This is running here as a story about cybersecurity, but it's apparently every advisory committee at DHS; there were a bunch of them, mostly not about technology; for instance, the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee.
Maybe I've been burned lately and my faith in humanity is ebbing but I'm hoping the reference to that specific committee isn't about "government sounds stupid if you take it out of context, so it's good that we burn it all down"
The Coast Guard having a plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble, seems like a good thing to me even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security.
edit: your other comment on this makes me think we are at the "letting commercial fisherman, and the coastguards trying to rescue them, drown to own the libs" stage, and my faith in humanity drops another notch.
> ...even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security.
DHS is arguably a much more appropriate home for the Coast Guard than its previous department, Transportation, given all of the facets of their actual mission (source: father and grandfather both in the Coast Guard for 30+ years).
1. "...advise and provide recommendations in writing to the Secretary of Homeland Security...on matters relating to the safe operation of commercial fishing industry vessels"
2. "review regulations..."
3. "review marine casualties and investigations of vessels..."
The NTSB, through its Office of Marine Safety (OMS), investigates major marine accidents across all sectors, determines probable causes, and issues safety recommendations. It operates independently.
In contrast, NCFSAC is an advisory body focused solely on commercial fishing safety, providing recommendations but not conducting investigations.
Or maybe dozens of K-street hotshots carefully scrutizined every possible department that could include such committees.
Or more likely, somewhere inbetween, thousands of teams, mediated by a few hundred of the most influential, struggling to get the attention of this or that decision maker. Most of them just throwing random things at a wall and seeing what sticks.
The truth is HN readers won’t know and can’t ever know, barring a tiny handful who can read the tea leaves successfully year after year.
Again I can't tell if you've quoted three vaguely regulation-y phrases in an attempt to justify generic contempt for government regulation or if you're backing me up with documentary proof that this is a boring sensible thing.
As your document says, it is literally the commercial fishing industry, shipbuilders, shipowners, equipment manufacturers, insurers etc. getting together to swap notes on safety because shipwrecks and deaths are not good for business.
"members serve as representatives of their
respective interests, associations, or organizations"
I found a job posting from 2020. I didn't know much about this agency so I looked them up. Turns out I didn't know much about them because this was established in 2018.
One of the interesting bits about the job posting is that, not too surprisingly, there are no salaries:
> All members will serve at their own expense and receive no salary or other compensation from the Federal Government, with the exception that members may be reimbursed for travel and per diem in accordance with Federal Travel Regulations.
Which, to me, can read two ways: altruistic people trying to make the industry better
OR
You won't even be selected to this committee unless you're already wealthy enough to foot the bill yourself and shape policy in a way that advantages ones self.
I don't know which way to read it, but if it wasn't costing anything, cutting it "for cost savings" can't be completely true. Maybe there were other overhead costs, but even saying that those costs are $1M/yr is a rounding error for the national budget.
This sounds to me like industry bodies such as WG21, TC39, JSR expert groups, etc. A way to get people with full-time jobs in relevant industries together to plan their shared future. I doubt the members of this board are wealthy people joining it in their own capacity. As such, i don't think it makes sense to consider them as either altruistic or self-serving; it's just part of their job.
An advisory counsel may not get paid but they submit findings to the Secretary. There's a long tail where the government becomes more aware of long standing and emergent issues.
Industry associations have no such reach unless individual members make it so, and unofficially at that.
The "U.S. Coast Guard was formed by a merger of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915" (wiki).
The US Department of Homeland Security "began operations on March 1, 2003, after being formed as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, enacted in response to the September 11 attacks" (wiki).
So are you saying that for 78 years of its existence, the USCG had no "plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble" until the DHS assembled a (assuming this is a thing) "National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee"? You dont think theres any redundancy? That just maybe bureaucracy cant help but to expand forever every time someone with a title has a question that cant be answered immediately by someone standing in the room, they have to create a committee so they can have someone on speed dial? If the coast guard doesnt have plans for this, one wonders what the coast guard does all day.
It’s common for organizations to reorganize. It’s quite possible that the committee was formed for purposes of centralization and efficacy. It’s also possible it was government overreach. What are the justifications for axing a committee or regulations and are those justifications correct?
I grew up in the commercial fishing industry and then worked in the tug boat industry. Many USCG regulations that were vehemently opposed by the old men save lives every day.
This is a classic Chesterton's Fence. Those who don't understand the origin of the regulations will continue to have strong, uninformed opinions about them.
Many crew working on boats have safety gear only because USCG requires it. The owners of those boats would not expend the money without the regulation.
Did they? What were the accident rates before and after? Why was the committee created? Do you think the people who axed these committees have an answer to the above questions? Or is it simply "government is bad"?
>I look forward to the evaluation by the administration to see if it's needed or it's redundant red tape.
That's kind of the point: they're doing no such thing.
All of the talk from Trump, Musk, the now-departed Ramaswamy, etc. hasn't been about sober analysis and careful evaluation, it's endless mockery and dumb jokes ("look at this agency name or person's title, what does that even mean LOL"), or "government bad" as the parent put it.
The pushback this gets isn't because people love bureaucracy or hate efficiency but because it's obvious this isn't an actual effort to improve anything, just mindlessly slashing things businesses/the powerful don't like and stunts to make the base clap.
It just happened. You have no idea what the evaluations were, they haven't been released and you weren't in the discussions. I hope they will be though.
From an outsider perspective this committee in particular seems redundant as there are other agencies that handle this scope.
If you want to boil it down to "government bad" sure, but I view it more as "over-regulation is bad".
Or do you view the government as a well oiled machine that couldn't have any bloat and we should never evaluate and cull feature creep in it?
“No problem, as a non-employee you are hereby confined to your cabin except to use the head, and you can eat in the galley but you have to pay for your meals, they cost $100 and will be deducted from your final paycheck. If you have a negative balance when we dock at a port in around 3 months, you must pay immediately or we will send the debt to collections. Have a nice day”
Maybe you want to read up on how things work at sea?
> ...to make sure workers have good working conditions and proper pay. That's universal to any job.
This is wildly untrue. The less skilled your labor, the more exploitative the available jobs are. This is why we have labor regulations, to protect these people.
Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well.
The CISA report that dealt with memory safety is still on the CISA site. What do these recent developments mean for CISA? Is it an independent organization that will continue to exist without DHS support or is it essentially dead and its site and reports will vanish as well?
> Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well.
It's a brand new website and old URLs won't work (this has been somewhat routine since Obama's first term). I wouldn't take that as a sign that a specific executive order is rescinded. However it may have been grouped in with other Biden tech executive orders (such as AI safety) which are being rescinded as excessive regulation
I am mostly ignorant but from hearsay CISA is part of DHS (the chief of CISA is a DHS official). doubt Trump loves it because he literally fired Krebs directly for not supporting misinformation and overthrow attempt in 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal)
CISA has an important job to do, but their mission was put at risk when it's leadership under Krebs chose to repeatedly violate the first amendment. Elections and Covid-19 are topics they've been documented in influencing, but with the capability there, what other narratives was it influencing that we don't know about?
The legal fight against CISA to stop their censorship was lost not on the basis of it being constitutional, but because the plaintiffs powerful enough to bring it to court couldn't show they had been directly harmed by it. A common stumbling block for many court cases for legitimate issues. CISA has publicly stated they will be changing their approach as a result of these controversies.
Can somebody give me a rational take on why? It feels immensely reactive. Salt Typhoon would seem to represent an active threat. Didn't DHS act quite.. conservatively?
A comment on the blusky thread went to "five eyes should stop sharing information" which I suspect won't happen, but I could see people thinking it should.
When someone comes in to slash everything, they generally don't bother understanding what they are slashing. This is the same as when a company hires someone to come in and cut costs, generally everything, good or bad, gets cut. That's what's happening on the US federal level right now. Eventually some things will be picked back up when someone realizes that it wasn't a good idea to stop it, but most things are just going to be wasted effort.
It's like the twitter thing. You start shutting off servers until someone says, "ouch it hurts". Then you turn it back on if you care. You then end up with less servers than you started.
and Twitter is bleeding money like anything, unable to retain users and advertisers. You may end up with less servers but not necessarily a stable and functional system.
Except we're not dealing with software here. The "ouch it hurts" once a government initiative has been "turned off" could be medical services, or social services, or food, or ensuring safe and clean products, or poisoned air or water, etc.
"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it"
If said fence was across a road that a school bus was hurtling towards at 60 mph… you’d stop asking these questions and remove it (and maybe put it back after you’ve solved the other emergency).
Several (of the new government) have expressed belief that the government is headed towards a catastrophic debt overload. In their view, emergency relief is necessary.
Not arguing for or against this view, but that seems to be what people voted for.
I am a big fan of Chestertons fence but it doesn’t always apply.
However, DHS was almost entirely formed from existing departments and agencies that were merely rehoused under a new structure, so Chesterton's Fence definitely applies to all of those. Even CISA, which is one of the newest elements, is now almost a decade old with a lot of accumulated expertise and experience.
Does the metaphor actually include the she of the fence? I always thought the idea is just to understand why the fence is there before removing it, regardless of its age.
In theory, it should be easier to understand the reasoning behind the existence of newer fences, but the idea is still to do that step first...
I mean, clearly some people just reject this entire idea as creating too much friction, and I can often see their point!, but I think we can at least avoid saying "it's a good concept, but it just doesn't apply in this case", and be honest about just rejecting the concept.
I’ll say this as someone who’s moderately wealthy: this administration is a massive wealth transfer to those with either capital or connections to it. Taking apart these committees means less-regulated telecoms, infrastructure and financial services. If you’re in those spaces, this is great for you.
The size of each of those industries entirely dwarfs the military-industrial bogeyman, which is largely just being transferred from one set of owners (Boeing, Lockheed, et cetera) to another (Musk, Bezos, Lucky, et cetera)
Sure, but DHS long predates this admin. The list of giants suckling at the public teat is huge (Rapiscan, anyone?) and spans many different administrations.
