DOGE was run like a startup and many startups are run like Sh!t shows with them following the mantra of break things fast ask questions later.

Case in point i know someone at the NIH who in March 2025 wasn't fired with his hordes of colleagues who were. Yet, fast forward a year later he gets a notice saying something like we are sorry but you should've been fired last year so be prepared to be let go at the end of June (2026).

Thankfully i just saw my friend last week as the end of June has passed and now he says they might keep him. Talk about batsh!t insanity for him and his life.

▲

jknoepfler 16 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

▲

Terr_ 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> as a business

This is doubly-bad when the guy at the top's "business" has a nearly 1:1 mapping to the governance of North Korea: An unaccountable dictatorship where the head directly owns everything and cannot be fired for incompetence, he executes/fires people on a whim, and meanwhile relatives and courtiers spend most the time sucking-up and backstabbing to end up with the power when he dies.

Why would any American patriot want to adopt that style? Even the people who sincerely advocate for "government like a business" draw upon a completely different type, one where the CEO is answerable to a board, the board answerable to a shareholders, and most of the shares are publicly circulating.

P.S. We're not even touching whether the business-person sucked at business, which in this case is also quite damning.

▲

aceazzameen 15 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a tangent, but people who advocate for "government like a business" are mental. Businesses want to profit and grow. The government should never be looking to profit off of taxpayers who are already funding the government. It's always a scheme from the wealthy guy to become more wealthy, and they do a good job of getting people to repeat their nonsense.

▲

TitaRusell 14 hours ago | parent [-]

A business has one boss who decides everything and is personally responsible if things go to shit. The employees pack up and leave to get another job.

None of this is applicable to a government- unless any American wants to find out what it means to be a refugee at the Canadian border.

	▲	mothballed 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If you seriously make a go at it you Americans be accepted for asylum in Mexico. There is a guy (Gavin I think? Real lanky nerdy guy) from Washington who was constantly criticizing government officials (and even Mexican ones) that was granted asylum. I also of a guy who showed in in Paraguay, renounced his citizenship to become stateless, and then they just offered him citizenship because they didn't know what to do with him.

▲

16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]