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I really think that the word "billionaire" needs to stop being used as a bad word. Billionaires are citizens too. They are bound (imperfectly) by laws. Therefo

I really think that the word "billionaire" needs to stop being used as a bad word. Billionaires are citizens too. They are bound (imperfectly) by laws. Therefore they too encounter situations where practicing civil disobedience makes sense.

j2kun 6y ago
I recall the quote from Thoreau, saying we must also stand up to those "who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity." The point of the essay is to exhibit disobedience to government when that government is perpetrating injustice. Somehow halting the production of luxury cars for a few more weeks, with the explicit intent of trying to save lives, doesn't seem like an injustice to me.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  > Somehow halting the production of luxury cars for a few more weeks, with the explicit intent of trying to save lives, doesn't seem like an injustice to me. Forgive the cliche, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. "Trying to save lives" is the new "think of the children". It's the same mentality that gives us legislation like the EARN IT act. -- The question we should ask is, (1) has the government provided a reasonable justification for placing such limits on commerce, freedom of movement, etc. And (2), is the strategy we're pursuing, from a public health perspective, the right one? My answer to both (1) and (2) is "hell no". The rules our government has ruled out are arbitrary and capricious and are largely based on superstition. Case in point: closures of public parks and beaches. Arguing (2) is out of the scope of this comment but suffice to say that my belief is the negative externalities introduced by our COVID-19 response are far, far worse than COVID-19 itself. -- FWIW, I am not a fan of Musk in general. I am inherently suspicious of people that are trying to save humanity. As we have seen with Musk - for example, how Tesla factory workers are treated in the pre-COVID-19 era - because he is working tirelessly to save humanity, he is willing to sacrifice actual humans to achieve his goals. Because after all, in the scheme of things, if you're talking about fighting existential threats like climate change or being stuck on one planet, what's the cost of even 100,000 human-lives' worth of wellbeing in comparison? It's not even close. But when it comes to COVID-19, I absolutely think Musk is right. Yes he has made some absolute asinine comments/predictions but his general points about suspension of civil liberties, and statements that COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal as we were told...all of that is totally true in my book.
  - harikb 6y ago
    People who oppose EARN-IT act did provide their reasons. I get it that you don’t believe their intentions. Do you have any plausible theories on this supposedly secret motives of Alameda county officials? You say it isn’t saving lives, so what do you think it is? What do they benefit from keeping a factory closed unnecessarily?
    - tathougies 6y ago
      > supposedly secret motives of Alameda county officials? This is an arbitrary goal post. There need not be any secret motive of the county officials to make their reasoning incorrect or the law not right. Their motives could be completely public and still scrutinized and found to be incorrect.
    - denkmoon 6y ago
      It is simple cover-your-ass behaviour from low level bureaucrats.
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      > You say it isn’t saving lives, so what do you think it is? I think that they intend to save lives but that their understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the best way to address it is so overly simplistic that the myopic policies they are instituting are going to lead to larger mortality over the long-term. Which is the pattern we see at the broader scale as well when we examine the US' response to the pandemic. So, like I implied above, their intentions are good, but intentions are largely worthless.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    > "Trying to save lives" is the new "think of the children". It's the same mentality that gives us legislation like the EARN IT act. Is not "but what about my freedom" the same thing? This is a nonsense argument. > But when it comes to COVID-19, I absolutely think Musk is right. Yes he has made some absolute asinine comments/predictions but his general points about suspension of civil liberties, and statements that COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal as we were told...all of that is totally true in my book. Forget the nonsense and call it for what it is. It has nothing to do with civil liberty. It has to do with money, power, and influence. People actually suffering and not knowing where their next check comes from, well, we don't really care about them. But when finally the rich software engineers get a little less comfortable, the screeches for freedom would make even the largest eagle blush.
im3w1l 6y ago
It's not about good or bad. It's about power. Billionaires have a shitton of power, and we need rules to rein them in. To protect us from them. That's in the abstract. Let's take this concrete example. Say there is some worker in this factory. They don't want to go to work. They don't feel safe. Now they are torn between two authorities. What happens if they do show up? What happens if they don't show up? Will they be seen as "not a teamplayer"? Will their career stall out compared to their yes-men colleges? Maybe even get fired without any cause given. Half a year later so as not to make it obvious?
