This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Some thoughts on the infamous OPM e-mail:
Whether the OPM e-mail asking federal employees to send a five bullet point list of what they achieved in the last week to a OPM e-mail address apparently controlled by Musk and/or @DOGE has turned into an even bigger scissor statement that is usual for US partisan politics. What is going on? (Well, it seems like it was an unconventional proof-of-liveness check on the federal employee base with no plan to read the responses, but I am more interested in the response)
First point - if this came from management, it would be a completely reasonable request. It would be odd if it came from senior management rather than your direct line manager (does a top executive have time to read all those replies?) but not necessarily irregular. It is the kind of thing I can absolutely imagine the CEO doing at a founder-mode startup with a few thousand employees. But it didn't come from management. It came from HR (literally, in the sense that the sender shows up as "HR" in Outlook, and in practice in that it came from OPM, which is effectively HR for the civilian federal government). Indeed, it came from an anonymous role account in HR. (Musk tweeted that the e-mails originated with him, but two courts have ruled, at Musk's request, that Musk is a notorious shitposter and it is legally unreasonable to take a Musk tweet seriously, so they are still legally anonymous)
If I received such an e-mail from HR in my day job at a bank (and I don't think any other large manager-mode organisation would be different), it would be unprofessional to do what the e-mail says and send a quick response cc my direct line manager. In a normal corporate (or, I assume, public sector) environment, you take at least some steps to make sure you don't accidentally become a patsy in someone else's political maneuver against your boss or department. So if I got such an e-mail, my immediate response would be to forward to my line manager* with a note saying something like "Not sure what is going on here - will hold off on replying until you are able to investigate" - and if I did eventually reply, I would agree the reponse with my manager. But the more likely outcome (unless senior management had been warned about the exercise beforehand) would be that the rapid large-scale escalation would lead to the head of the department sending an all-staff e-mail saying "Please don't respond until we have investigated what is going on here" and trying to get hold of someone in the CEO's office urgently. (And struggling to do so, because every senior manager in the organisation would be doing the same thing).
And this is just looking at the office politics perspective, From the infosec angle, this is worse. The e-mail said "don't send classified information", but if you work in a job where you are actually trying to keep secrets, there isn't a short, safe unclassified summary of what you did last week. I am not an expert on the US classification system, but I do know that producing an unclassified summary of classified information (including, for example, the classified information you worked on in the last week) is difficult work that only a few people in each department are qualified to do. The rule in corporate finance departments at banks (where almost all staff have access to market-moving non-public information such as upcoming mergers) and it is "Do not discuss live deals with anyone outside the department, even in general terms." For a corporate financier, sending a meaningful response to that e-mail would be a firing offence. The various department heads (including Trump's own political appointments like Kash Patel) in national security related departments who told their staff not to respond are doing the obviously correct thing.
tl;dr - the freakers-out are right - sending out an all-staff e-mail of this type from HR was irregular, and would have been massively disruptive to any large organisation other than a startup used to working around a hyperactive micromanaging founder-CEO.
* If the rumours are true that Musk is sending these e-mails from a jury-rigged server rather than an official secure US government system, then the e-mail would show up as external in Outlook, and my actual immediate response would be to report it to IT security as a possible phishing attack.
This is not accurate on their part. I heard from someone that, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the “HR” OPM account sent a test email asking federal employees to simply reply “Yes” to confirm that the email address was valid. So they already know which email accounts are valid.
This is not exactly the same as: I am clued in, turned on, and working hard. I imagine there was a week to respond "Yes", but it's different when asked for details on a short deadline. It sends a different signal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
others mentioned , on twitter, that this selects for people who are the best at bullshitting.
how many people can the administration fire? i would like to see the TSA be trimmed, but I would not hold my breath on that.
