Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s disrupter-in-chief
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In 2017 Elon Musk branded Donald Trump a “con man" and “one of the world’s best bullshitters". Now he is known at Mar-a-Lago as Uncle Elon and is in the president-elect’s inner circle.
This week they watched a rocket launch together. The alliance of the world’s leading politician and its richest man creates a concentration of power both want to use to explosive effect: to slash bureaucracy, detonate liberal orthodoxies and deregulate in the name of growth. Mr Trump has a mandate for such disruption.
Despite America’s economic prowess, much of Main Street, Wall Street and Silicon Valley is frustrated by government profligacy and incompetence. They are right to be. The state needs an overhaul.
Yet Musk-led reform risks creating a new problem for America: the emergence of a combustible, corrupt oligarchy. Weeks after helping Mr Trump win the election Mr Musk has climbed to the apex of power. The president-elect has appointed him to a new advisory body, called doge, tasked with slashing spending.
Mr Musk is already in touch with foreign leaders and lobbying for cabinet appointments. It is hardly the first time a tycoon has had extraordinary influence in America. In the 19th century robber barons such as John D.
Rockefeller dominated the economy. In the early 20th century, when there was no Federal Reserve, John Pierpont Morgan acted as a one-man central bank. Mr Musk’s firms are more global than the big 19th- and 20th-century monopolies, and smaller if measured by profits to GDP.
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