10 ms·

Elon is also now claiming to have "deleted" 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/): https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520 https://x.com/elo

by ian_d 2y ago

Elon is also now claiming to have "deleted" 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/): https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520

araes 2y ago
Thanks for the link on 18F in the feds. Didn't realize how much they had put up on Github and other areas [1]. analytics.usa.gov [2] is also pretty cool. Apparently its Jekyll, Sass, React and d3 from their Github. 343,025 first time users in the last 30 minutes, with GSA Advantage, USPS Tracking Results, NIST, CEAC Visa Status Check, and Federal Student Aid being some of the biggest sources. Had no idea this was available. [1] https://github.com/18F https://github.com/18F [2] https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/
__loam 2y ago
[flagged]
paulgb 2y ago
This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software! (login.gov is a good example of craft you don't generally see in commercial enterprise software, let alone government software) According to that tweet they were apparently “far left” because they also worked on Direct File, which sought to cut out the middleman (TurboTax et al.) and let Americans file taxes directly. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, unless you're in bed with Intuit, this seems pretty hard to argue against!
- watwut 2y ago
  If you goal is to make government small, ineffective at consumer protection and such, this is absolutely the first group to target.
- jf 2y ago
  login.gov is amazing software. Highly tested. Expertly implemented. It might be the most tested IdP available today.
  - jeffrallen 2y ago
    Then why did it send me to id.me to send my photo ID to some low cost outsourcer?
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      Because someone lobbied their bosses.
      - emchammer 2y ago
        I would rather show up at the local post office in order to verify my identity. Such a matter common in another country where I have lived.
        eadler 2y ago
        This is starting to happen. I had to do this for NIH recently. Or it would be happening absent the recent chaos.
        threeseed 2y ago
        I can't imagine many people agreeing with you here. You need to be (a) able to walk and drive, (b) in driving distance to a post office and (c) able to work around the post office's opening hours and (d) willing to waste the time to drive/line up etc. Or you can spend less than a minute to upload a photo of your passport.
        amluto 2y ago
        Which is great until someone impersonates you by spoofing a photo of you that satisfies “liveness” detection. It’s a lot harder to AI up an animated image in person at a post office.
- freitasm 2y ago
  > this seems pretty hard to argue against! Removing consumer protection would be something hard to argue against too, but yet, here we are: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfpb-litigation-new-rules-as-he-takes-the-reins https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfp... "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his new role as acting director." Nothing of this makes sense in that all these actions don't seem to make life easier or better for citizens in particular or the world in general.
  - altacc 2y ago
    A significant part of the animosity towards the EU and Trump's threat of tariffs is its consumer protection and preventing US companies, especially US tech companies, from doing whatever the hell they want. A major difference between the US and EU is what the TikTok nonsense proved: the US is happy for a US company, aligned to Trump's authority, to track, influence and commodify its users at will; whereas the EU doesn't want any company to have that power regardless of location.
    - _blk 2y ago
      ...Seems more like the EU reserves that power to itself, which I'd argue is even worse
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Every national government tracks people, including the USA, so Americans get the worst of both worlds.
      - tcptomato 2y ago
        Why would it be worse?
    - ban-evader 2y ago
      [flagged]
- chinathrow 2y ago
  At this point, Elon is doing only damage while he thinks he cleans up. Someone will have to cleanup after the cleanup aka damage doen though, and it won't be pretty.
  - intended 2y ago
    Don’t do clean up. The biggest mistake the dems can make is to come in and do clean up. This would be paying the bills of the abusive member in a relationship.
    - ArnoVW 2y ago
      People depend on the state. Someone has to be the adult in the room. If your marriage fails what do you do with the kids? You abandon them because you don’t want to clean up?
      - throwaheyy 2y ago
        Dems were already the adult in the room, US voters decided they don’t want one.
        xp84 2y ago
        Nope, they were in control, spent 4 years focusing most of their attention on things the voting public found various degrees of stupid, then put up two successive candidates in ‘24 that were absolute jokes. The voters decided that the Democrats weren’t serious and sent them a message: “Even this obviously-corrupt buffoon is better than the arrogant elitist that you put up. Do better or be prepared for irrelevance.” Personally I’m no fan of 90% of the GOP agenda, but my fondest wish is complete dissolution of the DNC, and another party taking over as the party of the non-rich to restore some balance.
        intended 2y ago
        Right! The dems are stuck doing the responsible boring and non eye catching thing. Economists, policy makers etc. increasingly have to make the dems carry the weight, in a political and media market which moves so fast that facts can’t even matter. In this situation, is it a surprise that they could deal with Covid, undo 2008, end nafta, or any number of great things, but still lose faith of the populace because they didn’t hit the populist taking points? It now very much feels like an era of talking points, and damn the facts. In which case either making the talking points stick, or change the talking points.
- justin66 2y ago
  > This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software! Hopefully it's obvious at this point: Musk and friends not there to do anything but enrich themselves, and destroy.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    Musk usually elevates technical and capable people, and gives them more power, not less. I suspect 18F would have been adopted by USDS, if it had been less overtly partisan in its hiring practices.
    - amitrip 2y ago
      [dead]
    - ljm 2y ago
      The only person Musk ‘elevates’ is himself. People with that kind of wealth have transcended humanity. Not towards greatness but towards total indifference.
    - georgeburdell 2y ago
      Care to provide an example? I was casually looking at applying, but I am on the conservative side as easily searchable on Google by voter registrations
- ianburrell 2y ago
  My brother works for 18F. 18F might also be "far-left" cause it was created by Obama folks. I also wonder if it is also bad in his mind cause conflicts with taken over Digital Service.
  - icameron 2y ago
    The overreaction is absolutely crazy. In no way are they leftist. They are about as woke as any typical modern progressive company. A lot of my colleagues in both public and private sectors include their pronouns in their signatures. They choose to use inclusive language and policies. The big hubbub on X was about the Slack bot that recommends inclusive language. https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/CHANGELOG.inclusion_bot.md https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/CHANGELOG.inclusion... There is a hit piece article not worth linking that calls out some of the devs who worked there. The comment section of that page is very hateful. As an American it’s shameful to see that level of hate for anything to do with policies of inclusiveness. The company looks like they hire regular people of all types. A few of the adults are trans or identify as queer and they are acknowledged as equal coworkers. Fairly representative of the tech industry I’d say. What is so bad about that? They seem to write some excellent code and have a good company culture akin to a lot of SV tech companies.
  - Trasmatta 2y ago
    >far-left >Obama folks Obama was not in any way "far left"
    - ban-evader 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - tempfile 2y ago
        I think you made this up. Do you have any evidence at all? What do you even consider a "shift to the far left"?
        2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 0xcde4c3db 2y ago
  Being in bed with tax preparation companies is probably the main thing, but I also vaguely recall a statement by someone years ago (perhaps Grover Norquist or Dick Armey) that filing tax returns should be kept annoying simply for the sake of keeping people angry about taxes in general.
  - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about? It's not taxes that are the problem per se it's fuckwits like Boris Johnson's cronies that think taxes are theirs to garnish and use any chance, even a global pandemic, to steal every dime they can lay their hands on.
    - coldtea 2y ago
      >Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about? No, but paying an exorbitant amount, but seeing few things being improved around you, but endless wars funded and cronies getting richer, and useless bureucracy enlarged and making your life or business more difficult, is.
  - robocat 2y ago
    > filing tax returns should be kept annoying That's just plain stupid. Taxes are already annoying enough. In New Zealand the government makes it really really simple to pay your taxes (automated tax returns for the majority). You can call our tax department on the phone and they answer and they are helpful and they don't seem to screw you. The idea is to make it simple for people and businesses to pay their taxes so that they pay. The IRD is run like a smart business.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Unfortunately a lot of things are just plain stupid.
  - DangitBobby 2y ago
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Replacing the government with unaccountable middlemen is sort of their goal, isn't it? Think of the efficiency we could gain once we do away with all of that accountability nonsense...
hondo77 2y ago
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has deleted a group that was devoted solely to making the government more efficient. Makes perfect sense, in Trumpistan logic.
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hondo77 2y ago
    By your logic, having one small group would be most efficient. Which makes perfect sense, given the tiny size of the US government, in Trumpistan logic.
    - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
      I didn't make any claims about what is the most efficient number of groups working towards efficiency. I also didn't make any claims which groups should exist, solely based on the name of the group. You're the one who made an argument along those lines. Not me. As if, a group named for efficiency couldn't possibly be inefficient. Or, that 2 groups working for efficiency would somehow be automatically better than 1 group.
Cornbilly 2y ago
Given his tech record, he probably dragged a file named 18F to the Recycle Bin. This is the same guy that nearly tanked PayPal because he was obsessed with rewriting their entire system for Windows.
