Most nations have modeled themselves after the concept of welfare state, a form of governance where a state is vested with the responsibility of tending to the needs of the economic and social well-being of the people.

A Welfare State

This term is supposed to have originated in Germany in the 19th century, when Otto von Bismarck, the first German chancellor, modeled his government on the concept. The most salient features of a welfare state, are, according to Britannica:

Juxtaposed with the concept of the welfare state is the profit motive — the principle on which business is built. Businesses strive to consistently grow profit and, in the process, generate maximum returns to shareholders.

Will Profit Motive Work For A Nation?

Running the federal government as a business, with the president acting as a CEO, isn't feasible, a professor of legal studies in business ethics at Wharton, Peter Conti-Brown, a professor of legal studies in business ethics at Wharton, said during a recent podcast.

"The instinct to want to have market structures, incentive-based compensation, command-and-control approaches to government as we see in business can come from anyone who's gone and spent too much time at the DMV," Conti-Brown said.

"It's like, 'Oh, this is miserable. If this were privately run, this would be very different.' But virtually nothing about the architecture of government, in the United States or in other places, corresponds to that model. Your interactions with Congress, your interactions with the public, with foreign countries, the entire fiscal dynamic, budgetary dynamics differ widely between public sector and private sector."

Has The Clamor For Corporatization Come Only With Trump?

A Washington Post article quotes many past instances of people wanting to run politics as a business:

A Precedent For Trump

When President Donald Trump, who hasn't had prior experience in politics, promised during his campaign that he would fix the federal government using his business acumen, it wasn't a groundbreaking statement.

These recommendations, according to the release, would be developed in collaboration with career staff along with private-sector and other external thought leaders. The initiative is to spearheaded by the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has little political expertise, but who is expected to plunge headlong into a range of policy issues that may have been alien to him in his past experiences.

Executives And Political Takes

The business leaders Trump has been relying on have strong political stances of their own.

Peter Thiel, the cofounder of Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), who was named to the executive committee of Trump's transition team in November, is a self-confessed opponent of regulations.

Trump has critics among corporate leaders as well. Shark Tank's Mark Cuban recently retweeted a Talking Points Memo article that was anything but bullish on Trump: