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Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Will Advise Trump On Business Issues (theverge.com)
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick have joined President-elect Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum, which will regularly meet with the soon-president to advise on business issues, the Trump transition team said in a statement. From a report on The Verge: The now 19-member council, established earlier this month, also includes Disney CEO Bob Iger and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Members will "share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his economic agenda," according to the transition statement. PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi also joins today. The announcement suggests a new link between the president-elect and Silicon Valley, which has been generally wary of the Trump presidency, with the notable exception of Facebook board member and Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who supported Trump despite controversy and has been working as an adviser for the transition team.
They're going to advise him they need even more H-1Bs.
Uber... such an ethical company.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Hey Donald. Elon and I think there are huge business opportunities on Mars. Yuge!
Tell you what, we'll drive you there in one of our self-driving car-rockets and you can see for yourself.
Ever think that maybe you don't have relevant skills anymore? No one complained when we filled the fields with migrant workers.
Plenty of jobs around these parts if you have the skillsets.
Nah, it's easier to whine "They Took Our Jeorbs"
Revenue is the sales you make. Income is the profit on those sales.
Lesson 2, if you borrow money on accounts that lie about the income, then that's called fraud, and its a nasty nasty crime.
Using billionaires like Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick to tell you what to do is "swamp draining"?
Yeah, drain that swamp and fill it with....billionaires.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
On the one hand, the fox is advising us that we're spending too much on henhouse fencing.
Then again, we should probably listen to him, as he has a degree in hen studies.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Silicon sultans: "Ok, we wont waste your valuable time Mr Trump, so we'll just get down to it. Give us unlimited H1Bs or we walk from the tower.
Trump: "Go fuck yourselves!"
I am an escaped mental patient from Intel corporation in Hillsboro, Oregon (Retired for those of you with an IQ of less than -1) and I need some help.
Do any of you, particularily if you are in the great asylum of Intel, know where Intel's MCM leadership (BK and his direct reports) stand on Trump? I seem to have heard silence from my vantage point up here in the Shang-gre-la of Bellingham, Washington on what is happening between Intel and Trump.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
He didn't even do that. He stole it from some guy called Wienerfloss.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Trump wants people like musk to get details on how to stop their industries which threaten his interests: oil coal, real estate, products.
Trump wants people like kalanick to get details on how to shift workers to contractor status... to reduce gov't needs... health-care, retirement, etc...
In the end I think Trump folks hate the sharing economy, so there's a hidden agenda. Trump is full of hidden agendas.
Trump is highly toxic in SV, there he is viewed as a KKK grand wizard and a serial molester in one. Anything but loud criticism would be career-damaging.
So I am surprised Musk and Kalanick decided to work with him. Did they forget what happened to Brendan Eich?
Did you consider that a lot of the comments that are critical of Musk are ad hominem attacks made by ACs, and therefore offer little to nothing to the conversation, and therefore deserve to get down-voted?
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Looking at the Alexa ranking of Slashdot over the past couple of months shows that readership has dropped precipitously. It started to slide around March, levelled out at a low pace throughout the summer, and took a nosedive right around the election.
During those months, many long-term readers took the trouble to post messages complaining about the political nature of the posts, and many of those also said "that's it - I'm leaving!".
It was clear during those months that many of the articles were partisan - mostly in favour of Clinton, but there were some that were pro Trump as well. The forum became nothing more than an anchor point for digs against Trump or Clinton.
This article is another example of this: it's a forum for people to wail about how awful Trump will be, because they can see the future with perfect clarity.
It's clear from context and evidence that people simply don't like this partisan bullshit, and are leaving the site in droves to avoid it. Whichever side you happen to be on, when you trash talk or support Trump you're alienating fully half the readership.
I would *think* that the editors should have a fiducial responsibility to see slashdot succeed, and looking at the Alexa history I would *think* that whiplash would step in and enforce a leadership vision that better navigates the shoals of politics.
I guess not.
The NYT showed a 96% drop in quarterly profits over the election season, very probably because of continuous partisan trash talking.
That's a huge drop in the profitability of a company, and should be a cloister bell for media in general: people simply don't like all this partisan bickering.
At the very least you're driving away half your readership.
Slashdot should focus on the technical and avoid emotionalism for the time being, at least until the election soreness has had a chance to calm down.
If Slashdot wants to succeed, that would seem to be the prudent move.
How else would he nave build that empire of his?
Didn't he tell the world that he is one smart dude?
This is a load of crap and Musk etc fell for it lock stock and golf club.
At the current accounts burn-through rate SpaceX does not have to 2018 to survive.