One possible upside of the current situation is that the very obvious corporate ownership of the federal government is dropping the “emperor has clothes” pretense. We are ever closer to simply paying taxes to Buy-N-Large.
If people don’t like it, at least now they can have a practical conversation about it (Luigi notwithstanding). It’s sort of like when Snowden showed us how fucked we were/are.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks might have been the triggering event but bringing a bunch of related federal departments and agencies under a single umbrella in DHS was probably a net positive. The previous structure was tremendously inefficient with a lot of duplication of effort and time wasted on interdepartmental coordination. Obviously graft should be addressed but it's unlikely the total graft was any lower before 2002.
> I don't think Chesterton has much to say about DHS, which is relatively new.
I'm responding to this statement. I thought it was pretty clear that the quote is still applicable, especially if you can read it applied to DHS. The comment I replied to was a response to a comment with the original quote. Its called Chesterton's Fence.
Chestertons Fence is a device or principle. It is not actually about a fence. As such, it still applies to, or pretends to apply to cases in the future, of which Chesterton could not be aware.
I assumed this demonstration was clear enough, but apparently I did something wrong here. Anybody care to explain why I have been flagged?
This is the original text written by Chesterton that describes the concept people refer to as "Chesterton's Fence" but with the word fence replaced with "department of homeland security".
The one wrinkle in this, to me, is that Trump spent four years as President already. Full disclosure: I despise the guy and wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire, BUT ... what if he saw a bunch of waste in his first run and therefore does understand what he's slashing?
Personally I don't believe that or want to believe that and would rather chalk it up to neo-toddlerism, but there's a chance right?
I examined my 2024 November general election ballot carefully. Ever since 2020's election denial, I've had a heightened awareness of election procedure, going so far as to read the Colorado Secretary of State's web pages on risk limiting audits, and making some attempt to understand the math behind them.
My Colorado general election ballot contained nothing I could see that would associate me as a registered voter to the ballot itself. Colorado ballots are hand marked, machine readable, and human readable as has been the best and obvious practice since 2000's "hanging chad" debacle. There are certainly "index marks" on the ballots so that the tallying machines can get squared up, but they don't appear different per ballot. I compared to my wife's ballot, just in case.
Because your comment does nothing against the original "I'm mostly seeing people who voted against this continue to grumble." comment.
People that vote are not always hush hush about who they voted for, and has nothing to do with can you pick their particular ballot out of the pile. If I tell you I voted for A but B won and now I'm grumbling about the things B is doing, there's no need for discussions about ballots at all.
Just like you don't need to find someone's secret ballot when they're wearing a red MAGA hat.
It is, though. The word "people" here refers in aggregate to the citizens who voted in November. It would be equally accurate for me to say "This is what we voted for" even though it's not what I voted for.
I don't have a dog in this race - I am not even from the US.
But, by definition, not voting is an action rather than absence of one. What you are doing by not voting is giving out a tacit agreement that the people who went and vote get to decide who will be elected.
Following that line of thought, by not voting, you actively chose the current government, no matter what the current government is.
I agree, but there are many who say that not voting is the only way to show contempt for a system rigged against them. Voting would be a tacit endorsement and recognition of the legitimacy of that system.
Those that don't care to vote are doomed to be ruled by those who care.
You still have to pay taxes, and perhaps see a government you truly despise making all sorts of decisions that will get the system even more rigged against you.
Not voting out of spite is similar to stabbing your own head to show contempt for your brain when you have a migraine.
Not voting, practically, is empowering the status quo. Particularly in America, where almost every election features intense down-ballot competition.
Someone who didn’t vote is more in concordance with the current government than someone who voted against it. Actions speak louder than words, and not voting is an action.
AWS and starlink have exposure of risk. You would think DHS work here went to net beneficial outcomes for both of them, and the wider telco sector. (Assuming you meant the tech sector)
What risk? There isn’t a consumer liability, and they can control the cybersecurity risk-reward balance they’re exposed to. From their perspective, oversight is the liability.
A good rule of thumb, at least for the next couple of months, is that any rules and regulations that have been criticised by the billionaires, banks or oil & gas industry are likely to be shredded. (The “deep state” stuff is mostly whoever has the king’s ear sort of politics. It’s unclear that had any influence here.)
I get what youre saying but Im not sure absolute liability is quite right. Im thinking of SBOM directives, or industry network security requirements for bgp announcements, for example. Amazon and, I assume, some of the other mega corps are AGES ahead of industry at large. Like huge multi year investments so that theyre plausibly close to complying with secure provenance, review, build tracking, and artifact integrity reporting from initial CR to request processing for everything that touches customer or business data. My impression is that the industry generally isnt any further than tracking some package names and version strings and calling it SBOM. If the new directives can preclude a large number of contract competitors that seems like a huge win.
Or, maybe Im thinking more of advantageous requirements/regulations than oversight per se.
Arent they differentiating only _if_ they required to get federal and dod money? The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators. They certainly take deployments and internal security seriously, but it doesnt seem to be monetizable outside of the contract requirements. Or maybe im missing your point?
What OP is saying is instead of having some sort of legal liability attached or outside directives being handed to them, they would rather implement on their own or push their own standards.
A notable example is SEC mandates on breach disclosures, which will most likely be dead now. Those were a major forcing function to make companies realize security is important. Otherwise, paying a ransom and doing the bare minimum to not get cut by Chubbs or AXA is the norm.
I agree with JumpCriscross on his read of this situation. It ain't great. At least I'm well off enough to weather the negative impacted by a lot of the chaos. Sucks for everyone else.
> The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators
It's bidirectional. CISA, FBI, and others often get intel or actively take down a botnet or offensive actor, and will percolate this information to security teams at larger organizations before percolating en masse.
For example, when this one APM/data collection tool that almost every DevOps team ik was using was pwned early last year, CISA notified CISOs days before they officially announced it in the news.
There is two ways for efficiency, either wipe everything clean or well setup a committee to evaluate which committees can be eliminate. And usual joke in bureaucracy is that later one will discover that even more committees are actually needed.
So the knee jerk reaction of current administration is burning it to ground. Which could actually change something.
Seems like a false dichotomy, between authoritarianism and Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
An effective administration would be thoughtful about things and reorganize rather than simply cut. So they're either being thoughtful and decided something like state sponsored infiltration isn't good to investigate or are being thoughtless.
It's probably as simple as Trump not wanting agencies to consult advisory boards consisting of outside experts since they might get in the way of his agenda.
It's probably not a specific decision based on what the individual boards have been doing.
I see you're making a joke about conservatism, but Trump isn't a conservative: he's a radical. His goal is to blow up the system, not conserve it. Getting rid of protections is part of that.
Slash and burn policies from a reactionary administration that doesn't and in fact refuses to think about the second and third order consequences of their decisions.
One of the reasons a lot of people are worried about this administration is the vibes based policy decisions they seem intent on making. Everything is haphazard, arbitrary and contradictory. Some of it comes down to personal grievance and some of it comes down to favors for people in the business sphere who chose to kowtow to this administration.
The "rational" explanation is that Trump's staff are trying to clear house of anyone they don't trust will give in to any demands they make, and put everyone else who works for the government directly or indirectly in a state of fear and confusion.
Current South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wants CISA to be “refocused” on critical infrastructure and to no longer address mis- or disinformation efforts online.
Yes. I don't want to assume an adversarial posture on this, I'm mostly an outsider, observer. I probably can't understand nuances in US domestic politics (although i am opposed to this kind of semi random behaviour by institutions, I did not see this signalled in NOG lists and the like as coming down the pipe)
So I'm wondering if this is as simple as cost/benefit? Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend?
The alternatives are mostly very sad: they're fools. Replacing a process can be beneficial. There's usually overlap.
It's because of the misinformation/disinformation mission that CISA took on during the Biden admin, it was a boondoggle that really pissed off Republicans.
Whatever problems or limitations the existing approach had dropping everything on the floor is one of the least helpful ways of trying to fix it (assuming good intent).
You have to assume competence too. You may have good intent but that doesn't help if you don't really know what you are doing or are blinded by ideology or some wayward belief.
Burning everything to the ground is a way of demolishing something though.
And if your intent is to just destroy it, it’s a far more effective one than bringing in experts to slowly try to disassemble the giant jenga tower without it falling over.
Is this explainable in any way by the cost of running these boards? By the sound of it the cost-benefit of thwarting Salt Typhoon is probably not optimal at zero investment.
Replacing government run and funded cyber security and threat assessment roles with privately owned contracters will be quite profitable for a few of the Brolliegarks.
No. The cost of running these is so small as not to be worth top officials' time in worrying about them. If they are looking to save lots of money, there are far more efficient ways to do that. This is just clearing house, establishing a tone, and making it clear that expert opinion is not valued.
The core tenet of Muskism, as described at length in Isaacson's bio is around those lines:
* question all the rules
* when in doubt, slash the rule, and see what happens
* if it's really bad without it, bring back the rule
* if you don't have to bring back 10% of the rules that you slashed, you haven't slashed enough yet
USA is now entering the phase where everything is getting slashed - following the will of the majority of -Pennsylvania- the people.
At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams.
Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams.
We'll watch from the other side of the Atlantic how the great libertarianism experiment goes for the USA.
I expect both impressive improvements, and dramatic karmic irony.
> At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams.
This is questionable. There are many times when bureaucracy exists for bureaucracy sake. But many, many times they exist for a reason.
Get any sufficiently large company and try to understand its complexity. Simply slashing it is a recipe for disaster.
> Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams.
This is highly questionable, especially the "lower taxes" part. Governments are not very keen on reducing revenue, more likely they will only direct the surplus by cutting off services to other things - in the case of US, I wouldn't be surprised if they just increase spending in military, for example. Those sleasy and juicy defence contracts need funding, you know.
