Also just btw, the Pentagon are missing 7 trillion dollars and DOGE don't seem to care, just the stuff that affects normal people. Weird that. Almost like the entire process is idealogical rather than economical.
Also just btw, the Pentagon are missing 7 trillion dollars and DOGE don't seem to care, just the stuff that affects normal people. Weird that. Almost like the entire process is idealogical rather than economical.
I literally do not know what you are doing with this. I said DOGE have highlighted waste (again, if true), you mentioned departments, I gave you examples of the waste they'd highlighted and somehow I'm now having to respond to this mess.Originally Posted by phonics
One needs to find something else to for those people to do, that actually has a beneficial effect on the economy. Not easy I know, but there's a net benefit even if you can't as presumably the benefits they'd receive will be less than the salary they were being paid and they're not in post to continue spunking money up the wall.
It's so fucking moronic to live in the United Kingdom where cutting the knees out from any government agency has led to mass pollution, zero services, a generation of retarded zoomers and massive price increases and go 'you know what they need, the richest cokehead in the world to tell a 23 year old to do that'
Again, they've been at this for days. The press briefing suggested the Pentagon is on the list. If that doesn't happen then that'd be a valid complaint. If you're fine with a mine being used to store hand penned retirement applications for seventy years I'm not quite sure why you're not fine with DOGE not covering everything in a fortnight.
ITS THE LARGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD. THE LIMESTONE MOLE PEOPLE STILL BUY THINGS.
This is insane.
Of course, but how long would it remain the World's largest economy if everyone was shifting boxes around a limestone mine?
Your argument appears now to have morphed into it's fine that things are shit. Anything better than entertaining the idea that people you hate might be onto something, I guess.
Yevrah, in this perfect world, the limestone mine gets digitised. So we spent hundreds of millions on this, and then hundreds of millions on creating the IT system. Then we spend millions on hiring IT people to make sure the Limestone Mine IT system doesn't get hacked or deleted state by state.
Or a few hundred people earn a living being mole people for retirement plans. Which sounds more efficient.
No you refused to talk about anything that isn't the Limestone Mine that I think is an incredibly efficent way of doing things monetarilly.
Would you like a look at how Nuclear Weapons work on Floppy Disks?
We cut things that actually mattered. If you're suggested spending $1.5m dollars on promoting DEI in Serbian workplaces actually matters then I'm not sure what to say to that.
Again, assuming that's true and it wasn't just a front for another purpose, which I'm inclined to believe it was as surely nobody could be that fucking stupid to sign that off thinking it would actually change anything.
A lie, I gave you an actual list of things that DOGE have highlighted and I haven't refused to talk about anything.
If it's an incredibly efficient way of doing it monetarily, why aren't actual businesses, that are run for, you know, profit, doing the same?
That would be what anyone who isn't a dumbass call a bribe to keep certain people in Serbia onside. It's like you're actively ignoring that America has been running an Empire since we fell off.
You sent me a website that consisted of a grand total of 16 tweets, one of which was about renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
1) With that logic, why does/has any business bothered digitising anything?
2) 700 people at $50k a head (and I'd bet actual cash money it'll work out as much more than that) is $35m a year, forever.
Yes, I gave you examples of the things DOGE have highlighted. Are you saying the link did not contain examples of things DOGE have highlighted?
I wonder what I could have possibly meant by this...
Which immediately makes some sense. Shunting paper around a mine in 2025 when you're the World's biggest economy does not unless you're so utterly blinded by a hatred of Musk/Trump that you've lost all ability to be anything close to objective involving them.
You realise there are 50 states right? You'd then have to train and hire people per state. I presume there would have to be a head for each state for accountability, several travelling IT people to cover the state plus the risk of digital files being lost. Would that work out at less than that?
P.S. That's a grand total of 8 dollars per person to have a physical record of the entire countries retirees from 1970 to now.
You are the one blinded. You're suggesting spending billions to change something thats worked for 50 years.
