> The reason I still give them benefit of the doubt on their intentions is...because they did come out and say that 20% of the savings should go back to taxpayers as a refund and that 20% should go directly to reducing the debt. That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention.
I'd rather the government keep the money and use it to pay for the many services that it provides. Like ensuring that I have clean water, unadulterated food, clean air, a functional banking system, healthcare, safe vehicles, making sure that unemployed people don't starve, researching infectious disease remediation, performing scientific research, maintaining national parks, making sure that kids have a baseline education, doing humanitarian work around the globe, and a thousand other things I don't have the time to enumerate.
I feel like people lose sight of exactly how ridiculously much money a trillion dollars is. You’re mentioning a bunch of desirable things you’d like the federal government to do, while ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings. You can simultaneously want the government to reduce waste and provide these services. Lately it feels like folks are getting too carried away and becoming “pro government waste” as some type of political flex. Really, the problem is _who_ is doing the reduction and _how_, not _that_ we’re doing it.
> ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings
Who's ignoring it? Once the problem is identified by someone, you fix it and move on. This already happens.
Trashing whole departments/agencies first and then trying to find all of the 'waste' amongst the wreckage creates more work in the long run when you have to rebuild all of the processes and try to reclaim some portion of the institutional knowledge that got flushed down the toilet for no reason.
Musk doesn't give a shit about any of that waste. People aren't pro government waste, they're anti political grandstanding about meaningless crumbs as a distraction while a literal nazi-saluting fascist eats the rest of the pie.
I think that addresses the root issue here- the money is not efficient in getting those things done. It's not even hidden and the freeloaders really seemed to feel no shame since covid (maybe social media is the cause?). It happens all over the world in every organization. Usually companies die off, but the budget just increases for the government.
Of course we don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water, but it's high time for a major course correction. In our government it is very hard to turn the ship around, and motivate people to serve.
I'd much prefer if we could magically motivate the 3/5 of govvies who are in cruise mode to try harder.
> and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged.
This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue.
It will create inefficiency. In the best case because it's not how the decades of built up institutional knowledge knows how to get stuff done. If the worst (and most probable) case, because what you're removing is actually needed... and we'll get an "oops sorry" later when the damage is done.
Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes. I have seen so many times (in private organizations) clearly inefficient processes getting ripped out, only to be replaced with much more inefficient ones.
Sometimes there are no shortcuts: You have to know what you're doing. The "This is 'something', therefore we must do it" bit only gets you so far.
Jumping into a complex system and trashing big swathes of it without taking the time to understand why it's there, what it does, and the consequences for destroying it will be, is one of the worst possible ways to 'reduce waste' that I can think of.
Deeming things as waste within days of gaining access to the info is 100% in bad faith. There is no possible way that musk and his minions took the time to find out why anything is the way it is. Nevermind the fact that you don't have to shut anything down to perform an audit. He is going through with a bulldozer and saying "oops" when he destroys institutional knowledge and capabilities. The damage is the point.
You are not paying attention if you believe that a crack team consisting of the world's richest man and half a dozen tween interns physically invading government offices and dismantling entire departments fast enough to make your head spin is anything other than "ill intent".
> It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
There should be little to doubt at this point, however. "Dismantling of the administrative state" was a mantra for many who are now in positions of power.
Then: "Prices will come down on day 1!"
Now: "It's hard to get prices to come down once they're up".
At some point, there's not much reason to doubt someone's goals, regardless of what they say. You can look at past say/do combinations and make reasonable predictions.
Stop giving 'benefits' to people with years of documented track records under the aegis of 'doubt'.
> It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
Then you should be giving the benefit of the doubt to the people and institutions that are accused on flimsy evidence. Then you should be giving benefit of the doubt to Harris and Clinton too, to progressives, to SJWs, feminists, to centrists.
It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt, but as my post clearly says at the end: "That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention."
Do you give the same benefit of the doubt to the 10s of thousands of civil servants who have already been abruptly fired without cause? Do you assume that they are capable and productive members of their departments who have been making good faith efforts to improve the lives of their fellow Americans? If so, then shouldn't the administration take a bit more than 30 days of careful analysis and deliberation before declaring their jobs wasteful and fraudulent?
So far they said 20% refunds, 20% against the debt, and the rest...presumably they are determining to what extent to put that into tax cuts and the other two buckets some more. This way everyone wins, assuming their savings so far are sustainable and annualized.
Spoiler: Nobody is _directly_ getting a refund. That money will be less than the planned increase in the deficit. (This is the house's budget bill which is the supported version of the president unlike the senate's version).
> because they make promises around goals with incomplete understanding and data and then recalibrate as more information becomes available.
