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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.
Let me know when Tesla uses its on-vehicle software to track where its users are going for political or personal reasons and hires private investigators to dig up dirt on critical journalists, while basing its entire business model on breaking local laws, on the premise that by the time localities go after them it's already expanded into bigger markets and can either "go legit" or simply leave the smaller markets that are cracking down.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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...
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.
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...
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.
This is it in a nutshell. They've streamlined the process of corruption.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
The skill laid-off American workers lack is fluency in Hindi. How do you expect them to talk to their coworkers?