No, You Can't Run a Government Like a Company

Running the Twitter playbook on the American government isn't just a disaster because Musk is bad at it. It would still be a disaster if he wasn't.

There’s a longstanding myth that, I think, emerges from the near-religious dedication people express toward capitalism that anything can and should be run like a company. Run a classroom like a company! Run a household like a company! Run a government like a company! Surely the businessmen are the philosopher kings of our age.

This is one of the critical elements of Curtis Yarvin’s grand political philosophy, that the United States in particular needs to adopt a system where the president behaves like chairman of the board and he appoints a CEO to run America Ltd. Considering that’s very close to precisely what’s happened between Trump and Elon Musk, it really makes you think. Considering the Vice President JD Vance is a big Yarvin fan, it really makes you think.

And look, corporate dominion over a whole-ass country isn’t unprecedented. The British East India Trading Company (you know, the villains from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) ruled India as a private government for about a century and I don’t know enough about that section of history to tell you anything about how that worked or how it worked out (bad, I think?), and then there was the British South Africa Company (they were really creative with their company names back then, the Brits) who decided their company was also its own country and named a chunk of Africa after their own CEO, Cecil Rhodes (that also went badly).

He got eaten by a kraken in the end

Here we are, though, with the United States now struggling to function as normal under its sudden and radical restructure as a private corporation under the governance of its new CEO, Elon Musk, and the oversight of its new Board Chairman, Donald Trump.

I don't know what JD Vance is in this analogy. The janitor? Company mascot?

Indeed I remember that being one of the reasons people voted for Trump the first time—he’s not a politician, he’s a businessman! A true capitalist will run this country better because capitalism is more efficient than government!

That didn’t turn out to be the case, but short memories have planted the same mindset in people’s heads a second time and now it’s Elon Musk’s turn. His efforts at running the country like a company are even more disastrous than Trump during his first term, because he’s trying to run it like Twitter—the one company that he absolutely destroyed! As if governance by corporate managerial strategy isn’t doomed enough to fail, God knows why he doesn’t at least try to run it like Tesla.

Maybe not

Considering Tesla’s success is based on making grand promises it never delivers on, and distracting from its failures with more grand promises, it would be closer to how real government works anyway.

But the problem is that you absolutely cannot govern a country the way you manage a company because those are completely different things! Their superficial similarities are that both involve a hierarchy and a budget. But…

The Corporate Structure Makes Zero Sense Mapped to the Government Structure

Companies are just complex arrangements of people and money. Where people are concerned, you have: Owners, managers, shareholders, employees, customers, competitors, and contractors.

Now imagine the United States of America, Inc. Who fits into each of these categories?

Say you’re just a regular civilian. Like, a barista, or a taxi driver, or someone who works in a cubicle but dreams of making a living as an internet writer. What are you in the corporate structure of your country?

Try not to pick one of the ones Trump says he's going to invade and annex

So then, why are you treated like an employee? You have to work, after all. You have to do what you’re told, or else you will be punished, and you can’t opt out of punishment. There are rules that you have to follow, and you don’t have any of the sort of leverage over those rules that a customer has. Viewed from this perspective, the services you enjoy look more like employment benefits and other countries look like alternative employers.

So every citizen of a country is sort of an employee of that country. So who are the customers? What are you producing for whose benefit? Are other countries the customers, or the competition?

Also you get to vote for the president! That’s not something an employee or a customer gets to do. So maybe you’re all shareholders. That makes sense because you get to share in the wealth of the nation when the nation does well. So who are the customers? Who are you selling to? Are the government the employees, or the board? Who are the management?

Elected officials will frequently say that they work for you. So you are the management, and the government is your employee. Why the fuck do your employees get to tell you that you’re not allowed to be transgender or something? Why do your employees get to cut off your health benefits and talk down to you?

I could rant on like this for another thousand words, but you see how none of this maps well at all. And that’s a problem for your businessman president, because…