[myrmidon]

I think it is really important from time to time to shed partisan tendencies and critically review policy initiatives and form a somewhat subjective overpromise/underdeliver judgement (also looking at where, why and how they succeeded or failed).

To me, the whole Doge initiative scores quite poorly in this regard: Initial promises appear not realistic (or even worse: deceptive), while the (preliminary) results are lackluster, too.

My impression is that the vast majority of "savings" was never achieved by promised efficiency gains or elimination of pure waste, but instead simply by cutting projects, i.e. slashing some form of public service or benefit in order to save tax money. Which is obviously inferior.

I think promises along that exact line deserve extreme skepticism: "Simply" slashing regulations/public budget for "easy gains" is just not credible, and if anyone is gonna bring up the same arguments in favor of nuclear power or similar things I'm just gonna label them "liar/idiot" and watch reality endorse my view...

[coffeefirst]

If you wanted to do this for real, your would double the size of 18F (which was doing extraordinary work), and given the Inspectors General a blank check to eliminate fraud. These are both apolitical entities. Frankly the only people this would upset is the legacy government contractors.

So obviously they eliminated one and gutted the other.

[myvoiceismypass]

18F was founded during the Obama administration, so absolutely no one in MAGA-world will ever have considered it apolitical.

One of the many fired IGs last year was investigating Neurolink - so noone in Musk-world will have considered them apolitical either.

Nothing government-related or government-adjacent will ever be broadly accepted as apolitical again in the US, regardless of intent or truth. Its very depressing.

[jdross]

Is that very different from what Joe Gebbia is doing now as chief design officer? Seems to be largely a rebranding of 18F's mission with different people and prioritization

[anthony_d]

> My impression is that the vast majority of "savings" was never achieved by promised efficiency gains or elimination of pure waste, but instead simply by cutting projects, i.e. slashing some form of public service or benefit in order to save tax money. Which is obviously inferior.

That doesn’t seem inferior at all. There’s very little to be gained by doing everything the same but with less money; the only way to make an actual difference is to quit doing the stupid shit that’s expensive. That’s what 90% of the world means by efficiency, i.e. don’t do the things that don’t need done.

[burnt-resistor]

The Georgia ballot theft, the SAVE Act, gerrymandering mandates, and promises of voter intimidation are all about stealing the next election. Oh and PACs and crypto enable bribery.

[zpeti]

> shed partisan tendencies and critically review policy initiatives

You could take a good will attitude to DOGE then. I think many (including Elon) genuinely believed they could cut fraud and waste. But by their own admission, they were only mostly an advisory committee.

You can only do so much. Congress still has authority, and that's how it works, that's how the system is intended. And the reason DOGE hasn't done much is exactly because congress isn't willing to cut spending. It NEVER will. It didn't under any president including Reagan.

So basically you have an ever increasing deficit and spending because the way the political system is setup drives this. In fact, it happens in basically every democracy, so maybe it's just something that happens in democracies.

So - you could call the promise of DOGE lies, but I think they were a lie from Trump and not Elon. I think Trump promised Elon cuts, to get his help in the election, then backtracked, and that's exactly why Elon stormed out, he didn't get what he wanted.

And the US government is still massively overspending. Trump didn't really cut anything.