Know Your Lane

There are things that are core and things periph­eral and to confuse the two is an invitation to trouble even if you are a genius. This is the lesson one can draw from the recent actions of Elon Musk. Tesla, his electric vehicle car company, that made him the richest man on earth, reported in their quarterly filing that profits have nosedived 71 per cent. Com­ing on the back of a drastic slide in stock prices, Musk announced that he will be reducing time helming the Department of Government Expenditure (DOGE) and from May onwards focus on his business.

DOGE was his ambitious plan to make government a more efficient machine while saving taxpayers trillions by culling wasteful spending. He has done the impos­sible often in his businesses but was unable to fully bend government to his will. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. In a private enterprise, he could be king. Order and it would be done. People and departments could be removed at will. Factories could be set up on parking lots and needed no one’s permission. In government, very little is automatic between command and execu­tion because its pur­pose is different from profit. It has a structure designed for power to not be absolute. Plus, he was working under another man, Donald Trump.

He also found that being associated with one political party meant being reviled by the other, who still made up 50 per cent of the country. That 50 per cent were also consumers and potential buyers of Tesla cars. The only ambition to justify such an enterprise was if he could set himself up to be the US president. Then all of it made sense. For the richest man in the world can only aspire to be the most powerful man in the world. But he is ineli­gible for it because he was not born in the US, a precon­dition for US presidentship. What was he gaining by getting into public life? Nothing that he did not already have, except for more enemies. And hence, the retreat for someone not used to admitting failure.

DOGEDonald TrumpElon MuskgovernancemultitaskingUS politics