On oligarchy – The Economist:

‘There was a time, not long ago, when an important skill for journalists was translating the code in which powerful people spoke about each other. Carefully prepared speeches and other public remarks would be dissected for hints about the arguments happening in private. Among Donald Trump’s many achievements is upending this system.’

(…)

‘That does not mean Mr Musk can breathe easy, though. His interests are vulnerable to more routine measures. At the time he entered government in January, he and his companies were subject to 65 potential or actual regulatory actions by 11 federal agencies, according to the minority staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an arm of the Senate. These include accusations that Tesla, Mr Musk’s car company, lied about its self-driving technology; that Neuralink, his brain-implant company, violated the Animal Welfare Act with its experiments on monkeys; and that SpaceX repeatedly failed to follow the law when launching rockets. (As head of doge, Mr Musk was able to dismantle some of the agencies within the government investigating him, such as the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.)’

(…)

‘One of the reasons why Silicon Valley magnates like Mr Musk rallied around Mr Trump last year was that he promised a more favourable regulatory environment. But “there was always the risk that what they were buying instead were the conditions of oligarchy”, says Donald Moynihan of the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. That is, business leaders who are loyal to the president get to operate as they like, while those who are critical get the full force of the law. Mr Musk may be about to discover what life is like outside the tent. Perhaps on feeling the cold he will find a way back inside.’

Read the article here.

As long as Mr. Musk doesn’t end up in a prison in El Salvador or suddenly happens to fall out of a window, the US is still better than Russia.

But the oligarchy-light has been there for a long time already, now the not-so-light-oligarchy has arrived.