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Following a number of CEOs pulling out of President Trump's American Manufacturing Council and Strategic and Policy Forum, President Trump tweeted that the initiatives have been ended:
Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!
The CEOs of Merck, Intel, 3M, and other companies had already left:
3M Co. Chief Executive Officer Inge Thulin stepped down from the White House's manufacturing council, adding to the corporate exodus as the backlash grows to President Donald Trump's ambivalent response to racially-charged violence in Virginia over the weekend.
Thulin joined the White House panel in January "to advocate for policies that align with our values and encourage even stronger investment and job growth -- in order to make the United States stronger, healthier and more prosperous," the CEO said Wednesday in a statement tweeted by 3M. "After careful consideration, I believe the initiative is no longer an effective vehicle for 3M to advance these goals."
Update: The members of the Strategic and Policy Forum reportedly disbanded the group before President Trump's tweet:
The quick sequence began late Wednesday morning when Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group and one of Mr. Trump's closest confidants in the business community, organized a conference call for members of the president's Strategic and Policy Forum. On the call, the chief executives of some of the largest companies in the country debated how to proceed. After a discussion among a dozen prominent C.E.O.s, the decision was made to abandon the group altogether, said people with knowledge of the details of the call.
Also at Bloomberg:
Trump made the announcement on Twitter, less than an hour after one of the groups was said to be planning to inform the White House that it would break up. [...] Trump appeared to be making an effort to get ahead of the news as the councils began to disintegrate. The strategy forum, which is led by Blackstone Group LP's Stephen Schwarzman, planned to inform the White House Wednesday before making the announcement public, according to another person familiar with the matter, who wasn't authorized to discuss the news publicly.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:57PM (17 children)
Here's Socialism:
The collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers.
If what you are talking about does not include that as a central organizing principle, what you are talking about is NOT Socialism.
Whatever label was applied to Stalinism, that regime was NOT Socialist nor Communist.
It was a top-down consolidation of power.
That is the OPPOSITE of Socialism.
Repeat for all other top-down regimes and their propaganda-based labels.
N.B. The fundamental unit of Socialism is the worker-owned cooperative (or perhaps the individual worker-owner).
...meanwhile, the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea is not democratic nor is it about the people.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:54PM (6 children)
OP was saying the jmorris is not confused, he is just using an incorrect definition which is "just like all socialisim that has ever been tried."
Meaning that real socialism has never been tried, the ownership has always been the government (not the people) owning the means of production with some elites / dictators taking all the wealth.
That's how I read the comment anyway.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:25PM (5 children)
You're still stuck on Cold War propaganda that Socialism is a governmental system.
You need to get over that.
To repeat:
Socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers.
Socialism is an ECONOMIC system.
It is defined by the ownership model in use.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:42PM (4 children)
Mondragon: Originally in the Basque country of Spain.
Started by 6 worker-owners in 1956.
Currently has over 100,000 worker-owners.
Now in 40 countries spanning 5 continents.
100 percent worker-owned.
Doing just fine, thank you very much.
Italy's government allows workers who have been laid off by boom-and-bust Capitalists to use their unemployment insurance payouts to start worker-owned cooperatives.
Ongoing since 1985.
That program change is called the Marcora Law. [google.com]
There are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of such workplaces in Italy now.
They make up a significant portion of the economy there.
Where actual Socialism has been tried, it works just fine.
Yes, it would be nice if this Democracy in the workplace model would expand to government (1 person==1 vote rather than 1 dollar==1 vote).
More people have to realize that they hold the power and they can displace The Oligarchs.
I hold that this can only come with more worker-owned workplaces.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by quietus on Thursday August 17 2017, @03:37PM (3 children)
Mondragon is a cooperative. With cooperatives it's not so much a one worker, one vote organisation as rather a one investor, one vote organisation (independent of the number of shares you buy). A typical cooperative has grown out of some kind of social movement or urge.
In the case of the cooperative I belong to, the inability to buy renewable energy from local electricity companies was the driver. We broke that market open, and are to this day one of the largest operators of wind energy installations in Belgium. The interesting part is that the traditional energy companies are copying this cooperative model -- for example, electrabel, the biggest energy producer in Belgium, part of the Engie multinational, has put its renewable energy business into a cooperative too.
About 4.7 million jobs in the EU are organized in cooperatives [coopseurope.coop], with a total annual turnover of a little more than a trillion euro.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @07:43PM (2 children)
Yes, credit unions, food co-ops, housing co-ops, and electricity co-ops are all examples of other types of cooperatives.
Mondragon manufacturers consumer goods and provides services to its customers, competing with Capitalist companies.
It is a worker-owned cooperative.
It is a different way of organizing the ownership of a workplace.
The word "investor" has no place in describing Mondragon; that is a Capitalist term and Mondragon is a Socialist operation.
In continuous operation since 1956 and having never laid off a worker-owner, Mondragon has become the classic example of how to do a worker-owned cooperative.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday August 18 2017, @03:46PM (1 child)
You react quite emotional with regards to the meaning of the word 'investor'. This might be something cultural -- Mondragon itself is open [mondragon-corporation.com] about it:
This is normal -- apart from the negative dividends principle -- for cooperatives: you pay a certain amount (i.e. you invest) in exchange for shares; you can only exchange these shares for their initial value after a set period of time (6 years e.g.), but as long as you keep those shares, you may receive a dividend on them. Whether or not a dividend is returned to members is decided on a general meeting; all members of the cooperative have an equal vote. The dividend is limited by law (6 percent, in Belgium); another difference with traditional companies.