Seems like a "bureaucracy not measured in bureaucrats" case. Trimming the TSA would just result in having longer waits at airports, as it's not like the TSA would relax its checks just because they are understaffed. You can't fight the bureaucracy ratchet in such a disorganised way - if you only reduce the number of bureaucrats, then the bureaucracy will clamour for more staff, whereas if you only reduce the number of tasks, then the bureaucracy will lobby for more tasks. Good luck telling the electorate that they should accept a 0.0001% greater rate of terrorism, anyway, when the next instance of aviation-related terrorism happens.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I guess adding another layer here is that taking adverse action against people who did not respond to the email would probably be unlawful. There are laws that govern how agencies (including OPM) within the federal government are permitted to collect data or information about government employees. There's already a lawsuit about this particular system and whether it meets the requirements. In that case OPM filed a Privacy Impact Assessment which states, in relevant part:
"Respond to this email or we'll take adverse action against you" is hardly voluntary. Forget about agency heads. The very entity apparently sending the email on Musk's behalf has to repudiate the consequences he described or, uh, admit they lied to a federal court?
More options
Context Copy link
Public servants have the pleasure of serving outside of the strictures of capitalism. The park service guy whose job it is to tell tourists about the flowers every day has an absurd privilege that this is what his job gets to be.
The idea that these people are seething THIS much about simply being asked what they do is infuriating to me. The American taxpayers work as de facto indentured servants for almost a third of their working lives to pay the salaries of these people. The balls for them to freak out and do these petty protests (hang a flag from the top of El Capitan) is ridiculous and embarrassing.
You’re a public servant. If you don’t want to be accountable to the actual president of the United States, then go try your luck getting a job telling people about the flowers in the private sector. You might be surprised at how many jobs there are for that with a typical HR structure (my guess is: 0. The closest would be working as a grounds keeper for some oligarchs garden, maybe?)
I’m pretty much here. I don’t understand just why these people are so allergic to the idea of having to prove to representatives of the elected government that they did five productive things in a week. Like how out of touch are they, that they don’t think they need to answer a question that most people with private sector jobs have to answer — what is it you actually do here, any why should you continue to get a paycheck from us. Rest assured, for even the lowest employee of any private business, if they are only doing 5 things in an entire week, they would be laid off as soon as possible. It’s an absurdly low standard. I think in most jobs if you only did five things a day, you’d be out. That’s all the public wants— they want everyone in the public sector to actually be held to some standard of actual productive work. We’re paying for it, and its unreasonable that they don’t think they need to do anything.
I don't know about your workplace, but I've never had a job where I had to prove that to HR (the rough private sector equivalent of OPM here) or shareholders (the rough private sector equivalent of the "public" here) directly. That's always been strictly between me and my direct management.
Not in a formal sense, but managers are held to justifying every employee, and yes, employees do have to sometimes write up their own job descriptions to send to HR. Other times, your direct supervisor informs HR of what tasks you are doing. The only really unusual thing is that the employee is asked to send that information directly to DOGE, and that there aren’t these kinds of job audits happening regularly (which is why DOGE is necessary). The interesting bit is that not only are the employees shocked by the demand that they show some form of actual productivity, but their immediate supervisors are telling them not to comply. If there’s a giant red flag of “these people know their employees do shit all all day” it’s them saying “don’t you dare tell DOGE what you do all day.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
yeah, but the upside is limited. no 'exits' or huge bonusses with park job. most of the waste is not from these jobs; it's medical costs when people get sick and cannot pay, for example. that is a big one.
I wouldn't call that a 'waste', per se, if the medical services billed for are needed by the patient and actually provided to them. (If doctors are getting paid for procedures that were never performed, on patients who never existed, throw the Physicians' Desk Reference at them.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're welcome to apply if it's such a good deal. Well, you aren't, because land management is in a hiring freeze, but you would have been before Jan 20.
If you are a non-minority non-veteran, those jobs are all but closed to you.
Somebody forgot to tell me or damn near everyone I work with, I guess. (Quite a few Mexicans, but there are a lot of Mexicans living around here in general and working outside around here specifically.).
I won't say affirmative action in government land management hiring has never happened, but it's massively overblown in online discussions by people who think it's called the National Forest Service, don't know the difference between district rangers, LEO rangers, interp rangers, and backcountry rangers, have never submitted an application or visited a potential duty station or Googled "how to write a resume for USAjobs", etc. etc.
I'm glad to see the Space Force has begun recruitment, and avoided the accusations of ripping off 40k's Space Marines in favor of poaching Airborne infantry.
(I presume this isn't as exciting as it sounds haha)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I work in a giant corporation. If HR tried to send this email, my senior management would (politely) blow a hole in them so large, the crater would be visible from space.
