Summary

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) began recruiting “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” willing to work 80+ hours per week with no pay to help slash federal spending.

Appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, the panel is tasked with recommending spending cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and agency restructuring by July 4, 2026.

Musk and Ramaswamy advocate for drastic measures, including cutting grants to nonprofits and potential mass layoffs.

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
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    7 days ago

    No high-iq individual will work 2 weeks per week with no pay in a society that requires money to live.

    • meco03211@lemmy.world
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      That’s a common tactic in scams. You want to weed out the actual intelligent people as early as possible lest they disrupt your scam. That’s why scam emails tend to have misspellings and grammatical errors. Smarter people instantly ignore that. Dumb people click on through.

      • slacktoid@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        So you’re saying we all should apply?

        So that we can disrupt this shit

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

      No they won’t… but rich people who can afford to support themselves while indulging in their love of making poor people suffer will be lined up around the block.

      Making a position unpaid is a classic tactic to keep out the poors.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        It’s disappointing so many aren’t getting this…

        It’s the same as “unpaid internships” being advantage to rich kids who can afford to work without pay.

        Like, there is an inordinate amount of rich assholes that would love to spend 80 hours a week finding way to cut taxes, regulations, and the social safety net.

        If you’re rich enough to begin with, this could pay a hell of a lot better than anything else you would spend your time on. Couple hundred million in the bank or stock market, and it would be more profitable than any actual job.

        And let’s be honest, Musk and Trump aren’t judging IQ by the freaking Wechsler exam, when rich idiots talk about IQ, they mean zeros in a bank account.

        • would_be_appreciated@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          People with that kind of money don’t work, they own. They’ll hire somebody to do those 80 hours while they rape underage trafficked girls.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      They’ll get paid by conservative think-tanks under the table so the Dept of Efficiency looks good and can pretend that it’s efficient.

      • Vash63@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        This is what I was thinking also. It will be filled with people getting paid by corps and special interests.

      • TehWorld@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Or corporations who want to have a say. BP Oil will happily drop off a shipping container of cash at a “volunteer’s” house if it means that they eliminate inspections of oil platforms in the gulf.

    • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world
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      This isn’t aimed at the idiots who would line up around the block and work for free to be called high IQ by Musk. Doesn’t really matter though, it’s all performative

      They already know exactly what they want to cut, and billionaires don’t need a salary to realize profits from deregulation.

      The job being “no salary” isn’t indicative of how cost effictive a volunteer public servant could be - it is a dinner bell for the wealthy

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        My goodness we’re gonna be MAGA’d so hard*, can’t wait

        *some people (with the best words) are saying this

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      I want to believe this, too. But considering how there are smart people clubs with upwards of 50,000 members in the US that treat “passing” an IQ test as their sole entry criterion, I am sure there are some. Not all who have intelligence also have the wisdom to use it well.

  • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    do “high-IQ” individuals even exist on the republican isle? why would a lefty want to get involved in this shit, especially unpaid? what idiot would accept unpaid labour under a multi-billionaire?

    • laserm@lemmy.world
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      High IQ individuals definitely exist on the republican side. The only thing is that they are the most selfish kind (hence why they are republican) and hence they won’t work for free.

      • voldage@lemmy.world
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        IQ tests intentionally omit any questions related to empathy, emotional intelligence and creativity, so it can favour people from the top of the pile and act as accurate perdictor of success in ruthless capitalist society. It implicitly promotes lack of those traits in individuals and explicitly promotes the definition of intelligence that’s unrelated to them. While you don’t get lower scores if you’re highly creative or empathetic person, so it’s not directly a detrimental for society and can be a useful metric for some cases like specific jobs, it’s image as sole measure of intelect is manufactured to promote “specific kind of people”, to which group many republican businessmen would belong.

        I’m not disagreeing with what you said, just thought I’d expand on that.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Good grief. It’s like he asked ChatGPT “how do I hire people suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect?”

    Dear meme-lords: I need something with much more facepalm than the Picard one. A “super facepalm” if you will. Thank you.

    • Archer@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      It’s really great that his government efficiency department is in fact duplicative. An excellent microcosm

  • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Fun idea: Flood their contact addresses with fake applications and fake credentials like certificates with high scores on made-up IQ tests or Mensa membership cards.

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Department of Government Efficiency is the name of the department that ends up involved in creating Soylent green or some crazy human organ harvesting thing.

    This sets off all sorts of red flags that bother the shit out of me. Like I’ll take boring dystopia over human slaughterhouses TYVM

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    There are only two types of “Super High-IQ” people who will go for an unpaid job working in politics for the likes of Musk:

    • Very naive young things, hence very inexperienced and who are going to do all mistakes in the book and then some for the next couple of years as they learn the ropes. By the time they know enough about the job they’ll be burned out from working for a guy like Musk not to mention knowing enough to know they’re better of elsewhere.
    • Grifters looking for making maximum money from being in politics. Since they’re not getting paid, that means corruption, lots and lots of corruption.

    Also, even amongst the “very naive young things”, in my own personal experience, the high intelligent types with the personality to be real believers of far right stuff, are at most above average intelligence but below genius level IQ (which is 120) and hence not really “super high”-IQ (which would more 160+) - I once worked with a guy like that who thought himself very intelligent and in his new job ended up working in an office with two genious level colleagues and he was very entertaining because of his “buttons” were so obvious and he was so easy to give the run around.

    Super-high IQ people are often the very opposite of street smart, but one thing they aren’t is stupid and at most fall into the first part of the saying “you can deceive most people some of the time, or some people all of the time, but you can’t deceive most people all of the time” - they can be swindled but they’ll figure it out faster than most.