- hinkley 2y ago
  I had a coworker who turned beet red when I put Musk and PayPal in the same sentence. You know that feeling when your parents didn’t yell and you wished they would? I was too afraid to ask for the full story. His PR makes him sound like a founder but he was not.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    “X.com was … founded by Ed Ho, Harris Fricker, Elon Musk, and Christopher Payne … It merged with competitor Confinity in 2000 and the merged company changed its name to PayPal in 2001.”[1] I’m sure individual usage will vary, but I would call him a cofounder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)
    - daemin 2y ago
      Wasn't he also in the USA illegally because he was in violation of his student visa?
      - jaimex2 2y ago
        yeah yeah, and something about a slave labour diamond mine which is just as relevant to Musk having a team capable of cleaning up.
    - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
      Wow, I can’t believe this is so controversial. When companies A and B merge, what would you describe the A-founders as, in relation to the resulting company?
    - 2y ago
jacobjjacob 2y ago
Looking at the quoted post, what do they have against Direct File? It is really hard to keep track of their positions which I believe is intentional.
- buu700 2y ago
  Related: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/doge-could-create-mobile-app-tax-filing-report https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/doge-could-create-mobil...
- neuronexmachina 2y ago
  Many in the GOP are generally opposed to federally-funded free tax return filing: https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/irs-direct-file-republicans-free-income-tax-filing-mike-kelly-abolish-donald-trump-campaign-finance/ https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/irs-direct-file... > In December, however, Kelly and 28 House Republican colleagues wrote to President-elect Donald Trump to ask him to end the program: “We write to urge you to take immediate action, including but not limited to a day-one executive order, to end the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) unauthorized and wasteful Direct File pilot program. The program’s creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach, and its rollout and structural flaws have already come at a steep price.”
  - ahartmetz 2y ago
    What the actual fuck. Simplifying government paperwork = government overreach. Got it.
  - rounce 2y ago
    All the dramatic language they use to dress up their claims is completely ridiculous.
    - shigawire 2y ago
      The argument (if you take it in the most charitable light) is that reducing barriers to paying taxes will make people less averse to paying taxes. So they fight any effort to bring sanity to the tax code or tax payment process. So even taken charitably I think they are wrong. But I do believe it is simply just corrupt and malicious.
ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
Corrected link: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520 https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520
Blackcatmaxy 2y ago
related thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922543#42922953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922543#42922953
pityJuke 2y ago
He got rid of 18F, a group within the Govt to improve usage of tech (and hopefully therefore efficiency), because of a tweet. A tweet about IRS Direct File, a group that replicates the basic automatic taxation program of other advanced economies? Over a fear that the Government would take over deciding what taxes people pay, despite a fact that such a program doesn’t necessarily block you from manually filing your own taxes (don’t know if the American implementation has that, but the UK one certainly allows you to override PAYE). Yes HN commenters, this is the genius behind Government reform. EDIT: Jesus Christ someone is going to convince him FedNow is a conspiracy and kill another basic system other countries have easily managed.
tsunamifury 2y ago
He clearly wants to replace the US government technology platforms with X/XPay/etc
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Yes - This is an underrated point. The circle of Elon, Thiel, Andersson, etc conceptually orbit Balaji. Balaji, The Network State author, explicitly advocates for a techno-libertarian exit because they perceive the US and especially "team blue" as getting in the way and slowing down their vision.
  - coldtrait 2y ago
    I still don't understand what Balaji wants to achieve with his crypto oriented nonsense. Could not make any sense of it.
    - Hikikomori 2y ago
      His ideas builds on Curtis Jarvis work, dark enlightenment. He is a close associate of Peter Thiel and JD Vance. Essentially they want to destroy the federal government, buy up assets and land, start their own micro countries where they can be King CEOs. Sounds like a joke but its not.
      - kelseyfrog 2y ago
        It's important to point out, and this not an understatement, that they believe that democracy is a failed project. Democracy in their eyes is either a failed experiment or obsolete. They share a belief that "change from within"[democracy] is impossible and that "exiting" is the only other option. This extends to governance models where people are encouraged to vote for their governance by packing up and moving (digitally and/or physically) rather than attempting change from within.
      - coldtrait 2y ago
        Curtis Yarvin? None of the things these people say sound interesting in the least. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to get it.
mychael 2y ago
[flagged]

