To the Editor:

I understand Musk’s “chainsaw” approach to budget cuts—the try it, see what happens approach. After all, in the tech world, there’s always an UNDO button. There’s a job, testers, who are dedicated to breaking things. I wasn’t a tester, but when I worked in the industry, I found an error (aka broke) something in one company’s system that shut the whole company down for two weeks. For another company, the problem I found was so big, I earned a major bonus for finding it. Ultimately, in tech world, any problem can be solved with the UNDO button.

If only that were true for the rest of life.

A health care initiative giving condoms can sound outrageous—and grab headlines—but when it’s understood to stop the spread of AIDS over there before it gets here, it makes financial sense. Laying off workers while you wait to see where the real need is can seem to make sense. Until you realize there is no UNDO button for either of those scenarios.

When a family is thrown into chaos because they’ve lost their income and health benefits, and their knowledge and expertise is lost to the organization. When AIDS spreads to your shore. When relief foods are left rotting on a dock and people are left starving, and farmers are left uncompensated. There is no UNDO button for that.

Human lives cannot be reduced to a series of 1’s and 0’s that can be deleted and rearranged at will. And that’s what Musk has a hard time computing.

Pat Collins,
Fillmore, Ca.