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Silicon Valley Reels After Trump’s Election

6 points by janeboo 10y ago

hga 10y ago
Carlos Slim's personal blog continues to generally disappoint (weasel wording since I've heard nothing but praise about their election night coverage, which could well be orders of magnitude better than most in both presentation and accuracy). For example, lying is not a policy that will help anyone: Last year, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, published a broad rebuke of Mr. Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States. Trump's been quite explicit about this being a moratorium, until we can figure out a better way to do it. And the "broad rebuke" they linked to was too short in general and too biased in facts vs. feelings to take seriously. Could we at least have an acknowledgement of why anyone would take this proposal seriously? Since we're talking about California, I'll even include a hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_Bernardino_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_Bernardino_attack (an even a sane immigration policy could have prevented, our current regime didn't even try, and we have many particulars about this couple if you doubt it). Some made very big, idealistic proposals — this being, after all, the land of disruption. On Twitter, for instance, Mr. Pishevar said he would fund a campaign to get California to secede from the nation. And this concept is about as old as the nation itself, couching it in terms of idealism and all the good connotations of "disruption" is ludicrous. Although I suppose killing off 6-7 figures of people, as happened the last time this was attempted for real, would qualify as "disruptive". Let me also comment on the economic idiocy of such a proposal: if it wasn't for the fashion and taste preferences of California's ruling classes being enshrined in law and regulations, it could probably feed itself, and could certainly supply its own electrical power and it's big enough, like Texas, to run its own reliable gird. But we all know the exact opposite has happened, and going further a simple change in law could also deprive it of the Alaskan oil which the last time I checked glutted its refineries (and crude oil is not all that fungible, plus it would be much more economic to send Alaska's oil to Japan and thereabouts, they get most of their's from much further away, the law here is a remnant of the '70s insane energy policies). Etc.; without entering a real war, which didn't, for example, happen quickly when Southern states started to succeed, the rest of the nation could bring California very low with simple embargoes like the ones I've mentioned, and that not even getting into what could be done in "cyberspace". The casus belli would be the inevitable, even required refusal of cash strapped California to shoulder it's share of the outstanding nation debt at the time of succession. ADDED: See also this "evergreen" Tweet https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/796229381114859520 https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/796229381114859520 "Media which got everything wrong will now tell you all the things that will happen as a result of the thing they said wouldn't happen."

6 points by janeboo 10y ago

hga 10y ago

Carlos Slim's personal blog continues to generally disappoint (weasel wording since I've heard nothing but praise about their election night coverage, which could well be orders of magnitude better than most in both presentation and accuracy). For example, lying is not a policy that will help anyone: Last year, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, published a broad rebuke of Mr. Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States. Trump's been quite explicit about this being a moratorium, until we can figure out a better way to do it. And the "broad rebuke" they linked to was too short in general and too biased in facts vs. feelings to take seriously. Could we at least have an acknowledgement of why anyone would take this proposal seriously? Since we're talking about California, I'll even include a hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_Bernardino_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_Bernardino_attack (an even a sane immigration policy could have prevented, our current regime didn't even try, and we have many particulars about this couple if you doubt it). Some made very big, idealistic proposals — this being, after all, the land of disruption. On Twitter, for instance, Mr. Pishevar said he would fund a campaign to get California to secede from the nation. And this concept is about as old as the nation itself, couching it in terms of idealism and all the good connotations of "disruption" is ludicrous. Although I suppose killing off 6-7 figures of people, as happened the last time this was attempted for real, would qualify as "disruptive". Let me also comment on the economic idiocy of such a proposal: if it wasn't for the fashion and taste preferences of California's ruling classes being enshrined in law and regulations, it could probably feed itself, and could certainly supply its own electrical power and it's big enough, like Texas, to run its own reliable gird. But we all know the exact opposite has happened, and going further a simple change in law could also deprive it of the Alaskan oil which the last time I checked glutted its refineries (and crude oil is not all that fungible, plus it would be much more economic to send Alaska's oil to Japan and thereabouts, they get most of their's from much further away, the law here is a remnant of the '70s insane energy policies). Etc.; without entering a real war, which didn't, for example, happen quickly when Southern states started to succeed, the rest of the nation could bring California very low with simple embargoes like the ones I've mentioned, and that not even getting into what could be done in "cyberspace". The casus belli would be the inevitable, even required refusal of cash strapped California to shoulder it's share of the outstanding nation debt at the time of succession. ADDED: See also this "evergreen" Tweet https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/796229381114859520 https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/796229381114859520 "Media which got everything wrong will now tell you all the things that will happen as a result of the thing they said wouldn't happen."