I wonder what effect DOGE will have on attracting talent to government jobs. It was already challenging to recruit qualified individuals to government positions; with these changes, I believe the situation will worsen significantly.
> I wonder what effect DOGE will have on attracting talent to government jobs. It was already challenging to recruit qualified individuals to government positions; with these changes, I believe the situation will worsen significantly.
The idea is to replace these government positions with private positions.
Remember feudalism? Some guy with all of the capital - which, in those days, meant arable land - basically got to dictate how things worked, because he had the stuff you, as a peasant, needed to live. He was called the king. If you didn't do what he wanted, your life got cut short. Government was just one guy's ideas enforced by his brute squad. In many ways, it was a sole proprietorship. Eventually, nobility was required to administer the land, and that nobility eventually turned into a structure that could keep the king somewhat in check, lest they carry out a coup. They became the administrative state. Today, we have legislative, judicial and executive bodies that - at least ostensibly - need to win election in order to do the same thing, thus replacing the nobility.
That's the ultimate goal here: the dismantling of the administrative state. The administrative state carries out laws made by a body - in this case, Congress - that, at least in theory, puts society's desires at the center.
A number of these laws directly impact the ability of capital holders to generate more capital. Since the people holding this capital think that the only reason humans do anything is to create more capital, they go to any lengths to keep society's "unprofitable" desires at bay.
Since the accumulation of capital can result in monopoly, you will, at some point, have someone controlling all of the capital again. This is a return to feudalism. You won't be swinging a scythe in a field in a toque and tunic, but the structure will be the same.
Yes, yes, we know. You won't believe us until we actually are living in the feudalist society they're working, right now, to create brazenly in public. Enjoy gloating about crazy we are until you realize we really are not.
The narcissist is incapable of being incorrect and will always find a scapegoat to explain the consequences of their poor decision-making.
The world is now run by these people, and because most people are more ape than man, they will emulate and elevate these people until some other stronger ape comes around to convince them to emulate and elevate them instead.
This is a really unfortunate perspective. The people that you are casting as "more ape than man" believe you to be doing the exact same thing you accuse them of; emulating and elevating people they think are also ruining the world.
I genuinely don't understand how you can comfortably make such sharp insults towards people who don't agree with you. I understand that it's easy to get caught up in echo chamber - which any website that uses upvote/downvote based ordering and hiding schemes inherently encourage - but the people that disagree with you politically aren't apes. They're not narcissists. You are not special or above others.
Ironically, I'd say what characterizes a "man" vs an "ape" is their capacity for self reflection... which is your moniker.
A narcissist, as described in the article, has no capacity for self reflection because it requires them to enter a reality outside of their ego from which to observe themselves objectively.
I can comfortably make these observations (not insults) because I'm describing what I have observed over the last many decades, not reacting to some news ephemeral news item.
What amazes me is that this is a conversation about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and their sycophants... people who are even more caught up in echo chambers and more insulting to our fellow humans, all while being far more insulting in their online speech.
And what is rich is you trying to cast me as the one who thinks they're special because I'm insulting the people who blindly follow Musk and Trump in their naive belief that they're helping to "save humanity" or "America" or whatever.
I live in the real world, not echo-chambers, this is the place I post most frequently and it's still like once every other week/month (and declining). My comment was directed at a group of people in general, while yours makes all kinds (very incorrect) assumptions about me personally.
You actually sound very much like the person who is "too online" and "in an echo chamber" since you seem to respond to the least charitable interpretation of what is said in order to score internet points.
It's certainly a lot easier to respond to my comment as if I was dehumanizing entire swaths of the public based on their voting choices or political beliefs... much more difficult to consider that I'm speaking about a very narrow segment of the population defined by their specific belief that Musk and Trump are special and can do nothing wrong and will not countenance any evidence to the contrary.
There is a podcast from New York Times with interviews from government workers [1].
From all accounts the firing was incompletely indiscriminate and so many people who you would think would never be fired were e.g. US Army Corp of Engineers working on flood prevention.
And so I can't imagine anyone wanting to join the government when there is a strong chance you will be fired in the medium term with no notice and with no reason. All after you've physically moved you/family to Washington because remote work is no longer available.
