
Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick, Indra Nooyi to Join Presidential Advisory Council - randomname2
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-forum-idUSKBN1431KU
======
jmcdiesel
So many of the comments here have to do with "his position keeps changing"

I'm not defending Trump personally - but as a concept, lets dig into this a
bit.

So someone gets into a position of gaining a vast amount of knowledge over a
short period of time from experts and consultants...

Do you expect that their perspective hasn't shifted, or that they will stick
to their guns no matter what?

Because that's politics as usual - ignoring new evidence an voting/acting in a
manner to support your original stance... never changing (especially
drastically)

But isn't the way it should be just this - that new information should inform
your decision and, if you're open minded, you should consider changing your
stance if the new information supports it?

I'd take someone who changes their mind with new information over someone who
sticks their fingers in their ear when information that opposes their
viewpoint comes to their attention. Even if their decisions are in
disagreement with me, their ability to change their stance says that they are
at least making those decisions as opposed to having those decisions decided
by what party label they strap on their chest...

~~~
thisisdallas
It's an odd time when someone is criticized for changing their mind based on
new or changing information.

~~~
mikeash
Changing your mind based on new information is excellent. We should all strive
to do this.

Constantly changing your mind based on nothing in particular beyond whoever
you talked to last is not the same thing, though.

Trump appears to have no real opinions. He says whatever he last heard, or
whatever he thinks the people he's talking to want to hear. For example, he
used to be pro-choice. When he started running for President he suddenly
became anti-abortion. And not just anti-abortion, but hardcore anti-abortion,
talking about jailing women who obtain them. When everybody on his side
recoiled from this, he instantaneously backpedaled.

Or take climate change, for example. During the campaign he maintained that it
was nonsense, a Chinese hoax, etc. After the election, when interviewed by the
New York Times, he said "I think there is some connectivity" between human
activity and climate change. And after that, he continued to build an
administration utterly hostile to doing anything about it. All while
explicitly citing climate change as a danger when e.g. applying for permits to
build sea walls for his property.

Pick just about any position Trump has expressed, and you'll see this pattern.
He changes constantly, and not based on a careful evaluation of new
information, but just whatever the environment happens to be at that moment.

~~~
truth_sentinell
This probably means he's lying and he doesn't give two fucks about the
country. Just get power no matter the means.

~~~
jessaustin
Have we had Presidents who couldn't have been described thus? Not in my
lifetime.

~~~
vkou
Most of them only lie try to blatantly lie about important things (Or at
least, when they feel like there's something resembling a fig leaf they can
cover up with.)

He lies just about every time he speaks. We really should not be listening to
anything this man says.

There is no point to performing Kremlinology on Trump. There is no consistent
narrative, there are no secret subtexts to his utterances, that can be gleaned
through careful inspection and comparison. He says whatever comes to mind,
which is usually the most expedient thing to say at that particular moment.

~~~
mikeash
That's what worries me about Trump. If he merely lusted for power and was
willing to lie to obtain it, like a normal politician, it wouldn't bug me as
much. Not that this is _good_ , but it's something we can deal with.

I'm not sure it's even fair to say that Trump lies. He's outright incoherent.
The words are just meaningless. Is it even a lie if there's no underlying
intent? Consider, for example:

"I don’t want to have guns in classrooms although in some cases teachers
should have guns in classrooms, frankly, because teachers are, you know,
things that are going on in our schools are unbelievable, you look at some of
our schools, unbelievable what’s going on – but I’m not advocating guns in
classrooms, but remember, in some cases, and a lot of people have made this
case, teachers should be able to have guns, trained teachers should be able to
have guns in classrooms."

A normal politician might come out in favor of banning guns from school, then
later on say that teachers should be allowed to have guns. That might be a
rational change of of heart based on new information, or a response to big
sacks of money dropped off by the NRA, or an attempt to pander to a new voter
base. But when the change comes _in the same freakin ' sentence_ you just
can't make anything of it.

I'm not worried that Trump will cause problems because of a lust for power and
willingness to lie, I'm worried that he'll cause problems because he seems to
be entirely detached from reality.

This is why I'm glad to see these people advising him. Maybe they can
influence him in good directions. But I'm not terribly optimistic, because I'm
sure Steve Bannon and friends will cancel it out and more.

------
jsnathan
(from the press release)

    
    
      > Members of the [President's Strategic and Policy Forum] will be charged with
      > providing their individual views to the President — informed by their unique
      > vantage points in the private sector — on how government policy impacts
      > economic growth, job creation and productivity. The Forum is designed to
      > provide direct input to the President from many of the best and brightest in
      > the business world in a frank, non-bureaucratic and non-partisan manner.
    

There are an initial 16 members on this council, all current or former
business leaders.

I wonder if having both Musk and Kalanick on this council signals anything
about Trump's position on driverless car regulation, or will otherwise
influence it going forward.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The person he's appointed to be Transport Secretary, Elaine Chao, is very
hands off (no pun intended) when it comes to regulation, which is likely to be
a good sign for driverless cars.

~~~
pure_ambition
no pun intended? what's the pun?

~~~
twoodfin
She's "hands off" when it comes to regulation, which may advantage cars that
can drive with "hands off" the wheel.

~~~
pure_ambition
Ah, I must be a bit dense this morning. I was wondering if she had lost her
hands in an accident or something.

~~~
r_smart
I missed it at first too, and started thinking: "I guess she has no hands
maybe...?" Then I realized I'm an idiot.

------
yoyomaforce
SpaceX depends on government contracts and Elon's companies all seem to be
intertwined somewhat financially,so it makes sense he would want to be close
to the President.

Uber also heavily depends on gov policy with the contractor/employee debate.
Uber is also heavily lobbying governments to privatize public transit which
would benefit it.

I also wouldn't be surprised if they pushed for that new in-between
employee/contractor designation that they've been claiming is necessary for
the new economy.

~~~
tankenmate
SpaceX depends on government contracts far less than say ULA; so far SpaceX
has had 17 successful private commercial launches and 15 successful government
paid launches, and ULA has only had 1 private commercial flight on an Atlas
rocket since 2010 (WorldView-3 Digital Globe). And to top it off ULA gets
USD1B a year for flight readiness regardless of how many launches it makes
(although this will probably go soon).

EDIT: company name fix.

~~~
yoyomaforce
He may depend less on gov contracts than ULA, but he still depends on them, so
I'm not sure what point you're making. Not trying to be rude, I would just
appreciate it if you would explain it to me, so I can understand what you
mean.

~~~
karkisuni
I think its more of a response to the growing misconception that Elon's
companies are exceptionally and fully dependent on government money in the
form of contracts, loans, and tax breaks to its customers. This suggests the
companies are being artificially kept afloat on the backs of the taxpayer and
are not "good businesses". Reality is, of course, more complicated. SpaceX,
Tesla, and SolarCity of course each benefit(ed) from the above, but not any
more than their competitors and are not entirely dependent on them. Loans were
paid back, contracts were competed and won fairly, tax breaks incentivize
desired behavior and are common industry-wide in transportation/energy.

Your original comment _could_ imply that SpaceX is more dependent on the
federal government than other launch providers, hitting a sensitive spot for
those fighting the above misconception, but that's not the case. Governments
have the money and motive to fly expensive satellites (or people) and are the
biggest customers for nearly all launch providers.

~~~
yoyomaforce
I get that. There has been a lot of anti-Elon stuff published in the last 6
months.

------
alphonsegaston
All these comments about Trump changing his mind or being swayed miss the
obvious indicators that he's just following the Putin/Surkov strategy for
creating a managed democracy. You destabilize the narrative coherency with
opposing, even random, signals (meet with Al Gore, then appoint Rex Tillerson,
add Kanye for good measure). As your opponents scramble for some logical
imperative along the lines of received political/economic narratives, you
dismantle the institutions that oppose you(both literal and civilly
constructed), so you can rob and rule however you see fit.

~~~
aetherson
I think that you're overestimating Trump's ability to dismantle institutions,
even if we stipulate that he's a machiavellian schemer who's successfully
sowing chaos among his opponents by "destabilizing the narrative coherency."

