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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.
Nobody would complain about H1B if salary floor was $250K. Bring more best-of-the-best to work in US any day. America F-yeah!
Only this is not how most H1B are used. Instead, they are used to hire $65K workers to replace $80K locals and to drive wages down. Not everyone is "relevant", most people are just cogs, but even "cogs" deserve decent living.
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.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
To play devil's advocate, maybe the intent is to advise to push to revoke or amend that bit of law.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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?
I guess it's time for the special snowflakes in SV to grow the fuck up.
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.
Musk must be engaging in some serious 1984-esque doublethink here. Or maybe Trump is blackmailing him in some way?
It would be suicidal for the CEO of any company which has government contracts as a major part of its revenue(SpaceX) to snub the president elect.
Not to mention the foolishness of refusing to advise a president who is probably looking at ending subsidies that makes another of your companies more profitable(Tesla).
There is also the angle of advising the president towards actions that reflect your world view, even if that world-view is not shared('we should push LED lights because they last longer and are safer than either incandescent or compact florescent, not to mention delaying the need to build more expensive power plants and power network upgrades' without even mentioning that the reduced power requirements could help fight global warming for example)
You're shocked someone didn't violate their fiduciary duty in the name of your feelings?
This is why liberalism is dying. It is a deserved death.
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.
Billionaires who will at least be less likely to be bought off by lobbyists...it's potentially a different kind of corruption, but at least it's different.
It's not different, it's just closer. Previously, very rich men would pay lobbyists to lobby the advisors. Now they've cut out the middle men and the very rich men simply advise.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You mean how an 'unpaid' mule replaced a farm hard earning a wage? Throughout the course of history everything has been pushed down, simplified and cheapened. The way to stay ahead of that is to adapt.
You mean like how ~20-25 years ago I would be paid and hourly wage to work picking stuff like tobacco, blueberries, strawberries and so on? And now they pay people who they import into the country seasonally by weight. Yes, very pushed down, simplified and cheapened. People no longer want to do those jobs because the wages they're paying because they've been artificially depressed can no longer sustain people living within the same country.
Om, nomnomnom...
So I am surprised Musk and Kalanick decided to work with him. Did they forget what happened to Brendan Eich?
They're not campaigning for him, they are advising (read lobbying) him. Like it or not, Trump will be President. If you get the opportunity to voice your opinion to the President, you take it.
Furthermore, Trump seems to be in a state of flux where he can be easily persuaded. With a good enough argument, they might be able to persuade him to be favorable to their causes.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".