Along with ‘American Patriot’ Vivek Ramaswamy, the world’s richest person has been given the time-bound – July 4, 2026, of course – task of cost-cutting government.
That is, ‘dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies’. That’s America’s version of our ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’ bumper sticker.
Some of the cuts Musk will suggest over the next two years will undoubtedly affect his companies’ more-than-occasional brushes with the law.
Better still, ‘re-imagining regulation’ will turbocharge Musk’s sprint to be the first trillionaire. As for America, Trump’s self-described ‘Manhattan Project’ – with Musk as Oppenheimer (and Ramaswamy as Edward Teller?) – intends to get government off people’s back and out of their pocketbooks, without taking questions from Congress over his methods.
But a new czar with no experience of government can deliver where insiders would struggle. Trump wants his administration to work like an enterprise, with Musk as CEO. And very few people fit the consultant’s job description as aptly as Musk. There will be pain – Twitter’s experience bears this out. But Trump is trotting out his ‘crash and burn flab’ project as a means to one end: MAGA. The Department of Government Efficiency, being seen from our shores as an America Inc turbocharged version of NITI Aayog of sorts, may hold a clue about its function in its acronym: DOGE.
The doge was the highest authority in the 8th-18th c. Venetian Republic. Doges acted not just as head of state but also head of the Venetian oligarchy. The federal presidential republic that Trump will oversee from Jan 20 could jolly well function along those old Venetian lines.