US presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would appoint Elon Musk to head a government efficiency commission if he is elected to office in November.

“At the suggestion of Elon Musk, who has given me his complete and total endorsement… I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” Trump told the Economic Club of New York.

  • NegativeNull
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    454 minutes ago

    He just wants to be able to shut down the FAA, who keeps enforcing rules he doesn’t like (and SpaceX keeps breaking)

  • @LEDZeppelin
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    523 hours ago

    The guy who lost $35B in a year and destroyed the business model - that guy?

    • Billiam
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      152 hours ago

      I mean, depending on what your goals are, that could very well be described as efficient.

      Like, if your goal is to destroy the American government, could anyone do it more efficiently than Elmo?

    • FuglyDuck
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      202 hours ago

      the guy that lead the Cyber Truck project? that guy?

  • @[email protected]
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    333 hours ago

    Musk is CEO of 3 companies and has the time for a Government job?

    Being CEO is a part time job.

    • Billiam
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      2 hours ago

      Isn’t it at least 5?

      SpaceX

      Tesla

      Twitter

      Neuralink

      Boring Company

      Now tell me that being a CEO is such a hard and stressful job that one man could be in charge of five companies.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        40 minutes ago

        You know what would happen if I did my job for five different companies?

        I’d get fired.

  • @Myxomatosis
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    483 hours ago

    Elon needs to get back to his CEO duties of abusing ketamine and shitposting on twitter all day long.

  • @Today
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    364 hours ago

    I had to scroll up to see if it was The Onion.

    • @Lost_My_Mind
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      103 hours ago

      I’ve been saying for a few years now that I don’t blame anyone anymore for biting the onion. It is FAR TOO HARD to figure out what is life being absurd, and what is an absurd satire headline.

      The lines aren’t blurred anymore. There are no lines. The lines have ceased to exist at this point.

      I don’t understand life anymore, and I’d like to go back to politics being boring instead of being a circus.

      • skulblaka
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        118 minutes ago

        And that’s assuming the headline you’re reading even has any bearing on the actual article, or that the article itself is factual, both of which are increasingly more common worries now.

  • Maple Engineer
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    263 hours ago

    He’s going to Xitter the US of A. 75% loss of value since he became involved.

  • @yesman
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    62 hours ago

    I’m getting really sick of the “conventional wisdom” that government is inefficient and wasteful when compared to private industry. Medicare for example can provide more healthcare per dollar than any private insurer despite subsidizing that industry.

    Profit and marketing are inefficiencies because they add cost but no value.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 hour ago

      Government is inefficient if you elect people who believe it is and set out to prove it.

      People who say “run things like a business” don’t know shit. Every job I’ve worked at has had tremendous waste, but no one was looking closely because it’s private.

      Like, right wing nut jobs would lose their shit if they learned a government office was buying fresh fruits for workers but most of it was going bad and being thrown out. But that happened every day for a while.

      There’s also been a lot of “why is this machine still running? How much are we paying AWS for this??”

      There’s also been a lot of "we don’t need to do accessibility on our website because most of our customers don’t care, and no one’s making us ".

  • @fox2263
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    73 hours ago

    Trump doesn’t understand that Musk made up the title for the acronym

  • @sunbrrnslapper
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    33 hours ago

    There are parts of the federal government that are wildly inefficient. So it isn’t entirely misguided to want to improve that. Appointing Musk to redesign the government’s operations is a terrible idea (based on Tesla operations).

    • snooggums
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      3 hours ago

      At the federal level most of the perceived inefficiencies are really just bloated budgets to ensure funds are available when needed, like for the military. The perception of inefficiency usually comes from the public not accepting the need for redundancy or that a lot of regulatory work is time consuming and expensive.

      When conservstives talk about efficiency they mean fire people and slash budgets they oppose existing, like the NOAA. They don’t actually mean efficiency.