In my original post I was trying to point out that the "alternative economy" is a bit bigger, and really not that unusual, than your sole example. Finally, socialism -- in the European social-democratic version -- does not consider capital, shares or bonds evil: they're simply a means to an end, subordinate to labour (workers, the human environment). Or at least, that's the theory -- with human fallacy regularly throwing a spanner in the works.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday August 18 2017, @03:53PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:54PM (4 children)
Workers owning the means of production is not necessarily antagonistic to the ideals of Capitalism. Most of that is marketing by people who prefer feudal styles of capitalism, involving top down lordships of financing with the peasant at the bottom living off the crumbs at the behest of their masters, much like has been happening with people like Trump at the top, and the minimum wage crowd at the bottom in America.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @12:12AM (3 children)
Workers owning the means of production is not necessarily antagonistic to the ideals of Capitalism
You clearly don't understand what Capitalism is.
You've indicated that you believe it to be an ideology.
Capitalism is an ownership model.
It consists of people with excess wealth investing money into a business.
Those people expect to make money from money by exploiting the labor of others--while the investors avoid doing labor.
...and Capital is only a representation of labor performed by The Workers.
Without Workers, there is no Capital.
...and in Capitalism, 1 dollar==1 vote.
In Socialism, only labor has value.
There are no outside owners.
Only The Workers have ownership of the means of production.
In Socialism, 1 worker==1 vote.
There's a silly line that goes:
In Capitalism, man exploits man; in Socialism, it's the other way around.
This is repeated by ignorant people who don't understand what Socialism is.
Next time you hear it, ask the moron babbling this nonsense how he could exploit himself if he owned the means of production.
...and it sounds like you are trying to lump in Entrepreneurism with Capitalism.
If you are the only employee and you have no investors, your business is Socialist.
If you have a payroll with non-owner laborers on it, your business is Capitalist.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 17 2017, @01:35AM (2 children)
Is it that simple, though? Is it enough to look at a single point in time to decide?
Ok, answer me this: if I'm the owner of a business that's fully automated**, what am I?
---
** Think expensive robots, not the ones every person can afford.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:48AM (1 child)
Yes, it actually is.
(The 2nd thought was predicated on the 1st, BTW.)
If you have investors who produce nothing within the company, yours is a Capitalist operation.
If you have employees who have no ownership in the company, yours is a Capitalist operation.
If your employees have ownership in the company but it's not 1 worker-owner==1 vote but is instead 1 share==1 vote, yours is a Capitalist operation.
(Probably called an ESOP: Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
Publix grocery stores and Dunn-Edwards Paints are examples.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 17 2017, @04:29AM
Ok, so suppose the following cases:
1. I opened the fully automated enterprise with capital obtained from another business using seriously underpaid labor. When the current (automated) business got up and running well, I sold the previous one.
2. I took a loan form the bank to buy the robots and, lucky enough, I managed to pay the loan with the robots still good.
In both cases, I have no employees now.
In the two cases respectively, am I socialist or capitalist?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:36PM (4 children)
I believe that that's not socialism, but only one particular variety of socialism called syndicalism. Socialism covers many different things, including things like medicare and the Social Security System. Many flavors of socialism have severe problems...but please point me to a governmental system that doesn't. I suspect that there are even variants of socialism that would claim unemployment insurance to be socialist.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @12:22AM (3 children)
You're back to mistaking gov't-run insurance systems for an ownership model.
You are referring to Liberal Democracy.
Sometimes, this is called Social Democracy.
People who are easily confused then call that "socialism".
That's not what it is.
Again: Socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers.
If you're not talking about -ownership-, you're not talking about Socialism.
You need to break free from the Cold War bullshit.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:34AM (2 children)
You seem to have a serious hardon for this rant lately. Hows about this: you get your socialist businesses going and I'll get my capitalist businesses going and we'll let the workers decide for themselves which company they'd rather work for. Cause, ya see, if your idea were so feasible and grand, it would be the predominate business ownership model out there. It's not though. Not anywhere on earth. Never has been. That you can point to one or two successful examples on the entire planet should impress nobody at all.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @04:19PM
I hear they are getting closer to stem cell research which might help brain damage, you should look into it.
I've given up trying to reason with you, you're an ideological zealot who ignores the obvious in favor of your personal worldview. I wish you'd get a clue about how often you are wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17 2017, @08:16PM
There was a time when slave economies were the big thing.
That gave way to Feudalism.
That gave way to Capitalism.
The next step on the way to the ultimate economic system is (non-exploitive) Socialism.
There are tens of thousands of (Socialist) worker-owned cooperatives across the globe.
With the contraction of employment in USA and ever-more-abusive Capitalist workplaces, Socialism/worker-owned co-ops have also become very popular memes.
(You and your ilk, stuck on exploitive employment paradigms, are dinosaurs/outliers.)
The Italian government realized the practicality of the worker-owned coop 3 decades ago and has been nurturing Socialism VERY successfully.
The worker-owners of the Suma corporation in Britain democratically decided that each worker-owner will receive the same pay rate. [google.com]
(They pulled everyone up to the highest pay rate.)
Mondragon has been showing the way forwards since 1956.
Socialism is definitely the wave of the future.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]