Hand washing worked for centuries and still does, why don't we do that anymore?
Because the suggestion wasn't that we create one giant washing machine for 350 million people and if we shrink a few hundred thousand peoples clothes it's no big deal.
I didn't know there were 50 states, so thanks for that. Mental note made.
And yes, I'm not suggesting digitising things is free, more that there's a reason that all businesses operating on a large scale and almost all below have done so.
Which is a disingenuous way to look at it. Much like the approach insurance companies adopt when they try and sell you something you don't need. "it's only the price of a daily paper per day".
We don't do it because it's massively inefficient. Using another example, should we go back to paper bank statements?
Right, I need to hit the sack. Night dude.
But reflecting on this all, even though I think I'm right, this is such a perfect reflection on what I said at the beginning. I asked for specific departments to take issue with so I would refute and show how they help people and instead I've gone back and forth on a fucking record bank that costs 35 million a year like that changes a single persons life if it continues to exist.
Night Yev, can I settle for this takeaway. If the followup on this absolutely absurd goose chase was 'man, if we could take all this waste away and then infuse the programs we believe in by taxing the richest people in the world by 5%' I could pretend to be on board. It's just looking for ideological savings to further hollow the state to give elon and his mates a tax break.
You asked a question that didn't relate to my post. I wasn't questioning the efficacy of those departments as a whole as I'm in no position to (I simply don't know enough about them), just that (if true) some of the waste that's been highlighted is wild.
If that happens, even if some of the other waste is eradicated, then it'll be a genuine disgrace and should be called out as such, which it thankfully clearly will be due to the rightful scrutiny this is all under.
Right, definitely bed now.
You are literally Charlie Brown. Maybe this time youll get to kick the football.If that happens, even if some of the other waste is eradicated, then it'll be a genuine disgrace and should be called out as such, which it thankfully clearly will be due to the rightful scrutiny this is all under.
Right, definitely bed now.
We are so back
I think I could take Doge at face value if the people running it and the president himself wasn't completely driven by filling their pockets. These "savings" are relatively meaningless and driven by ideology not cost effectiveness.
You know when Elon kept pumping Doge up and everyone thought they were going to be rich off it? It's this again, all his supporters think he will implement these savings and it will benefit them somehow, they'll never see it and therefore it's almost redundant.
Also a very particular world view, the same type that thinks things like the postal service and public transport should be ran for profit and not as a service, it's not like they represent a wider benefit to the economy as a whole after all
Good morning gents.
As mentioned in the other thread, deadly Dom has an interesting take on DOGE, one can decide how much one agrees with it and as always he likes to link things back to himself, but I thought it was an interesting take beyond the boring dichotomy of MAGA / Bad Men Are Bad:
MAGA + Silicon Valley network + DOGE is an attempt at US regime change, a government that controls the government replacing the broken old system that’s driving up debt by $1 trillion every 100 days. The Overton Window is blown open. Ideas that were ‘extreme’ even six months ago are happening. The demonstration that ‘you can just do things very fast’ is inevitably causing pure panic in SW1 where a foundational principle for decades has been that the basic idea of war and business ‘does not, should not and must not apply to government’. Central to understanding modern SW1 is appreciating how both parties fought to maintain this principle as a cross-party foundation even during a once-a-century pandemic and the worst land war in Europe since Hitler. And they succeeded. In 2019 we campaigned against this principle. In 2020 we started dismantling it. Boris-Carrie surrendered and reinstated it. Every important system accelerated its decline 2021-4. Labour and Lib Dems attacked all attempts to move fast as proto-fascism. Across the West, the old parties converged on defending the old system’s 2020 collapse and did not seek political advantage by suggesting the government change the old system to stop killing people in droves and destroying vast value. The Valley-comes-to-DC story is therefore an existential menace to the old regime across the West as it explicitly challenges the protected status of the permanent administrative state to which politicians have handed power since 1945. Cf. This by Joe Lonsdale on DOGE, technical teams and ‘root access’ to understand some of why it’s hard for the regime media to cover this story. If you ask Cabinet Office officials ‘how many people work here’ they can’t answer. If you ask ‘how many people do you pay’ they can’t answer. Part of what the PM’s data science team we set up in 2020 was doing was what Lonsdale describes here for DOGE which is partly why McSweeney stopped the Cabinet Office closing it after he was tipped off by some good officials. And see this piece on Ron Conway, a Valley legend: ‘AM ON IT’ is the exact spiritual opposite of SW1 and will be a superpower in DC where DOGE deploys people to work all night in government buildings largely ‘WFH’. Hence the Democrats trying to use the courts to declare the combination of root access and AM ON IT unlawful: speed and technical competence are the enemy of the old regime and the courts their most reliable weapon. As in Britain, lawyers and judicial review are the core defence of the permanent regime against the voters’ demands for change.
