>Regardless, it had always seemed pretty clear to me that it was never about efficiency anyway.

Nope, it was about looting the government's data and delivering retribution to perceived enemies (ie: USAID).

The billionaires who don't like regulations and like the idea of a semi-starving population that are forced to work in inhumane conditions for the lowest possible wages. Also, destroying democracy seems to be desired by them as they wish to concentrate all the power into their own hands.

Of all the things a 250 year-old federal government serving hundreds of millions of people across the entire spectrum of services should be run like, "a start-up" is pretty close to the bottom of the list.

I'm impressed we managed to arrive on an idea more detached from the fundamentals of public governance and less worthy of trust than running government "as a business." It takes real, concerted effort to be that thoughtless and shallow.

I've seen both sides of it. It's an unpleasant discussion but the government did drastic overhiring and now there are thousands of people that do DoD/DA-civilian work that are sitting back collecting paychecks while doing almost nothing. A majority of them being retired military that got grandfathered into the positions so to speak but aren't at all qualified to do those jobs.

But how do you fix it? These thousands of people have these jobs that their families depend on for survival. It's not their fault that the government severely messed up their hiring pipelines. If you cut the fat and leave those people out to dry, they certainly are not going to find work anywhere else. It's a lose lose situation.

What’s the sample size here? Sounds like anecdotal evidence to me.

You are largely misinformed, and if you are going to make such a wild (and defaming) claim, perhaps you'd back it up with some evidence.

Not only are they highly skilled, they are completely dedicated. They are straining to meed the needs of researchers right now, with staff volunteering on the weekends, against policy, to help out where they can, because they believe in their mission and are highly motivated and competent at doing it.

Sounds to me like the claim is—with the perspective of somebody who has lived an entire professional life within the federal research award system—that it actually was highly efficient.

So whether or not they were competent, and whether or not they succeeded at finding anything, that’s the true nature that existed to find in the first place.

What’s your basis for the assumption that “the waste” was there to find, particularly on the “burn it all down immediately” scale at which the grantmaking system was “reformed”?

They're saying that the federal government that DOGE "investigated" was already highly efficient.

Elon's goons are mostly a pack of bumbling morons sent on a mission to steal data for private purposes.

And yet well known grift like corn-derived ethanol continue. Looking forward to cutting some welfare queens loose next go around!

And repossessing the fruits of successful Obama era industrial policy (Tesla & SpaceX) for the American people who paid for them too, of course.

You responded to a detailed/narrow example flagged as an example, with a reiteration of the rule.

Worse still, the lack of significant savings DOGE, indicate that the government was generally efficient.

This means that while specific cases may exist, the vigilance of the public and the set up of the US system had kept average performance in bounds.

> What's the evidence for that?

If your mandate is to identify fraud or optimize a system, wouldn’t your success or failure be determined by the number of fraudulent cases you successfully prosecuted and won, as well as the amount of money you were able to recover?

Their god "genius" and leader promised[1] $2 trillion in cuts, if they haven't been achieve their stated goal, does that not mean that majority of the $2 trillion was being put to good use?

Running a government is nothing like running a company, because governments have multiple arms that aren't revenue generating (example the military, food stamps, farmer subsidies) but are key to the successful operation of the government.

This is why it is often a terrible idea to have former CEOs ( who only care about revenue and profits) run governments or government arms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_X6VmsMWiI

A weird question to ask in a thread about the destruction of evidence.

DOGE's record.

> What used to take 3 months is taking 9 or more.

There's no need to do work for the jackbooted thugs at this point.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-fires-operative-admits-gover...

"One of Elon Musk's austerity operatives discovered that the government had far less glut than he'd banked on — and tellingly, admitting as much publicly got him fired."

Well, they sure seemed to fail at finding much meaningful savings to be had. The government seems to be throwing money in the furnace at rates never seen before while actual outcomes seem anywhere from mixed to bad depending on your viewpoints.