Kash and Gabbard had it right: "thanks OPM, we will manage our own".
Obviously the answer is send a troll email
yeah this is a ham-fisted way of doing it
More options
Context Copy link
And honestly the only response anyone thinking through should have expected. Institutional power is legal authority + budget + manpower. An institution like OPM is only one of those.
One better-
Do, that, but-
Reply All
In an email with a header that starts "DO NOT REPLY ALL"
To the entire government.
(Yes, I know that's not technically possible... but.)
More options
Context Copy link
This is a bad analogy. This email is not HR department going rogue; it’s HR department executing a project that was mandated by CEO, and under a clear and explicit coordination with said CEO. Your senior management would not resist the HR in these circumstances.
Also, only a small fraction of government employees have security clearance, and if you lie to your employer about your work being classified when it’s not to obstruct them, it is grounds for disciplinary proceedings.
The flipside is that HR would, after getting the mandate from the CEO, would never send it before coordinating with my senior management.
Indeed, in the model of "this is a CEO-mandated data gathering activity", I'd have expected the heads of the various agencies to write their own email: "Hi Team, as per the direction of {CEO} our HR team to do {whatever it is}. Shortly you will receive an email about {PROJECT}, please do your best to help {HR TEAM} complete this important activity".
The fact that Kash and Gabbard (and Bondi?) ended up writing the exact opposite means that the project very apparently doesn't appear to have any such mandate. And, if we're being honest, that's not out of Trump's personality to do -- to tell subordinate 1 to go do something without telling subordinates 2,3,4 to support 1.
There are a large number of legitimate reasons to redact activity besides security clearances.
But yes, withholding it without a reason from a program or project is malfeasance.
Another issue in this context is you need the management alignment to warn against phishing emails.
If you demand all employees do what emails that say they are from HR demand be done or else be fired if they don't, you are going to have a lot of employees that do what emails that say they are from HR demand be done on fear of being fired if they don't.
Which is an excellent way to gain malware and lose information to scammers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This makes me wonder about a tangential question: what fraction of federal workers use their email on a daily basis? It seems a very desk-jockey centric view to send out a bulk email and expect all employees to respond in days.
What about the park rangers in remote places: I've been to National Park offices that didn't take credit cards because they were mostly off-grid within the last couple years. Wildland firefighters? Do USPS mail carriers have work email? TSA agents? Or anyone taking a whole week of vacation? There are whole classes of useful (well, we can debate the TSA separately) jobs that involve showing up, doing the work, and calling it a day without ever sitting at a desk deliberately taking time to answer emails on a daily basis, and government-wide emails seem unlikely to be a good medium to reach everyone on their levels.
At big institutions even the janitor has a work email and checks it regularly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is such a non-issue in my opinion. The correct analogy would be that you receive a phone call directly from the CEO's deputy, where he verifies his identity, and tells you "you're about to receive an email saying...". In such a situation, I imagine the calculus would be different. Reporting it as a phishing attack would be malicious compliance or outright disruptive and you should expect to be on the CEO/deputy's shit list.
I'm sure there are a lots of things DOGE intends to do with this special project. Identifying the most disruptive federal employees is hopefully at the top of this list. The best strategy for any fed employee is to keep their head down and get lost in the hundreds of thousands of other low level fed workers. The email is brilliant because this stuff is like catnip to the most ideological of trump's enemies. They literally cant resist fighting back and "Resisting". It's truly a brilliant move.
If that email didn't copy at least 1 person direct management chain, it would be extremely irregular.
The main reason, of course, is that if the CEO or his deputy wanted me to do something, he would want to direct my management chain to make that happen and to supervise it and to remove any roadblocks.
My guess is that part of the idea is to route around management. Presumably do-nothing employees are already known to their managers, but have been receiving some sort of protection for years.
Which is a recipe for failure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Depends on if the CEOs deputy is in my management chain. If the CEO asks me for a status report it's weird, but sure, he gets it. But if e.g. the VP of a division not my own sends it, that's a different question.