- ryankemper 6y ago
  > Let's take this concrete example. Say there is some worker in this factory. They don't want to go to work. They don't feel safe. Now they are torn between two authorities. What happens if they do show up? What happens if they don't show up? Will they be seen as "not a teamplayer"? Will their career stall out compared to their yes-men colleges? Maybe even get fired without any cause given. Half a year later so as not to make it obvious? Yes, I think pretty much exactly that would happen. (I'm not super up-to-date on the CARES act or other legal measures that they might be able to take, or if unemployment pays out to people who "quit" their jobs currently, so there's a small chance that those are options) However my conclusion is that's an example of why forcibly shutting down businesses was a terrible idea in the first place and never should have been done. But yes I totally agree, our governmental systems are not set up to handle these questions. I must confess that when the "flatten the curve" meme started spreading around and the initial 4-5% case fatality rate and 20% hospitalization rate numbers were being given, that I actually believed in flattening the curve and thus initially supported the lockdown. I should have known at the time that the goalposts were going to be moved. In retrospect it's incredibly obvious.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    I think a lot of people are starting to wake up to the threats of “new normal” and how damaging the response has been and continues to be. The math didn’t check out on “Flatten the Curve” from the very start. It is very, very hard not to get caught up in the panic response, and in that moment the sheer number of people who would accuse you of endangering lives for even doubting the response was necessary, correct, proportional, scientific, or even legal, was enormous. In MA ~60% of COVID deaths have been in nursing homes. That’s 3,000 deaths in an extremely narrow population (< 50,000 people) and the state was busy shutting down life as we know it and totally failed the people actually at risk. In NY they sent known COVID cases into their nursing homes. In RI 70% of their total fatalities have been in nursing homes. We need the end of lockdown, we need to halt the drift into totalitarian and draconian tracking measures, and we need strictly targeted and laser focused protections for the at-risk population. As far as TFA, it’s the typical Elon lightning rod effect but the fact is all the other auto manufacturers have reopened, and Alameda County is no hotspot. It should be entirely uncontroversial that Tesla is reopening and in the meantime challenging any continuing shutdown order in court. I doubt a preliminary injunction would be granted based on the required legal standard, although judges have surprised me in the past!
jonstewart 6y ago
Billionaires are indeed citizens and no one is taking away their rights, per se. However, it is my opinion that as a class of people they should not exist (astute readers know how to flag clear opinions so they need not always be noted as such for the sake of brevity). In 2018 the median household income in the US was $63,179 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N; numbers from other sources vary a bit but all around that point), and of course most people don’t have much for savings. $1B : $63,179 :: $15,828 : $1. My household income is quite a bit above the median and puts me in the top few percentiles, depending on how one adjusts for location. I pay a fair bit in taxes. I feel plenty incentivized to work hard; I would like to earn more and have a bit more money. At the same time, I have been incredibly fortunate in a variety of ways. It is difficult for me to see any credible policy rationale for why anyone should have 10,000 times more money than the median American household (and that’s for a modest billionaire). The extralegal advantages that come with such wealth are considerable, and worthy of pejorative usage.
- golemotron 6y ago
  People shouldn't be allowed to be too tall either. No one deserves to be 6'3 when the average height is 5'7. The extralegal advantages that come with such height are considerable and worth correcting.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Aside from the fact that Elon was born into a wealthy family (which is vaguely like having tall genes, I guess?), he can discard his massive wealth at any moment with considerable ease compared to the task of somehow reducing your height from 6'3" to 5'7". He actively chose to accumulate wealth and hold onto it, there are plenty of successful businessmen who aren't billionaires or aspiring billionaires. Are you really going to pick height as a comparison point for being a billionaire? Did tall people take their height from short people? Is height taxed?
  - brandonr49 6y ago
    I think this is a fantastic analogy, except instead of 5'7 and 6'3 it's 5'7 and 50,000' tall. You bet society would start to have some pretty interesting laws if there were a bunch of people running around that were ten thousand times the size of the median person. It would be agreed that people of this size, while capable of incredible things, present a significant problem for the general population and they consume A LOT of resources. Certainly the population would prefer if they were only 1000 feet tall, after all, it's impossible to maintain perspective if your head is in the clouds, far from the median person.

j2kun 6y ago

I recall the quote from Thoreau, saying we must also stand up to those "who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity." The point of the essay is to exhibit disobedience to government when that government is perpetrating injustice. Somehow halting the production of luxury cars for a few more weeks, with the explicit intent of trying to save lives, doesn't seem like an injustice to me.

ryankemper 6y ago
> Somehow halting the production of luxury cars for a few more weeks, with the explicit intent of trying to save lives, doesn't seem like an injustice to me. Forgive the cliche, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. "Trying to save lives" is the new "think of the children". It's the same mentality that gives us legislation like the EARN IT act. -- The question we should ask is, (1) has the government provided a reasonable justification for placing such limits on commerce, freedom of movement, etc. And (2), is the strategy we're pursuing, from a public health perspective, the right one? My answer to both (1) and (2) is "hell no". The rules our government has ruled out are arbitrary and capricious and are largely based on superstition. Case in point: closures of public parks and beaches. Arguing (2) is out of the scope of this comment but suffice to say that my belief is the negative externalities introduced by our COVID-19 response are far, far worse than COVID-19 itself. -- FWIW, I am not a fan of Musk in general. I am inherently suspicious of people that are trying to save humanity. As we have seen with Musk - for example, how Tesla factory workers are treated in the pre-COVID-19 era - because he is working tirelessly to save humanity, he is willing to sacrifice actual humans to achieve his goals. Because after all, in the scheme of things, if you're talking about fighting existential threats like climate change or being stuck on one planet, what's the cost of even 100,000 human-lives' worth of wellbeing in comparison? It's not even close. But when it comes to COVID-19, I absolutely think Musk is right. Yes he has made some absolute asinine comments/predictions but his general points about suspension of civil liberties, and statements that COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal as we were told...all of that is totally true in my book.
- harikb 6y ago
  People who oppose EARN-IT act did provide their reasons. I get it that you don’t believe their intentions. Do you have any plausible theories on this supposedly secret motives of Alameda county officials? You say it isn’t saving lives, so what do you think it is? What do they benefit from keeping a factory closed unnecessarily?
  - tathougies 6y ago
    > supposedly secret motives of Alameda county officials? This is an arbitrary goal post. There need not be any secret motive of the county officials to make their reasoning incorrect or the law not right. Their motives could be completely public and still scrutinized and found to be incorrect.
  - denkmoon 6y ago
    It is simple cover-your-ass behaviour from low level bureaucrats.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    > You say it isn’t saving lives, so what do you think it is? I think that they intend to save lives but that their understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the best way to address it is so overly simplistic that the myopic policies they are instituting are going to lead to larger mortality over the long-term. Which is the pattern we see at the broader scale as well when we examine the US' response to the pandemic. So, like I implied above, their intentions are good, but intentions are largely worthless.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  > "Trying to save lives" is the new "think of the children". It's the same mentality that gives us legislation like the EARN IT act. Is not "but what about my freedom" the same thing? This is a nonsense argument. > But when it comes to COVID-19, I absolutely think Musk is right. Yes he has made some absolute asinine comments/predictions but his general points about suspension of civil liberties, and statements that COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal as we were told...all of that is totally true in my book. Forget the nonsense and call it for what it is. It has nothing to do with civil liberty. It has to do with money, power, and influence. People actually suffering and not knowing where their next check comes from, well, we don't really care about them. But when finally the rich software engineers get a little less comfortable, the screeches for freedom would make even the largest eagle blush.

im3w1l 6y ago

It's not about good or bad. It's about power. Billionaires have a shitton of power, and we need rules to rein them in. To protect us from them. That's in the abstract. Let's take this concrete example. Say there is some worker in this factory. They don't want to go to work. They don't feel safe. Now they are torn between two authorities. What happens if they do show up? What happens if they don't show up? Will they be seen as "not a teamplayer"? Will their career stall out compared to their yes-men colleges? Maybe even get fired without any cause given. Half a year later so as not to make it obvious?

