Run It Like a Business

A coup can be performed in many ways. Musk & Co. has chosen this one, the one he and his fellows have yearned for and know best. Run government like a business. Strip it for parts. Suck the value out of it. If there’s a husk to leave, leave it.

-Anne Lutz Fernandez, “Musk & Co.'s Performance of Brutality”

If the people cannot vote, and have their will be decided by their elected representatives, in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.

-Elon Musk, Oval Office Address

My first year of teaching was 2006. A lot has happened since then.

What I do remember about that year is a vague refrain from school administrators that clashed with my idealistic, student-focused teacher education: school should strive to be more like a business, and dealing with parents should be more like customer service.

Looking back, I interpret this as a desperate, misguided attempt to, as Timothy Snyder calls it, comply in advance, to talk a …