[aga98mtl]

> He seems to realize he is an Elon bro but still thinks DOGE is an important national priority and not a problematic oligarchic downsizing of our important federal services and regulatory bodies.

I'm confused by this belief. Anyone who has ever interacted with a big government in the West knows they are a knot of old and confusing regulations that cause every thing to be slow and expensive. A leftist should be happy that the state gets to accomplish more with it's existing budget.

[tedivm]

The problem is that no one believes Elon and company are actually trying to "accomplish more with it's existing budget". That would be a great goal, but I don't believe that's what they're doing or even capable of doing.

Remember, Elon downsized Twitter by 80%, and then Twitter lost 80% of it's value. Simply firing a bunch of people doesn't accomplish more, it can actually destroy the value of the thing to begin with.

We've all seen this with republicans before. They take over, make things worse, and then use the fact that things are worse as an excuse for why the government shouldn't do the things it does. Elon isn't an expert in efficiency, he's an arsonist coming in to destroy the government so he and his buddies can extract more value out of this country.

[boringg]

Disagree with your take.

Many people believe Elon in that he's trying to right the ship. Elon has been very clear on his ambitions and he isn't what you are trying to paint him as (a political republican). And the counter point is that Elon and large portion SV have remained in the center while the Dems marched steadily left leaving everyone in the center without a party.

Twitter was broken and full of bloat as is clearly obvious given that it is performing in many ways better than before engineering wise. It has become much more of a wild west given his free speech absolutism perspective but you can't possibly argue that what he didn't proved all the critics wrong - lights stayed on, kept shipping products. It certainly hasn't lost 80% value from his actions - he bought it at the height of ZIRP mania.

Now whether Elon has a enough inertia to actually be able to tackle some of the truly endemic issues of the Federal government is another question. Some of his new found friends will certainly poison the water but my take is he is authentic in his attempt to reduce deficit and lower the debt for the US while increasing growth.

[sarchertech]

>he is authentic in his attempt to reduce deficit and lower the debt for the US while increasing growth.

The only way he is being authentic is if he is an idiot.

If he knew what he was talking about and was being authentic, he wouldn’t be publicly stating that he is going to cut $2 trillion from the budget.

Payroll for the entire Federal civilian workforce is only $300 billion.

I guess he could just be suffering from delusions of grandeur and he think he’s going to be able to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, or the Military.

[tedivm]

He's planning on going after Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That's the only way to cut that much from the budget. Republicans have been transparent about their desire to remove the social safety nets for awhile now.

[boringg]

I think both parties know entitlements need to be changed. No current way to manage.

[sarchertech]

So then he’s delusional because he thinks he can come up with someway to cut $2 trillion from those programs that anyone will vote for.

[aga98mtl]

Yes, the republicans will cut spending. Next election cycle the Democrats will be able raise spending, but now from a more sound basis. The deadwood will be pruned. DOGE is good for both the left and the right.

Also do note that the current Twitter valuation is higher than we he bought it. Cutting 80% of the staff at twitter was the right move. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/elon-musks-startup-xai-now-120118...

[tedivm]

xAI and X are two separate companies. xAI is raising funds with a target valuation of $40b, but that has nothing to do with X. The article you linked to makes this pretty clear and validates what I said about the 80% lost.

> The new valuation means xAI has surpassed the $44 billion Musk paid for Twitter in October 2022. X was valued at $9.4 billion by Fidelity, one of its investors, in September. The firm, which invested $19.6 million in the platform, has written down the value of its investment by nearly 79% since 2022.

Cutting 80% of the staff happened during the same time period when Fidelity dropped the evaluation by 79%. Cutting the staff doesn't seem like a good move at all.

[sarchertech]

The problem isn’t that someone is trying to improve government efficiency.

The problem is that we picked a billionaire professional internet troll to do it whose stated goal is cutting 2 trillion from the budget.

And ignoring the fact that Elon is already running 3 companies, you couldn’t possibly find someone with more conflicts of interest than the richest man in the world.

Here’s a quote from Reason (hardly a left wing publication) that sums up how absurd their goal is.

“Musk and Ramaswamy's public pronouncements thus far do not inspire confidence. Musk's promise to save "at least $2 trillion" annually—approximately one-third of all (noninterest) federal spending—suggests a lack of familiarity with the federal budget. Roughly 75 percent of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans, and interest, and the final quarter includes priorities such as infrastructure, justice, border security, health research, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid, and disability benefits.”

Large organizations are inherently inefficient because id the non linear growth in communications overhead. If you don’t understand an organization, coming in and hacking away at it is insanely dangerous. How many companies have been ruined when hedge fund buys then and starts trying to “maximize efficiency”?

[aga98mtl]

Yes cutting $2T is not realistic. If they manage to do a few percent of the goal it is still going to be good for everyone.

Bloat is a major issue that prevent anglosphere societies from achieving goals that poorer societies do easily. Ex: Spain or France do awesome public transit for 3 or 5 times less than we do.

[sarchertech]

You don’t accomplish things by setting wildly unrealistic goals that you know are unobtainable.

And he’s not going to completely reorganize society so that we can build cheap public transit. Especially not by running a “government agency” that can’t do anything other than make recommendations to the president.

Do you know how many similar commissions we’ve had to reduce waste and spending?