Trump Strategic and Policy Forum, Which Included IBM and GM CEOs, Disbands
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"[..] but I have to confess that it seems odd to me to denounce Nazism out of fealty to shareholder value. You can just denounce Nazism because you're not a Nazi! This is a financial newsletter, but I have never assumed that the operations of capital are autonomous and self-executing, or that executives are robots who are programmed to maximize shareholder value to the exclusion of all other considerations. Corporations exist in society, and are not above society's concerns. Businesses operate through human beings, who remain human even in their roles as CEOs. One would hope."
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-16/ceos-cons...
But that is how it works, right? If you don't maximize shareholder value you can be ousted, if you don't where others do you will lose in the marketplace and cease to exist. Isn't that competitive ruthlessness exactly what people like about our current system?
> Corporations exist in society, and are not above society's concerns. Businesses operate through human beings, who remain human even in their roles as CEOs. One would hope.
Citation needed, I guess. For mid-small size companies this might be the case, but evidence seems to point to the opposite of this for any organization large enough to be its own thing outside of the humans and subsystems that comprise its pieces.
Depends on what you mean by "maximize," since "shareholder value" is a matter of opinion. Some might make the case for short-term rises at all costs, while others take a longer view of "value." In between are a lot of experts and self-proclaimed experts.
If shareholders value not collaborating with Nazis, then not collaborating with Nazis generates shareholder value.
Shareholders as a group have no need to be less good than themselves individually.
In theory, there is nothing logically inconsistent about a CEO both advocating for a better society and protecting shareholder value. Indeed, the former can sometimes help achieve the latter. If your country becomes Venezuela, that's not going to do your stock price any favors.
In practice, it doesn't matter. For better or worse, it is basically impossible to definitely measure the effectiveness of a CEO. Board members use their best judgement and the limited data they have.
You can be ousted whether or not you maximize shareholder value, as no one knows if you did or not. CEOs work for a board and that board can fire them for, in practice, any reason they want to.
In turn those board members work for shareholders that can choose them for any reason they want.
> Isn't that competitive ruthlessness exactly what people like about our current system?
I wouldn't guess so, no. I would guess people more like the effect of said competitiveness, which is an efficient market with lower prices and more stability than the other systems that have been tried.
> Citation needed, I guess.
Basic reasoning? Corporations are tightly interwoven with society. Their customers and employees are all members of said society, for one thing. Burning society to the ground is not going to work out well for any corporation.
[0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=price+of+gold+in+bitcoi...
> Matt Levine says it best:
Is that the really best?
In this case, I chose him because his Goldman Sachs credentials make it impossible to dismiss him as some sort of far-left Antifa lunatic, and because he's making a good case for moral responsibility in business. A case that is widely accepted among actual business leadership, but somehow still stymies the HN crowd, where the shareholder-above-anything folklore was absolutely certain to make an appearance.
He also adds a wittiness that makes reading his material a pleasure.
> "For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!" https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/89747827044214374...
How many had already quit and this was just to stop further embarrassing himself?
This "Strategic and Policy Forum" existed for the sole purpose of promoting the individual company interests... Such as how to best offshore the work-force, pay less taxes, etc.
This backhanded manipulation and dealings did not work on Trump as well as it did on the previous presidents.
So now they are disbanding (as they serve no purpose), and using this moment to attempt to discredit the person they could not manipulate.
So I think they are on track with their real goals. Helping the American worker was never a serious goal.
The ACA is a lot more than just the public exchanges.
I don't understand how this would work - anyone more economically versed care to chime in on how you could have common ownership of the means of production that was also distributed capitalistically?
Of course it's obfuscated enough that it's hard to know what you own a piece of, but it doesn't have to be that way.
CEOs of large corporations have no problem doing business with china or israel or russia or any other questionable locations.
