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Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them. It just throws cold water on all his grandstanding about being a "free speech absolutist". EDIT: Ever
by phailhaus 4y ago
Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them. It just throws cold water on all his grandstanding about being a "free speech absolutist".
EDIT: Everyone telling me that company employees are different from Twitter are missing the point. We know that. But he clearly doesn't care about free speech "absolutely" when he throws a fit that his employees are criticizing him.
- soheil 4y agoHe never claimed SpaceX is a town square. You're conflating this with his description of Twitter as a de-facto town square where speech shouldn't be policed as harshly and silently as it is now.
- bamboozled 4y agoWas going to say the same thing, goodbye "town square".
- pcmoney 4y agoThere is a difference between a social media platform user experience and an employee you pay to work. In the first case you are hoping they will use their free time on your platform. In the second place you are exchanging money to get them to do what you want them to do instead of what they would otherwise be doing. If I pay a plumber to fix the toilet and he starts bothering me about ANYTHING BUT FIXING THE TOILET... he's gone.
- disintegore 4y agoYou don't employ your plumber full time, perennially. Your episodes of petty tyranny probably do not threaten your plumber's livelihood and/or career. Furthermore if your plumber gives you indications on how to avoid damaging your plumbing, it may not be directly related to "fixing the toilet", but he is nonetheless doing his job.
- pcmoney 4y agoNo but if I am paying him $300/hr and what he is doing is not related to fixing the toilet and is in fact causing me more problems or distracting the electrician who is also costing me $300/hr. Getting rid of him is not petty tyranny. Also I am not threatening his career, he is, he is choosing to take a principled stand and should understand the likely consequences and be willing to accept them.
- disintegore 4y agoIt was a mistake to participate in this absurd analogy to begin with. You can just stretch it until it becomes convenient again. There is simply no comparing the power dynamic between you and an independent contractor to that of an aerospace company and its highly specialized workforce. It's a simple fact that SpaceX chose its CEO's public image over its mission statement and reputation. I hope future prospects realize that there is no stability or long-term personal growth to be found there unless they can keep their heads down and kiss ass.
- JackFr 4y ago> there is no stability or long-term personal growth to be found there unless they [do their jobs].
- disintegore 4y agoWay to tell on yourself there
- d0mine 4y agoCEO who surrenders themselves with yes-men is bad at his job.
- pcmoney 4y agoNo they chose to remove unproductive, toxic people who were distracting away from the people actually doing the work.
- VikingCoder 4y agoI feel like there's a part of the word "absolutist" that you don't get.
- pcmoney 4y agoSo free speech absolutist means you tolerate incoherent yelling in all places at all times? While you're trying to focus and get work done? While you're trying to sleep? At your wedding? At a funeral?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kevingadd 4y agoab·so·lute adjective: absolute 1. not qualified or diminished in any way; total. free adjective: free; comparative adjective: freer; superlative adjective: freest 1. not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes. hmm I wonder what 'free speech absolutist' means. maybe that one's freedom to speak is not qualified or diminished in any way? their freedom to speak is total?
- googlryas 4y agoIsn't this just "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences"? No one is restricting their ability to speak, they are just restricting their ability to work at SpaceX. What's the alternative? Does a free speech absolutist need to never make judgements on what he hears from someone's free speech? If I hear a person say he wants to murder me and my family, do I still need to invite him over for Thanksgiving dinner? Aren't I exerting some form of control of over him if I say you can't come into my home? I think your view of the term "free speech absolutist" may make sense when analyzing the individual word meanings, but doesn't make sense as a phrase, and doesn't align with how self described free speech absolutists view themselves.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
- pardesi 4y agoHe doesnt pay from his pocket. He may be founder & CEO. But he is an employee as much as those five.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> He doesnt pay from his pocket. About 1/6 of the pay comes from his pocket, since he owns about that much of the company. > He may be founder & CEO. But he is an employee as much as those five. His main relationship to Tesla is as it's controlling owner, not an employee, though, yes, he's also an employee. That's pretty different from every other employee.
- pardesi 4y ago> About 1/6 of the pay comes from his pocket Sorry, pls explain me this business logic. 1/6th is his ownership which is mostly tied to stocks. The pay comes from liquidity(arising from sales, selling bonds & any additional stock dilution from the organization) Unless I am completely misinformed about how business accounting works. Ownership doesnt pay unless they sell their stocks to pay(which he did through raising funding through stock hypothication in the past)
- pcmoney 4y agoHe didn't fire them, the president of the company did for harassing their coworkers and wasting time.
- pardesi 4y agoRight. Now that most of us in public know how he thinks & acts, we still believe that the president of the company took action on her own. Since "union" is being supported by the socialists, employers are crushing any organization attempts, thats all.
- omega3 4y agoYou can believe in free speech and paying for the consequences of what is being said. These two aren't mutually exclusive.
- watwut 4y agoGiven the context, it is not much convincing argument.
- nightski 4y agoDeciding not to pay you to say whatever you want has nothing to do with your ability to say it.
- disintegore 4y agoDeciding not to associate with you or provide you with a platform for saying what you want has nothing to do with your ability to say it. Enjoy Substack.
- toolz 4y agoI think you say that with some amount of snark, but both sides of the argument agree with this. It isn't controversial to say twitter isn't legally or socially obligated to give you a platform to practice free speech. The fact Musk wants to turn it into a platform for free speech doesn't imply that he believes twitter has that burden of responsibility, only that he thinks it would be a good thing if they took on that responsibility. It's also not hypocritical for Musk to say twitter would be a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech while also saying workplace communication is not a good platform to take on the responsibility of free speech. Now whether you or I agree with his stance on either of these points is another subject entirely, but it is not hypocrisy as other comments seem to be suggesting.
