The people radicalized to these actions are trying to destroy the government. They haven't been especially subtle about it in their writing. The ideal outcome is not the same government outcomes but at 70% of the cost. The ideal outcome is the collapse of the federal bureaucracy so that the lords of capital can scoop things up and create their little kingdoms.
> The people radicalized to these actions are trying to destroy the government.
It's worse than that. They're also incompetent.
Look, I'm a radical anarcho-capitalist / libertarian / voluntaryist myself. I'm fine with the idea of "destroying the government" in general. BUT, even I would say that there's a right way to go about it, and that that involves dismantling things slowly and incrementally, identifying replacements (where available) for government services that are being wound down BEFORE winding them down, minimizing the harm done, taking "collateral damage" into consideration etc. These people are doing the equivalent of "destroying the government" by just randomly lobbing hand grenades all over the place, with no knowledge, consideration, or concern, for the outcomes.
Well, then get to resisting. Like it or not, people with your ideology aren't going to be distinguished from the people that burned the government to the ground, destroyed people's lives, and sold the ashes to the richest men on the planet.
It is a fascinating comment. Surely, you recognize things are hardly black and white. Like it or not, the guy has an actual popular mandate to do just that. If you accept that premise, the undistinguishing is already happening on both sides of the US' political spectrum.
Less than 50% of voters voted for him and what was total voter turn out? 60%? So maybe a 1/3 of eligible voters voted for him. A plurality does not equate to a mandate.
But if the outcome is that the existing federal system collapses and we have a collection of fiefdoms run by CEO-kings, endless nuance won't be the appropriate response.
If Trump has a popular mandate to illegally dismantle the government, then what was Biden's popular mandate? Why were such comparatively small things like student loan forgiveness seen as tyrannical? Where was the endless supply of pundits saying "well that's the mandate" then?
You have to understand that arguing from "mandate" is a nice way of saying, "Please stop talking." Its purpose is to end the conversation, not to engage in further discussion.
I just had to check since I am admittedly sick. Even wikipedia has mandate[1] as
"mandate is a perceived legitimacy to rule through popular support. Mandates are conveyed through elections, in which voters choose political parties and candidates based on their own policy preferences."
Even if we play around with concepts here, in a very, very practical sense, if the mandate is conveyed through elections, at least at the very beginning of the administration, that administration has a mandate to govern. Now.. this perception may change, but you can't honestly tell me this administration has no mandate for one simple reason:
If it does not have a mandate, neither of the previous administrations did.
Except that when democrats are in power, we don't hear "they have mandate" for them. We see obstruction at every level and a lot of vitriol. It is only when conservatives are destroying it becomes mandate for anything.
So, no. This is just another asymetric rule designed to enable.
Also, on cultural level, we are supposed to not consider all Republicans assholes, but if they mandated this, they are. Or when Canadiens boo American anthem, it is all "American people are not responsible for their leadership".
<< Except that when democrats are in power, we don't hear "they have mandate"
We don't hear it from democrats now either. What is your point? That each side uses the best argument that supports their position and they decide on the argument after they decide what their expected result is? We all know this and it has been unfortunate part of the discourse for decades at the very least.
<< We see obstruction at every level and a lot of vitriol. It is only when conservatives are destroying it becomes mandate for anything.
Could you elaborate on this point a little? I had a longer initial reaction to it, but I realized that the phrasing can be interpreted in several ways.
I will say this just to give you an idea of my initial read: the vitriol( from republican electorate ) was the cause of the mandate ( to clamp down on bureaucracy ). Now, said clamping generates its own vitriol ( and seemingly some vitriol as well ). Which vitriol you want to focus on?
<< Also, on cultural level, we are supposed to not consider all Republicans assholes, but if they mandated this, they are.
Why.. do I care about it at all?
Asshole designation is largely meaningless to me. I will push that point further, because I worry that I might be misunderstood on this point.
You may find that almost the entirety of the situation we find ourselves is a result of people 'just being nice' and trying not ruffle feathers. There was rather ample time to do some of the incremental changes some recommended here, but no one wanted to be an asshole. We are way past the point, where that label would even register ( not even have and impact; register ). Edit: I will separately note that on this forum, I noted years ago that if those issues are not addressed, we will find ourselves having to make rather unhappy choices.
I am pointing it out for one reason some may be misunderstanding some very basic reality. I will offer one more example of this weird blindness to zeitgeist.
Did you notice how Trump was able to simply shrug off the felon label? Have you considered the why behind it?
<< Or when Canadiens boo American anthem, it is all "American people are not responsible for their leadership".
Again.. why does it matter to me? They can boo all they want.
Being okay or ignoring such a label indicates a certain level of understanding it and accepting it. Trump is totally fine with being against the law because he is in a position of privilege - he can afford it. He doesn't care about those laws either, so basically is totally fine with being an antisocial - because a society codifies its principles in the laws it created. Now if another person is okay with being called an asshole, again it's because they are okay with being mean to others, to disrespect norms and generally other persons, out of a feeling of personal or group superiority and expected impunity - an impunity they see again and again in their role models. So while you cannot make the asshole care about it, the way you truthfully explained, it's important for the less-assholes to point this out to each other. Because the "others" are a group as well, even though nowadays it looks chaotic and actually just less visible in general. Just to be clear, I don't think anybody expects assholes fixing stuff for the rest, it's for the moment nothing more than flag waving. And also I agree that the system is seemingly built to be abused by assholes, something not even the founding fathers have considered. But what happened, happened, and the question is, what now?
<< Being okay or ignoring such a label indicates a certain level of understanding it and accepting it.
I am ok if people choose to believe that.
<< because a society codifies its principles in the laws it created.
In broad strokes, sure; no real disagreement here.
<< Now if another person is okay with being called an asshole, again it's because they are okay with being mean to others, to disrespect norms and generally other persons, out of a feeling of personal or group superiority and expected impunity - an impunity they see again and again in their role models.
No. Laws are laws. Norms are norms. Both are subject to change, but I worry that people confuse the two for whatever reason. Even the issue with Trump getting felon tag is resolved within the existing system since he is the president. You may disagree and despair that the norm "president shouldn't be a felon" is not upheld, but them is the breaks ( I was gonna write "that's democracy for you", but I don't think you would have found it as funny as I did ).
<< So while you cannot make the asshole care about it, the way you truthfully explained, it's important for the less-assholes to point this out to each other.
No. I am done with tacit acceptance of social coercion. It only allows current system to get more unstable as it basically rewards people who yell the loudest. If I really need to point out an example you may get behind, look at former Twitter. Musk bought recognizing that simple fact and used it to his advantage.
No. Pass on branding assholes with a giant A to point out to others.
<< it's for the moment nothing more than flag waving
Yes, thankfully thus far only minor incidents have taken place, but they are there and social media is not exactly helping.
<< But what happened, happened, and the question is, what now?