1. Created a narrative via dog whistles that white folks are actual victims in this country in the hands of minorities, immigrants, BLM etc. A strong undercurrent of "us" vs. "them" narrative. As a result a significant portion of Republicans believe that white people are more discriminated in this country
2. Undermined free press with constant attacks and going so far and creating his own news network - a clear propaganda approach
3. Allowed the FCC to enable Sinclair broadcasting takeover of local news media, creating a powerful propaganda arm in the form of local news
4. Undermined democracy via nepotism and nominating unqualified family members to important positions
5. Brutally attack critics in an attempt to shut down criticism
Here's my entry: 5 things Barack Obama did that were very similar to Adolf Hitler:
1. Assumed a populist mantra of taking back government from corrupt politicians ("change you can believe in" "not beholden to special interests")
2. Employed blitzkrieg tactics against unsuspecting and peaceful nations (Hitler: Poland; Obama: Libya)
3. Armed and funded radical revolutionaries in other nations in hopes of governmental overthrow and replacement by sympathetic new governments (Hitler: Spain; Obama: Ukraine, Syria, Iran; the Arab Spring more generally)
4. Designed a national healthcare system with a close analogue in Hitler's national socialist healthcare
5. Used inspiring rhetoric to distract from policies unpopular among the majority of the electorate (such as Obama's transgender bathroom policies, which almost 2/3 of Americans disliked)
Who should we do next? I'm thinking challenge round: either Bono, Hulk Hogan, or the Dalia Lama.
And this is bad... why?
As a European that has lived in 3 countries with free public health, I always find this argument baffling.
1.) That might be populist opinion but surely is not comparable to what Hitler did. Or do you seriously claim that people like Sanders, Warren use the same rhetoric as Hitler? That's ridiculous. Hitler was blaming Jews and other minorities and the Versailles treaty for the bad economic situation in Germany. Interestingly Trump is doing the same thing (Nafta, China, Mexicans etc)
2.) The overthrow of the Libyen regime was mainly pushed and pursued by us Europeans (France, England, etc). The USA was in the beginning hesitant and eventually participated. Just to make clear: This was a stupid decision and Obama also admitted this as his worst mistake. Hitler never admitted a mistake or defeat (see Leningrad). Guess what Trump also does not admit
3.) Sorry, but that's part of geopolitics (just to make it clear: It's actually the reason why half of the world is fucked up by wars) and almost every powerful nation has done this in the past and will do this in future. So not sure what you are comparing here.
4.) So then almost all of Europe must have a Nazi healthcare system? Hitler was also a fascist and thus more an ally of corporations, banks and companies than of the people. Some of his policies could have been mistaken as socialist but in reality they were part of his plan to please the population (construction of highways, pumping money into the economy for short term gain). His entire ideology was built around a super-race and elites which is quite the opposite what a "socialist" healthcare system is all about.
5.) Citation needed for the fact that 2/3 of Americans dislike transgender bathrooms. Trump's policies (taxes, healthcare) are so unpopular that he can't even pass them with a Republican Senate and House. Apart from that Hitler tapped into a huge antisemitic sentiment that was carried by a wide majority of people. If that hadn't been the case, he would have never be able to create his Nazi regime. I also think this is the main difference to today. The alt-right, KKK and Nazi clowns are a minority - a loud one - but still a minority. So I don't think that we are facing another Nazi regime. Nevertheless you can clearly see similarities between Trump and Hitler behavior. The only difference is that Trump lacks the intellectual capacity (maybe Bannon has it) in order to pull something off that Hitler had done.
I'm sure Obama did things wrong, but all that has already happened, and I fail to see how it's even remotely relevant to actual current events, and it doesn't in any way refute what the parent poster wrote.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conserv...
Here's the key quote "The moves, which include easing a cap on how many stations a broadcaster can own, have opened up lucrative opportunities for Mr. Smith, among them a $3.9 billion bid to buy Tribune Media, another large owner of stations."
Oh, he also failed to do anything about it when a foreign government (Turkey) used violence against protestors on American soil. Hitler never had the opportunity to do that, but he surely would have approved.
Here's a good video from 1947 explaining the whole thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk
Then, I guess Trump learned from the best.
2. Trump is pushing against white supremacy:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/trump-condemns-charlo...
"Trump calls KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists 'repugnant'"
Treating violent white nationalists like just another "political identity" is disingenuous. Like saying ISIS members are "just Muslims".
We treat identity groups with violent tendencies as terrorists (but only prosecute if their skin is brown)
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/trumpcast/2016/06/tru...
I'd be curious whether the historian would offer the same analysis today.
Go read about what lincoln felt about judges.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
"Supreme Court opinions decide only the individual case before the court, Lincoln argued. They do not bind members of Congress or the President in their political actions. It was thus proper for the other branches of government — and for the people — to resist wrong and harmful decisions of the Supreme Court and to seek to have them reversed and overturned. That was simply part of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. …"
Afterwards, they were even more clearly nationalist, but not at all socialist.