by ian_d 2y ago

Elon is also now claiming to have "deleted" 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/): https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520

araes 2y ago

Thanks for the link on 18F in the feds. Didn't realize how much they had put up on Github and other areas [1]. analytics.usa.gov [2] is also pretty cool. Apparently its Jekyll, Sass, React and d3 from their Github. 343,025 first time users in the last 30 minutes, with GSA Advantage, USPS Tracking Results, NIST, CEAC Visa Status Check, and Federal Student Aid being some of the biggest sources. Had no idea this was available. [1] https://github.com/18F https://github.com/18F [2] https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/

__loam 2y ago

[flagged]

paulgb 2y ago

This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software! (login.gov is a good example of craft you don't generally see in commercial enterprise software, let alone government software) According to that tweet they were apparently “far left” because they also worked on Direct File, which sought to cut out the middleman (TurboTax et al.) and let Americans file taxes directly. Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, unless you're in bed with Intuit, this seems pretty hard to argue against!

watwut 2y ago
If you goal is to make government small, ineffective at consumer protection and such, this is absolutely the first group to target.
jf 2y ago
login.gov is amazing software. Highly tested. Expertly implemented. It might be the most tested IdP available today.
- jeffrallen 2y ago
  Then why did it send me to id.me to send my photo ID to some low cost outsourcer?
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Because someone lobbied their bosses.
    - emchammer 2y ago
      I would rather show up at the local post office in order to verify my identity. Such a matter common in another country where I have lived.
      - eadler 2y ago
        This is starting to happen. I had to do this for NIH recently. Or it would be happening absent the recent chaos.
      - threeseed 2y ago
        I can't imagine many people agreeing with you here. You need to be (a) able to walk and drive, (b) in driving distance to a post office and (c) able to work around the post office's opening hours and (d) willing to waste the time to drive/line up etc. Or you can spend less than a minute to upload a photo of your passport.
        amluto 2y ago
        Which is great until someone impersonates you by spoofing a photo of you that satisfies “liveness” detection. It’s a lot harder to AI up an animated image in person at a post office.
freitasm 2y ago
> this seems pretty hard to argue against! Removing consumer protection would be something hard to argue against too, but yet, here we are: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfpb-litigation-new-rules-as-he-takes-the-reins https://news.bloomberglaw.com/banking-law/bessent-pauses-cfp... "Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has shut down a wide variety of operations inside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in his new role as acting director." Nothing of this makes sense in that all these actions don't seem to make life easier or better for citizens in particular or the world in general.
- altacc 2y ago
  A significant part of the animosity towards the EU and Trump's threat of tariffs is its consumer protection and preventing US companies, especially US tech companies, from doing whatever the hell they want. A major difference between the US and EU is what the TikTok nonsense proved: the US is happy for a US company, aligned to Trump's authority, to track, influence and commodify its users at will; whereas the EU doesn't want any company to have that power regardless of location.
  - _blk 2y ago
    ...Seems more like the EU reserves that power to itself, which I'd argue is even worse
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Every national government tracks people, including the USA, so Americans get the worst of both worlds.
    - tcptomato 2y ago
      Why would it be worse?
  - ban-evader 2y ago
    [flagged]
chinathrow 2y ago
At this point, Elon is doing only damage while he thinks he cleans up. Someone will have to cleanup after the cleanup aka damage doen though, and it won't be pretty.
- intended 2y ago
  Don’t do clean up. The biggest mistake the dems can make is to come in and do clean up. This would be paying the bills of the abusive member in a relationship.
  - ArnoVW 2y ago
    People depend on the state. Someone has to be the adult in the room. If your marriage fails what do you do with the kids? You abandon them because you don’t want to clean up?
    - throwaheyy 2y ago
      Dems were already the adult in the room, US voters decided they don’t want one.
      - xp84 2y ago
        Nope, they were in control, spent 4 years focusing most of their attention on things the voting public found various degrees of stupid, then put up two successive candidates in ‘24 that were absolute jokes. The voters decided that the Democrats weren’t serious and sent them a message: “Even this obviously-corrupt buffoon is better than the arrogant elitist that you put up. Do better or be prepared for irrelevance.” Personally I’m no fan of 90% of the GOP agenda, but my fondest wish is complete dissolution of the DNC, and another party taking over as the party of the non-rich to restore some balance.
        intended 2y ago