Regardless, I think the primary costs created by regulation aren't directly to the government budget, but rather knock-on effects of compliance incurred by the entire nation's economy.
Maybe, but it’s not like it hasn’t happened before… Clinton (yes, a democrat!) campaigned on balancing the budget, and iirc it actually was for a few years. In his case I don’t think taxes changed much either direction.
Most of the commenters here seem to be taking it on faith that these government organizations are necessary and serving a crucial function. But the entire thrust of this election is that the majority of the country doesn't share that level of faith in the federal government.
"When in doubt, slash and see what happens" seems like a highly effective, albeit a bit reckless, approach to finding out which agencies are truly needed and which are not.
Good. From day 1 DHS has been the most Orwellian department of the US government, which casually violates our freedom on a regular basis. The entire department should be abolished.
You would only need to wonder if you had been paying no attention to the clarion call about Project 2025 and what the incoming admin was directly planning to do wholesale.
This directive is shutting down a broad range of advisories under the DHS, perhaps you might like to read more in order to make a better informed comment.
First-pass guess is that it got "captured" by individuals that wanted to "take an equity and inclusion lens" on cybersecurity... and something something 2020 election interference. Those are the usual suspects when it comes to this sort of institutional rot.
It’s “equity and inclusion” to be concerned about outside influence on elections? That goes back to antiquity in general but the modern U.S. intelligence agencies have been dealing with it since they were formed, having been a major concern during WWI and WWII, and that only went up during the Cold War.
0day and spear phishing are about extracting/obtaining information. Misinformation and manipulation campaigns have the objective to ingest/manipulate information.
"Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks." [1]
I'd argue this government has not just experienced no consequences, they've experienced the opposite of no consequences. Somehow the American people saw everything they'd done and were saying they'd do and then the people emphatically voted for it. I'm still gobsmacked.
Hitler apparently had solid 15-20% support even up to a decade after defeat and Nazism generally had 50% support (before and after, as a good idea executed badly) so both your high and low are off.
It's just the beginning. There's a good breakdown of what it would take to reduce the government by Musk's "at least 2 trillion" and it doesn't look very good (for US citizens). I mean he what, is going to cut SpaceX contracts? Please...
'Musk told political strategist Mark Penn in an interview broadcast on X that the $2 trillion figure was a “best-case outcome” and that he thought there was only a “good shot” at cutting half that.'
'That figure was quickly dismissed as implausible by budget experts, who said the entire discretionary budget was only $1.7 trillion. Musk hadn’t waved people off the number until Wednesday, and it has been widely cited in reports about DOGE’s plans. '
> people outside of the government tasked with reducing the government
My point is we have seen zero evidence of this influence in Trump’s executive actions thus far. DOGE is analogous to the Federalist Society or NRA. Influential. But not policy prescriptive.
2 trillion is not prescriptive, but is there any unambiguous number published officially? Otherwise 2 tril is the only figure publicly advertised and I guess TFA is a sign they are starting to chip at this campaign promise
Blame it on Musk, replace the humans with computers. It could be an chronological digitalisation step and since the US is leading in the AI field they just start replacing the government with artificial intelligence.
Ah so you're saying he not only will not cut his existing gov contracts but actually add some more now for "AI government"? Sounds great and totally no conflict of interest
What has the federal government done for me lately?
Not a casual dismissal; I’m deadly serious. What is so bad about dismantling large chunks of the most useless, violent, criminal, and wasteful organization in the country?
It's absolutely impossible to answer you because the very premise of your question is made in bad faith. You wouldn't even need to think, by yourself, very long to get a long list of examples; the fact that you somehow can't means you don't want to and don't intend to.
The grandparent comment is abrasive and excessive but to some extent that opinion is shared by many. The federal government was never intended to be what it is today; the technocrats just keep growing it in wasteful directions and the general public feels a disconnect. A smaller and leaner government with a balanced budget is not a shocking thing to ask for.
That world is long gone. And impossible to define objectively. What's the smallest leanest monopoly of violence that keeps the peace so that the most ambitious peoples' journies help deliver the greatest standard of living increases for the most amount of people while also preventing human rights violations and atrocities?
If the govt wasn't meant to do that, then we still have those problems and I don't see any interest in any individual to solve it.
If I understand the polls correctly, the federal government was intended to be what it is, in the sense that the parts were intentional. Medicare was intended, and so on. Each of the parts that have large numbers of employees or large budgets was intended.
The only thing that wasn't intended was that the sum of the large numbers should be large.
> The federal government was never intended to be what it is today
Many parts of all our government were never intended to be what it is today, executive branch included. We have a system that at least kind of works, changes should be made cautiously because a world-leading economy and country is a complex system.
Yes, alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what has the federal government ever done for us?
My local government runs all those, federal just provides the funding. Redistribution of tax proceeds is enough of a job to excuse everything else for you?
This is a tired trope. Reasonable people will disagree about their preferences. Some will even find polite ways to agree to disagree about ideology. Consider if the Federal Government nationalized toilet paper production and distribution. Perhaps in a few years, posters on this forum would assume that they could not perform these basic tasks without the state's support.
Just because something is currently a function of the public sector, does not mean that it could not be achieved better by the private sector. The entire thread is filled with hyperbole. The efficacy of either approach is not being discussed. There is very little substance here. Instead there are two to three sentence zingers thrown around. Most of this has been discussed at length by authors who specialize in the field.
>When students are taught about public goods, roads and highways serve as the default example in virtually every economics class. The cliché question every libertarian has encountered—“Who will build the roads?”—is predicated on the idea that without the state, private actors will have no incentive to construct or finance roadways because they will be unable to monetize them (or, at least, unable to do so sufficiently to meet the needs of the community). This assumption is accepted with such a degree of faith that few scholars have seen fit to even question whether and to what degree private roads have been constructed historically.
>But in the early years of the new republic, Americans underwent what some historians have described as a “turnpike craze.” The term “turnpike” specifically refers to roadways constructed and operated privately. Early Americans, wanting to connect their communities to the developing market economy, eagerly subscribed to turnpike corporations for local roads. In fact, turnpike corporations were among the first for-profit corporations in the country, and dramatically widened the population of shareholders at a time when corporate stock was rarely available to the public.
Your local government runs all your roads, canals, railroads and public order? Even the largest cities in America parcel that out to the federal government.
Well, we don't really have much in the way of canals or railroads, but they do the actual maintenance and construction of roads in the first place. They also enforce the traffic laws (which they also set for the most part), maintain and install the signage, etc. The local and state police are obviously run by local government. Federal police are obviously not.
Roads. There's a large port nearby, but it doesn't depend on canals. The electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid, again, the federal contribution is largely limited to funding.
GPS, OK, that's useful and it's existence depend(-s/-ed?) on the federal government/military I guess.
Who makes it viable by protecting international shipping, guarding the coast and regulating port infrastructure? (If you’re on a Great Lake, it absolutely depends on canals. That and Canada.)
> electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid
Not how North American grids work, outside Alaska, Texas, Florida and maybe the SPP. States have influence on NERC through the utilities. Grids don’t line up neatly with state lines, and the whole mess requires regular federal coordination.
It's also something that could be handled by an excel spreadsheet as long as the budget was set. Providing a forum for the states to argue about issues is an actually useful and non-redundant thing that the federal government does - setting the budget wouldn't work without it. The facilitation of interstate commerce through a federated union is a great thing. A coordinated foreign policy and unified military is more effective and probably more efficient. The federal government isn't useless or lacking any impact at all on my life, but the state and local governments are far, far more involved in "getting the things I depend on done", and many of the things federal government does could probably be done without a federal government or with much less of one.
I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either, but the topic is the cost-benefit ratio of the federal government.
Do you really believe that without central government that we will as a society wholly disregard the last thousand years of technological progress? How do the billion people in Europe do it?
Your argument reduces to the now-infamous “but who will build the roads?” We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
> I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either
I think this comment is incredibly telling. Many people tend to treat problems that do not currently affect them because of the momentous, coordinated efforts of many individuals and institutions the same as problems that do not affect them because they are naturally nonexistent.
There is a huge difference between these two categories of problems. The first will become very visible when the constant behind-the-scenes work is no longer maintained. The second will not. Confusing these two seems to be one of the causes of the mess we currently find ourselves in.
> How do the billion people in Europe do it?
As a European, I can help with the conundrum: we DO have central governments, and they tend to take more responsibility for taking care of people than the U.S. federal government has ever been allowed to. Governments don't have to be continent-wide to exist.
You've overestated by more than a factor of two how many people are in the EU and willfully ignored the fact there IS a central goverment of sorts here too.
We’ve really gone full circle when the argument for less government is pointing to Europe, and the argument against the military-industrial complex is the guy directly arguing for more military spending.
Depending on how you slice things, and what you count as ‘military’.
Based on the GOA, approx. $500 billion/yr (including veterans benefits) goes into actually running the military [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59475]. Much of that appears
to be VA benefits, and it’s increasing.
So the remainder (minus war bonds!) feels like the Military Industrial Complex, which seems to add up to around $500bln/yr.
Google annual revenue appears to be up to approx. $282 billion/year now.
So unlikely any MIC component is close, but overall the MIC still seems quite a bit larger.
Alphabet's revenue last year were about $340 billiion.
550 billion is just for compensation. You also need to pay for the upkeep of bases, fuel etc.
MI complex probably still has larger revenues as Google, but difference is much smaller than you think and that is comparing the whole industry to just one tech giant. There are others with revenues as big or bigger.
> We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
Obviously blatant waste and fraud should not be tolerated, but ignoring the huge value of the military is very short sighted. When you hear the phrase, 'backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government', what do you think that means? The US has been in a privileged position for so long they don't even realize why they are there. People flock to the USD because of stability, rule of law, and the ability to park a carrier strike force off any coast in the world and project that 'full faith and credit' the US speaks of. The military is not solely responsible for the US's success, but it is a large part.
