“The only social responsibility of business is to make a profit” for shareholders, according to economist Milton Friedman. In contrast, according to the Preamble to the Constitution, governments should “establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

In other words, government and private businesses have fundamentally different functions in society. Businesses make profits by beating out the competition and dominating the market. Governments succeed by maximizing the common good. The tension between the public good and private profit is not new, but when we think business principles are right for government, it intensifies.

What happens when we take seriously the idea that government should be run like a business? You might think that “being run like a business” just means getting more efficient and nimble. No. It means that money doesn’t just talk, it shouts. When the Supreme Court decided in the 2010 Citizens United case that private money spent on political campaigns should count as free speech, what happened? The very rich now contribute unimaginable amounts of money to those campaigns, expecting favors in return. When those favors are granted, what do we get? Corruption. And we take it for granted that money buys power.

When the government pays private businesses to do work that the government could do, leaving huge loopholes, what do we get? More corruption. Private prisons and Medicare Advantage plans are two examples. Both developed from the idea that as businesses, they would be more efficient and better run than the public versions. But neither of these entities saves taxpayers money.

Medicare Advantage plans cost taxpayers 22% more than traditional Medicare, and private prisons are no cheaper than public ones. And both engage in questionable maneuvers to increase profit. Medicare Advantage plans claim payments for more serious conditions than those they actually treat, and private prisons have no responsibility to account for how they are spending taxpayer dollars. Plus, the incentives for both of these are to deliver as little service as possible for as much payout as they can get. Private prisons have worse conditions than many public ones, and the rate of often-fatal deferrals and denials of care under Medicare Advantage plans is absurdly high. What is this? Corruption. And we barely notice it.

Donald Trump’s presidency, however, has seen a grotesque and shameless ballooning of even that system. When Elon Musk spends at least $260 million to get Trump elected, and is then installed in a position to slash the agencies that regulate his businesses, what happens? The corruption that we already take for granted metastasizes into a near fatal condition.

To clarify: Musk has gutted the CFPB, which would regulate the peer-to-peer banking service that he wants as a function of Twitter/X. He has downsized the FAA, which issued regulations having to do with Space X. And he has demolished USAID, which investigated the provision by his Starlink company of internet capabilities to the Ukrainian army. These are no minor conflicts of interest; they are corruption. When Musk pays Wisconsin voters $100 each to sign a petition involving a closely fought race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, that is bribery, a close ally of corruption.

What about Trump himself? As president, he is exempt from the conflict of interest laws that apply to all other government employees, so his shameless embrace of crypto, having just started his own crypto firm, is not illegal. But we should not separate him from what Musk is doing: he hired Musk, he is egging him on, and lying about Musk’s entirely obvious corruption.

The underpinnings of business are of course not inherently corrupt. But business’ singular focus on its own profit is entirely inappropriate for a democratic government. Our current frightening slide toward autocracy and oligarchy is the predictable result of a confusion between the two principles.