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Perhaps because disrupting things was the actual goal, rather than saving money. DOGE was highly effective in harming the entities meant to oversee Musk's companies, stealing information about union organizing and labor complaints, reducing the government's ability to collect taxes, and destroying its regulatory capacity.

Because there wasn't that much to save, compared to the sheer size of the budget? Because it's much easier to destroy than to build, generally? Because it's always been more of an ideological exercise and a revenge vehicle than a real cost-saving venture?

Many of the people they cut were able to negotiate a full year severance, then were hired back as contractors effectively earning double pay.

I don’t buy that it was ever aimed at saving any more than RFK is about running a competent health dept

Because of the sheer idiocy of all involved.

There was no plan, no thought process behind any of the cuts.

Unless they thought appearing to be complete morons would distract from their actual mission of stealing all the Federal data they could.

The whole operation of black hats need to be investigated.

The goal was to disrupt government bureaucracy. Saving money was never the real objective, even though it was marketed that way.

Anyone who knows how to use Excel understands that entitlements and defense are the biggest issue (60%) when it comes to government spending.

Because it was really about serving red meat to the MAGA base. My relatives in Kentucky cheered because they believed the “all those lazy blacks are getting fired” narrative. It’s so strange to me as they are deeply religious and some of the kindest folks I know, but also the most racist.

Seemed like it was more about an ideological purge and possibly exfiltrating data than saving money.

I predicted it would net cost money if you did a full accounting. May end up being true.

Because politics is about short term social media hype and not lasting change. Everybody who has ever studied the budget know that social services, debt payment and the military are the budget. Trying to effect any change with a major overall of these, or massive now broad taxes will not solve the problem.

And politically the right can't increase taxes and the can't serously reform social services either. But likely it would lead to that eventially.

So its literally just two parties fighting over trivial social media wins while debt pill and yearly debt upkeeep spending grows.

The intent was never savings. Hackers and Accountants are completely different specialties. If you send in hackers, the intent is obviously to hack, not conduct forensic accounting. (The inverse would also be true of course)

destroying things is extremely easy. there are typically a few ways for something to be working well and countless ways for it to be broken.

It seems very little could be saved without an act of Congress.

I recall there was an interview of Bessent early on, on the All in One podcast where they laid out the plan for DOGE to cut 1 trillion. I don't think they even came close to a fraction of that.

Even if removing corruption was an actual goal, the big corrupt whales that do exist were/are just like Elon himself, all well-connected and had already paid their bribes to the current regime, making them untouchable.

Politics ensures that nobody will know what was actually saved and lost.

Because the whole thing wasn't actually wanted. They just needed some theatre to make it look like they were fulfilling their campaign promise.

Trying to get a government to reduce its spending from within is stupid and naive.

There is no scenario, no matter who is voted in, where government spending goes down. They just talk about it, and then increase spending on the things they like (e.g. the last "big beautiful bill").

This was the primary cause of the Trump-Musk spat: former promised the latter a cost cutting campaign, but it was just a trick, used only to destroy those parts of the government he disliked like USAID, after which he promptly neutered it and signed a massive spending bill, basically having conned him.

If it has actually been wanted - something that's literally impossible unless it was say created through an Article 5 convention - it would have been effective.

doge went in to crack the internal records of huge government silos, in order to leverage the inevitable evidence of wholsale,corruption, nepotism, vice, and illegal political involvments. and lo and behold, everybody lined up and is doing whatever tumpy says, which will be to hand over, most....but not all, of the stolen money, useing the same mechanisms to move it as before.

I remember people citing the All-In podcast about "you can always cut 10% without affecting things negatively" or something silly like that. Or thinking that $1T/year of cuts is something that's possible without taking out social security and medicare and tons of defense spending.

I can not tell you how much respect I have lost for anybody involved with the All-In podcast. They sold out all credibility for political wins for wanna-be fascists.

These jokers all got lucky, obviously. They can not perform basic analysis of organizations, clearly. What a joke of a result!

I saw first hand the damage that was done by Elon's little purge. I saw people who were actively trying to make the world better - heal the sick, feed the hungry, and help the unfortunate - blindly struck down from doing those goals by a tiny egotistical mans joke of a initiative.

I will personally never purchase or use anything from any of Elon Musk's companies ever again for the rest of my life and I push others to do the same and share their stories. This selfishness from a man with so much money and yet he only uses it for his own personal gain and to hurt others is disgusting.

“If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences—and infer the motivation.”

― Carl Jung

Because what they wanted was to "disrupt" and "saving" wasn't what they wanted.

Evil people, corruption, and very stupid voters.

Hubris, greed, corruption and contempt for four.

2nd law of thermodynamics is what makes destructiveness so costly. It is much easier and cheaper to destroy than to build or rebuild. The Trump administration is devaluing the United States at an alarming rate.

Immune systems of all interested triggered.

Systematic of so much clown techbro thought; idiots only see the obvious nicks and problems -- and even occasional absurdity -- in large institutions, and think they can come in fix everything.

It's just an extension of good ol' Chesterton's fence.

Because that was the point.

If musk, Trump, or any of their allies had any interest in cutting spending, they wouldn't have passed budgets increasing the deficit every chance they've had.

Must got what he wanted: some minor disruption to agencies that regulate him personally, the fear of god put into thousands of federal employees, and ostensibly federal data to help him bust unions.

The side effect of disrupting thousands of normal hard working people's lives it's just icing on the cake for a miserable prick like him, even if he did have to hire most of them back.

But if they could destroy the regulatory state while ALSO doubling the deficit with federal spending on defense, space, and oil, i don't doubt for a second they would do so.

The disruption was the point — it was all distraction while Trump worked on setting up his second term.

A few comments here touching on "disruption" (especially considering SV's historical mantras about "disruption" and "easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission").

So I think a good renaming is in order: Disruption of Government Efficiency

Slows it down to give them time to catch up, especially in this new tech era.

I read Wired in the 90s, I remember the Libertarian Logic.

The best part is "Oh gee, we might doom society, we should think about these things... hmm. OK, guys, let's keep building it."

Fuck it, let's straight up Stalin it, not just remove restrictions but FORCE these fuckers into slave camps building it all out, industrializing (Siliconizing? LLM-izing?) the future landscape.

We've already bent our "conservative principles" in the name of corporate expediency and fascistic tendencies (who doesn't love a little "public/private" co-operation).

The worst part is, most of these people have no principle and are merely opportunistic rent seekers bent on bending the rules for me, not for thee.

Because it was about Elon musk’s companies getting out of being investigated. His pay off for helping Trump.

Biased article behind a paywall.

We all fall into this trap, thinking we can do better than others.

The problem is that Elon Musk has power (in the form of money) and was able to buy his way into the government.

Elon Musk is a smart salesman but that's about it. He has little deep knowledge in a lot of what he does.

I'd be interested who here commenting negatively on DOGE actually has skin in the game (an American taxpayer)

Because "government efficiency" is an oxymoron?

We all knew this would fail. Any leader worth their salt would know massive reorganizations are failures even when they aren’t unconstitutional and worthy of the death penalty.

It was a smash & grab.