What is this supposed to be? It's a link to a bunch of posts on some kind of social media platform that all say "uspol science funding". Am I missing something?

There is a “show more” button

What a strange UI/UX.

This is because a bunch of us use the Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.) as a general purpose social media network and really don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is, but want to read the other things folks have to say. So a bit of etiquette has built up over the years to stash those things under a CW (think of it like a subject line) so you can read it when and if you have the spoons to do so, and can happily ignore it and wait for something else from that person, say, cat pictures, without having to unfollow them.

In a more elegant world, Mastodon/Fediverse would have the concept of topics, and I'd be able to follow `@mh+cats@example.com` without following @mh+uspol@example.com`, but we're not in that elegant world. Mastodon (nor Pleroma, nor Pixelfed, nor any of the other Fediverse software) doesn't offer anything like that, short of multiple accounts, which comes with other big problems.

Have the spoons to do so...?

Ok, that's actually very cool. And I deeply share this sentiment:

don't care to have the entire timeline be doom and gloom about how bad the world currently is

..

In a more elegant world [..] the concept of topics, and I'd be able to follow [..]

One can dream. I used to regard the idea of filter bubbles as a negative thing, but I'd be perfectly content with being able to craft my own right about now.

What a horrible outcome! NIST is, for most of its services, a self-funded agency and they define the acceptable standards for new tech. This makes no sense.

Edit: Too much time on screen today. My apologies for muddying the waters!

Who said anything about NIST?

Sad to say but this will be the norm for the next 4 years, don’t expect any federal organization to come out intact. I’ve basically ruled out working as a federal employee as there’s no assurances about anything.

Federal scientist here. The situation is dire, and this is only the beginning. We've lost all employees with < 1 year of service, which has halted the new projects they were hired to work on. Leaders of 100 employee offices were booted since they had less than 1 year of federal service--back to another interim director. Those of us left are hamstrung since all travel has been canceled, and our credit cards will have $1 limits starting tomorrow. Who cares if you had a recurring charge on it that was maintaining the cell service on an instrument monitoring a volcano. We waste time in hastily scheduled team meetings trying to figure out how respond to DOGE's latest demands, only to learn as more info comes down from above that, no, we're no longer required to address their ultimatum messages. Make no mistake—their objective is to dismantle and destroy government functionality.

More than 4 years. At least the way it seems right now. The democrats have no viable strategy or someone with a cult of personality that can unite all the factional groups.

This is true for many programs for reasons that will be hard to understand if you aren't a scientist. The NSF program managers are often pulled out of academia for brief periods of their career to do various tasks as experts. This means they are often probationary. This is the only way to hire people with deep expertise on the topic-du-jour.

The trump administration fired in wide swaths many probationary employees at NSF with total disregard for what they were doing or why. Not evaluated efficiency cuts. Just thrashing about.

Science in the US will be chaotically torn apart by this and a host of other decisions.

https://www.wired.com/story/national-science-foundation-febr...

In addition to these scientists, I heard from my friends in academia that they will be taking fewer PhD students because they're unsure of the funding.

We may be looking at a lost decade.

We'll be very lucky if it's a lost decade. One of the many factors that made the US a technical powerhouse were the long threads across disciplines where people could do focused research. you had to reapply for grants but generally could be sure that important programs would stay in place. This breaks all of that. It seems poised to break research as we know it.

As one of the many researchers that will likely lose their career to this, I will be forced to choose between stopping work that benefits both the public and industry or moving abroad to one of the many nations that do appreciate such effort. We are about to not only lose our future efforts but also hemorrhage current talent.

I'm surely not the only person who's inbox\phone exploded with messages after the news broke with collaborators abroad offering to help me start a lab at their institute. Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.

China is not losing this decade, the scientific gap will add to the growing chasm of future outcomes between the two superpowers.

And this is just one of many ways the US is currently shooting itself in the foot (or, if you prefer, cutting off its nose to spite its face). Thanks, Elon! Putin and Xi must be cheering...

Europe will gladly do take backsies on their WWII brain drain.

...until the extreme-right populists (supported by the current US administration) come to power there too?

Populism requires that you're popular. Brexit clones were extremely popular for the right across Europe right up until Brexit actually happened, and then suddenly they all remembered they'd never wanted anything to do with such a stupid plan and began scrubbing praise for it from their materials, back to "reform" and tinkering at the edges.

The trick is to be First. You can sell "Just do X and it'll be great" unless the people have already seen what a disaster X is.

Well, the AfD wants Germany to withdraw from the EU, and the only reason why ruling right-wing populist parties in eastern Europe (e.g. Hungary) don't do it is because it's the hand that still feeds them money (despite them continuously biting it).

TBF, Brexit was a particularly bad idea because of the Northern Ireland situation, so others can still feed the illusion that their *exit would be "cleaner"...

until Brexit actually happened, and then suddenly they all remembered they'd never wanted anything to do with such a stupid plan

Why is Brexit perceived so badly in the EU? Economically the UK has done about as well or better than the other big European economies.

Can you show us some statistics to back that up? From the time of brexit until now seems like a good time period.

There you are:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Only Italy has done substantially better, but that is recovery from the aftermath of the 2008 collapse.

What makes you think the UK is doing better? Most reports have found the opposite, with costs in the hundreds of billions range versus where the economy would otherwise have been:

https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/12/brexit-here-is-...

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/london-mayor-says-brexit-ha...

https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-new-report-suggests-uk-311...

One potential confound is that the UK was starting with a strong position so if you just compare it to, say, Portugal it’s still looking better but that doesn’t tell you the gap wouldn’t have otherwise been even wider.

Look at raw data, not media reports. I posted a link already. The UK's economic growth is very similar to comparable EU economies.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Given that European countries and the EU except a few outliers runs on proportional representation it is way harder for the extreme right to win a majority.

We’ve been dealing with our own extreme right parties for the past 20-30 years. They generally bounce between 10-25% of the vote depending on where in the political cycle they are. Like all parties do.

Never enough to dictate policy, but enough to influence when at the top of their cycle.

Compare with the US where only ~25% is needed to take over a party due to abysmal turnouts and electoral system.

