Yves here. While this article makes an important point about how Musk is trying to seize governmental control from the professional-managerial class (particularly lawyers) and top figures in key power groups (industry, finance, Serious Economists, state officials, what Black Agenda Report calls the black misleadership class) and shift it to IT professionals, author Tom Valovic is giving this power grab far too much credit in calling it “technocracy”.
First, technocracy evokes “meritocracy” when the Musk DOGE mob is not very good at tech. Lambert has documented many indicators of rampant sloppiness, such as a website that can be modified by outsiders, firing people based on keywords, and almost deleting the CFPB’s functionality from the residential mortgage mortgage market, which would have crashed it. He has also documented how they don’t understand a business logic based system (COBOL) and lack the patience to master the language, let alone figure out the system architecture. So they are mucking about willy-nilly. If you want to see how fooling around with a tightly-coupled system can turn out, read detailed post mortems of how staff optimization experiments set off the Chernobyl meltdown.
Second, it implies that technologists are superior to the vast array of other technical experts, such as scientists, mathematicians, engineers, statisticians, lawyers and yes, even economists. I don’t remotely accept that proposition.
Third, our current elite, or at least those in Democratic party wing, very much fetishizes its technocratic status. See how many now in key positions have advanced degrees from tony universities? Remember the Kennedy Administration “best and the brightest”? Remember how the American Keynesians who backed the idea of running a deficit to get out of the late 1950s recession (a correct move) then became too captured to tell Johnson what he did not want to hear, that he could not run deficits with the economy at full employment and not generate too much inflation. Recall Johnson had committed a war on poverty, sending a man to the moon, and winning the Vietnam War. He was not willing to raise taxes to fund Vietnam (which is how it would have been perceived). Only Walter Heller (former chairman of Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers) and Milton Friedman opposed him. But only Friedman in the end was given credit as Democratic economists like Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow doubled down on their defense of the Johnson deficits. The difficulty of breaking the resulting 1970s stagflation set the stage for the Reagan/Thatcherite neoliberal revolution, which in turn produced the sharp rise in inequality that set the stage for the US becoming an open oligarchy.
So this is a long-winded way of saying “been there, done that” with arguably better technocrats who were still all too willing to prostitute their expertise and fall in with what the political leadership wanted, whether or not it had any prospect of turning out well.
By Tom Valovic, a writer, editor, futurist, and the author of Digital Mythologies (Rutgers University Press), a series of essays that explored emerging social and cultural issues raised by the advent of the Internet. He has served as a consultant to the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and was editor-in- chief of Telecommunications magazine for many years. Tom has written about the effects of technology on society for a variety of publications including Common Dreams, Counterpunch, The Technoskeptic, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Examiner, Columbia University’s Media Studies Journal, and others. He can be reached at jazzbird@outlook.com. Originally published at Common Dreams
It’s hard to see articles about the “move fast and break things” approach of the Trump administration without also hearing about the hovering presence the world’s richest man, technocrat extraordinaire Elon Musk. The mainstream media likes to describe Musk primarily as an oligarch. His involvement—which now includes having a desk in the White House—is a rather alarming event and something hardly anyone expected. Unfortunately, most media reports are lacking an important perspective about this unexpected bestowal of political power to him and other technocratic oligarchs. Is this a deliberate omission or do many media outlets simply have blinders on because, in their perception, Big Tech is now fundamental to Wall Street’s economy and national security?
Musk is a true technocrat and represents the forefront of a new technocratic form of government that we are hurtling toward at light speed. However, the notion of technocratic governance is simply not on the radar screen of the MSM, various political think tanks, and Congress. In the case of the media, journalists often appear to be enmeshed in worldviews more appropriate to the late 90s than the complex and often baffling world picture we see today. Many articles about Musk focus on such issues as the legality of the Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) and the serious conflicts of interest that exist. Then, of course, there’s the sheer insanity of handing over the keys to the kingdom to a small group of computer tech bros inexperienced in matters of state who appear to have not been properly vetted or advised of existing privacy law and national security protocols. The idea that these individuals now have access to troves of the personal data of U.S. citizens is simply beyond comprehension. Still, while these are legitimate concerns, the larger implications for technocratic management are getting bypassed.
The advent of the technocratic state poses a clear and present threat to democratic norms. But in the early days of his presidency, Donald Trumphas opened the door wide open to its instantiation, first with the public announcement of a $500-billion joint AI development effort with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and AI frontman Sam Altman accompanying him on stage. I’ve written previously about the lack of technological sophistication possessed by the average member of Congress and how this is a deep concern. This knowledge gap creates a power vacuum that’s being fully taken advantage of by wealthy and powerful unelected technocrats who are at the forefront of accelerationist-style AI development.
A Runaway Freight Train
Is there anything that can stop this runaway freight train from running over the needs and rights of the public and constitutional norms? We’re all now highly dependent on phones and computing devices to carry out even the simplest of tasks in the course of everyday life. This life-limiting technological dependency represents a fundamental means of shifting power and control to elites who have the tech-based sophistication and infrastructure to leverage that control for their own advantage, facilitating a behind-the-scenes transfer of money and power up the food chain.
To think that Musk is motivated to “help out” with this internal nation-building would be naïve. As Anna Weiner wrote in a recent New Yorker article, “Tech executives see an opportunity to shape the world in their image.” Musk became the world’s richest individual only through a laser-like focus on self-interest and various questionable vanity projects. What’s also concerning is that this power shift toward a technocratic state is happening merely in the first few months of Trump’s presidency. Was this the president’s Reaganesque answer to making things more affordable or is it a cynical bypass of those campaign promises?
I’m not going to say that AI isn’t interesting and doesn’t have has great potential for positive change, as do many digital technologies—in theory at least. But we’ve already squandered opportunities to shape the internet as a force for social good with Big Tech moving to hijack its capabilities for marketing, advertising, social control, and even psychological manipulation. It’s more than a small concern that AI will follow a similar trajectory. Have we seen many announcements to date where AI will be used to solve global macro-problems such the climate crisis, wealth inequality, poverty, or automation’s negative effects on job markets? More likely, it will only exacerbate these problems. For example, AI’s insatiable need for electric power has been a key factor in the triumphant rebranding of nuclear power as a “green” technology. The most salient example of this is Microsoft’s intent to use the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to power its AI farms. As for wealth inequality, it seems clear that AI is already widening the divide between the economic classes. And, domestically and no doubt also in China and Russia, one of the most prominent uses of AI has been to provide new capabilities for drone attacks and nuclear warfare.
Onward Into the Fog
The first step toward counteracting these trends would be to better educate both Congress and the public about the still poorly understood dangers of a technocratic state which heralds further fusion of corporate and government power (historically, a hallmark of authoritarianism). In a way, this is a nonpartisan issue because Democrats have made their own contribution to cozying up to Big Tech’s plans for our future over the years. One possible small step might be for Congress to re-fund the Office of Technology Assessment. While this is hardly a panacea, providing more tech savvy advice to Congress would be a move in the right direction and might serve to balance the advisory data provided to the White House by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). We have yet to hear of anyone in Congress, Democrat or Republican, stepping up to warn about the dangers of technocracy, not just as a political phenomenon but also as a social and quality of life issue. Most likely, both high-profile media outlets and Congress are sidestepping this issue with a kind of strategic incompetence in order to support the powerful economic interests represented by their Big Tech donors.
