We're talking about people who named their "department" after a memecoin for the megalolz here.Originally Posted by Shindig
We're talking about people who named their "department" after a memecoin for the megalolz here.
As a lefty who has had many dealings with USAID over the years I'm torn.
1) USAID is a massive slush fund to hide CIA/Foreign Interventionism, which is obviously bad
2) USAID also does do alot of really good things. PEPFAR alone had saved tens of millions of lives funding HIV prevention/medication to people who would have absolutely no chance of accessing it otherwise. In Africa, HIV contraction rates total are down numbers wise 50% since the early 2000s despite the population increasing by 3-4% a year. On top of the people who are being treated for it that's another tens of millions who never had to catch it in the first place. It's a truly monumental and moral contribution to the world.
That's the moral side of it. On the realist side of it is
3) The entire point of USAID is soft power, you give out this money because these countries have vast mineral and resource wealth. It's not selfless charity, you give these people money/build projects because in return they sell you the cobalt, the lithium, the platinum etc. Africa contains vast swathes of this stuff. China is currently building them highways and throwing in a palace for the local chief to get access to this stuff. It just speeds up you losing control.
If he doesnt put DOGE as an option he's a coward.
You’ve jumped the shark. Using any argument to support your pathological hatred for the Trumpster, no matter how utterly dumb they are. Where was ‘government experience’ useful during the last x years of absolute shite we’ve just lived through? The rotating cavalcade of absolute fuckwits we endured were dripping with it and all absolutely fucking useless.
Maybe, just maybe, someone who seems pretty well placed to do alright in life (given he’s basically a child and on $100k a year already) might be able to cut through the absolute waste and mismanagement these departments will be swimming in. And we all know they will be - don’t even start pretending otherwise.
Considering the '$50 million dollars for Condoms to Hamas' was actually about Gaza, Mozambique and the latest thing to be deleted was an app that allowed Americans to submit their taxes for free instead of paying TurboTax $400, maybe just maybe they might also be dumb?
Also, where is this same energy for the military. The entire USAID budget was laid out in black and white on a public database (that they deleted) meanwhile the Pentagon hasn't passed an audit in a decade. USAID budget was 10% of the miltary budget last year. I'd try to be more accurate but these geniuses turned off the website that I could check the numbers.
They might well be, I don’t know, but that wasn’t the point I was making.
Your point was a completely unprovable hypothetical that's almost immediately debunked by what we've seen so far so it wasn't much of a point to begin with.
Jesus fuck.
My point was that RL is using any argument to suit, no matter how dumb they are. He’s better than that.
That's also quite literally what you did back to him. You invented a magical human being to counter his argument.
Being (very) good at coding doesn't mean you should be put in charge of running a country's finances at the age of 25. Jesus Christ, how is that a controversial opinion?
You expect this kind of delusional arrogance from software engineers themselves. You don't expect other people to buy into it.
Much like many of the potential catastrophes humanity is facing, this one is going to be a learn the hard way one. They mostly seem to be these days.
Would a 25 year old really have done any worse than Liz Truss?
They'll be replaced by AI soon enough.
Also all the good (morally) coders end up being arrested and then forced to work for the government not sign up to to be a cuck for the tech bajillionaire.
Wasn't her plan literally described as 'student politics applied to the real world'?
Yeah, you're right. All 25 year olds ever would apply student politics principles if given the gig.
Stupid question. Liz Truss got to the position she was able to do the damage in via the mechanisms of our democracy. These lot have not. They are not even appointees done through the right channels by an elected official. Neither is Musk.
Had a 25 year old actually got elected in some way (whether by the public or by their own party), maybe they wouldn't have, who knows.
And look, ultimately I've no idea whether this approach will be good, a disaster, or somewhere in between. But... we are where we are and career politicians have consistently proven themselves to be useless, the public have spoken and they want to try something else.
Mad? Perhaps. But when you consider that while prices were through the roof, inequality rampant, the last lot of incumbents were telling people "stop whinging, check your privilege and your pro-nouns. Oh and look, here's Beyonce" can you really blame them? I'm not sure I can.
We just need to sit it out, see what happens and it if really is as bad as some of you are expecting then the like of it won't happen again for a very long time and panic over.
See this is kind of what I'm talking about, you're the one making up arguments based on hypotheticals.
So far they've taken a public budget database offline, stopped funding for the most successful HIV intervention programme thats saved millions of lives, complained that a province in Mozambique is Hamas and removed the ability to file your taxes for free. Your counter-argument is 'Liz Truss was bad'.
The public have quite literally not spoken in any way shape or form.
I mean this is quite literally nonsense, this is one of the richest men in the world doing what he wants. What will stop it from happening again.
OK, Dominic Cummings then, or the special advisors that were all over phone hacking.
Did I imagine the US election result?
I can still access free tax file websites...
You're conflating individual parts of posts into one, rather than dealing with them piece by piece. It's an appalling way to discuss something.