These 25% can then win an election allowing the extreme right to dictate policy, as we now see in the US.

My fear as well. I’m not sure if even a magic wish to rearrange stuff back to the before January state of affairs is possible at this point.

Write to your representatives. I fear that if they don’t pull off something the only ethical and responsible thing is civil war. This shit is insane and will destroy everything I like about our government.

Also to quote every true patriot: the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

I’m so angry and mad and wanting to help fix it. My near term approach is write expansively to all my city state and congressional reps.

We already have diarrhea inducing corruption happening in plain view. We have walking piñatas for an urgent need to do campaign finance reform.

I’m not sure if there’s any way to save some of the institutions and programs that make this country actually great without a straight up secession/civil war for the coastal states.

I’m very very scared. And angry.

Calling your elected representatives daily is more effective. The app 5 calls makes it easy.

We're losing an entire generation at least. The pain that these cuts are going to cause won't be felt overnight. It will be felt over decades. "Things have been set into motion that cannot be undone".

We may be looking at a lost decade.

We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation of prior allies, reduced safety nets for the vulnerable, increased rhetoric against poorly defined 'foreign types', anti-intellectualism.

It's a helluva vacuum being created, and I'm not particularly optimistic about what's going to fill it.

You forgot "wilfully letting go of democracy". US democracy is far away from dying, but who knows how much longer it can keep holding up.

It’s not far away from dying. I would argue that it’s already too late. The trump administration has shown that it can seize the power to control spending which is constitutionally an exclusive power if congress and courts can’t and won’t do anything about it. We are past a constitutional crisis, republicans had a theory of a unitary executive and prove they can stream roll other branches. Now trump and others are talking about a third term. They play it off as a joke but that’s how they have succeeded in moving the goal posts already.

Here are some new concrete developments that I doubt the founders of the democracy would say are fine:

- the Executive Branch now has presumptive - if not absolute - immunity against all criminal official acts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_%282024...

- universities must obey Trump's culture war agenda, otherwise they will be de-accredited and a fine equal to the value of the entire university endowment will be leveraged - https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-vows-to-seize-endowm...

- President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers have long cited impoundment, a little-known legal theory [... that] essentially claims that any president has unilateral authority to ignore Congress’s funding bills and withhold or “impound” funds meant for programs, agencies, or departments deemed unsuitable by the White House. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/3244202/...

Impoundment, or rather the idea that it is an issue, is a weird concept in general. Congress legislates executive directives that should be acted upon and provides a budget. They don't say "spend every dollar we give" and they rarely define metrics for success to know if the executive branch is meeting their goals.

The fact that the Trump administration is able to so easily chest the game and roll back agencies is a side effect of congress writing thousands of pages of legislation without ever bothering to define precisely what is expected of the executive branch.

No, this is quite wrong. It is well understood in American law that "spend every dollar we give" is exactly what the budget approved by Congress means. It is then the duty of the executive branch to do so in an effective manner.

Laws shouldn't need to go into details on exactly how every last dollar is to be spent, they set the amount and the goals, and the executive exists to handle the details.

The problem is that the Trump administration is ignoring the laws they don't like. They're even trying to ignore a very explicit constitutional amendment (birthright citizenship). Writing more detailed laws would do nothing to make the Trump team follow the law.

The US is a strong federative country. Individual states are almost literally _states_ (as in "country") and have a lot of power. They can impose their own carbon taxes, net neutrality rules, fund research, etc.

And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.

States have "power", but not money. There are no state level science grants anywhere at the scale of the linked article.

CA spends around $11B on the University of California system. The NIH budget is $47B. I haven't done the math, but I would hazard that the total amount of money spent on science by the Federal and the individual state authorities would be comparable.

It's just that historically the Federal government was leading with the fundamental research, but if push comes to shove, states can start spinning up replacement programs.

And more importantly, their local democracy is going strong.

I guess you never heard of gerrymandering.

To your parent comment's point, this varies a lot by state!

Except that the states have no power because an unchecked executive branch can just claim that it had authority and the states have no recourse to resist.

The US has an incredibly weak form of government.

Don't get so depressed. The Executive branch in the US does not have a lot of power when it comes to influencing the states.

For example, Trump can't actually force states to change their school athlete programs. It doesn't have any power over individual states (or schools). All his DoE can do, is to threaten to withhold funding. And even that is being contested because the Congress has not authorized it.

However, if he does manage to withdraw the funding, that's just 6% of total spending on schools in CA ( https://lao.ca.gov/Education/EdBudget/Details/900 ) and 8% in NY. The states will just shrug and go on.

The discretionary part of the US Federal budget is not large, on the scale of the country.

And yet states aren't allowed to form alliances with other states according to Article 1 section 10. Sure, states might be able to fund research, but most states on their own aren't going to be able to afford to do this effectively - but if several states could band together to, say, keep funding climate science that might help keep us on track and keep scientists employed until better times come back. But they can't do that.

Actually, in many cases they cannot.

Take a look at the EPA "exception" that California has needed in order to impose more stringent fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

Many forms of commerce or communication that are relevant across state lines (net neutrality rules, etc.) are considered a federal prerogative and states have limited ability to control these.

Yes, states could do more to fund research--and hopefully they will--but no state has the same level of tax rate as the federal government, and while the NSF budget is "noise" in the federal budget ($10B/$1.7T discretionary) it would be quite a big outlay for most states, even for California it would represent 3%+ of the total state budget to reproduce.

Though, now that I look at that number, maybe it's actually an opportunity for CA...

Trump is continuing a trend that has been going on since at least Bush Jr. Presidents for a couple decades now have been moving more power into the executive branch.

Obama and Biden both talked about undoing this, but neither did. The Patriot Act still exists, three letter agencies still have authority to spy on American citizens, and immigration laws still defy what's written on the Statue of Liberty (I think most have forgotten how harsh Obama was on southern immigration).

False equivalence.

Tell me more.

Since Woodrow Wilson.

The Dangerous History Podcast has a very interesting series in Wilson. The host was not a fan.