It’s time to sound the alarm. What Musk is doing is tantamount to hacking the inner core of the federal government and the public trust—a blatant coup and power grab for technocratic ends. Yes, there is a definite case to be made for rooting out government waste, abuse, and corruption. But there’s a better and more measured way to proceed. Finally, it’s worth asking if Donald Trump fully understands the constitutional implications of opening this Pandora’s box. In terms of existing guardrails, he either turned Musk loose knowingly or unknowingly. But it doesn’t matter—both scenarios are equally troubling. Regardless of the outcome of pending and future court cases, we should all be forewarned that 2025 is rapidly shaping up to be the year we lost our civil liberties and protections (and our country as we know it) to AI and the Technocrat-in-Chief, Elon Musk.
Musk isn’t a technologist. He doesn’t understand the technologies and limitations for his company’s products. It’s widely known that senior management at his companies work hard to keep him away because he’s understood to be disruptive to good business practices.
Observing his publicly displayed behaviors, he’s an outright tyrant with complete contempt for his employees and customers. I believe he’s openly stated that he thinks of everybody else as NPCs that he can cast off and pull back with no consequences.
So NOAA will be cut by 50 percent if not entirely broken up into pieces and shuffled into other agencies. Crews that fight wild land fires for the Forestry Service and NPS are not hired this year. It looks like probationary employees at IRS (mostly people in customer service roles) will be fired today, right before tax season. Ditto FAA employees charge with maintaining radars and other monitoring equipment. And DOGE thinks it’s easy to just fire the folks securing the US nuclear arsenal and those specifically charged with monitoring spread of flu, and then unfire them when there is push back. They don’t care if they break things in ways that are impossible to fix because Musk, Thiel, Ellison and others involved are already openly talking about selling the “solution” to what they’re breaking. Maybe they’ll get it when their private planes start falling out of the sky because sure traffic control is no longer functional and the mansion they’re staying at is taken out by a hurricane that is no longer accurately forecasted. Probably not though.
This isn’t just move fast and breaking things (something that only sort of made sense in a Silicon Valley that long ago stopped making real things), this is failure to understand elementary things about organizations that DOGE and the Project 2025 are dynamiting. This is what Dunning Krueger plus psychopathy looks like at a massive scale.
And the Democrats aren’t doing a damn thing about it.
I just hope all this chaos within the Metropole will cut the rest of the world a break, at least.
Also, all the firings, cancelling of entire agencies (whatever I may think about the missions of those agencies) and “Fork” are illegal and goes against existing laws on federal expenditure and federal employment (including probationary employees who can only be fired for cause such as poor performance, which cannot be the case when all probationaries are fired at the same time). Trump and DOGE could have taken a few months to ram new laws through Congress but easier to just shock and awe the illegalities through and when stood inevitably blow up, they think they hacked it by making the agency heads do the illegal firings that DOGE ordered.
These people aren’t arbitraging any kind of technology or even terrible political process to get their vision through. They’re arbitraging open law breaking and betting that the existing enfeebled and already compromised system will let them have their way.
DOGE (and Trump) seems to be operating under the Feral Finster maxim; “What are you going to do about it?”.
Make West Wild Again! Also, bring back term robber baron.
Does that MWWAa ha ha come with a dastardly mustache twirl ;)
I got one idea for the anagram crowd….Make Analog Great Once More.
Think about it, just in daily life with the cell phone, and driving an updated sedan or large pickup as the primary vehicle. Before April 2015, when I just had to upgrade to using a smart phone for primary daily usage, I had an LG slider phone that I loved. Arguably that’s just not that long ago of course.
Simple in hindsight, maybe it just wasn’t so bad…Oh and I could not just mimic so easily using the already in place MAGA. So going with MAGOM.
Don’t forget to view their actions as following the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.
“Their religion is commerce and their society is determined by profit.”
https://projectsanctuary.com/the_complete_ferengi_rules_of_acquisition.htm
As a consultant I have watched this play out over the last 25 years or so. this is the same attitude expressed by senior management in my industry – insurance. As far as they are concerned you really don’t need any experts (other than 1 or 2) to maintain your computer systems, you just need to make sure they work – barely. So what has happened is most of the Americans have been let go and replaced with people offshore and some H1-B’s and L1’s. Indians in the case of the insurance industry. For the last 3 years and a good chunk of the previous 7 years I would be the only American on a team working for American companies in America. Most of the people I worked with from India had just or recently graduated from college – many had never even heard of insurance before they started in the industry. Kind of sounds like some of the dogebags we’ve been hearing about.
I agree with Yves that “technocracy” is the wrong term, not least because it already has an established, different meaning.
This appears to be a naked power grab by a faction of oligarchs from the tech sector.
Viewing it generously: Their business model is “build a minimally viable product, ship it out fast, then let the ensuing negative customer experiences work as your testing phase”. I cannot think of a worse way to approach important systems and institutions.
Viewing it cynically: they just want to rip out everything except the few parts they profit from or benefit them personally.
For example: I did notice that Trump’s executive order expanding IVF access, fits with (I think it was) IMDoc’s recent comment about the oligarch class favouring IVF.
For everything else, rip it out and let the normal people die.
Regarding the term “technocracy”, it has both the meaning of rule by experts and rule by technologists, as in for example the Technocracy Movement in the early 20th century USA.
Agree with rest of your comment. The Technocracy Movement at least wanted some kind of rational societal planning, without the waste of capitalism. Today’s tech bros are just rapacious oligarchs.
I tend to agree that this is not a true “technocracy” going on here as it is too all-encompassing a term. So maybe the right term should be a “Bro-tocracy.” By that I mean that you are talking about a small group of wealthy Silicon Valley types such as Musk and Theil who want to totally reconfigure the US Government to the way that they want it to be on – god help us – ideological grounds. Maybe they are Randian inspired but they appear to be convinced that their wealth entitles them to decide how to reorganize the government without actually taking the time to understand why some things should not be touched by random technobrats as it is akin to tap-dancing though a mine field. And the US Constitution? They probably regard that as just another contract – and one that is up for negotiation. God help America if these people decide what is really needed is a Constitutional Convention as America would be toast.
Thomas Wolfe, who coined the term “me generation” was once asked what he thought would follow. His response was: “plutocracy”.
As you note, that seems to capture more what Musk and the cult of Musk are about: it’s that his wealth and “success” entitle him to rule.
A number of other comments on this article point to Musk’s success as the reason he should be allowed to take a wrecking ball to the Federal government, and I wonder how different that really is from just outright advocating for plutocracy.
Indeed, not “technocracy”. Perhaps “techno-feudalism” à la Varoufakis? “Bro-ocracy”, or some psychopathic inflection of oligarchy?
The psychopatholigarchy. Same as it ever was.
I understand that there is much to dislike about the man. It is very easy to dub him a sociopath, a fraud or even a Nazi.
Regardless of how you feel about him, he has a track record of success. His ventures have changed the automotive industry, the space industry and communications.
It doesn’t matter if these changes are perceived as good or bad. It does not matter if he accomplished them himself or through other people. It doesn’t matter if you like his products or dislike them. It doesn’t matter if his companies survive or not, how they were funded or any other objections you might have to them. His actions and his business have affected all of us by reshaping the material world.
His success makes him a technocrat of the caliber we have not seen since Jobs. This is what technocracy looks like in 2025. “Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts …”
I do not know what the US Government is going to look like in 4 years but the odds are that it will be very very different.
What exactly are his successes? Buying into PayPal, which is terrible FinTech and primarily noted for producing the most odious group of tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley? Poorly built cars that regularly catches on fire and fall well short of autonomous driving capabilities he promised a decade ago? Putting a massive amount of satellites into orbit that’s already polluting the night sky and may well trigger Kessler Syndrome in low earth orbit in the coming decades? Buying Twitter, cheat most of its former employees out of their promised severance, and cratering its stock price?
