It is unfortunate but most users here are just partizans fueled with propaganda. I do not remember this place being such an echo chamber 10 years ago...
We don't know if they're actually cutting waste here. DOGE has already had to do a massive climb-down from saving $1000B to saving $105B, but most of that $105B has not been shown to be true. Actual cuts may only amount to a few billion.
Do we even have a way of estimating the billions it will cost to resecuritize our infrastructure? What about the cost in lost soft power? The total knock on effect in loss to the economy for not subsidizing basic research, that led to the U.S. being a major power in medicine & pharma? This is the very definition of penny-wise–pound-foolish.
How would you know it is actual waste? This government has a track record of cutting things regardless of their importance, so you can't rely on the fact they did it alone, so what is your source?
Won't even have to wait that long. Elon will be stepping down at the end of his special employee tenure in a month or two in which he expects to save $1T.
Nestle deliberately poisoned baby formula with fake protein to fool third world countries testing it. Malnourishing infants and causing deaths on what shouldn’t have to be a regulated industry in a sane world.
Their president also publicly stated water is not a human right, implying we should let people die if they can’t purchase water from capitalists.
Monsanto will sue you after their “patented” seeds float onto your field and germinate, basically leaving you no options besides using their seed after their local lobbying manipulated the courts to their side.
They're not, they're saying that GP imagines genuine waste-saving will happen, when in fact it's more likely to be fabricated "waste" conjured up by Elmo and his army of teenagers.
I don't totally trust this DOGE crew and think we should keep a hawks eye on them but the whole "they are cutting waste so they can funnel the money to themselves!" conspiracy theories making the rounds are pretty bizarre... And to what end, aren't many of these people already extremely wealthy? I sure hope I'm wrong.
> $5.3 trillion in deficit-financed tax cuts (the combination of $3.8 trillion of tax cuts assumed to be “costless” under a current policy baseline plus $1.5 trillion in additional deficits permitted), deficit increases of $521 billion on defense and immigration spending, a minimum of $4 billion in spending cuts, and an increase in the debt limit of up to $5 trillion.
So savings plus new borrowing will be funded to tax cuts, which will likely prioritize those already on higher incomes, and corporations.
If you have to explain your conspiracy theory with "the majority of these people suffers from the same special kind of neuroticism", I suggest you get back to your whiteboard.
Or you can keep living in a Disney reality where uncle Scrooges are the norm and not the exception.
I think you might be misunderstanding op's comment. "Because the amoral drive for extreme wealth doesn't stop at a certain level of wealth" is a statement that I read on its face. One does not need to reach for "conspiracy" as a way to explain the behavior of people faced with an opportunity to acquire more money: just look at the 5-6 posts making the same point in this very sub-thread. Did you miss those or did you mean to post this reply somewhere else? Money is a huge motivator for many people.
Nothing misunderstood here. Only someone seriously naïve or disingenuous would arrive at the conclusion that money is the main drive of such people who have already so much that they don't know what to do with it. Especially without proofs, as a "this can only be it!" position.
I'd rather believe wanting power for power's sake than this cartoon idea of an old duck diving into a pool of well-polished coins.
Truth is that beyond a few truly neurotic exceptions, the obscenely rich do use their money. Just not all in supercars and yachts, but also to influence what they can.
> And to what end, aren't many of these people already extremely wealthy?
When's the last time you heard a billionaire say, "I've got enough money I don't need to get any more" before they're very old and looking to burnish their image with charity work?! If they were the kind of person to be ok with more money than they could spend in 10 lifetimes they wouldn't be billionaires in the first place, at least not multibillionaires.
> And to what end, aren't many of these people already extremely wealthy?
I don't know, I really don't know. To this day I can't imagine the day I become a president of a big country I tell my citizens "BUY MY COINS AND THOSE OF MY WIFE!". It's difficult to imagine on so many levels. But yet this guy is doing it. So no conspiracy theory is too weird to at this point.
But if China starts importing immigrants, it will be just another shithole. Their quality and success come from their own population. Importing foreigners is just poisoning yourself your culture and future.
No one doubts his abilities, and reasonable people are grateful for his work with DOGE and support of free speech. Unfortunately, this platform has become an echo chamber for mainstream media, merely repeating news and links from sources like verge/bbc/politico etc. This is just a bias in the user groups. Still, we should hopefully put politics aside and focus on more tech related subject in this website :)
"What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
I am thankful that President Trump is taking a stance against genocide in SA and actually doing something good to help Afrikaners.
Just because you do not like the information surfacing and how they have used the labor of tax payers to support and fund totally ridiculous and/or illegal activities both in US and overseas, does not make these "findings" less important. I am surprised how many people are approaching this in such a partisan way, even in a place like Hacker News.