... which has been allowed and caused by the Republican congressional obstructionism going on since the 90's. Bush, Obama, and Biden could have reduced their own use of executive power, but they couldn't undo it - rather it was Congress that would have had to reign them in and shrink executive power. Just as the current Congress is ultimately allowing Trump's ongoing authoritarian power grabs, rather than passing laws and impeaching.

For another example, take the frequent neofascist argument that the federal agencies are "unaccountable" unless they are under the direct command of the President. No, the agencies were created by Congress, and have always been accountable to Congress. But Congress has not been doing its job, which is why they seem unaccountable.

No, the agencies were created by congress, and have always been accountable to Congress. But Congress hasn't been doing its job, which is why they seem unaccountable.

If Congress hasn't been doing its job, then they don't just seem unaccountable, they actually are.

For another example, take the frequent neofascist argument that the federal agencies are "unaccountable" without being under the direct command of the President

It’s not “neofascist” lol, it’s just what the constitution says. The first sentence of article II: “ The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

It’s not Congress’s job to hold executive branch employees accountable any more than it’s Congress’s job to hold judicial law clerks in the courts accountable. It’s the President’s job, in whom the executive power is vested.

That’s also reflected in the appointments clause. Anyone with discretionary authority must be either appointed by the president, or report to someone who is: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf. The whole point is to make the executive branch highly responsive to Presidenfial elections.

Are you arguing that only Republicans have controlled Congress singe Bush Jr was in office? Or that Congress held primary decision making authority behind the number of executive orders signed by presidents since then?

1) The fact that the President embodies the executive branch is just what Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The same people who say that’s “just a theory” also think that “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re not serious people.

2) Trump hasn’t seized the spending power. Congress was the one that delegated spending power to the executive branch by appropriating multi-billion line items and directing the executive branch to spend the money with only the vaguest instructions. Live by the delegation sword die by the delegation sword.

1) While Article II says....it also depends on a checks and balance system with the other two branches of government. We've already seen where the congressional branch is laying down for the executive, and we've also seen where the judicial branch has granted immunity essentially giving carte blanche to the executive. Without equal branches providing checks and balances, you've just ceded power the Constitution requires. Any of the lower courts trying to hold on to any semblance of checks and balance will eventually be reversed once it reaches SCOTUS.

The system has specific, well-defined checks and balances. For example, Congress can limit the executive’s control over spending by enacting specific appropriations bills with concrete line items. But it hasn’t done so for decades. It has done things like appropriate single $1.7 billion line items for USAID, leaving it to the executive’s discretion how to spend it with only the vaguest guidelines. Congress having done that, it’s not for say the courts to “check” that by insisting that the executive can’t exercise all the discretion Congress provided it.

And your point about immunity is misinformed. The Supreme Court held that the President has immunity for official acts. This is a no-brainer. You can’t sue Congressmen for their official acts either, or judges.

If the President didn’t have immunity, Georgia prosecutors would be able to indict and convict Joe Biden in some red county in connection with the murder of Laken Riley, on the theory that Biden recklessly or negligently opened the border leading to her death.

The US spent the last hundred years shifting power from congress to the president, because nobody in congress wanted the blame for any decisions and be either primaried, or lose the election. Trump isn't seizing power, he's just using the power voluntarily given to him. American democracy wasn't ended by a revolution, it was ended by lawfully elected cowards.

Bearing in mind that this administration won the election and a lot of what they are doing is more-or-less what they campaigned on, I'm not sure democracy is at risk.

One can pick around the details, but for example with regard to the firings, voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.

This is essentially democracy in action. Yes, the voters may come to regret their vote, yes they likely didn't understand what they were voting for, but that's the flaw in democracy we're aware of.

Is this what everyone wants? Clearly not. But democracy is about majority rule, not consensus.

When an election is canceled then one can talk about democracy dying.

But right now, Americans are just getting what the majority voted for. They may not necessarily like it, but they voted for it. And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.

Like if or not, the "democracy" part is working well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

Edit: you can use a democratic process to kill off democracy. In the end democracy is dead, and it doesn't really matter anymore why.

This:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/19/donald-trump-king-i...

doesn’t really sound like democracy.

Democracy is not about what he does. It's all about how he comes to power.

In 4 years the people will vote again.

Optimistic.

In 4 years the people will vote again.

There's legitimate concern that won't be a viable option, and the admin has hinted that will soon be the case.

Trump specifically disavowed Project 2025 when he ran and now is embracing it. He never said he was going to put an unelected billionaire in charge and disregard the Constitution.

And the lack of reaction by Republicans in congress suggests that they feel the best way to be reelected is to go along with it.

They are worried about getting primaried and their primary opponent being financed by Musk.

Wasn't Doge floated before the election, with Trump embracing the idea?

Regardless, Trump has made a living as a (slimy) business man. No one should have heard his campaign speeches and taken them at face value.

He didn't even have to be lying at the time, he could have simply changed his mind. The man seems to be driven only by two motivations: his family and making deals. The first one is often seen as admirable or honorable, the second means you'll do whatever it takes to negotiate a situation where you're better off by whatever metrics matter to you (usually money and status).

Family is an interesting one, given five kids across three marriages, so the 'thought' is admirable and honourable, but he's unable to live up to it - which kind of educates us as to his ability to live up to his word, or his ability to deal with difficult situations calmly and rationally.

And having Musk alongside him entirely destroys the family angle (media-prop children aside).

He disavowed project 25, but it was written by all his inner circle, and he hired them into govt. So, if the voter believed him, well duh.

Musk was a big part of the inner circle before the election. His track record is well known.

In other words everything that is happening was predictable and predicted. Voters knew what they were voting for. Those who are surprised really weren't paying any attention.

Voters could not have known that Trump would make a concerted effort to do anything unconstitutional. This is nothing like he did his first term or any other Republican has ever done.

He is going after departments that are conservative darlings like the Defense department. I can’t remember any serious person saying we need to cut spending and fire people at the FAA.

If he had thought that voters wanted Project 2025, why would he disavow it during the campaign?

I mostly agree. Trump is behaving in a way that's consistent with his prior rhetoric.

Where I disagree is that there may have been an expectation that the systems outside of "The President" would have stood up for themselves more, offered more resistance and slowed him down more. The slow-moving of government is (was though to be) it's own protection to some extent.

