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seawasp Yes, alas, still about the ongoing disaster...
We are seeing Musk and his DOGE-pack working to "cut down" government in the same way I might slash my way through underbrush with a machete -- inexpertly, indiscriminately, with neither knowledge nor much care about exactly what was in the way, only that I got through it.
Sadly, there are people out there cheering this on, and one of the common refrains is that the Federal government is too big, and too big by such a factor that it's no longer possible to reduce it by any controlled means; it's rotten to the foundations and only ripping stuff out wholesale will allow for it to be reduced to what they see as a manageable and reasonable size.
In many cases, I simply don't agree; a lot of the people making these assertions are the idiots who like to chant "taxation is theft" and try to pretend they've earned everything in their lives through Hard Work (TM), and don't depend on "Society" to support them. Note, I *WAS* one of those idiots for DECADES, an actual Randian Objectivist Libertarian, so I know EXACTLY how that goes. But in fact, that's a completely different discussion, one for later.
The one for now is that even if you find that your apartment building IS, in fact, rotten to the foundations, you don't just instantly rip it down indiscriminately. You get everyone OUT of the building first, and into somewhere else that will provide them with the shelter and such that they need, before you tear stuff down and start to figure out what will be built to replace it.
The only people who DON'T do that... are people who aren't living in the building, and who don't care at all about those who do.
The US Government is a source of support for many millions of people. Some of that is obvious and direct -- everyone who WORKS for the government. Others are those receiving Social Security, or vital medical care through Medicaid or Medicare, or food through WIC and SNAP, et cetera.
DOGE's approach is to treat everything like a corporate takeover -- go in, strip down, find the core that's actually functional and then make that into the center of all operations.
Government's job is STABILITY. It's not SUPPOSED to be a business. The things the government does best are things that are *diffuse* in their benefits to those living in the society. Providing a military defense in case of invasion -- that's not useful to people day-to-day, it's only useful if and when, and even when in use, most people hope never to see it in action except in movies. Providing justice systems of laws and regulations -- again, most people hope NOT to have to deal with this, but the benefits of having well-regulated commerce and law enforcement are spread throughout society. All of the things government SHOULD do are of this nature -- something that's really NOT suited to businesses, because it's not something with a decent ROI value proposition for a specific market. Keeping people healthy helps ALL businesses, for instance, but the benefit for any individual case is so diffuse and hard to extract that no real business can make use of that; at best, they can make use of it to DENY benefits.
People trying to treat government as a business don't have the first understanding of what they're doing, and people like Musk and his team are of the sort who refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE that they have no understanding. They are stupid in the most deliberate possible way, refusing to grasp that they started OUT going down the wrong path, and that this means that every single choice they make afterwards is still wrong.
More, of course, they're cruel, either knowingly or again through deliberate ignorance. When people like Musk and Trump and such say people may have to "suffer", I hear Shrek's Farquaad: "Some of you may die... but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."
They aren't going to suffer. Even if they manage to incompetently bring down civilization, they won't suffer until everyone else is done. And to me, that means they shouldn't be having much say in what's happening. If you don't care about the apartment building and the people in it, then let people who DO carefully disassemble it without killing half the population.
No, I don't care how worried they are about "the deficit", because -- oddly -- it doesn't seem to matter to them when they're the ones increasing it, and it's not something someone's gonna come up tomorrow and demand we repay. There's no guy named Guido who's gonna break the US' legs for not paying up.
We have responsibility, time, and obligations to meet. Even if one were to concede that Social Security and such were all a bad idea, the solution isn't either right or appropriate to basically just start slashing away and let millions of people crash and burn. It's the job of the government to figure out how to slowly change it over WITHOUT destroying the lives of the citizens.
Right now, we have a guy in the basement with sledgehammers, chainsaws, and dynamite, and no plan to even let people know when the whole place will fall in.
We are seeing Musk and his DOGE-pack working to "cut down" government in the same way I might slash my way through underbrush with a machete -- inexpertly, indiscriminately, with neither knowledge nor much care about exactly what was in the way, only that I got through it.
Sadly, there are people out there cheering this on, and one of the common refrains is that the Federal government is too big, and too big by such a factor that it's no longer possible to reduce it by any controlled means; it's rotten to the foundations and only ripping stuff out wholesale will allow for it to be reduced to what they see as a manageable and reasonable size.
In many cases, I simply don't agree; a lot of the people making these assertions are the idiots who like to chant "taxation is theft" and try to pretend they've earned everything in their lives through Hard Work (TM), and don't depend on "Society" to support them. Note, I *WAS* one of those idiots for DECADES, an actual Randian Objectivist Libertarian, so I know EXACTLY how that goes. But in fact, that's a completely different discussion, one for later.
The one for now is that even if you find that your apartment building IS, in fact, rotten to the foundations, you don't just instantly rip it down indiscriminately. You get everyone OUT of the building first, and into somewhere else that will provide them with the shelter and such that they need, before you tear stuff down and start to figure out what will be built to replace it.
The only people who DON'T do that... are people who aren't living in the building, and who don't care at all about those who do.
The US Government is a source of support for many millions of people. Some of that is obvious and direct -- everyone who WORKS for the government. Others are those receiving Social Security, or vital medical care through Medicaid or Medicare, or food through WIC and SNAP, et cetera.
DOGE's approach is to treat everything like a corporate takeover -- go in, strip down, find the core that's actually functional and then make that into the center of all operations.
Government's job is STABILITY. It's not SUPPOSED to be a business. The things the government does best are things that are *diffuse* in their benefits to those living in the society. Providing a military defense in case of invasion -- that's not useful to people day-to-day, it's only useful if and when, and even when in use, most people hope never to see it in action except in movies. Providing justice systems of laws and regulations -- again, most people hope NOT to have to deal with this, but the benefits of having well-regulated commerce and law enforcement are spread throughout society. All of the things government SHOULD do are of this nature -- something that's really NOT suited to businesses, because it's not something with a decent ROI value proposition for a specific market. Keeping people healthy helps ALL businesses, for instance, but the benefit for any individual case is so diffuse and hard to extract that no real business can make use of that; at best, they can make use of it to DENY benefits.
People trying to treat government as a business don't have the first understanding of what they're doing, and people like Musk and his team are of the sort who refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE that they have no understanding. They are stupid in the most deliberate possible way, refusing to grasp that they started OUT going down the wrong path, and that this means that every single choice they make afterwards is still wrong.
More, of course, they're cruel, either knowingly or again through deliberate ignorance. When people like Musk and Trump and such say people may have to "suffer", I hear Shrek's Farquaad: "Some of you may die... but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."
They aren't going to suffer. Even if they manage to incompetently bring down civilization, they won't suffer until everyone else is done. And to me, that means they shouldn't be having much say in what's happening. If you don't care about the apartment building and the people in it, then let people who DO carefully disassemble it without killing half the population.
No, I don't care how worried they are about "the deficit", because -- oddly -- it doesn't seem to matter to them when they're the ones increasing it, and it's not something someone's gonna come up tomorrow and demand we repay. There's no guy named Guido who's gonna break the US' legs for not paying up.
We have responsibility, time, and obligations to meet. Even if one were to concede that Social Security and such were all a bad idea, the solution isn't either right or appropriate to basically just start slashing away and let millions of people crash and burn. It's the job of the government to figure out how to slowly change it over WITHOUT destroying the lives of the citizens.
Right now, we have a guy in the basement with sledgehammers, chainsaws, and dynamite, and no plan to even let people know when the whole place will fall in.
