On November 12, US President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would appoint Elon Musk, the world's richest man, to go a newly formed organization Ministry of Government Efficiency alongside fellow tech billionaire and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The recent department shall be tasked with reining in government bureaucracy, reining in government spending and reducing regulation.
Musk has clearly expressed his support for Trump's campaign potentially illegal financial “freebies” to the voters. Although Musk's direct involvement in electoral politics is recent, attempts by tech corporations and their executives to reshape public policy and governance have a protracted history, from transportation and housing to urban planning.
If we take a more in-depth have a look at a few of these initiatives, perhaps we will get a preview of what Musk's Ministry of Government Efficiency is attempting to do, what government-by-tech might appear to be, and what could go fallacious.
Replacing public services
In 2013, Musk himself proposed a brand new type of public transportation called “Hyperloop” to attach Los Angeles and San Francisco. And Musk's SpaceX is his try and surpass publicly funded NASA in rocket constructing.
But other technology corporations also had similar ambitions.
Uber has made a variety of attempts replace public transport. Companies like Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet) have made efforts Replacement for urban infrastructure by constructing so-called “smart cities” that collect and analyze data about people’s behavior to make decisions about service delivery.
One economist even has recommended that Amazon bookstores could replace public libraries. Tech corporations have challenged public offerings in such diverse areas Training, Identity verification And Housing.
The limits of disruption
Many government-by-tech projects have one thing in common: the idea that government is fundamentally inefficient and that (unregulated) technology can provide higher solutions.
Silicon Valley tech corporations have long advocated “Disturbance“, the idea of overthrowing a moribund status quo through innovation. Unlike public bureaucracies, the argument goes, companies can “Move fast and break things” to seek out recent and more efficient ways to deliver services and value.
Tech corporations that follow this philosophy have actually provided services that profit lots of us in our every day lives and made enormous amounts of cash. But that doesn't mean that the Silicon Valley model is sensible for public administration. In fact, the evidence suggests quite the alternative.
A story of failure
The tech industry's forays into public service delivery have had mixed results.
In 2017, the Canadian city of Innisfil has replaced all public transportation with Uber. The result was rising costs to the town (fees paid to Uber), more cars on the road, and better transportation costs for low-income residents.
Sidewalk Labs' smart city experiment in Toronto was abandoned in 2021 after privacy and scheduling objections arose.
In housing, disruptions within the tech industry have exacerbated existing problems with Airbnb and other short-term rental providers Contribution to the housing crisis.
Narrow solutions for narrow problems
Technology corporations also are likely to give attention to a comparatively narrow range of problems. Silicon Valley helped us discover a taxi, select a restaurant for dinner, navigate a city efficiently, transfer money to our friends, and find the most effective rental for our vacation.
Fewer solutions have been provided for locating low-income housing, caring for the elderly or reducing our energy consumption. There are necessary reasons for this: Tech corporations wish to generate revenue by tapping into upper-middle class consumers with disposable income.
But these gaps also reflect that Lack of diversity in Silicon Valley itself. The tech industry remains to be predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly upper middle class and predominantly highly educated. This impacts the forms of problems Silicon Valley sees and the forms of solutions it produces.
This is all bad enough for the private sector. However, the federal government's job just isn’t simply to take care of shareholders or customers (and even just those that voted for them), but reasonably to look in spite of everything of its residents.
Services for the few
The concern here is that the sorts of solutions and “efficiencies” Silicon Valley is producing could find yourself serving the few on the expense of the numerous. Some “inefficiencies” in public services arise from the incontrovertible fact that they’re designed to accommodate as many individuals as possible. For example, provisions and protections for the elderly, for individuals with disabilities, for individuals who may not speak English as their first language require more bureaucracy and more regulation.
Musk has said that public transportation is a “Pain in the ass”where you’ve to face next to potential serial killers. Of course in many places Public transportation carries no such stigma. Additionally, many who would really like to commute in private jets (and even Teslas) have little alternative but to subject themselves to the vagaries of a public bus.
One of SpaceX's goals is to scale back the price of a visit to Mars to under $1 million. This could be a remarkable achievement, however it means Musk's planned Mars colony would remain incredibly elite. Spaceships and hyperloops are completely inadequate as public policy.
Unsexy necessities
While the philosophy of disruption seeks to downplay the importance of existing infrastructure and institutions, the technology industry itself relies on them. Uber relies on cars and roads (including the governments that maintain them), Airbnb relies on brick-and-mortar buildings (and the employees who construct them), and Amazon and eBay depend on transportation infrastructure and postal services.
All technology corporations depend on established and enforced financial, ownership and tax systems. These old infrastructures and institutions could be unsexy and even inefficient.
However, these so-called inefficiencies have often evolved consistent with fairness, justice and inclusivity. The track records of Silicon Valley tech corporations don’t suggest that they share such values.
image credit : theconversation.com