[zvr]

Bureaucracies are about processes.

I do not live in the US, and I don't follow all that's happening too closely, but from what I hear it seems that most of DOGE actions are about eliminating people and cutting budgets, which may be a valid way to save money. This has nothing to do with bureaucracy.

If, to complete a process, you needed approval by three people and you still need the same approvals, the bureaucracy is untouched -- it will just take longer without people and money.

[rowanG077]

Bureaucracies are about process. Process require people, a ton of people if you have a ton of processes. If you can slim the processes, a.k.a reduce bureaucracy, then a ton of people can be let go. Also if you let go a ton of people, processes are forced to become more efficient. This becomes problematic only once your processes are reasonably optimized. The later is what I view is essentially the vision of DOGE, they say processes are not efficient. Letting people go should not meaningfully decrease the efficacy of these institutions in the long term.

[consteval]

> Letting people go should not meaningfully decrease the efficacy of these institutions in the long term.

I disagree, of course it will meaningfully decrease the efficacy. The purpose of DOGE is to dismantle organizations which provide accountability for the private sector and the executive, including organizations which literally focus on optimizing processes.

Of course, the same amount of stuff needs to get done. The workload doesn’t actually decrease because these jobs are complex in nature. There’s a lot of citizens to provide services to, or a lot of organizations to regulate. Those factors stay constant. The hope is that they’re unable to do their jobs in time, and we get more “asbestos in baby powder” type incidents as a result. Or shitty water (literally) or listeria, or watergates, or pick whatever bad thing you want when regulation goes down.

I truly don’t understand how people make such bold statements as “letting people go changes nothing!” Really? What’s the mechanism for that? Process just… become more efficient? Do we even know how efficient the processes currently are? Because something tells me you have no idea. You’re assuming they’re inefficient because that’s easy to believe and requires no analysis.

[rowanG077]

> The purpose of DOGE is to dismantle organizations which provide accountability for the private sector and the executive, including organizations which literally focus on optimizing processes.

If you working from a bad faith PoV like this it really makes no sense to talk about it.

The mechanism is pretty obvious to me. The pareto principle is well studied.

Like a government agency has no self cleaning mechanism like a cooperation has. As far as I understand it. DOGE is trying to be that.

[consteval]

> Like a government agency has no self cleaning mechanism like a cooperation has.

What? No.

1. Unlike the private sector, the public sector is built on hard budgets, not speculation. They don’t balloon up like your typical money-burning tech company.

2. They can, and do, fire people for performance. No idea where the myth that they can’t do that came from.

3. They run probationary periods just like the private sector to make firing easier and, in fact, their probationary periods are much longer!

4. There are inspectors and agencies directly responsible for optimization.

[rowanG077]

1. That is simply a budget cap. There is still no pressure to optimize. It's like if I tell this function has to run in 10 seconds. You will make it run in 9.9 seconds and stop there. Maybe the function could run in 9.0 seconds, 5.3 seconds or even one second. Forcing continuous optimization is what is needed. Not a hard budget cap.

2. Firing individual people is obviously not what this is about. It's about department wide processes.

3. Oke, see my prior point.

4. Well yeah now there is, it's called the department of government efficiency.

[consteval]

1. Okay, and this is somehow better than, say, Uber, making approx -500 million a year every year for a decade and a half.

2. Firing people isn't what this is about? Or you blind or just dishonest? The only action DOGE has taken has been firing people. That's literally the only thing they've done! Not only is firing people "all this is about", it's all it could possibly be about!

4. No, there was MANY before. MANY of which were actually cut by the DOGE! And, somehow, DOGE has convinced bumbling idiots such as yourself that they're "saving" something. You aren't getting anything, and it should've been obvious a long time ago.

I don't even know why I'm arguing with you, it's obvious you're a cultist for Trump and Musk and will literally parrot anything they say, no matter what. You've said multiple things now that are just... blatantly untrue. Just, no evidence at all behind them. And this is all public information. You can see how the departments run, how the inspector generals work, how the Government Accountability Office works, etc. Why am I wasting my breath, or keystrokes, on someone who is either a diehard cultist or a literal computer program?

[sifar]

>> If you can slim the processes, a.k.a reduce bureaucracy, then a ton of people can be let go. Also if you let go a ton of people, processes are forced to become more efficient.

Or broken. The latter has a higher a probability.

This is pretty naive, one dimensional thinking. Making things efficient requires deep systems understanding and lack of which is on display here (Chesterton's fence). And one can achieve it reasonably for physical/technical things, however dismantling social processes that have evolved over the years for variety of reasons indicates neither the capability nor the desire to improve them.

[specialist]

What's DOGE's plan for process improvement? Is there a policy and legislative framework in the works?