Who's more powerful in our society? A successful CEO or a successful politician? We live in a world where business is politics and politics is business. Take for example, Vanderbilt (head of a shipping and railroad tycoon), Carnegie (head of steel industry), Gould (railroad magnate), and many more who have connived with politicians in order to gain advantages such as less competition, private gain, and the power to control the government. By being conniving and buying off senators and judges, they were able to stifle competition and stacked the odds against their competitors. Even though this was 100 years ago, we can see over and over again like a cycle how we the people allow businessmen to manipulate the government.

Starting off with a popular example that is something most people are familiar with: the controversial relationship between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. Elon Musk is a businessman and entrepreneur known for his work in Tesla cars, SpaceX, X, and xAI with an estimated net worth of $754 billion. With so much money, what does he do with it? He spends $250 million towards Trump and his presidential campaign but in 2022, he donated $36 million to Fidelity Charitable which is still a very big sum of money but we can see a clear priority in ensuring private gain through basically buying Trump and helping ensure his presidential win. By funding his campaign, Musk gained the power of heading the Department of Government Efficiency or the DOGE. There is controversy that Musk potentially accessed information that could influence his business decision making, such as access to a federal payment system and details of public contractors who compete with Musk’s own businesses.

Speaking of bribing politicians, another good example of this is the FirstEnergy Bribery Case. FirstEnergy is an electric utility company based in Akron, Ohio. The scandal, the biggest in Ohio history, was a $60 million scheme. This all starts in 2018, where FirstEnergy announces closure of nuclear plants and in 2019 they give $4.3 million to Sustainability Funding Alliance, a for-profit corporation run by Sam Randazzo who will later be confirmed as the chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. During this time House Bill 6, a bill made to bail out two nuclear plants, is introduced. FirstEnergy funds these ads promoting House Bill 6 because this will benefit them. In July 2019, the Ohio House passed this bill. In 2020, Former Speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder and his other allies are arrested and charged with public corruption and racketeering but FirstEnergy wasn’t charged and appears as “Company A” in the complaint, which lays out how money groups were used to benefit Householder politically and gain a bailout. Later in the year, Sam Randazzo’s house gets raided by the FBI and he resigns as chair of the Public Utilities Commission. Throughout 2020, there are many arrests made against Lobbyists and Householder’s allies. Then in 2021, FirstEnergy began talking about deferred prosecution, where if FirstEnergy pays money, the prosecutor will drop the charges against them. We can see a continuous cycle of paying money to stay out of trouble. Unfortunately this works and FirstEnergy is fined $230 million and admitted to conspiring with public officials in exchange for action that benefits FirstEnergy. Then in 2022, FirstEnergy agreed to pay $3.9M for failing to talk about the payments to Sam Randazzo. In 2024, during the ongoing trial, public records reveal that FirstEnergy made a secret $1 million payment to a group to support Lt. Gov. Husted’s campaign (this sounds like a guy named Elon Musk). Public records further reveal that FirstEnergy gave $2.5 million to an association backing Mike DeWine’s bid for governor. It is also further reported that FirstEnergy paid $4.3 million to Randazzo. The most recent update is December 19th 2025, If PUC approves the settlement, nearly $276 million will be returned to FirstEnergy’s Ohio customers. If FirstEnergy wasn’t caught, FirstEnergy would have so much control over the Ohio State Government till this day.

Even though I gave you just two examples, millions to billions of dollars are spent by businesses trying to garner control of the government and get benefits that the government gives them. It is the same cycle. Rich business gives suspiciously huge amount of money to politician and their campaign, then they get some sort of benefits such as bailouts or details on their competitors, but then they get caught then they either caught and have to pay money and then do the cycle again, or no actual action takes place and the cycle continues over and over again. As a society, we need to keep business and politics separate because business is a space of creativity, entrepreneurship, and should create a ripple effect of providing jobs, solving social issues and inspiring others to pursue business.