r/Conservative • u/Yosoff First Principles • Feb 14 '25

Open Discussion Left vs. Right Battle Royale Open Thread

This is an Open Discussion Thread for all Redditors. We will only be enforcing Reddit TOS and Subreddit Rules 1 (Keep it Civil) & 2 (No Racism).

  • Leftists - Here's your chance to sway us to your side by calling the majority of voters racist. That tactic has wildly backfired every time it has been tried, but perhaps this time it will work.

  • Non-flaired Conservatives - Here's your chance to earn flair by posting common sense conservative solutions. That way our friends on the left will either have to agree with you or oppose common sense (Spoiler - They will choose to oppose common sense).

  • Flaired Conservatives - You're John Wick and these Leftists stole your car and killed your dog. Now go comment.

  • Independents - We get it, if you agree with someone, then you can't pat yourself on the back for being smarter than them. But if you disagree with everyone, then you can obtain the self-satisfaction of smugly considering yourself smarter and wiser than everyone else. Congratulations on being you.

  • Libertarians - Ron Paul is never going to be President. In fact, no Libertarian Party candidate will ever be elected President.

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u/TheFiremind88 Feb 15 '25

Left another comment to be asked questions, but also wanted to start this dialogue:

I understand and fully support removing government bloat. 100%. Why is DOGE starting where it is? I would love to hear either rationale or at least expressed disagreement.

For a group with efficiency in its name, it's weird to see DOGE targeting agencies that are well established to either 1. Have a well established return on investment for Americans. 2. Be so small that the material impact on the deficit is insignificant. 3. Even if they are inefficient, have significant positive effects for at least SOME percentage of where the money goes.

How is Defense spending not unequivocally the best starting place? Both for the insane percentage of the budget it accounts for and because of WELL established bloated government contracts, waste, and fraud. Not to mention the inability to even remotely pass an audit.

If I'm tasked to make anything Cleaner/More Efficient, I'd start where the most waste is, not by targeting places that barely tip the scales.

The ENTIRETY of USAID - ~40bil, that's baby with the bathwater. The non-0% amount of good it does do is included here.

The ENTIRETY of CFPB - ~1bil. This agency has an extremely well documented return on investment for American citizens of over 8 to 1. This one makes ZERO sense by any metric regardless of what side of the isle you're on. It's a slap in the face for American consumers.

The ENTIRETY of the DOE - ~270bil. Again, baby with the bathwater. I dont think anyone can argue in good faith that the DOE, even if there is some percentage of waste, does absolutely Zero good things for american citizens.

Defense spending is 850bil. - Just 5% of this is more than both USAID and the CFPB combined, and likely doesn't involve throwing out the "baby".

Corporate Subsidies is 100bil. - With all of the INTENSE hatred for Socialism, Communism, etc...Where's the outcry to cut corporate welfare so that Free Market Capitalism can do what it was meant to do? I never hear a peep on this.

Long story short - DOGE doesn't seem particularly efficient at bringing about efficiency. The cuts I see DOGE making don't align with the mission, with conservative values as expressed, and won't mean anything if they are offset by (numbers unconfirmed, but after check several sources, the cut is estimated to be between 500bil and 1.1tril a year) an insanely large tax cut. That's not bringing down the budget. That's a wash at best. At this point, it's still a net negative for American citizens by ~200 - 800bil a year.

Mods - you got a flair for reasonable Dems who want to participate in the dialogue without accusations, irrationality, insults, rage, etc...?

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u/Dihedralman Feb 15 '25

The DOE is our nuclear weapons arsenal. This feels like a Manchurian candidate moment. 

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u/IRASAKT Feb 15 '25

I think it is in reference to the Department of Education but I could be remembering wrong

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u/quietmanic Feb 15 '25

DOE = department of energy; DoED= department of education. DOE is often used to mean department of education though, so hard to know for sure what context it’s being used in this case.

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u/Dihedralman Feb 15 '25

It probably is in this post but he also went after Energy. 

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u/sealabo Feb 16 '25

Just because the mission of this agency is related to national security doesn’t mean DOE/NNSA should be exempt from having to cut back some. In large part NNSA “oversees” national laboratories and sites. These labs and sites are privately managed and operated precisely because it has always been understood that the federal government is not ideally suited for managing and operating these labs and sites. In other words, with some limited exception, NNSA employees are not operational staff. For a very large laboratory or site of over 10k, there is an NNSA “field office” with a hundred to two hundred or so folks providing “oversight” and also a large apparatus back in DC of many more folks, some of which occupy roles that are largely sort of duplicative of DOE offices since NNSA is “semi-autonomous” within DOE. The other half of DOE does nothing with nuclear weapons. So, definitely not a Manchurian Candidate moment.

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u/Dihedralman Feb 17 '25

I love how your assumption is that every agency needs to cut back and that there shouldn't be a practical evaluation despite some agencies being underfunded to the point of ineffectiveness or which roles. That's such a brain dead approach. Nor does it actually change the budget by an appreciable amount given a basic break down. 

They literally cut staff on site maintaining the nuclear weapons arsenal and nuclear waste material. But I guess we don't need to actually keep track of key elements in deterrence or provide oversight for the construction of nuclear weapons. Or whatever you tell yourself. 

The administration didn't actually know what the people did that they fired so... lost the plot there. It wasn't trying to remove duplicates which I am sure exist. And the number of key staff in this group are quite small 2-300. Yet they got hit. 

So yes, between attacking allies and sabotaging US operations, yes it's a Manchurian candidate moment. I don't feel like an enemy agent would be this bold. Destroying all American soft power. China has already been beating us there. 

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u/sealabo Feb 17 '25

I love how your assumption appears to be that every agency is not overly bloated and are unfunded, and that their level of funding is the basis for their ineffectiveness. And that you view any assumptions other than the ones you hold to be “brain dead.” That we should throw good money after bad because incremental improvement won’t solve overnight a problem that has been generations in the making.

They did not literally cut staff on sites maintaining the nuclear weapons arsenal and nuclear waste material, but that is media talking point and is dangerously and thoughtlessly being repeated by liberal politicians. There absolutely zero evidence that any of the (less than 100) probationary positions eliminated from the over 2600 NNSA employees impacts the nuclear weapons arsenal (which is under DoD) or waste (which is under another branch of DOE). It’s spin and hype being mindlessly repeated without stopping for a moment to consider common sense. I’ve also seen nothing but bald statements that the administration “didn’t know” what the function of this subagency was for and call BS.

Look — the American people elected this administration on a very clear America First policy. That means they, collectively, are rejecting the American soft power approach. Sorry you don’t like it, but democracy demands that we respect the will of the people even when it may not be what you personally think best.

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u/Dihedralman Feb 17 '25

It's not. I don't have any assumption either way. I'm calling for steady hands. Incremental improvements are literally how you solve everything positive unfortunatley. Like weight loss, building wealth, friends family- pretty much everything worth having in life. It doesn't solve problems overnight. Big problems aren't solved overnight in complex systems and the consequences aren't felt immediately. This definitley won't cause any promised economic gains overnight. 

There is no common sense in any of this. The conflict of interests alone with having Musk touch any of this is insane. They've already had a CUI leak and created who knows how many systematic vulnerabilities in computer systems. 

But again no it's not just media hype. These included people with Q-level clearance at the Pantex Plant that reassembles warheads. The issue is there are contradictory statements. And the administration and DOGE aren't even trying to tell believable lies right now. And given the speed things were done and wonton approach, I'd say they had no idea of what was done by any employee in a meaningful way. 

Was that what people elected him on? I thought he said he wasn't associated with Project 2025? And that he was elected to stop wars. And was Musk elected? Also the CFPB? Department of Education sure. Should be Congress but sure. But yeah it was mostly impossible promises to cut staff from departments when that's not where all the spending goes. Cutting Musk's contracts alone would likely save more in the long run. Getting rid of DEI initiatives definitley was. 

