> but people in power can't?

Why do you presume they can’t? Musk failed phenomenally to sell DOGE to the public, the President or the Congress. The expectation was that he’d have been better at that.

Can you tell me more? I was already familiar with The Butterfly Revolution and RAGE before the inauguration, but it sounds like most people weren't?

Power respects power, ultimately. If you have wealth and power, those in power assume it was earned, because otherwise it's admitting that their own power could be through luck.

I will say that there are a few billionaires out there that do not get respect because everybody else assumes they "got lucky," but it's certainly not many billionaires. And those that people assume "got lucky" have mostly had terrible PR management on their way up, and not bothered to try to clean up their image. I have taken investment from one such billionaire that people would tell me "he got lucky," and though I don't think he got lucky to make his billions, he was also really terrible in his judgement and could not make the switch to investing even in similar industries successfully.

The way most of our governments are set up, the people in power typically arrive on the backs of the people with money. Elon Musk has a great deal of wealth, so everyone in power is going to listen to him.

Money and power are all that matters. Musk is a dipshit but he's a rich and powerful dipshit and that's all that matters

"Why do companies hire consultancies?"

Because they don't have a permanent need to hire the expertise.

Very different idea.