This is an almost impossible post to respond to without it become a flame war.
But if anyone is curious about the idea that we have too many government bureaucrats, and whether this increases costs, I encourage them to read the findings of the Transit Costs Project. In looking deeply into why transit is so expensive in the US, they found that a major cost was that the US has too few bureaucrats, and instead has to hire extremely expensive consultants.
This aligns with my understanding from friends/family members who work at state and county agencies: they are rarely able to provide the quality of service people want because they're severely understaffed, and are killing themselves in a sisyphean attempt to meet people's needs.
There's a valid question to be asked about why the government allows union contracts that seem tailor-made to keep people who don't want to work hard (by making it impossible to get fired and underpaying people) while encouraging young, ambitious folks to leave, where they can be promoted more easily and aren't managed by less competent administrators.
But "just get rid of 80% of the bureaucrats" isn't how you start that conversation.
> In looking deeply into why transit is so expensive in the US, they found that a major cost was that the US has too few bureaucrats, and instead has to hire extremely expensive consultants.
See also Noah Smith's 2023 post "America needs a bigger, better bureaucracy":
> I believe that the U.S. suffers from a distinct lack of state capacity. We’ve outsourced many of our core government functions to nonprofits and consultants, resulting in cost bloat and the waste of taxpayer money. We’ve farmed out environmental regulation to the courts and to private citizens, resulting in paralysis for industry and infrastructure alike. And we’ve left ourselves critically vulnerable to threats like pandemics and — most importantly — war.
The counterpoint being public-servant-rich economies that stagnate and turn inwards, connecting with intrigue and politics instead of their job(Latin American Brasil and Argentina). Plus feedback mechanisms for issues of state management are incredibly crude and act at a very far away point, through the president or legislator of a nation.
I think a lot of people fall into this trap of searching for the ultimate person or agency that is accountable, be it Illuminati, the Rockefellers or a deep state of some kind. The reality, that it’s all chaotic, that there are a lot of people with their own agenda, that nobody controls it all from the top, and it all ends up as a never-ending struggle of incomprehensible dimensions, that is too scary a thought for many, even very intelligent people.
In what way did what Musk did with Twitter-now-X not work? He bought the platform with the intent to open up the window of allowed discourse to that allowed by the law instead of that demanded by the ideology of the platform owners. This mostly succeeded, the level of censorship on the platform has been radically reduced. You may not like the result because you happened to be ideologically aligned with the previous platform owners but that does not make it invalid, it just means the platform no longer shields you from those who walk different paths.
Does this mean X is a good place to frequent? No, it does not, just like Twitter wasn't a good place to frequent. I only ever used Twitter passively and I only ever use X in the same way. I do not post and I have no interest in doing so, I do however like that X now allows different viewpoints. While I do not like the increased amount of spam, shitposts, crypto scams and other nuisances which came with the opening up of the platform I see this as a temporary problem which can be solved just like spam on email no longer is a problem - I have been self-hosting my mail since the early 90's and saw the rise of spam as well as its current defeat (which may be temporary due to the ascent of generative AI but that is another story for another time) on my own server.
So, yes, X mostly works, at least for me. I only use it by following links in articles, I never use the site directly, only through a self-hosted Nitter [1] instance, I do not log in nor do I respond to anything. Maybe things are different for those who live on the platform but... maybe that is not a good thing to do anyway?
Twitter was trying make money, X is doing much worse at that than Twitter was. Musk may not care about that and may be fine with the significant drop in valuation since his purchase (he may have had other goals).
Is it the case that we want the government to become much less effective at current goals, with the possibility that it transforms to effectively serve other goals? Of course if you just say that the government is bad, it's easy to argue that making it less effective is good, but "it's bad and needs to change" is not an articulation of an interesting argument.
If 'making money' was the objective Twitter was definitely on the wrong path with its radically oversized and underworked staff but let's make one thing clear: it is definitely not making money which is the first measurement to track - that may come later but for now the objective is to make the place live up to its supposed intended purpose of being the 'town square' where everyone can put up posters and notes. Twitter resembled a college campus where any poster or note not abiding to the desired narrative was quickly pulled down or pasted over. Current X is closer to a town square which just so happens to be situated right next to a number of schools with rowdy pupils with an ample supply of posters and buckets of glue. They're half-way there, now they need to keep the shitposters and spammers in check somehow without falling in the same trap that so many other places - this one often among them - have succumbed to: they need to keep the window of allowed discourse as wide as possible while keeping the place navigable. If you've read books like Snow Crash or e.g. Otherland you'll have come across descriptions of 'online markets' where the unprepared visitor is bombarded from all sides by hawkers peddling their goods. The solution to that problem always ends up being some form of 'client-side filtering', i.e. just like what is keeping e-mail useable through the onslaught of spam. Whether this ends up being done through some form of browser extension or a proxy like Nitter (which I use) remains to be seen.