Hence, Elon needs Trump, and subsidies by the million-man Uber car loads.
Otherwise Elon has to sellout to Bezos and that IS a painful option!
Ha ha
You do know that you are talking rubbish, right ?
If you looked carefully into how governments are run, you will come to the conclusion that many business sectors are subsidised via tax breaks from governments. Many companies get tax breaks such as for the Oil Extraction and Exploration companies. Different business sectors use different accounting methods and tax rules.
"very skilled in mismanaging money on a massive scale" if this were really true there would be a fraud case but no such case exists, Mr Musk is putting much of this money into constructing infrastructure. I suggest you wait another 10 years to see how these investments bring success.
"exploding rockets" is part of the rocket industry and is calculated into the costs and insurance. It is sad when rockets fail. The important thing is that lessons are learned from the failures as this knowledge can be used to improve the rockets.
"building self-crashing cars" is a false premise. The driver is still in charge of the car when the auto-pilot driver assist is used. You should compare traditional car crashes with crashes of electric cars (EV's) to come to the proper conclusion that EV's are safer. There will always be some horrific car crashes.
EV's will be the dominant form of transport within 20 years from now, You need to get used to it.
Kalanick certainly seems douchey enough to associate himself with Trump. But Musk always struck me as being better than that. I wonder how he reconciles his own work in electric cars and solar with Trump's belief that global warming is nothing more than a hoax propagated by China to hurt our economy? Then there's Musk's work in SpaceX vs. the most anti-science pack of thugs to occupy DC in my lifetime. Musk must be engaging in some serious 1984-esque doublethink here. Or maybe Trump is blackmailing him in some way?
Imagine all the people...
Using billionaires like Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick to tell you what to do is "swamp draining"?
Yeah, drain that swamp and fill it with....billionaires.
The swamp is filled with political elites and insiders. How is using non-political insiders *not* draining the swamp?
To put this in terms of information theory, the term "elite" is a measurement, and as such should come with units. We usually don't show the units when we make that measurement, but this can lead to confusion.
So for example, LeBron James is an elite athlete, where "athlete" is the units of measurement. Trump could appoint LeBron to his cabinet, that would be putting an "elite" in charge, and it would still be draining the swamp because LeBron is not an elite politician.
The measurement units are different. An elite athlete is not the same as an elite politician, and calling both of them "elite" just confuses the matter.
Trump himself is an "elite", only the unit of measurement in this case is "financial". Elon Musk is also a financial elite.
"Draining the swamp" refers to removing corruption, which implies getting rid of the "political" elite.
It makes sense to take advice from elites in other units of measurement, because elites generally get to be elite because of their skill and experience.
Elites in charge are fine, so long as they are elites due to skill, and not politics.
Interesting way to write "insanely hostile." The limousine libtards of tech are talking secession.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Trump built a company built around repeatedly ripping people off, making significantly less money than he would have had he just put his money into a fund that tracks the S&P and then sat on the couch all day.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Why would the guy who was elected almost completely because he's such a business genius need any business advice? Are you sure it's not the other way around?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Precisely. Trump should instead listen to Brian Krzanich of Intel, who supported him during the elections and got flak for it from Silicon Valley commissars. Aside from being supportive of Trump, Krzanich has led a company that currently is the best of American manufacturing and jobs, and which not only holds its own but also towers over international competition
This article is another example of this: it's a forum for people to wail about how awful Drumpf will be, because they can see the future with perfect clarity.
Which part of the summary or article points toward anything that is negative?
Firstly, you edited my post (as shown by the emphasis), just like what reddit CEO Steve Huffman did.
Secondly, I said political articles provides an anchor for carping, and didn't say that this article was negative.
Get bent, asshole. Editing someone's post is wrong.
America is the best country in the world because they know what really matters, business interests. No other western nation puts business interest so far ahead of the interests of everyday citizens as the US, and the results speak for themselves.
For example, crime in the US is very low compared to the rest of the western world because there is now a profit incentive to have people locked up. Just look at how large our prison population is relative to the western world. This is why crime is so low. I think Trump was wrong about saying crime is running rampant. How can it if we lock up so many criminals anyways?
And if we look at the average life expectancy, we can see that our privatised hospitals are kicking ass. You can't get better treatment anywhere in the world. If you look at stats regarding population health, you'll see that all countries with government run, tax payer funded health care systems, have it much much worse, whether it's Canada or the UK's NHS.
