4 ms·

I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have some sort of behind the scenes

I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull to make him squeal like a pig, elected office or no. I can only assume they're all actually largely ok with it. I would not have imagined that they just never thought about things like that in general and now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of situation has happened. I have no previously considered reactions or plans for most things and life just smacks me in the face like I've been walking with my eyes closed, but I'm a hapless midwit.

beambot 2y ago
[flagged]
crazygringo 2y ago
Why aren't you assuming the opposite -- that these mythical levers don't actually exist?
noduerme 2y ago
Most people feel like hapless midwits, and we know that most of us actually are. Yet we have this tendency to assume, for some weird reason, that people in important positions have their shit together more than we do. Only in emergencies and times of crisis do we see that no one has their shit together. When we see that, we want to blame it on conspiracy or some sort of 5-dimensional chess being played, because it goes against the safe notion that someone, somewhere, is steering the boat (even if we don't like where they're taking us). But the safer bet is that no one is steering, and no one actually can steer, and that it's incompetence all the way to to the top.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  Yes, accidental, hapless stumbling onto major windfall on multiple occasions clearly is an indication of nothing more than pure, unadulterated, McDuck level of luck and not, I repeat, not indication of anything but simple return of a favor.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  I don't mean to imply that I believe they are excellent people who will take care of us all, nor that there is any illuminati cabal like that other ludicrous comment. I only mean to imply they are people who know how to get what they want, and are willing to do more or less anything. There is a new story that Amazon is going to overtly display the tarrif on every price. That is like 1% of the kind of thing I'm thinking of.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    You've missed the tail end of that story - Trump made an angry call to Bezos, presumably full of threats, after which Bezos announced that they weren't going to do that and totally never planned to.
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      It's still an example of a lever. He didn't pull it but that's a seperate issue and actually exactly my point, why not? Or for that matter, maybe he did pull it, maybe he caused the story to even appear in the first place, or maybe they will do it regardless what he just said. Maybe he has something less obvious he's working on, or maybe he's somehow fine with the tarriff.
    - noduerme 2y ago
      Totally. But Bezos is leaving a lot of money on the table, and none of this makes political sense. Everyone goes down if things get more expensive. Meanwhile I'm imagining a Chrome plugin that shows you the pre-tariff prices on Amazon [rubs hands]
SimianSci 2y ago
There seems to be a (largely American) misconception that people in positions of power are there because they earned such a position through being capable and competent. Most people in power lack critical thinking skills, having earned their position primarily due to the circumstances of their birth and the people they know. It is incredibly rare for someone who is competent enough to weild such levers of power to be granted access to them.
_2d30 2y ago
> I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull to make him squeal like a pig, elected office or no. The "US is an oligarchy, the corporations are in control" was always a false narrative.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
  Huh? If anything, it now should be clearer than ever that it has been for a long time. The only difference is that the oligarch that happens to be benefiting from it is in the public spotlight, associated with and part of the current administration, and at the same time main guy for several publicly owned companies. If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not because they have no power to wield. Good grief. There are times when I read some posts and it is like reading youtube comments under madtv skit 'apple i-rack' asking what it means... how do you not know what it means?
  - _2d30 2y ago
    > If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not because they have no power to wield. Good grief, this is just an axiomatic belief, then. No evidence will sway you one way or another.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
      What part of oligarch is hard to translate into sufficient amount of evidence that does not require me to prove that 1000 million dollars might result in an ability to wield influence that a a simple individual like meself would consider mildly outsized? At this point it is like gravity. You don't have to believe it. It is just is.
      - lawn 2y ago
        Of course they have more influence than you and I. But that doesn't mean they have enough power to influence the president and to correct course.
woah 2y ago
You're so wedded to your overly simplistic and conspiratorial worldview that everything is a secret plan by "the elites", that now you've had to invent a new conspiracy about how they all had a secret plan to lose themselves billions of dollars. Sometimes a stupid guy gets elected by low-information voters, and enacts stupid policies that crash the economy. There isn't any secret illuminati meeting where they can tell him to stop.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  I think you shouldn't try to use the word stupid given this example of your acuity.
- TylerE 2y ago
  Dude, Trump and Elon are literally the Elite. Take your blinders off.
vharuck 2y ago
>now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of situation has happened They know what they would do, if this were under any other president: make phone calls, write editorials in major newspapers, start donating to future political rivals. But this is Trump. He's surrounded by equally corrupt lackeys, and immediately fires anyone showing a shred of morality. The entire federal government does his bidding. He sues news media until they settle with him for millions, signs executive orders banning specific law firms from working with the federal government until they offer him millions in legal services, cuts off money from states that dare defy his will, and demands universities let the federal government investigate all staff in Middle East studies. Any business leader who stands up to him will be crushed. The best way to keep making money is to get on his good side, like Elon. This is literally tyranny. Thank goodness there are plenty of judges willing to stand against the obviously illegal acts.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  What about the voters that vote out members of Congress because they go against Trump?
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  He's chaotic and unpredictable by normal standards, but that seems irrelevant to me. I don't mean the damage isn't consequential. What I mean is he has very obvious and simple motivations and reactions. For the purposes of somehow dealing with him, it's not all that important that "he might do anything". It seems obvious that anyone who wants to deal with him should take that as given and move right past worrying about what he might do and assume that he will, for sure, do anything. But he will do so for completely basic reasons and in response to completely basic stimuli. A bullfighter completely antagonizes the bull into a frothing unthinking frenzy, on purpose, and owns the bull. The bull is actually totally predictable and manipulable, and not because the bull can be reasoned with. Musk and some few on the right are the only ones not being complete idiots about handling him. They are getting everything they want from operating him. The left probably can't play that same trick since they probably can't figure out ways to tell him he's great and get leftie things out of him. Or forget left & right just business where they're all assholes, everyone can't play the same suck-up game. Musk is apparently doing suck-up without looking like a weak begger suck-up. Or he's allowing himself to look like just enough of a beta to keep Trump from feeling threatened, yet, like how his maga hat isn't red. Flouting the uniform, yet, not. It's probably a fine line there. And there is only room for a few magic pretend-beta slots. Trump will simply not give good behavior to very many people no matter what they say, so if all 100 people in his circle were all the perfect suck-up, still only a couple will get what they want and the rest get pissed on. So anyone that didn't happen to win that lottery (or just weren't as good as Musk at that game) will have to go the other way which is poking him with a stick. But they aren't. In the left vs right arena the left just continues to try to use rational arguments and appeals to reason on people who don't give a shit about that. Just who are the dummies when it comes down to that? Though I wasn't originally intending to talk left or right but just about chaos impacting business and these supposed hard nosed rutheless powerful captains of the world just letting it happen. They only care about one thing, and he's burning that one thing by the billions, and they are...what? Nothing? So when I say "I can only assume they are somehow ok with it" I mean there must be things I don't know. Like ultimately this doesn't really hurt Bezos and the like all that much. Like they make money on whatever happens somehow. Or they think longer term and they are ready to absolutely gorge themselves on some kind of bounce back in a couple years because they are somehow positioned exactly right. Like how at a smaller scale how Equifax ultimately made a shit ton of new money as a result of having their web site hacked. Maybe all the Bezos's of the country are just arms dealers who make out no matter what. I don't know. Perhaps everyone's right and they are all tools no better equipped than myself. But I just think that's a kind of stupid take. Some probably are, and some surely are not. I am quite sure I can not solve Apple's Trump problem better than Tim. I simply wonder, what the heck are they doing? It looks from here on the ground like they aren't doing anything. But I can only assume that just means I can't see anything that matter from here, and don't know how to read what I can see.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
Mentioned it a few times in the past, but this is just a big freak out and America having a hard time squaring the fact that by almost all meaningful metrics, their "enemy" has taken the lead. Nobody really knows how to fix it, everyone at the top knows they can't really do much about it, but they have to show "power", because that's all they have left. Nobody wants to "lose" in public's eyes, but that's just how some of the world is starting to think. Honestly, I feel kinda conflicted. From one point, I always looked up to the American values, and way of life. But it's becoming increasingly misaligned with my own values and the things I find important in life.

beambot 2y ago

[flagged]

crazygringo 2y ago

Why aren't you assuming the opposite -- that these mythical levers don't actually exist?

noduerme 2y ago

Most people feel like hapless midwits, and we know that most of us actually are. Yet we have this tendency to assume, for some weird reason, that people in important positions have their shit together more than we do. Only in emergencies and times of crisis do we see that no one has their shit together. When we see that, we want to blame it on conspiracy or some sort of 5-dimensional chess being played, because it goes against the safe notion that someone, somewhere, is steering the boat (even if we don't like where they're taking us). But the safer bet is that no one is steering, and no one actually can steer, and that it's incompetence all the way to to the top.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
Yes, accidental, hapless stumbling onto major windfall on multiple occasions clearly is an indication of nothing more than pure, unadulterated, McDuck level of luck and not, I repeat, not indication of anything but simple return of a favor.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
I don't mean to imply that I believe they are excellent people who will take care of us all, nor that there is any illuminati cabal like that other ludicrous comment. I only mean to imply they are people who know how to get what they want, and are willing to do more or less anything. There is a new story that Amazon is going to overtly display the tarrif on every price. That is like 1% of the kind of thing I'm thinking of.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  You've missed the tail end of that story - Trump made an angry call to Bezos, presumably full of threats, after which Bezos announced that they weren't going to do that and totally never planned to.
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    It's still an example of a lever. He didn't pull it but that's a seperate issue and actually exactly my point, why not? Or for that matter, maybe he did pull it, maybe he caused the story to even appear in the first place, or maybe they will do it regardless what he just said. Maybe he has something less obvious he's working on, or maybe he's somehow fine with the tarriff.
  - noduerme 2y ago
    Totally. But Bezos is leaving a lot of money on the table, and none of this makes political sense. Everyone goes down if things get more expensive. Meanwhile I'm imagining a Chrome plugin that shows you the pre-tariff prices on Amazon [rubs hands]

SimianSci 2y ago

There seems to be a (largely American) misconception that people in positions of power are there because they earned such a position through being capable and competent. Most people in power lack critical thinking skills, having earned their position primarily due to the circumstances of their birth and the people they know. It is incredibly rare for someone who is competent enough to weild such levers of power to be granted access to them.

_2d30 2y ago

> I am kind of surprised that the collection of people at the tops of all the big companies commanding so many billions, don't have some sort of behind the scenes levers they can pull to make him squeal like a pig, elected office or no. The "US is an oligarchy, the corporations are in control" was always a false narrative.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
Huh? If anything, it now should be clearer than ever that it has been for a long time. The only difference is that the oligarch that happens to be benefiting from it is in the public spotlight, associated with and part of the current administration, and at the same time main guy for several publicly owned companies. If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not because they have no power to wield. Good grief. There are times when I read some posts and it is like reading youtube comments under madtv skit 'apple i-rack' asking what it means... how do you not know what it means?
- _2d30 2y ago
  > If the other oligarchs seem to be doing nothing, it is not because they have no power to wield. Good grief, this is just an axiomatic belief, then. No evidence will sway you one way or another.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
    What part of oligarch is hard to translate into sufficient amount of evidence that does not require me to prove that 1000 million dollars might result in an ability to wield influence that a a simple individual like meself would consider mildly outsized? At this point it is like gravity. You don't have to believe it. It is just is.
    - lawn 2y ago
      Of course they have more influence than you and I. But that doesn't mean they have enough power to influence the president and to correct course.

woah 2y ago

You're so wedded to your overly simplistic and conspiratorial worldview that everything is a secret plan by "the elites", that now you've had to invent a new conspiracy about how they all had a secret plan to lose themselves billions of dollars. Sometimes a stupid guy gets elected by low-information voters, and enacts stupid policies that crash the economy. There isn't any secret illuminati meeting where they can tell him to stop.

Brian_K_White 2y ago
I think you shouldn't try to use the word stupid given this example of your acuity.
TylerE 2y ago
Dude, Trump and Elon are literally the Elite. Take your blinders off.

vharuck 2y ago

>now have actually no idea what to do now that this kind of situation has happened They know what they would do, if this were under any other president: make phone calls, write editorials in major newspapers, start donating to future political rivals. But this is Trump. He's surrounded by equally corrupt lackeys, and immediately fires anyone showing a shred of morality. The entire federal government does his bidding. He sues news media until they settle with him for millions, signs executive orders banning specific law firms from working with the federal government until they offer him millions in legal services, cuts off money from states that dare defy his will, and demands universities let the federal government investigate all staff in Middle East studies. Any business leader who stands up to him will be crushed. The best way to keep making money is to get on his good side, like Elon. This is literally tyranny. Thank goodness there are plenty of judges willing to stand against the obviously illegal acts.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
What about the voters that vote out members of Congress because they go against Trump?
Brian_K_White 2y ago
He's chaotic and unpredictable by normal standards, but that seems irrelevant to me. I don't mean the damage isn't consequential. What I mean is he has very obvious and simple motivations and reactions. For the purposes of somehow dealing with him, it's not all that important that "he might do anything". It seems obvious that anyone who wants to deal with him should take that as given and move right past worrying about what he might do and assume that he will, for sure, do anything. But he will do so for completely basic reasons and in response to completely basic stimuli. A bullfighter completely antagonizes the bull into a frothing unthinking frenzy, on purpose, and owns the bull. The bull is actually totally predictable and manipulable, and not because the bull can be reasoned with. Musk and some few on the right are the only ones not being complete idiots about handling him. They are getting everything they want from operating him. The left probably can't play that same trick since they probably can't figure out ways to tell him he's great and get leftie things out of him. Or forget left & right just business where they're all assholes, everyone can't play the same suck-up game. Musk is apparently doing suck-up without looking like a weak begger suck-up. Or he's allowing himself to look like just enough of a beta to keep Trump from feeling threatened, yet, like how his maga hat isn't red. Flouting the uniform, yet, not. It's probably a fine line there. And there is only room for a few magic pretend-beta slots. Trump will simply not give good behavior to very many people no matter what they say, so if all 100 people in his circle were all the perfect suck-up, still only a couple will get what they want and the rest get pissed on. So anyone that didn't happen to win that lottery (or just weren't as good as Musk at that game) will have to go the other way which is poking him with a stick. But they aren't. In the left vs right arena the left just continues to try to use rational arguments and appeals to reason on people who don't give a shit about that. Just who are the dummies when it comes down to that? Though I wasn't originally intending to talk left or right but just about chaos impacting business and these supposed hard nosed rutheless powerful captains of the world just letting it happen. They only care about one thing, and he's burning that one thing by the billions, and they are...what? Nothing? So when I say "I can only assume they are somehow ok with it" I mean there must be things I don't know. Like ultimately this doesn't really hurt Bezos and the like all that much. Like they make money on whatever happens somehow. Or they think longer term and they are ready to absolutely gorge themselves on some kind of bounce back in a couple years because they are somehow positioned exactly right. Like how at a smaller scale how Equifax ultimately made a shit ton of new money as a result of having their web site hacked. Maybe all the Bezos's of the country are just arms dealers who make out no matter what. I don't know. Perhaps everyone's right and they are all tools no better equipped than myself. But I just think that's a kind of stupid take. Some probably are, and some surely are not. I am quite sure I can not solve Apple's Trump problem better than Tim. I simply wonder, what the heck are they doing? It looks from here on the ground like they aren't doing anything. But I can only assume that just means I can't see anything that matter from here, and don't know how to read what I can see.

tokioyoyo 2y ago

Mentioned it a few times in the past, but this is just a big freak out and America having a hard time squaring the fact that by almost all meaningful metrics, their "enemy" has taken the lead. Nobody really knows how to fix it, everyone at the top knows they can't really do much about it, but they have to show "power", because that's all they have left. Nobody wants to "lose" in public's eyes, but that's just how some of the world is starting to think. Honestly, I feel kinda conflicted. From one point, I always looked up to the American values, and way of life. But it's becoming increasingly misaligned with my own values and the things I find important in life.