All you really have to ask yourself is "have Musk or Trump ever done anything in their entire lives to benefit anyone that isn't themselves?"
The answer is no. Therefore you've got to be as gullible as a three year old to think they're starting now.
They've both given livelihoods to thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
Which is why Phonics linked you a list of things DOGE have or are cutting which absolutely "actually matter", but you've stubbornly refused to acknowledge them so you can talk in perpetuity about the one thing you think you've found that doesn't matter
Last edited by randomlegend; 14-02-2025 at 08:38 AM.
In the most exploitative way they could possibly get away with at every juncture in order to make themselves more (and more and more) money.
If they could make that money by using slaves they would have. I mean in Trump's case he has a long history of actually just not paying contractors he's employed so he essentially does treat them as slaves.
Last edited by randomlegend; 14-02-2025 at 08:43 AM.
Yeah, but they've still done it. You and I haven't.
I'd argue with Tesla and X they already had them and he came in above them, and in some cases led to them having to leave.
As for Trump last time round he was firing people as quick as he was hiring them and there was a lot of talk about how he is renowned for doing business deals with the little guy then litigating them to death without paying his end, not sure that counts? It works for him obviously but not so beneficial to others.
And?
I said they've never done anything in order to benefit other people. You've given me an example of something they did to benefit themselves.
All those people having (often well-paid) jobs is a benefit. It's a results business. Doesn't make them good men, but if they get the state working more efficiently (as they say they will) then who cares.
There is a reason why government shouldn't move fast and break things like 1) the data they hold is hugely sensitive and private 2) breaking things can mean people die 3) government bodies are there to be boring, safe and competent. That's why we have the private sector to take risk and are rewarded accordingly.
Of course it matters. If someone who's never done anything altruistic in their life suddenly does something apparently for the good of the people you need to be asking what's in it for them?
Jimmys point is dumb anyway but then you factor in that Trump is famous for stiffing anyone he can on payment and then tying anyone who tries to get paid for their work up in legal proceedings for years to get them to accept pennies on the dollar. It just moves from dumb to retarded.
I agree but Trump is definitely a President who thinks he needs to be seen doing things. The (well, his) public might see it as refreshing. I can't help but think whatever he does just gets restored to the old order when he's out.
If you want to see what the public think look at the Facebook comments on articles and don't go on Reddit. They're all bootlicking simps.
Haven't they literally just suggested / started legislation increasing the deficit by four trillion dollars largely to extend in terms of time and scope the Trump 1 tax cuts?
As for the mole people, I bet that'll be one of those things where capital expenditure comes out of budget X and so is tightly controlled but maintenance or whatever is out of budget Y and no one gives a fuck about that. Also, how have you not heard of Iron Mountain? Also, with their involvement it will obviously be somewhat kick back driven as well.
No they wouldn't do that. They're altruists who want what's best for the American people.
If any of the 'boring, safe, and competent' governments of the past few decades had at least hinted at trying to reduce waste, we wouldn't need to rely on the current set of wackos to do it. I doubt they will do any meaningful progress, but at least I hope that they inspire future governments to give it a try.
So naive it's painful
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