~~~
alphonsegaston
Institutions in the United States, because of our size and emphasis on
Federalism, have always existed in a tenuous position from the beginning.
Throughout our history, we have seen the large parts of the judiciary,
criminal justice system, and in practice, whole state governments collapse in
pursuit of things like racial and economic inequity (robber barons, civil
rights era south, populist leaders like Huey Long, Mafia control of
Providence). By fanning the flames of racial and religious intolerance, as
well as economic populism, Trump has set the stage for a similar collapse
under whatever local conditions most conveniently serve his interests. Maybe
in Arizona, we have to suspend the rule of law because the immigration
situation is out of control, in West Virginia it's because of economic
conditions, New York is at risk from terrorism. All of these circumstances
have some truth to them, which is why the make great pretexts.

~~~
aetherson
And yet, Joe Arpaio lost re-election, New York is still reliably and deeply
blue, and it is still the case that nobody at all cares about West Virginia.

If the US is in fact constantly on the brink of collapse, it sure is a wonder
we made it this far.

------
Symmetry
The more non-sycophants advising Trump the better, I suppose. Maybe Elon can
move Trump a bit on global warming?

~~~
anondon
FWIW, Trump stated in a recent interview that he would keep an "open mind" on
climate change. He was probably informed by his advisers that climate change
is real.

~~~
szul
His policies seem to change based on who is in the room with him, so I guess
it's best to get the right people in that room.

~~~
vinhboy
Except that's not how protecting the environment works. You can't undo damage
to the environment as easily as you can destroy it. So if in one minute he
thinks its ok to do something destructive, in the next minute it will be too
late to undo that.

Please keep this in mind.

This applies to other areas of life as well. If you are an undocumented child
living in this country. You can't have a normal life if all you know is that
Trump might change his mind. You will forever live in fear. That's not fair to
anyone.

~~~
szul
Oh, I don't disagree.

------
aliaser
I remember Elon tweeting "Anything but Trump" when someone asked about his
thoughts on twitter. Seems that tweet is deleted.

~~~
beambot
It bothers me that Twitter is frequently considered an original source, and
yet comments can be deleted willy-nilly. It's too close to 1984-esque
Newspeak. The HN model seems much better: You can only delete comments for
some amount of time after initially posting; after that, they're fixed in
stone.

(But I am glad this new council is somewhat bipartisan!)

~~~
castratikron
So is this when someone makes a HN post about how he's developing a block-
chain based, distributed Twitter alternative?

~~~
aliaser
No need it's already here - [https://steemit.com/](https://steemit.com/) . But
i haven't looked how it really works under hood. Given recent events with CEO
of reddit who did edit negative post about him [1] it becomes more and more
actual.

[1]:( [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-
co...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reddit-ceo-edits-user-
comments_us_5839cf32e4b000af95ee5b68) ).

~~~
catwell
I didn't know that one, I did use
[http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/) some time ago (and gave up
because of the chicken/egg effect).

------
anondon
Can Elon, Travis influence Trump's policies in any meaningful way by being
part of the PAC?

A lot of Trumps plans such as opening up fossil fuel reserves, not believing
in climate change (though Trump said he would keep an open mind in a recent
interview), going hard on immigration go directly against what Silicon Valley
stands for. Will it be possible to influence Trump's plans on these issues? I
remain skeptical.

~~~
joezydeco
I have a hunch Trump is influenced by whomever is standing in front of him at
any given moment.

His attraction to wealth and celebrity might actually be beneficial to the
tech scene here. The more he meets with people like Musk, Cook, Gates, hell
even Kayne West, the better in my opinion.

Honestly, I think the Democrats could actually turn Trump into a left-leaning
President given enough careful attention and subtle manipulation. The GOP has
been in a mode of "our way or no way" the last eight years and it's a hard
habit to break. It could backfire with Trump.

~~~
yedava
Given that Stephen Bannon will be the white house advisor, I don't see that
happening. Trump seems to trust his advice the most.

------
castratikron
Didn't see that one coming.

~~~
geodel
Yup. I was expecting tech elites to move to Europe or other liberal place and
stick to principles.

~~~
jimbokun
Did any of the people in the article, specifically, claim they would move to
Europe?

------
chmaynard
Just sent this note to Tesla Sales:

Please tell your CEO that he needs to focus on one thing at a time. Delivering
the Tesla Model 3 as promised should be his ONLY priority. Activities such as
serving on a Trump economic advisory panel or thinking about solar shingles
are a distraction and a waste of his valuable time.

Thanks, Craig

(Model 3 reservation number xxxxxxxx)

~~~
te0x
If anyone on earth can multitask, it's him.

