cowfriend
Along with what others have said, you might want to recognize that Congress controls the purse. They dictate how much the executive should spend on each item, though that can be nuanced (as in "up to this much" vs "exactly this much")
So the upper management is composed of political appointments. And like any other organization, the upper management has considerable discretion in setting priorities.
re: "politically selective law enforcement" is not a good thing, because laws are one of the things that are supposed to constrain politicians.
In theory it does, that is the whole idea and genius of the constitution.
In fact at the moment it does not, because Trump has so captured the Republican party that the legislature has almost no power to stand up to him. The Supreme Court has a long history of judges aligning with the political party that seated them, and Trump put 3 of them into their seat.
this alarming trend seems to coincide with DOGE’s unrestricted access to federal networks.
the first 2 paragraphs: Beginning on January 8, 2025, a surge of U.S. government infrastructure began appearing on what’s known as “the search engine of Internet-connected devices,” Shodan.io.
Federal agencies typically secure their systems behind multiple layers of protection, ensuring that critical services – such as mail servers, directory services, VPNs, internal IP addresses, and remote access gateways – remain isolated from public access.
Now is this conclusive proof that DOGE did it? Hardly. However, can you think of anything else that changed since 8 Jan that would override decades of policy in the matter of hours?
These posts have a high political index, which given America's current culture wars tends to bring out the kind of behavior which none of us want on HN.
It's a damn tough balancing act.
Also, look at my post history, I'm pretty strongly anti-DOGE. I'm defending Dang because I love HN and appreciate what he is doing under extremely tough conditions.
Every time the administration changes, the heads of all the departments change, and the incoming people are typically pretty ignorant of what the department does. How would a corporation work if every 4 years you rotated the C-suite and 2 levels down, with people from a completely different business sector?
Meanwhile, funding is shifted even more often. Or is just outright cut once every few years.
Meanwhile, every action they take is an official government action. Which means it is LEGALLY REQUIRED to happen in certain ways based on laws written by people who don't think about consequences or how they are enacted.
And it is 2.2 Million people. There are economies of scale here.
So I wonder how this compares to current Google, current Facebook. I've heard people here talking about how messed up those companies are, projects started/stopped at whim, massive investments that get abandoned 2 years later, etc.
Or to banks. Banks don't modernize their software because they can't, not because they don't want to. No wonder the US government has similar issues.
Because that would NEVER happen in the US, certainly no government agency would fire its own people for having following legally enacted government policy just because that policy was no longer in fashion (though still legal government policy, because Congress hadn't yet changed the law).
However, your views read like propaganda.
The "internal resistance" you refer to is simply people trying to follow the law, while being constantly whipsawed by changing political winds. We see similar stories here on HN about work in large corporations. What do you think it is like in an org with 2.2 MILLION employees, where their actions have the power of government behind them often including access to extremely sensitive information?
HN talked about leaking any Youtuber's contact information for 10K, with suggestions that Google should better protect people's data.
HN frequently talks about the dangers of non-accountability for police. Would you like that same non-accountabilty spread to all aspects of the Federal government? (if so, merry christmas because now you have it)
If you cannot find any steel-man arguments against DOGE, may I suggest that you read the remainder of this HN article?
https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6814
Going after the Treasury, given that X is moving into finance?
https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/elon-musk-doge-cfpb-x-payment...
re: mandate to audit government. If this was a serious audit, then DOGE would have put serious data privacy controls in place.
An audit without proper data protection IS a cyberattack; an exfiltration of protected data.
Tesla's valuation is 10x the rest of the Magnificent 7, obviously investors think his ties to government are worth something.
(edit- valuation means i.e. P/E ratio; I saw the chart about 2 weeks ago so forget the exact valuation metric)
Maybe because in many ways it can be?
Unexpected medical condition -> crushing debt
Police stop goes bad
Job loss for reasons outside of your control
Wildfires burn your house down, or some other natural disaster
There, fixed it for you
and found: The reason the U.S.’s strong performance on cancer comes as a shock is because access to care in the country is notoriously unequal. But, it turns out, that's far less true of the elderly.
