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I wonder how much their lack of union plays into this. The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes a

I wonder how much their lack of union plays into this. The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes and violence from the UAW. Tesla doesn't have to worry about unions (at least yet), and so they have very centralized factories where an enormous amount of work is done. Probably makes it easier to do everything in the US if you can do it all in one building

porphyra 2y ago
In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump Presidency. Biden was pressured by unions to snub Tesla at the EV summit. This personally offended Elon, who then went to support Trump with all sorts of tactics including buying Twitter to amplify his voice.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump Presidency. Yeah, how dare they do the things that make reactionaries be... reactionary.
  - porphyra 2y ago
    The democrats also tried to pass legislation in 2021 that excludes Tesla from an EV credit due to it being not built by unions, even though Tesla has by far the largest share of electric vehicles and is the most productive and innovative company in this sector.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      Yeah we wouldn't want the people making the product having representation and getting a larger share of the take on the sale of said product.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - rat87 2y ago
      Yeah because they were anti union. It wasn't because of any personal dislike of Elon. And it was inevitable that the more mainstream automakers would sell more evs then Tesla as EVs became a larger and larger share of cars sold. Granted it's taking longer than expected but Tesla is no longer the majority even if it's overall has a large plurality but falling pretty fast
      - lenerdenator 2y ago
        For guys like that, being pro-union is personal dislike. They see themselves as the smartest, strongest, most clever people in history. They don't need some group moderating their plans, much less one made of people they hired. Any suggestion to the contrary is a strike against the natural order that they perceive reality through.
  - guywithahat 2y ago
    I think there was a lot of pressure on Tesla/Elon to donate and participate more, and higher ups turned pretty hard on him when he didn't. They were pulling the tax credit from Tesla while holding EV summits with everyone but him. I don't think he was being reactionary, I think his hand was forced. Further he really isn't a conservative. He's still running around on X talking about how we need to double the number of H1-B's and other social-left causes. Cutting spending through DOGE is something every Republican has talked about for decades, and I don't think it's a major flip for him to want to do that.
    - iainmerrick 2y ago
      I don't think H1-Bs are really a "social-left cause". They're something that big tech companies like because they get to cherry-pick skilled workers and keep them locked in. On the main political spectrum, I think they're pretty centrist. The right dislikes them because they're immigration in disguise, the left dislikes them because they're indentured servitude in disguise.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      He's incredibly conservative. He very much likes the idea of Neo-feudalism. You have a class that owns everything (of which he's the prime example right now) and then you have a class that labors to rent things from people like him. Those who don't - or can't - play that game are simply not fit to survive. It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots of tech bros are into it.
      - guywithahat 2y ago
        With all due respect, I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about
- ivape 2y ago
  Is Citizen's United the only thing that allowed one person to donate $150 million? This is the obvious flaw. We would need a RICO type framework to identify the basket of vectors that one person/organization can use to funnel money to a candidate. This is a bipartisan issue but I don't know how we can surface the narrative so more people can talk about it.
