Comment by kevingadd
1 day ago
Are sweeping layoffs without any serious attempt to retain critical talent going to empower the remaining staff to do their best work? We've seen lots of examples of DOGE cutting loose important people and then flailing to hire them back. What happens when that one person who makes the whole team able to do their jobs gets cut loose? Are you empowered and productive then suddenly?
If DOGE were serious about increasing efficiency they'd be focused on process reforms. Instead they're randomly cancelling contracts, cancelling leases, and letting people go without doing the hard work of analyzing processes or analyzing organizations to figure out where the problems actually are.
It's like their philosophy is "if we cut one of the dog's legs off it'll suddenly become a more efficient runner".
I'm not here to defend DOGE, but you're making the same mistake as the article of assuming the DOGE approach has no merit.
Deleting processes somewhat randomly, then listening for the pain, is a pretty well-known technique for understanding and cleaning up legacy systems. Of course, it should only be used on systems where (temporary) failures are tolerable.
There are parts of the government where that is true, and parts where it is dangerous. The problem on both sides is assuming the same techniques should be applied across the entire government, when some services are indeed life-and-death and others absolutely should be deleted.
The pain you're listening for here is dead veterans, dead trans kids, dead disabled people, starving seniors, people dying from preventable viruses because of vaccine program cuts. The pain you're listening for here is toxic water and food-borne illnesses.
We know we need most of these programs and services! You can make them more efficient, you can identify and cut waste. You don't do that by just making blanket, massive cuts to staff and services and then trying to cobble the pieces back together over the next few years. It doesn't make sense. No sensible person would run a business that way.
These people genuinely believe that some amount of human death is acceptable collateral.
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These are some extremely serious claims that I'm going to need to see sources to believe. I'm by no means here to defend DOGE, but what have they done to put the lives of trans kids at serious risk?
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No, that is definitely not well known or time tested technique in anything that actually affects things that matter. You do that when you don't care about consequences. And in this context, not caring about consequences is sociopaths.
Second, you can't just turn on institutions or checks and balances again. Which is who DOGE does it - to cause permanent destruction they will blame on someone else and to cement oligarchy power.
> It's like their philosophy is "if we cut one of the dog's legs off it'll suddenly become a more efficient runner".
I think their philosophy is to replace the dog's legs with ones that run (only) where they want it to run.
No replacement has happened yet. No improvement has happened yet. They're just firing people, cancelling contracts, and cancelling leases.
That's not true.
Look at USAID: they canceled everything, but there was a significant outcry about PEPFAR specifically. Now PEPFAR is back, and likely to stay.
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