I'm not sure what evidence suggests that Republicans in congress would grow a spine to resist this. Conversely the evidence since 2016 suggests they actively applaud it.

The voters have voted out any congress people who resisted, sending a clear message that they want this path.

This may not be the pretty side of democracy, but it is democracy.

My point above (which I see is being downvoted) is not thst I see this as "good" , but rather that I see it as democratic. Everything going on is literally because the people voted for it. The stacking of the Supreme Court, the obstructionist behavior in congress, the tolerance for (Trump) crimes- this has all been rewarded, not penalized by voters.

If democracy is the will of the people , then what you see seeing is the power of that will.

Except it’s not really democracy. You have gerrymandered districts. You elect a leader not by who gets the most votes, but who wins a system that was designed for the benefit of white slave owners.

And of course, who really believes the election results when you have Trump saying that Musk rigged some voting machines in his favor.

Face it, the US no longer creates its government from the collective will of its citizens. They’ve replaced politicians with corporate backers for the actual corporations themselves.

This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy.

Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the voters want.

A constitution in itself a worthless document, and the checks and balances have no power. The power comes from conventions. Conventions on how the constitution should be interpreted and how the people in power should act within the constitutional framework. If too many people ignore the conventions and interpret the laws and regulations literally to their advantage, democracy will die. It died in the Roman Republic, and it has died in many modern republics. Plenty of authoritarian states maintain nominally democratic institutions. And many of them became like that in a way that was at least nominally legal.

This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy.

Attempting to run a democracy in a non-literal way seems like a recipe for disaster.

That seems to imply that citizens get to cast a vote and have their voice heard...unless those in charge decide the citizens don't know what is best for them.

As a country we picked Trump. For better or worse we made that bed and we now have to lie in it.

Folks on the left would do well to remember that the same unelected bureaucracy that declared “resistance” to Trump would destroy an AOC or Sanders presidency too. Ultimately, it’s a good thing if electing the President can effectuate drastic changes in the executive branch, because that’s the only real lever voters have for affecting the largest and these days most powerful branch of government.

Ultimately the checks and balances are also elected. Directly in the case of congress, indirectly in the case of the judiciary. (Mitch McConnell obstructed merrick garland and was rewarded for it.)

Of course unrestrained majority decisions lead to terrible outcomes. This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.)

Democracy is objectively a flawed system for this reason. It has never promised to deliver the best, or even good, government. It is what it is.

I agree, this is a literal interpretation of democracy. It is "the will of the people". I'm not sure that anything else could still be even called a democracy.

This is Orwellian double-speak. You’re defining “democracy” to mean “not democracy.”

Nor does the “constitution” support your view. Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

What you’re calling “democracy” and the “constitution” is neither. It’s Wilsonianism, an idea invented by a eugenicist who hated the constitution as well as democracy: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...

I don't see how your reply is related to my comment.

I was not defining democracy. I was describing the common real-world usage of the term, which has a more specific meaning than simple majority rule. It is commonly used as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Some Americans use "republic" for the same concept, but that's misleading in other ways. Partly because some countries that are commonly understood to be liberal democracies are constitutional monarchies. And partly because some actual republics (such as North Korea or the member states of the former USSR) do not match the concept particularly well.

I was also not talking about any specific constitution, but constitutions in general. They all come with implicit and explicit assumptions that must hold, or the system will not work as intended. If some entities are supposed to function as checks and balances to each other, they are expected to remain independent. If they choose to collude instead, nobody is capable of stopping them if they decide to twist the constitution beyond recognition or outright break it.

I said that a constitution on its own is worthless. That means a constitution cannot enforce itself. There must be some people who are capable and willing to enforce it. But if they are capable of enforcing the constitution, they are also capable of breaking it. Which means there must be other people capable and willing to act as checks and balances. And so on. The system may work as long as those people act within the expectations, complying with both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. But if they reject the expectations and start looking for loopholes to take advantage of, they may find some. If that becomes too common, the constitution becomes worthless, because the people who are supposed to enforce it no longer believe in it.

One thing Americans don't seem to realize is that the current constitution needs to be rewritten once we get out of this mess. One of the consequences of dictatorships is that they deform the constitution for their purposes. It seems that republicans have done enough to deform the system in an irreparable way.

How would you propose rewriting it that wouldn’t just mean “less democracy” and “more control by credentialed elites?”

Trump specifically ran saying he didn't agree with many of these plans.

His actions are consistent with cheaper federal government but not smaller federal government. Just a centralized executive government that does what he says.

The method is simple: say what you need to to get approval, do what you always wanted to do after you get it.

See also Kennedy walking back his anti-vaccine positions to get crucial votes out of Republican senators in committee and then promptly revealing he is still anti-vax.

So when he makes comments about at third term and claiming even more power... how consistent do you think that is with smaller federal government or continuing democracy?

Trump ran on saying whatever to whomever. his intentions though were obvious. He ran on cutting spending by 2 trillion. Where did people think this was going to come from? He ran on ending red tape. He ran on reducing regulation.

These days folk getting approved by the senate just have to show up. No one believes RFK when he says he's changed his mind on vax. I mean, these guys are lackeys, not stupid.

Democracy is about letting people who have no understanding, who pay minimal attention, who are easily led by media and populism, choose who should be in charge.

It is working as designed.

Do we need a better system? I'd argue yes. But all the others are worse.

If the population votes him a 3rd term, If they vote for congress who supports that- that is democracy. The people will get what they vote for.

We are literally seeing what "govt by the people" looks like. This is not democracy dying. It's democracy showing its flaws.

Perhaps the Democrats should consider letting their voters choose the candidate for once instead of anointing it. Nobody wanted Clinton except the DNC establishment, and then they lied about Biden until he was forced aside for Kamala at the behest of insiders.

voters clearly approved of the concept of smaller, cheaper government. Which is basically what's happening.

Except that this is completely false. These haphazard cuts are a miniscule portion of the federal budget, even assuming they don't incur a whole bunch of second and third order costs. The exact same administration doing those is going to burn literal orders of magnitude more money on tax cuts for billionaires, border security theater, and other corrupt nonsense. Federal finances were in bad shape a year ago and are going to be absolutely horrid a few years from now.