Honestly, I don't know, but my personal rule of thumb is to not make things worse.
>I'm fine with the idea of "destroying the government" in general. BUT, even I would say that there's a right way to go about it...
Earnest question: Does the second sentence here cause you to reflect on the first, because:
>minimizing the harm done, taking "collateral damage" into consideration...
acknowledges that the government is performing important functions on which people rely.
I know there's an argument that the private sector could instead provide some of these, but that causes me to consider whether such critical services should be in the hands of for-profit companies?
> but that causes me to consider whether such critical services should be in the hands of for-profit companies?
I believe the idea is that you can have multiple companies for a given purpose and switch between them (or form your own) depending on what you think works best for you and your community. You cannot have multiple governments - if the one elected on an piece of land you happen to live on does not act in your interests, you're pretty much SOL at least until the next election cycle (if it's a democracy) or the next coup (if it's not).
The obligatory caveat is that - of course - this does not work in practice. At the very least, it requires a perfect free and fair market which means it needs us all to be well-informed rational actors. And there are probably more requirements than just this.
The problem with this line of thinking is in people frequently ignore their own interests or just shrug their shoulders and "I got mine" in some way: The absolute easiest example that comes to mind is roads. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people complain about tax on gasoline and how they don't even use the majors roads and highways that much. Mention that nearly every single thing that keeps them alive will in some way require roads to exist and they'll move the goal posts to "I ready pay other taxes" or "I've already paid plenty" or less reasonably "fine let all this go away then because we got along fine 200 years ago without it".
With other things, it's just about impossible to convey to someone with this sort of mindset anything much less direct like the costs of having beauracracies creating and enforcing regulating building codes or workplace standards, and even those are easier to grasp than many other services
Exactly - no disagreement here. But if you understand it and I understand it, can we dream of a day everyone will? :-)
In the meanwhile, I support bureaucracies. Even if the long-term goal is to get rid of them, I currently believe that we desperately need those training wheels for the time being, and trying to dismantle them until we know how to do well without is irresponsible and dangerous.
Companies tend to deceive customers, as the incentives are frequently aren't aligned, so "voting with a wallet" is not functioning as well as it should. And profit-seeking leads to market consolidation, which, at least past some threshold is a net negative on society and turns into oligopoly.
A vision of a society without a government is utopic. It requires drastically different mindset and understanding of the side effects and unintended outcomes from every living person. Yet, I cannot help but naively like the idea of such society (which is entirely subjective thing), and so I wish we all could be smarter and knowledgeable, stop fighting for resources, and that some distant day whatever becomes of us may live in a world where cartels won't form because everyone understands how that's not really in anyone's interest (paradoxically, I believe that's not even good for the cartel itself in the long term - power and wealth are also a deadly curse).
I did not expect that conclusion in the last paragraph.
It occurred to me that making a point of the type, "here's what I believe is best or here's what I prefer, but I understand that the current reality doesn't accommodate it" represents a level of non-binary nuance and maturity that is exceedingly rare these days. We'd all do well to emulate it.
You can think that someone doesn't deserve the benefit they get from the government but also think it's unfair to impose additional hardship by cutting it off suddenly.
For most states, there's only two governments--the city and county governments of most states are organs of the state governments and only have such authority as the state unilaterally deigns to let them have.
As for the distinction between state and federal, that's essentially the exception that proves the rule. The reason you cannot have multiple governments is because you end up with a situation of contested authority, and a brief look at US history (and I suspect every other federal system in the world, though I don't have particular knowledge for others) shows a litany of debates over whether state or federal government has primacy in a given jurisdiction. It's only barely tolerable by the fact that, even if the grant of authority to the different governments is unclear, at least the authority to decide who has authority is unquestioned.
>acknowledges that the government is performing important functions on which people rely.
>I know there's an argument that the private sector could instead provide some of these, but that causes me to consider whether such critical services should be in the hands of for-profit companies?
I think decentralizing and delegating some of those services to be closer to the people (to state governments) has merit. I agree with the OP that to shift to in that direction there's a right way and a wrong way to do that transition. In today's immediate self gratification culture though you'll get what we're getting. Patience is a virtue we were all born without. It takes displince and strong values to stick with it.
Oh but they can be just fine, you only need to look outside the States to see it working. They're not perfect either, don't start me on it, but I can see exactly that idea working in Switzerland: the state making the rules for the private providers _and_enforcing_ them. It might be against "muh freedom to rip everybody off" but I personally refuse to call that "freedom".
OTOH, some important things in Switzerland are still state-owned, like the railways or the post.
Some people treat Switzerland like some libertarian paradise, but in reality, while Switzerland does tend to be more economically liberal than many of its neighbours, it's usually pretty pragmatic and not committed to some ideology.
> that involves dismantling things slowly and incrementally
Yeah? been waiting, consciously, for over 35 years and all we managed to do is give billions to industries for no return for citizens, tenfold our debt, potentially bankrupt Medicare, and so on.
Democrats have been in power about equally (20 vs 14 years but just president isn't enough to be "in power"); so neither side is interested in fixing this country for the people instead of themselves.
This. In fact, since the system is built for gridlock, both parties happily pretend to care about given's electorate red meat, while blaming the other party for failing to do X. It is a perfect scenario for an elected official: do nothing -- the hardest thing to do in politics.
Hmm. Is it though? You are making rather broad statement here. Would you be willing to offer an example supporting that statement?
<< Democrats were willing to work across the aisle and even adopted republican ideas.
'Were'? It is a real question, but the spirit is the same as above. Can you offer an example you have in your mind. I suspect I know where you are going with this, but I don't want to assume too much.
<< The moment they do, Republicans reject their own ides. Republicans refused to cooperate.
Same as above.
<< It is assymetric and the knee jerk tendency to both side everything just enable it.
No. This is pure silliness and I am frankly tired of hearing this point so I will just call it out.
I like to see things as they are. If things happen to work in a way that I happen to not like, then I do not like those things, but it does not mean said those things are invalid, simply because it was a 'kneejerk' reaction to it.
And even trying to cast it as kneejerk is amazingly inaccurate. This resentment has been building for a long time now ( does anyone even remember Vance's CNN commentary that basically said 'can you hear us now?' ), which kinda sucks for the political class as they will need to figure out a different model ( and it seems they may have already ) to bamboozle the population.
I am happy to discuss further, but you need to give me a little more.
Obama was literally that. And republicans refused to do any cooperation at all and punished own republicans for any compromises. Obama eventually understood it well into his period.
Trying to both sides here is just lie. And yes, knee jerk complain is about people saying 'both sides' because they feel like they have to, not because both sides would be the same.
I will admit it is a good response, because McConnell is effectively on the record[2] for actively torpedoing any opposing party moves. Still, affordable ACA passed with -- I might add -- 'bipartisan' support ( quotation, because phrase is thrown out the moment even one opposing party joins the vote ).