  - twoodfin 2y ago
    Citizens United has no impact on what an individual can do with his money. It’s purely about corporate spending by entities like IBM, the Sierra Club, or the New York Times Company.
    - TylerE 2y ago
      It does because a rich individual can just start a proxy corp and do whatever.
      - twoodfin 2y ago
        They don’t need to because a rich individual already can use their money for whatever speech they like.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    I think you are confusing Citizens United v FEC (2010) with Buckley v. Valeo (1976). (CU is largely “corporations are people applies in the application of Buckley”.) Though, also, neither decision impacts limitations on donations to candidates, both address limitations on expenditures (in Buckley’s case by non-candidate persons independent of campaigns, by candidates from personal funds, and by candidates in aggregate; CU mostly deals with the first of those where the legal person is a corporation and not a natural person.)
  - porphyra 2y ago
    I agree that allowing elections to be influenced by spending money was a mistake. Campaign spending is way out of control and it reduces our leaders and politicians into desperately begging for donations.
- EricDeb 2y ago
  No one private citizen should be able to hold that much influence
mmooss 2y ago
> The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes and violence from the UAW. That is the story the auto companies like to tell, to make unions look damaging to workers and communities. From what I've read, the migration had a lot to do with race. But regardless, do either of us have any evidence to share? (not me right now)
- guywithahat 2y ago
  The race riots didn't help, but they were largely secondary to the factories leaving. The UAW would never strike at their factory; they would usually go across the street and strike at some significant, shared plant (like an engine factory for multiple vehicles). For a long time, logistic constraints prevented major auto companies from moving too far away, but once they figured it out they started putting each factory in a new, usually right-to-work state, so you could only strike at your factory. Flint went from being the home of GM and having ~14 major auto factories to 3. Similar story for Detroit. Similar things happened in most major industries. The other one I'm familiar with is GE Locomotive, who moved their engine facility to Grove City (which still never unionized), and now has a major facility in Fort Worth as well.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > The race riots didn't help, but they were largely secondary to the factories leaving. That's not what I mean. What I understand was that, in many cities (not just Detroit), racism led to the factories leaving.
    - jsnider3 2y ago
      How does that work? Did GM suddenly decide there were too many black people in Michigan so they moved to Georgia?
      - mmooss 2y ago
        There are several issues of how racism interacted with manufacturing. One is that the auto manufacturers wouldn't hire black people into serious jobs - for a long time, all they could be was janitors, etc. I read one account that they went to local black leaders for recommendations and one person had a graduate degree - CPA or MBA, iirc. They got a dead-end clerical job or something like that. Union workers were often actively hostile, even when union leadership welcomed them. Multiple times they walked out when one black person was hired. Also, local racism crushed the black community, which would be the workforce. Redlining effectively prevented black people from living outside certain neighborhoods and prevented them from getting loans. They ended up packed into these neighborhoods, subject to white slumlords who charged exhorbident rents. Schools were awful. With little education, no money, no access to credit, and even if you overcame all that, no opportunity for career. Don't forget police brutality, race riots against blacks everywhere, lynchings in the South, etc. There is more I'm not remembering atm.

