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Government United States Politics

Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Will Advise Trump On Business Issues (theverge.com) 244

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.
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Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Will Advise Trump On Business Issues

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  • Uber... such an ethical company.

  • 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.

    • Using billionaires like Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick to tell you what to do is "swamp draining"?

      No, no, he is draining the swamp. Draining it right into his advisory board and cabinet. He never said where he was draining it into. And anyway his voters didn't take him literally apparently but they did take him seriously. So they have no idea what he's going to do, but they're damn sure he'll do it.

    • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:16AM (#53483571) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:58AM (#53483945) Journal

        "Draining the swamp" refers to removing corruption, which implies getting rid of the "political" elite.

        So in your book, removing corruption is replacing one group who want to enrich themselves with another group who want to enrich themselves?

        Elites in charge are fine, so long as they are elites due to skill, and not politics.

        Just by the way, politics is a skill.

        • So in your book, removing corruption is replacing one group who want to enrich themselves with another group who want to enrich themselves?

          To be fair, the idea is that group that is getting replaced was enriching themselves through bribery and corruption. The new group will hopefully try to enrich themselves by making laws and regulations less hostile to business.

          • To be fair, the idea is that group that is getting replaced was enriching themselves through bribery and corruption. The new group will hopefully try to enrich themselves by making laws and regulations less hostile to business.

            You mean -> The new group will enrich themselves by making laws and regulations less hostile to their own specific business interest...

            • I'm saying the "idea" is that bringing in business leaders looking to enrich themselves will hopefully still try to enrich themselves, but do so in such a way as to benefit everyone.
      • by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
        Wait, you think the CEO of Exxon Mobil is not part of the political elite? You seem to be under the impression that large corporations somehow don't deal in politics, when they in fact tend to deal in politics as much as politicians themselves.
      • Yep, get rid of those political insiders who are so terrible because they are beholden to big money special interests. Let's replace them with, hmm, direct representatives of those big money special interests.

    • No, "drain the swamp" refers to a particular set of 5 or 6 policies from this speech [donaldjtrump.com].

      First: I am going to institute a 5-year ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government after they leave government service.

      Second: I am going to ask Congress to institute its own 5-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staffs.

      Third: I am going to expand the definition of lobbyist so we close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when we all know they are lobbyists.

      Fourth: I am going to issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

      Fifth: I am going to ask Congress to pass a campaign finance reform that prevents registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in American elections.

      There is another major announcement I am going to make today as part of our pledge to drain the swamp in Washington. If I am elected President, I will push for a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

      "Draining the swamp" has nothing to do with his cabinet or advisers. However, leftists and the lefty media have picked up the term as demoralization propaganda by either actually not knowing what it means and making up their own definition (which of course Trump will never fit) or by knowing what it means and lying about it. That's the thing when dealing with a lefty. You always have to figure out if they're one of the stup

    • What, you didn't expect a big stink when a swamp is drained?

  • Well.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @10:41AM (#53483293) Homepage

    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.

  • Folks:

    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.

  • Trump is toxic in SV (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @10:48AM (#53483337)
    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?
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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.

    • by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @12:27PM (#53484193) Journal

      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. [bbc.com] With a good enough argument, they might be able to persuade him to be favorable to their causes.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I bet Breitbart's advertising revenue is rocketing. Trump's tweets reveal that it is his favourite source of news (most often quoted/linked) by far. Putting your ads on there is like a personal hotline to his cell phone, able to reach him at 3AM when he decides to do a bit of reading and go on a Twitter rant.

        I bet their analytics are good enough that an advertiser could target him personally, and know exactly how many times he viewed/clicked their messages.

  • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @10:53AM (#53483371) Homepage Journal

    Looking at the Alexa ranking [alexa.com] 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 [dailycaller.com] 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.

    • by bfpierce ( 4312717 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:08AM (#53483481)

      This is an article about who in tech is going to be advising the president. That's not partisan, it's just a fact.

      If /. users can no longer handle facts being distributed there's a bigger problem than 'what content do we post'.

    • by wjcofkc ( 964165 )
      The articles were pro Hillary. The comments were dominantly pro Trump. This came as a surprise to myself and I am sure others. Post after post after post anti Trump posts, including those critical in a reasonable way got modded straight to hell. I am not talking about flamebait or trolls, just attempts at discussion. I took a step back from Slashdot myself. Not completely, but it was such an unproductive political cluster fuck I consider bailing at least for the remainder of the election.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        anti Trump posts, including those critical in a reasonable way got modded straight to hell. I am not talking about flamebait or trolls, just attempts at discussion.

        Please provide some links to support your claim. In particular, link to anti-Trump posts that are "critical in a reasonable way" or "just attempts at discussion" that "got modded straight to hell".

        I consider myself to be non-partisan (I'm registered as an independent and I didn't vote for Trump or Clinton), but I have actually observed the opposite effect. When I look at stories such as this one [slashdot.org] from Sunday, the very first post is a profanity-laden anti-Trump post that somehow was modded 3 (Interesting).

    • Well said. This seems to be a legitimately tech-centric story... which has been pre-poisoned by months of crap posts.
    • by ( 4475953 )

      On the contrary, Slashdot should hire Trump to take care of this forum. He would be the best for this job, because he knows words, he has the best words.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If you look at the moment commented on stories they are often the political ones. I suppose it could be that the majority of readers who don't comment and are now leaving, but it seems more likely that in fact political stories bordering on click-bait are what are keeping the site alive.

