How, exactly, do you excise entrenched corruption smoothly? The corrupt people are going to do everything they can to stop you and protest loudly in the process.

The current problem is corruption but the real problem is that corruption will always happen when the power is there. The only way to prevent it is to not place the power at that level in the first place.

Limited power is the only anti-corruption tool that works.

Limiting the power of the goverment also freqently involves corruption, companies bribing politicans to avoid popular safety and labor regulations

I think you are missing the point. Corruption is inevitable. Limiting the scope of the government restricts the scope of possible corruption.

Limiting the scope of the government restricts the scope of possible government corruption.

But there's still corporate corruption. Corruption among charities. Corruption among churches. Etc.

There are trade offs everywhere. If you make your government too small to bust monopolies, then you end up with a country beholden to giant corrupt monopolies.

Its not inevitable at least at scale. You can build a good goverment with transperancy and minimal corruption. Its just hard.

Only worked in smaller countries, ie states. Limit the power of federal government and you can get pretty nice states, and you wouldn't have to worry about someone like Trump.

Generally some of the worst things come from defering to the states. From slavery to jim crow. Not to forget federal workers safety and minimum wage laws which protect people even if their state goverments suck

And you still have to worry about Trump because he doesnt care about the rule of law or the constitution. Its much easier to blindly destroy then to build.

Plus almost no one actually cares about so called states rights(I'm sure you do but the actual number of people is negligble). Even before Trump most conservatives who claimed to care about it didnt. I prefer to be honest and state that at least in US history its usually a bad idea. But ill take good policy at any level, if a state implements good policy I wont object, although usually it would be ideal for a good policy to be nationwide and help most people.

Increased transparency might help, together with empowering voters to get rid of corrupt politicians.

Unfortunately right now the opposite seems to be happening, Trump funneled US taxpayer money (and foreign government money) into Mar-a-Lago his whole first term and still got reelected.

More important than transparency is consequences for engaging in corruption. Negative reinforcement is something missing for politicians in general.

Musk is corruption. He does not want to solve it, he is literally trying to ensure it happens more and without any risk.