Halfway to Anywhere 257
someone has a good heart,” he said.^410
Elon was once asked how he is able to do the things
that the government has found itself less able to accom-
plish as quickly? “Well, one way to think of government
is to think of it as essentially a large corporation,” Elon
replied. “Generally, large corporations have a harder time
with radical innovations than smaller companies. There are
some exceptions to that rule, like Apple, but it is generally
true that the larger a company is the harder it is to execute
innovation.”^451
When discussing the benefits of a small company,
and a small government, Elon compares West Germany
with East Germany and South Korea with North Korea. In
these countries, the same people live but different system
of government control them, and as a result, they have
different standards of living. In West Germany, the eco-
nomic output per capita was about five times higher than
in East Germany. “And it’s not like West Germany was
particularly capitalist, they were a lot more socialist than
we [US] are,” Elon said.^359
Because Elon believes in a small government, he ques-
tioned how much a president could affect the economy.
“The reality of being a president is that you are like the
captain of a very huge ship and have a small rudder,” Elon
said. “If there was a button that the president could push
that said ‘economic prosperity,’ he would hit that button
really fast. You could measure the speed of light by measure
how fast they press that button.”^363
But he’s still positive to some politicians.^98 “I believe