Sheldon Richman wants something from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy that they won’t be able to do, and I don’t think they really want to mess with it. The United States has 7,000 state-owned companies, and some private companies are aligned with the state, either out of convenience or fear of retaliation. I have many reservations about Elon Musk's good intentions.

The government and its agencies do not sell their services in the competitive market to consumers who voluntarily choose to buy them, and they are not guided by the profit and loss system, and their revenues are not earned according to the quality of their services.

In private companies that operate in an environment of free competition, the situation is different. In the world of commerce, price signals emitted by the market drive decisions. The profit and loss system shows how scarce resources are being used. If correctly, consumers reward companies by providing them with large profits; if incorrectly, consumers punish companies by imposing losses on them.