        Right! The dems are stuck doing the responsible boring and non eye catching thing. Economists, policy makers etc. increasingly have to make the dems carry the weight, in a political and media market which moves so fast that facts can’t even matter. In this situation, is it a surprise that they could deal with Covid, undo 2008, end nafta, or any number of great things, but still lose faith of the populace because they didn’t hit the populist taking points? It now very much feels like an era of talking points, and damn the facts. In which case either making the talking points stick, or change the talking points.
justin66 2y ago
> This is nuts, 18F was one of the few groups in the federal government that is/was good at making software! Hopefully it's obvious at this point: Musk and friends not there to do anything but enrich themselves, and destroy.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Musk usually elevates technical and capable people, and gives them more power, not less. I suspect 18F would have been adopted by USDS, if it had been less overtly partisan in its hiring practices.
  - amitrip 2y ago
    [dead]
  - ljm 2y ago
    The only person Musk ‘elevates’ is himself. People with that kind of wealth have transcended humanity. Not towards greatness but towards total indifference.
  - georgeburdell 2y ago
    Care to provide an example? I was casually looking at applying, but I am on the conservative side as easily searchable on Google by voter registrations
ianburrell 2y ago
My brother works for 18F. 18F might also be "far-left" cause it was created by Obama folks. I also wonder if it is also bad in his mind cause conflicts with taken over Digital Service.
- icameron 2y ago
  The overreaction is absolutely crazy. In no way are they leftist. They are about as woke as any typical modern progressive company. A lot of my colleagues in both public and private sectors include their pronouns in their signatures. They choose to use inclusive language and policies. The big hubbub on X was about the Slack bot that recommends inclusive language. https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/CHANGELOG.inclusion_bot.md https://github.com/18F/charlie/blob/main/CHANGELOG.inclusion... There is a hit piece article not worth linking that calls out some of the devs who worked there. The comment section of that page is very hateful. As an American it’s shameful to see that level of hate for anything to do with policies of inclusiveness. The company looks like they hire regular people of all types. A few of the adults are trans or identify as queer and they are acknowledged as equal coworkers. Fairly representative of the tech industry I’d say. What is so bad about that? They seem to write some excellent code and have a good company culture akin to a lot of SV tech companies.
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  >far-left >Obama folks Obama was not in any way "far left"
  - ban-evader 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tempfile 2y ago
      I think you made this up. Do you have any evidence at all? What do you even consider a "shift to the far left"?
      - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
0xcde4c3db 2y ago
Being in bed with tax preparation companies is probably the main thing, but I also vaguely recall a statement by someone years ago (perhaps Grover Norquist or Dick Armey) that filing tax returns should be kept annoying simply for the sake of keeping people angry about taxes in general.
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago
  Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about? It's not taxes that are the problem per se it's fuckwits like Boris Johnson's cronies that think taxes are theirs to garnish and use any chance, even a global pandemic, to steal every dime they can lay their hands on.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Because paying to build society and help those around you to a better life through shared resources is something you should be angry about? No, but paying an exorbitant amount, but seeing few things being improved around you, but endless wars funded and cronies getting richer, and useless bureucracy enlarged and making your life or business more difficult, is.
- robocat 2y ago
  > filing tax returns should be kept annoying That's just plain stupid. Taxes are already annoying enough. In New Zealand the government makes it really really simple to pay your taxes (automated tax returns for the majority). You can call our tax department on the phone and they answer and they are helpful and they don't seem to screw you. The idea is to make it simple for people and businesses to pay their taxes so that they pay. The IRD is run like a smart business.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of things are just plain stupid.
- DangitBobby 2y ago
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Replacing the government with unaccountable middlemen is sort of their goal, isn't it? Think of the efficiency we could gain once we do away with all of that accountability nonsense...

hondo77 2y ago

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency has deleted a group that was devoted solely to making the government more efficient. Makes perfect sense, in Trumpistan logic.

baobabKoodaa 2y ago
[flagged]
- hondo77 2y ago
  By your logic, having one small group would be most efficient. Which makes perfect sense, given the tiny size of the US government, in Trumpistan logic.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    I didn't make any claims about what is the most efficient number of groups working towards efficiency. I also didn't make any claims which groups should exist, solely based on the name of the group. You're the one who made an argument along those lines. Not me. As if, a group named for efficiency couldn't possibly be inefficient. Or, that 2 groups working for efficiency would somehow be automatically better than 1 group.