      I'd say it's the quality of the comments that is causing the decline. It's like groundhog day sometimes, with the same long debunked arguments getting repeated over and over, the same troll mods to block anything trying to m

    • 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?

      • Well, there's the fact that the likes of Musk, Cook, and Page have tossed away what they'd previously claimed were their values and have decided to associate themselves with and support Trump. That speaks very negatively about them and makes me inclined to re-evaluate whether I wish to be a customer of their companies.

        • I bet it's taking everything they've got to keep a straight face for these meetings. But they have businesses to run, and those businesses live and die at the whim of the people who make the rules. If these CEOs want their businesses to survive and thrive, there's nothing else they can do besides suck it up and work with the guy. Like, what other options do they have? They can't change who the president is going to be. The risk involved in shunning the president (elect) is way too high (at best, somebo
          • Well, alternatively they could lawyer up. When the Nixon administration went on the attack against IBM, Big Blue retained a cadre of lawyers that have since become colloquially nicknamed "The Nazgul"... the implications of facing them being obvious. IBM fought the government to a standstill, fended it off for 13 years, and eventually broke the government's resolve and saw the case dropped.

            13 years is a long time. Barring SCOTUS catastrophe, Trump will be gone and consigned to the ash heap of history in 8

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:30AM (#53483689) Homepage

      The NYT showed a 96% drop in quarterly profits [dailycaller.com] over the election season, very probably because of continuous partisan trash talking.

      From your article:

      The company also reported that total revenue dropped one percent to $363.6 million from $367.4 million.

      Wow, one percent reduction in revenue - people were clearly quite ticked off....

      (Given that newspapers are a declining industry to begin with, I wouldn't be surprised if that beats the industry average)

    • by fnj ( 64210 )

      First, everything I see presently on the front page of slashdot, including this article, are tech.

      Slashdot seems to be relatively balanced to me, both in articles and in comments. You want to see a place that started out leftist and has turned into a complete sewer of ultra-left bias, see soylentnews. An echo chamber for cuckoos. Participation has dropped to critically low. And theregister is embarrassing themselves with their batshit-insaneTrump derangement.

      OTOH, pipedot stayed virtually 100% pure tech, an

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        First, everything I see presently on the front page of slashdot, including this article, are tech.

        Slashdot seems to be relatively balanced to me, both in articles and in comments. You want to see a place that started out leftist and has turned into a complete sewer of ultra-left bias, see soylentnews. An echo chamber for cuckoos. Participation has dropped to critically low. And theregister is embarrassing themselves with their batshit-insaneTrump derangement.

        OTOH, pipedot stayed virtually 100% pure tech, an

    • by bryanbrunton ( 262081 ) on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:43AM (#53483809)

      I've given up on Slashdot because the lowering of the quality of the posts (the level of detail, precision and insight) is directly correlated to number of conservative dipsticks here on Slashdot. The constant denial of global warming. The defending of the pussy grabber in Chief. Pizzagate level bullshit is fairly common on slashdot.

      There's really little difference between slashdot and r/the_donald.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a shame moderation isn't public. I bet it's actually a relatively small number of people, like that GamerGate shit. A few people instigating and using sock puppets to amplify and moderate, and then a larger but still relatively small number of useful idiots who are stupid enough to fall for things like Pizzagate.

        I'd love to know what was going through that guy's mind as he searched the pizza restaurant, clutching his rifle and knowing that the cops were already outside... The dawning realization that t

    • by Minupla ( 62455 ) <minupla@gmail.PASCALcom minus language> on Wednesday December 14, 2016 @11:48AM (#53483851) Homepage Journal

      trash talk or support Trump you're alienating fully half the readership.

      I suspect your stats are actually wrong here - you're assuming 100% of the readership is American. I can speak for my small piece of the rest of the world when I say that pretty much unanimously the response in Toronto is "Umm, we tried electing someone like that as our mayor... did you not follow the late night comedy jokes about him? It didn't go so well."

      Min

    • Whichever side you happen to be on, when you trash talk or support Trump you're alienating 46% or 48% of the readership.

      /ducks

    • by pkphilip ( 6861 )

      I agree. The quality of slashdot discussions have dropped a lot.. the number of comments against each article is also very low these days. It was unusual to have stories with less than 300-400 comments, now a lot of stories don't even hit the 100 comment mark. And most of the comments themselves are not adding much insight - and that is a shame, because I have always come to this site for the depth of the discussion and not because of the stories themselves.

    • by geek ( 5680 )

      Agreed. I come to tech news sites to get away from this bullshit. I stopped visiting Ars Technica because of this and I absolutely refuse to visit The Verge. When I want politics I have sites to go to for that. Slashdot has always been a cesspool for this shit and I will admit I have been sucked in on a number of occassions but I just took a multi month break from slashdot because of this crap. Get back to news for nerds or fuck off

    • But there was only a 1% drop in revenue. That means almost no readers were leaving.
      NYT were barely braking even before, and they are barely breaking even now.
  • Interesting way to write "insanely hostile." The limousine libtards of tech are talking secession [bloomberg.com].

  • ... 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.

  • 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.

    • by xeno ( 2667 )

      Does anyone... anyone... seriously believe that Trump will pay attention to any thoughts and direction to come from this Strategic and Policy Forum? Will he listen at all?

      Thus far Trump has ignored most briefings on a wide variety of critical topics, refused his daily presidential briefings to prepare for taking over the office, held mock forums in which he assembles rooms full of people smarter than him and then berates and insults them (e.g. the post-election summit with news org leaders, among others),

  • 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 als

  • 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 cuttin

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