Especially given the Musk/DOGE recent experience.
Musk takes over Twitter, fires 40% of the workforce, and nothing much happens.
Musk takes over the US Govt, fires <10% of the workforce, and things stop working.
From this we should conclude, obviously, that the government is run much, much more efficiently and with less slack than any of the Big Tech organisations (who are also all busy laying off 10s of % of their workforces, apparently with no ill effect).
I'm not sure banana republic is the best description of what is happening, the definition of the term only cover part of where things are heading.
A comparison with NK seems more complete, especially given the current twits at the top, so I've taken to referring to the US as DPR-US.
Right now though I think you can say the US is just back-sliding. Trump threatened to arrest Mamdani for I guess being very popular or something but he doesn't seem to have even attempted to actually do that. Once it's actually gone, Mamdani just gets imprisoned or executed so that Trump's preferred candidate "wins" regardless. The technology of democracy is still there, but the actual principles it supports are gone.
Lord of War:
> Yuri Orlov: [Narrating] Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
I know of a software billionaire[0] who opened a pizzeria and failed. He said so himself.
Should we conclude, obviously, that any break even pizzeria owner is a better businessman than tech billionaires?