Perhaps you should simply announce an investigation, then deliver findings of the investigation and recommendations.
They're starting with the end in mind - the dismantling of the administrative state - then making cuts. Then finding out what the impact might be, then continuing cuts.
There is no good faith here, and there is nothing in 'doubt' that someone should benefit from.
> I don't consider this to be a lie, per se, is because they make promises around goals with incomplete understanding
They didn't even try to formulate an understanding. All of their actions show willful and deliberate disregard for how the system works. That's not "incomplete understanding" or a good faith effort.
Trust is objectively bad for systems design and processes, especially without audit and oversight! Everything should be trustless whenever it can be. They have broken every best practice in the book.
Even if you believe that trust shouldn't be earned, it is inadvisable to believe anything that Elon Musk says is in good faith. How many more examples do you need after the Hyperloop debacle? Here's an expanding list: https://elonmusk.today
How many times do you need to be lied to by the exact same person before you realize that facts don't mean anything to them?
At this point, I'm surprised when I hear something from Musk that is verifiably true.
Wasn't that actually "if you agree to resign and leave next September we'll continue paying your salary until then and you wont have to RTO if you work remotely" rather that actually 8 months of severance?
> then recalibrate as more information becomes available.
So you are waiting until they will start actually lying when they have more information (instead of "just" being incompetent)?
Giving someone who has proven time and time again to be exceptionally dishonest (Trump but also arguably Musk) the benefit of the doubt seems unwise. Why would they suddenly stop lying?
The fact alone that they have promised a huge tax cut to high income earners will will inevitably outweigh any potential savings by DOGE means that any claims about reducing public debt are inherently dishonest.
It's what authoritarian populists do when they get control of governments. They "hack" the economy with short-term stimulus and giveaways to keep the rubes content and happy while they dismantle civil society and the rule of law and entrench themselves.
Economic stagnation and decline usually follow within a couple year, but if they've entrenched themselves well enough, they don't have to care about public opinion very much and can shift to repression.
I’m sorry but the naivety of your comment is absolutely hilarious. Good luck getting your refund when the IRS is being ran by a handful of angsty young adults
DOGE and POTUS are incentivized to follow through on this type of thing because it would increase good-faith in the masses big time. I don't think they'd renege on it. I'm certainly not naive! You can see that I've been contradicting DOGE on things since they became a thing. (@cyrsbel on X)
Hi, I’ve read a lot of your comments, and you are going to get short shrift for it.
The core issue is the idea that they are incentivized to act in good faith.
Theres a great article which was shared here:
"Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing.
or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive"
> Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field.
and
> More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.
I'm still waiting on orange to release his tax returns like he promised from his first presidential debate. That audit's gotta be almost complete by now, right?
> DOGE and POTUS are incentivized to follow through on this type of thing because it would increase good-faith in the masses big time.
Trump has no interest in increasing good faith. He doesn't need to. He can't run for office anymore, and even if he could, there's literally nothing he could do to lose voters. And he certainly doesn't give a shit about the future of the Republican party.
The people that voted for Trump fully support everything that's being done.
What incentive is there for anyone in the Trump administration to care about that? I don't see one.
> I don't think they'd renege on it.
Lower prices on day 1. Stopping Ukraine war on day 1.
Trump just says things in the moment to play for approval, then says something contradictory later if need be. There is no fallout, pushback or consequence from his supporters, and they have control of ... all branches of government right now.
> The reason I still give them benefit of the doubt on their intentions is...because they did come out and say that 20% of the savings should go back to taxpayers as a refund and that 20% should go directly to reducing the debt. That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention.
I'd rather the government keep the money and use it to pay for the many services that it provides. Like ensuring that I have clean water, unadulterated food, clean air, a functional banking system, healthcare, safe vehicles, making sure that unemployed people don't starve, researching infectious disease remediation, performing scientific research, maintaining national parks, making sure that kids have a baseline education, doing humanitarian work around the globe, and a thousand other things I don't have the time to enumerate.
I feel like people lose sight of exactly how ridiculously much money a trillion dollars is. You’re mentioning a bunch of desirable things you’d like the federal government to do, while ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings. You can simultaneously want the government to reduce waste and provide these services. Lately it feels like folks are getting too carried away and becoming “pro government waste” as some type of political flex. Really, the problem is _who_ is doing the reduction and _how_, not _that_ we’re doing it.
> ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings
Who's ignoring it? Once the problem is identified by someone, you fix it and move on. This already happens.
$1,300 coffee cups: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/22... Audit of C-17 Spare Parts: https://www.dodig.mil/In-the-Spotlight/Article/3948604/press...
