- Joined
- Oct 14, 2018
- Messages
- 3,790
Regarding efficiency, is there any sense of what is ‘efficient’? Everyone in support of it seems confident it’s easy to determine that. I don’t feel the same. It’s interesting the variability in value systems for determining what should be cut. A lot of efficiency fans for some reason bring up domestic cuts etc but interestingly the main supporters don’t ever bring up reducing weapons funding to the Middle East supporting obvious genocide (Biden exacerbating the problems). Interesting parallels for sure.
Otherwise it’s actually at the front end a good idea by Trump. That is if the structure starts here:
1. If there is a job set with a redundant task, then that makes sense to me for DOGE.
2. If there is a job with a famous politicians kids getting favors then that makes sense for DOGE
3. If there is a way to gauge productivity/efficiency and remove positions that are milking tax payers money and are obviously not even working to what they are being paid for then that is a great task for DOGE.
1 and 3 alone could fairly and slowly cut the right positions regardless of content. I am a huge fan.
Otherwise:
1. There is a major conflict of interest having a rich businessman determining what is and is not efficiency. How is that functionalized to me to determine what is important? Where’s the value system in such a structure? It’s interesting people complain solely about Biden and inefficiency without that massive counterpoint. Long story short: it’s a problem and it takes capitalism to cloud capitalism/feudalism. It’s making us closer to China and their government/tech alignment which is very dangerous.
DOGE is a good idea, but not having more departmental involvement from EPA, other agencies, etc., is dangerously insular. We will see what happens. And this leads to:
2. I read about people laughing at tweets about some specific things getting funded that seem ridiculous to the average Joe in the population.
Specifically, one example laughing about zebra fish and tequila research because of a politicized tweet with zero context. Why is that a candidate for DOGE? How do we know that example isn’t research linking animal response to environmental stimuli to its effects on humans? How do we know it isn’t part of a multi-tiered research set of grants and questions which answers could benefit us (microbe models, animal models, human models, system models)? DOGE should be about efficiency not about cutting environmental work for the sake of cutting to fulfill preconceived notions of conspiracy theorists. Cut based on redundancy, poor work efforts, and government favors. Don’t cut a large chunk of substantive research because of tweet dependent laziness and have zero understanding or experience of the importance that world can bring to us. It’s pretty irresponsible. And I’m making a simple example not as tweet worthy and laughable as it seems. Im sure there’s thousands of comparable examples being radically oversimplified by tweet land and reinforcing all of our general intellectual laziness (including me) to reinforce even a lazier belief system.
3. Be careful about ‘efficiency’ and it’s overemphasis. Many such heavier supporters would have also been on the ideological spectrum that supported the massive cuts to HIV research. In the early-mid 1980s such poor infrastructure as rigorously explained by highly involved researchers in the Coming Plague (failed legislature and response to their warnings) to potentially intervene earlier, especially in the blood banks led to giant hypothetical what if in our society. This would have been deemed inefficient by the current Musk supporters. It would have been labeled the ****** disease back then until it got into the blood banks and the middle class heterosexuals also started getting it in their blood transfusions.
4. Another major what if: the trade off on efficiency and neglected funding that existed for coronavirus surveillance (in the very region it was rumored to originate) in the first place Trump term, too, and focus on laboratory conspiracy theories. It’s fascinating how the western media focused on Chinas lack of response to the pandemic, Trumps response, frivolity of mask probability, etc, and even deviated towards laboratory release/mistake like the movie ´Outbreak’ conspiracies. But there was almost zero media coverage about the removed historical funding for coronavirus surveillance ´PREDICT’ in that region as it was considered ‘pork’ via funding removal of USAID. There was historical funding in place because of the high risk and variability of coronavirus development and high risk of jumping into humans and subsequent infectious disease spread.
Be careful what you wish for, sometimes for the magical ‘’efficiency’. I guess we will never know if continued funding for such surveillance could have prevented such a disaster in so many ways. It’s more convenient not to think that way for people, though.
Read these articles about what was cut:
amp.theguardian.com
And
www.latimes.com
5. Long story short: DOGE is a great idea for the initial bulletin points I mentioned, and if agency leaders are brought into heavily for the decision making. It’s a terrible idea if super big business is still in charge, catering to self reinforced fake free market (lift! Drag! Fire!) nonsense which is masking big tech:government alignment and watered down generalities about which content to cut based on generic conspiracy theorists running the show.