On the other hand, we may need to go over some definitions, because it is possible we are somehow not talking about the same thing, but use the same words further confusing this conversation.
<< and punished own republicans for any compromises.
<< ( previous comment ) The moment they do, Republicans reject their own ides.
Practical question. Sides or ideas in the above as it will affect my interpretation.
>> In fact, since the system is built for gridlock, both parties happily pretend to care about given's electorate red meat, while blaming the other party for failing to do X. It is a perfect scenario for an elected official: do nothing
<< The lock is VERY one sided.
Let us assume for a moment that I buy into your premise.
The current system is built around gridlock. I am not joking. The whole separation of powers is basically saying 'if you can't work something out, each side has opportunities to grind the system to a halt'. Which side uses the feature more is irrelevant to equation given that the system effectively incentivizes its use. We can talk all day about how things should be, but you don't exactly win golf tournaments by performing synchronized swimming routine.
Anyway, my very subtle point that both sides are the same stands. Do you know why? Because the 'sides' that do not understand the system and the rules it operates under do not last in congress very long ( and are ousted as you pointed out in your example ).
The problem is that it wouldn't get done. To do it that way you would need the cooperation of the bureaucracy and they are just not going to cooperate here. And who can blame them? I wouldn't do a good job if my bosses asked me to do an analysis of how to cut my job. The conclusion would be "the collateral damage would be catastrophic." I think that's why large corporate layoffs are always a shitshow too.
What about early retirement for unnecessary bureaucrats? You give them their most recent salary and benefits until they're 65 or would've been eligible for retirement, then handle their retirement plans as though they'd been working all that time. So that's fewer bureaucrats, less resistance to the change, more people moving to the "more productive" private sector, and the money still flows to communities via federal wages.
This kind of plan would be crazy for a private company that needs to fight to survive each quarter, but it works for governments who should be planning decades ahead.
Then it's worth asking: surely no matter what your perspective is, it's possible to come up with intelligent and capable malefactors who'll further your power and that of your side?
No matter who you consider to be malefactors. Let's say we call ancaps malefactors, and we're talking about the reformation of society. Surely it's possible to find capable people who will set that in motion and lock it in so it can't be avoided? There must be so many people able to plan this out. You might be one of those people!
And yet, how come we're looking at a pile of nonsense people, hurling grenades and being catastrophically useless in their own rights, across the board?
Do you consider them incompetent, when the claim is they'll make everything great and you hope they'll serve your interests?
Or do you consider that they're doing exactly what they are meant to do, but they're meant to be saboteurs and the damage IS not only the point but the only real plan?
In that case, they might not even be in control of what they think they're intending, but they've been selected to do exactly what they're doing. Some of the bigger ones seem to be carrying on like Bond villains, presumably because they enjoy that, but even they are poised to do catastrophic damage to what they're supposed to 'rule'.
So do they even expect to rule anything, or are they simply trying to break everything before fleeing the ruins? They're not acting like they're trying to build power, it's something else. Even Trump's bluster is not really building power in any way, it's only undermining American hegemony at a staggering rate.
<< They're not acting like they're trying to build power, it's something else. Even Trump's bluster is not really building power in any way, it's only undermining American hegemony at a staggering rate.
That is arguable, but let us assume it is true for the sake of the argument. If that is true, would you agree that US hegemony seriously waned over the course of at least 4 administrations before Trump?
I can assure you that a great number of the people who disagree with you don't just "hate Musk" or have Trump derangement syndrome or something. This assumption that people only disagree with you for bad faith reasons or aren't "remaining curious" is weird, and you should reflect on it.
"Just hire them back" is not actually a cost efficient option.
Take TB medication delivery, one of the many programs halted by the USAID cuts. If you stop a TB treatment midway through you make the development of drug-resistant TB more likely and you make it more likely that this strain spreads to others. Even if Musk decides that actually it really is unconscionable to not tackle the deadliest disease on the planet (which happens to be treatable), the delays cause deaths. This isn't like turning some web server back on.
Rehiring people is also a fucking joke when they've been fired in this manner. People have been forced to rapidly leave the countries that they are deployed in with minimal support from leadership. Those relationships are burned.
That's the bigger point. This is the destruction of the United States as a viable partner, today and for the future. It's the most anti-American thing you could do, which makes you think how much of this is incompetence and ideology and how much of it is compromise.
Also, everyone knows that they're more likely to get messed around as a government employee now, so the market rate has gone up. It is now more expensive to hire people for the same roles.
Government jobs don't work like that, do they? There's a pay schedule for the job title and that's what you get paid. The codes start with G and go from 1-16 and beyond. Idk look it up. You don't really get to negotiate wages as a federal employee. The only thing you can get paid more on hire is if the schedule for the title is like GS4-GS5 DOE
The flip is they get paid time off, a lot, retirement, health coverage, and maybe early retirement.
> You don't really get to negotiate wages as a federal employee.
Not on an individual basis, no. But the rates get set according to the market just like everything else, to the lowest that results in sufficient supply. The market is always moving. Recent changes will result in positive price pressure. Rates will inevitably lag, but they do not exist in a vacuum relative to the market.
Benefits of government employment exist, but other changing factors still move the market.
>It’s the same with firing people and hiring them back. Performance metrics are unreliable, but firing and then hiring back who you miss isn’t. It shows you who is really critical.
I might believe this if there was actually any time between the firing and rehiring. This isn't the administration firing people, observing the result, and then restaffing the programs that did actually become less efficient. There have been multiple times in recent weeks in which this administration fired people and then immediately moved to rehire them because they didn't have any idea of who they actually fired in the first place.
I just don't understand how anyone could think all the confusion and uncertainty we have seen over the last month is part of a well constructed and good faith plan for a more efficient government.
Its picking up rocks to see what makes threats or scatters.
A large portion of the effect you seem to be experiencing is trump and elon troll, and the media just mangles the trolls until I do not believe any story, comment, etc about Trump, doge, musk, Zelensky, Putin, whatever unless I literally see their words or hear their words.
Ex: the executive branch policy executive order today or yesterday. MSM and people on the internet "he's bypassing the checks and balances!"
OK no that's not what the EO says; but just for fun check what EO Biden signed about this many days into his presidency.
Hint: Reformation of the US Supreme Court.
It's just what they do. Presidents.
Also for the record Trump has signed 68 and in the same timespan Biden signed 34. Most of both were rescinding the others EO.
The example I gave was people being fired and immediately rehired[1][2] and you're blaming that on the fake news not understanding Trump's "trolling"? That is your defense that this is all "part of a well constructed and good faith plan for a more efficient government"? The President of the United States is trolling federal workers by firing and then immediately rehiring them?
as my wife pointed out earlier today, they weren't fired. she said the best term she could come up with at that exact moment was something like furloughed. They're getting paid for months without having to show up and clock in.
that is not fired.
thank you for proving my point though. Probationary employees won't have their employment renewed, and everyone else you're calling "fired" was furloughed. Since she's a government employee, i tend to listen to her, rather than some other government mouthpiece over in Britain.