------
sickbeard
Hrm ok. I thought Elon was a smart man

~~~
freyr
And a smart man would know he has a lot to offer society by advising someone
like Trump.

------
justinzollars
Please no more politics!

I thought we were on a one week long hiatus. If you have the ability, please
down vote this article.

~~~
Karunamon
That experiment would have been over yesterday anyways.

~~~
justinzollars
It was wonderful to read about tech while it lasted.

------
jlebrech
now if he tapped up Elon musk to make the next air force one a reusable rocket
that would be cool.

------
lukaa
Elon Musk explicitly said it would be disaster if Trump wins and now he is
Trump advisor. Hypocrisy and love for money obviously Tr(i)umphed again.

~~~
Diederich
Can you explain the hypocrisy?

Elon Musk has a couple of well defined, over-riding goals: to make humans a
multi-planetary species and to see humanity move to sustainable power. To
those ends he's fully committed. Making a lot of money is one necessary,
interim step along the way. As is working with/coordinating with the US
Government.

~~~
lukaa
Hypocrisy means he is bad for country but sense he is now in power I'll join
him to make my business better and now Trump is not so bad. Saying one thing
and doing another is definition of hypocrisy.

~~~
Diederich
> ... and now Trump is not so bad

I'm pretty sure most people's basic opinions of Trump haven't changed.

In fact, I think it's a pretty admirable trait to be willing to work with
someone that you might personally detest in order to make the best of a bad
situation. The easy but wrong thing thing is to refuse any cooperation if
someone you don't like is in power. That's largely what the Republicans in the
House have been doing for the past eight years. That's not a way forward, that
just deepens divides and future gridlock.

------
laichzeit0
Space travel is an almost certain reality in the near future. If anything
Trump wants to be first in line to open an elite casino and Trump Tower on
Mars for the ultra wealthy. Elon can make it happen.

------
coldcode
I wonder if Mr. Trump will attend, he seems not terribly interested in
briefings. Perhaps he will since they are business related instead of
intelligence.

------
em3rgent0rdr
Despite how cool Elon's companies are, don't forget for a moment that Elon
Musk is just another crony capitalist who likes government money.

~~~
tankenmate
Let me fix that for you; "Elon Musk is just another capitalist who likes
money."

Minor snark aside, Musk's companies have not availed of any government money
that wasn't available to others. And in many cases Musk's companies weren't
even the beneficiaries of said government money, quite often that money went
to the purchasers of products made by Musk's companies (Tesla, electric car
subsidies go to car owners, not manufacturers; Solar City, feed in payments go
to the owners of the solar equipment (and yes I realise sometimes that is to
finance companies and/or to Solar City)). In other cases like SpaceX they have
competed for government contracts and won those contracts.

But at the end of the day Musk's companies typically attract less subsidies
(Tesla / Solar vs other car companies / oil / gas / coal companies) or charge
the government less for the same work than others (think ULA). So in effect
they are better for the government's stated goals than a lot of other
companies. And yet at the end of the day Musk's companies need money to
survive and grow just like any other company; government or otherwise, and
compared to many other companies in their respective arenas their revenue from
government contracts can be substantially smaller pro rata.

So in the end Musk's companies will use whatever influence they can (this is
called hustle in start ups), and they need money (and do whatever they can to
avoid being solely dependent on government cash). And to top it off they
actively support competition, even when they could afford to stand still and
reduce the rate of innovation.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
No argument that he is a Capitalist that likes money. Just emphasizing that he
is a special type of Capitalist who is willing to engage closely with
government to obtain benefits. The fact that other businesses in his industry
may also obtain these benefits he lobbied for is in fact on the spectrum of
cronyism in practice:

"Crony capitalism exists along a continuum. In its lightest form, crony
capitalism consists of collusion among market players which is officially
tolerated or encouraged by the government. While perhaps lightly competing
against each other, they will present a unified front (sometimes called a
trade association or industry trade group) to the government in requesting
subsidies or aid or regulation."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism)

~~~
tankenmate
Actually the push for NASA to use commercial style contracting was started
under President Regan (Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 and followed by
further laws under G H W Bush in 1990), while Elon was at Pretoria Boys High
School (Transvaal, South Africa); so to say that his lobbying had anything to
do with NASA moving to awarding competed fixed price contracts for orbital
services rather than using the previous cost plus model of contracting amounts
to crony capitalism is entirely wide of the mark and bordering on wholly
false.

EDIT: fixed grammar

