Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
It might not work in the government the same way it would in a business because public sector entities have wildly different incentives, constraints, and feedback structures than private sector ones.
When a private company cuts staffing by 90% and discovers that doesn't actually double total productivity, they can reverse course (or more likely just go out of business and get replaced by another firm that didn't blow their own dick off). When the civil service gets handed an impossible directive, they can just keep failing forever while politicians bury their heads in the sand and insist that any minute now the plan will start working.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
That's a pretty underwhelming argument.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Or they replace the fired workers with Republicans and the bureaucracy goes from 95-5 to 70-30.
What's your source for Federal employees being 95% democrat?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
how did the US survive with government spending per capita dramatically lower than now for the first couple hundred years of its history
Since I'm sure you're aware of the differences, at least at a high level, I will note that there's quite a bit of daylight between "the country would not survive" and "abolishing these programs would be a net negative". Especially given, as mentioned, that the major cost drivers are politically untouchable.
where the profit motive demands efficiency
The profit motive in the private sector largely doesn't apply to individual employees (or rather, doesn't demand efficiency), who are mostly incentivized to work just hard enough to not have to worry about being fired.
What the market really does is punish (too much) inefficiency. But that logic can't be applied to the government, because the government can't fail (at least, not in the way a mismanaged firm fails).
So I have to suppose that bloat is off the scales where no such motive exists.
Per FRED, Federal staffing was approximately 2.3 million in 1955 and 3 million in 2025 (and has remained steadyish since the late 60s). The US population in 1955 was 160m; in 2025 it was 340m.
Fed staffing is a politically contentious issue and there is a lot of pressure to keep it low even as the country grows. Bloat largely comes in the form of contractors - since hiring adequate civil servants is politically impossible, contractors are used to make up the shortfall, and if you thing the Feds have bad incentives, wait until you meet the contractors. USG habitually overpays for services for the sake of keeping nominal headcount down.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Did you also maybe believe that Milei would fail in Argentina
No, but then, Argentina is not the US.
Twitter would collapse when Elon fired 80% of staff
Twitter is a billionaire vanity project (or alternatively, an influence op). It is markedly worse as a service post Musk takeover and sacking 80% of the staff hasn't made it any less unprofitable.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
The question is if it's purposefully crude
Depends on what you mean by 'purposefully crude'. Most government-waste-cutting enthusiasts have a dubious understanding of the causes of government inefficiency, have an ideological presupposition that government spending is a waste, and have never heard the term 'market failure'. The result tends to be that they approach the problem by driving a bulldozer through Chesterton's fence. My view is that "they have no idea what they're doing" is significantly more likely than deliberate clumsiness.
There's a side problem wherein the major drivers of government spending are politically untouchable but you need to grandstand about how you're making cuts so you attack the Everything Else bucket even though it tends to be short-sighted penny-wise behavior.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
are there any interpretations of why Trump tried so hard to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign other than the maximally-cynical one?
The maximally cynical one seems like the most parsimonious.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Insecurity, uncritical jingoism, contempt for the poor and the weak, proud ignorance, prioritizing the privileges of the elite over the well-being and rights of ordinary people, the South, brutality against the least members of society masquerading as "law and order", Christian nationalism...
Fake disagreements are Trump's go-to for domestic performances. He likes to present himself as a tough, ruthless dealmaker, but like much of Trump's image that is mostly kayfaybe. E.g. during his first term he renegotiated NAFTA, supposedly to get a better deal for the US. This produced the USMCA, a trade agreement that looked an awful lot like NAFTA with some minor tweaks.
This might be a 'win' for Trump domestically insofar as he gets to say he won a pissing match and a certain kind of voter eats that up, but as far as Trump being an effective president this seems like further vindication of the view that he is all hat and no cattle.
bad diplomacy (because it makes you look like a boor)
As somebody who is solidly on team "don't be a dick", the position is more substantial than trying to avoid looking boorish. It's the view that the US derives a great deal of its power/influence from its network of allies, and gratuitously alienating friendly nations for the sake of tough guy posturing degrades US power by making them less likely to cooperate in the future. (And more generally that shakedown diplomacy is extremely short-sighted and signals that you're an untrustworthy partner).
The view, expressed elsewhere in this thread (not by you), that the naysayers are simply being prissy is a remarkable failure to model the thought processes of people who disagree. We may, of course, be wrong, but the core complaint is not that Trump is being uncouth. The US has neither the interest nor the ability to force everyone to fall in line, so cashing in goodwill in order to entertain domestic audiences is hurting America for minimal benefit.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Columbus was an exaggerated evil
I don't know what you mean by 'exaggerated'. He's not personally responsible for every atrocity committed in the name of the Spanish Empire, but he dealt brutally with both his subordinates and the indigenous people under his authority to a degree that was notorious during his life. He also bears at least partial responsibility for the violent and deliberate destruction of several Caribbean indigenous cultures (i.e. genocide).
This sort of blood libel from the left is why Trump won
a) that's not what blood libel means b) insofar as puncturing myths of a romanticized past is a reason Trump won, it mostly speaks poorly of his supporters.