It's got nothing to do with any of this. It's about the fact the US has just handed it's data and financial security over to a bunch of Elon Musk's 18-25 tech goons and it cannot be undone.
You are abjectly failing to understand what the problem is.
Elon Musk was on the ticket?
If it was not ELON MUSK would anyone notice or care who is looking at government budgets?
Dominic Cummings was shit and got sacked and literally no-one who did actually ordered the phone hacking suffered any consequences whatsoever!
Oh my god you are so fucking stupid.
What has already happened cannot be undone. Ever. The American peoples data is irrevocably compromised, as is the system used to control all of their money.
You see, you (and many others) just don't get it. Trump won, Trump has appointed Musk, your average common or garden human who voted for Trump will be absolutely fine with that, particularly given Trump even told everyone that that was what he was going to do.
I'll happily be proven wrong if there's a poll that shows Republican voters at the last election are against this turn of events, but it won't exist.
Yeah no-one cared about untouchable billionaires being involved in the workings of the state before 2023.
He's the President not the fucking Holy Roman Emperor. We've been here and done this. It's kind of the point.
How are you not getting this. If anyone at any time since the advent of computers did what Musk and his squad did over the last week they would have rotted in prison for the rest of their lives.
Well they wouldn't, because they wouldn't have got beyond the threshold of the building.
But Trump has given him free reign to do whatever he wants, sacking and removing anyone who stands in his way, and the safeguards are either under Republican control and so rolling over for him or are just being ignored with no consequences.
Just let me get this clear. Are you saying the data of all American people ever (both now and in the future) is irrevocably compromised and the system used to control all of their money is a system that will forever be in use and that's irrevocably compromised too?
There's a poll showing Brexit voters are against the turn in events but you still complain about people saying Brexit is shit. You've just gone full contrarian thinking it makes you the rational person.
This is not how any of this works.
In all normal times, the creation of new government departments required the assent of congress. Trump bypassed that by issuing an executive order to repurpose a different department into DOGE.
For Musk to be appointed to run a government department, he would have to be vetted and it would require congressional approval. Musk would obviously not get that approval because of his business interests and ties to foreign governments.
Trump just installed him anyway, illegally, and there's nothing left to stop him.
It couldn't be more outrageously illegal or undemocratic or just plain insane if it tried
I don't know about all American people EVER, but virtually every American alive, yes. And to your second question, yes, unless they want to completely rewrite the entire system from the ground up.
Which with legacy systems is borderline impossible.
People on the left were screaming at the Democrats to actually offer anything to the working ("middle" in stupid yank nomenclature) class. But you never listen to them, do you? You're as bad as the centrists themselves. But yeah, the centrist melts failed so now we have to let the far right have a go at slashing the state and selling off anything they can to the oligarchs.
With read and write access it's almost literally impossible to say that it's not.
Trump ran for President, in running for president he literally told people he was going to put Musk in charge of government efficiency (with the other chap), people voted for him. Trump won. The people spoke.
You might not like what they said, but they said "we want that, thank you very much".
Without really having any sort of view on the matter, this does sound a bit like hyperbole.
In other news my wife tells me he's about to blow up the US/EU data bridge, so that'll be fun for her and her kind.
The 'database' exists and I assume some people had access to it before MUSK. But they were all saints who would never do anything wrong while MUSK and his younguns are the devil and his demons, therefore we are all doomed for eternity.
Biden won by more than Trump, do you think people shouldn't have been able to say anything bad about his policies either?
Hang on, so Trump did actually do this within the rules?
What would you say to the argument that it's actually very democratic as Trump told the American people he was going to put Musk in charge of this and they voted for him (presumably to do it)?
How have you reached that? I think that when Biden won, the people spoke (and they were essentially saying "get this Covid loon out of power now before he does some serious damage") and I now think the people have spoken in putting Trump in charge. He won the election fair and square and by a much bigger margin than a lot of people were expecting.
People are absolutely free to criticise either or both and that's fine.
Because they were not allowed to waltz in and connect random servers to it.
Prior to this, if you so much as plugged a pen drive into one of these computers you'd be hauled up on serious charges.
They have connected it up to their own server. The data is now "out there" and it can never be reclaimed.
There's also a reason government employees with access to incredibly sensitive data and systems are vetted and undergo background checks. Someone like Musk - with ties to Putin and the CCP and his own personal businesses which make him obscenely compromised - would never be allowed to be in a role with this kind of access.
I didn't realise people were genuinely this moronic when it comes to data security.
If you want to do this dumb semantic argument, he actually got less than 50% of total votes.
Didn't Biden spend his first few days Executive Ordering away half of Trump's previous Executive Orders and then Executive Ordering what his voters wanted? Welcome to the future.
Yes, but they were all unelected and playing an integral role in government, just like Musk. Appointing the World's richest man makes it a bit of an outlier, but in almost every other respect it isn't.
I was watching Maggie and Brian the other night (quite good) and even back then (if the portrayal is to be believed) Thatcher's economic and European policies were being shaped/influenced by some chap outside of the cabinet.
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