Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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."
They're going to advise him they need even more H-1Bs.
They might say that, but that's not the same as Trump will do as they say. Trump said he will talk to companies and figure out why they aren't hiring American workers and then try to solve the problems. During his campaign, he already discovered one reason: regulations. It's much cheaper, faster and easier to just build a plant in Mexico than to go through regulations set by Washington. For all we know he is investigating which specific regulations, which works to push out companies.
Just assuming he will do as the CEOs request and assume what the CEOs will request is like assuming Trump will pick Romney. (which he didn't despite the press presenting it as a safe bet)
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.
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.
They're going to advise him they need even more H-1Bs.
Well, for Spacex, that's unlikely. Just about every (every?) opening on their site:
To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, applicant must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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.
"Nobody would complain about H1B if salary floor was $250K."
Yeah they would. A good sized chunk of people bitching about H1B do so on the basis of the guy 'isn't born here', they don't even know if they're actually here on H1B status or just an immigrant who's now a US citizen and has been for years.
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.
Ever think that maybe you don't have relevant skills anymore?
How about the cases where those being replaced have to train their H1-B replacements? Their skills and knowledge are good enough to teach the job but not enough to actually do it?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Plenty of jobs around these parts if you have the skillsets.
What parts would those be?
What skills would those be?
It's amazing how I can have everything on the job's required skill set and yet, get the "you don't have the skills" email - when I actually do get one. Most of the time, you hear nothing form a potential employer. At most the "we got your application" robo-mail.
And then there's the "you don't have the skills" after the interview. Funny, I had them when I was invited. Tank the interview? How? I never get feedback. Although, it is quite telling that when I walk into the room and see the glance at my graying sideburns and balding head. And as you're walking to the meeting room, you see only 20 somethings in their cubes.
Yeah, right - lack of skills.
I even had a neighbor who was fired for being old. No really, the company hired this Stanford grad who not only thought that you weren't any good unless you have a Standford degree, but he told my neighbor that a 60 year-old can't program - even though he was doing the job for years.
He was laid-off due to restructuring. His lawyer said it would be a very difficult case to win and just filing the lawsuit would make him unemployable because see, all those HR departments have this database that tells you who have filed EEOC, ADA and other lawsuits against their employers. He kept the $3,000 instead of paying the lawyer's retainer.
Anyway, in short, "lack of skills" is a bullshit reason unless one mentions EXACTLY what SPECIFIC skills are missing. And do you know what many companies with competent non-bullshitting management do when they have a problem getting folks with the proper skills? They create training programs or they back the program at their local schools. That simple solution seems to evade the "geniuses" in Silicon Valley. I wonder why?
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.
And of course, in a show of patriotism, Trump took less profits by moving his clothing line back to U.S. production. What's that? He didn't? I'm shocked.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
$65K workers to replace $80K locals and to drive wages down
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.
Your average RN these days can do as much, if not more, than a doctor could do 100 years ago. Your average Physicians Assistant does what a doctor would do 20-30 years ago. My wife's a doctor, she doesn't complain that the RNs and PAs are "taking her job". Or that it's pushing down the wages of doctors. The doctors have moved on to doing something else. Doctors no longer take blood pressure even though at one time that was a cutting edge diagnostic. They don't put in IVs. They don't do a lot of what is medical grunt work. It has allowed them to specialize and as a result medicine has improved. However the doctor that refused to do continuing education has found themselves irrelevant in 2016.
Once upon a time people were paid a living wage drafting, then CAD took off and we eliminated those positions because they weren't relevant jobs anymore. However if you asked the drafters I'm sure they would insist they were highly skilled. As a rule of thumb every 20 years you should be able to replace someone making $100k with someone making $50k, it doesn't mean that "no one makes" good money any more. It means that that the $100k job has moved on to a different skillset. You've never been able to learn something when you were 20 and continued doing that, exactly as you learned it, until retirement. Look at office photos from the 1940s, 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. You should notice a big progression in the skills required to operate in each of those office environments. If someone graduated college in 1940 and refused to pickup anything new in 40 years they would be absolutely irrelevant by 1980.
Seeing how slashdotters whine about anything new I completely understand why some of them are being replaced by H1Bs. Left up to some people we'd still be using punch cards because "That's the way it's done". The 'old people' I know that are still gainfully employed are ones that have continued to reinvent themselves every 10-15 years and stay ahead of what is coming. They're the ones that worked on the tools that replaced other people.
A college education is not a guarantee you can't be replaced, it just gives you a head start. My local highschool's VocTech IT program looks a lot like what a BS IT program looked like 20 years ago. We've created tools and simplified it to the point that we can teach a bulk of it to highschool students. That's the position H1Bs are filling.
