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In the Age of Trump, Tech CEOs Cast Themselves As the New Statesmen (buzzfeed.com)
An anonymous reader shares an insightful story on Buzzfeed News: Mark Zuckerberg isn't running for president of the United States, but you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. On Tuesday morning, the Facebook CEO kicked off the company's annual developers conference in San Francisco with a glancing shot at Donald Trump, followed by a reiteration of the company's oft-repeated pledge to bring the world together. Zuck's not alone. Last month Apple CEO Tim Cook led his keynote with a similar stump-speech vibe. He dove right into the company's national security and privacy fight against the FBI. Two weeks ago Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told attendees of the company's annual Build developers conference of plans to "move our society forward," asking "profound questions" of his developers:"Is technology empowering people or is it displacing us? Is technology helping us preserve our enduring values such as privacy, or is it compromising it?" Google CEO Sundar Pichai hasn't delivered his big keynote yet (it's coming up May 18), but late last year he issued an open letter in support of Muslims after Donald Trump suggested he'd blanket-ban the religious group from entering the United States. Welcome to 2016: where tech's biggest leaders are no longer selling themselves as innovators, creative geniuses, or domineering tycoons, but as world leaders -- statesmen shaping the course of human history.According to a report from last month, several tech executives -- including Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sean Parker -- met recently to discuss how to "stop Donald Trump." Musk, however, later refuted such reports.
This is nothing new. Highly successful, rich business people have a long history of trying to affect society and government policy.
Love sees no species.
Actually they ARE doing it for financial reasons -
Zuckerberg heads up a PAC which is trying to open up more immigration and H1Bs - because, y'know, he *cares* about the people and it has nothing at all to do with getting cheaper tech labor into the states. That goes for all the tech CEOs listed here.
Trump is adamantly against that so he must be taken down.
I think the reason so many CEO's attack Trump specifically is because he's not bought and paid for. They don't have him in their pocket, so there's no telling what he'd do as president. He's a wild card. Many people assume he'd "make America great again" but most likely he'd just do whatever got him a lot of news and made him popular.
He already has money. At his age he probably started to think about death and if people will remember him. Win or lose, people are going to remember Trump.
I think the reason so many CEO's attack Trump specifically is because he's not bought and paid for. They don't have him in their pocket, so there's no telling what he'd do as president. He's a wild card. Many people assume he'd "make America great again" but most likely he'd just do whatever got him a lot of news and made him popular.
No need to attribute to plutocratic machinations that which can be adequately explained by logic.
You're spot on about Trump being an unpredictable loose cannon. Large, established businesses and financial markets abhor precisely the kind of chaos Donald Trump promises to bring to the White House.
Say you run a business or manage investments. You'd like to have at least some vague idea of how things are going to go over the next week, month, quarter, year, and so on, so you can make somewhat-informed decisions about market conditions, raw materials, domestic and global trade conditions, capital outlays, etc.
So Donald Trump is POTUS. You wake up in the morning, and legitimately wonder if today President Trump is going to:
- Begin a campaign of mass deportations;
- Decide we shake down Mexico for billions of dollars and divert significant steel and cement production to build a big ass wall;
- Decide to cut an entire federal agency;
- Decide to end a major work visa program;
- Be totally cool with, or maybe start a war over, Putin's latest incursion into Eastern Europe;
- Simultaneously shit on the tourism industry and the Constitution by announcing an entire religion is forbidden from entering the country;
- Say some offhanded ridiculous thing that stirs up outrage/protest here or abroad;
- Say some offhanded ridiculous thing that makes it harder for people in $your_industry to do business here or abroad;
- Say something cute about [minorities/women/Muslims/poor people/some other group he thinks are 'total losers"] that paints America and American businesses in a bad light;
- Embarrass the country; act like running the country is a reality TV show;
- Try to shout over, or interfere with, or shut down a media outlet that's giving him problems;
- Refuse to raise the debt ceiling and/or let us default on some obligations;
- Cause worldwide condemnation and mutiny by ordering our armed forces to kill terrorists' family members;
- Pull troops out of Japan and South Korea and try to hand them nukes to make up for it;
- Start a WWIII-sized trade war;
- Start actual WWIII.
Regardless of what kind of job he's done running his own private sector interests, his unpredictability and volatility (a source of personal pride for him) would cause perpetual fear and chaos in the global economy. So it makes sense than just about any large corporation would look at that and say, "No thanks."
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By paying their fair share of taxes, and not using tax havens.
If there was an actual shortage, they would be open to hiring older workers and they would be open to hiring entry level and sending them to school.
They certainly wouldn't be participating in 'no poaching' agreements of questionable legality.