Your wife seems to be confused and is probably lumping together the previous round of voluntary deferred resignations with the more recent round of firings and layoffs.
The exact word used by both the USDA spokesperson and NNSA email was "termination" with the latter specifically saying "effective today"[1]. These are the words directly from the people whose job it is to communicate on behalf of this administration.
This matches the pattern of what has been happening to other federal workers who have generally had their termination letters cite "performance", regardless of their past reviews, as the reason for the termination[2], presumably so they can be let go without any notice or severance pay.
the first article you linked uses the phrases "terminated, fired, laid off, mass firings, termination notifications, ending contracts"
Do you see how you're not actually getting any information from that?
the second article isn't any better "fired", "laid off", "sent letters that were lying", “The U.S. Department of Transportation finds, that based on your performance you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Department of Transportation would be in the public interest,” the letter to fired staffers read. “For this reason, the Department of Transportation is removing you from your position with the Department of Transportation and the federal civil service effective today.”
That letter was to probationary employees. maybe. I've never seen a nat-pop in a news article like that before. It is in reference to something near the top, maybe?
What you're reading and linking to me is fuel. It isn't useful information.
people who get fired for being poor at their jobs - do they usually own up to it? or do they squawk about how unfair everything is. "i'm not poor at my job and my supervisor said so" yeah does your supervisor still work there or? There's poor management; just like employees, C levels, and politicians.
>Do you see how you're not actually getting any information from that?
I don't know what to tell you. There is information in these articles and you don't even need to trust the journalists who are reporting them. All these articles have included quotes directly from the relevant government officials and emails.
Here is another article[1] with a direct quote from the following:
-White House deputy press secretary saying "Any key positions that were eliminated are being identified and reinstated rapidly"
-Trump's Secretary of Energy saying "When we made mistakes on layoffs at NNSA, we reversed them immediately, less than 24 hours."
- Even Elon Musk saying "We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly."
And yet you are still refusing to admit what the people directly involved are telling you is true? You still think I'm just being misled by bad journalism?
so the secretary called them "layoffs"? Alright, so they weren't fired? Thanks again. I said they weren't fired. The comment you replied to originally was about the threat of auditing agencies is kicking up a lot of ruckus.
It is fine if you think these layoffs, firings, or whatever are not necessary, even if the only reason you think that is msm reporting and a dislike of elon and donald. I don't really care.
The journalists you assure me are doing just fine used 5 different words that have different meanings to convey that the people were no longer "employed".
If you can get real information from that, great. I'd argue that you don't, since i've spent 3 comments arguing that.
This is the problem with your argument and all others like it.
Like the parent comment states in this thread, there is a truly mind boggling level of nuance and complexity that goes on in almost every single discrete field. The nuances that make you succeed in one field may not (are probably not!) the same as another field.
We can even see this within a field: Being a good engineering manager does not make you a good engineer, or vice versa. So why should we think either of these disciplines can be extended into geopolitics, finance, or anything else?
Some of the people you fire will not come back, even if you try to rehire them immediately. Some of the firings will not result in problems in the near term, but will cause problems later on. Some of the firings will cause problems that only occur under certain conditions, like catastrophic events and natural disasters.
Furthermore, you cause real harm to people who depend on these services in the interim period where you’re figuring things out. In some cases that harm cannot be undone.
The stated policy objectives to reduce waste could be achieved with much less disruption and cruelty simply by doing them more slowly and thoughtfully. There is no need to rush everything through in six weeks.
<< The stated policy objectives to reduce waste could be achieved with much less disruption and cruelty simply by doing them more slowly and thoughtfully. There is no need to rush everything through in six weeks.
If there is one thing that Trump has clearly learned from his first term, it is your window to effect actual change is surprisingly small and for that reason alone, historically speaking, presidents tended to open with their priorities ( whatever they were ).
I am mildly on the fence, but it has been my affliction most of my life. FWIW, I do hear you, but I do see a need for a drastic reduction. I recognize it is a gordian knot and it will be painful across the board. Doing it slowly may be just taking a bandaid off one hair at a time.
"Efficiency" is such a dumb thing to optimize for singlemindedly. Overly efficient systems are brittle and can't adapt to shocks. Look what happened to the efficient global supply chain when that ship blocked the Suez Canal.
Imagine if we demanded "efficiency" from fire departments; they'd only hire as many firefighters as they need to respond to the average number of emergencies per day, then totally flop when there's a mass casualty event.
Having a fast moving and inefficient government is what attracts people to the US! To live and invest there. Fast moving governments can destroy things, make them unpredictable and unstable based on the whims of a few. In this case an unelected billionaire with conflicts of interest and a pardon for all his crimes waiting for him in Dec of 2028.
"move fast and break things" means iterating on a product but that's on a whole different scale when you are talking about space rockets and the USA government
You give a compelling argument. If the same strategy was being executed by someone else, I'd even consider giving it a thought. Heck, if the president was executing this independently, I'd still give him the benefit of doubt. But I don't trust Elon with what you're suggesting. He has nefarious motives.
>It’s the same with firing people and hiring them back.
Except that we're talking about human beings.
>Progressives will hate all of this simply out of a hatred of Musk
Consider that truly believing this instead of considering that some people have well-reasoned concerns, might make you closed to divergent ideas. And that is, of course, what you're accusing progressives of being here.
> a brilliant strategy to quickly and comprehensively remove waste
A better strategy would have been to :
- spend 2016-2020 while Trump was in power auditing the NSAID / federal spending.
- spend 2020-2024 while they were hand-vetting thousands of loyalists and having Musk donate $240,000,000 towards their funds, plus other donations from other mi/billionaires, planning spending cuts.
- spend the pre-election time telling people what cuts they were planning and why.
- move to make those planned cuts quickly and comprehensively.
- release a tidy report of fraud and corruption found after 2, 3, 6 months.
This keeps confidence in the government high for national and international investors and governments, it would win over some Dems and undecided voters, it would reduce worry and stress from Republicans. They didn't do that, and you can't say it isn't a priority or they didn't have money or time or access to do it, so the possible remaining reasons don't look good:
1. they are just winging it. They don't know what the agencies do, what can be cut or what they want to spend.
1. The plans are so objectionable that if they told everyone their plans in advance, people would not have voted for them. (They don't care what the agencies do).
1. the chaos and hurt is part of the plan.
1. They want to be able to make stuff up, and have nobody able to call them on it. (see also: DOGE's actions are sealed by Executive Order, Musk has said some untruths about what they've found, Musk told interviewers that the things he says will be incorrect).
It's been overrun by Nazis and is worth a fraction of it's purchase price. Having a website be technically online is not the measure of if it's "doing well".
>Operationally, Twitter is doing well, even with 80% of the workforce gone.
>It’s pretty clearly a success story on any objective measure.
Your comment actually underscores the problem. That is, even if Twitter really is more efficient operationally, the overall business is greatly diminished.
You point to the advertiser feud as the reason for revenue drop-off, as if it's a tangential thing. But, in fact, part of the reason for that is the chaos, as well as other, let's say..."human dynamics". And, now we're seeing a mass exodus from Twitter, the impact of which remains to be seen. It's all related. Having humans in the mix makes things far messier.
So, business success is not merely about operational efficiency and, when it comes to government, it's orders of magnitude more complex.
The advertisers couldn't care less about operational chaos at Twitter. They care about bad press. If Twitter was a lesser known company or Elon Musk wasn't a political enemy of liberal journalists, there would have been minimal revenue loss. This had nothing to do with the layoffs. Twitter would have the exact same problem even if they kept all the employees.
>The advertisers couldn't care less about operational chaos at Twitter
I wasn't referring to operational chaos or layoffs. I was referring to social chaos—you know, all of the controversial "free speech" stuff.
You could certainly characterize it all as merely political. But many would say (do say) that the kind of speech, disinformation, etc. that now occurs regularly there is much more than that.
Obviously, you're free to disagree, but then that leads to a somewhat tedious and unresolvable discussion wherein we debate what other people actually think or how much hate speech occurs; or we disagree over semantics of the "who decides what's hate speech?" variety.
Overall, I think most would agree that things changed under Musk. Some call it free speech. Some call it hate speech. But, whatever side you choose, it's controversial by definition. Advertisers, especially those serving a "general audience", tend to not like controversy.
Everyone has the right to choose and, among those with that right, are advertisers.
objectively, the ad business used to bring in around $5 billion. It now brings in closer to 1. Sure, costs got cut, and now it's cashflow positive, but if the goal was really to reform the business from a strictly monetary point of view, it's impossible not to bring up the fact that there could have been an extra $4 billion in profit, if someone had just been less polarizing of a character.
so objectively, looking strictly at the numbers, it's not a winner. if I were a PE firm and my hired CEO's personality caused revenue to drop that hard, I'd find another CEO who could just as easily have cut costs without all the insanity. insanity brings risk and has cultural and political costs, and who wants that? Just make me money and don't get me in the newspapers.
so the only reasonable conclusion is that it's not about money or the stated goals but about power. Ever get annoyed with a waitress at a restaurant over something small? A normal person would just brush it off, but if you're a billionaire, you can buy the restaurant, cut her wages (because firing her is less humiliating), and have her boss treat her like shit, because it's fun for a billionaire to flex on the peasants like that.
It stopped being about the money a couple hundred million dollars ago.
Unless they radically edited what they said after you replied, I’d say the approach they favor necessarily includes understanding the fence. It’s a bit rude to just lump them in with “folks like themselves” as an ad hom.
Even as a left lib who thinks the primary purpose of a government should be to pool money into public good, I doubt all the fences that are up are there for good reasons anymore. Questioning them in a careful and rational manner is healthy, and I wish it were done more. Wanton destruction like we’re seeing now isn’t.
I think that’s in line with what your parent comment was saying too. They might be more surprised than I would be as to how many fences are justified, but it sounds like they believe it’s important to check.
I've worked in government and large institutions, and frequently deal with people who think like this.
Let's just say I'm perfectly comfortable with the ad hominem.
Literally 100% of the people I've encountered with this attitude either soften it once they're actually in, or they come in and break things.
Any time someone comes in with a "clean house" attitude," I know I have to get ready because they nearly universally have no clue of what they're talking about.
Pardon my French. - You need to be sharing a fuck ton of examples.
People make sense of things in many ways. One of the most fundamental are stories.
Share every example or story you can, or your friends can. This is one of the things conspicuously absent on HN, which is surprising since there should be many people with personal experience dealing with governments or complex systems.
I respect your experience, but your message added literally nothing to the conversation besides “you probably suck because people like you generally do.” It was nothing but a personal attack.
That’s considerably harder to respect, and it put me in the position of feeling like I needed to defend the parent of your comment.
Being more direct, since you seem to value that: consider keeping that sort of thing to yourself unless it has an actual constructive point beyond insulting the person to whom you’re responding. However true it might be per your subjective experience, posting it here only makes you look bad.
If nothing else, choosing a straw man of not understanding Chesterton’s Fence, when that was already directly contradicted by the parent comment, comes off as you being the ignorant one.
You may be comfortable with the ad hom, but maybe you shouldn’t be so comfortable with that.
Identifying what the collateral damage would be, planning to minimize harm done, and identifying replacements for the functionality prior to replacement reads to me like an exact application of the principles recommended by Chesterton's fence rather than apparent ignorance of the concepts https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/:
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
If you still see it so differently I'd like to better understand some more of the reasoning why.
I can't take any credit for theory as the above is just what Chesterton's Fence story is advising with nothing added.
I'm not particularly a DOGE fan myself but I've seen many folks like the above able to do great amounts of "cleanup" in organizations of 100k+ employees without much broken glass. Plenty who don't as well and create a mess of course... but those are not usually the ones who introduce themselves by way of being concerned about the effects and rate of change. People absolutely certain they know how something will go without doubt before even getting involved are usually the biggest problems, though they aren't wrong 100% of the time either.
Just as not every person who is hesitant to remove things is just a curmudgeon, freeloader, fake worker, lazy, or whatever else people like to characterize them as it's also true not every person who wants to remove cruft is ignorant, clueless, wreckless, royally screws things up, and so on. In both cases success is more tied with those focusing on the details, review, and planning of the execution rather than feelings on first thought.
Last weekend the Washington Post published some internal DOGE memos showing this is absolutely true. What's happening has nothing to do with efficiency. It's all about ideology.
But DEI is what made JD Vance who he is today. To quote an article:
"The truth is, if it was not for the Yellow Ribbon Program I would not be going to law school."
It absolutely is. I’m a disabled (technically, but not in any meaningful way) veteran, and you’d best believe that the first time I decided to mark those two boxes on job applications, my callback rate skyrocketed.
> Veterans are included in DEI hiring practices. As are disabilities.
My message was specifically about the Yellow Ribbon Program, not if DEI includes people with disabilities.
> If you've applied for a job in the past 10 years surely you've had to declare your gender, ethnic background, veteran status, and disability status.
I did not. I believe that here, in Switzerland, it'd be illegal to ask for your gender or ethnicity. Age is legal, although not often practiced in IT. Veteran status - not a thing.
Phase 2 consists of placing on leave employees in non-DEI roles — who DOGE determines are somehow tied to DEI — as well as other employees working at offices whose existence is mandated by law.
The ideal outcome is that government fails, then they can point at the failing government and ask, why do we want to pay for something that is failing.
If you want people to get onboard with spending cuts, you should raise taxes high enough to actually pay for all the spending so taxpayers feel the consequences of it.
Reducing revenues and letting people run up the credit card for decades instead, as an intentional strategy, was beyond irresponsible.
They've known for a long time that they can't cut spending. It will be terribly unpopular. So they cut taxes (especially on the rich) which keeps tax pressure on everyone else, but gets them wealthy donors.
Then the opposition has three choices: play chicken with the national debt, cut spending, or raise taxes. Usually raising the national debt is the easiest option.
Yeah, their vision is us living in burbclaves of New South Africa, Mr Lee's Hong Kong and Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates and the bankrupt US Government with trillion dollar notes not to be used as toilet paper because it is illegal and clogs the plumbing.
When you are Elon, or Trump, or even a moderately succesful business… all the government does (or at least what you perceive) is tell you no. You can't dump that here, you can't build that there, you can't fire that person for that reason, you can't do that without a permit, etc.. They just want to clear all the roadblocks out of the way for their PERSONAL gains.
Get rid of the government and you can do whatever you want. That is what they want. These are people who feel they have "won" the game of capitalism, and were still told, "No." That greatly upset them. How can a winner be told they can't do something?
There's thousands of homeless and underhoused people all over the US for the same exact reasons so you don't have to be rich to feel the effects of government telling you no. Didn't used to be that way at all. My grandfather built his own house ~70 years ago with his brother from trees they cut down on the property and set it on blocks. He lived in for 60+ years and it's still standing. It's a house I could buy and live in right now. But I can't just build a much better house with modern materials and live in it without an egregious amount of site work.
It's so dumb it's gotten to the point that there is intense competition for the most rundown house that's already utility connected so you can tear it down and replace it piece by piece to avoid all the ridiculous new rules. It's only feasible to build either million dollar+ homes or jank-station multi-families where you hear your neighbors toilets flush.
There's thousands of homeless and underhoused people all over the US for the same exact reasons so you don't have to be rich to feel the effects of government telling you no.
There was a new EO recently that required all new hires to be approved by DOGE. So the goal would be to bring back something like the CSC had (which was essentially IQ filters for a job). Then the per employee productivity would increase in the government.
Government employees are unbelievably unimpressive, and it started in 1978 with the abolition of the CSC.
Is the US going the way the aftermath of which is described in Neuromancer, or is it going to be Snow Crash, complete with visas to every city state, and the "US" part that's left deluded that they are in control?
It's snow crash, they're calling it network states. Tech billionaires want to be CEO kings of their own mini states, their goal is to destroy the federal government. Project 2025 is based on ideas (in particula, RAGE, retire all government employees) from Curtis Yarvin, good friend of Peter Theil and JD Vance.
> This wasn't just theoretical—there were actual attempts to implement these ideas, like the Peter Thiel-backed “network state" project called Praxis in Greenland.
Accurately observed, but I think they're foolish and are only being used by a particular nation-state with a grudge against the US. Their alliances are pretty obvious, but an empire trying to reclaim its empire does not keep its promises to tech barons.
The Project 2025 people are probably sincere, but wildly impractical. Their impracticality has been indulged by a global adversary which simply intends to destroy the United States on every possible level. There's no reason the tech barons will be given mini states. Why would that happen?
They have money, there might be enough corruption in some states to allow them to accomplish this, or since they're in power they could sell federal land?
Not sure if anything but their own incompetence can stop them now, if not that a military coup might happen when trump cracks down on protests with soldiers, like he wanted last time he was president.
That's actually the problem. These tech shitlords KNOW there's a chance everything is destroyed in a way that doesn't leave them gods. But they place that chance at like 30%. They're degenerate gamblers basically, betting it all on red.
That's my take too. The tech barons are all remarkably stupid and think that if they destroy the federal government they'll be able to swoop in and take everything, but the end result is 50 individual governments that stop paying dues to the feds, many of which are going to be far more hostile to said tech barons.
They're not even smart enough to properly pay off and maintain the military so they could try and enforce the oligarchy.
The best part is this is trivially obvious to anyone who knows their US history. The articles of confederation were torn up and replaced with a strong federal government that could adapt over time in part because the "federated states" system resulted in a bunch of petty tyrant Governors who completely ignored and neglected their federal obligations, ran their states like fiefdoms, and consistently made things shitty for everyone out of their pettiness.
Lots of people insist that the US should be a loose federation of states that are mostly left to themselves, basically like a less bureaucratic Europe, but that's stupid, because if that model worked, the constitution would not exist
I spent a long time trying to figure out who he could have been comparing himself to every time he was in the media for decades, until I was watching the Simpsons and realized Krusty had always been there but was no longer the worlds most beloved clown.
Removing political guardrails and community due-process is what is happening.
A king and his fool is unsustainable, thus... people with brains and money will simply start to vote with their feet and leave while they are able. Have a great day =3
> people with brains and money will simply start to vote with their feet and leave while they are able
That worked in 1935. It doesn't work in 2025, in a world with nuclear-tipped ICBMs. We're all stuck on this planet together now; there's no escaping from a US with a mad king at the helm.
Not unless someone is suicidal, the ultimate glass-cannon is practically only an economic-weapon designed to bankrupt anyone foolish enough to compete in such programs.
Besides, there are rumors of far worse things now like geriatric Fox media. lol =3
The government was on life support because of the same people killing it now. If you want to shrink the government, you first break it, then say it’s broken and must be reduced as a result.
The alternative was followed from the 30s during FDR until arguably the 80s…make the government effective, and it was immensely successful.
That was dependent upon an interpretation of the 10th amendment achieved via intimidation to pack the courts. Before that most the regulatory apparatus would not be constitutional.
What many of us are welcoming is an end to most regulation of most intrastate commerce except as authorized by the constitution. It is time to undo the damage of Wickard v Filburn.
If it’s austerity why are they raising the debt limit by 4 trillion and awarding massive contracts to their cronies (or themselves)? They are not trying to cut costs, they are trying to reallocate wealth away from the working class and into billionaire pockets.
Oligarchy. Kleptocracy. Morons cheering because they're deluded enough to believe that the definition of "pork" is when the government transfers money directly to lower and middle class via paychecks.
Congress will authorize contractors to do these jobs instead. We get back privatized versions of the old government services at a higher price, and the money goes into the bank accounts of the rich.
I'd like to read the CBO report on what this shit will actually cost over ten years.
Yarvin's writing as Moldbug is very clear on the subject. Both Thiel and Vance are public admirers and have reflected Yarvin's RAGE (Retire All Government Employees) in public. Thiel acolytes and admirers are staffing DOGE, drawn from tech communities and web forums.
They do not believe in functioning democracy but instead in a Randian "utopia" where the lords of capital run regions of the country as kings and the poor are turned into "biofuel."
