Since Mark Zuckerberg ascended into the unholy trinity of the world’s richest oligarchs, it’s hard to remember that he once led a team of underdogs in a race to claim the mental airspace and gadfly attention span of young and old people around the world at Facebook. They styled themselves as ”disrupters,” following Zuckerberg’s imperative to “move fast and break things.” If they weren’t “breaking things” they probably weren’t moving fast enough, he suggested.

He changed Facebook’s motto in 2014, after it became successful, emphasizing moving fast “with stable infrastructure.” But the culture of disruption and broken systems from the tech world persisted. Today, business analysts identify “innovative disruption” as a positive change achieved through new products or processes that improve value for new and existing customers. Recent disrupters include companies which are now mainstays for services previously unimagined: Amazon for delivered consumer goods, Uber for easily accessible transportation, Netflix for on-screen entertainment, Airbnb for short-term rental housing, Tesla for electric vehicles, etc.

They restructured the relationship between company and consumer using new technologies. They moved fast by offering new products and services that improved options for customers. They broke things in the dog-eat-dog business world, and left failing companies in their dust.

Today, one previous business disrupter, Elon Musk, is devouring portions of our federal government. The DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) has moved so fast that it’s not even a legal cabinet department. Trump proposed it, but instead of choosing the constitutional process involving Congress (which took six months in 2002 to create the Department of Homeland Security), he used a back door and blank check to unleash a gleeful Musk with his chain saw. The cuts are currently subject only to the grudges and grievances of Musk, Trump, and other powerful backers.

I believe the National Park Service, which safeguards and provides access to natural wonders including Yellowstone, Yosemite, and more than 400 others across the country, is one of the best federal programs ever created. Last year, it served a record 330 million visitors, a fact downplayed by the new administration.

Yet it is facing severe budget cuts. Why? Oligarchs like Trump, Musk, and new Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum don’t need to take advantage of low-cost public access to the parks, vacationing instead on yachts and at palatial resorts. Many would also profit from exploiting more protected land under a “drill, baby, drill” policy.

There are two key differences in “breaking things” in business and in our constitutional government. One is that economic disrupters “broke” things by promoting a better product or process. They replaced old goods and services with new ones that proved themselves more worthy, more efficient, and more popular.

Almighty Musk declared that USAID, a lifeline to food and medical care for millions abroad, was “evil” and should “die.” He quickly strangled the flow of money (now challenged in court) while floating complete fabrications, such as condoms for Gaza, as justification. It is a disruption, along with dozens of others, that “breaks things” but provides no positive direction or program to replace it.

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The other fallacy is that our government should be run only as a business. Veterans Affairs was never designed to turn a profit, foreign aid wasn’t intended to improve a short-term bottom line, our interstate highway system and complex web of roads provide crucial services to the public without creating net profits immediately.

Of course, there are bloated budgets and waste in the government, just as there are in the corporate world. Well-planned and justified cuts are welcomed by nearly everyone. But “moving fast” is the antonym of “well-planned,” and the whims and self-interest of the upper 0.1% aren’t sufficient justification for cutting services benefiting large majorities of Americans.

Is a constitutionally elected Trump simply doing what he said he’d do? Yes and no, depending on which of his contradictory statements he chooses that day. He promised trade wars and lower consumer prices, but ignored the fact that the two are mutually exclusive. We currently pay exorbitant prices for everything from groceries to gas, appliances to automobiles, and phones to pharmaceuticals. Increased tariffs mean higher consumer prices, which will bury the already hunched figures of many Americans like an avalanche.

And it isn’t Trump, Musk, or the multiple millionaire and billionaire cabinet members who will feel the direct effects. They are uniformly cavalier about economic hardship, as long as it isn’t their own. It will be you, me, and millions of other average Americans who suffer from lost jobs and higher prices.

Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.