Not so good for taxpayers.

> There is a certain class of American

The selfish kind. Unfortunately that seems to be the end goal of the American dream: "I got mine, fuck you." I can't tell you how many times I heard the "protect my family" argument from people I never thought would vote for that clown.

I have never worked for the government, but have worked in industry that deals with government employees. One thing that is very different in industry than in government budgets is that industry budgets do have that 10% of waste. But the budgets of all government orgs I have seen are incredibly lean, especially on the salary side. The government gets mission-driven folks that are willing to give up income in order to accomplish the things they want in the world. I saw this most clearly at CDC, all the scientists I interacted with could double their salary over night by going to private industry, but they stayed where they were because they were more interested in doing meaningful and impactful work. And when it came to the budgets that CDC used to accomplish scientific work, they were even more frugal and effective than the most penny-pinching academic labs I saw. Industry is awash in waste in comparison to how effective the dollars were that were spent at CDC.

And the CDC work is all pre-competitive work that boosts the efficacy of everything else in the economy. A tiny amount of money that results in so much more economic activity and savings than could be imagined in most private industry. And all the numbers for the public savings on, say, food safety are all clearly laid out in long reports. Reports that nobody at DOGE would ever read because they don't believe than anything good could be produced by people who accept lower salaries for higher impact.

The way most of our governments are set up, the people in power typically arrive on the backs of the people with money. Elon Musk has a great deal of wealth, so everyone in power is going to listen to him.

> but people in power can't?

Why do you presume they can’t? Musk failed phenomenally to sell DOGE to the public, the President or the Congress. The expectation was that he’d have been better at that.

Money and power are all that matters. Musk is a dipshit but he's a rich and powerful dipshit and that's all that matters

Power respects power, ultimately. If you have wealth and power, those in power assume it was earned, because otherwise it's admitting that their own power could be through luck.

I will say that there are a few billionaires out there that do not get respect because everybody else assumes they "got lucky," but it's certainly not many billionaires. And those that people assume "got lucky" have mostly had terrible PR management on their way up, and not bothered to try to clean up their image. I have taken investment from one such billionaire that people would tell me "he got lucky," and though I don't think he got lucky to make his billions, he was also really terrible in his judgement and could not make the switch to investing even in similar industries successfully.

"Why do companies hire consultancies?"

> It's all political corruption, eliminating the regulators for Musk's empire, cover it up with lies about other things.

I just don't see the world this way, and I don't think my being argumentative about it is healthy for either of us.

> deep information bubble

The same could be said for you. You've left very little room for nuance.

I am not a direct investor in any of his businesses, and my opinions are my own. Musk was and is the largest military contractor, bought and paid for. He's a genius marketer, autistic, and gets his hands dirty on projects technically. He's not an idiot and he is socially awkward. I believe whatever big projects Musk starts are at the urging and partly the direction of the US military.

It seems clear (to me) that Musk is crushing it in most of his businesses. It's clear (to me) that the on again, off again relationship he has with the Trump administration was just pro wrestling kayfabe. It is impossible for me to impute motives to Musk, he says pro-human things and he works (potentially) very anti-human projects. I am apprehensive about everything he has his paws in.

Here's one of the big public hearings in the aftermath. D's got their digs in if that helps encourage you to watch.

https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/public-funds-private-age...

I agree fully on the prosecutions. It's long since time for scoundrels to be frog marched off to jail.

I am of the opinion that there was corruption (waste and fraud and abuse) in pre-doge government. If you think everyone was clean and good, well ... I disagree.

IMO, post-doge things are "better" only because we saw some of the inside of the sausage factory. Nothing got materially any better.