Imagine a government managed by billionaire CEOs. Each might run their own private sector department like a start-up, with citizens buying "subscriptions" to what we now see as basic rights.

Instead of going to school, you might pay a Patreon-style subscription fee to a virtual reality classroom run by an AI tutor.

But why should we care? Well, Elon Musk invested almost £100m into President-elect Donald Trump's campaign, and now he is being rewarded. Trump has announced that Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy are to run a new 'Department of Government Efficiency'.

The Department will, according to Trump, "dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations [and] cut wasteful expenditures".

Musk has promised a whopping $2 trillionOne thousand times bigger than a billion. in cuts - around one-third of all federal spending. He has been vocal about his desire to shave government influence down to a minimum.

But many doubt he is the man for the job. Musk cut staff at X, formerly Twitter, by 80% after he purchased the site in 2022. But X has seen steep revenue declines since then.

Have governments become useless?

Yes! Governments are lumbering, inefficient tools of overregulation which prevent economic efficiency and poorly distribute resources.

No! None of this is about efficiency or preventing bureaucracy. Realistically, Trump and Musk know that they will have more power if they hack off the limbs of our democratic institutions.