Elon Musk's Demolition Crew

> that has just resigned because of hyper racist comments he made in the past that have come to light.

Just to add clarity, "the past" in this case wasn't even that long ago, as these racist tweets that were uncovered were from June to December of 2024.

You need experience to preserve and improve a service.

If you want to destroy and sabotage a service, you place incompetent people at the helm.

Even the CIA lists this as a strategy in its sabotage manual.

The question was raised here 24 hours ago .. and [flagged][dead] fairly rapidly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42957495

Which was unfortunate as I asked for technical comments on the wisdom of moving fast and breaking things when applied to a million humans aloft at any moment.

They're going to rewrite it in Nodejs and React aren't they?

These guys are so desperate to come up with a thin veil to put over their fascist push that they'll quote a low-level employee taking a paperclip home as a prime example of government waste and good enough reason to shut down an entire cabinet-level department.

What changes and what's any indication that they would ever have been positive regardless of these people?

Unilaterally taking a chainsaw to federal agencies, against their congressional establishment, in a rush in the first three weeks of the administration, is a terrible idea no matter who's running the show.

Even if that were somehow a positive thing, the goals range from ridiculously dubious to outright evil.

> I want to believe these changes can be positive, (...)

What is there to suggest these changes have any positive trait whatsoever? They don't even carry a plausible justification.

My take exactly. It makes the takes around Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment seem like their real motive.

Neither Trump nor Elon will stick to a script if a deviation enriches them or, in Trump's case, was mentioned by the last person to flatter him.

Lack of workplace experience does not mean lack of competency.

Experience can be acquired by many means, not necessarily in a cubicle filling TPS reports.

People that grew up with Internet access, access to massive amounts of open source projects, documentation, tutorials... and now AI... can be more competent that you think.

You're relating issues that have been disconnected, government spending and taxation. If the government were actually funded then income tax would be much higher. The US has been on a defecit spending road to hell for a long time now and the national debt is unsustainable.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/us-heading-towards-economic-he...

That commenters never even discuss this fundamental context should tell you a thing or two about how well-informed people here are, and about the value of these discussions (i.e. why they are rightly flagged). Reality doesn't care about upvotes.

I speak from personal history, but it's really easy to take a bunch of theoretically smart, high-achieving young people, give them a singular purpose, and have them work in overdrive with a level of arrogance that fits their lack of wisdom. It's essentially exactly how Mao was able to create the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

> I've learned the hard way that many people in this country do NOT actually care about democracy.

Our democracy has been eroding for decades. Congress collects paychecks while gridlocking progress, even on bipartisan issues that could help ordinary citizens. Super PACs and "campaign contributions" (aka bribes) ensure the wealthy control both parties. Democrats and Republicans both spend recklessly and divide the nation. Democrats won't admit it, but their approach has driven half the country to prefer what the Republicans have become: essentially a cult.

Democracy is 'good' mainly because it represents a vote of who would win a violent fight, and anticipating that, we can bypass all that and just defer to the victors without bloodshed. As means of violence becomes less equal amongst those granted suffrage, though, democracy becomes less stable as there is no longer clear visibility as to why the losers must defer.

If we weren't easily slaughtered meat sacks, I'd say democracy rather sucks.

Sincere question: are you and I using “democracy” to mean the same thing?

What Trump is doing is a reversion to how the federal government was run after the founding and during the 18th century (what’s derisively called the “spoils system”). Trump campaigned with a bunch of people with specific ideas (RFK, Musk, Gabbard, etc.) and then when elected put those people in positions of authority. Here, taking an axe to the civil service was Item #9 on Trump’s platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. He sent Musk as his surrogate to camp out in the key swing state of Pennsylvania the week before the election. For many Trump voters, this is what they voted for. For others, maybe DOGE wasn’t their thing, but they were content with it to get RFK Jr. or Gabbard or Tom Homan. And from all those people you got a winning coalition.

What you’re talking about sounds more like Wilsonian managerialism. Where elections are more like an input signal to a credentialed civil service service that applies its expertise to the problems of governance: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c....

You can make a fair case that governance by detached civil servants is better, but how can you possibly say that it’s more democratic?

> The fact that nobody is stopping these people is the clearest evidence anyone needs that there's no such thing as "the deep state".

What do you mean? I see plenty of people trying to stop DOGE. Not very successful so far, considering the President does have significant powers over the Executive function.

And the "deep state" is nothing special. It's simply the unelected government employees. It's the same thing you see in big private corporations and the reason why CEOs tend to fire all the VPs and each org "cleans house" - people who don't agree with your mission will work to oppose it.

Half of these people are software engineers, many in their early 20s. I don't even need the gender card to point out that the group seems highly biased.

Not everyone believes democracy means what you think it means. It's like saying "religion is good." Which religion?

>Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America

That's also a bit disingenuous. You can save America today by not being an ass to others, doing what you know is right and spending some of your free time helping others. Plenty of charities one can get involved with, locally as well.

The reason why they're there is because "I worked for Musk" in your CV translates to tens/hundreds of millions of dollars later in life.

Walk and talks like a duck. This is an attempt at Yarvin's Butterfly revolution. Failing too, because courts know how to prioritize and take past actions into account, but wasteful nonetheless.

I hear loads of Feds saying to hold the line. Less have taken Musk's RAGE offer than what normally retire in a given year.