I mean, what did Hitler do exactly to redirect the party that you see as not being socialist?
Among the more obvious things, displaced the focus on levelling social and class heirarchy with imposition of the heirarchical doctrine of Führerprinzip, and abandoning any substantive pursuit of the platform plank for confiscation of all non-labor income, and maintaining a robust insistence on the importance of private property and private initiative in industry.
Communists were globalist socialists, Nazis are nationalist socialist. The imposition of the Führerprinzip was pulling power away from the global political regimes supported by the communists into the German one. It's nearly irrelevant with respect to the socialist bit, it's all about the globalist vs nationalist.
>and abandoning any substantive pursuit of the platform plank for confiscation of all non-labor income
What do you think the killing of all those Jews was about? The Jews were stereotypically the wealthy bankers, the 1%ers in today's parlance. One of the first things Hitler did after taking power was run around killing all the communists. Why? Because he believed that the communists wanted to turn over power to international finance regimes (Jewish 1%ers). Obviously the murdering and the racism bits are the key factors for why we hate the Nazis. But murdering and racism aren't what determines whether something is socialist. This was definitely socialism implemented through the eye of a racist.
I'll grant you that Hitler was a hair to the right of Stalin. There was a ghost of private property ownership but the substantive powers of property ownership were held by the government, not by private owners. The government determined what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was distributed, as well as what prices could be charged and what wages would be paid. Does that sound like private property ownership or capitalism or a free market to you? It certainly doesn't sound like it to me.
Don't believe everything everyone says about themselves.
Not without also pointing out that not only are political party names often misleading, and also that the “National Socialist German Workers Party” name was with the party before Hitler and his gang took over the party and threw out its old platform, specifically getting rid of the socialist bits.
Hitler didn't bring socialism to Germany. The party introduced extreme nationalism.
You don't.
BLM and KKK may both be violent, but they are being violent for different reasons. You can condemn the violence without equating them. It is like saying Nelson Mandela and Pablo Escobar are same because they fought government and went to prison.
To you, but the president endorsing a group or legitimizing the cause of another is not irrelevant.
Are we going to associate everyone with their political identity or not? It's unethical to do it only when it's a political identity you disagree with.
Listen up: people, including CEOs, actually can have their own opinions on things. They can decide "hey, I don't want to support this guy who refuses to condemn neo-Nazis". That is hardly an unthinkable prospect.
>Yes there may be some individuals in the organization that have reacted in inappropriate and violent ways, but the organization as a whole is a positive thing.
BLM and especially Antifa are not "positive things." People who chant "Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon" are not people that civilized society should want to associate with. There are some legitimate grievances people of color have about treatment by police, but BLM is not their ally. When Micah Johnson opened fire at a BLM protest and told a hostage negotiator he wanted to kill white people, especially cops... that's not a "positive thing." There are some legitimate grievances any civilized person has against the alt-right, but Antifa who set Berkeley ablaze just because Milo Yanapolis wanted to give a peaceful speech, is not their ally and is not a "positive thing." And it doesn't matter how much of a piece of shit Milo is.
>wholly inappropriate to be the president of the United States.
This we also agree on. I didn't vote for Trump and don't support him now. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to hypocrisy. Trump's comments today were even worse here because he called out white supremacists and neo-Nazis but sort of hemmed and hawed about the alt-right. There's two minds about what the alt-right is. It's either white supremacists, or dumbasses on the internet who like frog memes. Depending on who you ask you'll get one answer or the other. When Trump was asked directly about alt-right he said he didn't know exactly what that was. What he should've done is said it depends on what you mean by alt-right. If you mean people who like memes on the internet, don't care one way or the other about them. If you mean white supremacists, they're assholes. He was most likely this way because the alt-right means a lot to Bannon who almost certainly influenced his speech. It was wrong of Trump.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/suspect-trooper-dea...
Tyrone Harris Jr. fired shots at an unmarked police car, then died in a shootout with the police. He didn't manage to actually kill anyone though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_unrest#Tyrone_Harris_....
Jeffrey Williams shot two police officers in relation to BLM protests and demonstrations in Ferguson. Naturally BLM disavowed him.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/williams-ferguson-p...
Micah Johnson killed 5 officers and wounded several others http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437694/black-lives-mat...
There's a few others, but it's hard to find reliable sources because the mainstream media has, as I explicitly called them out for, avoided associating these acts of violence with their group identities.
Thanks for adding this random made-up idea to the discussion.