Otherwise it’s actually at the front end a good idea by Trump. That is if the structure starts here:
1. If there is a job set with a redundant task, then that makes sense to me for DOGE.
2. If there is a job with a famous politicians kids getting favors then that makes sense for DOGE
3. If there is a way to gauge productivity/efficiency and remove positions that are milking tax payers money and are obviously not even working to what they are being paid for then that is a great task for DOGE.
1 and 3 alone could fairly and slowly cut the right positions regardless of content. I am a huge fan.
Otherwise:
1. There is a major conflict of interest having a rich businessman determining what is and is not efficiency. How is that functionalized to me to determine what is important? Where’s the value system in such a structure? It’s interesting people complain solely about Biden and inefficiency without that massive counterpoint. Long story short: it’s a problem and it takes capitalism to cloud capitalism/feudalism. It’s making us closer to China and their government/tech alignment which is very dangerous.
DOGE is a good idea, but not having more departmental involvement from EPA, other agencies, etc., is dangerously insular. We will see what happens. And this leads to:
2. I read about people laughing at tweets about some specific things getting funded that seem ridiculous to the average Joe in the population.
Specifically, one example laughing about zebra fish and tequila research because of a politicized tweet with zero context. Why is that a candidate for DOGE? How do we know that example isn’t research linking animal response to environmental stimuli to its effects on humans? How do we know it isn’t part of a multi-tiered research set of grants and questions which answers could benefit us (microbe models, animal models, human models, system models)? DOGE should be about efficiency not about cutting environmental work for the sake of cutting to fulfill preconceived notions of conspiracy theorists. Cut based on redundancy, poor work efforts, and government favors. Don’t cut a large chunk of substantive research because of tweet dependent laziness and have zero understanding or experience of the importance that world can bring to us. It’s pretty irresponsible. And I’m making a simple example not as tweet worthy and laughable as it seems. Im sure there’s thousands of comparable examples being radically oversimplified by tweet land and reinforcing all of our general intellectual laziness (including me) to reinforce even a lazier belief system.
3. Be careful about ‘efficiency’ and it’s overemphasis. Many such heavier supporters would have also been on the ideological spectrum that supported the massive cuts to HIV research. In the early-mid 1980s such poor infrastructure as rigorously explained by highly involved researchers in the Coming Plague (failed legislature and response to their warnings) to potentially intervene earlier, especially in the blood banks led to giant hypothetical what if in our society. This would have been deemed inefficient by the current Musk supporters. It would have been labeled the ****** disease back then until it got into the blood banks and the middle class heterosexuals also started getting it in their blood transfusions.
4. Another major what if: the trade off on efficiency and neglected funding that existed for coronavirus surveillance (in the very region it was rumored to originate) in the first place Trump term, too, and focus on laboratory conspiracy theories. It’s fascinating how the western media focused on Chinas lack of response to the pandemic, Trumps response, frivolity of mask probability, etc, and even deviated towards laboratory release/mistake like the movie ´Outbreak’ conspiracies. But there was almost zero media coverage about the removed historical funding for coronavirus surveillance ´PREDICT’ in that region as it was considered ‘pork’ via funding removal of USAID. There was historical funding in place because of the high risk and variability of coronavirus development and high risk of jumping into humans and subsequent infectious disease spread.
Be careful what you wish for, sometimes for the magical ‘’efficiency’. I guess we will never know if continued funding for such surveillance could have prevented such a disaster in so many ways. It’s more convenient not to think that way for people, though.
Read these articles about what was cut:
Trump administration cut pandemic early warning program in September
Predict project had identified 160 potentially dangerous coronaviruses but was wound down three months before outbreak
And
Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses
The program had worked with labs in Wuhan, China, and around the world to detect deadly viruses that could jump from animals to humans.
www.latimes.com
5. Long story short: DOGE is a great idea for the initial bulletin points I mentioned, and if agency leaders are brought into heavily for the decision making. It’s a terrible idea if super big business is still in charge, catering to self reinforced fake free market (lift! Drag! Fire!) nonsense which is masking big tech:government alignment and watered down generalities about which content to cut based on generic conspiracy theorists running the show.
