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.
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