If I want to see technologists who actually build useful things rather than arbitrage the flaws in the existing economy/legal system, I would look to China (DJI, Deepseek, Huawei, BYD). Musk hasn’t created anything of value compared to founders of those companies.
What exactly are Musk’s successes?
The advent of PayPal was a byproduct of a far more ambitious scheme to replace the entire banking system with a digital era infrastructure. Musk has always started with enormously ambitious goals. This partial success provided the capital to launch Tesla.
Tesla evolved to become the dominant EV producer in the U.S. by bootstrapping from the limited production of a sports car to the wider production of a luxury sedan to the large scale production of a middle-market car. The advent of Tesla accelerated by a decade the move to EVs by world auto makers
SpaceX has radically cut the cost of launching payloads to orbit by introducing recoverable boosters, a feat no other rocket producer has duplicated. It is currently developing the world’s largest recoverable rocket, which will be capable of reaching Mars.
Starlink has delivered global Internet access through a constellation of satellites unmatched by any other provider. These satellites will soon enable global communication by cell phone from anywhere on earth
The success of Musk’s ventures is attributable to his ability to form and lead effective teams that can tackle highly challenging projects. There is nothing accidental about the accomplishment of these teams. The question we should be asking ourselves is why other corporations don’t have the same quality of leadership.
Whatever we may think about Musk’s politics, the magnitude of his achievements is undeniable. Facts are stubborn things.
These ventures don’t push technical boundaries. The Chinese are putting out better products than Musk in every one of these fields now, it’s not even close.
PayPal is a buggy and annoying to use payment platform that took advantage of poorly regulated gaps in the existing payment ecosystem. Newer payment platforms are far more user friendly but PayPal has a first mover advantage with some legacy businesses.
Tesla was only viable because of government subsidies and continually over hyped regarding its autonomous driving capabilities. Compared to the ambition of what the Chinese managed to push out in the last 5 years, Tesla is going to be gone outside of high tariff wall areas in a few years.
If you’re going to go with worshipping American tech oligarchs, at least point at Sam Altman or Jeff Bezos or various pieces of Apple or Alphabet. At least they built interesting new stuff and pushed the tech frontier out. Musk’s work is at best taking over other people’s ideas and boosting stock prices based on hype.
I suggest you read the Isaacson biography to gain a better understanding of Musk and his achievements. I note that your statement that Musk’s ventures “don’t push technical boundaries” ignores the achievements of SpaceX. Perhaps you should watch the video of two SpaceX boosters returning to a controlled landing simultaneously.
The Chinese entrepreneurs whose EVs are competing with Musk are using the same advanced engineering techniques that Tesla pioneered: highly automated assembly lines, advanced battery designs, software-based controls, and mega-castings. They are following his lead, presumably with state subsidies.
The entrepreneurs who have established the U.S. as a leader in a number of fields are not very nice people, but that does not diminish their business achievements. It is irrational to express personal and ideological antipathy through denial of obvious accomplishments.
Isaason took dictation and Musk lied.
If you think Musk invented highly automated assembly lines, you have lost your mind. That’s the Japanese.
And he didn’t have them. We wrote early on, repeatedly, with photos, at how heavily manned, as in way overmanned, the Tesla factories were. The very high defect rate was the result of a LACK of automation and a lot of human hand work.
And as for lithium ion batteries for cars, they were under development in the 1990s, long before Tesla. I did an advanced battery study for EVs for a VC firm in 1993. I even drove a prototype EV! Lithium ion batteries for EVs were less favored then due to worries about fire risk but still being pursued even then.
And see Chinese advances:
https://dialogue.earth/en/business/chinas-position-in-the-global-race-for-alternative-ev-batteries/
https://archive.is/bSCnV#selection-1013.0-1013.252
Elon would not be able to build competitive Teslas without Chinese batteries and access to Chinese autonomous driving advances. Whatever the Chinese “copied” from him, they’re now way way better while Tesla has barely changed in 10 years. You throw out vague accusations about subsidies for Chinese companies but Musk’s companies are all heavily subsidized by state funding.
I don’t need to read his hagiography to know that I can buy a better quality and far better featured BYD car for less than half the price of a Tesla.
The only thing that Musk appears to be very good at is social engineering the field to be favorable to him. It’s really quite remarkable given how odious he is as a person. He doesn’t even look human and definitely doesn’t act human, yet has millions upon millions of Internetfanbois who will jump on any criticism of Musk or his many dubious companies.
I over-wrote comment that consistent of AI output. We have said repeatedly, but this reader apparently missed our stern warnings, that AI results are not permitted on this site. I have found serious errors on questions that should be well within its capabilities, such as definitions of legal terms.
In addition, the comment also violated our Policies by amounting to grounds-shifting, a form of bad faith argumentation.
Those conditions would apply to Tesla as well, since its biggest factory is in China and until recently, it sold a lot of vehicles to Chinese consumers, until it got outclassed by Chinese companies who built a better mouse trap. Try again.
AI as knowledge? All these “subsidies” exist across countries regardless of industry, as anyone who’s worked in government/law/finance/industry understands.
I thought copy-pasting AI junk is not allowed here.
Good call. Even as I write, our crack staff is picking “the right tool for the job” from our extensive collection of thumbscrews and racks.
I have to admit this got me confused. Being a non-native English speaking IT guy, to me thumbscrews and racks mean server racks nad computer case thumb screws. Only after Internet search, I realized that the expression is from the “goold ol’ times” before the electronic data processing machines.
Emma,
May I respectfully defend Elon Musk a bit here?
China is firing on all cylinders and will in my opinion be the world’s leading superpower in the near future. But Jeff Bezos is only good at exploiting his workers and his natural monopoly, while Sam Altman would not have a company if it wasn’t for Elon Musk.
I will admit to becoming an Elon Musk fanboy when bought Twitter to provide some forum for freedom of speech. I do think Elon Musk is overextended and it is just a matter of time before a crisis in one of his companies cascades like dominoes through the other ones.
Of course! I hate all tech oligarchs so I’m certainly not personally offended. There’s no question that every billionaire does many illegal or at least extremely unethical actions against their workers and the public.
Having said that. ChatGPT was a significant advance in the “field” of “AI”, however we choose to define it. Amazon and AWS are far and away the leading companies in the fields that they pioneered. They’re real pushes in the frontiers of technology in ways that Elon’s products aren’t (including the space stuff, which are just appropriating old government IP and edging the far more cost effective and proven Russian rockets out of the way).
I believe the only companies that truly originated with Elon are Neurolink and The Boring Company, neither of which I’d call a smashing success.
He did not buy Twitter to provide “some forum for freedom of speech”, but to push his own agenda. This should be obvious by now.
“I do think Elon Musk is overextended and it is just a matter of time before a crisis in one of his companies cascades like dominoes through the other ones.”
Indeed possible. I’ve often thought he might meet the fate of Samuel Insull, though Musk is a more significant figure.
Freedom of speech? Don’t think so.
X consistently blocks my https://strategic-culture/ posts.
Elon Musk is an expert in freedom of speech, because he is rich. If he blocks you, it is done in order to protect our democracy (not to mention the Venezuelan one). /s
So you get to drive a Tesla and feel like George Jetson.
EV or ICE, USians are still largely stuck in the cars, and often in horrible traffic.
Wake me up when Musk has actually done something about that.
Of course he did! Don’t you remember The Boring Company? :-)
Problem solved: next!
The National Railway Administration (NRA, Chinese: 国家铁路局) is way more boring. 😉
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_railway_tunnels_in_China
Thanks for the reality, Emma and Yves!
Somewhat off topic, but where is this Green Light traffic AI used in the southern US, or Musk’s, or anybody’s? Doesn’t seem like it’s in use in my town. To justify nukes to obtain juice for this technology demonstrates how delusional the US micimattAI has become (hope they aren’t going this route in China). Use it for traffic lights, prohibit any new nukes for the stuff, and put a limit on what it can draw from existing grids.
