There also happens to be lots of historical precedent to this kind of aggressive purges that aim to install loyalists in government, not least Germany in 1933.
(Nazis also made a big deal out of stopping “sexual deviants.” Studies of trans people and their history were the first books they burned. And now the CDC in USA is removing that information everywhere they can. A strange coincidence.)
It’s not a get-out-of-jail card if you’re just crunching some numbers while following illegal orders.
If we were really concerned about waste, the first and only place to look is the $1T+ we spend every year on the military.
And yet, the average life in US has gotten better and better under democratic rule, while worse under republican rule.
The problem with people like you is that you are so bought into a narrative of "government bad" that any sort of mistake or non optimal that the government does is seen by you as corruption.
And then when you have people like Musk, Rogan, Hotz, and other prophet wannabes that amplify that messaging, it solidifies that in your mind and you move become farther and farther from reality, until you are solidly in MAGA land where anything liberal is automatically bad, even if your side does the exact same thing.
There is a shitload of government bloat and inefficiencies, but these things need to be trimmed over a long period of time, not by Musk style of breaking things without giving a fuck about what he breaks.
When you see all the smart people like Musk, Hotz, Andreesen, Ackman, getting involved and changing their minds, maybe it's time to reconsider your priors too.
this line got me to laugh aloud, congrats
Here is the problem. You say this like a blanket statement, because you are parroting a popular talking point, but they and you intentionally leave it blank, because to any counter anyone gives you, you always have a response.
For example, I can say "well more people are graduating with college degrees", to which you reply "well the degrees are worthless because the actual education sucks". To which I reply "well data clearly shows that people with college degrees are making more money", to which you reply "yea because its all just fake money, those people aren't doing anything of value". To which I reply "yes but money still gets exchanged and economy keeps on going", to which you reply "but this is not sustainable"
So now, its not that education has gotten worse, you just think that the education is not correct for what you personally believe the future society is going to require. But you will never state that point directly, because you know it makes you sound dumb since you have no way to actually prove what the future society will look like.
>cost of living
Not really. Houses have gotten more expensive, but thats a supply issue. Average cost of living for the same standard has gotten better - you get more things for about the same money after inflation. Lots of places you don't need a car to get around, remote work is a lot more prevalent, saving people a shitload of money, and access to goods and services has gotten better (Amazon delivers to a lot of places now, giving access to acceptable quality goods for low prices)
>wealth inequality
So perhaps the worlds richest man shouldn't have power over the Treasury?
The other stuff has issues, but again just because there are issues doesn't mean you have to tear it up.
This is what I mean, you just repeat these talking points without any sort of critical thinking. Its the actual "woke" mind virus that they ironically talk about - it feels good to believe that you know what the actual problem is and think that you know the right solution. But you don't and neither to they.
And penultimatey, here is the real thing to think about. Both Musk and Hotz are very much into AI/ML. They both understand that their brains are neural networks. They both understand that to have a well performing neural network, you need to have good training, and specifically discriminant training on errors. A neural network cannot point out its own errors. It needs an external source. With humans, this looks like conversation with opposing side where you end up either reinforcing what you know because you are able to show factually that the other person is wrong, or changing your own beliefs and views when the opposite happen.
But none of them do that. They just like to preach ideology without ever anyone challenging it. They get facts wrong all the time, make baseless predictions that hardly ever come true, and never own their mistakes. Badly trained neural networks.
So in the end, they are literally the exact thing they hate - "woke" people preaching in their echochambers. Horseshoe effect. Or alternatively, they are just straight up lying to the likes of you and anyone gullible enough, so that they can gain more power. Those are the only 2 possibilities.
Generally, you are correct about one thing, and that is mental health. The reason why these people have power is because when people, especially young men, don't have anything in their life to feel proud about, they tend to attach themselves to an ideology. It works like this for both left and right, again horseshoe effect. The physiological reason why some college students feel the need to go to Pro Palestine protests and justify Hamas acts of terror, ignoring the reality of the situation, is the same reason why you feel the need to call Musk smart. So this is definitely problem that needs to get solved. But not by anyone on either end of the horseshoe.
So, he's already announced you'll be paying 10-25% tax on all imported goods moving forward, and that he'll personally loot the revenue.
3 reasons come to mind -
1. There's a vast and profound difference between trimming inefficiencies ("cutting waste") and eliminating a valuable function. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
2. This entire administration and its main actors have given zero reason to assume what they are doing is in good faith. In fact, quite the opposite they have incited worry that their motivations are not honest.