This is democracy! You can say it’s a bad idea or whatever. But Trump had Musk on stage promising to do this then we elected him. That’s democracy. Tyranny of the majority.

Also people like it: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HHP... (pp. 29-32)

Democracy involves rule of law.

In a sense, but not in the sense of all the political branches having to run every decision by lawyers and judges.

We're only one skipped election away from democratic death.

How would you "skip" an election, though? Every single blue state and swing state will hold elections in 2026 and 2028. The federal government has no say in that.

If the red states don't feel like having elections, then I guess their legislatures will be directly appointing electors to send to the electoral college. Outcome will be the same, more or less, as if they held elections.

We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

many here see it way (me too, though i'm well aware that many times whenever i was critical of Musk, he happened to be right, and in this case - Musk is naturally not anti-science guy, so i'd guess there must be some other reason for him doing that which i'm just not able to see).

I wonder whether somebody from the opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions. In particular what is the expected state near, mid, and longterm and how the current actions are supposed to result in it. It would be great to have it with some ballpark estimates.

Trump I have no explanation for except corruption.

But Musk and DOGE, there is a simple explanation. Musk has learned that you take a chainsaw to sacred cows, then fix the 10% that were really bad mistakes, and that is the easiest way to cut through bureaucracy. So he's trying that, at scale.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like he'll notice most of his bad mistakes. Because it is at scale, and his attention doesn't go that far.

Yeah, this slash and burn approach is legitimately good in many circumstances. You cut through cruft, break down old unneeded processes, and things that are needed but were undocumented become quickly documented and maybe refurbished. Things that break are quickly noticed and reinstated.

It really doesn't work for huge complex systems where the breakages aren't felt fully for many years, and building the systems back up take decades, and things break so far down the line that it's impossible to even tell what needs to be fixed.

I have to hope that the intentions are actually good, because the appearances from the outside look a lot like the start of a dictatorship.

When you’re refactoring a system (which is really what he’s claiming to want to do) you don’t just delete the repository and start with main(). You figure out where the edges are, how they fit together, where are the Chesterton Fences and how can we protect them until they’re understood. A/B unit testing.

This takes a non-zero amount of time and it takes careful consideration by subject experts.

I can’t really speak to your hopefulness of good intentions - as a parent that relies on government agencies to help my special needs child with the tools she needs, I see no hope here.

What does success look like? How long should the chaos and pain last before you’re beyond hope? Will there be remuneration for people that are materially hurt by this scorched earth policy? How will you be hurt, personally?

I generally agree with you, but I have worked with many balls of mud that actually can not be understood even with experts and research without an unreasonable amount of time. Things like a program that runs in a database that was bought from a vendor that has since gone out of business, and the program ostensibly formats some rows and puts them into another table, but we don't know and can't know if anything else is actually using it because observability is not a part of this product, and we can't reach anybody who actually was involved in making it or setting it up. In these cases, a scream test is easier, faster, and more effective than "proper" research. And nearly the entire system is built on these inscrutable processes that nobody understands.

Sometimes it involves people, too. I did consulting work at a company that maintained an entire department of dozens of people who did nothing but mechanically opened spreadsheets that were dropped into a share, copied a specific set of rows from them into another spreadsheet, and then copied that spreadsheet into another share. It turned out the entire process was redundant, because what it was built to temporarily fix had already been permanently fixed elsewhere, and they still kept growing this useless department for years. Happily, the majority of these people were reassigned rather than fired.

For a collection agency, breaking these things is temporary pain. For a government, it can be deadly for constituents.

I can’t really speak to your hopefulness of good intentions - as a parent that relies on government agencies to help my special needs child with the tools she needs, I see no hope here.

I am really sorry to hear that. It's not a good position to be in. I have a trans child myself, and I am also worried about being able to care for them in an environment that is increasingly hostile. I've spent weeks of this past month depressed and panicked over the current "governance". I'm just trying to cope, and sometimes that involves a bit of denial.

What does success look like?

Don't get me wrong here. No success is possible. If their intentions are good, they're still destroying things that will kill people and take decades to repair. There will likely be no remuneration. I'm just hoping for the outcome that is least bad. I have zero hope of anything good resulting.

Their actions are pretty clearly to consolidate power, replace everyone with loyalists, cut taxes on the rich, deport and depopulate the country and transfer assets to their associates. Once the economy is tanked they can go on a buying spree and pick up all sorts of private assets for bargain price.

Musk's motivations are simple; the rich have been promised tax breaks, which means deep spending cuts. So gutting the parks service means no parks open to the public, but balances a tax break to billionaires.

Same for "science". That's a long term investment with long term returns. Kill that now for immediate tax breaks. Let someone else worry about the fallout 10 years from now.

Then there's direct interest. The CFB regulates companies processing payments to protect consumers. X wants to process payments without that pesky oversight. CFB is gone.

Musk and Trump sell this to the masses as saving money. Which the masses assume means lower taxes for them. Whereas the billionaires understand it's to remove services from the masses to route more money to themselves. The masses are easily duped - this is literally democracy in action.

In 2016 they had tax breaks without spending cuts. And he's not actually saving all that much money. The employees are only a small part of the budget.

He's doing it because hate for government employees has been a talking point since Reagan. He's getting huge accolades for sticking it to the evildoers. It's popular and fun.

So gutting the parks service means no parks open to the public, but balances a tax break to billionaires

That's the stupid thing in the end. Gut the parks service, here's your $500 tax break on your several hundred million+ income.

Well I'm not from "the other side" as I don't align with either party, but I do live in a very red part of the country.

In the short term, as I understand it, the goal is to root out fraud and abuse. For decades many people from both sides of the aisle have believed the government wastes money, that is nothing new. The current moves somewhat rhyme with the early Clinton administration. Whether that is Trump's goal or not is largely speculative, but those I've talked to that support him see this as the goal.

The mid and long term goals vary wildly depending on who I talk to. Some still view it like old school republicans, small government and states' rights. Others want a government just as large and powerful as today but focused on different goals and moral views.

The question I've yet to hear raised or disavowed by the Trump supporters I know is whether this is leading to fascism. A supposed billionaire running the country with his billionaire friends in toe sure seems like industry take over of government.