The Chinese are building a lot of nuclear stations right now. It’s possible that they’re a better design but no guarantees. I think they’re keenly aware that they may not be able to rely on imported fossil fuel for much longer and are desperately trying to ween themselves off. I hope that some combination of renewables, improved transmission capabilities, and batteries will eventually move them off of nukes but right now it’s full steam ahead.
The Chinese are building a lot of nuclear stations right now. It’s possible that they’re a better design but no guarantees…
[ Yes, Chinese nuclear stations are in varying stages of readiness and they are of improved design with significant engineering guarantees. Please look to Chinese 3rd and 4th generation nuclear stations. ]
https://english.news.cn/20231206/d7e2c22f0b5c412ba761dd26d3eef7a7/c.html
December 6, 2023
World’s 1st 4th-generation nuclear power plant goes into commercial operation in China
BEIJING — The world’s first fourth-generation nuclear power plant, China’s Shidaowan high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) nuclear power plant, has officially gone into commercial operation, according to the National Energy Administration and China Huaneng Group Wednesday.
The project, located in Shandong Province and with China owning fully independent intellectual property rights, is jointly developed by China Huaneng Group, Tsinghua University and China National Nuclear Corporation.
HTGR is an advanced type of reactor that features fourth-generation nuclear power technology, and a key development direction of nuclear power, said Zhang Zuoyi, chief designer of the major program of the HTGR nuclear power station and dean of the nuclear energy and new energy technology institute of Tsinghua University.
With “safety” as a key characteristic, the reactor can maintain a safe state and steer away from a meltdown or leak of radioactive materials. This capability is maintained even in the event of a complete loss of cooling capacity, without any intervention actions, Zhang added…
How it started: “In 2013, entrepreneur Elon Musk published a white paper, where the hyperloop was described as a transportation system using capsules supported by an air-bearing …”
How it’s going…
Vegas Loop faces numerous trespassers and struggles to meet expectations
https://san.com/cc/vegas-loop-faces-numerous-trespassers-and-struggles-to-meet-expectations/
Sooo… over a decade later, we’re talking human drivers in Teslas — basically an underground taxi system with a network of dedicated tunnels.
Doesn’t look very transformative to me.
It didn’t start in 2013, but 1904.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain#20th_century
Goddard is more known for his work in the field of rocket science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Goddard
The way things are going, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center could be renamed to Musk Space Flight Center.
His actions and his business have affected all of us by reshaping the material world. So did actions and business of Hitler. Regardless of how you feel about him, he had a track record of success (until things went downhill). His ventures have changed the automotive industry, the space industry and communications.
Does it matter if these changes are perceived as good or bad? Does it matter if he accomplished them himself or through other people? Does it matter if you like his products or dislike them? Does it matter if his companies survive or not, how they were funded or any other objections you might have to them? I think it does. It matters a lot.
I have to second Emma’s point.
What are elon’s success’s , other than taking his dad’s money making a tiny contribution to the history of college kids creating an interface on the new thing called the internet; and parlaying it into the appearance of a hell of a lot more money? He is a bullsh%%ter, and good at self promotion. Just like trump.
After all, he really hasn’t built anything. Space X is still rife with unscheduled rapid deconstruction events, polluting the carribean. His Boring company hasn’t really done anything. Tesla, is more of a fetish, than it is a car.
So, What is elon good at?
Oh, he has a track record alright.
Not sure what your point here is. No one is arguing this bull in the china shop isn’t changing the layout of the store. Your implication seems to be that Musk is somehow exceptional. No. He’s just doing what he always does: he bought his way in to the control room and started pulling random levers and pushing random buttons. Any oligarch with the inclination could have done the same thing.
What do you call someone who openly professes to be against democratic values, breaks clear laws of the land because he doesn’t care, praises corporatist technofeudalism as the path forward, and breaks out 2 full Nazi salutes in a moment of joy?
Those salutes are nothing, when compared to providing communication backbone to actual Nazis on the frontline. Starlink has been instrumental in keeping the Banderites in fight all this time. Funny how he did not pull the plug on that yet.
Although, the speed of Musk in this gov scheme has been alarming. I view it as he’s an outsider trying to accomplish some things and will be stymied at some point. He will decide to move on to his next thrill.
That’s my working hypothesis: claims of techno wizardry are just cover to distract the rubes while Musk embeds people to ensure Trump’s control of his government.
I saw a clip yesterday where Trump said that explicitly—last time he wrote “beautiful EOs” and they were not followed. Now, he sends Musk and his “team of geniuses” and they get his orders done. Or maybe that’s just another cover story, could be.
Based on Trump’s use of Kellogg to talk tough about the RF then excluding him from the talks in Saudi Arabia, there is some reason to think he is using deception to cover his moves.
Edit: should it be “sharp rise in inequality”?
Yes, thanks, fixed!
I tend to think technologist or technocracy refers to government by or heavily influenced by technical experts, the scientists, mathematicians, engineers, statisticians. I think Singapore is close to this, Germany was this?
And I don’t think it looks like what DOGE is about. Where are the experts? That they’re peering through data is actually a good techno first step, but what’s the cred of the team? Who are they, why should we think they merit the role?
Having said that, if Musk has to pull together a team of experts but without relying on traditional sources of merit, e.g. not able to use experts from academia, the source for engineers, economists, scientists, etc., he’s severely crippled AS a technocrat, assuming that’s what he wants to be. But perhaps, instead, he’s pulling his team from the corporate world? In which case this isn’t technocratism, it’s corporatism.
And the clearest historical example/precedent of such would be the third reich.
Good points. Here’s the current DOGE team:
https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/
They appear to be mostly from the corporate world, and I don’t see much to indicate they have any particular expertise on the agencies they’ve started wrecking.
Where is Bill Black? I know he would have insight on DOGE, particularly on the very young people doing the culling.
Where are the experts? Why should we think they merit the role?
This must be what the PMC are thinking now that the “P” has changed meaning from Professional to Precarious.
I don’t trust Elon Musk, either, but most of the hue and cry from the PMC is an echo of the disbelief of the working class thirty years ago, when Bill Clinton made them redundant with the PMC by his side. They thought their 20% should run the world, and told the rest of the people to learn to code.
And now a few of the people who learned to code really well are doing the same thing to the PMC, because they think the 1% who know tech should rule the world. That will end badly, but it’s not a new phenomenon, it’s a continuation of the way we’ve been trending the past 30-40 years.
What DOGE is tearing down are things that protect the whole society, public health monitors, weather forecasters, government payment systems, protection of our personal data, and an impartial civil service that works within the perimeters of US laws as their written. These protections are already wire degraded but DOGE is dynamiting them out of existence.
I for one am very concerned about whether my elderly family members will be getting social security checks in 18 months, whether the national forests and parks will be burning this summer, and whether hurricane forecasts will be reliable this summer/fall. I don’t think this is an us v. them concern but enjoy your schadenfreude I guess.
That is very much on point.
All the so called talking points promoted by the powell memorandum are bursting forth with highly engineered seed.
Burn expertise and throw innovation on its’s pyre.
It will glow long enough, and burn enough toxins, to succeed.
They might well have their desolation, and we will have the worst of it.
Which, I do not think JRR Tolkien, ever wished for.
I do not think his self adopted children are close readers.
America is going through a perfect storm where in the Trump -Musk duo enjoys all the “positive” prejudices of society (white men, rich, business men, high IQ, self made , capitalist) and the Democracts enjoys all the negative prejudices( DEI hires, people of color, minorities, immigrants) . Democracts are caught flat footed on challenging the duo as this means challenging the soceities holy cows. It will become worse and American institutions will be destroyed and Democrats will somehow get the blame.
I don’t see Trump as high IQ but he is tenacious, cunning, and has a great instinct for weakness, all things “smart” people regularly underestimate. And his TV show lasted 14 years. That is an eternity in that business, so he was good to begin with in the “create a public persona” mode and had oodles of practice.
But I very much agree with your general point. Lambert added that as bad as the Musk team is at actual engineering, they are great at social engineering.
Exactly. They view society and its economy as a social-technical system, which should be run rationally by its engineers. This view began from a left-wing, rather than a right-wing perspective, as can be seen in The Engineers and the Price System by Thorstein Veblen, published in 1921:
“https://archive.org/details/engineersandpri01veblgoog”
Veblen thought that an engineered economy would overcome the artificial scarcity and instability of market capitalism. He believed engineers could be a revolutionary class in America, even though (ironically) he knew Herbert Hoover.
Except for the IQ bit*, I think you’re spot on with the analysis of who/what Trump is. Every once in a while, I attempt the impossible and try to put myself in his shoes. Old, battered by years of lawfare with the intention of putting him in prison forever, 3/4″ from having his brain exploded, unable to run again for president, unsure of the loyalty of some of his closest. What does he feel for his kids/grandkids?
Musk, whatever he thinks of himself, is a useful tool for Trump. He can do stuff very quickly, and if he screws up Trump can cast him off to the side and throw some of the blame on him all the while praising him for a “good try”.
*IQ references lead to a very long discussion on the various types of intelligence.
I need to clarify: I did not say Trump has high IQ. I meant society wrongly attributes certain sections of society by virtue of their race, financial positions as having high IQ.
It’s not technocracy. It is “State Capture”. You don’t have to be good at technology to do State Capture. You mainly need influence, wealth and indifference … indifference to constitutional law, conflict of interest and other people’s needs.
i dont think musk’s government gets to count as a technocracy because he isn’t bringing in experts, he’s kicking out experts and bringing in 20 year old cs majors. it’s just using the guise of “advanced technology and AI” to cut costs. we live in a society that values efficiency and innovation, ergo, people argue whatever they are doing exemplifies those values.
everything going on with doge feels incredibly similar to the media coverage of when musk first seized control of twitter. people wanting to point and laugh at the failures, musk trying to rehire the people he fired while insisting everything is fine, etc. musk alienating people from twitter resulted in the formation of new social medias for different interest groups. i am wondering how this will be mirrored on a governmental scale. meta’s creation of threads represents a large, preexisting private company trying to fill the void. i suppose mastodon/bluesky represent decentralized local networks trying to fill the void. yves has written about how this is like 1990s russia privatization and i think i need to research what that looked like more.
it’s really hard to stay sane and rational when news happens and everybody gets all panicked about things. i am starting to think the best way of doing so is finding historical parallels. that way, events can be seen as part of a larger story instead of something strange and terrifying. which i am sure is already obvious to a lot of people. i myself just figured it out though.
“i myself just figured it out though.”
Kudos, matt. You’re way ahead of a whole lot of people who don’t understand that context/history matters when trying to sort out what’s going on.
There’s no evidence that DOGE is doing anything to cut costs. The biggest supposed “win” was cancelling an arguably DEI contract with $8 million total that had $5.5 million remaining on contract, but they somehow dyslexically read the contract as valued at $8 billion.
The entirety of US civil service payroll is about $200 billion a year. Even cutting every single federal civilian employee would be a fraction of the DoD annual budget. And there’s a reasonable chance that everyone fired in the last month will be reinstated with back pay once the cases work through the court system.
If these cuts are actually intended to justify the $4.5 trillion tax cut, they’re going to have to terminate major DoD weapon systems or SSMI entitlements. So good luck oldsters, tell your kids to learn Chinese or Russian and leave ASAP.
Emma, leaving aside your obvious distaste for Elon Musk, it may be that President Trump’s ultimate purpose is to increase the financial efficiency of the Federal government, but the task the DOGE kiddies are performing is simply an initial investigation into the flow of Federal funds. They are just following the money expended by the Treasury in order to comply with the requirements of Article 2 Section 9 of your Constitution:
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
Note that it specifically uses the phrase, “all public money”.
Article 2 Section 1 categorically states, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Establishing the public transparency of appropriations made by law and the consequent flow of funds drawn from the Treasury seems to the most significant obligation arising from the Presidential Oath which makes the other obligation possible.
Louis Fisher in “Presidential Spending Power” briefly summarises past conflicts starting with the concerns of the First Congress about the reporting role of the Treasury in improving revenues and curtailing expenses, and ranging over the conflicts over Treasury Reports to Congress and the assertion of Presidential authority over the Treasury by Monroe, Jackson and subsequent Presidents.
It seems to me that after the Second War, Presidents and Congress were much less inclined to transparency in the flow of funds through the Treasury, and many black and grey areas developed which have remained opaque until President Trump made the decision to use DOGE to establish financial transparency so that future Presidents, the Congress and the people are provided with the opportunity to see how their taxes and Government borrowings are applied and to make their judgements accordingly.
In a situation where opaque and black funding arrangements would appear to have been completely out of control, and, in some cases, deliberately so, throughout the entire post-FDR period, and particularly following the adventures of the Biden administration, it strikes me the DOGE’s ruthless shock and awe approach in this initial phase has been highly effective in raising public confdence in, and acceptance of the purpose of the present administration and has made it much less easy for the bureaucrats in the Federal government, the military and the agencies to block the process of achieving, if not total transparency, then at least a very high degree of transparency and clarity and will set benchmarks for the electorates of other countries to judge the behaviour of their politicians and bureaucracies.
> DOGE’s ruthless shock and awe approach in this initial phase has been highly effective in raising public confdence in
Made all the more ruthless because nobody knows who’s actually in charge! My favorite confidence builder was when they accidentally laid off people who worked manufacturing nuclear weapons at Pantex. “You don’t need three people to handle that, two should do it, whoops! BOOM!” And so forth.
An example of BOOM from cutting corners and poorly trained people in the nuclear world.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/tokaimura-criticality-accident
In his book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, he relates how workers at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project were unaware that concentrating U235 in solution could result in a criticality event. A result of knowledge siloing because of security concerns. It required extensive revisions to the purification process. Near miss. FAFO!
I’m supposed to entrust a bunch of uncleared 20 year old MuskRats, at least one of whom made unauthorized disclosures of confidential information at a previous employer, with sensitive confidential information including everybody’s social security number, address history, tax returns, HIPAA information for military people, etc
As for “auditing”. These are the brain geniuses that proclaimed the cancellation of a $8 million dollar contract as saving $8 billion in”fraud, waste, and abuse”. Fired seasonal fire fighters and park rangers, nuclear arsenal security specialists, weather forecasters, and people responsible for tracking down avian flu spread. Because they were too lazy and indifferent to figure out the impact of their ordered firings.
May you enjoy the blessings of their “auditing” on your life. You’ll have to excuse me as I continue to not to enjoy the blessings of Musk’s amazing auditing skills as applied to his various companies and products.
They are not auditors in the normal sense, they are establishing a money trail, and , hopefully, establishing linkages, and forensic accountants and financial investigators will follow, and all the razzmatazz of organisational change and development along with the introduction of effective and transparent accounting systems with regular periodic audits will go down a very different path.
The lucky break they had was that all or most of the payments go through the Treasury (unless the CIA, is involved in the fentanyl business and similar operations and then you will need a team with, let us say, a wider range of skillsets).
I’m looking at this as a UK citizen, with a governing system in which financial secrecy has been strenuously pursued over the centuries, and I’m sitting next door to an unauditable EU which is intent on the creation of even more unauditable slush funds in which Fonda Lyin’ and cronies will bathe whilst vigorously hounding those who attempt to expose them using the useful “tools” of the newly invented crimes of “hate speech”, “disinformation” and “misinformation”.
But then, I live in a world in which things have begun to move so fast, I’m left wondering which will follow the Syrian government and disappear first, Starmer, the Ukraine, NATO, the EU, or Israel?
The sort of “radical transparency” that comes from being completely unbeholden to rule of law and beyond the reach of public disclosure laws? The sort that didn’t even bother to hide conflicts of interest and selling of public goods such as the weather service into private hands? The ones that have no concern about the health and safety of the citizenry?
Well you live in the UK, so…hahahaha
BTW, just saw this on Reddit. Radical transparency indeed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1iti8av/termination_of_employees_a_week_of_chaos_and_death/
NOAA is no longer allowed to share weather data with UK meteorology service so…good luck to you.
bertl,
auditors would, in an normal sense, establish a money trail.
That is what an audit is called.
An autidor would not pre-emptively act as a hanging judge as they turn one stone over another.
Beating up public servants (re :sir kier blairmer recently), who are the only practical opposition to his fairweather pathologies, is my idea of totaliararism.
Bully the weak and coddle the strong.
In modern polity, it means success.
In my experience, auditors are pretty low on the pole at the major accounting firms and are pretty much dependent on being fed information prepared by internal accountants, and their services are time consuming and costly and generally consist of a series of random checks on individual transactions – and they they seem have a compulsion to up sell their firm’s consultancy products.
Smaller firms are generally unwilling to take on this kind of work because it to do it thoroughly can result in the loss of what might otherwise be a stable long-term source of income which may not be easily replaced so they lack the necessary experience.
I think it may be be wise to have a forensic accountant on retainer to advise on specific issues which arise from the investigation but generally forensics only come into the picture once the kiddies have a map of the flow of funds.
I can see your point about “beating up” public servants but I can also see the point of enforcing and reinforcing the fact that the President has executive authority and the responsibility for the hiring and firing of personnel, particularly if another aim is to change the cultures which exist in the various federal departments, agencies and the military.
I am not convinced that accepting the responsibility for the appointment and termination of personnel is any kind of indicator of totalitarianism and I suspect that Hannah Arendt, who really understood the nature of totalitarian systems, would agree with me.
Arguably, the Deep State and the permanent standing of public servants is a much more likely indicator of an inclination towards the totalitarian because of the way in which the product of group think is enforced in any institution with a significant number of permanent employees and the cheerful willingness to beat up anyone who disagrees with established policy, I think President Trump may well have came to that point of view during the four years he was out of office.
1. Trump has been terminating and deploying personnel (Musk) outside his constitutional authority. See Lambert’s latest DOGE post. How is this any different than Trump operating in accordance with Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt and declaring a state of exception? This is consistent with his strained declaration of emergencies as the basis for imposing tariffs?
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/koepnick/M_f04/materials/presentations2/graves_schmitt.htm
2. I see no evidence that Trump has made any effort to reduce the power of the Deep State in the US and the MIC. We ran a post in Links on how Tulsi Gabbard’s first statements after her confirmation as head of DNI could have been made by any factotum:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/tulsi-gabbard-has-nothing-to-say
Despite Pentagon being pork central, the DOGE stooges haven’t gone rooting around there. What does that tell you? The priority is to gut social programs and wave pom-poms over marginal savings and abuses there, and not go after the big perps.
I don’t see any attempt by President Trump to create a state of exception, unlike my favourite US politician, Huey Long, who in the captured state of Louisiana, began to bring about fundametal change benefiting ordinary, relatively and absolutely poor, families. Ufortunately, he was assassinated before he had a chance to achieve his aims for the people and, as is typical of republican powers, his name has been blackened and the extent of his reforms ignored and forgotten.
I suspect the idea of creating a state of exceptio nwould be abhorrent to President Trump and it is a more fitting description of the tendencies of the Bush, Obama and Biden regimes. I see President Trump as more of a plebian tribune in the mode of the Gracchi brothers.
I think the President is trying to democratise rapidly and bring about change within the difficult context of a republic, and he knows that he is currently at the height of his power to make longterm institutional reforms, a power which will steadily decline as his term progresses. From his recent experience, I am sure he is fully aware that he is bound by a republic of laws and many of his decisions will be overturned by the courts.
When I first became the lead on a project, I gave many soothing talks implying (or even explicitly) stating that change would be minimal knowing full well that many of the groups I spoke to would likely sacrifice members and most of the employees would be forced to re-apply for jobs with an altered tak structure, so Tulsi Gabbard did what she had to and she is forced to play nice for the first few months in office.
The way to go after big perps is to get some practice going after small perps and empty jobs in order to gain experience as a team capable of producing the leadership of future teams operating on the basis of clear but rolling protocols and developing a basic doctrine which will be adapted appropriately for different areas of government activity, and that is (perhaps hopefully) what I see happening.
Yves, I apologise for the misspelling, etc, in my but your system kept rejecting my reply to each of your points as commets already made, which only accepted to post after repeated tryin to post. Unfortunately it emerged after a long period when your website stopped function on my computer within giving me the opporunity to make corrections before the comment finlly emerged on screen.
Yves, I apologise for the misspelling, etc, in my comment but your system kept rejecting my reply to each of your points as commets already made, which only accepted to post after repeated tryin to post. Unfortunately it emerged after a long period when your website stopped function on my computer within giving me the opporunity to make corrections before the comment finlly emerged on screen.
Yves, I apologise for the misspelling, etc, in my comment but your system kept rejecting my reply to each of your points as comments already made, which only accepted to post after repeatedly trying to post, as it is doing with this one. Unfortunately it emerged after a long period when your website stopped functioning on my computer without giving me the opporunity to make corrections before the comment finally emerged on screen.
I am sorry but Lambert has produced the goods otherwise. See Feb 19 Water Cooler. Trump has declared that his DOJ determines what the law means. He has just put the DOJ over the Supreme Court.
This goes also for firing people without going through legally required procedures, and impounding funds.
Why you defend this is beyond me.
What President Trump declares about the law is not necessarily what is, and that is the fundamental truth about your republic.
Equally, I’m not defending anything. I am describing, based on my own experiences in production industries and education, what practical technical issues are involved in this kind of change process and why certain choices may have been made and how the process is likely to evolve.
I do not necessarily agree with the approach adopted, but that does not mean that I do not understand and respect the decisions made in this particular context.
You must have experienced situations where emloyees are fired without notice and less profitable customers abandoned as organisational change takes place in a busness setting. The same approach is now bring applied to government and observing the process and the results will be vey interesting.
My own approach to change was strongly influenced by my study and observations of business failure and the efforts made by Sloane and Raskob to pull together a disparate collection of subsiduary companies an integrating them into an organisation which became the largest industrial company in the world, the resulting structure capable of supporting many decades of managerial incompetence as entopy inevitably set in.
I don’t have particularly strong feelings about the internal conduct of US politics, but I am interested in the way they are conducted within the framework of the institutions created by the Constitution and the departments and agencies which have evolved over time since the Founders.
I am certainly interested in the conduct of your Republic’s foreign policies, overt and covert, because they have consequences for my country and our close neighbours.
Your theory might be worth considering if Trump, Musk, or the rest of the Project 2025 crew has ever demonstrated any interest in the interests of the common people.