And to add on, even the military brass is not in favor of wasted spending of the military industrial complex.
The military itself has been trying to close unneeded bases, get rid of weapons it doesn’t need, etc. But Congress and the rest of the civilian leadership won’t let it because the civilian leadership is more interested in kickbacks from contractors than doing what is best for the military.
Military leadership has also been warning about the destabilizing effect of climate change and the dangers of our deficit.
This is a meaningless phrase, much like “died for our sins”. Endless reptitions don’t make it into a meaningful logical statement.
The only inherent value of the USD is that you can pay US taxes in it. The “full faith and credit” bit meant something when you had to trust the USG to redeem it for physical gold or silver, but as you know that hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Now it’s about the same situation as the Tether fraud. Bitfinex doesnt need a carrier strike group for me to be able to trade USDT for cheeseburgers or gold coins.
People talking about the rule of law in the USA this week are especially comical. The graft and corruption are on full display for the entire world stage. They’re not even pretending any longer. It is now demonstrably clear that the value of the USD is not dependent on the rule of law in the US.
> whose going to check that the food being produced is safe?
Honestly, we could do with less of this. It isn’t hard to tell if fresh food is safe. It’s impossible with hyper-processed nonsense. Increasing liability for producing unsafe processed food might be what we need to tip our food balance in a healthier direction.
> You're right–I didn't think about fresh, prepared foods.
If only that. What about lead salts added to spices for better color (red pepper, curcuma)? What about all the other billions of ways to cut costs and make food unsafe, who is going to check for that in the absence of governments? "Increasing liability" is incredibly naive, the perpetrators don't care about that if the chance they are not caught is high enough, which it is if food chain monitoring isn't continuous.
This sort of kneejerk culture war regurgitation mischaracterizes your argument, as well the people you are talking to, and undermines your own credibility. Separately, it adds positively nothing to the discussion except noise.
The world isn’t as black and white as you seem to be convinced it is. Not everyone is neatly categorized into reasonable friend and nonsensical insane foe, unfortunately.
Do you enjoy meaningless culture brawling in the comments? Does it provide you with some sort of emotional supply? It certainly isn’t accomplishing anything else (other than breaking the social contract here). I’m truly confused, on a purely intellectual level. (I don’t expect you to change or do anything differently, I am simply thoroughly baffled.)
Your original question was also “culture war regurgitation” by any standard which includes the post you’re replying to. If you want better discourse, you have to start that way and bring receipts that you’re participating in well-informed good faith.
You've characterized yourself as someone not to be taken seriously by hypocritically accusing me of doing the exact same thing you are doing, then projecting by armchair psychoanalyzing your very own problems. Not to mention that ridiculously childish selfie on your web site. Don't dish out in the first place what you can't take back in return. Don't you have some cryptocurrencies to pump and dump somewhere else?
Claiming there is no central government for 'billion people' 'in Europe' and then lashing out when someone engages you on the same level is a very positive addition to the discussion.
Put differently:
“What has COBOL done for me lately? Can’t we just cut out all COBOL code, and replace it today to save money on paying COBOL cowboys?”
It put fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid scheme scammers and Bitcoin Ponzi scheme shills like SBF in jail where they belong. Why, are you afraid of that happening to you too?
Perhaps someone came in and realized that this advisory board had 0 benefit and just a waste of tax payer money? If so, I’m all for getting rid of wasteful spending
This is running here as a story about cybersecurity, but it's apparently every advisory committee at DHS; there were a bunch of them, mostly not about technology; for instance, the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee.
Maybe I've been burned lately and my faith in humanity is ebbing but I'm hoping the reference to that specific committee isn't about "government sounds stupid if you take it out of context, so it's good that we burn it all down"
The Coast Guard having a plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble, seems like a good thing to me even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security.
edit: your other comment on this makes me think we are at the "letting commercial fisherman, and the coastguards trying to rescue them, drown to own the libs" stage, and my faith in humanity drops another notch.
> ...even if it's grouped somewhat incongruously under Department of Homeland Security.
DHS is arguably a much more appropriate home for the Coast Guard than its previous department, Transportation, given all of the facets of their actual mission (source: father and grandfather both in the Coast Guard for 30+ years).
By the numbers though I wouldn’t be surprised if the number one issue coast guard deals with is drunken recreational boaters.
Here is the National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Council charter:
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-09/24_0712_ncfs...
The activities listed are:
Based on just that text, they're the water version of the NTSB and thus one of the most important groups in the country.
NCFSAC isn’t the water version of the NTSB.
The NTSB, through its Office of Marine Safety (OMS), investigates major marine accidents across all sectors, determines probable causes, and issues safety recommendations. It operates independently.
In contrast, NCFSAC is an advisory body focused solely on commercial fishing safety, providing recommendations but not conducting investigations.
So, maybe the new administration did a global "ctrl-f regulation, uncheck".
Or maybe dozens of K-street hotshots carefully scrutizined every possible department that could include such committees.
Or more likely, somewhere inbetween, thousands of teams, mediated by a few hundred of the most influential, struggling to get the attention of this or that decision maker. Most of them just throwing random things at a wall and seeing what sticks.
The truth is HN readers won’t know and can’t ever know, barring a tiny handful who can read the tea leaves successfully year after year.
What's a "K-street hotshot"? K-street is new to me.
Edit: Thanks to @lelandfe for pointing to
* n.b. HN can't handle the period at the end of the link, see the jump page link for convenience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_StreetI'll leave this comment up in case there are others this term is also new to.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Street_(Washington,_D.C.)>
Again I can't tell if you've quoted three vaguely regulation-y phrases in an attempt to justify generic contempt for government regulation or if you're backing me up with documentary proof that this is a boring sensible thing.
As your document says, it is literally the commercial fishing industry, shipbuilders, shipowners, equipment manufacturers, insurers etc. getting together to swap notes on safety because shipwrecks and deaths are not good for business.
"members serve as representatives of their respective interests, associations, or organizations"
This is not woke communism.
I found a job posting from 2020. I didn't know much about this agency so I looked them up. Turns out I didn't know much about them because this was established in 2018.
One of the interesting bits about the job posting is that, not too surprisingly, there are no salaries:
> All members will serve at their own expense and receive no salary or other compensation from the Federal Government, with the exception that members may be reimbursed for travel and per diem in accordance with Federal Travel Regulations.
Which, to me, can read two ways: altruistic people trying to make the industry better
OR
You won't even be selected to this committee unless you're already wealthy enough to foot the bill yourself and shape policy in a way that advantages ones self.
I don't know which way to read it, but if it wasn't costing anything, cutting it "for cost savings" can't be completely true. Maybe there were other overhead costs, but even saying that those costs are $1M/yr is a rounding error for the national budget.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/13/2020-22...
This sounds to me like industry bodies such as WG21, TC39, JSR expert groups, etc. A way to get people with full-time jobs in relevant industries together to plan their shared future. I doubt the members of this board are wealthy people joining it in their own capacity. As such, i don't think it makes sense to consider them as either altruistic or self-serving; it's just part of their job.
What’s the advantage of having this as a government agency vs. just an industry association?
An advisory counsel may not get paid but they submit findings to the Secretary. There's a long tail where the government becomes more aware of long standing and emergent issues.
Industry associations have no such reach unless individual members make it so, and unofficially at that.
We need to see YoY growth on ship rescues to justify their existence. Otherwise they're just a parasitic cost center.
The "U.S. Coast Guard was formed by a merger of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915" (wiki).
The US Department of Homeland Security "began operations on March 1, 2003, after being formed as a result of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, enacted in response to the September 11 attacks" (wiki).
So are you saying that for 78 years of its existence, the USCG had no "plan for when large fishing vessels get into trouble, and indeed a plan to stop them getting into trouble" until the DHS assembled a (assuming this is a thing) "National Commercial Fishing Safety Advisory Committee"? You dont think theres any redundancy? That just maybe bureaucracy cant help but to expand forever every time someone with a title has a question that cant be answered immediately by someone standing in the room, they have to create a committee so they can have someone on speed dial? If the coast guard doesnt have plans for this, one wonders what the coast guard does all day.
It’s common for organizations to reorganize. It’s quite possible that the committee was formed for purposes of centralization and efficacy. It’s also possible it was government overreach. What are the justifications for axing a committee or regulations and are those justifications correct?
It's probably about mission creep, I'd guess.
American workers don't deserve to be safe while working in commercial fishing apparently. Good news!
I think fisherman know how to be safe without bureaucrats in DC that have never been in a fishing boat butting in.
You just need coast guard for emergencies.
They got along just fine before 2003 when DHS was created.
I grew up in the commercial fishing industry and then worked in the tug boat industry. Many USCG regulations that were vehemently opposed by the old men save lives every day.
This is a classic Chesterton's Fence. Those who don't understand the origin of the regulations will continue to have strong, uninformed opinions about them.
Many crew working on boats have safety gear only because USCG requires it. The owners of those boats would not expend the money without the regulation.
What regulations of this committee do you think saved lives that other agencies did not?
The USCG, NMFS, NIOSH, and OSHA regulations are still there.
Maybe we should add 20 more agencies just to be safe :)
Did they? What were the accident rates before and after? Why was the committee created? Do you think the people who axed these committees have an answer to the above questions? Or is it simply "government is bad"?
I look forward to the evaluation by the administration to see if it's needed or it's redundant red tape.
There's already OSHA, NIOSH, and NOAA that cover these things, so imo it's probably redundant at the least, harmful and wasteful at the worst.
>I look forward to the evaluation by the administration to see if it's needed or it's redundant red tape.
That's kind of the point: they're doing no such thing.
All of the talk from Trump, Musk, the now-departed Ramaswamy, etc. hasn't been about sober analysis and careful evaluation, it's endless mockery and dumb jokes ("look at this agency name or person's title, what does that even mean LOL"), or "government bad" as the parent put it.
