Disruption is imminent

“So he basically bought Trump,” came one hilarious comment in a BBC report about Elon Musk being named by President-elect Donald Trump as co-head of the new US efficiency department.

Another netizen, one presumes an American, then asked if there was “an ethical conflict of interest to have a businessman with government contracts setting government policies.”

I nearly choked on my coffee.

Here and everywhere, businessmen — the more successful, the better — had long been elected or appointed to positions that could well be used to benefit their self-interests, should they choose, and I bet Elon Musk is no different.

Arguably the richest man in the world — now worth, what, $303.3 billion, according to Forbes, and $314 billion, says the Bloomberg Billionaires Index —Elon Musk would never be caught dead doing something as cheap as stealing from the nation’s coffers in the guise of public service.

No, he would probably never let victims of calamities go hungry by storing donated goods until they rot, making extra millions on the side from government contracts, or hold donated funds until they are “forgotten.”

That, in a manner of speaking, is “so last year.”

Basically, you can get your money’s worth out of a government position by making yourself immune to stress — the stress, that is, of being investigated by agencies concerned with such activities that may be considered red flags.

With his massive wealth, Musk poured money into the Trump campaign and was promptly rewarded with a plum post — one mandated to “create a more efficient government.”

Musk achieved billionaire status at age 41 after making the forward-thinking move of investing in PayPal and divesting it after a while, then investing in tech-heavy companies like Tesla and SpaceX.

Trump, like Musk, is prone to making out-of-the-box moves — though most of his seem to rub people the wrong way more than usual — such as creating a Department of Government Efficiency to be headed by Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The President-elect “will co-lead” this new “entity” that he also “indicated will operate outside the confines of government,” a wire report says.

What the world leader wants is “to drive large-scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach” to government, said Reuters.

The Department of Government Efficiency, nicknamed DOGE (a reference to Musk’s reported favorite cryptocurrency, the Dogecoin), would work to “dismantle bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies,” said BBC News. In other words, speed things up, lessen regulatory blocks and cost-cut.

It would be a business model for the times, one might suppose — and disruptions will be imminent. As they say, nothing worth having is attained without pain, but what kind of changes will be wrought by getting a man to head a department that may put him “nominally in charge of government agencies with oversight of his companies — the Environmental Protection Agency, (which) has had run-ins with Musk over threats to wildlife near the SpaceX launch pad,” as Emma Brockes wrote for The Guardian.

Some are wont to believe he angled for a post that would allow him (and no doubt his fellow billionaires who will man DOGE) to wield influence where it matters….to them.

While such speculations are nothing new — countless politicians had been accused of the same over the course of history — we wait with bated breath for the upcoming shakeups these men will have in store for the United States….and the world.