It's from the admin of r/keep_track. It is far from complete (missing lots) and the summaries they write aren't always accurate.
The Federal Reserve section is one that's clearly incomplete, for instance, including just two goals when the document has several (e.g. curbing last-resort lending is missing).
That said, the site's a good portal if you're aware of those limitations. I really like that each item has a link to the PDF.
There are also various public talks and other published pieces by members of the admin, laying out exactly what they're planning to do (and now are doing) and why.
I dunno when they figured out they can just conduct conspiracies in public and nobody will call them on it, so there's little reason to bother with secrecy, but that's how they work now, and it's been weird to watch. I first noticed it with Bush II when prominent members of his administration published multiple pieces (before he was elected) calling for war with Iraq, and stating that the US should take essentially any half-decent excuse to go to war with Iraq even if that excuse itself is bad, then... did exactly that! And got away with it! Inexplicably, the media would interview them on the topic of going to war with Iraq and didn't make all the questions about that. It was barely a footnote to media coverage of the run-up to the war, which was so damn weird when anyone could just go read the text of these pieces themselves, with familiar names on them, telling us exactly how they were planning to fuck us. Didn't matter, they could just straight-up publish "here's how we're going to screw the public" and then screw the public exactly that way, and laugh all the way to the goddamn bank (literally, in many cases—they made so friggin' much money off the post-9/11 security apparatus and the wars)
It is really frustrating how news organizations don’t remember previous news cycles and connect the threads. That’s why the trump strategy of flooding the system with outrage constantly is so effective. People can’t maintain the narrative over time and so things get buried.
If what happened to USAID isn’t evidence enough for you, I suggest you go and read up on Project 2025. Below is a link to the chapter on the commerce department where they call for the dismantling of NOAA. As the head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russel Vought is one of the most powerful men in the executive branch and was one of the main architects of Project 2025.
The "starve the beast" strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast) has been around for a long time and is something that some right wing conservative people want to do. E.g. Norquist's quote that "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.".
As someone else mentioned, this isn't only about improving efficiency of the government but also about it doing less. So things that currently you would be getting from the government you would no longer be getting. You might agree or disagree with this idea.
Predicting what Trump is going to do is not easy. I don't think he really knows himself each day what he will get up to. Mostly draw a lot of attention to himself, seems the main goal. He's doing fantastic on that front. Regarding policy, he is a lot more purposeful vs his previous term and he is pretty closely following the Project 2025 playbook:
Enacting government policy primarily through executive orders is an "interesting" approach. I would say that's not how you want a government to work. Maybe Trump's extreme use of EOs will prompt some reform or maybe it will become the new norm. The other branches of the US government don't seem very interested in actually performing their job.
The congress in 2021 seemed very interested in doing their job but the minority in the Senate did a really good job of obstructing anything and everything using the pocket filibuster.
meta: it's interesting because this kind of disingenuous "Just asking questions. I'd love to know more!" had been pretty effective at shutting down conversation when the topics were abstract. People were inevitably tired of explaining the same things over and over to a contingent that didn't want to understand.
But now that our country is being imminently destroyed by these treacherous looters, there are enough people ready to immediately jump in with straightforward answers that the FUD is a mere speed bump, making the technique pretty useless for shutting down discussion and consensus.
I'm not from your country and don't follow its politics closely. The GP had said that the intent had been clearly written but provided no breadcrumbs for me to research further.
Your country makes up 5% of the worlds population, the other 95% of us are not all following that closely and certainly not trying to commit some form of sabotage by asking for more information.
You're voluntarily in a thread about US politics. If this is your first such thread, reading it would have gotten you the background.
Also, the "I haven't seen" construction is quite dodgy on its own, as it has become common pattern of the neofascists to feign ignorance rather than acknowledge details.
If it was really an innocent one time question, you're certainly not the only one to have been harmed by this destruction.
> The people radicalized to these actions are trying to destroy the government.
The federal government, right? They are in favor of state and local government, but object to federal, which they assert reduces the ability for states to have different rules and regulations that can drive competition amongst different legal frameworks.
This seems unclear. For example, the Department of Transportation just told NY they have to shut down the new (and apparently relatively successful) congestion pricing [1] in NYC. (As with some other things being torn down by the administration, apparently the rules say the government cannot do this.)
So it appears, at least, that the administration doesn't actually respect states' rights and is looking to take over everything.
I'd be interested in understanding the property rights of the roads they were taxing. Were they taxing highways that had some covenants or contract ensuring toll free passage? I'm unfamiliar with the contract made for federally matched roads but it wouldn't surprise me if there's an agreement you can't just turn it into a toll road by calling it a new tax.
“ In a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the federal government has jurisdiction over highways leading to Manhattan and that the additional tolls posed an unfair burden for motorists outside the city.”
However that seems like a dubious claim (Google results report the highways around Manhattan are operated by the state of NY, however New Jersey is adjacent).
I wonder if they could get around that by making the prices balance to zero? Like charge fees to people during congestion times and pay those fees outdistributed equally amongst those who enter during non congestion.
Then there would be no net revenue/toll. The optics would also be far better than green washing a net toll on people driving in from outside the city/state.
Charging people from outside the area so that they are less likely to come in a personal vehicle is one of the direct goals of congestion pricing. It isn't an environmental program, it's a traffic management program and isn't greenwashing anything.
You can call it whatever you like. I didn't say it was an environmental program, it is first and foremost a revenue generation program under a clever guise to dupe towards political leaning of new yorkers.
You can read their own description, they green wash advertising cleaner air, less emissions, etc.
They didn’t need to dupe anyone; the program is indisputably not popular and they implemented it anyway. The two goals of congestion pricing have always been to generate revenue for the MTA and reduce congestion/pollution in Manhattan. They never hid that. Most transit advocates support both of those goals, and the beauty of congestion pricing (as opposed to a revenue-only option like an extra tax on businesses in the congestion zone) is that it can accomplish both at once.
I’d also note that popularity has been going up as everyone sees the benefits immediately and the predictions of a business meltdown turned out not to be true. It feels very similar to the bans on indoor smoking where smokers predicted restaurants and bars would close and the opposite happened.
What is harder to fight against, however, is when they make deals with corrupt officials (looking at you democratic NYC Mayor, Mr Adams) to get what they want: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80yrglnn79o
> They are in favor of state and local government, but object to federal, which they assert reduces the ability for states to have different rules and regulations that can drive competition amongst different legal frameworks.
As demonstrated by efforts to prevent state and local governments from acting independently...
You want to distinguish between favoring federalism VS favoring the policies/culture/etc. of specific states.
So yeah; they are in favor of more state government in lieu of federal, even though they hate certain states’ policies. I think that’s obvious. Now, the question is whether or not they will succeed in handicapping states’ autonomy when they disagree with things. My take is they will try (and have tried), but it isn’t a foregone conclusion that they will succeed. There’s soft power and there’s violence, and I’m optimistic that it will be more the former.
