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from the do-you-really-want-Donald-Trump's-ear? dept.
The CEOs of Tesla, Uber, and Pepsi have joined President-elect Donald Trump's "Strategic and Policy Forum":
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped three additional high-profile chief executives including Tesla's Elon Musk to join a group that will meet regularly to give input on job creation and the economy.
Trump announced the first batch of CEOs for his "strategic and policy forum" on Dec. 2. The group is led by Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone. Trump's transition team now said the group would expand to include Tesla's Musk, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and Pepsi chief Indra Nooyi.
From the article at The Wrap:
Trump announced the initial 16 members earlier this month, and the group will be chaired by Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman. According to a press release distributed by Trump's transition team, "Members of the 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."
Also at WSJ (paywalled).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by n1 on Saturday December 17 2016, @03:10PM
In the grand scheme of things, these appointments are as irrelevant as they appear, but...
1) I'm sure Trump can see himself in Musk... They both have used large amounts of other people's money with little risk to their own capital and have created a brand around their name. If you enjoy the vision of TSLA, SolarCity and SpaceX that's fine, but don't be ignorant to what they are in practical terms and their actual potential as viable businesses. TBTF is the goal, viable business is secondary. Musk wants to be the next Steve Jobs, his own relevance and importance is what he really cares about.
2) Uber is an interesting business in that they rely on privately owned transport to enable their 'ride sharing/taxi' platform. But their longer goal is to put an end to private ownership of transport, and are now pushing forward with their driverless cars which will enable that. It's not something i've seen really, starting a business looking one direction with the actual direction in a very different one. Perhaps Trump's administration will use that as inspiration.
3) Linda McMahon is to run the 'small business administration' -- Vince McMahon bought the business from his father, disrupted the industry and broke up the territories to become THE big fish in a small pond who doesn't count their public facing talent as employees, despite having contracts which forbid them to take other work. WWE is entertainment, and this is a joke.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17 2016, @03:40PM
> But their longer goal is to put an end to private ownership of transport,
You mean personal ownership. They fully intend to establish a transport monopoly and then extract maximum rent from it.
But even today they exploit information asymmetry with their drivers such that take home pay after expenses is usually less than minium wage. And the people they really suckered, the ones who bought more expensive cars than they would otherwise, expecting to offset the costs by driving for uber, those people are trapped - utterly beholden to uber's ability to cut them off for any reason.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Saturday December 17 2016, @03:49PM
Yeah, I meant personal ownership. Massive difference there, thank you for the correction and elaborating on the point I failed to make.