Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The Doge Plan to Reform Government
wsj.comAren’t “rules and regulations” written by people under direction of a president, such that it is effectively the president’s work? Do they just stand on their own with no legal backing? Or do they want the president to be the one actually writing them all? Or is it his signature they want?
Undoing them isn’t just the same as undoing previous presidents’ work?
>"Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government"
The irony of these two guys starting off their piece about how they plan to reshape the government with this...
To everyone voting it was clear, that Elon would get this role. So he was part of the elected package. Probably, that was also a deciding factor for many voters.
> The irony of these two guys starting off their piece about how they plan to reshape the government with this
Did you read the next sentence or did you accidentally omit it from your excerpt? It says: "That isn’t how America functions today."
Then, "Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem."
Elon is only in it for the money. Any "saved" money will go to his coffers.
This is a very common idea, but it makes little sense to me. As the richest man in the world, money is the last thing Elon needs more of.
None of these plans seem to enrich Elon more than anyone one else. He's working on it for free.
Honestly, I think this is more like when a $300k SWE takes a week off to fix a bug in their favorite open source project.
He's clearly implied he has some priorities vis-à-vis the government:
1. Relaxing Regulation for autonomous driving
2. Relaxing Regulation for rocket launches so he can get to Mars while he's still living.
3. Contracts for SpaceX wrt to space exploration and Starlink usage
Yes indeed, he doesn't need it for the money, but the power, that is a lot more helpful to him now.
Don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is literally the "starve the beast" strategy.
Underfund everything in the government by cutting taxes, then argue that the system is obviously broken. Now offload that work to the private sector.
Who will pick up the work in the private industry? Probably the cronies of these guys. That's how it always works.
The rationale is that "everything" in the government is less efficient and more expensive than the private sector.
There will be no reform, only destruction.
creative destruction is not necessarily bad, but the default way of nature to move forward.
Obviously, you need to destroy the right things...
The real destruction will no doubt be in the courts.
Vivek and Elonsky will push the boundaries as far as they can, and Trump will not enforce anything.
Someone else will sue, and maybe somewhere someone will have standing. It will start to get interesting when SCOTUS has to face the monster they've created.
We’ll build it back up. This too shall pass.
It is a fallacy to assume you can easily rebuild what you've destroyed, especially if the destroyers are still around and fully intending to destroy it again.
The common trope that libraries could not be implemented today if they weren't already in existence seems relevant.
I never said it would be easy. I admit it might not even be possible. Exceptional damage and harm might occur, to both institutions and the citizenry, before we can right the ship. We are in an objectively terrible situation. I’m advocating for a mental model where we don’t give up, and we are always prepared to exert maximum force against leverage when the opportunity presents itself.
To resign one’s self that the situation is entirely futile is not only unproductive, but intellectually boring. Are we not in search of interesting problems to solve for?
"...Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home."
Psychopaths at work here
"We will make federal employees work 80 hours a week for no pay."