To come back to your original premise it also remains to be seen how X can end up with a sustainable business model. The same was true for Twitter so this is not a new thing. There is an organised advertising boycott against X which was spearheaded by those who are angry that what they considered to be "their" medium was opened up to the "bitter clingers, garbage, deplorables and irredeemables* (to use but a few of the terms bandied about by the old guard when referring to those who do not abide by their ideology) which will eventually peter out so that is one of the potential avenues. Additional revenue streams may be found by extending X - which in itself is a rather simple and low-bandwidth service - with features like video streaming etc.
Will I use such a service? Most likely not, I never used Twitter and I do not use X since I dislike the format. I also prefer decentralised services over centralised ones so I self-host nearly all services I use. Why then do I not support 'Twitter alternatives' like Mastodon or Threads over X? Threads is connected to Metafacebook which I shun like the plague so that is out just like any other service run by that abomination is. Mastodon is a collection of fiefdoms run by petty tyrants who wield the ban hammer like the old Twitter regime dreamed they could do. I do self-host a number of 'fediverse' services (Peertube, Pleroma, Pixelfed, Lemmy - only Peertube sees any real use, the rest is purely experimental) but I do not see these as alternatives due to their limited reach:
person A posts something on fediverse site B which will never be seen by those who use fediverse site C since that site is run by a petty tyrant who bans everyone on fediverse site B because that site *did not ban* fediverse site D where someone once posted something which the petty tyrant running fediverse site B does not like.
My premise was more that success is in the eye of the beholder.
For example, if the transformed government were to fail to reasonably protect the Great Lakes from contamination with industrial byproducts, I would consider the transformation a failure and a bad outcome.
I think comparisons work best when the goalposts remain in place. My response was to the rhetorical question Is this person under the impression somehow that what Elon did to Twitter _did_ work, not whether Musk's strategy will make money or keep the Great Lakes free from contamination or whatever other comparison can be made. Musk set out to 'free' Twitter, seemingly convinced this was necessary when the satirical Babylon Bee was banned and seems to have achieved that purpose. The future will tell us if X remains viable after the advertising boycott finally peters out - probably quite soon given the current zeitgeist.
> I really hope Donald Trump understands the need for radical change of the US government (on the order of firing 80% of the people), and also understands that he can’t do it without Elon’s help. So that’s obstacle one, does Elon get free range to operate?
I work for the government. Sure, state government, but still… I take this seriously. You're gonna find out that quality of services falls apart if and when this happens.
> “Will this be one of the historical once every 70 years administrations? I’ll know it is if the government budget is cut by over 50%.”
Did the author even bother to look how the US federal budget is spent?
Social Security, Medicare and defense account for 54% and Trump has promised not to cut these.
11% is spent on interest payments, and since Trump will cut taxes and thus reduce federal income, the government will have to keep borrowing and keep paying even more interest.
Maybe he could cut the 18% of the budget that goes to the states? Oh, but those are mostly benefiting red states. Hmm.
No biggie. I’m sure Elon Musk will figure this out in an afternoon while tweeting and playing Diablo in the White House.
Great answer. I think he will indeed make defense more transactional(to other countries) and social security benefits further privatised and moved out of the public books. Not sure it is great, but you kind of gave the answer.
I'm sure Trump and Elon could destroy the bureaucracy that keeps Social Security, SNAP payments, and Medicaid flowing to rural America and somehow spin it as the Democrats' fault.
Also, if you're an enemy of the USA, a great moment to attack American interests would be just after 80% of government employees are fired.
But if anyone is curious about the idea that we have too many government bureaucrats, and whether this increases costs, I encourage them to read the findings of the Transit Costs Project. In looking deeply into why transit is so expensive in the US, they found that a major cost was that the US has too few bureaucrats, and instead has to hire extremely expensive consultants.
https://transitcosts.com/about/
This aligns with my understanding from friends/family members who work at state and county agencies: they are rarely able to provide the quality of service people want because they're severely understaffed, and are killing themselves in a sisyphean attempt to meet people's needs.