An opposite question is interesting: why not abolish state governments and only have the federal government? I haven’t thought about it deeply so don’t have a strong sense that it would be better than the status quo, though I suspect it might.
Centralization and size comes with inefficiency and slow decision making. It also comes with economies of scale. For something like the Medicare, the economy of scale dominates and it makes much more sense to be federal. When it comes to running schools, there really isn't much economy of scale so it makes much more sense to run it locally.
Economies (and diseconomies) of scale exist, of course, but aren't central to what is the responsibility of the federal government and what is the responsibility of the state governments. That, of course, is laid out rather plainly in the founding legal document of the country.
The Civil War settled that the feds could rule over the explicitly authorized powers of the federal government. In the 30s the feds reneged and decided blatantly unconstitutional stuff like the (later passed) Civil rights act could hold if they just call everything interstate commerce.
When the US falls apart this will be a likely central focus .
CRA under the 1875 version was found unconstitutional per the Civil Rights Cases of the Supreme court [0].
In the 1930s the executive threatened to pack the supreme court and many analogous private/intrastate commerce regulations were allowed federally by this bastardization of 'interstate commerce' by the court. Then they repassed the CRA with yet again stuff found unconstitutional, using their new version of 'interstate commerce' (everything).
The CRA objectively has been found unconstitutional by the Supreme court, and I believe it may be again under the latest generation of the court.
so, probably restating what you said, if someone wanted to pass something like that, a constitutional amendment is the better way since relying on interstate commerce clause is shaky ground... is that right interpretation?
Yesterday, Trump announced he was killing congestion pricing in New York City. A program set up by the state of New York, to help fund infrastructure in New York.
Seems like an issue that should be left to the state, and yet here they are asserting federal authority over it.
I’m not that familiar with US politics but I read that this was more a symbolic move and he actually can’t influence this law since as you pointed out it’s a matter of the New York state. He can announce things all day, which is exactly the strategy - do at least 5 ridiculous things every day and the media/people can’t react fast enough — bury them in shit
He is just a tell is how enablers made all these people sound innocent and their detractors crazy. At this point I believe it was often deliberate strategy. Plus crazy paranoid were actually 100% correct over years.
Like many things in US politics, “it’s complicated.” The program had to get approval from the federal government (which was granted by the Biden administration), it’s now up to the courts if Trump can rescind that approval.
The point is that saying power should go back to the states is really just a talking point conservatives use when it’s convenient for them, not actually a strongheld belief that guides their actions in any way.
Louisiana wants to punish a New York doctor for prescribing medicine. Project 2025 in general wants to ban and criminalize medication abortion nationwide.
If I kept a running list of all the ways conservatives preach states right but don't really practice it, I wouldn't have much time to do anything else.
And "states rights" has been coded language anyway. Refer to Lee Atwater 1981 interview. Now the coded language has focused attention on "DEI", "trans", among other things.
That states' rights were claimed to keep slavery, or any other morally reprehensible thing, does not mean that the concept of states' rights is wrong. It means slavery and other morally reprehensible things are wrong.
Of course, at any given time, there exist a number of issues facing the public over which there is no clear consensus on whether they constitute something morally reprehensible.
You're making the argument that what the federal government decides is right is always or usually the right thing compared to what states are claiming. I challenge you to claim that this is the case for, say, federal law forbidding marijuana versus states allowing it, or as was the case until very recently, enthusiastic support for pediatric gender reassignment from the federal government versus states outlawing it.
They are making the point that "states rights" is empty hypocritical talking point. It is meant to win argument by pretending you care about something you don't.
Everybody knows "state rights" imply conservative policies, but don't apply to anyone else.
> Everybody knows "state rights" imply conservative policies, but don't apply to anyone else.
Is that right? Has there been a widespread backlash on the states' rights grounds against, say, Colorado or Massachusetts legalizing marijuana despite it being classified as a Schedule I drug federally with no acceptable use?
How about sanctuary city or state laws? Those in support of such policies base it on the concept of shared sovereignty between federal vs. state and local governments, i.e. states' rights. So there's clearly liberal or progressive uses of states' rights, in addition to conservative uses.
>You're making the argument that what the federal government decides is right is always or usually the right thing compared to what states are claiming.
Nope. The word I used is "usually." Go back and read it. You're the one who decided to replace that "usually" with "always" and I'm not obligated to play the strawman role for you.
When states make a special case out of states' rights it's usually not for a good reason, otherwise they could just pass state laws. States' rights arguments imply things the Federal government would be opposed to, that states would need to weaken the power of the Federal government to accomplish, usually where regulations or anti-discrimination laws are concerned.
They to have just enough government for them to extract as much wealth as possible. States rights is about them doing whatever they want without interference.
The US had a civil war that its defenders describe as being about "states' rights", with the most important right of all being the ability to literally own other people as property.
Make America Great Again is a about returning to those glory days.
Slavery was never actually banned. The 13th Amendment leaves a Death Star sized loophole.
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I do not find it strange or otherwise see it as a loophole that duly convicted prisoners pay some of their debt to society by being forced to do labor.
It at least hinges on what people are convicted of being things that "deserve" slavery. Not all agree that possession of drugs for personal use meets that. Or performing or having an abortion. What if the government turns full Russia and makes political dissent illegal? Or championing/practicing "non traditional family values" like LGBT?
There is also a moral hazard in being able to earn money on prison labor, as it incentives putting people in prison.
I agree that the moral hazard is there, and it's fraught with potential for abuse[0]. But prison labor also has the potential to teach convicts skills and discipline that would be useful after their sentence.
> Not all agree that possession of drugs for personal use meets that. [...]
I'm not sure if you're saying that there is disagreement in society about what things constitute crimes, or that there should be a difference in how we treat convicted prisoners on what they were convicted on?
On its face, I'm not sure why, say, someone convicted of manslaughter is "deserving" of being made to do labor and someone convicted of, say, felony reckless driving is not, or vice versa. But I'm sure there are arguments to be made in either case.
[0]: Like the "Kids for cash" scandal in Pennsylvania, though I'm not sure if there was a labor component involved there and not just a per-prisoner payment (which is just as bad).
If they were in favor of state and local government, why is the federal government threatening to sue California for admissions in the UC system and demanding that NYC's congestion pricing be ended or else lose federal funding? Why are faculty members at state universities being forced to change their research because it is on a verboten topic?
The idea that Trump, Musk, or anybody involved in leadership of Trump's administration care about state and local government authority is, frankly, fucking ludicrous.
The people radicalized to these actions are trying to destroy the government. They haven't been especially subtle about it in their writing. The ideal outcome is not the same government outcomes but at 70% of the cost. The ideal outcome is the collapse of the federal bureaucracy so that the lords of capital can scoop things up and create their little kingdoms.