Comment by TheOtherHobbes
1 day ago
>Do you have any actual evidence of this?
Apart from the exfiltration of data, the complete absence of any savings or efficiencies, and the fact that DOGE closed as soon as the exfiltration was over?
>Corporations and governments are made of actual people.
And we know how well that goes.
>"the state" doesn't have one grand agenda for enslavement.
The government doesn't. The people who own the government clearly do. If they didn't they'd be working hard to increase economic freedom, lower debt, invest in public health, make education better and more affordable, make it easier to start and run a small business, limit the power of corporations and big money, and clamp down on extractive wealth inequality.
They are very very clearly and obviously doing the opposite of all of these things.
And they have a history of links to the old slave states, and both a commercial and personal interest in neo-slavery - such as for-profit prisons, among other examples.
All of this gets sold as "freedom", but even Orwell had that one worked out.
Those who have been paying attention to how election fixers like SCL/Cambridge Analytica work(ed) know where the bodies are buried. The whole point of these operations is to use personalised, individual data profiling to influence voting political behaviour, by creating messaging that triggers individual responses that can be aggregated into a pattern of mass influence leveraged through social media.
> Apart from the exfiltration of data, the complete absence of any savings or efficiencies, and the fact that DOGE closed as soon as the exfiltration was over?
IMHO everyone kinda knew from the start that DOGE wouldn't achieve much because the cost centers where gains could realistically be made are off-limits (mainly social security and medicare/medicaid). What that leaves you with is making cuts in other small areas and sure you could cut a few billion here and there but when compared against the governments budget, that's a drop in the bucket.
Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are properly termed "entitlements", not "cost centers". You're right that non-discretionary spending dwarfs discretionary spending though.
Entitlements cost quite a bit of money to fulfill.
Quibbling over terminology doesn't erase the point - that a significant portion of the Federal budget is money virtually everyone agrees shouldn't be touched much.
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I think we’re mistaking incompetence with malice in regards to DOGE here
Hanlon's razor is stupid and wrong. One should be wary and be aware that incompetence does look like malice sometimes, but that doesn't mean that malice doesn't exist. See /r/MaliciousCompliance for examples. It's possible that DOGE is as dumb as it looked. It's also possible that the smokescreen it generated also happened to have the information leak as described. If the information leak happened due to incompetence, but malicious bad actors still got data they were after by using a third party as a Mark, does that actor being incompetent really make the difference?
Sorry, no. Hanlon's razor is usually smart and correct, for the majority of cases, including this one.
In this case, it is a huge stretch to ascribe DOGE to incompetence or to stupidity. Thus, we CAN ascribe it to malice.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump are many things, but they are NOT stupid and NOT incompetent. Elon is the richest man in the world running some of the most innovative and important companies in the world. Donald Trump has managed to get elected twice despite the fact (because of the fact?) that he a serial liar and a convicted criminal.
They and other actors involved have demonstrated extraordinary malice, time and time again.
It is safe to ascribe this one to malice. And Hanlon's Razor holds.
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> The people who own the government clearly do.
Has anyone in this thread ever met an actual person? All of the ones I know are cartoonishly bad at keeping secrets, and even worse at making long term plans.
The closest thing we have to anyone with a long term plan is silly shit like Putins ridiculous rebuilding of the Russian Empire or religious fundamentalist horseshit like project 2025 that will die with the elderly simpletons that run it.
These guys aren't masterminds, they're dumbasses who read books written by different dumbasses and make plans thay won't survive contact with reality.
Let's face it, both Orwell and Huxley were wrong. They both assumed the ruling class would be competent. Huxley was closest, but even he had to invent the Alpha's. Sadly our Alphas are really just Betas with too much self esteem.
Maybe AI will one day give us turbocharged dumbasses who are actually competent. For now I think we're safe from all but short term disruption.
Orwell did not. He modeled the state after his experience as an officer of the British Empire and the Soviets.
The state, particularly police states, that control information, require process and consistency, not intelligence. They don’t require grand plans, just control. I’ve spent most of my career in or adjacent to government. I’ve witnessed remarkable feats of stupidity and incompetence — yet these organizations are materially successful at performing their core functions.