- seoaeu 4y agoIf the employees had posted on twitter instead, he totally still would have fired them. Musk just wants to be able to speak without consequences, while he’s perfectly happy to impose consequences on speech by his employees
- toolz 4y agoand it still wouldn't be hyprocritical - free speech has nothing to do with being able to say anything somewhere and avoid consequences. It only has to do with protecting your ability to say those things. If you call your friend mean things on twitter and your friend decides to stop talking to you, freedom of speech has not been violated.
- memish 4y agoOnly if you don't understand context and what free speech is.
- onion2k 4y agoBeing fired was a consequence of their free speech. Musk has only ever said he believes people should have absolute freedom of speech; he hasn't said people shouldn't face consequences for what they say.
- AlexandrB 4y agoSo he's in favor of "cancel culture"? It's hard to keep up. Edit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using?
- _-david-_ 4y agoCancel culture is not strictly being cancel for your actions. It is unjustly cancelling somebody. If you hired a baby sitter who said they wanted to kill your child (even if it was a joke) it wouldn't be unjust to fire that person. Nobody would argue that was cancel culture. Obviously, I am not saying what these employees are saying is equivalent, but cancelling somebody for what they say is not always cancel culture.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoMusk is using the definition of free speech where people you agree with face no consequences for speech, and people you disagree with suffer arbitrarily. That is always the definition powerful people use when they say “free speech.”
- specialist 4y agoaka Freemium Speeches™
- onion2k 4y agoEdit: Isn't getting kicked off twitter simply a consequence of saying something that's against twitter's TOS? What definition of free speech is Musk using? Being banned from Twitter is a consequence of your speech, but it's also restricting your freedom to speak. I imagine Musk feels that not restricting people's freedom of speech is more important than the consequence of banning them. That doesn't mean he thinks there should be no consequences for speaking. Just that the consequences shouldn't limit your freedom to speak. In this case, people fired from SpaceX are still free to speak out about Musk's brand and its influence on SpaceX. Their speech has not been restricted.
- zenron 4y agoBeing a free speech absolutist has nothing to do with consequences from invoking your free speech. Everyone wanting free speech despite what type of speech that they legally allow is the price we pay to have it. Invoking it and using ignorant, racist or hatefull language doesn't mean you won't pay a social price for it. It just means we won't throw you in jail using the state for it. But you may just lose your jobs. Thems' the breaks.
- ss108 4y ago"It just means we won't throw you in jail using the state for it. But you may just lose your jobs. Thems' the breaks." This is a misrepresentation of the current "debate" taking place regarding free speech, a debate we have frequently on Hacker News. Nobody is threatened with jail for saying anything in the US, so if that was the primary bone of contention, the debate wouldn't exist. It's more about cancel culture, etc.
- felipesoc 4y agoExactly, it means we won't throw you in jail using the state. But Musk argues otherwise, that Twitter must let people use their platform to say whatever they want. And at the same time, people working for him cannot say whatever they want about his company.
- mlindner 4y agoYou're twisting things a bit. He views Twitter as a virtual extension of the real life town square. Namely that the government/Twitter can't remove you from that real/virtual town square for what you say. SpaceX isn't, nor will it ever be, a town square so the rules don't extend there. (Nor do they extend to Twitter the corporation itself.)
- meatsauce 4y agoThis is highly deceptive. Musk is on record saying that for a town square, you should be able to say whatever you want so long as it is within the letter of the law. Which means, gone will be the days of getting perma-banned for offending some woke crybaby. Musk's companies are not town squares. They are private entities and employees can be fired for insubordination, harassment, or abuse of company resources.
- drak0n1c 4y agoThe goal of the employees was to silence his free speech. Disrupting those censorious efforts by firing them is his dealing with Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. He realized that to preserve a tolerant workplace, intolerance of their rising tide of intolerance was necessary.
- krapp 4y ago>Disrupting those censorious efforts by firing them is Popper’s Paradox in action. No, it isn't. Popper's paradox only applies to the speech of parties which use force, rather than speech, to suppress the free speech of others. It was written in the context of Nazi Germany, and warning about the consequences of what is now called "free speech absolutism," when that freedom is co-opted by authoritarians who don't respect it (in other words, people like Elon Musk.) Trying to suppress speech with more speech is simply how free speech is supposed to work.
- res0nat0r 4y agoTo be fair though, Elon is in no way a "free speech absolutist", he just plays one on Twitter because he wants to freely manipulate the market to line his pockets, but still won't tolerate people critical of him.
- meatsauce 4y agoThis is nonsense. You cannot compare at-will employment with public speech within the letter of the law. Simplified: Woke Cancer Culture != Protected Class
- mlindner 4y ago"Free speech absolutist" doesn't mean "freedom from consequences outside the town square (either literal or virtual)". It just means you won't be forcibly removed from the town square. Just like you can go walk in your Nazi parades in the US, it doesn't mean you won't get fired from your job if people see you in that parade, but you can still keep doing your parades.
- sacrosancty 4y agoWhat are your actual principles there? Does it also apply to freedom to be openly gay? Walk in your pride parades but get fired from your job as a consequence? I don't think you're using any general principles, just picking argument salad to fit your belief.
- meatsauce 4y agoWhy are you comparing apples to hydrazine? You simply cannot compare the employment relationship and open debate within the letter of the law.
- klyrs 4y ago> Everybody knows that he's within his rights to fire them. No, I don't know that. This is explicit retaliation for what appears to be organizing around working conditions. That's protected. https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172915/elon-musk-spacex-letter-fired-legal-protected-speech-nlrb https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/23172915/elon-musk-spacex...
- scollet 4y agoNo one has the right to fire anyone.