So yes, we are all cogs. The trick is you need to make sure you're a cog that is hard to find an expensive to replace because the rest of the world is coming after your position.
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.
What parts would those be?
Anywhere but SV.
EXACTLY what SPECIFIC skills are missing.
There is a high demand for Simulink modelers right now. (Search Indeed in any metropolitan area in the US) It should be able to buy you 5-10 years before that's something that's taught at the highschool level. (If I could afford the licenses I could probably teach a 15 year old that loves Minecraft to do it).
- even though he was doing the job for years.
Mechanical drafters had been doing their job for years before CAD came along. I don't doubt that most of them could still draft the exact way they had been for decades at that point, it doesn't mean that they were efficient or productive in the new environment.
If I told you in 1970 that I needed you to spin up 1000 servers how long would it take you to do it? How long would it take in 1990, 2010 and 2016? I don't doubt that the person that knew how to do it in 1970 could still do it in 2016, the question is if that is the best way to continue to do it.
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.
Their skills and knowledge are good enough to teach the job but not enough to actually do it?
Yes. I could train a high school student (or H1B) to do about 80% of my job. I actually wish I could. It means I could spend the rest of my time on the other 20%. Until that 20% becomes 80%, rinse and repeat.
Say your job is getting servers online. Your job is to build a machine, load the OS and deploy it. For whatever reason you refuse to learn docker or (insert other containerization here). If you train someone on what you do and they turn around and do use a tool that means they can do your job in 1/10th of the time are they no longer doing your job?
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
Musk will be telling him: "You know that thing you spent years denying and put a denier in charge of? It's the core of my businesses and you need to invest heavily in it."
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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)
He wants to hear fromother people who's companies are losing money.
BUT YOU NEED A 6 YEAR DEGREE TO PROGRAM. THESE ARE USELESS. NO ONE LEARNS TO CODE THAT FAST
WHY AREN'T WE RETRAINING PEOPLE TO DO RELEVANT JOBS?
Notice how you can never win?
Edit 1: It is like yelling because it's parroting how they act.
Edit 2: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris at massa sit amet urna malesuada lacinia. Praesent sit amet iaculis sem. Cras vitae arcu a neque cursus porttitor et nec purus. Fusce viverra eleifend enim eu malesuada. Vestibulum quam orci, porta eu maximus at, bibendum a metus. Vestibulum semper consequat justo feugiat luctus. Duis pretium elit ipsum, eu sollicitudin risus sagittis quis. Nam sodales, ante a semper pretium, sem lectus malesuada orci, quis finibus metus ante sit amet elit. Fusce suscipit, felis quis feugiat bibendum, justo ante scelerisque tortor, vitae gravida velit ante eu arcu. Vestibulum eget magna quam. Suspendisse potenti. Maecenas sed nunc arcu. Nunc eget lorem vel turpis tristique venenatis ut nec metus.
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.
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...
Fiduciary duty is not 'make as much money as possible at the cost of everything else'.
I was under the impression -- apparently mistaken -- that The Donald is the world's greatest expert on business. Why would the WGEOB need advice?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
The OP said 'nobody would', so merely arguing the point that there are people out there ( I know them ) who argue against H1B simply because they're 'brown people'. They don't have a damn clue as to whether that guy is on an H1B or just somebody who was born in Bangladesh.
So, in other words, your posit is that trump is blackmailing Musk: "Say, that's a nice rocket launching business you have there. It'd be a shame if anything bad were to happen to it, wouldn't it?" So... aside from the face that you seem to believe that trump is in some way deserving of an ass-kissing in a slashdot post he will certainly never see, that's exactly my own point.
Imagine all the people...
The predominate exporter of solar energy is China. Now I don't care if you want green energy or not, the net effect is the relocation of U.S. energy dependence from OPEC to China. Now, given Saudi Arabia has basically crapped all over human rights with zero international challenge as a result of their control of energy, it should be clear to everyone the dangers of such a situation. And what we see is a long line of Chinese donations to the political party which keeps shipping U.S. energy to China "in the name of the environment" and "free trade": These aren't new claims, e.g. from 1998: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05... What's fantastic is when Republicans point this out, they're just labeled "science deniers."
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
For that matter, it wasn't *that* long ago that you could pay off your college tuition with a summer job.
its illegal for RNs to replace Doctors.
RNs have replaced what Doctors do. They have exactly picked up what would have been 'doctor work' 50 or 100 years ago. Just like an H1B can pick up and do what a "IT Doctor" did 20 or 30 year ago.
making sure her ass isn't replaced by web MD
I would have given you Watson, but WebMD? No.