3. They are doing this with a shocking lack of oversight, on their own terms.
2. What type of actions/behaviors would lead you to believe this is being done in good faith? That seems somewhat hard to demonstrate when the other side almost universally assumes you never do anything in good faith.
3. This is the fault of our government structure since always and specifically our Congress over the last many decades, which has ceded more and more of the actual running of government to unelected civil servants who technically fall under the umbrella of the Executive branch. If we wanted to prevent things like this from being done, we should've had an actual civil service ala the UK, which although it falls under their Executive branch, it is not unilaterally controlled by it (e.g. the Civil Service Commission prevents the PM from just doing whatever he wants).
As a secondary note, oversight in this case seems somewhat hard to achieve, given the usual problem of "who watches the watchers?" If you think some part of the government is performing poorly and that this is systemic, who do you trust to provide oversight that might not themselves have ulterior motives to preserve the status quo?
This is perhaps the single biggest disconnect I see between Democrats and Republicans right now. To Democrats, Trump is "the man who attempted a self-coup", and everything he does is viewed in that light. Whereas Republicans seem to think that it just wasn't a big deal that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.
There were all sorts of bad intentions on the part of the rioters/coupers/whatever on January 6th, but AFAIK there is very little evidence to indicate these people were directed by Trump in any meaningful way.
Do you recognize that Trump tried to overturn American democracy? If not: which part of the above paragraph do you disagree with?
In your comment, you seem to be referring to the fact that Trump didn't specifically call for violence on Jan 6. Depending on how exactly you define "coup", you could argue that Trump didn't personally attempt a coup, but rather Trump's supporters attempted a coup on his behalf while he cheered them on (and subsequently pardoned them). I think this is an irrelevant technicality; if Trump's supporters' attempted coup had succeeded, then American democracy would be just as dead as if Trump personally committed the coup.
Returning to the original topic: If you consider Trump's entire conduct around the 2020 election (as well as his extensive history of other dishonesty and lawbreaking) do you genuinely believe that the Democrats still owe Trump a presumption of good faith?
Elon Musk is the quintessential Silicon Valley poster child, who believes his limited domain knowledge is enough to fix all of the world’s issues. No surprise that people that think alike and populate this corner of the internet, wouldn’t see no problem there.
What he’s doing is technically and formally a coup. See how Mussolini took power in Italy. If you can’t see that, you’re definitively part of the problem.
Just came out swinging. Your post is full of tons of assumptions, all meant to insinuate I am a crazy right-winger. Thanks for proving my point.
You're being watched. So far you've shown that you are quite extreme and its not the good kind of extreme.
You're happy to believe whatever you want to believe, the free society I've contributed to that allows for you to do so benefits you greatly.
You're absolutely not entitled for me or anyone else to believe a single thing you say especially since you refuse any malleability on others.
What a coincidence! I think exactly the same about you!
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Since this topic is as divisive as it gets, so your comments on it should be at maximum thoughtfulness and substantiveness right now.
Edit: we've unfortunately had to warn you about this many times - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40779071. If you want to keep posting here, please fix this.
Also, please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN.
But I wasn't aware that ideological battle is off-limits. It seems like every thread is full of it, so it's hard to walk away with that impression.
The reason for a separate account is because proposing ideas that don't fit the HN mainstream can result in people trying to track you down and "punish" you for having opposing views. Unfortunate, but that's where the world is.
That's far from the case, and keeping things that way is critical to HN's future. Even now, when we're at a high-water mark because of the political externalities, it's far from the case.
It may be the case that people inclined to do ideological battle on the internet are more likely to overestimate its presence, simply because that's where their attention goes.
In short: Framing this as "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" is assuming good faith, but given Trump's history, he doesn't deserve a presumption of good faith.
(Secondary to that: There's a difference between "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse" versus "shutting down entire functions of government without a replacement". Look at Musk trying to shut down USAID, for example. If Musk wanted to "cut waste, fraud, and abuse", that would mean "reforming USAID to achieve the same outcomes while spending less money". Instead, Musk is proposing to eliminate USAID entirely. Even if not for the self-coup angle, that's clearly not just "cutting waste, fraud, and abuse". Foreign aid is established by Congress, and only Congress has the constitutional authority to eliminate that aid.)