>No agency would voluntarily modernize systems

1. yes, we do. DOGE was renamed from Obama Appointed DSA, which inevitably reduced other agencies as we centralized IT. How about you be specific and suggest what agencies are past their usefulness?

1.5 but no. The government doesn't just lay off people. They tend to move people around for their work when their old resposibilities decline. The government is not a tech company trying to maximize profit.

2. that's why we have actual audit agencies. Each agency audits itself and then the GOA is the government's general auditor.

>Everyone in tech clearly fell on the modernization side

Not necessarily, because again: the government isn't a tech company. And that's a good thing. You can't move fast and break the treasury. That's how you cause the next stock market crash.

>Headed by one of the greatest tech disrupters since probably Edison. Now they act like the sky is falling?

Yes, because you just equated a businessman in tech who's never touched anything in the domain to one of the most important innovators in history.

Read up on your history and Tell me Musk is some tech visionar. You may not have noticed, but this isn't 2017 anymore and Musk's persona has long faded. He's not exactly hailed here as a tech genius anymore

>I can’t find any steel-man argument against DOGE.

You're not looking then. How about this: they are breaking the law. A lot. And then antagonizing judges who reel them in.

Ignore everything else; how can you excuse this? What's the steelman argument around "well it's okay to break the law?" this isn't civil disobediance (quite the contrary), lives were not in danger at the OPM, USAID, and Treasury. What is your justification? How far does this need to go before you'd admit that they are breaking too many laws.

>Only explanation I have for those opposing this is some combination of personality derangement

You say this and wonder why we cannot have a civil conversation? A conversation is two way. Statements like this is inflammatory and preaching.

> or some crazy model of the world that glorifies bureaucratic power as some fundamental right enshrined in constitution.

If you even care, my viewpoint is this: your solutions change as your problem scales. inevitably, larger problem spaces need more time and nuance to resolve.

exmaple 1: is it okay for me to go back to my toy renderer and rewrite it from scratch? Yes. No one's using it, I know the scope of the code, and sometimes when you visit old code like that, it's best for me to just start over. I got my value out of that code (and my first job!)

example 2: I'm contracted to work on some existing project. They put abou a year into it. You want to rewrite from scratch. Is that okay? It can really go either way. Maybe the code is truly horrible and you're experienced enough to handle this rewrite. it works out. Maybe the work needed is minor and you're basically working against their best interests. They may resist without a good reason, not hire you on, reduce your pay for the contract, etc. You won't simply get your way without some sort of credentials or reasoning. But it may be the right call.

Example 3: I'm working at a multibillion dollar company and am touching a 15 year old codebase with 10m+ lines of code. You dont like a certain system and offer to optimize it (let's say you worked here a year). Will you get approved? Absolutely not. You need to at best go through a huge procedure to even get access to that part of the repo, propose a very smart plan, and then implement it slowly. Then you'll talk with various stakeholders for each commit. It maybe would take you a month if you went in yourself. It ends up taking a year of discussions and iteration.

So, the government is example 3. Is the right call to ignore your lead, product managers, release managers, and build engineers and put in your code, break the version contol, and jam in your barely tested code into Prod? I fail to see how any result short of multiple miracles keeping you from not only being fired, but blacklisted locally from any other software firm in that area. If you broke it enough, you may even be retaliated against for damages to the business. No programmer would sympathize with that.

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So, back to reality; why am I seeing people celebrate not only all of the above, but then threaning your boss's life for doing their job and keeping you from destroying the business? Why am I being called "deranged" for being aware of my data and not appreciating it being accessed without my consent, for no good reason (what is my social security going to do to fix the government? Request as little data as you need for your function)?

Using your odd comparison, Why would I sit by while someone destroys the death star? I'm in the Death Star (I don't know why, but I'm rolling with it)! I don' have a Pod Racer to get off like the rebels do. They are trying to kill me! Why is self-preservation derangement now?