The pushback this gets isn't because people love bureaucracy or hate efficiency but because it's obvious this isn't an actual effort to improve anything, just mindlessly slashing things businesses/the powerful don't like and stunts to make the base clap.
It just happened. You have no idea what the evaluations were, they haven't been released and you weren't in the discussions. I hope they will be though.
From an outsider perspective this committee in particular seems redundant as there are other agencies that handle this scope.
If you want to boil it down to "government bad" sure, but I view it more as "over-regulation is bad".
Or do you view the government as a well oiled machine that couldn't have any bloat and we should never evaluate and cull feature creep in it?
DHS merely inherited the Coast Guard's responsibility for the fishing industry. It wasn't just unregulated before 2003!
That's false. The DHS didn't inherit any fishing responsibilities in it's creation.
The Coast Guard has and still does work with related agencies (NOAA/NMFS, Fish and Wildlife, EPA, etc.) in this regard.
“This is unsafe! I quit!”
“No problem, as a non-employee you are hereby confined to your cabin except to use the head, and you can eat in the galley but you have to pay for your meals, they cost $100 and will be deducted from your final paycheck. If you have a negative balance when we dock at a port in around 3 months, you must pay immediately or we will send the debt to collections. Have a nice day”
Maybe you want to read up on how things work at sea?
That's not what this committee handled, other government programs such as OSHA, NIOSH, and DOL handle that.
You don't need a special fishing committee to make sure workers have good working conditions and proper pay. That's universal to any job.
> ...to make sure workers have good working conditions and proper pay. That's universal to any job.
This is wildly untrue. The less skilled your labor, the more exploitative the available jobs are. This is why we have labor regulations, to protect these people.
Why did you leave all the important parts out of the quote?
I already noted that there are agencies that handle labor regulations. You left that out.
This committee had nothing to do with labor regulations...
> I think fisherman know how to be safe without bureaucrats in DC that have never been in a fishing boat butting in.
There's 1000 years of people killing themselves needlessly that says they don't.
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Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well.
The CISA report that dealt with memory safety is still on the CISA site. What do these recent developments mean for CISA? Is it an independent organization that will continue to exist without DHS support or is it essentially dead and its site and reports will vanish as well?
Big C Plus Plus must be in play here
> Seems the Cybersecurity Executive Orders that dealt with Memory Safe Languages and the ONCD Report (which mentioned Rust, if I remember correctly) are all gone from whitehouse.gov as well.
Do you have any clues for the "why" ?
It's baffling, traditionally his highest support has come from the Rust belt.
Thank you for this comment. Gold. :D
It's a brand new website and old URLs won't work (this has been somewhat routine since Obama's first term). I wouldn't take that as a sign that a specific executive order is rescinded. However it may have been grouped in with other Biden tech executive orders (such as AI safety) which are being rescinded as excessive regulation
I am mostly ignorant but from hearsay CISA is part of DHS (the chief of CISA is a DHS official). doubt Trump loves it because he literally fired Krebs directly for not supporting misinformation and overthrow attempt in 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Krebs#2020_dismissal)
It is not hearsay that CISA is part of DHS. This is an easily verified fact.
CISA has an important job to do, but their mission was put at risk when it's leadership under Krebs chose to repeatedly violate the first amendment. Elections and Covid-19 are topics they've been documented in influencing, but with the capability there, what other narratives was it influencing that we don't know about?
The legal fight against CISA to stop their censorship was lost not on the basis of it being constitutional, but because the plaintiffs powerful enough to bring it to court couldn't show they had been directly harmed by it. A common stumbling block for many court cases for legitimate issues. CISA has publicly stated they will be changing their approach as a result of these controversies.
Can somebody give me a rational take on why? It feels immensely reactive. Salt Typhoon would seem to represent an active threat. Didn't DHS act quite.. conservatively?
A comment on the blusky thread went to "five eyes should stop sharing information" which I suspect won't happen, but I could see people thinking it should.
When someone comes in to slash everything, they generally don't bother understanding what they are slashing. This is the same as when a company hires someone to come in and cut costs, generally everything, good or bad, gets cut. That's what's happening on the US federal level right now. Eventually some things will be picked back up when someone realizes that it wasn't a good idea to stop it, but most things are just going to be wasted effort.
The goal of these people isn't to understand. They don't care. They know they're slashing important stuff. It's a numbers game to them.
It's like marking read all your emails. The important stuff will pop back up.
It's like the twitter thing. You start shutting off servers until someone says, "ouch it hurts". Then you turn it back on if you care. You then end up with less servers than you started.
and Twitter is bleeding money like anything, unable to retain users and advertisers. You may end up with less servers but not necessarily a stable and functional system.
Except we're not dealing with software here. The "ouch it hurts" once a government initiative has been "turned off" could be medical services, or social services, or food, or ensuring safe and clean products, or poisoned air or water, etc.
This is the result of hiring people that will "run the country like a business". The human element is removed from consideration
>Except we're not dealing with software here.
You're not, sure. The people who are in charge view the whole apparatus as a machine, and the people doing the work as cogs in that machine.
Chesterton's Fence
"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it"
If said fence was across a road that a school bus was hurtling towards at 60 mph… you’d stop asking these questions and remove it (and maybe put it back after you’ve solved the other emergency).
Several (of the new government) have expressed belief that the government is headed towards a catastrophic debt overload. In their view, emergency relief is necessary.
Not arguing for or against this view, but that seems to be what people voted for.
I am a big fan of Chestertons fence but it doesn’t always apply.
I don't think Chesterton has much to say about DHS, which is relatively new.
However, DHS was almost entirely formed from existing departments and agencies that were merely rehoused under a new structure, so Chesterton's Fence definitely applies to all of those. Even CISA, which is one of the newest elements, is now almost a decade old with a lot of accumulated expertise and experience.
The newness of DHS has nothing to do with whether or not Chesterton’s Fence applies.
Does the metaphor actually include the she of the fence? I always thought the idea is just to understand why the fence is there before removing it, regardless of its age.
In theory, it should be easier to understand the reasoning behind the existence of newer fences, but the idea is still to do that step first...
I mean, clearly some people just reject this entire idea as creating too much friction, and I can often see their point!, but I think we can at least avoid saying "it's a good concept, but it just doesn't apply in this case", and be honest about just rejecting the concept.
…and entirely a kneejerk reaction to 9/11, enabling a massive public-private wealth transfer graft under the false pretense of national security.
> a massive public-private wealth transfer
I’ll say this as someone who’s moderately wealthy: this administration is a massive wealth transfer to those with either capital or connections to it. Taking apart these committees means less-regulated telecoms, infrastructure and financial services. If you’re in those spaces, this is great for you.
The size of each of those industries entirely dwarfs the military-industrial bogeyman, which is largely just being transferred from one set of owners (Boeing, Lockheed, et cetera) to another (Musk, Bezos, Lucky, et cetera)
Sure, but DHS long predates this admin. The list of giants suckling at the public teat is huge (Rapiscan, anyone?) and spans many different administrations.
One possible upside of the current situation is that the very obvious corporate ownership of the federal government is dropping the “emperor has clothes” pretense. We are ever closer to simply paying taxes to Buy-N-Large.
If people don’t like it, at least now they can have a practical conversation about it (Luigi notwithstanding). It’s sort of like when Snowden showed us how fucked we were/are.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks might have been the triggering event but bringing a bunch of related federal departments and agencies under a single umbrella in DHS was probably a net positive. The previous structure was tremendously inefficient with a lot of duplication of effort and time wasted on interdepartmental coordination. Obviously graft should be addressed but it's unlikely the total graft was any lower before 2002.
[flagged]
…who are you quoting or paraphrasing? Parables aren’t an argument on their own.
> I don't think Chesterton has much to say about DHS, which is relatively new.
I'm responding to this statement. I thought it was pretty clear that the quote is still applicable, especially if you can read it applied to DHS. The comment I replied to was a response to a comment with the original quote. Its called Chesterton's Fence.
Chestertons Fence is a device or principle. It is not actually about a fence. As such, it still applies to, or pretends to apply to cases in the future, of which Chesterton could not be aware.
I assumed this demonstration was clear enough, but apparently I did something wrong here. Anybody care to explain why I have been flagged?
This is the original text written by Chesterton that describes the concept people refer to as "Chesterton's Fence" but with the word fence replaced with "department of homeland security".
Thanks.
Chesterton's fence is always lost on populists.
The one wrinkle in this, to me, is that Trump spent four years as President already. Full disclosure: I despise the guy and wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire, BUT ... what if he saw a bunch of waste in his first run and therefore does understand what he's slashing?
Personally I don't believe that or want to believe that and would rather chalk it up to neo-toddlerism, but there's a chance right?
Considering the surprise he showed on video when being told what he's signing, I don't believe he knows what he's slashing, let alone understands it.
> Can somebody give me a rational take on why?
Investigations are annoying to people who were behind the President at his inauguration.
People voted for this and now act surprised.
I'm guessing the people who voted for this are not surprised. They either expected it, want it, or don't care.
It shouldn't be surprising to anyone here with a functioning brain and is roughly aware of what is going on. Expect more of this.
The question is whether "don't care" will remain true.
I think what we're seeing in this moment is the overreach that precedes the backlash, like clockwork.
You mean the same way as with Brexit? We can only hope that the people who voted for him will have the same capacity for regret.
People voted for unrealistic pipe dreams. They often do, but happens in particular with reactionary and populist votes.
I'm mostly seeing people who voted against this continue to grumble.
and, unfortunately, grumbling is all that they will do
How do you know this? The USA still has secret (Australian) ballots last time I checked.
You checked with what/who?
I examined my 2024 November general election ballot carefully. Ever since 2020's election denial, I've had a heightened awareness of election procedure, going so far as to read the Colorado Secretary of State's web pages on risk limiting audits, and making some attempt to understand the math behind them.
