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submitted 2 days ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Summary

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) began recruiting "high-IQ small-government revolutionaries" willing to work 80+ hours per week with no pay to help slash federal spending.

Appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, the panel is tasked with recommending spending cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and agency restructuring by July 4, 2026.

Musk and Ramaswamy advocate for drastic measures, including cutting grants to nonprofits and potential mass layoffs.

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[-] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 7 points 16 hours ago

Wait, I think this is how we get work camps for people who are "too smart".

[-] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

Then it is easy to dispatch them. Like Pol Pot did with anyone who seemed to be able to read and write

[-] arc@lemm.ee 46 points 1 day ago

So a billionaire wants people to work 80 hour weeks for nothing. People tell him to fuck right off. As in, find a cliff and keep walking.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't think these positions will remain empty. Corporations will send a few lobbyists to check if the cost/power ratio is beneficial and if so, just flood the department.

[-] TehWorld@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago

I hadn't thought of that, but this is 100% exactly what will happen. BP oil will surely pay someone VERY handsomely to 'volunteer' 80 hours a week toward eliminating all oversight of drilling rigs in the gulf.

[-] TheBrideWoreCrimson@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 day ago

My first thought was spies... because they are already on someone else's payroll.
Also, bootlickers and extremely desperate people that would take on any job.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 13 points 1 day ago

People "desperate for any job" are actually desperate for money and willing to work for it. They won't take an unpaid position, what are you thinking?

[-] DankDingleberry@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago

feels like im playing plague inc. and these are all joke news

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago

Please, someone uninstall this version of the game!

[-] SquatDingloid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Drinking asbestos paste lets you escape the simulation

And it's delicious

The government doesn't want you to know this

They want it all for themselves

[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago

Good grief. It's like he asked ChatGPT "how do I hire people suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect?"

Dear meme-lords: I need something with much more facepalm than the Picard one. A "super facepalm" if you will. Thank you.

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 day ago

You need super high IQ people to create memes like that

[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Clearly. I'm also prepared to pay the handsome sum of $0. Where is my cabinet position?

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[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 47 points 1 day ago

Smart people don't work for the bad guys for free Jack.

[-] 1SimpleTailor@startrek.website 23 points 1 day ago

America's saving grace may in fact be that the fascists are too stupid and lazy to do the work required to dismantle the federal government and cause mass human suffering.

[-] teamevil@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

They're just going to speed run a bunch of wrenches into the gears of democracy.

[-] b161 2 points 16 hours ago

It’s gonna be like when he fired all those Twitter staff then hire some back again. Or when we got a bunch of servers shut down without knowing what they do and locked people out of their accounts. Or like the fucking CyberCuck.

[-] sibachian@lemmy.ml 38 points 1 day ago

do "high-IQ" individuals even exist on the republican isle? why would a lefty want to get involved in this shit, especially unpaid? what idiot would accept unpaid labour under a multi-billionaire?

[-] laserm@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago

High IQ individuals definitely exist on the republican side. The only thing is that they are the most selfish kind (hence why they are republican) and hence they won't work for free.

[-] voldage@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

IQ tests intentionally omit any questions related to empathy, emotional intelligence and creativity, so it can favour people from the top of the pile and act as accurate perdictor of success in ruthless capitalist society. It implicitly promotes lack of those traits in individuals and explicitly promotes the definition of intelligence that's unrelated to them. While you don't get lower scores if you're highly creative or empathetic person, so it's not directly a detrimental for society and can be a useful metric for some cases like specific jobs, it's image as sole measure of intelect is manufactured to promote "specific kind of people", to which group many republican businessmen would belong.

I'm not disagreeing with what you said, just thought I'd expand on that.

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[-] bstix@feddit.dk 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Ok, get this. You elect politicians to "help slash federal spending".

What the hell is Musk even doing and why is he outsourcing this job to unpaid idiots, when politicians already get paid to do this?

Okay, I'll do a few suggestions for free:

  • Stop subsidizing companies. All of them.
  • Tax the rich to boost the federal income.
  • Legalize all immigrants so they can be tax paying citizens.
  • Crack down on employers using illegal underpaid illegal immigrants.
  • Provide universal health care. Sick people don't work.
  • Cut down on police force spending.
  • Cut down on car infrastructure spending.
  • Cut down "defense" spending in artificial oil wars.
  • Help Ukraine to defeat Russia, so Russia will have to surrender and disarm their nukes, so that USA can also cut down on cost for maintenance of nukes.
  • Expand renewable energy. It's free energy yo, and it creates jobs for tax paying citizens.
  • Stop mining fossil fuels. It will cost more to clean that shit up than is earned.
[-] KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 day ago

I just wanted to add some context for one of these bullets.

The US is upping the amount it spends on nuclear weapons maintenance and production because China has reentered the game as a major player. They'd been stable at 300-350 warheads for decades but is expected to ramp up to producing 100+ per year by 2030.

So one major adversary has just been replaced by another. Everything old is new again, including the cold war arms race.

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[-] Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

I want YOU to be POTUS. Right now.

[-] wildcardology@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

Undocumented immigrants paid $96 billion in 2023, they don't benefit from them but imagine if all of them get to pay taxes.

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[-] sibachian@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago

my bingo card is almost full, just missing universal basic income - people with money, spend money, supporting businesses and thus "the economy".

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[-] Eiri@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 day ago

The US are just a bad parody of themselves at this point.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There are only two types of "Super High-IQ" people who will go for an unpaid job working in politics for the likes of Musk:

  • Very naive young things, hence very inexperienced and who are going to do all mistakes in the book and then some for the next couple of years as they learn the ropes. By the time they know enough about the job they'll be burned out from working for a guy like Musk not to mention knowing enough to know they're better of elsewhere.
  • Grifters looking for making maximum money from being in politics. Since they're not getting paid, that means corruption, lots and lots of corruption.

Also, even amongst the "very naive young things", in my own personal experience, the high intelligent types with the personality to be real believers of far right stuff, are at most above average intelligence but below genius level IQ (which is 120) and hence not really "super high"-IQ (which would more 160+) - I once worked with a guy like that who thought himself very intelligent and in his new job ended up working in an office with two genious level colleagues and he was very entertaining because of his "buttons" were so obvious and he was so easy to give the run around.

Super-high IQ people are often the very opposite of street smart, but one thing they aren't is stupid and at most fall into the first part of the saying "you can deceive most people some of the time, or some people all of the time, but you can't deceive most people all of the time" - they can be swindled but they'll figure it out faster than most.

[-] prole 22 points 1 day ago

Also, most actual intelligent people understand that IQ is incredibly flawed at best, and put little stock in it.

But I guess if your goal is "anti-DEI" or whatever, then of course you're cool with intelligence tests that make white people seem smarter.

[-] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm a guy with a high "test IQ", and my sister, who is in the normal range is way more succesful that me in most aspects of life. You don't want high "test IQ", you want "smart people" not the same, and far more difficult to measure. High IQ basically means you are good at solving certain types of puzzles

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[-] unmagical@lemmy.ml 295 points 2 days ago

No high-iq individual will work 2 weeks per week with no pay in a society that requires money to live.

[-] meco03211@lemmy.world 185 points 1 day ago

That's a common tactic in scams. You want to weed out the actual intelligent people as early as possible lest they disrupt your scam. That's why scam emails tend to have misspellings and grammatical errors. Smarter people instantly ignore that. Dumb people click on through.

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[-] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 98 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No they won't... but rich people who can afford to support themselves while indulging in their love of making poor people suffer will be lined up around the block.

Making a position unpaid is a classic tactic to keep out the poors.

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago

They'll get paid by conservative think-tanks under the table so the Dept of Efficiency looks good and can pretend that it's efficient.

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 23 points 1 day ago

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!

--Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

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[-] rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago

Fun idea: Flood their contact addresses with fake applications and fake credentials like certificates with high scores on made-up IQ tests or Mensa membership cards.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 121 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This dipshit thinks he can save the country 2 trillion dollars by firing government workers.

Even if he fired every single government position in the entire country, he couldn't make up 2 fucking trillion dollars out of that. The budget for payroll is, what? Like 15% of the total spending?

[-] cybervseas@lemmy.world 112 points 2 days ago

He doesn't genuinely think that's true. It's all a grift.

[-] DogPeePoo@lemm.ee 61 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

D epartment

O f

G rifting

E veryone

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[-] umbraroze@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

Ah, this will be the Department of Dunning-Kruger. The workers are idiots who think they are supergeniuses. Led by an idiot who thinks he's a supergenius.

During Trump's first term, this was just a metaphor, suggested by random comedians. Now, life will imitate art to its full extent.

[-] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 43 points 1 day ago

Win a grift by pretending you are an idiot

Your opponent is Elon Musk

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[-] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago

There are gonna be lots of applicants from the Intelligence Institute of Texas...

[-] kautau@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago

Can this department kick it off by eliminating itself, since it’s a wish.com version of https://www.gao.gov/

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[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

I don't know about you all but as soon as Trump was elected I immediately resolved to cut my personal spending by as much as humanly possible. I've already canceled many of my subscription services and I have reduced my use of Amazon and other online purchases to absolute zero. I'm going to work on paying down every dime of debt I owe as soon as possible and save every penny. Because shit's going to get fucked in the next 4 years with these clowns in charge. It's gonna be a light Christmas in my household this year.

I highly recommend you all do the same. Don't be the last one holding the bag when the music stops and reality sets in. For example, look at the people in the UK after Brexit.

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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
628 points (100.0% liked)

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