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> the public doesn't need to be know the budget and shortlist of possible locations for the next Gigafactory Putting aside your other sensible comments, this o

• notahacker 11mo ago
  I mean, the impact of that usually fairly public anyway, especially if it involves subsidies or legislative changes. Companies are free to whinge about legislators they consider obstructive too; Elon loves it! I'll put it another way. Florida is quite happy to send state officials very publicly to small events explicitly focused in reeling in businesses, do a very public presentation about how they don't do socialist things like handouts but do offer them material support in building out their US base in Florida, and then hang around for networking. It's very much part of their jobs, and it's advertised and reported on, and in at least some cases open to the general public. So if I'd wanted to sidle up to Jared Purdue and explain why Florida's state investment fund should underwrite part of the cost of a space propulsion facility near Cape Canaveral, I was at a small event nowhere near Florida where I totally could have done that recently. But if I have no expectations that commercially sensitive data will be protected I'm almost certainly not going to consider following up by sharing financial projections and plans and evidence for his staff to review (and yet would be free to proceed if he can make things happen based purely on 5 minutes conversations or suitcases stuffed with cash) . I suspect Florida voters would prefer their DOT to be able to have that proper follow-up though (or would if the plant was likely to happen in the next 2 years and likely to end up in Florida...) If the public wants more insight into what governments are doing to attract business you get that from budget transparency, formal review processes, publicised state support thresholds, independent anti corruption monitoring etc and of course PR about success stories, not by placing all written correspondence with businesses into the public domain, a measure which will severely limit their ability to [selectively] attract business. First thing I'd want the government to do to attract business is to respect the same confidences everyone else does, and that means where the new plant might be is non public information. Likewise Elon can threaten or offer campaign contributions to a governor over the phone and probably does so, but if he wants to actually do the responsible thing and email lots and lots of arguments and evidence to try to persuade a governor that vetoing a bill is a bad thing, it's probably reasonable to assume that some of that is commercially sensitive (ironically if it's financial or technical details redacted from long emails is actually material to changing the governor's mind, it's probably because the case is better than the generic "yay Gigafactory, yay looser autonomous test regimes" arguments that get trotted out). Better to have a paper trail only suitably cleared people can see than nobody prepared to leave any paper trail at all. And yeah, it's Elon, so there's probably other stuff that has nothing to do with his companies redacted too, but that's another issue entirely
  • piva00 11mo ago
    You are putting "attracting businesses" as a bigger priority than public accountability of the government elected by the public? Why even have the farce of a democracy if the purpose of government in your view is to attract businesses? There are mechanisms for businesses to share confidential information with government officials, and keep it under wraps if the release of them could undermine their businesses, use these mechanisms instead of trying to make government communication opaque to the public in the name of "attracting businesses". More government transparency is never, ever, a bad thing, the few exceptions where it might require transparency to be reduced need to be very clear cut to avoid being abused (as is common in the USA to call "national security" and redact a shit ton of stuff), the less transparent your government is, the bigger chances it's just being corrupted, no one wants that.
    • notahacker 11mo ago
      > You are putting "attracting businesses" as a bigger priority than public accountability of the government elected by the public? Why even have the farce of a democracy if the purpose of government in your view is to attract businesses? If you're going to respond to day old threads, at least try to engage with arguments in good faith. If someone (reasonably) suggests that what the government does to attract businesses is a matter of public interest, then naturally my reply is going to point out that not sharing all their commercially sensitive plans and positions is a good start. At no point have I even hinted that attracting business is government's highest priority. It isn't, but nor is "indiscriminately publishing every email ever sent to a public official" automatically a higher one. There are indeed mechanisms to share confidential information with government officials. One of those mechanisms is that commercially sensitive information shared with public officials gets redacted from emails shared in the public interest. Like all mechanisms it can be abused, but the public is still better off from knowing the general gist that Elon had a lot of email exchanges with the governor, some of which have been published and some of which redacts stuff that was either sensitive business detail or very embarrassing than they are if a similar exchange took place through unofficial channels instead.
      • 11mo ago