The S&P 500 claim is bullshit, here's a good article about it https://www.bloomberg.com/view...
As someone with 30 years with matlab and simulink experience, I approve of this post.
If you can figure out the black magic that is TLC programming 'language' you're worth your weight in gold to a company. New dev boards are developed all the time and in my experience there is a huge shortage of people that know how to stitch the C and Simulink together.
They might say that, but that's not the same as Trump will do as they say. Trump said he will talk to companies and figure out why they aren't hiring American workers and then try to solve the problems. During his campaign, he already discovered one reason: regulations. It's much cheaper, faster and easier to just build a plant in Mexico than to go through regulations set by Washington. For all we know he is investigating which specific regulations, which works to push out companies.
I hope half, if not ALL, of what you said would come true. I will wait and see but won't keep my hope up. However, if he fails, I don't accept any excuses he is going to give; especially those that are pointing fingers to others.
"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
Different from my experience. 35 years ago I picked strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries, plums, pears and apples. All were paid by weight or volume. The small fruits in the Fraser Valley were mostly picked by E. Indians who were usually trying to get their UI weeks in, so must have been legal and the tree fruits were often picked by Canadians who were traveling such as Ontarian's and Quebecois with a fair number of European young tourists working illegally.
Now, at least in the Fraser Valley with small fruits, there are workers from Central America on the foreign workers program where the farmers fly them up, house them and pay about $15 an hour before flying them home. I do drive by other farms where they still seem to have lots of E. Indians being paid by weight.
I know this is Canada but since you're Canadian, I take it you're talking about Canada, unless you were working in the States.
The real problem is that Canadians don't want to work in the fields and aren't fast enough to be worth a hourly wage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
America IS the Coastal Areas. That's why the "Flyover states" are cash leeches like Texas, which would die without Pentagon money
Note "sarcasm" for the dense here
Instead, they are used to hire $65K workers to replace $80K locals and to drive wages down.
I see this posted on Slashdot all the time, and I want some proof because my experience is the opposite.
There are two H1B workers sitting right next to me. As a programmer, I've worked with H1B Visa employees for 20 years. I've interviewed many of them. But never have I seen them command salaries significantly different than any other employee on the team. To the contrary, I keep going into interviews and going "they are asking for sponsorship + what salary?!?!?!" And if they are good, they get it.
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.
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.
That boy ain't right.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
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.
What the rule should be: "Visas are given for a period of 3 to 5 years, the company pays $50,000 upfront and the employee can work anywhere they want for the duration of the visa" That way companies will not be able to underpay H1B visa workers (because they'll move to a different company) and the high upfront cost will be an incentive to hire domestic workers first. Paying all that money upfront and a high salary later only makes sense for top talent, which is what H1B is all about.
Liberalism is not dying. It is making a resurgence. Democrats havent represented liberalism in a long time. And I'm talking talking about their self defined brand of liberalism that they teach in schools.
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?
I know this is Canada but since you're Canadian, I take it you're talking about Canada, unless you were working in the States. The real problem is that Canadians don't want to work in the fields and aren't fast enough to be worth a hourly wage.
Different part of the country of course. I worked in Ontario. The group of people I was with could do a first pick of a tobacco field(280 acres) in 5 hours when we were riding on the picker. New guys were slower, but that's to be expected.
Om, nomnomnom...
If you're the only one who can hear the dog whistles, then you're the dog.
"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.
Robots don't need H1Bs.
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.
"You seem to be confusing solar energy (as you put it) with solar power generation equipment."
Here I was thinking we had electric lines between the United States and China to give us their solar power exports. Boy I sure am enlightened now.
"Your equivalence is false"
No it isn't. Existing equipment requires continual maintenance and replacement, and new installations are frequently needed to account for growing energy demands in the population. More than that, ramping up nation-state scale production of equipment isn't something that can be done overnight. Being cutoff from OPEC would have similar consequences as being cutoff from renewable energy for dependent nations without their own production.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
How about the cases where those being replaced have to train their H1-B replacements? Their skills and knowledge are good enough to teach the job but not enough to actually do it?
I am a foreigner in this exact case. The developers who got fired needed to train me to replace them. Why? Because of the fucking mess they did here. You better have them walk you through the code and tell you where the bodies are buried. After that, I started refactoring the codebase untangling the crazy spaghetti they've created over the last 5 years, adding tests, set up continuous integration and change the way the project is managed from pretending-to-be-agile to actually-doing-the-right-thing agile. These things make life easier for me and hopefully for whoever is gonna work on this project in future.
Do I feel bad for these guys being fired? Yes.
Did they deserve it? Yes and no. They needed guidance, but the business needed results. I hope they get a chance to improve at their next job.