Comment by basscomm

Comment by basscomm 3 days ago

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> The reason I still give them benefit of the doubt on their intentions is...because they did come out and say that 20% of the savings should go back to taxpayers as a refund and that 20% should go directly to reducing the debt. That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention.

I'd rather the government keep the money and use it to pay for the many services that it provides. Like ensuring that I have clean water, unadulterated food, clean air, a functional banking system, healthcare, safe vehicles, making sure that unemployed people don't starve, researching infectious disease remediation, performing scientific research, maintaining national parks, making sure that kids have a baseline education, doing humanitarian work around the globe, and a thousand other things I don't have the time to enumerate.

rzz3 3 days ago

I feel like people lose sight of exactly how ridiculously much money a trillion dollars is. You’re mentioning a bunch of desirable things you’d like the federal government to do, while ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings. You can simultaneously want the government to reduce waste and provide these services. Lately it feels like folks are getting too carried away and becoming “pro government waste” as some type of political flex. Really, the problem is _who_ is doing the reduction and _how_, not _that_ we’re doing it.

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  • basscomm 3 days ago

    > ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings

    Who's ignoring it? Once the problem is identified by someone, you fix it and move on. This already happens.

    $1,300 coffee cups: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/22... Audit of C-17 Spare Parts: https://www.dodig.mil/In-the-Spotlight/Article/3948604/press...

    See also, the myth of the $600 hammer: https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the...

    Trashing whole departments/agencies first and then trying to find all of the 'waste' amongst the wreckage creates more work in the long run when you have to rebuild all of the processes and try to reclaim some portion of the institutional knowledge that got flushed down the toilet for no reason.

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    • rzz3 3 days ago

      In the case of one of my examples, it took someone dragging a bag of bushings to congress. And though these specific examples may have been addressed, the point is there are likely many more in every corner of the government. It needs to be systematically reviewed and prevented; waste like this should never have happened and should never happen again. I’m not at all saying I support DOGE’s methods here, but I do want to eliminate government waste, and I don’t think the existing methods have worked. The national debt is out of control, and I think the reality is 25% of government spending could be eliminated without anyone even noticing a reduction in service.

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      • basscomm 2 days ago

        I guess the question that should be asked if the examples of waste presented thus far are exceptions or if there's just rampant waste everywhere that nobody has been able to find. We have (well, had) a Government Accountability Office that's supposed to be empowered to audit the federal government's spending, and should be able to catch fraud and waste on the scale of billions of dollars. If they're not able to find it, then I can only think of three reasons why that might be: fraud and waste on that scale doesn't exist despite certain outlets constantly insisting that it must be there, it does exist but they're either understaffed or otherwise not empowered to adequately remediate what they do find, or it exists and they're complicit in hiding it.

        I'm sure I'm missing something, I'm no expert by a long shot, but government spending isn't a secret. Budgets get approved by congress and spent by the executive out in the open. Maybe someone interested in curtailing waste could start by auditing budgets? Making sure that the money allocated got spent where it should have and that the budgets weren't padded with unnecessary spending? But that takes a lot of time, effort, and energy, is kind of boring, and wouldn't generate dozens of headlines every day.

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  • EnergyAmy 3 days ago

    Musk doesn't give a shit about any of that waste. People aren't pro government waste, they're anti political grandstanding about meaningless crumbs as a distraction while a literal nazi-saluting fascist eats the rest of the pie.

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    • rzz3 2 days ago

      That’s really the reason for my comment—there’s a fine line, and the person I responded to said something (IIRC) along the lines of “take my money, I don’t care, I just want good government services”, and that can’t be the message. Everyone should be in favor of reducing waste and increasing accountability, and where and how our tax dollars are spent _does_ matter. This just isn’t the way we should be doing it, and the way we were doing it before wasn’t the best answer either. I’m scared that people are going to start being anti-waste-reduction simply because we hate Trump and he’s (claiming to be) pro-waste-reduction.

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      • basscomm a day ago

        I assume you're talking about me. I said that I want the government to keep the money I paid them to provide services that I and 340-odd million other people rely on. You seem to think that means that I want the government to spend as much money as possible. I've never heard anyone argue in good faith that they want the government to spent limitless amounts of money to do those things, but it needs to spend some amount of money to provide services. Providing services for every American is expensive.

        It's not an either/or situation. You can have responsible spending and also services to benefit everyone. Cutting me a check to give me back some of the money I've paid into the system doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you only got the money by destroying the CDC or whatever.

        It would be kind of like the gas company tearing my house down because my windows aren't insulated and then giving me a couple hundred bucks because they technically eliminated the source of the wasted energy

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scottyah 3 days ago

I think that addresses the root issue here- the money is not efficient in getting those things done. It's not even hidden and the freeloaders really seemed to feel no shame since covid (maybe social media is the cause?). It happens all over the world in every organization. Usually companies die off, but the budget just increases for the government.

Of course we don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water, but it's high time for a major course correction. In our government it is very hard to turn the ship around, and motivate people to serve.

I'd much prefer if we could magically motivate the 3/5 of govvies who are in cruise mode to try harder.

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gadflyinyoureye 3 days ago

Should the government get a blank check? If there is waste and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged.

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  • John23832 3 days ago

    > and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged.

    This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue.

    It will create inefficiency. In the best case because it's not how the decades of built up institutional knowledge knows how to get stuff done. If the worst (and most probable) case, because what you're removing is actually needed... and we'll get an "oops sorry" later when the damage is done.

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    • intended 3 days ago

      >This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue.

      Needed to save that line,

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  • xorcist 3 days ago

    Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes. I have seen so many times (in private organizations) clearly inefficient processes getting ripped out, only to be replaced with much more inefficient ones.

    Sometimes there are no shortcuts: You have to know what you're doing. The "This is 'something', therefore we must do it" bit only gets you so far.

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  • basscomm 3 days ago

    Jumping into a complex system and trashing big swathes of it without taking the time to understand why it's there, what it does, and the consequences for destroying it will be, is one of the worst possible ways to 'reduce waste' that I can think of.

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  • daveguy 3 days ago

    Deeming things as waste within days of gaining access to the info is 100% in bad faith. There is no possible way that musk and his minions took the time to find out why anything is the way it is. Nevermind the fact that you don't have to shut anything down to perform an audit. He is going through with a bulldozer and saying "oops" when he destroys institutional knowledge and capabilities. The damage is the point.

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  • EnergyAmy 3 days ago

    This is not how to accomplish that. Musk is looting the government for personal gain and installing lackeys that are loyal to him.

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  • CyrsBel 3 days ago

    You are both correct. It's not an either-or.

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