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White House loyalty rating for companies
- easton 1y agohttps://archive.ph/ZTCSv https://archive.ph/ZTCSv
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoI've been beating this drum for a while and I'm going to keep doing it. If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029, but any assumption that the current federal government will treat you fairly without taking their side in political battles is a grave strategic error.
- RajT88 1y ago> I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029 That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.
- bilbo0s 1y agoThis. I mean billionaires don't even go to prison for engaging in pedophilia. Which is just about the worst crime you can commit. If anyone thinks liberals or conservatives will put them in prison for bribery, they're being a little naive. This nation is owned by the billionaires. In all honesty, they don't even need to be in alignment with the government. There's next to nothing the government can do to rein in giant banks. If anything, the government has to be certain to make sure the banks are appeased.
- RajT88 1y agoYou could say "moneyed interests". There is a distinction - there are both huge companies and billionaires, and a lot of the companies are owned in part or in whole by the billionaires. But together, they increasingly determine how our political system is run. It all seems to entrenched and at the same time escalating, it feels like it's inevitable it'll all fall apart. I'm surprised we're not seeing more moneyed interests colluding to establish equilibrium which is sustainable.
- yks 1y agoWell, early supporters of fascism do tend to end up in prison, because fascism needs purges. So in a monkey paw way, I wouldn't bet against the current crop of CEOs falling from graces very hard.
- bilbo0s 1y agoThat's not quite how facism works. There are the purges. But it's normally not the corporate or moneyed puppetmasters getting purged, rather it's the political allies of the fascists that get purged. Military and law enforcement leaders who start off as allies have a particularly dismal survival record in these kinds of governments, since they don't have even the ephemeral protection of democratic legitimacy.
- scarface_74 1y agoThe companies that you could accuse of outright bribery are Meta, Twitter, Paramount, and Disney who all gave money that benefited the President directly. Cook kissing ass and giving the President a meaningless trinket, doesn’t quite arise to that level.
- Smeevy 1y agoI've seen values estimated at between $150,000 to $200,000 for that trinket. That's actually a pretty solid bribe for most politicians and that's just what's been visible to the public. For comparison, in AZ we had legislators caught in a sting operation that were selling individual votes for gambling legislation for between $660 to $60,000 in the 1990s. We should not normalize this. That was a outright bribe even if it wasn't as big as what others gave. I wouldn't get off the hook for murder just because I argued that Ted Bundy killed waaaaaaay more people than me.
- scarface_74 1y agoToo late “we” as a country already have. This country left caring about ethics and morals in 2016.
- anigbrowl 1y agoThe fancy glass engraved with Trump's name is a meaningless trinket, but the solid 24karat gold base is about as obvious a tribute payment as you can imagine.
- mcphage 1y agoIt may take longer, but they will, eventually. Maybe not Tim Cook.
- EasyMark 1y agoOr vote in 2028
- causal 1y agoTrying to give something more power because you think it likes power is generally considered risky https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang=en https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang...
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoThe exception, of course, is if you expect to co-benefit - Intel sent their CEO to kiss the ring and now they might be getting free investment money out of the deal. But it's definitely a risky strategy.
- causal 1y agoThat is not an exception, it's exactly what the Tweet is talking about
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoIt's not. The Intel CEO wasn't obeying "in advance", he went to the White House after Trump announced (with absolutely no explanation) that Intel must fire him.
- abullinan 1y agoIt was literally less than 48 hours where the president went from fully negative to fully positive on the intel ceo. I don’t think the ring is all the ceo kissed. That’s the president’s plan for every ceo.
- Hilift 1y agoI doubt anyone will care about this in four years. Society grows accustomed to daily life, as with the Vichy. The job market will be in tatters, similar to what South Africa has now with 40% unemployment. Every time a homeless person steals copper wire from a street lamp in LA, they make $50 from illegal recyclers and it costs taxpayers $10k to fix. $20 million per year, $100 million since 2020. 2029 there will be crime drones swarming LA recording crimes and seeking overly tanned people in real time on YouTube. LA took out a $1 billion loan this year to keep the lights on, and now Denver wants to do the same with zero economic prospects, which is a weird sales pitch.
- jurking_hoff 1y ago[dead]
- actionfromafar 1y agoWow, this stood out. "Only 791 executions were carried out."
- spwa4 1y agoWhich means 90% of people who committed extremely serious crimes in service of the Nazis, serious enough to warrant the death penalty, were gradually let out of prison in the years after that. Of the people not convicted to death, 100% were "forgiven". Not really, but read on. Most people convicted to death (AND Robert Schuman, who was convicted, but later founded the EU) were guilty of helping the Nazis deport and massacre people, and not one or two, hundreds at least. Tens of thousands, some. And the reason for releasing most of them is even worse, if you disregard that half managed to escape. The reason is that the resistance (and remaining Nazis, by the way, who in some places killed literally everyone they could get their hands on in retreat) carried out their own executions in French towns, villages and cities. Without courts, or judgement. Needless to say, pretty much everyone in government was guilty and more and more were getting executed. So a "clean slate" was declared, to prevent the country falling apart entirely, and these people were let go. Not just in France. Spain. Italy. Belgium. Luxembourg. The Netherlands. In countries that were Nazi-leaning (like the Netherlands, Austria or Italy) some government departments (think health, youth, justice and education departments) literally have archives of their own cooperation with the holocaust. Please note that it is now known that quite a few victims of both the courts and the extrajudicial killings were convicted as Nazi collaborators ... BY Nazi collaborators who remained in government and wanted revenge. Needless to say, there was a wave of murders around the time of every release, with suspiciously little effort going to finding the perpetrators.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago>If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. This has been true in every industry and every company for the last 100 years. It's not even illegal, unless you're out there offering quid pro quo bribes.
- perihelions 1y ago> "unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029" I don't understand how anyone could disagree with this assessment. This is the most transparent bribe ever, https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GettyImages-2228840629.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Getty... ("Donald Trump speaks behind an engraved glass disc gifted to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook during an event in the Oval Office of the White House")
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoWhen the reckoning finally arrives the aristocrats will forgive themselves in the spirit of reconciliation and moving on, just like they did after WWII. Plenty of American companies like IBM made tons of money helping the Nazis and then after Berlin fell it turned out they were actually always on the side of freedom and there is absolutely no need to expand the war crimes trials to include collaborators.
- tempodox 1y ago> in 2029 Nope, King of America is a lifetime position.
- EasyMark 1y agoHamberders don't obey even a king's demands, they are a fickle master
- burnt-resistor 1y agoBillionaires (in good graces) won't go to prison for the foreseeable future, but small fish will. Furthermore, the absurdly rich will exploit their newly-expanded corruption via patronage options with executive, legislative, and judicial branches to harm their competitors and enemies. This is why Tim Cook gave 47 a gold award. The system is coming apart at the seams for ordinary people and they're losing faith in the legitimacy of the legal and economic systems. This is how communism and civil wars start.
- 1a527dd5 1y agoI mean at first glance, this doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. But ignoring my initial reaction; I don't think this is any different from lobby groups keeping tabs on what congressmen say vs do. Just this time it's the government tracking which companies are pro-government currently. It's not nice, but this government is transactional at best. While I choose not to play games; it's hard not to play when the other side is the government. This does explain all the random gifts the government is getting.
- moelf 1y ago>I don't think this is any different from lobby groups for starter, lobby groups cannot issue executive orders just start and stop tariffs and government grant willy nilly
- gchamonlive 1y ago> It's not nice, but this government is transactional at best. Is it? Will it remain so? Things sometimes are until they aren't and the difference is sometimes impossible to distinguish. Better not to give fascism the benefit of the doubt it doesn't deserve.
- gammarator 1y agoLobby groups are private actors rating elected Congressional reps. This is government officials rating private actors (with an implied threat to punish those who don’t comply).
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoI don't think "transactional" is the right word at all. There's no durable deal you can make with the government that will stop them from demanding more. The President's open, explicitly stated position is that the American economy belongs to him, and you have no right to conduct your business in a way he doesn't like.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoYou can't appease bullies. They always come back for your lunch money again on some future day. Any promises they make are worthless.
- frogperson 1y agoThis is fascism. The merging of corporations and the government.
- nimbius 1y ago[flagged]
- causal 1y agoI've never understood this line of Marxist rhetoric, isn't like every instance of communist government also a complete merging of state and corporate power? Or is that just more "not true communism"?
- dralley 1y agoLet's say that I granted your point entirely. Would you object to the counter-point that massive authoritarian excess, corruption, and economic inefficiency is a natural end result of Marxist-Leninist thought?
- marcusverus 1y ago[flagged]
- jameslars 1y agoLooking at this in a vacuum, sure maybe it's time to touch grass. Looking at this in the context of everything else going on in the country, maybe there are a lot of warning signs that are pretty hard to ignore?
- marcusverus 1y agoAccepting an anonymous and unverifiable characterization of a spreadsheet as evidence of fascism is not justified by other equally specious claims you've accepted as evidence of fascism.
- 1y ago
- Cuuugi 1y agoI do not like the Trump administration, but they don't exist in a vacuum. It seems the most of their policies are bitter reactions to perceived misdeeds from "the left". Corruption definitely crosses the aisle.
- dralley 1y agoThis is such utter BS. And also, btw, also doesn't exist in a vacuum. The left isn't immune to feeling bitter disgust at titans of industry that openly pay bribes and tributes and lie on camera in service of political objectives in exchange for political and economic favors.
- Cuuugi 1y agoThe left does not equal the democrat party. The right does not equate to the republican party. My point is that there is open levels of collusion with the Biden admin (and Obama earlier) and media corps which have given the Trump admin cover to openly talk about their "favored companies" Relax guy, politicians are not your friends.
- LPisGood 1y ago> My point is that there is open levels of collusion with the Biden admin (and Obama earlier) and media corps What do you mean?
- ryandvm 1y agoWonder if there are any groups out there tracking a "Democracy Loyalty Rating" (i.e. the opposition)...
- bilbo0s 1y agoJust Devil's Advocate, but this being the US, the opposition doesn't necessarily support pure democratic ideals either. It's just that the conservatives are so much further along the authoritarianism scale that the liberals appear to be freedom loving democracy activists by comparison. But I guarantee you, if you were to drop the average US Democratic party politician into Germany, Australia, or Canada, they'd be considered to be so far right of center that people would question whether or not that politician even believes in democracy.
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoThe ratchet effect is real. American liberals have comfortably positioned themselves as the counter to authoritarianism but you'll notice that they never actually make things less authoritarian. They're thrilled to keep the direct power seized by the right, and to expand their own soft power where possible.
- daedrdev 1y agoAhh yes only the left has agency ???
- ratelimitsteve 1y agothat's a wild misreading of the idea that the powerful like to keep and expand their power
- Aunche 1y ago> you'll notice that they never actually make things less authoritarian They tried, but it was blocked by Republicans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_People_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_People_Act
- cryoshon 1y agoThis is fascism. There is no longer separation between the government and private industry as a result of the criminal and out-of-control authoritarian Trump administration. By and large, Silicon Valley and its kingmakers are fully in support of this, many vocally so.
- bananapub 1y agoit really is just continually amazing that the American elite is almost entirely fine with the executive ending the rule of law and the pretence that the President isn't meant to use the powers of office purely to enrich himself and reward favoured courtiers. why has no CEO of any, even medium sized, company come out and just said "fuck this, fuck you, fuck 33% of voters, we'll continue to try to operate like a normal country in our little corner"? I'm sure some absolutely fucking vile sociopaths will buy one share and then launch a shareholder lawsuit demanding the CEO be as pathetic as the rest of them and that Not Bribing The President is a new form of securities fraud, but you need at least one person to loudly say no to this nightmare if you want any hope of it ending.
- jurking_hoff 1y ago[dead]
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- tombert 1y agoI have very strong (and cynical) opinions on why people run companies do this but I was told posting it has made me unemployable so I’ll keep the spicier ones to myself. I think a lot of it comes down to motivations. The people running these companies have very little to gain from acting ethically and a lot to lose.
- linguae 1y agoUnfortunately the executive branch has a lot of power, and many opposed to these wild moves are fearful that openly speaking out will lead to retaliation. Witness the revocation of grant money at targeted universities, for example. Also consider how tariffs are applied and un-applied at moment’s notice. The only way out that I see is for the executive branch to eventually overplay its hand and anger enough MAGA voters to risk losing the House and perhaps the Senate, thus opening the door for the opposition to have the numbers to block legislation and even threaten impeachment over egregious violations of the Constitution.
- ot 1y ago> Trump works transactionally Why can't we just call this corruption? Is there any other, more charitable, interpretation of "transactional"?
- pavlov 1y agoI suppose the charitable interpretation is that Trump favors transactions that offer short-term benefits to the country, rather than America’s traditional investments into long-term goals that tend to be more nebulous (“soft power” etc.) Of course, one look at Trump’s actual transactions in office should dissuade of that notion. After he made the preliminary trade deal with the EU, he bragged on TV that Europeans are investing $600 billion and Trump himself gets to decide where the money goes. It’s baffling that anyone would assume that’s how any of this works, but he clearly thinks the point of these transactions is to get more power and wealth for himself.
- kenjackson 1y agoIt’s amazing that on HN this is not universally condemned. The big learning out of this administration is that the US people aren’t stewards of democracy. But rather fanatics of their “side”.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago[flagged]
- happytoexplain 1y agoSure, but there's a difference between voting for somebody more extreme because the existing options are ineffective, and supporting people with these attributes (pettiness, hatred, fascist-y behavior, incompetence, disrespect of laws/rights/citizens, disrespect of traditional US standards for leadership, etc).
- beej71 1y agoMaybe they haven't, but your other ideas are clearly worse.
- causal 1y agoDemocracy makes problems much more visible. The "other ideas" will just hide problems much better
- Lord-Jobo 1y agoHides them under a mountain of corpses with duct tape over their mouths. That's the only way these autocratic nightmares end.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoWe? You aren't doing anything, you just happen to like what this guy is telling you to do more than the other guys.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
- unclad5968 1y agoIm uninvolved in politics. Can someone explain to me why it's facist that the government is recording who is cooperative and who isn't? That doesn't seem malicious to me, unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies. Even then, lawmakers know who cooperates and who doesn't, they don't need a spreadsheet for it. I'm willing to be enlightened of my ignorance here.
- happytoexplain 1y agoThe administration's vindictiveness and obsession with loyalty is extreme (for the US).
- throwawaysleep 1y ago> Can someone explain to me why it's facist that the government is recording who is cooperative and who isn't? Because your experience with the government in a democracy shouldn't be dependent on whether the person in power decides you have shown sufficient fealty. > unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies. Like they have so far?
- delusional 1y ago> unless you assume it will be used for punishing poorly cooperative companies. You don't have to assume that. The US government has already made that policy quite clear.
- janderson215 1y agoDoes this also apply to Tesla with the previous administration, or is this new dynamic?
- marcusverus 1y agoSure, the Biden admin actively targeted a publicly traded company[0] because their CEO was critical of the administration, but that's not fascism. Fascism is when the bad guys make spreadsheets. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/ev-tax-credit-2024-tesla-model-3-exclusion-biden-administration-1854304 https://www.newsweek.com/ev-tax-credit-2024-tesla-model-3-ex...
- btbuildem 1y agoI've found it helpful to view the current US admin through the lens of organized crime: if you pretend the prez is a mob boss, everything becomes much more congruent and coherent. The incentives align, the not-so-clear motivations make sense, and most definitely the methods.
- Herring 1y agoMore generally I'd say it's a power grab, like a monopoly. Yes abuses always happen, but even if it was all legal and above-board, the main problem is this mentality of "more power for me less power for you". Most Americans love this idea of being powerful, which is why he won the popular vote. The rapes probably even helped him in some quarters. This idea also appeals strongly to a lot of HN - Warren Buffet openly talks about the importance of getting a "moat". It's anti-competitive. In reality a more distributed power structure is much better for overall progress, and even for the monopolist in the long run (Example: Intel, Russia).
- 1659447091 1y ago> Warren Buffet openly talks about the importance of getting a "moat". The moat Buffet talks about is not the moat you appear to think it is. It does not belong in the same category as the other things you mention. Moats are a defensive structure, in Buffet terms, its about being a sustainable business "it’s the low-cost producer in some area, it can be because it has a natural franchise because of surface capabilities, it could be because of its position in the consumers’ mind, it can be because of a technological advantage, or any kind of reason at all, that it has this moat around it." -- the moat is "protecting a terrific economic castle with an honest lord in charge of the castle" [0] A moat is about a business having an "it" factor that sustains it, it's not offensive (attack) feature like the power grabs you talk about are. The important part, that is missed here of Buffet talking about it, is having an honest person in charge: "And then if we feel good about the moat, then we try to figure out whether, you know, the lord is going to try to take it all for himself, whether he’s likely to do something stupid with the proceeds, et cetera. But that’s the way we look at businesses." [0] https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/1995/05/01/morning-session---1995-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting.html https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/1995/05/01/morning-session---...
- tempodox 1y agoJust one tiny step away from China’s social credit score.
- thisisit 1y agoAs bad as this is it will only lead to more brigading about how billionaires like Zuckerberg were talking about being repressed under the Dems/Biden. It just seems the party condemning others regarding first amendment rights isn't that first amendment. And for others yet this is going to be only a "rating" or a list. Nothing bad is going to happen just because the list or rating exists. Right? To them I ask to explain how many points Tim ̶A̶p̶p̶l̶e̶ Cook and Apple got for his gold bar: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-cook-trump-gift/85555805007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-...
- EasyMark 1y agoMore fascism that the people with their heads in the sand will poo poo as a nothingburger. Mixing politics and corporations is a tradition amongst authoritarian governments.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoMost of those people have never lived in an authoritarian/fascist country and experienced it first hand, or if they did, they were one of the beneficiaries and are eager to repeat it in the US.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago> Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for America and the Steel Manufacturers Association. Someone should start a boycott list. I for one will not doing business with these companies any longer.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago>boycott Cisco So are you getting a HAM licence then?
- insane_dreamer 1y agoI don't mean that I'm not going to do anything that involves them, which isn't realistic. But I'm not buying any Cisco equipment or services directly; that's something I have control over.