
Silicon Valley Braces for Uncertainty After Donald Trump’s Victory - fmihaila
http://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-braces-for-uncertainty-after-donald-trumps-victory-1478716165
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diego_moita
People are dreaming too much about this guy policies.

To me, he looks exactly like Sílvio Berlusconi: a self-centered egocentric,
with the attention spam of a spider and the temperament of a 10 year old boy.

Like Berlusconi he simply wont be able to understand detailed policies or
complex problems and doesn't have the intelligence or patience to stitch
alliances and deals to implement those policies. Like Berlusconi, the only
thing he understands is the "art of the small deals" that bring advantages to
him.

Edit: I am not the only one saying this:
[http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21709984-americans-
coul...](http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21709984-americans-could-look-
italy-taste-things-come-what-donald-trump-and-silvio)

~~~
astrodust
Speaking as someone who suffered through four years of having a "Crack Mayor"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Ford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Ford)),
you're underestimating the damage a person like this can cause. He's someone
who lived a life so ridiculous that the movie _Tommy Boy_ is the closest
anyone can get to explaining it. The parallels are surreal.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUY6lDja-
DE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUY6lDja-DE)

Rob Ford would declare things as done long before votes had even been called,
he would bully people into voting his way, and then he'd declare victory.
Anyone who opposed him would be ground down, harassed, and if he couldn't fire
them he'd persecute them until they got out of his way or they were no longer
a threat.

Rob Ford didn't care what the rules were. He didn't care about decorum or
tradition. He didn't care if what he said was unworkable, or if he lied, or if
he offended people. He just did whatever came to mind, without question,
without checking if he had the authority to.

Rob Ford was born into privilege, inherited an ownership position in a company
worth millions of dollars, and has never had to work a day in his life. He was
famous for showing up to work at 2pm and leaving by 4. He had the audacity to
brag he'd never missed a day of work on a day he was missing work because he
was in drug rehab.

Trump will do _whatever he wants_ and there's not going to be anyone there to
stop him. This is a man who's never been held to account for any of his
actions. He has no concept of morality, nothing to keep him centered.

If anyone opposes him, he'll have them fired, blackballed, or tormented until
they quit either in disgust or humiliation. He'll make George W. Bush look
like a wimp, a man of half-measures, of someone who had too much empathy for
his opponents.

If he's anything like Rob Ford, which Daniel Dale
([https://twitter.com/ddale8](https://twitter.com/ddale8)), who covered Rob
Ford in depth during his tenure will surely attest, we're looking at _multiple
scandals per day_.

It got so bad near the end of Rob Ford's term that he'd give a press
conference in the morning and have to apologize in another press conference in
the afternoon and even then would _almost_ fuck that up so badly he'd have to
give another apology.

This shit is real and it's ugly.

~~~
amscanne
I also "suffered" through Rob Ford.

His main problem was substance abuse. That led to the the massive circus that
was his last two years in office. Trump does not have this issue (or at least,
doesn't seem to) so I don't think the comparison is justified.

You're being overly dramatic about Ford in general. His first year was
actually productive and he delivered on many of his promises (freeze property
taxes, repeal registration tax, privatize garbage collection, kill transit
city). This isn't just me being generous, I'm echoing Robyn Doolittle, who was
the reporter that broke the scandal, followed subsequent scandals and
published Crazytown.

~~~
serge2k
> or at least, doesn't seem to

Pretty sure he doesn't drink or anything because of what happened to his
brother.

~~~
astrodust
There is no way I'm ruling out cocaine with Trump.

------
zer00eyz
Lets be real here for a minute.

There was already a lot of uncertainty in the valley before this happened.

The first bubble was a great purge of bad ideas, and people (based on skill or
passion), it was fuel for the next evolution.

Any major change to the status quo is going to send some waves through the
community, and I honestly think that were long over due for a correction not
only in the broader market but in tech as well.

Frankly, it might be a good thing.

~~~
sdegutis
Yep, drastic change is probably better than keeping what we have. That's the
hope, anyway. That's why Trump won.

~~~
pcwalton
I can't tell whether you're endorsing this view or not by saying "that's the
hope, anyway". If so, it seems obviously false. As anyone who has debugged
code knows, even if what you have is bad, randomly making changes rarely ever
makes it better.

~~~
alva
injecting randomness into some functions can take you out of a local maxima

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n00b101
The uncertainty is worse for highly regulated industries, like financial
services. It's unclear what will happen with Dodd-Frank, FRTB, DOL fiduciary
rule, etc. This has potentially large, adverse impact on consulting and
RegTech firms - customers prefer a "wait & see" approach where costs and
decisions are deferred during periods of regulatory uncertainty.

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Alex3917
Silicon Valley is about to put a third of Americans out of jobs, and rather
than having the entire bay area sacked and pillaged Trump has somehow managed
to shift the blame onto immigrants and minorities.

Just putting things in perspective...

~~~
kp1234321
Innovation has always and will forever put people out of jobs while
simultaneously creating new ones. Are you suggesting that innovation is just
as bad for our country as Donald Trump?

~~~
woofyman
How do you know it "will forever" create new jobs?

~~~
kp1234321
Nobody can predict the future, but if the past is any indicator then I'm
pretty confident.

~~~
marviel
Will the people being put out of work be skilled enough to operate these new
jobs? What happens when we get AI that is comparable in capability to the
average worker?

------
AnimalMuppet
"America elects a reality TV star as president. What happens next will shock
you..."

------
IntelMiner
Would it be possible to get a link to a non-paywalled version of the article?

~~~
seangrogg
WSJ uses referrer to determine their paywall. Most of us just copy the title
and search it from Google as they don't wall users that come from Google
traffic.

~~~
relics443
Another option is to use the web link under the link at the top of the page.

~~~
DrScump
... which works often, but not always, nor forever.