porphyra 2y ago

In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump Presidency. Biden was pressured by unions to snub Tesla at the EV summit. This personally offended Elon, who then went to support Trump with all sorts of tactics including buying Twitter to amplify his voice.

lenerdenator 2y ago
> In the long run, unions can be blamed for this whole Trump Presidency. Yeah, how dare they do the things that make reactionaries be... reactionary.
- porphyra 2y ago
  The democrats also tried to pass legislation in 2021 that excludes Tesla from an EV credit due to it being not built by unions, even though Tesla has by far the largest share of electric vehicles and is the most productive and innovative company in this sector.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    Yeah we wouldn't want the people making the product having representation and getting a larger share of the take on the sale of said product.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rat87 2y ago
    Yeah because they were anti union. It wasn't because of any personal dislike of Elon. And it was inevitable that the more mainstream automakers would sell more evs then Tesla as EVs became a larger and larger share of cars sold. Granted it's taking longer than expected but Tesla is no longer the majority even if it's overall has a large plurality but falling pretty fast
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      For guys like that, being pro-union is personal dislike. They see themselves as the smartest, strongest, most clever people in history. They don't need some group moderating their plans, much less one made of people they hired. Any suggestion to the contrary is a strike against the natural order that they perceive reality through.
- guywithahat 2y ago
  I think there was a lot of pressure on Tesla/Elon to donate and participate more, and higher ups turned pretty hard on him when he didn't. They were pulling the tax credit from Tesla while holding EV summits with everyone but him. I don't think he was being reactionary, I think his hand was forced. Further he really isn't a conservative. He's still running around on X talking about how we need to double the number of H1-B's and other social-left causes. Cutting spending through DOGE is something every Republican has talked about for decades, and I don't think it's a major flip for him to want to do that.
  - iainmerrick 2y ago
    I don't think H1-Bs are really a "social-left cause". They're something that big tech companies like because they get to cherry-pick skilled workers and keep them locked in. On the main political spectrum, I think they're pretty centrist. The right dislikes them because they're immigration in disguise, the left dislikes them because they're indentured servitude in disguise.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    He's incredibly conservative. He very much likes the idea of Neo-feudalism. You have a class that owns everything (of which he's the prime example right now) and then you have a class that labors to rent things from people like him. Those who don't - or can't - play that game are simply not fit to survive. It's a school of thought so old that we barely recognize it anymore, but that's what he wants to return to. Lots of tech bros are into it.
    - guywithahat 2y ago
      With all due respect, I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about
ivape 2y ago
Is Citizen's United the only thing that allowed one person to donate $150 million? This is the obvious flaw. We would need a RICO type framework to identify the basket of vectors that one person/organization can use to funnel money to a candidate. This is a bipartisan issue but I don't know how we can surface the narrative so more people can talk about it.
- twoodfin 2y ago
  Citizens United has no impact on what an individual can do with his money. It’s purely about corporate spending by entities like IBM, the Sierra Club, or the New York Times Company.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    It does because a rich individual can just start a proxy corp and do whatever.
    - twoodfin 2y ago
      They don’t need to because a rich individual already can use their money for whatever speech they like.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  I think you are confusing Citizens United v FEC (2010) with Buckley v. Valeo (1976). (CU is largely “corporations are people applies in the application of Buckley”.) Though, also, neither decision impacts limitations on donations to candidates, both address limitations on expenditures (in Buckley’s case by non-candidate persons independent of campaigns, by candidates from personal funds, and by candidates in aggregate; CU mostly deals with the first of those where the legal person is a corporation and not a natural person.)
- porphyra 2y ago
  I agree that allowing elections to be influenced by spending money was a mistake. Campaign spending is way out of control and it reduces our leaders and politicians into desperately begging for donations.
EricDeb 2y ago
No one private citizen should be able to hold that much influence

mmooss 2y ago

> The auto factories fled Flint/Detroit due to the UAW basically an attempt to limit the scope of strikes and violence from the UAW. That is the story the auto companies like to tell, to make unions look damaging to workers and communities. From what I've read, the migration had a lot to do with race. But regardless, do either of us have any evidence to share? (not me right now)

guywithahat 2y ago
The race riots didn't help, but they were largely secondary to the factories leaving. The UAW would never strike at their factory; they would usually go across the street and strike at some significant, shared plant (like an engine factory for multiple vehicles). For a long time, logistic constraints prevented major auto companies from moving too far away, but once they figured it out they started putting each factory in a new, usually right-to-work state, so you could only strike at your factory. Flint went from being the home of GM and having ~14 major auto factories to 3. Similar story for Detroit. Similar things happened in most major industries. The other one I'm familiar with is GE Locomotive, who moved their engine facility to Grove City (which still never unionized), and now has a major facility in Fort Worth as well.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > The race riots didn't help, but they were largely secondary to the factories leaving. That's not what I mean. What I understand was that, in many cities (not just Detroit), racism led to the factories leaving.
  - jsnider3 2y ago
    How does that work? Did GM suddenly decide there were too many black people in Michigan so they moved to Georgia?
    - mmooss 2y ago
      There are several issues of how racism interacted with manufacturing. One is that the auto manufacturers wouldn't hire black people into serious jobs - for a long time, all they could be was janitors, etc. I read one account that they went to local black leaders for recommendations and one person had a graduate degree - CPA or MBA, iirc. They got a dead-end clerical job or something like that. Union workers were often actively hostile, even when union leadership welcomed them. Multiple times they walked out when one black person was hired. Also, local racism crushed the black community, which would be the workforce. Redlining effectively prevented black people from living outside certain neighborhoods and prevented them from getting loans. They ended up packed into these neighborhoods, subject to white slumlords who charged exhorbident rents. Schools were awful. With little education, no money, no access to credit, and even if you overcame all that, no opportunity for career. Don't forget police brutality, race riots against blacks everywhere, lynchings in the South, etc. There is more I'm not remembering atm.