Similarly though, I rarely heard the other side of the aisle acknowledging whether the other path was intentionally leading to Marxism - a similar number of parallels existed there as well and in either case the outcome is authoritarianism and massive federal powers.

The Democratic Party is about as far away as you can get from any sort of Marxist political ideology as you can. There’s not a single even minor US political movement that is even remotely related to Marxism.

That seems like a hard claim to stand behind when Harris's father was a Marxist economist. BLM was also a very popular movement among the Democratic party, and it was organized and run by Marxists.

How do you land on the party being as far from Marxism as a party can be?

What Marxist policies was Harris promoting?

Elon Musk's parents and grandparents were adovactes and beneficiaries of a violent, racist apartheid South Africa. His dad had children with his step-daughter.

Fred Trump was arrested for participating in a KKK rally and prosecuted for racist discriminatiory housing practices.

How do you land on Trump and Musk being far from violent ugly racism?

This has zero to do with rooting put fraud, this is literally making goverment more corrupt.

And the whole "democrats are Marxists" talking point is ridiculous. There are no paralels here, just a authoritarian and anti democratic movement successfully demonizing other side regardless of truth.

You're being too black and white here in my opinion.

From what I've seen we don't yet have a clear vision of what their end goals really are. They've talked about waste and fraud, and what they've done so far could be to that end. Going out a layer and you find people around them, and Project 2025, that seem to talk much more towards privatizing the government. I haven't seen enough to know which way it will go, but its been moving so quickly that I can't keep up with everything.

I didn't say "democrats are Marxists" and I didn't intend to imply that. To say there are no parallels is disingenuous at best. Wealth distribution is a great example that is common in both groups, as is anticapitalist and anti-meritocratic views and policies.

That doesn't mean democrats are Marxists or that the party is Marxist. It does, though, mean that there are policies many Democratic voters or politicians support that align with arguments Marx made (and that doesn't inherently mean the ideas are bad ones).

1.) If you did not seem enough, it is because you was avoiding it. Project 2024 also literally describes much more then just privatization.

The goals of conservative movements were always visible and open, alteought enablers preferred to demand everyone uses euphemisms.

2 ) You did used those words. You knew it was exaggeration and even now you are exaggerating. Plus even milder claim is purely false. You got what you wanted politically, so this strategy of false equivalencies, of blaming democrats of what conservatives do and plan to do is getting really hollow.

Bo sides were not the same, you just create such impression by using euphemisms for one side and exaggerations for another one.

3.) No one on the right has any business to use the word meritocracy. They never wanted ine, occasionally using that word to manipulate. Right now, qualified woman amd black man were removed from leadership position amd replaced by mediocre unqualified man.

Right now, qualified people are replaced by unqualified loyalists.

I wonder whether somebody from the opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions.

i am not on trump's side (i hate trump; i am neutral on musk except these past few weeks i think he's said -- but not yet really done -- things that are a bit beyond the pale, even for him) but i think this will be positive for American science.

as i posted in sibling comment:

to steelman the issue: what if there was overinvestment in science? as in we chased money after talent that didnt exist, or was mismatched to the difficulty of the available and fundable open questions.

two things: you'd expect a lot of fraud and misallocated science to have been recently uncovered (Reproducibility crisis, amyloid hypothesis scandals e.g.).

after the cuts, you would expect the quantity of science to go down, but the quality to go up.

i guess technically this isn't a logocal explanation since i dont think trump is doing this in good faith but i think the US might be better off in the end.

No because these cuts do nothing to address fraud.

In the immediate it seems to have cut short the next generation of scientists leaving more of the entrenched old hands.

opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions

Maybe it is like with Mozilla. You send money to Firefox development, but it pays for Marxist get-away conference in Africa.

Once academia gets rid of bloat, there will be far more money for science and engineering!

They slashed grants that pay science. Science ia going to be cut.

I keep oscillating between are they just stupid or are they malicious and I'm starting to settle on the latter given the kinds of actions this administration is taking. Ironic that their voters thought they'd be mAkINg AMeRIcA gREaT aGAin when in fact they're going to cause us to lose our leadership role in many areas.

It's a good thing you are "starting to settle" 2025. I mean before 2020 they disbanded federal bodies for pandemic prep and look what happened.

Still, "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

But was that malice, or stupidity? Do you think they disbanded pandemic prep because they wanted people to die in a pandemic? It seems much more likely that they were too stupid to realize that being unprepared for a pandemic is way more costly than being prepared for one.

There's certainly a lot of malice: asking for names of FBI agents who worked on Jan 6 cases, and in putting Tulsi Gabbard over the CIA, refusing to enforce the laws against offering bribes to foreign officials, cutting agencies regulating Trump's and Musk's businesses. But cutting pandemic prep, firing people working on basic technology... that shows that they're both malicious and stupid.

It doesn't really matter what their intent is when the result is the same.

Also...

Do you think they disbanded pandemic prep because they wanted people to die in a pandemic

Are you familiar with the term reckless?

The confusion is caused by a belief that it is Trump [0] who is making calling the shots.

[0] He probably believes it as well.

We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world.

It’s not hard to understand why people believe Trump Is a Russian asset

Yes - we don’t have proof that he is, but looking at things like the way he’s handling the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes it a fair question to ask whether it would be any different if he was.

I’ve had a similar debate over the DOGE effort to install political commissars throughout the executive branch. There’s one alarm about how skipping a lot of safeguards would make it easier for an adversary to get inside (either by compromising one of their people or relying on the defense being so disrupted) but there seems to be an equally strong argument that a foreign intelligence agency might choose to stay out because nothing they could do would harm U.S. interests more and getting caught might trigger a strong enough reaction to halt the damage.

Maybe China will start accepting international PhD students? I don’t see anyone else who could pick up the slack.

No point unless coupled with ability to immigrate. Why would China educate foreigners only to see them leave? There is no payoff.

