Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Things companies in tech can do:

- Demand to see the detailed plan for TrumpCare. What's it going to cost us? What will it do to our employees? Where are the details? That's what lobbyists are paid to find out. Employers have a big stake in this.

- Demand to see the tariff plan. So far, it's all talk, but soon it will be legislation. This has huge impacts for many businesses. Business planning and investment will stall until the details are settled. Already, you don't want to build a factory in China or Mexico. On the other side, will there be efforts to make it easier to sell into China?

- About that infrastructure thing. What kinds of projects will be supported? Roads? Internet access? Pothole repair?

- How serious is the administration about not employing illegal aliens? Will employer sanctions be increased or more stringently enforced? Will employers be going to jail? On the other side, will the enforcement be effective enough to force growers to use robotic picking? Is it time to get behind ag startups like Abundant Robotics? Get into robotic floor cleaning for commercial buildings?

- Will there be tax incentives for investing in communities in rural America? If so, how much, and when will they become available?

- Will Glass-Stegall come back? That was a Trump campaign promise, and it's in the Republican platform.

Every one of those is a real business issue, and business needs to know what's going to happen.

I think this is a Chess vs Checkers issue. It doesn't matter if you lay out a plan based on reason if the other side is playing a different game altogether.

Check out this simple strategy from the Republican playbook. They pour money into State elections (through Super PACs) during a census year and take control over legislature and the redistricting process and execute a horrendous gerrymandering which drives urban areas out of voting power. This leads them to hold on to a majority in the House at national level which forms the bedrock of their agenda execution at national level.

When have you seen Democrats executing such long-term ruthless strategy?

There is nothing stopping from Tech Billionaires doing the exact same thing Koch brothers did for the past 15 years.

There is that, but Republican politicians will listen to business about business issues.

The tariff plan will never pass Congress. It might not even get out of a committee. Except for the most diehard extremists in the Republican party, the tariff plan is an economic non-starter.

Getting out of the TPP affects tariffs. Getting out of NAFTA would have even larger effects. There will be negotiations with China. Tariff changes are coming, and businesses which import and export need to know what they are.

One other important thing, especially when trying to persuade someone ambivalent or even in favor of this insanity: appeal to their self-interest.

People who don't see a problem with ethnically cleansing the country of people based on religion or nationality are by definition selfish, immoral and hateful. Thus, as disgusting as this is, you will not persuade them by making appeals to the humanity of the people they hate.

Fortunately, even if one adopts a purely utilitarian "whats-in-it-for-me-view" approach, this policy still makes no sense: rather than "protecting" us from the vanishingly rare occurrence of terrorism, these laws inflame tensions between the west and the entire Islamic world. ISIS thrives on division and Trump has just became their all-time greatest recruiter.

Americans all across the world are now in fact placed in more -- not less -- danger thanks to this racist, hateful, Islamophobic and un-American law.

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