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Comment by aerosmile | Hacker News Reader

The guy is a bad ass. If he wanted to run for President, he would win. I am really not exaggerating - I had a chance to meet him a few years back, and at that time he was the most impressive person I had talked to in person for an extended amount of time (not based on credentials or achievement, but simply based on clarity of thought and new ways of thinking). I also know that PG rates him incredibly highly.

To give you a taste, this is him 3 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjUs7o-TnjY. I remember watching that video the first time and being particularly struck by his insight on how entrepreneurial sales is different from regular sales [1], which I have been able to apply since then on a regular basis.

[1] https://youtu.be/hjUs7o-TnjY?t=2499

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>The guy is a bad ass. If he wanted to run for President, he would win.

It's interesting to note that we had a president like this, and that was Herbert Hoover. Hoover's claim to fame before being elected president was saving Belgium from starvation during WWI[1], the dude deeply understood logistics and had lots of connections so was able to negotiate with all the parties to get humanitarian relief and set up his own NGO. I picked this up from reading this biography of him.[2] Unfortunately he's become only associated with fumbling the Great Depression.

[1] https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1989/spring/h... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/Hoover-Extraordinary-Life-Times/dp/...

Jimmy Carter was the other engineer-president. His post-presidential career has burnished his image a bit but on the whole engineers who become president haven't been too popular.

I've been meaning to read that Hoover biography forever.

A very interesting guy, for sure. People respected his acumen, but no one seems to have liked the guy. Like a surprising number of presidents, he basically lucked into the job.

I thought the humorous podcast American Presidents: Totalus Rankium had an excellent two-parter on him:

Part 1: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-64j34-f045e3 Part 2: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-zsqhc-f1a4af

Hoover didn’t just fumble it, he was absolutely committed to passivity. If only he had shown the same determination that he had for postwar relief.

> Hoover … committed to passivity

That’s a legend that is in fact not true. He actually laid the ground for most of Roosevelt‘s „New Deal“ policies. These policies were likely ill-conceived and turned a bad recession into decade long depression.

https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-herbert-hoover...

https://mises.org/library/great-depression

Please no more CEOs running for president. The government is not a business.

The government is not a business, but people can adapt, learn and re-purpose their skills. I think that the key, mistaken, assumption that you're making in your pushback is that general competence does not exist: people who are good at business are hyper-specialised for that environment and their skills will not carry over to governance. I think some people are really good at very general, cross-domain skills and should be put in positions to use their skills effectively.

Skills yes, but not their worldview. The fundamental duty of government to provide for its people compared to business' insatiable need for profit makes them incompatible.

There is no way for a food stamp program to generate a profit - that's entirely opposite from the point of it! Closer to home, you can tell when corners are getting cut for budget reasons that are penny-wise and pound foolish in a department at a businesses that treats departments that don't generate profit as a cost center, eg the IT department.

Businesses also have the luxury of firing poor workers. Government has no such luxury with their poor.

Please no more lawyers running for president.

A CEO who built or run an actual value-adding business (e.g Flexport) probably has more integrity, intelligence and aptitude than the average lawyer-who-seeks-politics who very often turn out to be snakes.

who would you rather have? a politician...?

After four years of Trump, I know where you're coming from. But you're projecting the moral and ethical values of one person to millions of people.

Here's the thing - I've run startups that had a strong business, and those that haven't. While I would believe that my fundamental values never changed, I can tell you that I was far more tested in situations when we were running out of money than when we had 8 figures in our bank account. For example, how do you design a paid leave policy? With 8 figures in the bank, you really have to be a psychopath not to leaning on the generous side. But when you don't know if you can do the next payroll and the financial security of 100 people hinges on you hitting the next month's target... and then someone tells you about a family member who just passed away... Sometimes there are no good solutions, and you want to avoid getting yourself in those situations. So ironically, a hard-hitting CEO can sometimes lead to a better paid leave policy than a startup run by the most empathetic social worker in the world.

> If he wanted to run for President, he would win

Yes. It would be great to have non-ideological leadership focused on solving practical problems instead of waging culture war.

Please expand on what you mean by "culture war"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

As of late their has been a bit of a disturbing trend to ignore everything before the past 5 to 10 years, that is why I ask such questions.

> waging There's nothing wrong with pushing back, though.

I was an early customer of Flexport and got to talk to him on a number of occasions. I felt the same way about him. Total beast.

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