See also, the myth of the $600 hammer: https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the...
Trashing whole departments/agencies first and then trying to find all of the 'waste' amongst the wreckage creates more work in the long run when you have to rebuild all of the processes and try to reclaim some portion of the institutional knowledge that got flushed down the toilet for no reason.
2 replies →
Musk doesn't give a shit about any of that waste. People aren't pro government waste, they're anti political grandstanding about meaningless crumbs as a distraction while a literal nazi-saluting fascist eats the rest of the pie.
2 replies →
I think that addresses the root issue here- the money is not efficient in getting those things done. It's not even hidden and the freeloaders really seemed to feel no shame since covid (maybe social media is the cause?). It happens all over the world in every organization. Usually companies die off, but the budget just increases for the government.
Of course we don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water, but it's high time for a major course correction. In our government it is very hard to turn the ship around, and motivate people to serve.
I'd much prefer if we could magically motivate the 3/5 of govvies who are in cruise mode to try harder.
Should the government get a blank check? If there is waste and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged.
> and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged.
This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue.
It will create inefficiency. In the best case because it's not how the decades of built up institutional knowledge knows how to get stuff done. If the worst (and most probable) case, because what you're removing is actually needed... and we'll get an "oops sorry" later when the damage is done.
1 reply →
Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes. I have seen so many times (in private organizations) clearly inefficient processes getting ripped out, only to be replaced with much more inefficient ones.
Sometimes there are no shortcuts: You have to know what you're doing. The "This is 'something', therefore we must do it" bit only gets you so far.
Jumping into a complex system and trashing big swathes of it without taking the time to understand why it's there, what it does, and the consequences for destroying it will be, is one of the worst possible ways to 'reduce waste' that I can think of.
1 reply →
Deeming things as waste within days of gaining access to the info is 100% in bad faith. There is no possible way that musk and his minions took the time to find out why anything is the way it is. Nevermind the fact that you don't have to shut anything down to perform an audit. He is going through with a bulldozer and saying "oops" when he destroys institutional knowledge and capabilities. The damage is the point.
This is not how to accomplish that. Musk is looting the government for personal gain and installing lackeys that are loyal to him.
You are both correct. It's not an either-or.
You are not paying attention if you believe that a crack team consisting of the world's richest man and half a dozen tween interns physically invading government offices and dismantling entire departments fast enough to make your head spin is anything other than "ill intent".
You realize that the entire executive branch excluding defense is like 10% of the federal budget.
There isn’t enough money to be saved to give you back anything.
People don’t understand scale. They will cut spending $800B, cut taxes by $4T and people will say that action is budget neutral.
You're giving them the benefit of the doubt because they made a vague promise to give you a bigger tax refund?
Did you read the entire post you are responding to? I clearly said this at the end:
"That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention."
It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
> It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
There should be little to doubt at this point, however. "Dismantling of the administrative state" was a mantra for many who are now in positions of power.
Then: "Prices will come down on day 1!" Now: "It's hard to get prices to come down once they're up".
At some point, there's not much reason to doubt someone's goals, regardless of what they say. You can look at past say/do combinations and make reasonable predictions.
Stop giving 'benefits' to people with years of documented track records under the aegis of 'doubt'.
> It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
I would implore you to develop the skill of judging one’s character overtime. Some folks have proven they don’t deserve the benefit.
Otherwise, I fear that your good nature will become a vulnerability instead of the strength that I can be.
> It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
Then you should be giving the benefit of the doubt to the people and institutions that are accused on flimsy evidence. Then you should be giving benefit of the doubt to Harris and Clinton too, to progressives, to SJWs, feminists, to centrists.
You give them the benefit of the doubt because they tell you exactly what you want to hear?
It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt, but as my post clearly says at the end: "That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention."
Do you give the same benefit of the doubt to the 10s of thousands of civil servants who have already been abruptly fired without cause? Do you assume that they are capable and productive members of their departments who have been making good faith efforts to improve the lives of their fellow Americans? If so, then shouldn't the administration take a bit more than 30 days of careful analysis and deliberation before declaring their jobs wasteful and fraudulent?
So you do give them the benefit of the doubt because they tell you exactly what you want to hear.
What will you do when they break your benefits of the doubt. Wait for the next time for more of the same words?
I appreciate that nature, but not when the stakes are _this_ high.
Post your bank account number here. Give us the benefit of the doubt.
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Did they mention which tax payers those 20% will be going back to?
Small temporary income tax cuts, big permanent capital gains tax cuts.
Always has been, always will be.