More options
Context Copy link
Eeeeeeh. I'm generally pro-DOGE, but I don't think you appreciate the justified paranoia of the average federal employee or contractor. Because the relentless phishing attempts are truly out of this world. And it's not beyond the capabilities of our adversaries to take whatever email DOGE is sending out, and then create a phishing template out of it. The fact that Elon tweets so damned much about everything he's doing just makes this all the easier.
Add to that the fact that they get training monthly about cyber security best practices, usually with an emphasis on phishing. Add to that the typical level of incompetence in the government.
Thankfully this had nothing to do with national secrets, but I was at a federally museum in DC once. I had to scan a QR code to pull up the webpage to pay for tickets to a specific exhibit. I had a shitty old phone with a 3rd party QR scanner. Unknown to me, since I used it so rarely, the QR scanner had been turned into malware. I scanned the code, and instead of giving me the URL it represented, an ad appeared pretending to be the link I scanned. I only know this in retrospect. It took me to a suspicious looking website asking me to sign up for something with my credit card. Doubtful, I showed the person at the desk with the QR code directing people how to buy tickets. They squinted at it for a moment, and then confidently told me it was the correct website. It wasn't, it stole my credit card, I didn't get tickets, and they just shrugged. I had even showed them the website twice thinking that it really didn't look right. I should have trusted my gut, but my wife was riding my ass to stop being paranoid and just get the tickets already before they sell out, and our kid was hungry and bored. It was a frustrating lesson in trusting my gut and ignoring everything else.
I get phishing emails as a contractor literally every day. I work at a small company. I know literally everybody in the company. I know the people in these emails are fictitious. Sometimes I get emails "from" people who actually work at the company asking for shit it's nonsensical for them to ever ask for, with a replyto that's bullshit, or some url shortening link that they'd never actually use. Or other shenanigans. It never ends. I'd say I'd seen it all, but once or twice a year they come up with something new that really gives me pause.
Eventually you just get worn down, and you start to ignore everything that isn't from a known point of contact, preferably not even over email. Slack is preferred in my organization.
Ideally this is the sort of thing cryptographic signatures are supposed to be good for. "Email from the CEO asking us to buy gift cards? Did he sign it with a valid RSA key that is signed by our CA? No? Then I'll just wait for clarification."
Even though much of the infrastructure for this exists in the large organization I work in, it doesn't get used for the broadcast emails that go to everyone (actually, a small subset are, but only one department seems to care), even though it would seemingly be useful. But I suppose the crypto dream of the '90s will always be "the future" because
normiesnon-nerds don't understand or appreciate it.More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just for the record, I work for the federal government and what you are wondering about is exactly what happened. Some of us got the email, others didn't, we all requested clarification from our supervisor, who immediately said "everyone hold up until I figure out what is going on." The commander said the same thing shortly thereafter, and about twenty four hours later we received the directive from very high up in the chain of command to not respond to the email at this time.
Exactly why I am feeling bearish on Trump. Internal enemies, exactly the issue his first term, seem to not have been dealt with. His underlings, perhaps even one personally chosen by him (EDIT: like Gabbard), overriding his will.
It's not internal enemies. What the fuck am I supposed with an email from "hr@opm.gov" that has never emailed me before? Asking clarification from my chain of command is the right and proper thing to do. If I had seen the email prior to all the news discussion, I would have assumed it was a phishing scam. The entire project was amateur hour from Elon.
I don't think @some was saying you were an "internal enemy" for sending it up the chain; they were talking about whoever gave the "directive from very high up" to ignore the email even after some time had passed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, DOGE efforts are highly irregular, and massively disruptive to government agencies. That’s kinda the point. Your analysis of the email thing is somewhat superfluous, because we already knew that the DOGE exists precisely to get the government out of the ruts it’s been stuck following. And, of course, nobody is surprised that many employees don’t like it.
Sounds like an attempt at percussive maintenance. I thought the whole point of DOGE was to get a team of smart outsiders led by a certified genius to fix government inefficiency - this is the opposite.
How do you know that this is opposite? How do you know that it is not the best, or even not a good way to tackle this problem? This sort of argument would be more convincing if there was an alternative way of going about doing this that was clearly better. Do you know any? I don’t. On the other hand, I know that Elon Musk has a track record of using very similar procedures across his companies, and in these cases, they apparently have been very successful.
I think that we will find out quite soon whether this was a good plan or not.
More options
Context Copy link
...
