally signed by...a new DoJ appointee who was most recently employed as one of Trump's own lawyers. Holy shit!
It's barely started and the corruption is everywhere. It's blatant and out in the open, and it's disgusting.
I'm going to a protest today. I encourage others to do the same.
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?