Cornbilly 2y ago

Given his tech record, he probably dragged a file named 18F to the Recycle Bin. This is the same guy that nearly tanked PayPal because he was obsessed with rewriting their entire system for Windows.

hinkley 2y ago
I had a coworker who turned beet red when I put Musk and PayPal in the same sentence. You know that feeling when your parents didn’t yell and you wished they would? I was too afraid to ask for the full story. His PR makes him sound like a founder but he was not.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  “X.com was … founded by Ed Ho, Harris Fricker, Elon Musk, and Christopher Payne … It merged with competitor Confinity in 2000 and the merged company changed its name to PayPal in 2001.”[1] I’m sure individual usage will vary, but I would call him a cofounder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)
  - daemin 2y ago
    Wasn't he also in the USA illegally because he was in violation of his student visa?
    - jaimex2 2y ago
      yeah yeah, and something about a slave labour diamond mine which is just as relevant to Musk having a team capable of cleaning up.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    Wow, I can’t believe this is so controversial. When companies A and B merge, what would you describe the A-founders as, in relation to the resulting company?
  - 2y ago

jacobjjacob 2y ago

Looking at the quoted post, what do they have against Direct File? It is really hard to keep track of their positions which I believe is intentional.

buu700 2y ago
Related: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/doge-could-create-mobile-app-tax-filing-report https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/doge-could-create-mobil...
neuronexmachina 2y ago
Many in the GOP are generally opposed to federally-funded free tax return filing: https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/irs-direct-file-republicans-free-income-tax-filing-mike-kelly-abolish-donald-trump-campaign-finance/ https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/irs-direct-file... > In December, however, Kelly and 28 House Republican colleagues wrote to President-elect Donald Trump to ask him to end the program: “We write to urge you to take immediate action, including but not limited to a day-one executive order, to end the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) unauthorized and wasteful Direct File pilot program. The program’s creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach, and its rollout and structural flaws have already come at a steep price.”
- ahartmetz 2y ago
  What the actual fuck. Simplifying government paperwork = government overreach. Got it.
- rounce 2y ago
  All the dramatic language they use to dress up their claims is completely ridiculous.
  - shigawire 2y ago
    The argument (if you take it in the most charitable light) is that reducing barriers to paying taxes will make people less averse to paying taxes. So they fight any effort to bring sanity to the tax code or tax payment process. So even taken charitably I think they are wrong. But I do believe it is simply just corrupt and malicious.

ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago

Corrected link: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520 https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1886498750052327520

Blackcatmaxy 2y ago

related thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922543#42922953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42922543#42922953

pityJuke 2y ago

He got rid of 18F, a group within the Govt to improve usage of tech (and hopefully therefore efficiency), because of a tweet. A tweet about IRS Direct File, a group that replicates the basic automatic taxation program of other advanced economies? Over a fear that the Government would take over deciding what taxes people pay, despite a fact that such a program doesn’t necessarily block you from manually filing your own taxes (don’t know if the American implementation has that, but the UK one certainly allows you to override PAYE). Yes HN commenters, this is the genius behind Government reform. EDIT: Jesus Christ someone is going to convince him FedNow is a conspiracy and kill another basic system other countries have easily managed.

tsunamifury 2y ago

He clearly wants to replace the US government technology platforms with X/XPay/etc

kelseyfrog 2y ago
Yes - This is an underrated point. The circle of Elon, Thiel, Andersson, etc conceptually orbit Balaji. Balaji, The Network State author, explicitly advocates for a techno-libertarian exit because they perceive the US and especially "team blue" as getting in the way and slowing down their vision.
- coldtrait 2y ago
  I still don't understand what Balaji wants to achieve with his crypto oriented nonsense. Could not make any sense of it.
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    His ideas builds on Curtis Jarvis work, dark enlightenment. He is a close associate of Peter Thiel and JD Vance. Essentially they want to destroy the federal government, buy up assets and land, start their own micro countries where they can be King CEOs. Sounds like a joke but its not.
    - kelseyfrog 2y ago
      It's important to point out, and this not an understatement, that they believe that democracy is a failed project. Democracy in their eyes is either a failed experiment or obsolete. They share a belief that "change from within"[democracy] is impossible and that "exiting" is the only other option. This extends to governance models where people are encouraged to vote for their governance by packing up and moving (digitally and/or physically) rather than attempting change from within.
    - coldtrait 2y ago
      Curtis Yarvin? None of the things these people say sound interesting in the least. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to get it.

mychael 2y ago

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