Success usually has a positive connotation, and they don't seem to be doing a particularly good job if you take the "reduce the size of the government" goal at face value (they are making messes everywhere they go, with the government shrinking slower than normal attrition...).
They also don't seem to understand that a lot of work isn't profit-oriented (which is the only thing the Trump administration believes in). Some programs exist because they were a benefit at the time (and yes, those need review) and may still be of use, but they always were intended to be a service for everyone, even if some people didn't use. them.
No one seems to understand the concept of government service. It's government business or nothing.
I've been told that billionaires think differently than the rest of us, but I still can't fathom why someone would want to be the king of a shit hole when they could be richer as a regular citizen of a liberal democracy. Why do they hate our success?
I used to make similar arguments like was at the top of your comment until I actually read some literature around it.
Of course, I always assumed it would be cheaper to buy a regime change in some small nation of limited economic import than to wrangle a nuclear superpower, so what do I know.
If I woke up with Elon Musk's pocketbook, given I spent way too much of my childhood playing SimCity and Civilization, I'd want to experiment with some ideas on statecraft myself. Mine run to more "WWII-style ration books as a UBI distribution medium", "we're banning cars and building so much rail that people will regularly have their arms amputated by sticking them out their apartment window and hitting a passing train" and "ripping the Berne Convention to shreds and wiping with it on livestream", but clearly YMMV.
Consider a scenario - the US falls into some weird anarcho-libertarian dystopia. This works fine for a while, but no one is making new computers or new cars or new anything and the only way to get these things is to open negotiations with outside groups. But what do you offer them? The currency is worthless because it used to be backed by a central government but it isn't now. If you don't have something that is valued by the outside group, you have nothing to bargain with. And if you don't have superior force of arms, they don't have to accept it anyway. And even if you do, you absolutely cannot trust them.
Modern government is built on trust. It has value because, even if it is somewhat corrupt, or even totally corrupt, it keeps society functioning in a way that provides value to everyone, even if it is unevenly distributed. By reducing that uneven distribution, we increase the overall value to everyone both inside and outside the system. It's literally the definition of win-win.
If the government system has some value, then its currency has value, regardless. The US dollar is valued because it is backed by the word of the US government. Other countries have lesser value because, while their word might be good, they aren't as trusted or don't have the might that the US government has at its command.
Trump and Musk and the people they're working with don't get that. They only see win-lose. They don't understand that their value is in trust and that they are rapidly pissing away that trust.
We are unimaginably fucked.
Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, and badly at that, and I apologize for that. I'm sitting down here, so far from being able to do anything effective, and it's so unbelievably frustrating.
The domestic slash-and-burn, the foreign policy tarriff chicken, even the minerals deal with Ukraine-- they all take the form of "you can book some great numbers for the next quarter. All it costs you is pesky stuff like 'long-term viability' and 'leadership positions', and those are only a problem for Future You, and who cares about him anyway?
We've basically become Hewlett-Packard as a country.
Sure you can acquire a private fleet of jets and cars now. But given that you rarely if-ever drive them it's no different than a fleet of rare animals.
Sure you can play video games and watch sports on TV but is that really much better than watching sports from a private suite?
I will conceded that their life expectancy has basically doubled but I don't think there's anything you can do as a king to fix that. If you don't hoard all the wealth it's not like life expectancy immediately doubles. A rising tide raises all ships but the tide takes centuries to do that lifting.
And no one has to worry that some other billionaire is going to send an army to conquer his or her estate and holdings by force of arms, slaughtering all the employees and destroying the inventory.
They don't have to pack the basements with food for the winter. Their fleets of cars and other ridiculous collections can be safely stored away from the environment and peasants (meaning anyone poor, like millionaires).
Governments make rules to favor them and do the job of selling it to the masses. They don't have to do their own PR. In fact, the media will do the PR for them and it won't cost them anything, for the most part.
They can bury their pecadillos on private islands, secure in the knowledge that, even if word gets out, word won't get out, for reasons. And besides, no one will really care, because governments and media will magically turn it from horrible scandal to mild eccentricity.
And if they don't like the government, well, now, they can just buy one.
No idea what happens if they try to return it, though.
They needed to maintain the claim that democracy should be destroyed, in order to prop up their ideologies, without actually going ahead and destroying it. Oops.
I am not an ancap because there are some major problems with their philosophy, but your analysis is just incorrect.
They know thy have the opportunity to buy up the assets and to cash in on the chaos.
Dismantling government. Look up the "network state":
* https://thenetworkstate.com/preamble
> All of these men see themselves as the heroes or protagonists in their own sci-fi saga. And a key part of being a “technological superman” — or ubermensch, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would say — is that you’re above the law. Common-sense morality doesn’t apply to you because you’re a superior being on a superior mission. Thiel, it should be noted, is a big Nietzsche fan, though his is an extremely selective reading of the philosopher’s work.
