Elon Musk’s rule as a business tycoon has been marked by large-scale, arbitrary layoffs of his own staff, including top executives who crossed him.
Musk was unleashed on the government in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump his very first day in office. The order established the Department of Government Efficiency, which was inserted into the U.S. Digital Service, an organization originally established by President Barack Obama as a way to encourage young, public-service minded techies to do a one- to two-year stints in government to help agencies with IT modernization. Until very recently, he had no formal government job at all, which exempted him from conflict of interest rules, or from having to divest his stock holdings or put them in a blind trust.
As soon as Musk started, it became clear that he had little interest in conventional ideas of efficiency, which involve getting better organizational performance without spending more money. Instead, he immediately began to focus on slashing or eliminating entire government programs. An early list from his erstwhile co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy included eliminating the IRS, FBI and the Education Department.
Musk seems unaware that our system established multiple institutions sharing power in addition to the president, most obviously Congress. Given his ignorance, we should not be surprised that Musk seems to believe he has the authority to freeze government spending and to “delete” entire tech teams and cripple the U.S. Agency for International Development.
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