Slashdot Mirror
What the Trump Win Means For Tech and Science (arstechnica.com)
Republican nominee Donald Trump has won the US Presidential election to become the country's 45th president. Now that he is going to run the government, it's a good time to look back on the kind of policies and changes he is likely to bring in the United States. From an article on ArsTechnica:Trump's presidency could bring big changes to regulation of Internet service providers -- but most of them are difficult to predict because Trump rarely discussed telecom policy during his campaign. The Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules could be overturned or weakened, however, if Trump still feels the same way he did in 2014. At the time, he tweeted, "Obama's attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media. [...] With Trump's win, it's still not clear what a Trump administration would do on the issues of cybersecurity and encryption. As Ars reported last month, Trump and his campaign team have been vague on many such details. During the presidential debates, he brushed off the intelligence community's consensus that the attacks against the Democratic National Committee were perpetrated or silently condoned by the Russian government. But Trump did call for a boycott of Apple -- a boycott of which he didn't even abide by -- during Cupertino's fight with federal prosecutors about whether Apple should be forced to help the authorities unlock a killer's encrypted iPhone. [...] Trump's presidency, by some accounts, is likely to be a disaster for science. Most analyses of his proposed budgets indicate they will cause deficits to explode, and a relatively compliant Congress could mean at least some of these cuts will get enacted. That will force the government to figure out how to cut, or at least limit, spending. Will science funding be preserved during that process? Trump's given no indication that it would. Instead, many of his answers about specific areas of science focus on the hard choices that need to be made in light of budget constraints. With the exception of NASA, Trump hasn't identified any areas of science that he feels are worth supporting. More generally, Trump has indicated little respect for the findings of science.The Silicon Valley top heads were largely upset with the outcome of the Presidential Election, to say the least.
Yeah this campaign has been more bumper stickers and slogans than specific policy proposals, so we really don't know yet.
Having studied Trump as a businessman, I strongly suspect he doesn't know which policies he'll propose - that will depend on what he hears from the experts he hires. In his long business career, he hired really smart people and trusted their judgement, rather than micro-managing, thinking he knew everything betterv than everyone else. His role was threefold a) the public face, drumming up publicity, b) negotiating major deals and c) overall leadership. He largely left the operational details to the very competent people he hired.
Let's HOPE he does the same as President, signing off on foreign policy developed by foreign policy experts, economic policy developed by experts in economics, etc.
Also one in particular - another Republican leader, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a budget nerd, who actually wrote several federal budgets and knows the federal budget perhaps better than anyone else. There's been tension between Trump and Paul Ryan during the campaign. Hopefully that tension is healed and Trump respects Ryan's significant expertise.
Trump's main argument on Obamacare is that what employers and buyers need is a federal market where a buyer in one state can bypass their state and go directly to a seller in another state. I would have LOVED that a year ago before I changed employers. I was stuck with a crappy Blue Cross Blue Shield plan that covered half of my doctors. CIGNA covered everyone but they don't sell directly to Virginia residents like they do in the North East and elsewhere. Why? Probably because CIGNA hasn't found enough of a market to justify jumping through another set of regulatory hoops like a trained seal to sell to 3% of Virginia.
But imagine if I could just call their office in CT and say "Virginia resident here, ship me a quote. My Virginia doctors ALL take you. Would love to buy direct." No middle man, no bureaucrat. I say "give me the same plan you helped my self-insured employer XYZ sold." They give me a quote. That's it.
You know what I expect? Trump just might be the guy who tells the FCC to damn the torpedos and go full speed ahead on plowing under local franchise rules and monopolies. I expect that that case in NC where no one wanted to sell to a community but the state wouldn't let the community solve its own problems would rub Trump precisely the same way buying healthcare for his employees rubbed him. That is, very very raw at seeing regulators say "nuh uh cuz... uh nuh uh" and seeing his people get lower quality health care at higher prices.
No one cares any more, just like no one cared that Obama was black.
I live in a predominantly black neighborhood. When Obama was running for president I had a 3hr wait at the polling station the first time, 2hrs the second time.
Voting yesterday: no wait. None. I walked in to an empty polling booth, cast my vote and left.
Black people cared that Obama was black and turned out in record numbers. White people by-and-large didn't care what colour he was. No matter what they say though, a lot of people voted for Obama, in part, because he was black. (they may have liked his message to, but race was a factor for many in the minority community).
Yesterday was almost a backlash, a lot of angry white uneducated voters, and angry older voters from an age when racism was acceptable turned out en masse to vote for the guy who wants to make America white again.
Hillary lost the election in part because Obama was black. It's not the only reason, she's also a bitch and people are angry at the current establishment and her track record; however, it is partially a reason.
The popular vote difference was only 0.2%, and even though he had a decent size lead in electoral college, many of the states he won were by very small numbers. Maybe not all Trump supporters were angry racist white men. It is very easy to believe that at least 0.2% of the electorate is angry white racist men though- and that's all the difference that there was in the end.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch