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California officials reject subsidies for SpaceX over Tesla spat
- new_realist 6y agoContrary to what Tesla told Alameda County, the Tesla factory is (illegally) in full production, producing cars sitting on Pier 80 for export to Europe and China. https://tslaq.org/letter-from-the-saf-to-alameda-county-officials/ https://tslaq.org/letter-from-the-saf-to-alameda-county-offi... That’s not an essential activity; it’s just greedily risking California lives to serve luxury car consumers abroad. I’m not surprised that California is none too happy with Elon.
- msandford 6y agoSo are we going to ban all cars now? Average automobile deaths are ~30k per year. They're non essential. Let's all stop driving. "do whatever it takes to save lives"
- new_realist 6y agoCOVID deaths are near 90K in the US (so far).
- protomyth 6y ago[deleted - I didn't mean anything like the reply]
- KittenInABox 6y agoDo you have sources that suicide is being counted as covid deaths?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bsder 6y agoDeaths by other causes--flu, pneumonia, clots, strokes, etc. are all being reported as above normal levels. That's a sign that Covid-related cases are likely being undercounted rather than your unsubstantiated assertions of overcounting.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- all2well 6y agoAbout ~16k people are murdered every year in the US, however I would assume you think it's worthwhile to try and do something about that
- umvi 6y ago> do whatever it takes to save lives When did this become the norm? It happened sometime in the last decade, this idea that life is the ultimate metric with which to measure the utility of some action. I agree that life is precious and up there in importance, but I do not agree that it is the most important variable to optimize for. There are things more precious than life, such as freedom. Specifically, freedom that can be guaranteed for the next generation. I worry that the "save lives" crusaders will eventually win and everyone will be safely enslaved in a brave new world of a super powerful government that doesn't let you do anything except have sex and do recreational drugs.
- nine_k 6y agoThis only applies is you speak about your own life. Once you speak about someone else's — no, life is the most precious part you need to preserve. The reason is simple: any material things can be replaced, but a life, once stopped, cannot be reinstated. The trouble with deep economy shutdown, though, is that it becomes a trolley problem: do you want to save some more lives today at the risk of having more people die later because of the consequences? I think this is where the war mentality should kick in: we need to fight and have our commanders risk our lives, so that the other people we care about would live. It's not that bad yet, though, except for the medical personnel.
- throwaway45783 6y agoThat's a whataboutism. And actually driving is essential if you live on the west coast. And we should be doing everything we can to make it so that it's not essential, but it turns out that's a deeply political issue.
- new_realist 6y agoThese cars are not being made for California, but for China. Tesla has adequate inventory for sale in the US.
- throwaway45783 6y agoThe comment I was responding to wasn't actually about the cars being made, but just about driving in general.
- rajangdavis 6y agoThat's not taking the argument in good faith. Car accidents aren't infectious and furthermore, we don't see 30k deaths in the span of 2 months. I think Musk could have fared better working with the government to make it feasible to work in the Tesla factories and limit exposure and provide a model for other businesses. Instead he just went ahead and has no guarantee that his employees won't be exposed.
- dgzl 6y agoRoad rage is infectious but I'm not sure why it matters anyway.
- miguelmota 6y agoYour argument is a logical fallacy. Car accidents are not contagious.
- briandear 6y agoIs it greedy for a worker to want to feed their family? Serious question.
- all2well 6y agoCall me crazy, but I don't think people should be threatened with starvation if they don't work
- burrows 6y agoOk, you’re crazy. Me: Who produces the food if no one works? You: Food producers are essential workers so food production is unaffected. Me: How do people outside the food industry pay for the food without working? You: They don’t. The government taxes future productive efforts of other people to buy the food. Me: But I don’t want the government to take my future dollars and give them away. You: Too bad chump.
- all2well 6y agoA better answer, from your perspective, would probably be that private charity and food banks deal with this problem already, right?
- dgzl 6y agoThey are certainly more effective than Government handouts.
- all2well 6y agoMy point is nobody wants people to starve, neither Elon and his buddies or Gretchen Newsom
- burrows 6y agoThe only problem is the government infringing individual rights by shutting down companies. 1. Agents allocate their own scarce resources. 2. Agents make subjective assessments of Covid-related work risks. 3. Agents who previously preferred saving to consumption are less constrained. Nothing to see here.
- burrows 6y ago> That’s not an essential activity; it’s just greedily risking California lives to serve luxury car consumers abroad. A truly professional pearl clutcher.
- new_realist 6y agoA pandemic is a matter of life and death.
- burrows 6y agoLife is a matter of life and death.
- koolba 6y agoThe illegal act is arbitrarily shutting down the ability to earn a livelihood. When these cases make their way through the courts I’m thinking they’re going to side with the Musks, not the Newsoms.
- Nightshaxx 6y agoWhy shut down jobs if they can be safely done with social distancing? Preventing someone from being to exercise their freedoms and feed their family when they aren't harming others is just illogical panic.
- new_realist 6y agoThe factory was scheduled to reopen in a week, but Elon had to start earlier, before negotiations had completed. I suspect there was a requirement or two by the county he didn’t like.
- galvin 6y agoNobody is arguing against feeding families. Business taking insufficient safety measures pose a risk to their employees and the wider community. Due to the broad and delayed nature of the risk and the effort required to deal with it, it's not clear that business will voluntarily take the best course of action. For the sake of protecting employees from unsafe conditions and protecting the wider community from secondary effects in a timely manner it's better to implement broad measures first and deal with the details later. The cost of temporary unemployment is nothing compared to the cost of surpassing the capacity of healthcare services.
- new_realist 6y agoCalifornia unemployment benefits are generous; in fact, likely more generous than wages from risking your family’s health on the factory floor.
- TylerE 6y agoI would hardly call it an arbitrary shutdown. Pandemic, ya know.
- pkaye 6y agoI live in Alameda County and our new cases have not been dropping for 6+ weeks. Just fluctuating up and down. Yesterday it spiked up a bit though I don't attribute it to Tesla. We haven't really run out of hospital capacity but I wonder where this will lead if the Tesla workers start getting sick. A lot of them also commute in from far off as Modesto for the work.
- koheripbal 6y agoYou can't shut down the entire economy for a disease with a death rate well under 1%. You need to protect and isolate the vulnerable until a vaccine is ready, and get back to living.
- pkaye 6y agoMaybe the compromise is to let they people who willing to take the risk do the jobs with high chance of exposure.
- koheripbal 6y agoThe compromise is allowing people and companies to make their own choices about their own well-being and livelihood.
- clouddrover 6y agoWhen you're dealing with an infectious disease it's not just about your own choices, it's also about how your choices affect others. This is a public health issue. This is not a civil liberties issue. Don't fall for Musk's hypocritical "FREE AMERICA NOW" nonsense.
- soganess 6y agoChoice is compromised because of the pandemic. The imploding job market will cause individuals to make "choices" against their own well being. Hypothetical: 1) Your cash-flow strapped employer, whose CEO has a history of possible SMI and legally questionable behavior, decides he has the bravery to risk lives and free the economy by opening up his factory against the advice of the state. 2) You, a 50 year old assembly line engineer with a history of smoking, are unable to find a new job because of the pandemic. Luckily, from the server farm warmth of its reinforcement-learning heart approximation, your employers "allows" those that can work from home to do so. Unluckily for you, you can't do your job from home, so you go to work against your best judgement. It's either that or be replaced immediately by a younger/healthier person who lost their job weeks ago because their former employer also chose not to plan for a rainy day. Sound more like a bigger mouse trap.
- dgzl 6y agoAka, offering their employees stable work and pay.
- threatofrain 6y agoCalifornia and Fremont have both stated that the Fremont facility is “critical”. It’s Alameda County that’s walking to its own tune, but as Elon basically said goodbye to California, there’s no use for the state to cry over spilled milk.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- proc0 6y agoYou confuse greed with reasonable assessment people will suffer in proportion to how long the economy is shutdown. What is worse: A chance of dying from an illness that is inevitably spreading to all, or... An inevitable loss of jobs that will ensure otherwise healthy people dying from not being able to afford food or a place to live anymore? Not to mention there is room for more patients in hospitals around where Tesla is at.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago> “In my opinion, given the recent threats of the CEO to leave the state of California, and everything else we’ve discussed today, this proposal does not rise to the level for me to feel secure in supporting it,” said Gretchen Newsom, a panel member and the political director of an IBEW electrical workers union local. > Though a small amount of money, the funding was opposed by organized labor groups. Tesla and SpaceX are both nonunion shops. California is absolutely within their right to withhold these funds. Musk is well within his right to relocate his businesses to Texas (SpaceX engine facility in McGregor is a ~90 minute drive from Austin, ~2 hrs from Dallas) or another favorable state when the next Gigafactory is sited. Let rational actors go through their motions.
- vulcan01 6y agoThat is assuming that Musk is a rational person...
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI actually quite enjoy when he’s exuberant, makes it more interesting. Boring leaders are boring. In this example, Tesla and SpaceX have created at least tens of thousands of jobs in the state (Tesla indicates 50k+ if you include supplier related jobs), and California might be cutting off its nose to spite its face over $600k. That’s a very California thing to do, and if Musk loses his shit over that, it’d be a very Musk thing to do.
- augustt 6y agoThat kind of thinking got us #45. Some things are more important than entertainment.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 6y agoClimate change is very important. Extinction level important. Don’t like the horse, run a better horse. This horse is doing pretty well despite the occasional tirade or Twitter meltdown. I can live with that.
- readams 6y agoSounds like this is much more about organized labor trying to act like a mafia than it is about Musk; this is just a convenient excuse. They oppose the funding because it's nonunion.
- smsm42 6y agoBoth sides look bad for me here. Musk for asking $655k of state money when he could obviously afford to foot such a bill on his own - just in April 2019 they raised half a billion, surely they could afford to spend 0.1% of that on "training funds" without milking the taxpayer. I understand that if the funds are available a savvy businessman would take them even if they don't need them - but that doesn't exactly elicit sympathy. And California, of course, by conditioning distribution of tax funds which should be equally available to every qualifying business on kowtowing to politicians and denying the funds if somebody dares to challenge their policies. That's not how these funds are supposed to work, if they serve any purpose it's not to give Newsom or his minions a leverage to shut up their opponents.