What do you think a 'certified genius' leading a team of 'smart outsiders' fixing government efficiency should look like?
I'm not sure, but I don't think it would all that distinguishable from what we are observing.
The guy already tested this approach in his Twitter takeover, it obviously worked (i.e. made Twitter VASTLY more efficient) there despite him having to adjust course a few times.
More options
Context Copy link
There's a great Patio11 Twitter thread about the repeated failures of government payroll modernization inititives.
You can't "play by the rules" and get anything done. Every inefficiency is someone's personal cutout. The agency will not simply allow DOGE to cut waste. DOGE has to force the agency to do it.
The best way to do that would be to devise the appropriate plan and then get the head of the agency, the one selected by Trump, to supervise and execute it.
DOGE has to force the agency to do it and the worst conceivable way to force it would be by not having the direct leadership of the agency on board.
I feel that 'appropriate plan' is hiding a gargantuan amount of assumptions where you ask the civil service to reduce headcount and they return to you and say that they need to hire more. It's a Yes, Minister bit, but it would be exactly what would happen. If the civil service had the ability to de-bloat itself we wouldn't have a ketamine-fueled billionaire taking a chainsaw to the institutions. There is no 'best way' to do it: you're going to be Washington Monument'd for a papercut, you might as well go for the head.
I mean, there is this institution called Congress that can set funding and headcount and whatnot. In this respect, the Presidency is much unlike a modern CEO who has both supervisory and fiscal authority.
When the dust settles, if this all fails, the blame will be placed on the blob rather than on the ham-fisted execution. So it goes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not sure they are necessarily at odds. Musk seems pretty famous for prioritizing speed over getting things right the first time and yet this doesn't stop him from not only getting things right but getting them right faster than others. For instance, IIRC he spent millions on complex machinery for Starship before deciding that it should be made out of stainless steel and had to basically eat the loss; Starship is still poised to be the heaviest-lift reusable rocket ever built at a time when other reusable rockets are still struggling to compete with Starship's smaller predecessors.
Anyway, I don't take for granted that Musk is necessarily making the best decisions or the right ones in his newest venture, but I also don't think that "smart outsiders led by a certified genius" and "percussive maintenance" are at odds inherently.
OK, I've been a bit negative about this elsewhere in the thread, but this is understandable.
Still, if DOGE are prioritizing speed over getting things right, then it has to be open to feedback in order to get on the right track, even if it means eating the L. Much of the criticism here can be reframed that way -- hey they are quickly iterating and look, here's a strategy that didn't work.
Open to feedback from who though?
Should he take feedback from Democrats who want the project to fail? Federal employees losing their do-nothing job? Random internet commenters who've never run a lemonade stand? Presumably, Elon is taking feedback from people who he trusts.
I'm kind of in the awkward position of thinking "Gee, this looks bad", but then realizing that there's a reason where Elon is where he is and I'm not. I wouldn't bet against him.
Oh sure. But part of that is "Elon is willing to do the wrong thing in order to more quickly iterate to find the right thing".
That is not at all contradictory to the thought of "gee this looks wrong".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, 100%. And it sounds like Elon is probably getting said feedback by the way agency directors are handling it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a huge fan of this Musk philosophy in his engineering ventures. Testing often-too-flawed engineering ideas as fast as you can is much cheaper and much faster than trying to come up with something flawless on the first try, and seemingly-ironically it tends to give you a less flawed final product too. I'm not sure how well that works with people rather than objects The fourth Falcon 1 wasn't working while scared that mistakes had been made that blew up the first three. The Falcon 9 landing engines weren't going to change careers because SpaceX tried out parachutes first. The machine-welded stainless steel Starship tanks aren't going to quit and find a job where composite tanks and hand-welded steel tanks don't get abused and wrecked.
I'm not sure how well the philosophy works with people. Federal government work in many cases is seen as a tradeoff: lower compensation than equivalent skills would get you in the private sector, but with better job security to make up for it. If he significantly cuts headcount without cutting output (or if Congress follows up with more deliberate cuts) then maybe making that deal worse is still fine? We'll have fewer interested applicants, but we'll also have fewer jobs we need to fill, so we won't have to raise pay to compensate for the drop in supply? But this isn't like an engineering experiment where the experimenter is the only one who learns something and failure is just one of the things we can learn; here the experimentees are learning too and failure can have more lasting consequences.