I could very well say the same thing about the Indian leaders that are today honoured
You certainly could. Depending on who you're talking about, I might even agree, though the whataboutism misses the point. Nobody is building statues of Native American leaders as a celebration of scalping anymore than people are building statues of George Washington as a celebration of slavery. (And if they are, they shouldn't). Native American war leaders are honored as icons of resistance against wars of conquest. The veneration of Confederate generals is at best a veneration of an ultra-sanitized version of the Confederate cause.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
You know who wants to kill the Jews today? It's not right wingers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poway_synagogue_shooting
It's correct to say anti-semitism is not exclusively a right-wing problem, but right-wing anti-semitism in the US is very real and very definitely capable of violence.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Elon did a Nazi salute to trigger the Libs and stop them from organizing effective resistance to things that actually matter
Daily reminder that it is never 5d chess.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
"Gulf of America" is some freedom fries-tier petulant nationalism and everyone who supports it deserves to be mocked relentlessly for their lack of dignity.
If you're a white man under 50, then you've experienced things being renamed as something that is done to your people
Speak for yourself.
Renaming thing can be good or it can be bad, because who and what we choose to honor says something about ourselves. Nor are we bound for eternity by the preferences of those who came before us. We don't expect Latvians to keep up Soviet monuments or Germans to preserve the aesthetic decisions of the Third Reich.
Renaming things that bear the names of Confederates is good, because it is a repudiation of tyranny and white supremacy. The best you can say about these men were that they were good generals (usually not even that), and we're not lacking for pillars of martial excellence that weren't traitors. Renaming things named after, say, Jefferson is bad, because while Jefferson had many less-than-admirable qualities, they're not why we honor him. I'm pretty mixed on Columbus Day, because while Columbus was pretty terrible even by the standards of the time, it's meant to be a celebration of Italian American heritage, not exploitation and genocide (though, as above, I think we could probably dredge up a less notorious alternative who was also actually American).
The Right is, of course, free to rename things, but of late the people and things they seem to want to honor have a tendency to vindicate their critics.
Also, Denali is a vastly superior name name to Mt. McKinley.
I think it's a good move
Has Trump ever done anything you didn't consider a good move?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
I mean, the previous Trump term should've been a sign. And if not that, Obama's tenure, or Bush's, or...
the expected guardrails (voters will punish bad pardons) mostly don't work
The other main guardrail is supposed to be removal from office, but that's happened exactly once (technically never) and in the meantime the GOP has made it abundantly clear that they have no will or ability to hold Trump accountable.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
And we manage to dredge some unity and goodwill out of our desiccated corpse.
I wouldn't hold my breath. Trump is a superlative divider.
if not the United States, where would you go
The traditional answer is Canada, but that's looking less safe of late :v
One of the (many) reasons I despise Trumpism is that it embraces everything sordid and distasteful about the United States and rejects much of what makes it genuinely exceptional. It looks backwards to a worse time for its idea of "greatness" and praises thuggishness.
Simply put, Trump makes it very hard to be patriotic. (It doesn't help that his supporters have spent much of the last eight years saying I and people like me are not merely opponents but enemies).
I'll bet you 50$ that if you look around your neighborhood, you'll notice 0 changes over the next 4 years attributable to Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, my circle of concern is broader than just the physical confines of my neighborhood. I have a number of friends and relatives who (quite rationally) expect Trump to make their lives worse over the next four years. I personally expect that if Trump follows through with the economic and taxation policies he has touted, I will be materially worse off than the alternative.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
I could be overlooking some incident, but I don't think anything even comes close.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
Just expel the locals and resettle Panama with Trump-voting loyalists. Maybe purge Puerto Rico and Connecticut at the same time.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
The US could offer Panama statehood. We'd get the canal and a quarter of global shipping.
The burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire
That personalist politics are prone to corruption and abuse is well-known. Very occasionally you get Lee Kuan Yew, but mostly you get thugs and conmen.
The trouble is that personalist followers are really good at convincing themselves the vices of their big man are actually virtues.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
Trump is somewhat less corrupt but much less tasteful about it than Bide
That would require some substantiation, especially considering this might be the single most corrupt act by monetary value of any US president, ever.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
This line of reasoning seems like a bit of a cop-out and/or an excuse to suspend critical thinking. If all pols are secretly crooks, then I don't have to feel bad about supporting the guy who is openly a crook.
'Politicians' are not corrupt. Some politicians are corrupt, and not every corrupt politician is equally corrupt. If I see one guy doing lots of corruption, a second guy doing a little corruption, and another third not doing any corruption, "all three are doing similar amounts of corruption but the latter two are better at hiding it" is not the most parsimonious explanation.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
No. "Joe Biden and his team of advisors" is equivalent to "Donald Trump and his team of advisors". The equivalent of "The Left" is "The Right" - a group which includes white supremacist terrorists, corrupt police unions, etc...
Expecting someone to completely abdicate political participation because someone directionally aligned did something disqualifying is unreasonable. Expecting someone to display basic civic virtue by not support a particular candidate that did something disqualifying is entirely reasonable.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6mo ago
Harris and Biden both condemned rioters. Donald Trump vocally supported rioters as long as they happened to be wearing police uniforms and attacking protestors.
What's really interesting to me about that group is that they're an incredibly niche subreddit while their right-wing equivalents are running the Republican party.
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