Upgrades should be sustainable, incremental, gradual, and reviewed. Especially for governance systems. If there's no existential risk requiring moving fast, then it's a bad idea to move fast on these things. Governments are not companies.

Companies can be run in slow bureaucratic ways and governments can be run in fast startup ways, you just need the right people

Governments with almost a gigaton of nuclear weapons should not be run in "fast startup ways". Losing some VC money and reshaping the global economy or compromising nuclear safety are not the same stakes.

If the IRS has the nuclear safety codes then it’s better we find out than the Chinese.

DOGE fired a ton of Department of Energy employees who manage the nukes. This isn't just about the IRS or the Dept of Education.

Can is not should. Who are we trusting to move fast with our governance and why? Is this why?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/trum...

Unacceptable.

We are trusting Donald Trumps judgement to execute on the promises he made to get elected. Nothing is perfect, and I think this whole thing is probably happening too early.

He's already broken dozens of promises. Hell, he doesn't even have a plan to replace the ACA after having neutered it like 7 years ago even though he ran on "repeal and replace". To trust him is beyond folly.

> trusting Donald Trumps judgement

Ha! Well there's your first problem.

Why would I trust a serial liar with anything?

Also, just because he was duly elected it does not give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants, especially when he's running afoul of the law and firing all of the inspectors general and independent monitors.

"I'm the elected president so I get to decide the allocation of government money" is basically the legal theory that Trump is putting forward to be challenged.

A plain reading of the Constitution as well as the 1974 Impoundment Control Act should both be enough to debunk that legal theory, but alas here we are.

[1] https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/120-the-impoundment-crisis-of...

I mean, this is literally the definition of insanity: doing the same thing you imbeciles did 8 years ago and expecting different results.

Electing a felon that notoriously managed to bankrupt several casinos and pretty much every business they've ever run is definitely not electing a smart man or even a vaguely competent businessman.

This has always been about racism and wanting to punish "other" people because you failed at life and want a handout.

I wouldnt trust Trump as a dogcatcher. The man is a habitual liar and conman. He cant help himself. If you trust him I have a couple of bridges in queens on sale, cheap.

LOL

Maga: Move Fast Break Things

-In other news, the US has lost track of several Nuclear Weapons after cutbacks left building empty

Maga: YOLO. My Uncle Jed going to make the Oklahoma City Bomb look like nothing. Yeeee haaa. Wait and see science nerds. Taking back the country.

[Citation needed]

It has to be done quickly because the administrative state is large and there is a lot to do. Institutions grow old with time and need drastic reform or replacement. I don’t know what they will replace everything with, ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that. Look at how FDR used the Bureau of the Budget to similar effect.

> I don’t know what they will replace everything with, ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that

Kind of the key issue dontcha think? Maybe woulda been good to know that before burning down the government?

"ideally they have a bunch of smart people thinking about that" is exactly what the government is for. We had a bunch of smart people thinking about a lot of our problems. They're fired now.

The idea that government isn’t filled with tons of smart, hard working people is infuriating. Not every smart and ambitious person wants to spend their life in a rent-seeking job, building the next subscription-based app. There’s thousands upon thousands of dedicated government workers that could earn more in private industry, but view the work as a higher calling.

So true. It's a damn shame what DOGE is doing to the government I paid for.

Tearing it down and replacing it with something leaner, faster, better (fingers crossed) is just nonsensical libertarianism all over again.

Yes you just need to reorganize those smart people into a new system. I don’t agree with everything being done.

This is where the libertarian approach always falls apart. "ideally" this and "ideally" that. In the real world however libertarianism is a ridiculous fantasy which will harm everyone except the very rich.

Before the courts can catch up, they lose power in the Senate or those affected can organise. There's also something to be said for disorienting your opponents. Plus it gets things done faster without dragging it out. It's wins all round.

GP: They absolutely will make something good out of it, but for their benefit not the average American.

Not even.

At this point Musk is Wile E. Coyote. He's run out of road, so he's attempting to improvise an Acme Degovernmentizer to levitate.

He's not interested in "cutting waste" but in covering his ass so US Gov can't Enron his doughy face into prison, where it belongs.

But it's going to explode, like everything else he's ever been solely and personally in charge of.

Sure but I wouldn't even call it "something good" at all. The government is owned by the people and must work for the public good. One critical function of that is limiting exploitation of the people by business and preventing the hoarding of wealth and power by a few.

Continuing: the solution is "people power". Everyone should join a union, for starters.

The Curtis Yarvin utopian fantasy is no government coupled with mythical "network states". An uncontrolled experiment that's cynically really to defang the government to lower all barriers for the rich making more money.

It's their goal to destroy the federal government. They'll likely tank the tank the economy and sell federal land to themselves for cheap to set up their network states where they can be their own tech CEO kings.