So far they said 20% refunds, 20% against the debt, and the rest...presumably they are determining to what extent to put that into tax cuts and the other two buckets some more. This way everyone wins, assuming their savings so far are sustainable and annualized.
4 replies →
Not yet as far as I've seen.
Here you got then - https://docs.house.gov/meetings/BU/BU00/20250213/117894/BILL...
Spoiler: Nobody is _directly_ getting a refund. That money will be less than the planned increase in the deficit. (This is the house's budget bill which is the supported version of the president unlike the senate's version).
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Do you think they can be trusted to tell the truth?
[flagged]
> because they make promises around goals with incomplete understanding and data and then recalibrate as more information becomes available.
Perhaps you should simply announce an investigation, then deliver findings of the investigation and recommendations.
They're starting with the end in mind - the dismantling of the administrative state - then making cuts. Then finding out what the impact might be, then continuing cuts.
There is no good faith here, and there is nothing in 'doubt' that someone should benefit from.
> I don't consider this to be a lie, per se, is because they make promises around goals with incomplete understanding
They didn't even try to formulate an understanding. All of their actions show willful and deliberate disregard for how the system works. That's not "incomplete understanding" or a good faith effort.
Trust is objectively bad for systems design and processes, especially without audit and oversight! Everything should be trustless whenever it can be. They have broken every best practice in the book.
Even if you believe that trust shouldn't be earned, it is inadvisable to believe anything that Elon Musk says is in good faith. How many more examples do you need after the Hyperloop debacle? Here's an expanding list: https://elonmusk.today
How many times do you need to be lied to by the exact same person before you realize that facts don't mean anything to them?
At this point, I'm surprised when I hear something from Musk that is verifiably true.
>I've seen was an offer of 8 months
Wasn't that actually "if you agree to resign and leave next September we'll continue paying your salary until then and you wont have to RTO if you work remotely" rather that actually 8 months of severance?
> then recalibrate as more information becomes available.
So you are waiting until they will start actually lying when they have more information (instead of "just" being incompetent)?
Giving someone who has proven time and time again to be exceptionally dishonest (Trump but also arguably Musk) the benefit of the doubt seems unwise. Why would they suddenly stop lying?
The fact alone that they have promised a huge tax cut to high income earners will will inevitably outweigh any potential savings by DOGE means that any claims about reducing public debt are inherently dishonest.
>with unemployment benefits as well, perhaps that ends up getting close enough
It won't be, unemployment benefits are a fraction of what the severance benefits are. Its disingenuous to bundle them together due to that fact alone.
This is Clientelism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientelism
It's what authoritarian populists do when they get control of governments. They "hack" the economy with short-term stimulus and giveaways to keep the rubes content and happy while they dismantle civil society and the rule of law and entrench themselves.
Economic stagnation and decline usually follow within a couple year, but if they've entrenched themselves well enough, they don't have to care about public opinion very much and can shift to repression.
I did have a question about that. Where does the other 60% go? Isn’t the whole point to reduce the debt?
[dead]
I’m sorry but the naivety of your comment is absolutely hilarious. Good luck getting your refund when the IRS is being ran by a handful of angsty young adults
DOGE and POTUS are incentivized to follow through on this type of thing because it would increase good-faith in the masses big time. I don't think they'd renege on it. I'm certainly not naive! You can see that I've been contradicting DOGE on things since they became a thing. (@cyrsbel on X)
Hi, I’ve read a lot of your comments, and you are going to get short shrift for it.
The core issue is the idea that they are incentivized to act in good faith.
Theres a great article which was shared here: "Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing. or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive" > Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field. and > More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.
I'm still waiting on orange to release his tax returns like he promised from his first presidential debate. That audit's gotta be almost complete by now, right?
> DOGE and POTUS are incentivized to follow through on this type of thing because it would increase good-faith in the masses big time.
Trump has no interest in increasing good faith. He doesn't need to. He can't run for office anymore, and even if he could, there's literally nothing he could do to lose voters. And he certainly doesn't give a shit about the future of the Republican party.
The people that voted for Trump fully support everything that's being done.
How are those public contradictions going?
> increase good-faith in the masses big time
What incentive is there for anyone in the Trump administration to care about that? I don't see one.
> I don't think they'd renege on it.
Lower prices on day 1. Stopping Ukraine war on day 1.
Trump just says things in the moment to play for approval, then says something contradictory later if need be. There is no fallout, pushback or consequence from his supporters, and they have control of ... all branches of government right now.
I am not reading your twitter history to say that assuming Elon and Trump wont renege on something is the worst bet of your entire life.
1 reply →
This is a Wikipedia article about you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_information_voter
Sadly, there were enough people like you to enable a fascist coup.