My Colorado general election ballot contained nothing I could see that would associate me as a registered voter to the ballot itself. Colorado ballots are hand marked, machine readable, and human readable as has been the best and obvious practice since 2000's "hanging chad" debacle. There are certainly "index marks" on the ballots so that the tallying machines can get squared up, but they don't appear different per ballot. I compared to my wife's ballot, just in case.
Why do you ask?
Because your comment does nothing against the original "I'm mostly seeing people who voted against this continue to grumble." comment.
People that vote are not always hush hush about who they voted for, and has nothing to do with can you pick their particular ballot out of the pile. If I tell you I voted for A but B won and now I'm grumbling about the things B is doing, there's no need for discussions about ballots at all.
Just like you don't need to find someone's secret ballot when they're wearing a red MAGA hat.
I'm not sure it's the same people.
It is, though. The word "people" here refers in aggregate to the citizens who voted in November. It would be equally accurate for me to say "This is what we voted for" even though it's not what I voted for.
Not voting was the most popular choice among Americans eligible to vote in 2024, so "it's what we didn't vote for".
I don't have a dog in this race - I am not even from the US.
But, by definition, not voting is an action rather than absence of one. What you are doing by not voting is giving out a tacit agreement that the people who went and vote get to decide who will be elected.
Following that line of thought, by not voting, you actively chose the current government, no matter what the current government is.
I just realized, this is how Trump will reform the 2028 elections. Every non-vote will count as a vote for the status quo.
"You won't have to vote again" – Trump 2024
I agree, but there are many who say that not voting is the only way to show contempt for a system rigged against them. Voting would be a tacit endorsement and recognition of the legitimacy of that system.
> show contempt for a system rigged against them
Those that don't care to vote are doomed to be ruled by those who care.
You still have to pay taxes, and perhaps see a government you truly despise making all sorts of decisions that will get the system even more rigged against you.
Not voting out of spite is similar to stabbing your own head to show contempt for your brain when you have a migraine.
Not voting, practically, is empowering the status quo. Particularly in America, where almost every election features intense down-ballot competition.
Someone who didn’t vote is more in concordance with the current government than someone who voted against it. Actions speak louder than words, and not voting is an action.
how so? voter turnout was 64%, so voting was more popular than not voting
I think the math would be: ~32% Harris, ~32% Trump, ~36% didn't show up.
I see a big market for “Don’t blame me, I didn’t bother voting” bumper stickers.
AWS and starlink have exposure of risk. You would think DHS work here went to net beneficial outcomes for both of them, and the wider telco sector. (Assuming you meant the tech sector)
> AWS and starlink have exposure of risk
What risk? There isn’t a consumer liability, and they can control the cybersecurity risk-reward balance they’re exposed to. From their perspective, oversight is the liability.
A good rule of thumb, at least for the next couple of months, is that any rules and regulations that have been criticised by the billionaires, banks or oil & gas industry are likely to be shredded. (The “deep state” stuff is mostly whoever has the king’s ear sort of politics. It’s unclear that had any influence here.)
I get what youre saying but Im not sure absolute liability is quite right. Im thinking of SBOM directives, or industry network security requirements for bgp announcements, for example. Amazon and, I assume, some of the other mega corps are AGES ahead of industry at large. Like huge multi year investments so that theyre plausibly close to complying with secure provenance, review, build tracking, and artifact integrity reporting from initial CR to request processing for everything that touches customer or business data. My impression is that the industry generally isnt any further than tracking some package names and version strings and calling it SBOM. If the new directives can preclude a large number of contract competitors that seems like a huge win.
Or, maybe Im thinking more of advantageous requirements/regulations than oversight per se.
Amazon et al would much prefer to do that on their own terms than have to coördinate with government (or their competitors).
Arent they differentiating only _if_ they required to get federal and dod money? The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators. They certainly take deployments and internal security seriously, but it doesnt seem to be monetizable outside of the contract requirements. Or maybe im missing your point?
What OP is saying is instead of having some sort of legal liability attached or outside directives being handed to them, they would rather implement on their own or push their own standards.
A notable example is SEC mandates on breach disclosures, which will most likely be dead now. Those were a major forcing function to make companies realize security is important. Otherwise, paying a ransom and doing the bare minimum to not get cut by Chubbs or AXA is the norm.
I agree with JumpCriscross on his read of this situation. It ain't great. At least I'm well off enough to weather the negative impacted by a lot of the chaos. Sucks for everyone else.
> The coordination definitely seems to be more of amzn (and similar) employees providing technical expertise to congress and regulators
It's bidirectional. CISA, FBI, and others often get intel or actively take down a botnet or offensive actor, and will percolate this information to security teams at larger organizations before percolating en masse.
For example, when this one APM/data collection tool that almost every DevOps team ik was using was pwned early last year, CISA notified CISOs days before they officially announced it in the news.
There is two ways for efficiency, either wipe everything clean or well setup a committee to evaluate which committees can be eliminate. And usual joke in bureaucracy is that later one will discover that even more committees are actually needed.
So the knee jerk reaction of current administration is burning it to ground. Which could actually change something.
Seems like a false dichotomy, between authoritarianism and Kafkaesque bureaucracy.
An effective administration would be thoughtful about things and reorganize rather than simply cut. So they're either being thoughtful and decided something like state sponsored infiltration isn't good to investigate or are being thoughtless.
Especially wrt things setup, created, mandated during thr prior admin.
They were elected on a mandate to burn it all down, in their view, and this is what that looks like.
I've never understood how 49.8% of the vote is a mandate.
It's probably as simple as Trump not wanting agencies to consult advisory boards consisting of outside experts since they might get in the way of his agenda.
It's probably not a specific decision based on what the individual boards have been doing.
If you stop assuming good intent, I think the answer is fairly obvious.
And that obvious answer is?
I see you're making a joke about conservatism, but Trump isn't a conservative: he's a radical. His goal is to blow up the system, not conserve it. Getting rid of protections is part of that.
Slash and burn policies from a reactionary administration that doesn't and in fact refuses to think about the second and third order consequences of their decisions.
One of the reasons a lot of people are worried about this administration is the vibes based policy decisions they seem intent on making. Everything is haphazard, arbitrary and contradictory. Some of it comes down to personal grievance and some of it comes down to favors for people in the business sphere who chose to kowtow to this administration.
The "rational" explanation is that Trump's staff are trying to clear house of anyone they don't trust will give in to any demands they make, and put everyone else who works for the government directly or indirectly in a state of fear and confusion.
https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/01/trumps-dhs-pick-says-...
Current South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wants CISA to be “refocused” on critical infrastructure and to no longer address mis- or disinformation efforts online.
So less/no fact checking, including Trump claims.
Noem has practically zero influence over anything right now.
Her explanation, moreover, doesn’t make sense. The infrastructure advisory committees are also being disbanded.
Rational != principled.
Yes. I don't want to assume an adversarial posture on this, I'm mostly an outsider, observer. I probably can't understand nuances in US domestic politics (although i am opposed to this kind of semi random behaviour by institutions, I did not see this signalled in NOG lists and the like as coming down the pipe)
So I'm wondering if this is as simple as cost/benefit? Did somebody do the sums and decide the delivery was sub par for spend?
The alternatives are mostly very sad: they're fools. Replacing a process can be beneficial. There's usually overlap.
It's because of the misinformation/disinformation mission that CISA took on during the Biden admin, it was a boondoggle that really pissed off Republicans.
Whatever problems or limitations the existing approach had dropping everything on the floor is one of the least helpful ways of trying to fix it (assuming good intent).
“They are never as dumb as I hoped they were, and I am never as smart as I thought I was.”
Basically nearly every person who goes into a new situation thinking only they can fix it.
"The same level of awareness that created a problem, cannot be used to fix it"
You have to assume competence too. You may have good intent but that doesn't help if you don't really know what you are doing or are blinded by ideology or some wayward belief.
Which of the advisory boards do you think were run by incompetents or blind adherents to generally unpopular opinions?
Do you think it was half? More? Less?
I'm talking about the administration that dropped the boards, as per the post I was replying to.
Burning everything to the ground is a way of demolishing something though.
And if your intent is to just destroy it, it’s a far more effective one than bringing in experts to slowly try to disassemble the giant jenga tower without it falling over.
Why would you assume good intent at this point? Their motives and plans have been clear for years.
You don’t need advisory panels if you don’t want advice
Is this explainable in any way by the cost of running these boards? By the sound of it the cost-benefit of thwarting Salt Typhoon is probably not optimal at zero investment.
It seems that the Salt Typhoon investigation would be better handled by the NSA anyways..
This seems entirely ideologically motivated to me.
with a dash of business motivation.
Replacing government run and funded cyber security and threat assessment roles with privately owned contracters will be quite profitable for a few of the Brolliegarks.
No. The cost of running these is so small as not to be worth top officials' time in worrying about them. If they are looking to save lots of money, there are far more efficient ways to do that. This is just clearing house, establishing a tone, and making it clear that expert opinion is not valued.
The core tenet of Muskism, as described at length in Isaacson's bio is around those lines:
* question all the rules
* when in doubt, slash the rule, and see what happens
* if it's really bad without it, bring back the rule
* if you don't have to bring back 10% of the rules that you slashed, you haven't slashed enough yet
USA is now entering the phase where everything is getting slashed - following the will of the majority of -Pennsylvania- the people.
At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams.
Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams.
We'll watch from the other side of the Atlantic how the great libertarianism experiment goes for the USA.
I expect both impressive improvements, and dramatic karmic irony.
So the opposite of conservatism in the traditional sense which is do not change things?
Maybe more like radical libertarianism?
> At the level of a company, this can bring great efficiencies, and make reusable self-driving cancer-free nuclear-fusion based rockets. Or crypto scams.
This is questionable. There are many times when bureaucracy exists for bureaucracy sake. But many, many times they exist for a reason.