The issue with AI is that it can churn out necessary bullshit and allow the competence challenged to function more effectively.
I agree. The government doesn't need a long term plan, or the ability to execute on it for their to be negative outcomes.
In this thread though I was responding to an earlier assertion that the people who run the government have such a plan. I think we're both agreed that they don't, and probably can't, plan any more than a few years out in any way that matters.
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A lot of people seem to think all government is incompetent. While they may not be as efficient as corporations seeking profits, they do consistently make progress in limiting our freedom over time. You don't have to be a genius to figure things out over time, and government has all the time in the world. Our (USA) current regime is definitely taking efforts to consolidate info on and surveil citizens as never before. That's why DOGE, I believe served two purposes, gutting regulatory government agencies overseeing billionaire bros activities and also providing both government intelligence agencies and the billionaire bros more data to build up profiles for both nefarious activities and because "more information is better than less information" when you are seeking power over others. I don't think it is simply "they're big dummies and assume they weren't up to anything" that others are trying to sell holds water as Project 2025 was planned for well over a decade.
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You're ignoring that the people that are effective at getting things done are more likely to do the crazy things required to begin their plans.
Just because the average person cant add fractions together or stop eating donuts doesn't mean that Elon cant get some stuff together if he sets his mind to it.
> Has anyone in this thread ever met an actual person? All of the ones I know are cartoonishly bad at keeping secrets, and even worse at making long term plans.
That's the trick, though. You don't have to keep it secret any more. Project 2025 was openly published!
Modern politics has weaponized shamelessness. People used to resign over consensual affairs with adults.
Those simpletons seem to have been able to enact their plans, so you can be smug about being smarter than they are, but it seems that they've been able to put their plan into action, so I'm not sure who's more effective.
> they've been able to put their plan into action
They have been able to put multiple, inconsistent, self contradictory plans into action over the last 40 years. Having accomplished many of their goals they now seek to reverse their own efforts.
They are either as bad at planning as any individual human I've ever known or they are grifters who don't believe their own shtick.
I think you're wildly underestimating the heritage foundation. It's called project 2025 but they've essentially been dedicated to planning something like it since the 1970s. They are smart, focused, well funded, and successful. They are only one group, there are similar think tanks with similarly long term policy goals.
Most people are short sighted but relatively well intentioned creatures. That's not true of all people.
> I think you're wildly underestimating the heritage foundation.
It's possible that I am. Certainly they've had some success over the years, as have other think tanks like them. I mean, they're part of the reason we got embroiled in the middle-east after 9/11. They've certainly been influential.
That said, their problem is that they are true believers and the people in charge are not (and never will be). Someone else in this post described it as a flock of psychopaths, and I think that's the perfect way to phrase it. Society is run by a flock of psychopaths just doing whatever comes naturally as they seek to optimize their own short term advantage.
Sometimes their interests converge and something like Heritage sees part of their agenda instituted, but equally often these organizations fade into irrelevance as their agendas diverge from whatever works to the pyscho of the moments advantage. To avoid that Heritage can either change their agenda, or accept that they've become defanged. More often than not they choose the former.
I suppose we'll know for sure in 20 years, but I'd be willing to bet that Heritages agenda then won't look anything like the agenda they're advancing today. In fact if we look at their Agenda from 20 years ago we can see that it looks nothing like their agenda today.
For example, Heritage was very much pro-immigration until about 20 years ago. As early as 1986 they were advocating for increased immigration, and even in 2006 they were publishing reports advocating for the economic benefits of it. Then suddenly it fell out of fashion amongst a certain class of ruler and they reversed their entire stance to maintain their relevance.
They also used to sing a very different tune regarding healthcare, advocating for a the individual mandate as opposed to single payer. Again, it became unpopular and they simply "changed their mind" and began to fight against the policy that they were actually among the first to propose.
*EDIT* To cite a more recent example consider their stance on free trade. Even as recently as this year they were advocating for free trade and against tariffs warning that tariffs might lead to a recession. They've since reversed course, because while they are largely run by true believers they can't admit that publicly or they risk losing any hope of actually accomplishing any of their agenda.
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