it won't all be fair or kosher for sure and some of the layoffs were already stated as mistakes publicly and jobs offered back to some(though not very many surprisingly). with that being said, i hope even you see a surprising amount of what has been uncovered is clearly bad?
The only example I've seen that is potentially is a good move is removing the penny from circulation, but of course that has its own pros and cons.
Tesla is going bankrupt
SpaceX is just polluting the outer space
What am I missing, expert?
PS. Your green username gives you away
This is a genuine question; he’s the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Boring Company, the CTO of Twitter, and the owner of several more companies.
If he’s running five or more companies, and trying to run a government department, how involved can he actually be with running any individual one? They can’t all be full time jobs.
But with the recent case where he bragged about being in the top 20 Diablo players in the world, only to find out that he paid people to level his character up for him, makes me think that maybe he doesn't actually do anything. I mean, he's bragging and lying about something that does not matter.
No one really cares if the CEO of your spaceship or car company or brain-implant company is good at video games. If it turned out that everyone saw he was bad at Diablo, approximately nothing changes (and potentially people like him even more if he's a good sport about it and laughs it off!), and yet he felt it was important to construct a lie around this so he could brag.
If he's going to brag about a completely insignificant false accomplishment, why should I assume that he's going to tell the truth for stuff that people would actually care about? At this point, I'm erring on the side of "Musk doesn't do anything outside of providing initial funding".
Maybe I'm wrong, that's certainly possible, but he really killed a lot of his credibility.
now with that all being said, when i see contracts like this:
"Telephone Based Mindfulness Training to reduce blood pressure in black-women" $2million(https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_47PH0825C0001_474...)
"South Sudan Gender Aware Sustainanable Water and Sanitation": $40Million (https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_72066821C00009_72...)
State Department Spending on Social Media Influencers:$4M (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-REP...)
Just some random example of currently killed or going to be killed contracts....I feel like all I had to do is have friends in government to basically just suck money off of the people while adding nothing back to society as a result of it. There are hundreds to many thousands of discovered "projects" and funds with these type of numbers. This is a plague in my viewpoint and does nothing to benefit society and move the needle, which engineers so pride themselves in doing...
> "Telephone Based Mindfulness Training to reduce blood pressure in black-women" $2million(https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_47PH0825C0001_474...)
The link you provided indicates funds were for repair to some bridge at port of entry in TX - "YSLETA, LAND PORT OF ENTRY PAVEMENT REPLACEMENT REPAIRS PROJECT, EL PASO, TX AWARD WAS MADE WITH LOW EMBODIED CARBON FUNDING"
> "South Sudan Gender Aware Sustainanable Water and Sanitation": $40Million (https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_72066821C00009_72...)
"tech bro American" doesn't want clean water for people in Sudan and promotion of basic hygiene practices.
https://dt-global.com/projects/afia-wash/
> State Department Spending on Social Media Influencers:$4M (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-REP...)
There's so much wrong with this source material. It is so biased.
All of these "killed" contracts you deem as wasteful yet turn a blind eye to the _billions_ that public companies pour into stock buybacks. Minimal investment back into the company. This only helps _rich_ cunts and foreign investors.
They could be a sign of a lack of better projects for the company to invest in.
There's likely something to be said about tying stock buy backs to more stock options for employees, but it'd have to be voluntary rather than regulated.
There's definitely something to be said about CEO compensation relative to worker wages. But that's a civil society discussion, not a government regulation one.
And finally capital gains taxes being lower than income taxes is morally reprehensible, but this one will take quite a bit of work to undo without destroying the US economy due to capital flight out of the country once the law changes
These tech-bro-americans with very little experience with science, biotech, helping other people, international relations, understanding of how institutional knowledge works, or grant funding cycles and NIH works, are dismantling key infrastructure. It's worse than dumb it's much more terrifying.
Water and sanitation are a HUGE issue in developing countries. It's a main disease vector. It's also very common in many places that women have to practically sneak out of the village at night to go to the bathroom (some field) and get raped. Given anything I've heard about South Sudan I'd need surprised if these issues didn't exist there.
Third one is a positive surprise. Propaganda is clearly of increased importance in this century and we must fight the fight.
Without looking into it you can't just assume that mindfulness training doesn't have a proven clinical effect on blood pressure, and if it does then it's a good use of money. Preventative healthcare is still healthcare
Your link to the blood pressure reduction project is linking to something totally else, but in general such approaches seem to have some scientific backing. Improving public health seems like benefiting the society.
I wonder how many engineers really benefit society with their work, and how many even actively harm it.
https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...
0. https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
Do you actually know that those are pointless contracts or are you just making assumptions based on the titles?
Should they:
1) Hire professional auditors and business consultants to perform the undoubtedly massive review;
2) Ask the CEO of one of their suppliers to do the review as a fun side gig, let the CEO bring in a tiny team of teenage whiz kids, and give them full god mode access to the company’s books and databases and HR systems to they can fire anyone at will and ask questions later?
The approach chosen by America’s chief executive is bafflingly #2.
It’s worth noting that Trump has no experience managing a large corporation. All his businesses are partnerships with very few employees. He has no competence for this kind of thing, so he’s delegating everything to Musk who is the proverbial fox in the hen house, shutting down regulators who affect his own businesses.
And the little experience he has is of repeated bankruptcies and dodgy dealings, saved only by his political adventures (which now bankroll his Mar A Lago resort with public money).
They could apply some efficiency but it would be terrible in term of cost savings. There doesn't seem to be a registration costs (at least not that I can find). DNS service companies might take a $0-50 fee per year per domain? It is a very small number in a very large budget for a government entity.