Get any sufficiently large company and try to understand its complexity. Simply slashing it is a recipe for disaster.
> Unfortunately, at the level of a Federal Government, it will bring lower taxes, but some of the 10% will end with coffins. And crypto scams.
This is highly questionable, especially the "lower taxes" part. Governments are not very keen on reducing revenue, more likely they will only direct the surplus by cutting off services to other things - in the case of US, I wouldn't be surprised if they just increase spending in military, for example. Those sleasy and juicy defence contracts need funding, you know.
There is essentially no relation to taxes. Everything they are cutting falls into the “Other” category in this chart:
https://www.crews.bank/charts/taxes-and-spending
Even if they cut 100% of government functions other than entitlements, healthcare, and defense, it would not solve the deficit.
Is DHS "other", or "defense"?
Regardless, I think the primary costs created by regulation aren't directly to the government budget, but rather knock-on effects of compliance incurred by the entire nation's economy.
DHS would fall under “other”.
At least officially, the stated goal is to eliminate the deficit, which at least Elon has been warning about lately.
If that holds up (and who knows if it will) I wouldn’t expect any taxes to be cut until the budget is close to balanced.
I expect a lot of noise about it, then an expansion of the deficit for tax cuts, followed by more noise about how evil the deficit is.
I wonder if I would be happier if I was as naive as a this.
Maybe, but it’s not like it hasn’t happened before… Clinton (yes, a democrat!) campaigned on balancing the budget, and iirc it actually was for a few years. In his case I don’t think taxes changed much either direction.
Basically this.
Most of the commenters here seem to be taking it on faith that these government organizations are necessary and serving a crucial function. But the entire thrust of this election is that the majority of the country doesn't share that level of faith in the federal government.
"When in doubt, slash and see what happens" seems like a highly effective, albeit a bit reckless, approach to finding out which agencies are truly needed and which are not.
I (sincerely) wish you and your family to not be on the path of one of the people who will rush to profit from the lack of regulation.
I preemptively nominate "unexpected knock-on effects" as "periphrase of the year" for 2025 ;)
Good. From day 1 DHS has been the most Orwellian department of the US government, which casually violates our freedom on a regular basis. The entire department should be abolished.
The swiftness here really cements the notion of a useful idiot. Makes you wonder who crafted the details then the execution.
You would only need to wonder if you had been paying no attention to the clarion call about Project 2025 and what the incoming admin was directly planning to do wholesale.
Literally, for months.
It's strange to me how 'cyber security' went from 0days and spear phishing to misinformation on Twitter.
Salt Typhoon isn't a misinformation campaign on X-itter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon
This directive is shutting down a broad range of advisories under the DHS, perhaps you might like to read more in order to make a better informed comment.
First-pass guess is that it got "captured" by individuals that wanted to "take an equity and inclusion lens" on cybersecurity... and something something 2020 election interference. Those are the usual suspects when it comes to this sort of institutional rot.
It’s “equity and inclusion” to be concerned about outside influence on elections? That goes back to antiquity in general but the modern U.S. intelligence agencies have been dealing with it since they were formed, having been a major concern during WWI and WWII, and that only went up during the Cold War.
CISA's censorship campaign was majorly focused on keeping the mainstream Covid-19 narrative alive: https://reclaimthenet.org/cisa-covid-censorship-industrial-c...
It was highly controversial as many believed it to be unconstitutional breach of the first amendment: https://reclaimthenet.org/fifth-circuit-expands-injunction-a...
0day and spear phishing are about extracting/obtaining information. Misinformation and manipulation campaigns have the objective to ingest/manipulate information.
"Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks." [1]
Not exactly rocket science.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_security
The already highly compromised ideologues who seized control of the federal government are dismantling it because they said they would.
Every comment on this post is frighteningly uninformed about current events.
I'm inclined to write a Firefox addon that just replaces every headline out of the US with "Leopards Eating Faces official caught eating faces"
It works both ways.
"Department of Mission Creep, Pork-Barrel, Tax and Spend, continues to tax and spend as it endeavors to expand pork-barrel mission."
“Then makes weird noises, nothing bad happens, and continues eating faces”.
If there are no consequences, it just reinforces their power.
I'd argue this government has not just experienced no consequences, they've experienced the opposite of no consequences. Somehow the American people saw everything they'd done and were saying they'd do and then the people emphatically voted for it. I'm still gobsmacked.
Just wait. Hitler was very popular too. Until he unequivocally lost, at least.
By then, the country was destroyed along with most of it’s citizens, but boy howdy was it a ride eh?
hE's HiTlEr!!
Every time. I lived in Austin in the early 2000s and have no idea how many "BUSH=HITLER" bumper stickers I saw. It was stupid then, it's stupid now.
Uh huh. How about we check in in about 5 years eh?
Hitler apparently had solid 15-20% support even up to a decade after defeat and Nazism generally had 50% support (before and after, as a good idea executed badly) so both your high and low are off.
I was going to write something pithy about "Sure, we screwed up, but we'll get right the next time!", but that really doesn't feel funny right now.
I’m not sure you’re saying what you think you’re saying.
It's just the beginning. There's a good breakdown of what it would take to reduce the government by Musk's "at least 2 trillion" and it doesn't look very good (for US citizens). I mean he what, is going to cut SpaceX contracts? Please...
https://youtu.be/5fvDfDDZ4Ms
> Musk's 2 trillion
There is no evidence this is an actual target for anyone in government.
Not for the government. For people outside of the government tasked with reducing the government. Musk is one of them
Musk did backtrack on the $2 trillion goal.
'Musk told political strategist Mark Penn in an interview broadcast on X that the $2 trillion figure was a “best-case outcome” and that he thought there was only a “good shot” at cutting half that.'
'That figure was quickly dismissed as implausible by budget experts, who said the entire discretionary budget was only $1.7 trillion. Musk hadn’t waved people off the number until Wednesday, and it has been widely cited in reports about DOGE’s plans. '
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-say...
> people outside of the government tasked with reducing the government
My point is we have seen zero evidence of this influence in Trump’s executive actions thus far. DOGE is analogous to the Federalist Society or NRA. Influential. But not policy prescriptive.
2 trillion is not prescriptive, but is there any unambiguous number published officially? Otherwise 2 tril is the only figure publicly advertised and I guess TFA is a sign they are starting to chip at this campaign promise
> 2 tril is the only figure publicly advertised and I guess TFA is a sign they are starting to chip at this campaign promise
Not a campaign promise if it didn’t come from the campaign!
This isn’t cost cutting. The DHS budget hasn’t been slashed. This is deregulation. (Which was a campaign promise.)
Blame it on Musk, replace the humans with computers. It could be an chronological digitalisation step and since the US is leading in the AI field they just start replacing the government with artificial intelligence.
Ah so you're saying he not only will not cut his existing gov contracts but actually add some more now for "AI government"? Sounds great and totally no conflict of interest
What has the federal government done for me lately?
Not a casual dismissal; I’m deadly serious. What is so bad about dismantling large chunks of the most useless, violent, criminal, and wasteful organization in the country?
It's absolutely impossible to answer you because the very premise of your question is made in bad faith. You wouldn't even need to think, by yourself, very long to get a long list of examples; the fact that you somehow can't means you don't want to and don't intend to.
The grandparent comment is abrasive and excessive but to some extent that opinion is shared by many. The federal government was never intended to be what it is today; the technocrats just keep growing it in wasteful directions and the general public feels a disconnect. A smaller and leaner government with a balanced budget is not a shocking thing to ask for.
That world is long gone. And impossible to define objectively. What's the smallest leanest monopoly of violence that keeps the peace so that the most ambitious peoples' journies help deliver the greatest standard of living increases for the most amount of people while also preventing human rights violations and atrocities?
If the govt wasn't meant to do that, then we still have those problems and I don't see any interest in any individual to solve it.
If I understand the polls correctly, the federal government was intended to be what it is, in the sense that the parts were intentional. Medicare was intended, and so on. Each of the parts that have large numbers of employees or large budgets was intended.
The only thing that wasn't intended was that the sum of the large numbers should be large.
> The federal government was never intended to be what it is today
Many parts of all our government were never intended to be what it is today, executive branch included. We have a system that at least kind of works, changes should be made cautiously because a world-leading economy and country is a complex system.
You didn't die of dysentery, for one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9foi342LXQE comes to mind!
Or food poisoning from drinking milk.
Yes, alright, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what has the federal government ever done for us?
Heh, good Life of Brian quote that one. ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
My local government runs all those, federal just provides the funding. Redistribution of tax proceeds is enough of a job to excuse everything else for you?
This is a tired trope. Reasonable people will disagree about their preferences. Some will even find polite ways to agree to disagree about ideology. Consider if the Federal Government nationalized toilet paper production and distribution. Perhaps in a few years, posters on this forum would assume that they could not perform these basic tasks without the state's support.
Just because something is currently a function of the public sector, does not mean that it could not be achieved better by the private sector. The entire thread is filled with hyperbole. The efficacy of either approach is not being discussed. There is very little substance here. Instead there are two to three sentence zingers thrown around. Most of this has been discussed at length by authors who specialize in the field.
>When students are taught about public goods, roads and highways serve as the default example in virtually every economics class. The cliché question every libertarian has encountered—“Who will build the roads?”—is predicated on the idea that without the state, private actors will have no incentive to construct or finance roadways because they will be unable to monetize them (or, at least, unable to do so sufficiently to meet the needs of the community). This assumption is accepted with such a degree of faith that few scholars have seen fit to even question whether and to what degree private roads have been constructed historically.
>But in the early years of the new republic, Americans underwent what some historians have described as a “turnpike craze.” The term “turnpike” specifically refers to roadways constructed and operated privately. Early Americans, wanting to connect their communities to the developing market economy, eagerly subscribed to turnpike corporations for local roads. In fact, turnpike corporations were among the first for-profit corporations in the country, and dramatically widened the population of shareholders at a time when corporate stock was rarely available to the public.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/who-will-build-roads-anyone-who...