Age 65 is when virtually everyone in the U.S. qualifies for Medicare — America’s national, taxpayer-subsidized, government-run (dare we say socialized), comprehensive health insurance program.
in other words, the data you are arguing with shows that EU style socialized medicine produced better outcomes.
re: cancer survival. Are you referring to this work from 2020, showing that the US has more cancer than the EU, even though odds of survival are better?
The US Has Higher Incidence, Survival of Rare Cancers Compared With Europe (2020) https://www.ajmc.com/view/the-us-has-higher-incidence-surviv...
and shows that Age-adjusted incidence for all rare cancers combined was 17 percentage points higher in the United States than in Europe. The 5-year net survival for all rare cancers was significantly higher in the United States compared with Europe (54% vs 48%).
so 17% more likely to have it and a 6% increase in survival.
Can we talk about cherry picking?
There, fixed it for you.
You are forgetting about the influence of government subsidies. What would the housing market be like if home mortgage interest payments were not, and had never been deductible? Think back to the 70s, when mortgages had double-digit rates.
Would the US be swamped in HFCS, would we be producing ethanol, were it not for subsidies?
I agree with you on the importance of education. However, incentives matter, and government can incentivize both to the positive and negative.
The three-fifths compromise was to reduce the power of the Southern states in the House of Representatives. The southern states wanted slaves counted in their population, thus increasing the southern's states power in that house, even though the slaves themselves would not have any voice in who was elected. The southern states would have (and did) use this power to continue slavery.
Re: the founding fathers and slave ownership. Thomas Jefferson treated his slaves as free people. Why didn't he actually emancipate them? Well, let's say he did, would anyone else recognize them as emancipated, respect their rights to own property, to work, to be free?
Be careful how you apply the context of this era when judging past eras.
And wonder how future generations will view us, who destroyed and slaughtered the earth for what?
Bright lights on the street create more shadows. All you have to do is step out of the streetlight and no-one will see you, because the light-level contrast between the lit street and the surrounding space.
If there aren't any streetlights, so the surrounding space has the same illumination as the roadway, then that space is more present in more passerby's visual awareness.
So your proposed solution, "Streelights on every street" actually increases the risk you are so concerned about.
Yes, generally the purpose of the light is so others can see you.
My god, we spend all of our lives blasting lights into our eyes (some people call these lights "screens"), we've forgotten how to live without it!
You state this like it is a bad idea.
If you have a cell phone, you have a torch.
If you are walking in a place where there are cars, having a light on you is a great way to reduce your risk of being hit. So yes, you should absolutely be carrying a torch if you are walking near streets after dark. Nordic countries teach this in kindergarden.
When I'm crossing a street after dark, I always flash my torch at potentially oncoming cars. Even if I'm at a lit crosswalk.
If you are walking in a place without cars, then the place probably doesn't have the infra to provide street lighting. You may want a torch, depends on the phase of the moon and your comfort level with dim lighting.
The night is not 'complete darkness', we can generally see fairly well.
Also, I suspect your presumption on assault risk and assault rates comes from media, which is designed around building fear. Fear sells.
So I agree that you find the natural world terrifying, I just wish you didn't. Because the natural world is what we are fit for.
in other words, all the ways we have to manage emotions, and all of our "non-emotional" functioning.
So we have somehow evolved to be able to better manage emotions.
Ok, so if we grant all of that, then haven't we just said that emotions are common to animals? So then how is it anthropomorphising to say that animals have the traits which we've just said define animals, whereas what makes humans special is that we have 'risen above' mere emotion?
So instead of letting the mother cow nurse her calf for the first few months and then start taking her milk for our use, the more "modern" practice is to separate the calf immediately.
Which means if you are drinking milk, you are drinking it from seriously depressed cows.
I wonder how this contributes to our culture's growing mood of depression?
see i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-ask...
or just google dairy cows separate from calves