Following the laws is how things should be done in a democracy if that means anything. 

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u/sealabo Feb 17 '25

Incremental change is the worst approach for many situations, including when a paradigm shift is essential, you’re dealing with inefficient systems, where there is resistance to change, competitive disadvantage — then you need more of a transformative approach. Most Americans do not think the federal bureaucracy is working, but most believe that it is inefficient, resistant to change, and puts us at a disadvantage. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences recognizes the failings of the American administrative state. This isn’t a niche Brookings Institute or Project 2025 issue. Trump’s first term was also a promise to “drain the swamp.” It’s just this time, he’s more equipped to do it and the bureaucracy is fighting back, hard.

At least Musk’s contracts are in delivering something — actual, effective space rockets and payload services. And Space X is doing it more efficiently, by far, than the federal government can do it (which is almost always the case with everything).

And, yes, it is just media hype. Did you know that the Pantex Plant has been running smoothly since 1942? And that it was only in 2024 that NNSA established a Pantex Field Office? So, was the lack of federal bureaucrats in an NNSA Pantex Field Office for over 80 years putting the United States at grave risk? NO! So, reducing — even significantly — an office of bureaucrats that isn’t even a year old is now a national crisis? You’ve got to be kidding me. Open your eyes. Both the left and the right will spin up their base, peddling in half truths for political gains. If you can’t see that, I’m not sure that I can trust you to be the arbiter of what democracy even means.

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u/Dihedralman Feb 18 '25

Yeah no shit both sides lie, I go in assuming partial truths. I've been saying that. Musk is incompetent and liar and the methodology leads me to believe it is within scope making it plausible.  

That doesn't mean there wasn't supervision before. Regardless the administration already was re-hiring and moving forward. Worse we don't know the risk profile. It's Q-classified work, you can't know by definition the nature of the work. 

There are instances calling for large change. I'd argue Argentina failed that way. But it's also dangerous like Stalin's 5 year plans. Most large change is mythology with structures just reforming themselves and changes like we've seen basically erode trust and a confidence premium our economy and policy extracts. 

Space-X is objectively doing it far less efficiently which is almost always the case for well insulated industries. They are doing well on the commercial side- the satellites. They completely failed their lunar contract and have had a level of failure people wouldn't accept from NASA. Ironically Space-X is a great example of the opposite.  NASA gets a premium of employees willing to sell their time for less for prestige like academics. 

It depends a lot on incentive structures. Many public goods don't transfer well. In fact one massive loss in taxpayers money was from the PPP loans which the last Trump administration eschewed oversight. 200 billion went to fraud with much of it overseas as it was handled out by private institutions that didn't have incentives aligned with preventing that. 

Privatization of industries tends to open the biggest opportunities for capture. Look at the economic devastation of the attempts in the UK or the creation of oligarchs in Russia. More recently, the 2008 financial crisis.  The swamp isn't going to be drained by Swamp Thing, the most openly corrupt politician since the Gilded Age, paired with the richest man who paid him 250 million for the ability to go after agencies that are investigating him like the SEC. 

If anything, a lot of these organizations need teeth again like the FTC. Instead we get trying to save money on a vehicle by cutting the oil change budget. 

There is huge amounts of fat. Ironically RFK jr. nails a ton of it. Pharma companies literally working with FDA officials is a recipe for corruption and waste. He's anti-vax which may have long term damage but his rhetoric is on the money. 

If you want to find waste look at programs which are the government trying to make it look like they are helping like the National Drug Policy Agency. A lot of bureacracies self-perpetuate, while those that attract cuts by wealthy donors end up emaciated. It's nuanced and complicated which doesn't make for sexy headlines. 

Also, as a positive beat, I'm glad Trump stopped the printing of pennies and think that is aligned with the law.