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FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

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Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#121

Post by [deleted] »

mandevil wrote: post #97
atonse wrote: post #6

I love this idea – of an actual, genuine debate on this topic where an actual corporate executive can make some points (I know they will be Tim-Cook-like spin but debate is better than asynchronous speeches where people talk at each other) Update: I realized I didn't write the second half of my sentence... which makes me sound like a corporate shill. The second half is... AND someone on the other side can immediately…

Eh, real-time live debates are terrible formats for this because they encourage and reward Gish Gallops. This is why scientists stopped debating creationists, because they discovered through repeated trials that it just rewards people who have less shame and are always willing to spout more lies. In theory, the other guy can call BS, but generally it takes a little bit of time, even with Google, to figure out where t…

[deleted]

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#122

Post by appleiigs »

Majromax wrote: post #96
appleiigs wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors have stock. Dividends and stock buybacks move idle cash out of the corporation and back into the hands of investors. Investors now have cash instead of stock. Those investors are better at distributing cash to good investments than Fedex or Apple or Google is. The cash doesn't get redistributed from the non-1% to the 1%. The idle cash that corporations have aren't generating jobs.

> The idle cash that corporations have aren't generating jobs. But that contradicts the claimed raison d'être for the 2018 tax cut: that corporate direct investment was being restrained by corporate income taxes. A call to lower corporate income taxes so more money could flow to investors would have been consistent, both with economic orthodoxy and with the observed outcome.

> more money could flow to investors

Is that a bad thing? I'm thinking it is good.

Why do people want higher taxes for?

I'm thinking lower taxes reduces the amount of money going to the government is good. The government is horribly inefficient due things such as bureaucracy, corruption, etc. No matter where they operate, it hasn't been good. Whether it's US or China, the gov't is not where I think money should go.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#123

Post by malvosenior »

objektif wrote: post #77

Why is everyone on this thread running to rescue NYT? Most of what NYT does in the last 10 years as far as I remember is crony-corporatism and warmongering. And occasionally support social liberal causes to deceive people.

Agreed. They also post continuous anti-tech coverage. They are definitely yellow journalism at this point and I wish they'd stop being voted to the front-page of HN as if they're an impartial source.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#124

Post by Miner49er »

remarkEon wrote: post #55
Miner49er wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FedEx didn't even dispute any of the article. They're just doing some whataboutism. Edit: Can someone downvoting point out where I'm wrong? They say the NYTimes distorted the truth, but give no indication of how.

The "whataboutism" is the crux of the issue though. Everyone does their best to minimize their tax burden every year - this is completely rational behavior. I don't know what point the NYT was trying to make, other than maybe showing that FedEx has some good accountants. The debate that we should be having, and the one that FedEx is perhaps crudely trying to edge us toward, is whether these tax policies actually "hel…

Did you read the NYTimes article? The article is more about how FedEx didn't re-invest the money saved on taxes like they claimed they would. Instead they put used it for stock buybacks and dividends. The NYTimes article was about the very thing you said it should be about.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#125

Post by Grimm665 »

mepiethree wrote: post #64
blhack wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable javascript and your time on the internet will improve substantially.

As someone who writes JavaScript for a living, :(

Good Javascript is like that quote in Futurama:

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#126

Post by ryanmercer »

jmull wrote: post #34
sarcasmatwork wrote: post #2

Expected behavior coming from New York Times. Good on Fedex for pushing back.

Uh, I don't see any substance in the pushback. Is there any? E.g., how does the fact that the NYTimes paid no federal income tax in 2017 address or refute anything in the article? Likewise the other financial facts about the NYTimes doesn't seem related. The times article is about how the tax cuts did not result in the capital investments promised, by FexEx and others. Now, if the times had lobbied for the tax cut an…

>The times article is about how the tax cuts did not result in the capital investments promised, by FexEx and others.