It makes sense in US because of for-profit universities and easier immigration. That is not situation over there.

to steelman the issue:

what if there was overinvestment in science? as in we chased money after talent that didnt exist, or was mismatched to the difficulty of the available and fundable open questions.

a few things: you'd expect a lot of fraud and misallocated science to have been recently uncovered.

after the cuts, you would expect the quantity of science to go down, but the quality to go up

[flagged]

If you've read the three-body problem series (or the tv show) [spoiler incoming]

- - - -

the way to stop humanity from being able to fight back (against alien invasion) is not via weapons, but via disabling science. It's a long term strategy.

So the conspiracy theory that trump is a russian asset (or is influenced by them at the least), seems plausible, if you imagine that such removal of science and research funding is meant to disable american technological progress for decades to come. This would be a strategy that outlasts the tenure of the russian asset.

Those concepts are not science fiction, they were very often used in the past already. Just read about how the most famous dictators in history came to power, and what they did first.

Discrediting scientist is a standard step for most dictators. They only keep the bare minimum they need for the military and surveillance.

Who is the dictator here? Obviously the states that run these schools will raise taxes to fund the state schools, no?

The dictator is still in the oven, but it's nearly ready. Just needs a topping of constitutional crisis and a suspension of elections and it'll be done.

You don't need to suspend elections you just need to subvert them. For-show elections make good dictatorial theater.

Science in the US will be chaotically torn apart by this and a host of other decisions.

Seems unnecessarily alarmist speculation to me. :shrug: I'd rather see how this plays out, since no one can possibly know at this point.

We have seen it happen over and over again.

When was the last time real science came out of Russia?

I wouldn't put down Russia's achievements.

They did manage to effectively disable their greatest geopolitical enemy and cause us to destroy ourselves.

All the weaponry in every other country on earth couldn't harm America more than what they did with social media, some highly skilled "recruitment," and smart leveraging of monetary resources.

They got us to vote against Ukraine at the UN without a gun. Even the worlds best weapons aren't that effective.

Not evaluated efficiency cuts. Just thrashing about.

Personally I'm not sold on their tactics so far, but there is another way to view this than thrashing out.

Non-probationary federal employees are protected and not easily fired. If one honestly believes the government is bloated and so far into debt that the budget needs to be balanced at all costs, cutting anyone and anything you can may make sense.

Normally you wouldn't throw good food overboard, but if the ship is sinking you may have no choice other than to throw out anything that isn't bolted down.

Where exactly is the proof that the ship of government funded science in the USA was sinking?

If you don't mean just US funded science, then what evidence is there that the USA was sinking in general? When I look at the graph of debt increase, it was actually decreasing.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1366899/percent-change-n...

“The debt is increasing at a slower rate” isn’t really enough when interest rates are non zero. As the US has to keep rolling its debt to higher interest rates it’s going to continue to escape decline even with significant cuts to spending

OK, but if the debt was the actual issue of concern, then we certainly wouldn't be cutting taxes (income) at the same time, would we?

Government employee payroll makes up a tiny fraction of the budget. It's actually a horrible place to start.

It's actually a horrible place to start.

That depends on what the options are. The executive branch likely does have authority to fire probationary employees. They likely don't have authority to immediately fire non coronation dry employees or to end programs and departments created congress.

This may be the best lever they think they legally have today. If that is the case, and that's an if, they are trying to stick within the letter of the law despite how it is often being reported.

The loss of their jobs is all part of gods plan, apparently https://www.mediaite.com/politics/house-republican-tells-fir...

And the worst thing is that they may have misunderstood what "probationary employees" were. In federal speak, they are new employees, but the new regime may have thought they were "bad" employees, based on the idea of "probation" in the criminal justice sense.

there are two tiers of program managers. there are those that are pulled from academia, as you say, but theres a 3-5x? multiple of "junior' PMs that are say MS or BS scientists, rarely PhD (usually the case when the PhD is... subpar), these are career and eventually thet are promoted to senior management and decision making roles.

I don’t know what the distribution of advanced degrees is among NSF program managers, but I strongly reject the implication that career program managers are somehow a lower tier or less well suited for the job. I’ve personally served a few times as an NSF panel reviewer for a career PM that does not hold a PhD, and they are awesome. They have a background in the startup world and ask really insightful question and know how to build effective groups of experts and efficiently guide discussion to get actionable feedback from them in a really short timeframe. A lot of PhDs are not great with these skills, and I’ve learned a ton about evaluating the potential impact and risks of research proposals by interacting with this person.

Also, this attitude is kind of counter to the egalitarian notion a lot of HNers hold that you don’t need a formal CS degree to be a great software dev.

yeah well i worked with a high level DARPA PM that it turned out her phd was overinterpreting noise and her PI (francesco stellaci) railroaded the postdoc that tried to call foul. by the way, that PM, last i checked had left DARPA and was working on a microfluidics nanodrop blood diagnostics company -- you cant mke this shit up!! and a DOE biotechnology pm that was excited to be on the project -- but by his own admission couldn't remember what a promoter was. fucking clown cars.

you don’t need a formal CS degree to be a great software dev.

not at all the same. the point here is about incentive structure. If you're a great scientist, why aren't you doing the science? something made you decide instead to be a career bureaucrat.

Notwithstanding the other awful aspects of all of this, there’s a certain vibe of, “people who don’t understand how a system works attempting to act like they know how the system works and are too cowardly to admit they are breaking everything.”

This just reads like “Character Limit” except replace Twitter with the federal government.

It's like an internet argument spilled out into the real world, with all the posturing and bravado to increase perceived expertise.

Except it's gambling with an entire nation's fortune, instead of likes/votes/reactions.

To repeat popular quotes, there's a lot of walking up to fences gaily and then tearing them down, and a lot of "Government doesn't work, vote for us and we'll prove it"

Not much to say. If anyone is truly on the fence, please remember this and vote against it in 2026. Vote early, vote often. Vote local. I promise that killing trans people and defunding science is not going to make gas cheaper or anything.

It reminds me of the Gordian knot myth. All these sages had tried and failed to untie it. Alexander the Great, a true jock, sliced it in half with his sword.

