Of course. It’s constitutional for him to do it
But a lot of people are falling for Elons tricks. He is not an honest man
And what’s he’s doing is not good. Not good at all
Discussion
How is what he's doing not good?
What he’s doing is partially good. But it’s partially bad too
Same principle as the patriot act and tsa, only using efficiency as the excuse rather than safety. Lots of 4th amendment /privacy violations in letting Elon access financial transactions. And he’s already talking about putting treasury transactions “on chain” which is the first step towards a cdbc
Also he can potentially shut down investigations into his own companies. Rumor on the street is that Tesla has been violating immigration law for years (if you remember the H1B debate over Christmas break)
Which brings something else: Elon tried to hire a Turkish national at doge that doesn’t even have us citizenship and was stopped by Trump. That he tried at all shows how compromised he is
Sure, that stuff isn't great. But the example of the hire shows that there is some accountability with Trump. And while I think Vivek would have been better in the role, no one else has really had the balls to go into a govt controlled org (twitter) and clean it out. We need the US govt blown wide open. I'll take the good with the bad because no one is perfect, and some things are really important.
Did he actually clean out Twitter?
Maybe talk to Taibbi about that one
Did he fire the fact checkers, for example? Yes. I'm not on Twitter, so I don't know the full scope. It sounds like you might be in favor of secret spending programs like USAID. I'm not saying you are, but it sort of sounds like it. We need to get rid of the IRS, the Dept of Education, the FBI and CIA. We need to fire at least 1m govt employees. If Elon is the blunt instrument to get that done, I can live with it for a while. If he can't do it, he needs to go.
I’m not at all in favor of USAID. I actually would like to see that ended and I applaud Elon for going that route
Where I worry is that I don’t think Elon is trustworthy. He’s already lied about H1B and weirdly enough his video game record, he has an ulterior motive here
And the palantir stuff is scary. Facial recognition plus social credit system is not good long term. That does need to be stopped
That is a good observation. What is your solution? No one else seemed willing to slay the dragon.
For one, we need to stop the H1B abuse, they need compliant workers to pull this off
Secondly we need to encourage whistleblowers to come forward in many of these positions. One of them tried at open ai and was killed (his death was ruled a suicide). Need to get exposure on that
Extra scrutiny should be applied to trumps federal court appointments wrt the 4th amendment
State legislatures and gubernatorial races are critical in the pushback. More easily accessible and probably the best place to get involved
but what we do we about all of the graft over the years and government mismanagement?
Things could get worse though and it’s important to not lose site of that
We can't be afraid of that. The detergent of light is more important right now. The corruption is dar more widespread than any benefit Elon might or might not be able to drive. Don't lose the forest for the tree.