I’m familiar with the American state of exception and lawlessness through the works of Peter Dale Scott, Aaron Good, Gabe Rockhill, etc. However, I see nothing in how Trump and Musk are rolling this out that would be of beneficial to the common person or really anyone other than a very small clutch of transhumanist Silicon Valley broligarchs looking to feed on the ensuing “liberated” federal assets, work functions, and whatever they can collect from “protective” tariffs that will do nothing to grow American industry.
What they’re smashing first are vital functions to American health and safety and hiring probationary workers who are least likely to be part of any deep state and are in fact the cheapest workers (compared to high tenure feds and contractors).
They already spelled out their dystopian vision under Project 2025. I don’t think they have anything like the competence and social conditions to get towards their end goal but a lot of smash and grab can be accomplished in the meantime.
I feel like I am rewatching the fall of Syria again. These guys aren’t getting away with this because they’re competent. It’s because the system that could be put up to fight them had been so attritioned by years of apathy and prior unclean hands, plus there are probably powers that be within the US deep state who see opportunities to let them proceed forward for now, so now they’re like HTS installing themselves in Damascus in 2 weeks.
Emma, what you see as an emotionally compelling political issue, I view as a technical matter.
In any situation like this, my inclination was always to view the initial proposal through as many frames of reference as possible, walking as many miles as we could in other people’s shoes – managerial employees, administrative staff, production workers and their immediate supervisers, up and down the distribution channel – and convert the proposal into an agreed brief, especially if the timescale was very short. The whole idea was to increase our own personal emotional distance from the proposed assignment but to also become as aware as possible of the emotional, professional and career interests we were likely to face, and not forgetting political responses by local authorities and members of Parliament.
It is also an approach I explained and recommended to my students in live projects and casework in my subsequent career in education. “Why did you choose to do that? What alternative approaches did you consider? Why didn’t you consider this?” were questions my students were compelled to answer both one on one with me or an assistant and in whole class critiques. I also suggested that these questions be asked at every stage in the life of a project.
I obviously don’t know what form this process took in relation the DOGE, but clearly some thought, of whatever quality, must have been put into the current task and it was more that just a case of firing from the hip.
yeah sorry i kinda put my foot in my mouth here. (it’s what i get for commenting during class.) what i mean to say is that cutting costs is part of the guise musk is using to seize power. he might legitimately believe cutting costs is good. but he’s not going after the DoD like you said. (maybe the trump admin is – i’d imagine going after the MIC would take much longer than going after institutions with less power. we won’t know til something happens tho.)
my only solid analogy is still his takeover of twitter. going “i am going to make things better!!! innovation and efficiency by adding AI and cost cutting measures!!!” but the real end result has been waves of people leaving and a significantly more pro-musk group being the only ones left on the site. but again: the pro musk people eat up the changes because they think it exemplifies their values of innovation and efficiency.
so basically i agree i just had a massive fumble when wording my comment.
i’m a bit torn on learning chinese or not though. like i know america is going downhill. and i could learn a foreign language and start a life abroad. but i’d feel really guilty for abandoning my friends and family. america is my home and id lowkey rather fight for it than leave.
They are now at least saying that they will go after DoD. Cut 8 percent a year until 2030.
It could be a bluff like the the invasion and tariff threats, or maybe they’ll find a softened target that’s ready for picking the carcass of, who knows.
technocracy -> techbrocracy
“And now a few of the people who learned to code really well are doing the same thing to the PMC, because they think the 1% who know tech should rule the world”
Brings to mind Dark Enlightenment thinker Curtis Yarvin who is purported to be an influence on the whole PayPal mafia and our VP Vance.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/curtis-yarvin-trump
A very dark rabbit hole indeed.
In honor of this apparently obligatory knee bending to DOGE, I vow to never ever mention my husband or my marriage without also mentioning that sometime my spouse is annoying.
Good lord. The point is that Musk, who may or may not work for the Federal Government, and his crew have not provided any explaination of what they plan to do and how they are qualified and more useful than the systems in place.
And by Musk, I mean Elon Musk, the world’s most often photographed with a greasy sheen of flop sweat man.
As he said himself, getting money is ‘just the matter of making a few phone calls’.
I know credit can be loose these days, as long as there is collateral, but he has always taken it to the moon, without a return trip.
If the algorithm decides which government offices to close and which employees to fire, it’s a technocracy, but if Musk and his subordinates decide, it’s just a Muskocracy.
“Congress are sidestepping this issue with a kind of strategic incompetence”
I would exclude “with a kind of” in the above sentence.
The strategy, in my view, is to feign helplessness in order sidestep the constitution because of party affiliation.
“The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for long years,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison on March 15, 1789. “That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.”
We remote now?
Jefferson wrote also that there are two parties (sorry for not putting the exact quote here but something to the effect) – one that will push power upward and into the hands of a small group and the other who trusts in the people and operate under the peoples consent.
The choice is here and now – Hamiltonian or Republic
As I have watched this whole thing roll out over the past year for whatever reason a few movies (and their characters) popped into my mind that describes some of what is happening. I’m not a huge movie buff but it seems a bit like reality (if that’s what this is –doesn’t feel like it) mimicking art.
First the democrats roll-out the dead guy from Weekend at Bernies to be their candidate and prop him up until finally the jig is up
The republicans counter with Johnny Ringo from Tombstone as their candidate. Doc Holliday perfectly describes Johnny ” he can’t kill enough, steal enough, hurt enough, hate enough ” —when Wyatt Erpp asks Doc why he does what he does- Doc replies ” he wants revenge/retribution –Wyatt asks for what –Doc replies “for being born” . Trump has been this way since he was born. BTW –Val Kilmers acting job as Doc in this movie is one of the best performances I have ever seen. The bullying/preying on the weak is key in Johnny and his gang to take over the town (remind you of anyone)
Now we have Trump in office and we roll into the movie THE GRIFTER (caps for Trumps preference) with John Cusak in the lead role …..we now have probably the biggest grifter/conman in world history in one of the most powerful positions with no interest in governing but certainly focused (with his motley crew of sychophants/oligarchs) in robbing americans blind.
So the question begs –how do we collectively become the Doc/Wyatt team to fight back against Johnny and his gang of malcontents.
I will end this with a quote from Roadhouse (Patrick Swayze as Dalton) —-were nice until it’s time not to be nice .
We’ll the time to be nice is long past …..and there are a lot of ways to do this non-violently.
“The first step toward counteracting these trends would be to better educate both Congress and the public about the still poorly understood dangers of a technocratic state which heralds further fusion of corporate and government power…”
Good Luck with that. The majority of Congress are only interested in dialing for dollars and the power it brings. Educating the public how? Both the MSM and social media platforms are now run by the oligarchs and corporate entities themselves.
So who is going to do the educating? Who will give us the unvarnished truth about what our government has been doing and the challenges that we face? To some extent Trump/DOGE have been shining the light on what agency’s such as USAID and NED, have been up to by shining light on the where the money goes. This is a start, but I have yet to see any MSM really dig into the underlying reasons for those programs (favorable corporate/capitalist regime change, corporate access). I’m pretty sure that the soft power that those agency’s used will continue under another name regardless of the party in control.
The author fails to see that this “Technocracy” is just another different set of elites and oligarchs that have come into control. I agree with him that “We lost our civil liberties and protections (and our country as we know it),” but that started long ago. I don’t think this group has any better sense of humanity or good than the last bunch. Maybe the public will somehow figure that out and then real change can happen.
