Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I'm extremely skeptical of the entire premise of DOGE. There are vast changes being made to very large organizations, in very short timespans, with the claim that those making them know what they're doing. But the timespans in question - days to weeks at most - mean that there's no time to review anything. So those making changes do not, cannot, be making decisions based on reviews of available evidence, because they haven't given themselves time to review the evidence. Which in turn means that when they claim they do, they're either delusional or lying.

Chesterton's Fence [1] would also seem to apply here, but I mostly think it's not even getting that far. DOGE isn't doing an audit (if it was, there would be auditors, not talented young programmers) and then taking action. DOGE is executing already planned actions, while pretending to be an audit, and helping itself to a great deal of access and data along the way.

1. https://theknowledge.io/chestertons-fence-explained/



The plan seems to be to (1) "RAGE: Retire All Government Employees (...), take over the United States government and gut the federal bureaucracy. Then, replace civil servants with political loyalists"

So in essence, they think these short term problems can be reversed once the pawns are replaced.

(1) https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-elon-musk-ceo-dictator-d...


I'm not sure they care about the problems solved. The model is probably closer to what happened to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed.


It should be noted… it’s illegal to do that.


The vice president is out here saying that judges shouldn't be able to stop the president from doing something.


[flagged]


Fair enough. I was not familiar with the source and couldn't check all the references since some were to a private blog, but what's open check out: https://youtu.be/ZluMysK2B1E?si=_RWmR8mzGcKrmp9Z


DOGE seems to be treating this like a culling in a private company but you can't do that. It's completely normal for private businesses to fail but we rely on the government as a safety net (e.g. social security, FDIC, etc..) so failure there is catastrophic.


> we rely on the government as a safety net

This is the issue though. They think the safety net is the problem.


Their ideology is that safety nets let useless people take up too many resources.


You should be skeptical, because Musk and the Musk Youth are precipitating 1-3 constitutional crises daily. And then they ignore federal judges who tell them to stop their coup.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: