politics

I feel like I disagree with this approach to government efficiency:

https://x.com/DOGE/status/1860739165144367441

The examples listed are a tiny fraction of all spending. If a government _optimizes_ for "don't make oopses that look bad on twitter", then it will end up missing a lot of valuable opportunities, and at the same time lots of actually-wasteful large-scale things will remain just because they look respectable.

You _want_ a VC-like approach on small-scale public funding, that is okay with large quantities of oopses, because its goal is to make sure it captures the 1000x opportunities. Concentrate prudence energy on the large-scale stuff.

How the Government Spends your Tax Dollars: 
-$28 million on licensing fees for a green “camouflage” pattern on Afghan National Army uniforms 
-$2.5 million on a Super Bowl Ad for the Census 
-$1.7 million for holograms of dead comedians -$500,000 to build an IHOP in Washington,…

Department of Government Efficiency

Vitalik, please take a trip to anywhere in red state America, sit and talk to actual small business owners and veterans (some are both!) who are not connected to Washington or the WEF, and get a better understanding of the reality of what is going on in people's worlds.

Talk to people who were debanked by Biden.

Discussing this with economists or tech people online won't cut it.