And our education system is the envy of everyone. Secondary education from private institutions is so great because those institutions have an INCENTIVE to be the best. That is, profit. Public education systems elsewhere in the world do not generate top skilled in-demand employees like ours. And we have more prestigious universities pumping out high quality graduates than anywhere else. Why? Because the profit on those $60k student loans is pretty damn good, that's why.
And just look at our labor rights. No living wage requirements, no mandatory leave, and firing / layoffs is a breeze for employers ensuring they only get the best. When you have the best employees, you make the best profit, and more profit means more growth and more growth means hiring more people! We need so many people for our profitable businesses that we've thrown the door wide open to other countries to send their best over here. America is generous like that.
And when you look at defence spending, we're #1! Most of our war machine is produced by private industry so that translates into JOBS and PROFIT.
This is why I love America. We're strong, healthy, well educated and low crime, all because we prioritise the interests of businesses above all else. We need businesses and businesses need us, and only America seems to get it.
... will regularly meet with the soon-president to advise on business issues ...
I'd prefer it if most of Trump's Policy Forum members could "meet with the late-president to advise on business issues". Then both they and Trump would be in the afterlife and out of our hair. Bonus points for taking Pence along as well.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Headline is slanted. For the love of god, the council which will meet with Trump has 19 members and represents a wide swathe of industry. Musk and Kalanick are only barely 10% of the council. Other extremely notable members are Cook from Apple, Iger from Disney, Rometty from IBM, Nooyi from PepsiCo, and (obviously) 13 others.
What could possibly be bad with a President who seeks wide input from industry and others? In my life extending back to Truman, I don't remember this level of dialog and participation.
So you think there is a meaningful distinction between "political" elites and "financial" elites? Wow!
I also think there is a distinction between an elite athlete and a financial elite.
You don't? Wow!
(Also, Arnold Schwarzenegger is elite both as a politician and finance and athletics, as was John Glen.)
I'm not a Musk fanboy, but even I'll give him credit where it's due.
Dude's taking money from taxpayers and...
Building a huge ass battery factory in the US.
We could do worse than Elon Musk advising the Trumpster.
Did you consider that anything on this site that could be explained as even remotely critical of Saint Musk immediately gets downvoted to -1, however reasonable and well-founded the criticism may be?
The followers of the Cult of Musk never cease their holy job of silencing criticism.
Travis Kalanick knows how to raise money but not build a profitable company. Uber burns $100M every month in cash with no profitability in sight.
Elon Musk has:
1) Was bought by PayPal and helped them execute the sale of the company to eBay; I'll give him this success but he had a lot of help.
2) Built Solar City, which is an equipment leasing company. While profitable, it's return on deployed capital is barely above Treasury Bonds; Solar City would be more profitable if it invested in AAA or AA Corporate bonds. It's major success is all fo the tax credits it gets, and it's customers do not get, for deploying solar panels, and thus transfers a lot of government money to itself.
3) Built SpaceX, which while doing commercial rocket launches has a very poor success rate relative to other rocket companies, and is also not profitable. It might be but they spend too much money on recoverable vehicles and need to spend more money on improving their launch success rate. Meanwhile most of it's money comes from the government, so again another government handout company so far.
4) Built Tesla, which to his credit had it's first profitable quarter but we have yet to see if this is sustainable. THey have major quality issues with their cars, which is going to be a serious financial problem with the Model 3 when it comes out. But again, it has been successful in transferring tax credits to itself through higher prices.
So essentially Musk has done a bang up job in transferring money from the government as well as the public markets to himself and his own companies, but has yet to prove that they are sustainable, useful pillars of the economy.
I think these two men need to focus on their companies and ensure they are sustainable without them before they advise Trump on business policy. Hell Trump's businesses aren't the greatest but they're a lot more successful than those guys' businesses.
Neither of you seem to have actual intelligence.
What the rule should be for H1B visas is that one cannot displace existing workers in the organization in order to bring in contractors on H1B status. Don't allow an abstraction layer between the job to be performed and the original company in the form of the middle-man contractor company to allow this kind of BS.
Excellent Idea, and good catch on the 'abstraction layer' BS!
H1B visas are only supposed to be used when an American worker with the same skills cannot be found, yet we keep hearing about cases where American workers train their H1B visa worker replacements before the Americans are fired. This should be a big red flag. The job should not be H1B eligible because there is an American worker available to do the job, the person currently doing the job.
How do employers get away with this obvious visa fraud with no penalties whatsoever? They use the job description equivalent of 'creative accounting'.
With a few simple re-definitions of employee roles and employee tasks you can avoid fines and still engage in blatant visa fraud.
Anybody who supported Trump supported racism, misogyny, fascism, conspiracy theories, ethics violations a mile long, Russian interference, and a just plain nasty, unAmerican asshole.
So fuck Krzanich.
Tracking the S&P doesn't work that way since the list of included companies isn't static. If a company starts doing poorly, it gets dropped and better performing companies (after they're already performing well) get added.
If you have a billion dollars then you will be fine.
I've never seen an AC make a 'reasonable and well-founded' criticism of Musk. It *always* turns into a ranty screed.
I have seen actual users have 'reasonable and well-founded' criticism of taking tax money & timelines though.
The S&P 500 claim is bullshit, here's a good article about it https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
"Elon Musk is a snake oil salesmen out there pimping a mechanically impossible "super tube" for travel"
What is mechanically impossible about it? The logic behind it seems sound.
"and the Uber guy... well, I mean, what technolgoically is so amazing about making an app with a map that connects a buyer and seller of a service? "
Nothing is amazing about it.... except that taxi companies for the most part weren't doing it. The user experience is light years ahead of a traditional taxi service, in my experience. Of course Uber seems to be breaking laws all over the world, laws which should probably be updated but are laws nevertheless, and they are probably abusing the employee/contractor distinction to the detriment of their employees/contractors.
Just asking as I wonder the political aspects. I'm not trying stir up another political diatribe (I admit it sure does seem like I am) but trying to speculate national policy that I see could impact Silicon Valley that sometime in the future this area will be economically depressed (there was a time with Detroit was an economic powerhouse, nobody foresaw it could become like it is). What we have is a new administration that claims to bring jobs back to US and not particularly accommodating to China.
We also have many powerful companies like Apple that are closely coupled with China and contribute to the Democratic Party. I see California as a separate "country" from the rest of US (maps show it as blue while most of continental US as red), huge immigrant percentage (and Trump is not particularly accommodating to immigrants). It seems to me Republicans would be pleased to see Silicon Valley along with rest of California economically take a nose dive that would reduce power with several Democrats (that make up most of the elected officials). IEEE article about tightening of H1B visas that would impact many SV companies. Of course there are many local people that are getting squeezed out which they'd be happy to see several of these SV companies go out of business. Trump talks about high tariffs on foreign made items (just about everything we buy), many of us are used to regularly buying cheap stuff and disposing it shortly after. I wonder if this will cause high tech startup and design go someplace else and SV becomes insignificant (there's not much oil to be drilled here so it does not fit into the petroleum centric of the Trump administration).
If such a thing were to happen then all these new buildings will go vacate, demographics significantly change, people paying mortgages on million dollar homes suddenly go "underwater," etc., etc., etc.
mfwright@batnet.com
He would be alright if he wasn't mass producing those horrible batteries and simply moving the pollution from the consumer to the manufacturer. If his business model involved renewable energy -> compressed hydrogen -> usable energy -> commercial application (drivetrains, home power etc) it wouldn't be a problem. But the guy has convinced people that what he is selling is the answer, it's not, it's half way there and he knows it. Therefore he's spewing bullshit whenever he opens his mouth.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/tesla-spacex-targeted-alt-superpac-214003984.html?client=safari
It's not enough to let the market address a perceived need - the alt right is actively trying to destroy capability which would help address global warming even if it doesn't cost taxpayers anything.
Looks like the tinfoil hats are a dime a dozen amongst slashdot's proletariat, given that every company is evil
Uber has the tracking that it does b'cos in some places, there have been cases of drivers assaulting passengers, and they are the ones held accountable for that. So they have to cooperate w/ local authorities, unlike the average /. poster who openly writes about how to subvert or break the law. As for classifying themselves as a ride sharing service, as opposed to a taxi service, they are free to pitch that, and it's up to authorities in different cities to determine whether they pass muster or not, and whether it's worth letting them compete w/ services like Curb.
In the case of Tesla, as a company, they did what they have to to get money from investors and government. As far as government goes, they should not be in the business of subsidizing anybody, but since they are, people have treated them like chumps and taken their money. Similarly, for investors, they need to be informed about what they are investing in and ask themselves whether a real ROI is there, and after that, determine whether it's a risk worth taking. I myself wouldn't invest cash in either of these companies, but that's a call everyone has to make.
I was wondering how that turned out. I didn't really care how it turned out as it was just a way to make the left look like what they truly are. But I find the results hilarious and makes sense why it wasn't mentioned by mainstream media.
A guy who sees no problem with ruthlessly exploiting the underclass only long enough for him to be able to afford replacing them with robots, and a guy who simultaneously wants welfare for everyone but doesn't think you own your car, will be advising the President on the economy. Two elite Un-Americans who couldn't care less what goes on outside of the Valley, much less in flyover country and the blighted 'burbs.
Labor protections and property rights are going to take a savage blow with this coming congress. This isn't a Presidential transition team - this is a transition team toward open Corporatocracy. They will own you.
every last one of them
Great, that can really only mean one thing. Copyright will be extended another 75 years, or maybe they will just drop all pretenses and simply say that Copyright is forever now (for all intents and purposes it has been for sometime anyway with continual extensions).
For what it's worth, probably good to have Elon on the team at least. As to Uber, a bit of an odd choice seeing how the product is considered illegal and illegitimate in many places in the US, though one could argue that is because he is a cutting edge entrepreneur breaking into what amounts to monopolized markets through regulation.
When they don't need you anymore, they won't feed you anymore.
That boy ain't right.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
"Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Will Advise Putin Administration On Business Issues" There. Fixed that for you.
The government uses tax breaks as a means to direct corporations and people to move in a direction in which they would like them to go. It's a carrot while a tax can be used as a stick.
For example, if a government wants businesses to spend more on R&D they can increase the tax credit that the company receives for doing so. Just before 2000 came along the Canadian government allowed businesses to fully write off some computers and equipment in order to deal with the Y2K situation. Normally they would have had to depreciate them over time. I don't remember what limits, if any, there were. But it was a tax break being used to get companies to make sure that their equipment was Y2K compliant. Of course a lot of companies took advantage of the program to upgrade their computers just to write them off in that tax year.
A few years ago the federal government of Canada brought in a program where the parents or guardians could write off up to so much of sporting costs to supposedly get kids more active. It wasn't going to get any more kids involved in sports because if you couldn't afford the costs now you still couldn't because you wouldn't get the money until the spring when we file our taxes. But it looks like an attempt to use the tax code to get people to do something that they weren't going to do.
Soda taxes are a good example of tax being used as a stick to get people to change their consumption habits.
That's easy enough to say in retrospect. But if it were that easy we'd all be rich. Even you.
In any event, he made his money doing what he knew. And he not only has his money, he also has a legacy of lots of things built. What does George Soros have to show for his money?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
The skill laid-off American workers lack is fluency in Hindi. How do you expect them to talk to their coworkers?
about the tube?
well physics and material science are against it. the idea is literally 100+ years old.
and musk has only made true profit on his money laundering bank that isn't a bank.
thats what journalists forget - so far he is not a tech genius businessman.
interesting to see though because tesla is only almost viable only due to co2 taxing of regular cars. taxed same they would be unsellable.
"well physics and material science are against it. " I have not seen any analysis to indicate that, if you could share one that would be great.
"and musk has only made true profit on his money laundering bank that isn't a bank." Musk hasn't owned Paypal for years.
Tesla has not generally turned a profit because they are investing everything in growing manufacturing capacity rapidly. You can argue whether or not they will make future profits but many successful companies have started out this way, prioritizing long-term growth over short-term profits, including Amazon.
SpaceX has claimed profitability though as a private company the data is not publicly reported.
"interesting to see though because tesla is only almost viable only due to co2 taxing of regular cars. taxed same they would be unsellable."
Well you see in this country we have an interest in reducing pollution and climate change which is why emissions requirements were put into place. Other car companies choose not to meet the requirements so they buy credits from Tesla. Tesla makes a tiny bit of money from this, but it's quite small, and less than the value of the credits if the gasoline car companies were to just make their own EV's. And yes, the Tesla luxury cars could be profitable on their own but are not sellable to the mass public. The Model 3 if successful will be sellable to the public regardless of govt incentives.
Both Musk and Kalanick want to remove people from their businesses in order to reduce costs. I have no issues with ending paid work as we know it provided I still get paid. But if no one gets paid, Houston, we will have a BIG problem.
Only boring people are ever bored.
True. I own an EV and after 6 months gas-powered cars are dead to me. I have a reservation on a Tesla Model 3 and the money is sitting in the bank waiting. In the meantime my 30kWh Nissan LEAF more than gets the job done. I charge up at home for $1 / day. I pay nothing in servicing because there's bugging to service. EVs are so simple compared to gas cars. No radiator (so no coolant), no fan, no fan belt, no gearbox, no transmission fluid, no spell plugs, no alternator, no alternator belt, no pistons, no gaskets to blow, no air filter to clog or replace. No oil filter. No oil. All those things you pay to have maintained in your gas powered car? In a battery electric car they do not even exist.
Only boring people are ever bored.