Drive by IND on 70, you can see the capital investment that was one of the promises of this. Hub expansion via construction (similar construction at MEM). The construction at IND is so large you can actually see it from the other side of the airport, I know because I see it every weekday when I pull into the parking lot at work.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/01/26/fedex-credits...

800,000 sqft expansion at IND alone

https://bgabuilders.com/fedex-indianapolis-ob4-project/

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#127

Post by not2b »

pcroh wrote: post #118
crazygringo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FedEx is a $40 billion company -- eight times the size of the NYT. They already have equal footing, and are responding right now, which is why we're reading about it. Only with zero specifics of what they claim the NYT is inaccurate on. So... neither substantive nor particularly entertaining. :(

How many people will read the NYT article compared to this blog post? They don't have equal footing.

But the blog post does not specify how the original article is factually incorrect. So why should anyone pay attention to it? If there are specific errors, let Fedex point them out and ask for specific corrections.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#128

Post by matt4077 »

zaroth wrote: post #112
Someone1234 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is it isn't journalism, it's activism. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Journalists have an ethical responsibility to be honest, but outside of that there's nothing to say that a journalist cannot have a set of beliefs that shape their worldview. In this case you aren't really accusing the NYT of being dishonest, you're saying that their honest opinion isn't ok because you have a different opinion (or…

The difference between the NYT having an opinion and me having an opinion is that only the NYT is protected against lawsuits for libel with a special standard of “actual malice” by the contorted reasoning that anyone they chose to publish an article on must therefore be a public figure. IANAL, but a good example of this is the coverage of the Covington High School students.

The actual malice standard was first defined in a case involving media (the NYT, as it happens), but it applies to anyone, including you.

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#129

Post by pcroh »

not2b wrote: post #127
pcroh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people will read the NYT article compared to this blog post? They don't have equal footing.

But the blog post does not specify how the original article is factually incorrect. So why should anyone pay attention to it? If there are specific errors, let Fedex point them out and ask for specific corrections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor

Re: FedEx responds to The New York Times article from Nov. 17, 2019

#130

Post by nostrademons »

CPLX wrote: post #25

This is stupid. The NY Times, as a business, wasn't a subject of the article. It's not a competition between a media company and a shipping company. It's a piece of journalism. Either that journalism is accurate or it isn't. If it's wrong they should issue a correction, or review how it could be misleading or slanted and offer an alternate perspective. If it's correct they should stand by it. In no event does the wri…

It's an interesting example of the recent shift in public discourse from being focused on truth to being focused on power.

All speech has both subjective emotive content ("power") and objective factual content ("truth"), and the interplay between them is part of what makes speech effective. In times of hegemony, though, the "power" content of speech is downplayed. Power relations within society are taken for granted, and it's pointless to challenge them, because the best case is that your words will be discounted as crazy and the worst case is that that power will be exercised against you, potentially with life-ending consequences. Think about speaking out against a totalitarian government, or being a communist during the McCarthy era.

In times of multipolarity, the "truth" aspect of speech is downplayed, and discourse is all about power. Think of nationalism in the 1870s, or yellow journalism in the early 1900s (right as British hegemony was collapsing into the multipolar world that led up to WW1). Papers would publish plenty of stories that simply weren't true, but the point wasn't truth: it was to boost their circulation numbers and amass more power and influence in a world that was rapidly collapsing into a system of warring powers.

Trump, SJWs, white nationalists, MRAs, cryptocurrency advocates, anti-vaxxers, Russian cyber-trolls, and Democratic Socialists are all other instances of this phenomena: they are small splinter groups vying for mindshare because they see that the existing power structure is collapsing and will leave behind a vacuum, and they all distort the "truth" (which was always distorted before by power relations, but not to this extent) in a bid to gain more followers. Some corporations are catching on, and this FedEx statement is an example of this: note that they posted it as an open letter, on their own company blog, rather than as a press release. They don't care whether the NYTimes actually accepts their debate or not, they want to make the public statement to undermine the legitimacy of the NYTimes as a source of truth itself.

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