Trump and Musk style themselves after Alexander. They see the complexities of geopolitics, security, culture and economics, and they have contempt for that complexity. They give simple, brutal solutions for hard problems: War in Europe? Force Ukraine to surrender! Slow to change government policy? Fire Federal workers and consolidate power! Too many illegal immigrants? Send them to Guantamo! And it feels active, it feels efficient, it's cathartic, and so their base cheers them on as they take swings at the load-bearing walls of our country. The fulminant narcissism, impulsive mania and willful ignorance are adaptive, to them.

Sometimes the only way to know something is important is to shut it off and see if anyone complains. For example, lots of stories in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629714. Now certainly the Trump administration could have been more careful, but they only have 4 years so the Facebook motto of "move fast and break things" applies.

I wouldn't do this if there were lives at stake. e.g. turning off circuits in a hospital to see which ones are really necessary.

It's a very strong claim to say no lives depend on any federal funding.

All of the important programs have temporary restraining orders. That's actually the standard the judge applies, "is there a possibility of irreparable harm?" (e.g. lives lost). It's not perfect but no system is.

USAID saved thousands and thousands of lives every year. And that is a massive understatement of the suffering and misery USAID prevented.

It’s gone. People are dying because it’s gone.

Have you been paying attention to Republicans over the last 40 years? They don't care if it's useful or important. They don't want government programs to exist.

Trump isn't changing that. Don't kid yourself.

To be rather abrasive in my response: I believe your view is a waste of air. In case I'm correct how about we cut you off from air for a week and if there's a problem we'll restore it then.

That is how a large portion of the internet works, e.g. in most subreddits certain viewpoints will be instantly banned without any discussion. HN is kind of strange in that respect.

Why shouldn't the three monopoly cellular players in the US do this work themselves? Is there some reason the NSF is doing industry research for them? Are we /honestly/ afraid of "falling behind" in cellular technology if the government doesn't do basic research?

How is it saving money if the cost is just shifted elsewhere? Why does it matter where the work is done except for empty ideological signaling?

The cost would be borne by the consumers of Telcos / wireless services rather than by all taxpayers.

The Telcos would allocate funding / resources based on their financial position and their needs.

I dunno, tbh maybe the government can do a better job at right-sizing the service and running it efficiently than the private sector could? Maybe! But it feels like most arguments along these lines would also apply to the Telcos themselves, i.e, if government can do a better job why not nationalise the Telcos?

Consent matters.

There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to pay for something they do not want to buy, simply because you think it would be good for them.

I am vehemently pro-research and pro-education, but these tax-funded programs are not it. There must be some meaningful connection to the delivery of value, otherwise this stuff is just public-private wealth transfer. This seems obvious to me. Why should this research be subsidized? Why should government subsidies exist in general?

This isn’t crazy stuff. We would like a smaller federal government. Why is everyone acting like the sky is falling when an elected official does the things people voted for them to do?

(Note: I did not vote for this administration, but I am happy about some of the policy decisions that are being made (and unhappy about others).)

You don't believe that, or you would have moved to be out from under this ultimate tyranny. Somalia, perhaps.

Your argument is the classic Randist Libertarian one: "There is no such thing as society, everything I did I earned myself with no reference to anyone." It is, of course, complete and utter garbage. Government spending is the only known way of constructing projects that are not attractive money-makers: rural electrification, communications systems, roads, water treatment, education. In order to keep currency flowing, governments remove it from circulation via taxation.

This violates consent, though. Consent matters, regardless of how much handwaving occurs after people choose to violate it.

The other such places you describe also violate consent. Same criminal acts: coercion by violence.

I do indeed believe in the things I have said, and I have indeed emigrated from the United States for many such reasons, principally among them my objection to being forced to fund neverending war.

Unfortunately the US Government still taxes me remotely.

You can renounce your US citizenship and thus avoid the burden of US taxation.

Government subsidies should exist in general because fundamentally, humans are very bad at making long-term decisions. Institutions, taxes and transfers are how we make sure that society is oriented away from people's short-term preferences and towards long-term benefit to all.

If people are very bad at making long term decisions, then how would a government (made of people) somehow mitigate this? Governments also have demonstrated their fundamental inability to outperform in making long-term decisions.

“People are bad, therefore let’s throw organizations of even more people at the problem” doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

In fact, not only does this “solution” not solve the problem, it creates a whole host of new ones: corruption, graft, human rights abuses, and perpetuation of the status quo due to codification.

Most people are bad at making long-term decisions. Some are not. Biases can be overcome with sustained training and dedication.

Using taxes to fund basic research is one of many ways our institutions have a countervailing effect towards long-term thinking. In fact we should be taxing much more and doing much, much more of it.

This is explicitly anti-majoritarian, yes.

Corruption is indeed a potential issue, and we should focus on ways to e.g. root out peer review rings. But the numbers we're talking about are tiny.

I can think of a large number of vastly worse tyrannies.

The outcome of this is not going to be a smaller government that achieves 80% of its previous goals with 70% of the spending. The outcome of this is going to be massively chaotic organizations and less efficiency because of the huge fucking wrecking balls slammed into everything by people that have publicly spoken about their goal to destroy the post-new-deal society and replace it with CEO-kings running fiefdoms.

Congress passed laws allocating the spending. That by definition is consent.

They did this without my involvement. Furthermore, the amendment that they claim permits them to steal your money was ratified by representatives who were elected by no people alive today.

The current population had no say whatsoever in these laws. They were born into it like being born into slavery.

There is no “unsubscribe”.

Interesting approach to competing with China on wireless technology. I would have thought the US having a competitive edge over China in terms of research and development would be important to Republicans.

The federal govt can’t be the majority of technological innovation. If we’re lucky this vacuum will be filled by an even larger private sector innovation hub like Xerox park and bell labs.

Just like in healthcare, right? Where we are lucky the private industry has created...oh wait, most expensive healthcare system in the world, doesn't cover a third of the population, doesn't even crack the top ten in outcomes.

Oh my god dude, who do you think is the major subsidizer of private industry research?

I didn’t say I was in favor of axing all govt positions and grants, dude.

You didn't say that, but you're supporting the guys who did.

You do realize PARC and Bell Labs are long gone, right?

Why do you think the vacuum won't be filled by other countries willing to fund their scientists?

This is after all the same reasoning used to give tax breaks to get a factory to setup in town