ryankemper 6y ago
> Let's take this concrete example. Say there is some worker in this factory. They don't want to go to work. They don't feel safe. Now they are torn between two authorities. What happens if they do show up? What happens if they don't show up? Will they be seen as "not a teamplayer"? Will their career stall out compared to their yes-men colleges? Maybe even get fired without any cause given. Half a year later so as not to make it obvious? Yes, I think pretty much exactly that would happen. (I'm not super up-to-date on the CARES act or other legal measures that they might be able to take, or if unemployment pays out to people who "quit" their jobs currently, so there's a small chance that those are options) However my conclusion is that's an example of why forcibly shutting down businesses was a terrible idea in the first place and never should have been done. But yes I totally agree, our governmental systems are not set up to handle these questions. I must confess that when the "flatten the curve" meme started spreading around and the initial 4-5% case fatality rate and 20% hospitalization rate numbers were being given, that I actually believed in flattening the curve and thus initially supported the lockdown. I should have known at the time that the goalposts were going to be moved. In retrospect it's incredibly obvious.
- zaroth 6y ago
  I think a lot of people are starting to wake up to the threats of “new normal” and how damaging the response has been and continues to be. The math didn’t check out on “Flatten the Curve” from the very start. It is very, very hard not to get caught up in the panic response, and in that moment the sheer number of people who would accuse you of endangering lives for even doubting the response was necessary, correct, proportional, scientific, or even legal, was enormous. In MA ~60% of COVID deaths have been in nursing homes. That’s 3,000 deaths in an extremely narrow population (< 50,000 people) and the state was busy shutting down life as we know it and totally failed the people actually at risk. In NY they sent known COVID cases into their nursing homes. In RI 70% of their total fatalities have been in nursing homes. We need the end of lockdown, we need to halt the drift into totalitarian and draconian tracking measures, and we need strictly targeted and laser focused protections for the at-risk population. As far as TFA, it’s the typical Elon lightning rod effect but the fact is all the other auto manufacturers have reopened, and Alameda County is no hotspot. It should be entirely uncontroversial that Tesla is reopening and in the meantime challenging any continuing shutdown order in court. I doubt a preliminary injunction would be granted based on the required legal standard, although judges have surprised me in the past!

jonstewart 6y ago

Billionaires are indeed citizens and no one is taking away their rights, per se. However, it is my opinion that as a class of people they should not exist (astute readers know how to flag clear opinions so they need not always be noted as such for the sake of brevity). In 2018 the median household income in the US was $63,179 (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N; numbers from other sources vary a bit but all around that point), and of course most people don’t have much for savings. $1B : $63,179 :: $15,828 : $1. My household income is quite a bit above the median and puts me in the top few percentiles, depending on how one adjusts for location. I pay a fair bit in taxes. I feel plenty incentivized to work hard; I would like to earn more and have a bit more money. At the same time, I have been incredibly fortunate in a variety of ways. It is difficult for me to see any credible policy rationale for why anyone should have 10,000 times more money than the median American household (and that’s for a modest billionaire). The extralegal advantages that come with such wealth are considerable, and worthy of pejorative usage.

golemotron 6y ago
People shouldn't be allowed to be too tall either. No one deserves to be 6'3 when the average height is 5'7. The extralegal advantages that come with such height are considerable and worth correcting.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Aside from the fact that Elon was born into a wealthy family (which is vaguely like having tall genes, I guess?), he can discard his massive wealth at any moment with considerable ease compared to the task of somehow reducing your height from 6'3" to 5'7". He actively chose to accumulate wealth and hold onto it, there are plenty of successful businessmen who aren't billionaires or aspiring billionaires. Are you really going to pick height as a comparison point for being a billionaire? Did tall people take their height from short people? Is height taxed?
- brandonr49 6y ago
  I think this is a fantastic analogy, except instead of 5'7 and 6'3 it's 5'7 and 50,000' tall. You bet society would start to have some pretty interesting laws if there were a bunch of people running around that were ten thousand times the size of the median person. It would be agreed that people of this size, while capable of incredible things, present a significant problem for the general population and they consume A LOT of resources. Certainly the population would prefer if they were only 1000 feet tall, after all, it's impossible to maintain perspective if your head is in the clouds, far from the median person.