Tom Valovic here. Thanks for your commentary Yves. I would argue that the reason technocracy is inherently dangerous is that it is not really visible to the naked eye so to speak. It does not manifest as a distinct phenomenon but rather happens behind the scenes in a rather Oz-like fashion creating a kind of grotesque info-bureaucracy. (I’m thinking of Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil which kind of augured this in albeit a satirical way.) The UN, for example, just held a major conference on AI which was attended by the representatives of the global diplomatic corps of various countries. It’s a kind of technocratic socialization (I almost said brainwashing) where they get to sign on to the AI bandwagon without really knowing much about it or it’s full range of capabilities to penetrate every nook and cranny of our lives. Put on the T-shirt Mr. Politician and you are an instant member of the club and pushing its virtues. AI in that sense is kind of a trojan horse.
Also: Just to clarify, I don’t in any way think that technologists are superior to mathematicians, scientists, and others. This is about a power base and one hidden in plain sight. The technocracy takeover isn’t about individuals so much as about the behind-the-scenes operations of Big Tech initiatives melding with government programs as well as the creation of a high degree of tech dependency on the part of the populace. (AI, for example, was developed by the military.) Please see:
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/big-tech-companies-more-powerful-than-nations
Thanks Tom and Yves for the article.
Good that you mention “AI” and the military. Every time I see “AI”, I think “Metalhead”, because I can’t help but worry that’s the direction we are headed. “Lavender” on steroids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_%28Black_Mirror%29
Also: Thanks for all comments here. I am reading these carefully.
Almost every large IT system has bad data in it. The fact that the usual right-wing media headline writers are shocked–shocked!–about a system as big and clunky as Social Security having bad or missing or ridiculous birth dates just shows how naive they are, and how ready to jump on the first available outrage morsel.
Maybe it’s different for Wall Street systems, but any unglamorous business system is maintained by users who hate doing data entry and lack dedication to data quality. IT database professionals will try to normalize a system like a manufacturing application and, for instance, put a part’s weight and dimensions in separate data fields, so they can be easily used to search for or filter data. Then the manufacturing personnel will ignore that and enter all the information in the part’s description field, in whatever order happens to strike their fancy that day. People are very good at extracting relevant information from chunks of unformatted text; computers are pretty poor at doing so. People have built-in concepts of meaning and purpose; computers: nope.
And wait till the Nerd Reich boys find duplicate people in the Social Security database–duplicates! People fraudulently collecting multiple checks! No, 99% of these will be dead records. But duplicate records get created by manual data entry and in even greater numbers by CRM front-ends that ask the customer to register themselves online. You can’t tell how serious the data problems of a system are in a week of looking around, especially when you don’t know the application design or the purpose of the different record types. You need to spend a long time looking at data and looking at how it’s used to see where the really serious problems are. The smash-and-grab approach of Elon’s bunch is not going to make anything more efficient, but it certainly could break systems that many people rely on.
Today’s article from “Wall Street On Parade” that team is using the site called WIRED. Wired is noting how the GOA (Government Office of Accountability” is springing into action. The GOA is under the Legislative Branch and NOT the Executive Branch. Their duties is to measure Fraud in the US
Two Senators have requested that GOA look deeply into the behaviors of Musk and his actions using technology.
It appears, Musk, AKA Trump may be committing crimes using advanced technology.The GOA is tasked in determining whether some of Musk’s technology is shifting those $$s saved to increase Musk’s profits.
A somewhat similar attack was waged by the Reagan Administration. It seems some or many Republicans maintain/ed that the US Government needs to be shrunk down “to the size of a bath tub.” A typical Calvinistic philosophy, “Pull Up Your Bootstraps and get to work.”
Read today’s article by “Wall Street On Parade.”
DC has had accountability vacuums, without basic standards for administrative control, for decades. Some say bug while others say feature. In any event, people around the country have heard about eliminating government waste from many past presidents like Clinton, W and Obama. The GAO, OIGs and others charged with some types of oversight look like they have missed out on opportunities to research, identify, even propose some systemic fixes to the legacy software and processes. Congress critters are supposed to look out for their constituents, so they are part of the problem and provide hollow lip service and empty slogans. They could start to be part of some solutions.
The government isn’t alone in that area. Large financial institutions have wrestled with their legacy core systems for deposits and such to allow some backward and forward compatibility. How well they did remains to be seen as Chase and others look rather opaque to outside observers and regulators.
Musk, et al are exploiting the moment for maximum publicity as part of the Trump torrent of executive orders and critiques. Citizens have many concerns about what goes on in the institutions in DC or on Main Street and occasionally might even see wide-spread reporting. Some greater transparency and accountability would go a long ways toward beginning to restore some trust. There remain many privacy issues like those from the Lerner era IRS or Department contractor access to millions of records outside their remit.
Team Dem could start to tilt the scales of public opinion back toward their side with some policy statements that go beyond name-calling. Come up with plausible actions that lead to accountability and transparency, with follow-up, firm audit requirements and public dissemination of the results and specific actions plans to fix identified problems. Do that well in advance of the 2026 midterm elections.
Agencies won’t run like businesses for various reasons. However, that does not make them immune to common sense, and reasonable standards of control and timelines. Each Department has its own challenges, and with the billions or trillions in play, why not be constructive now?
OF COURSE the western world is acting more fascist after 50 years of privatization, deregulation and the financialization of the economy. “Neoliberalism” is just rebranded fascism, that should be clear to everyone by now. When the big capitalists are unrestrained, everyone else suffers. US economic policy has decimated the middle class.
Article: Privatization is at the Core of Fascism
We need to end the Kochtopus that has seized control of US policy since the ’70s.
“Libertarianism is a poison that’s crept into our society on the backs of rightwing billionaires like Libertarian David Koch, who ran for Vice President in 1980 on a platform of shutting down every government agency except the military, courts, and police.”
Article: The Koch Brothers Have Radically Changed American Politics
A new book exposes the hidden campaign to mainstream their libertarian agenda.
Project 2025 is a continuation of David Koch’s 1980 libertarian platform:
“Even by contemporary standards, the 1980 Libertarian Party platform was extreme. It called for the abolition of a wide swath of federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the Federal Election Commission, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Federal Trade Commission, and “all government agencies concerned with transportation.”
It railed against campaign finance and consumer protection laws, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, any regulations of the firearm industry (including tear gas), and government intervention in labor negotiations. And the platform demanded the repeal of all taxation, and sought amnesty for those convicted of tax “resistance.”
Koch and his libertarian allies moreover advocated for the repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs. They wanted to abolish federally mandated speed limits. They opposed occupational licensure, antitrust laws, labor laws protecting women and children, and “all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates.”
And in true libertarian fashion, the platform urged the privatization of all schools (with an end to compulsory education laws), the railroad system, public roads and the national highway system, inland waterways, water distribution systems, public lands, and dam sites.”
“Back in the 1950s and 1960s when Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand were first pitching this ideology (then called neoliberalism and objectivism) as a way to bring “freedom” (economic freedom for big capitalists only) to America, they were broadly ridiculed and ignored.
But the libertarian foundations and billionaires got into the act in the 1970s, along with the rightwing media organizations they were then building, putting Ronald Reagan into office and shaping his policies, sending America into a libertarian slide.
The Reagan Revolution’s libertarian experiment has brought us the predictable results:
– the highest rate of child poverty and maternal death in the developed world
– one in seven American children going to bed hungry
– our schools, roads, bridges and rail systems in shambles
– millions without access to healthcare
– historically low tax rates on corporations and billionaires
– an impoverished middle-class
– devastated labor unions
“In the 1980s, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), led by the likes of Bill Clinton, aimed to reinvent the Democratic Party for the neoliberal era by purging it of progressive forces left over from the 1960s and 1970s.
The goal was to make it friendly to Wall Street and the Pentagon while dropping the civil rights and tree-hugger talk, and it was largely successful, as the party found popular support among professionals in the nicer suburbs.”
Elon Musk hasn’t got a clue how government is meant to work