I’m honestly baffled, completely flummoxed, if we had a change in government here in Ireland and someone came in and listed all the unnecessary government spending and announced cuts to curb an outrageous accumulating debt would we not be cheering, is this not exactly what was needed, have the career political armchair critics not been calling for this all their lives, a real tangible change?
Democracy under threat, some people need to give their head a wobble. This is democracy. The people voted for it. The vocal poo poo butt scooping minority are doomed to the history books, they’re a lot more toxic than any car, I’d be ashamed to be aligned with them in any way.
Eircom?
We don't suffer from the US frontier myth/fantasy that government isn't necessary.
We also don’t suffer from being gazillions in debt
If somebody entered government and started behaving like Musk, the government would collapse.
A bit OT here, but it needs to be said that national debt is never a problem. Wasn't a problem for Trump 1.0 when he gave tax breaks to billionaires to purchase jets and yachts. That one cost $3 trillion so far.
have you not been watching the news? they're not cancelling mid level public servants getting free yachts, they're cancelling things like their national weather service paying for the computers which calculate the forecast. or, as i have read, research into mRNA vaccines. probably the greatest breakthrough in recent history in the search for the cure for cancer, and trump has decided 'nah, i want to be remembered for canning that research'.
this is disaster capitalism. wreck the public services so they can outsource it to his buddies in the private sector so they can wring it dry.
if the person was democratically elected, and had a mandate to do it, then sure. Governments are designed to endure long beyond an individual politician or policy.
It’s already been shown in court that what musk is doing with doge is unconstitutional - and if they continue to ignore the judiciary, while the Executive (Trump) exerts control of Congress, then the US enters a full constitutional crisis. to suggest musks actions are just a government contractor rooting out overspend would be a total misrepresentation of what’s happening.
What a simplistic way of looking at it.
A democracy can turn into a dictatorship, just FYI in case you didn't know.
Hence the 'under threat' bit.
I know all to well, didn't we try it out here recently.
There is a right and wrong way to do it though - this is the sort of thing that needs a scalpel not the trump approach which is to use a sledgehammer. They have shown already they have no clue of the consequences of their actions (not that they care anyway).
Is he making the country run more efficiently?
It’s a country with many functioning departments working together, so should your question be is he contributing to the country running more efficiently?
why would I mention contribute, responding to a post, where you didn't?
But if you want to change to contribute, does he have anything to do with the country running more efficiently?
In a practical discussion around the activities of one individual regarding the running of a country it would be somewhat necessary to use the word contribute, rather than the word make, because only the president himself has the power to “make” the country run more efficiently, and even that power has its obvious restrictions.
I agree, and wouldn’t ending the war in Ukraine contribute to cutting defense spending?
We have already established that you want to change to contribute
You still haven't answered the question.
Is musk contributing to making the country run more efficiently?
Ending the war in Ukraine has to be agreed by the two parties fighting it.
How exactly is he contributing to making the country run more efficiently?
Cutting unnecessary spending, find a cut fraud, cut inefficient and unnecessary employment, basically treating it the same as a business that is at risk from collapsing.
This contributes toward the country running more efficiently.
Except a government isn't a business.
What unnecessary spending? How would cutting unnecessary spending increase government efficiency?
What fraud? How would cutting this increase government efficiency?
What inefficient/unnecessary employment?
Strategic cost cutting can help with efficiency, unfortunately thats not what musk does.
I should have asked you at the start, what do you think efficiency is?
Sure. But that's not what is happening in the US. Only someone completely gullible and completely ignorant of the realities would think that is what's happening with DOGE/the US.
Eliminating whole departments because a few projects have overspends is moronic. Eliminating whole departments and thousands employed on certain projects because your world view and political ideology deems them as "unnecessary" is moronic.
I know this is a bit off topic but I'll tie it back onto the subject
Making government more efficient is always a good thing. However a country isn't a start-up. This is a bunch of unpaid Musk fanatics, doing their best to remain anonymous and unaccountable, going at American jobs with a hatchet. They went in and "collected skulls" of a bunch of nuclear staff only to have to chase and rehire them as they were essential.
Musk himself is highly imbalanced, only recently tried to claim Hitler wasn't responsible for the deaths of millions, that it was "government workers", which is unhinged and again highlights his personal fanatical hatred of public sector employees.
If it were being done in a proper way, cool, but that isn't happening.
Trump supporters and libertarians and fringes sit there are clap all this along - but when their jobs get axed by some 22 year old Musk intern who watched Succession 8 times, suddenly they aren't so supportive of this approach.
Likewise with his car company. He's damaging sales. Any other CEO would be long gone by now. But since this man has now paid his way into some bizarre hand of the king position in a country gone insane - we have this situation where he's still head of a car company that he is speed-running into the ground.
Imagine being such a literal car-crash of a CEO that the public are burning your cars. It's unprecedented stuff.
Oh and
https://electrek.co/2025/03/20/tesla-confirms-it-cant-sell-the-cybertruck-even-with-tax-credit-and-discounts/
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a64245325/tesla-cybertruck-loose-steel-body-part-recall/
https://www.ft.com/content/62df8d8d-31f2-445e-bfa2-c171ac43db6e
It's a circus headed by a clown.
A government very much is a business, it has money coming in and going out, it provides services and functions to people, it employs people, it relies on partnerships with other countries/businesses, they can go bankrupt like any business. I’m not going to list the spending or employment deemed unnecessary, it’s widely documented, it could be debated that some is necessary but that’s not the point, the point is that even if one unnecessary cost is saved, or one unnecessary government job is terminated then that is contributing to a government running more efficiently, assuming we are discussing the dictionary definition of the word efficient.
adjective
The difference is a government provides services that wont/cant and never will be profitable and/or efficient
I'm shocked you can't provide any examples even when it's "widely documented".
So you can explain how musks cost cutting has achieved your definition
You aren’t shocked, you’re looking to argue whether some cost cutting is just which I have no interest in.
If you don’t agree that a country has similar existence to that of a company then I have no explanation for you other than to highlight the dictionary definition as maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense, that’s the approach of Doge and Musk, surely it is possible to separate the man from the task.
treating public services as a business isn’t always the best idea……..
They’ve cut critical research funding for healthcare and other areas. That’s cutting off your nose despite your face
If money is so tight , why hasn’t he cancelled some of NASAs projects ? And why are they pursuing the F45. ( isn’t he making billions from NASA???)
Last week Trump wa giving out that Canada have the smallest military spend, then went on that they have the biggest. And how it’s not fair?
Surely cuts to the military should have been first thing made.
after Trumps iinformencial. And threating to treat people as terrorists who boycott Tesla .
The same Trump who pardoned are those found criminally guilty of the insurrection ( apparently that’s ok but bad mouthing a car company is terrorism?)
I think the guy with the Molotov cocktail was using more than a few choice words to get his point across.
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