The DC suburbs are the richest in the country. What part of that indicates lower compensation?
It seems more like, instead of lower compensation, it's simply lower standards, and the job security incentivizes the layabouts, the malingerers, and the otherwise unsuitable who could not command anywhere near the same remuneration anywhere else.
The DC suburbs are indeed very rich relative to a lot of the country, but it's not the federal employees who are holding up that average. The most a typical federal employee can make in DC is $191,900 as a GS15 Step 7-10 (note that $191,900 is a hard cap government wide and DC has one of the highest locality pay adjustments of any city in the country). That's a great salary by most standards, but bear in mind that GS15 positions are rare (most feds will retire never having reached a GS15 position) and you may gain one step a year after earning the position (OPM claims it takes on average 18 years to reach Step 10).
On top of that, as you say the DC suburbs are some of the richest in the country, and it's consequently incredibly expensive to live here. So while that $191,900 looks good, it's just getting into the range where you could comfortably buy a non-"fixer upper" house inside the Beltway without needing a contribution from your spouse's salary.
There are numerous industries in DC where you could make more with less experience like tech, law, defense contracting, lobbying, general federal contracting etc. Consider that those last three are all industries whose existence is predicated on their ability to suckle from the federal teat. If there's any villain in the story of modern government inefficiency I'd suggest we look at the contractors before we start vilifying the feds.
Federal pay scale for DC: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2024/DCB.pdf
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, yes, yes! People aren't engineering, although sometimes similar principles may apply.
It's interesting, low government pay is a complaint I've heard articulated before, and I think there might actually be something to substantially slashing personnel roles while increasing personnel pay.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Tulsi Gabbard is the latest official to tell her employees to ignore the email.
Musk is pushing his luck, right? It's only been a month and cracks are already forming among administration officials.
It has to catch up to him at some point. He's playing from the Tiberius Gracchus playbook. Either he will be assassinated by an insane person or the next Democratic administration will put him in solitary.
But imagine betting on black and winning every time 10 times in a row. At some point you must think you have plot armor.
I just hope he can defeat the blob before they inevitably get him.
In terms of his strategy, I think both he and Trump and throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. If they meet resistance, they move on, but they are relying on their greater energy and competency to overwhelm the defenses of the other side. They know they have 2 years to do this, 4 years max. The Trump coalition is unstable without the great man. No one can speak to the rubes like he can. So time is of the essence. And it's why the preferred strategy for the other side is delay. "Of course we want to increase government efficiency, but we just need to do it the right way", says the party that obviously doesn't want to increase efficiency.
Gabbard is not the blob, is she? I thought we were all bullish on her.
If someone with your values is pushing back on you, maybe this is one instance for actual mistake theory.
More options
Context Copy link
Not just that, but betting exponentially increasing amounts on black and winning while crowds of people are insisting that you'd be stupid not to quit or stupid not to bet on red.
I fear he's currently spiraling on psychoactive drugs or something, but trying to picture things from his point of view I don't see how someone with that personal history can manage to pull himself out of making mistakes like that before it's too late. Hypothetically, if you're Musk and you think extra ketamine just gets rid of those damn depressive periods, but people are trying to tell you that they're also making your manic periods reckless, why should you listen to them? Ignoring the naysayers always worked great before!
Ketamine has merit for treatment resistant depression. Now, I don't know what it would do for someone who is bipolar (Musk has claimed, and then denied, having it), but as drugs to try to solve your mental health concerns, there are worse.
I do expect that whatever he does want to use, recreational or otherwise, he has the best doctors money can buy nominally overseeing it. Not that he necessarily listens to them.
More options
Context Copy link
If he is on drugs, they are working great.
I recently learned more about xAI built Colossus, the supercluster that trained Grok3. It's amazing, and probably only Musk could do it in such a short time. Grok went from zero to top or near top in less than 2 years. And xAI is his like third or fourth most important project after SpaceX, DOGE, and Tesla.
Certainly this superhuman level of exertion isn't possible for much longer, but I'd never bet against him. It feels more and more that we're all just NPCs in whatever simulation he created.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link