> The ubermensch ideology helps explain the broligarchs’ disturbing gender politics. “The ‘bro’ part of broligarch is not incidental to this — it’s built on this idea that not only are these guys superior, they are superior because they’re guys,” Harrington said.
[…]
> The so-called network state is “a fancy name for tech authoritarianism,” journalist Gil Duran, who has spent the past year reporting on these building projects, told me. “The idea is to build power over the long term by controlling money, politics, technology, and land.”
* https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/395646/trump-inauguration...
Also:
* "Why big tech turned right": https://www.vox.com/politics/397525/trump-big-tech-musk-bezo...
* "The crypto bros who dream of crowdfunding a new country": https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyl171lyewo
Have you ever read cyberpunk, especially William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (starting with Neuromancer) where corporations are the government? Basically that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no
Indeed I believe that the current administration's end-goal is the collapse of the US as we know it. Thiel and other billionaires need the collapse to create their own cyberpunk states inside current US territory. The remaining territory will be probably taken by Project 2025 guys, who want to rule it as a Christian theocracy / far-right utopia.
Assuming that's the explanation, then radical change isn't surprising. How radical can be argued, but turning the rudder on the ship of state can't be.
I admit that I'm an outsider, but in terms of social welfare and equality, the US still seems closer to capitalist dystopia than a far-left utopia. Expensive healthcare mostly tied to work / insurance, very expensive education, high wealth inequality and pretty poor social safety nets.
At the same time, on many "culture war" issues America has seemed too extreme for my taste. For instance, discriminating people based on their "race" in university admissions is absolutely insane. But the solution to fixing these crazy ideas shouldn't be going all the way to far-right, with its own crazies like anti-vaxxers, Putin fanboys and climate-change deniers. I miss the times when most popular politicians were centrists.
What the fuck are you talking about? We don’t even have socialized medicine in this country.
And in a lot of the countries in Europe where things are further along the 'speedrunning' spectrum things don't seem too bad.
Heck, Sweden has more billionaires per capita and a wider social safety net:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
I am sure the Head of the health department — one that doesn’t consider measles a problem — has given his stamp of approval for that, after all, he has a whole 0 years in all tangentially related fields combined!
“Cancel” suggest more decision-making than appears to have happened, at least in the research projects I am aware of—a number had to be canceled by those running them because the unprecedented blanket payment pause notionally to evaluate programs existing programs made it impossible for them to continue operating.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/doge-cuts-911-related-c...
Being a distraction from the fact that Trump is raising taxes on average Americans (tariffs) while trying to blow out the deficit to the tune of $2 trillion to finance tax cuts to the rich.
The only news I’ve heard is that they fired 12 of 85 staffers and prohibited hiring seasonal workers, which was then rescinded a few days later.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/federal-firings-coul...
Not to attack you personally, but I’ve noticed there is a lot of hyperbole here based on dramatic headlines, extrapolation based on feeling rather than facts, so important but difficult to stay informed.
The comment you're responding to says "...while letting the condition of the lakes further erode", which the article you linked to supports.
> ...extrapolation based on feeling rather than facts...
12 of 85 is a fact. It's basic logic to estimate the effect of this.
The administrator in the best position to understand the impact of this has provided an analysis: "Cutting back the control program by one-sixth would allow over one million lamprey to survive, McClinchey estimated. Those lampreys would eat nearly 5 million pounds of fish, equalling $105 million in lost economic output and potential, far outstripping the cost of the workers’ salaries."
What's your basis for dismissing this as feelings? It appears irrational.
E.g. if your coworker comes into work and says "Wow, you guys wouldn't believe it - I was passed by this maniac doing at least 140 mph on the way in to work today. What a crazy speeder!" then you see on the news the police arrested the driver for driving up to 95 mph. You might say "140 mph sounds like hyperbole, it looks like it was significantly less". If they respond "what's the hyperbole, you don't think he was speeding? You're irrational!" you might be a bit confused as, leaving the unnecessary bit at the end aside, the hyperbole was the clear and excessive exaggeration of the rate of speed, not an implication the individual was driving safely this morning.
In the above the hyperbole was "they canceled invasive species control programs for the Great Lakes". Well no, they are risking it being ineffective and causing great harm due to a personnel cut somewhere on the order of 15%-20%. The exaggeration here is the amount it was cut. At no point was it claimed the exaggeration was there could be some level of a negative impact as a result.
To me it doesn't seem worthwhile to respond from the perspective of misinterpreting a comment, especially when being pedantic. One would hope the same level of precision could be applied to the writing as to the reading?
> Cutting back the control program by one-sixth would allow over one million lamprey to survive, McClinchey estimated. Those lampreys would eat nearly 5 million pounds of fish, equalling $105 million in lost economic output and potential, far outstripping the cost of the workers’ salaries.
For example, they canceled invasive species control programs for the Great Lakes. Is it a success that they saved a modest amount of money, while letting the condition of the lakes further erode?