You’re not wrong, but there is also wisdom in age. I’m 37 now, and got in plenty of similar trouble when I was 16-22, simply because my brain literally was not fully developed yet. My impulse control was worse, my consideration of consequences was much less existent, and so on.

I think the reaction is more about wanting some older adults in the room as well, not about having no younger adults in the room.

Younger people always want to knock down Chesterton’s fences whenever they see them; I know, because I was recently young.

But asking the elders why those fences exist is always a good idea; then, knock them down if the issue is resolved. Humility and curiosity are required for that.

I do find that knocking them down to find out why they were necessary is often a lot more efficient. Even at 37 that hasn’t really changed. But that’s a lot easier to justify when the impact of that decision is a bunch of process interruption at worst.

And being that efficient is fine, if you're a startup or a technology company. If you're the government, sometimes people die waiting on their treatment to be funded because of your efficient bulldozing.

You were not a 19 year old with access to the personal financial data of hundreds of millions of civilians.

Financial data that seems to be subject to those running massive fraud or allowing it through negligence, but somehow attempting to tackle that is more dangerous than a 19 year old holding an incredibly efficient weapon.

The foxes were already in the hen-house before DOGE turned up, either, as many seem to think here, there are now competing foxes in there, or a clean up is happening. I've yet to see any evidence of actual damage done by DOGE, so why is everyone ignoring the evidence of actual damage that they've found? Can we work that one out?

> actual damage done by DOGE

I’m guessing they don’t post that on Xitter, do they? Do they even post what exactly they did there?

The problem is that same admin who ran up second largest national debt increase is now doing some inconsequential fraud hunting before running up likely the largest debt ever.

> I’m guessing they don’t post that on Xitter, do they? Do they even post what exactly they did there?

I don't know about exactly but I found this tweet[0] informative, this is just a part:

> To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

> - Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.

> - All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!

That does sound like sound financial management, and pretty basic, which does make me question the whole system.

> The problem is that same admin who ran up second largest national debt increase is now doing some inconsequential fraud hunting before running up likely the largest debt ever.

That is almost fair criticism, let down by the doom-mongering, and ignoring that a) they're actively cutting things, and b) no pandemic (yet).

[0] https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888314848477376744

Ok, that’s what I saw elsewhere. The conflicting part is where some individual agencies pass their audits (https://oig.usaid.gov/node/7291) and yet this claim of lacking audit basics. What gives? Is this highlighting bits where say DoD is a known black hole and then crafting a narrative?

As for “doom-mongering”, you don’t have to take my word, just listen to what republicans are saying: $3T in tax breaks extension, possibly offset by $1T in cuts. Not even accounting idea of cutting income taxes. You do the math.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/house-gop-rushing-...

you're probably being dowvoted because there are thousand of regulations and a multi year program exclusively made to educate young soldiers, besides giving them guns.

your argument starts well, but then compares the top well behaved military machine with a war lord arming children and throwing them on the front.

I would trust 19 years old soldier with an assault weapon more then trusting him with what DOGE is supposed to do. Soldiers passed training literally designed to make them obey orders and not randomly shoot that gun. And there is whole hierarchy designed to keep their use of assault guns in check.

I would not trust a random 19 years old with assault gun, I would not trust that guy if we were alone in the room where his superiors do not see. But, I would be afraid of him raping me more then him using that gun without order.

> I was a 19-year-old holding an assault weapon in my daily work in the military with the power to terminate the lives of almost 99.99% civilians, friends with 23 starting piloting USD 5 million machines, and it's just sad to see that we as a society do not see young adults as capable as their older counterparts.

Who would you trust more, a teenager with active military training and awareness on how to handle a gun or a teenager picking up a gun off the floor for the first time?

If these teens all had followed proper protocol, went through a full security clearance process and training on how to handle sensitive data there would be no issue. They did not. And they are definitely not old enough to have had experience dealing with highly sensitive systems. So you've got people that are not qualified to handle data, working on systems they are not experienced enough to work in, kicking over load-bearing pillars that they can't see.

Yeah, there is a trend towards an absurd infantilization that would call 26 year olds children. It seems to me to have grown first out of a desire to acquit themselves of responsibilities combined with the junk pop-science about brain age fully forming and a desire to acquit themselves of poor decision making and their own bad outcomes, and then later used as they grew older use to dismiss others.