> My local government runs all those
Your local government runs all your roads, canals, railroads and public order? Even the largest cities in America parcel that out to the federal government.
Well, we don't really have much in the way of canals or railroads, but they do the actual maintenance and construction of roads in the first place. They also enforce the traffic laws (which they also set for the most part), maintain and install the signage, etc. The local and state police are obviously run by local government. Federal police are obviously not.
Then we can cut the federal funding of weapons and equipment for police that comes from the federal government. Right?
> we don't really have much in the way of canals or railroads
How do goods get into and out of your town? Are you connected to a grid? Do you use GPS?
Roads. There's a large port nearby, but it doesn't depend on canals. The electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid, again, the federal contribution is largely limited to funding.
GPS, OK, that's useful and it's existence depend(-s/-ed?) on the federal government/military I guess.
> Roads
And who builds the big roads?
> a large port nearby
Who makes it viable by protecting international shipping, guarding the coast and regulating port infrastructure? (If you’re on a Great Lake, it absolutely depends on canals. That and Canada.)
> electrical grid is also maintained by the state along with the other states on the same regional grid
Not how North American grids work, outside Alaska, Texas, Florida and maybe the SPP. States have influence on NERC through the utilities. Grids don’t line up neatly with state lines, and the whole mess requires regular federal coordination.
@Jump You're talking to a wall man.
“Redistribution of tax proceeds” is a snide way of saying “totally facilitating societies value concentration to get the things you depend on done”.
It's also something that could be handled by an excel spreadsheet as long as the budget was set. Providing a forum for the states to argue about issues is an actually useful and non-redundant thing that the federal government does - setting the budget wouldn't work without it. The facilitation of interstate commerce through a federated union is a great thing. A coordinated foreign policy and unified military is more effective and probably more efficient. The federal government isn't useless or lacking any impact at all on my life, but the state and local governments are far, far more involved in "getting the things I depend on done", and many of the things federal government does could probably be done without a federal government or with much less of one.
Well, the stories goes that's actually an Al Capone gift to society
I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either, but the topic is the cost-benefit ratio of the federal government.
Do you really believe that without central government that we will as a society wholly disregard the last thousand years of technological progress? How do the billion people in Europe do it?
Your argument reduces to the now-infamous “but who will build the roads?” We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
> I didn’t die of being trampled by unicorns either
I think this comment is incredibly telling. Many people tend to treat problems that do not currently affect them because of the momentous, coordinated efforts of many individuals and institutions the same as problems that do not affect them because they are naturally nonexistent.
There is a huge difference between these two categories of problems. The first will become very visible when the constant behind-the-scenes work is no longer maintained. The second will not. Confusing these two seems to be one of the causes of the mess we currently find ourselves in.
> How do the billion people in Europe do it?
As a European, I can help with the conundrum: we DO have central governments, and they tend to take more responsibility for taking care of people than the U.S. federal government has ever been allowed to. Governments don't have to be continent-wide to exist.
Instead of asking what the government can do for you, ask what the idea behind government programs are and what it seeks to overcome.
Being ideologically captured "big goboment bad" is as bad as geopolitical analysis being "America bad".
You've overestated by more than a factor of two how many people are in the EU and willfully ignored the fact there IS a central goverment of sorts here too.
> How do the billion people in Europe do it?
Last I checked, they use government. Two governments, I think.
At least two. In federations like Germany it's three. Plus local administrations.
We’ve really gone full circle when the argument for less government is pointing to Europe, and the argument against the military-industrial complex is the guy directly arguing for more military spending.
The whole military-industrial complex (defense industry) has about the same yearly revenues as Google.
As others have already said, we Europeans do have central governments and there's fewer of us.
Direct military expenditures in the US amount to roughly $900billion to 1.2 trillion dollars/yr. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_Unite...]
Depending on how you slice things, and what you count as ‘military’.
Based on the GOA, approx. $500 billion/yr (including veterans benefits) goes into actually running the military [https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59475]. Much of that appears to be VA benefits, and it’s increasing.
So the remainder (minus war bonds!) feels like the Military Industrial Complex, which seems to add up to around $500bln/yr.
Google annual revenue appears to be up to approx. $282 billion/year now.
So unlikely any MIC component is close, but overall the MIC still seems quite a bit larger.
Alphabet's revenue last year were about $340 billiion.
550 billion is just for compensation. You also need to pay for the upkeep of bases, fuel etc.
MI complex probably still has larger revenues as Google, but difference is much smaller than you think and that is comparing the whole industry to just one tech giant. There are others with revenues as big or bigger.
Who provides the upkeep of bases, fuel, runs the contractors who run the equipment, provides the equipment itself, etc?
The MIC. It isn’t just artillery shells.
In general though, I agree. The tech industry is an absurdly valuable target. And thanks for the updated revenue numbers!
> We don’t need the military-industrial complex
I hope you realize that part isn't going anywhere any time soon.
It will stop going into at least somewhat plausibly effective weapons though. See what happened with Russia’s military for a preview.
> We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
Obviously blatant waste and fraud should not be tolerated, but ignoring the huge value of the military is very short sighted. When you hear the phrase, 'backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government', what do you think that means? The US has been in a privileged position for so long they don't even realize why they are there. People flock to the USD because of stability, rule of law, and the ability to park a carrier strike force off any coast in the world and project that 'full faith and credit' the US speaks of. The military is not solely responsible for the US's success, but it is a large part.
And to add on, even the military brass is not in favor of wasted spending of the military industrial complex.
The military itself has been trying to close unneeded bases, get rid of weapons it doesn’t need, etc. But Congress and the rest of the civilian leadership won’t let it because the civilian leadership is more interested in kickbacks from contractors than doing what is best for the military.
Military leadership has also been warning about the destabilizing effect of climate change and the dangers of our deficit.
This is a meaningless phrase, much like “died for our sins”. Endless reptitions don’t make it into a meaningful logical statement.
The only inherent value of the USD is that you can pay US taxes in it. The “full faith and credit” bit meant something when you had to trust the USG to redeem it for physical gold or silver, but as you know that hasn’t been the case for a long time.
Now it’s about the same situation as the Tether fraud. Bitfinex doesnt need a carrier strike group for me to be able to trade USDT for cheeseburgers or gold coins.
People talking about the rule of law in the USA this week are especially comical. The graft and corruption are on full display for the entire world stage. They’re not even pretending any longer. It is now demonstrably clear that the value of the USD is not dependent on the rule of law in the US.
> They’re not even pretending any longer. It is now demonstrably clear that the value of the USD is not dependent on the rule of law in the US.
I assure you if people who matter start agreeing with you, we’re all in for a really, really bad time.
> We don’t need the military-industrial complex to put down ashphalt or produce safe food.
And whose going to check that the food being produced is safe?
> whose going to check that the food being produced is safe?
Honestly, we could do with less of this. It isn’t hard to tell if fresh food is safe. It’s impossible with hyper-processed nonsense. Increasing liability for producing unsafe processed food might be what we need to tip our food balance in a healthier direction.
> It isn’t hard to tell if fresh food is safe.
You can tell if fresh salad has E. coli by the look of it? Or if fresh eggs contain Salmonella?
> You can tell if fresh salad has E. coli by the look of it?
You're right–I didn't think about fresh, prepared foods.
> if fresh eggs contain Salmonella?
Pasteurised eggs (washed in a factory, I'll note), no. Fresh eggs, hell yes--they smell and look weird.
> You're right–I didn't think about fresh, prepared foods.
If only that. What about lead salts added to spices for better color (red pepper, curcuma)? What about all the other billions of ways to cut costs and make food unsafe, who is going to check for that in the absence of governments? "Increasing liability" is incredibly naive, the perpetrators don't care about that if the chance they are not caught is high enough, which it is if food chain monitoring isn't continuous.
Nobody's preventing you from drinking raw milk, injecting disinfectant, and popping horse dewormer pills to own the libs. Go ahead, make my day!
This sort of kneejerk culture war regurgitation mischaracterizes your argument, as well the people you are talking to, and undermines your own credibility. Separately, it adds positively nothing to the discussion except noise.
The world isn’t as black and white as you seem to be convinced it is. Not everyone is neatly categorized into reasonable friend and nonsensical insane foe, unfortunately.
Do you enjoy meaningless culture brawling in the comments? Does it provide you with some sort of emotional supply? It certainly isn’t accomplishing anything else (other than breaking the social contract here). I’m truly confused, on a purely intellectual level. (I don’t expect you to change or do anything differently, I am simply thoroughly baffled.)
Your original question was also “culture war regurgitation” by any standard which includes the post you’re replying to. If you want better discourse, you have to start that way and bring receipts that you’re participating in well-informed good faith.
You've characterized yourself as someone not to be taken seriously by hypocritically accusing me of doing the exact same thing you are doing, then projecting by armchair psychoanalyzing your very own problems. Not to mention that ridiculously childish selfie on your web site. Don't dish out in the first place what you can't take back in return. Don't you have some cryptocurrencies to pump and dump somewhere else?
https://sneak.berlin/s/img/jp.jpg
Claiming there is no central government for 'billion people' 'in Europe' and then lashing out when someone engages you on the same level is a very positive addition to the discussion.
Edit: Your website states you live in Berlin, Germany; no, the US federal government has done nothing for you. This is a troll comment.
> you live in Berlin, Germany; no, the US federal government has done nothing for you
I mean…
Put differently: “What has COBOL done for me lately? Can’t we just cut out all COBOL code, and replace it today to save money on paying COBOL cowboys?”
It put fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid scheme scammers and Bitcoin Ponzi scheme shills like SBF in jail where they belong. Why, are you afraid of that happening to you too?
Perhaps someone came in and realized that this advisory board had 0 benefit and just a waste of tax payer money? If so, I’m all for getting rid of wasteful spending
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