That said, I would certainly like to see them improve in this area. I'm a big fan of Tesla, but they are not without their flaws, and working conditions appear to be one of them. They should do better. Not because it somehow conflicts with their mission, but just because it's the right thing to do.
I think that's contradictory. If you are setting out to save the world, but you can't improve factory conditions for your own workers, how have you shown the capability to save the world?
I'm reminded of having a strong AI agent that's given the condition "save humanity". That condition can be satisfied by having no humans on the planet to save.
It's irrelevant. Nothing you do for worker satisfaction in one factory demonstrates whether you can or cannot save the world. There is absolutely no contradiction in treating them separately. This doesn't excuse making workers unhappy, but it's really a separate issue.
It's just not relevant. It's a non sequitur. It's "A is bad, B is good, you're doing A, therefore you can't do B."
A similar argument could be made about the Cold War and McCarthyism. It is simply nonsensical to mistake the goal of "saving the world" with the goal of "don't ever treat anyone slightly questionably ever again".
Why then we don't revert to capturing slaves in poor countries and have them "save the whole" (like, recycle garbage by manual labour) while working 18 hr/day?
We can surely sacrifice their well-being in order to save the world for us, can't we?
You can't use people as slaves unless situation is so that everybody has to become slave. Also, you can't use people as a tool (without their consent).
There's not much to discuss. We've been there already with Hitler's Work Camps and Stalin's GULAG Camps.
> There's not much to discuss.
Since it's just an unrealistic though experiment, I wouldn't dismiss out of hand the idea of "enslaving" everyone for a short time for some kind of amazing outcome.
> We've been there already with Hitler's Work Camps and Stalin's GULAG Camps.
Ha. No. Neither of those gave enormous benefits to the world. And they killed people, not just put them through unpleasant working conditions. Completely noncomparable.
One can argue he had quite similar result in mind to the proposed electric-vechicle-enabling indentured servitude.
I don't think it would be excusable even if he avoided killing people while defaulting to raping and beating the crap out of them.
I'm not defending Tesla's behavior. I'm just pointing out that it's not inherently contradictory.
By adding the "if necessary" bit you turned it into a trolley problem which misses the point entirely.
To paraphrase: "The ends justify the means".
I disagree. That road leads to all kinds of evil.
> if it's necessary to do so
There is no road in the context. It's either sacrifice the small group, or save the whole - that's the entire proposition. If you remove the necessity part, that changes the equation entirely.
There's nothing obvious about it, look at the debates around assassinating Hitler for a historical example: http://theconversation.com/killing-hitler-when-is-assassinat...
As long as we drive on that road on autopilot, no one will notice.
Which position would you take in the line of people to be sacrificed? How much sacrifice are you willing to put up with? Not other people, just you.
I don't think it's necessary in this case, as I think my original comment made quite clear. There just isn't an inherent contradiction between these two things.
Your confidently declared decree of fact here suggests that you have some sort of god view that allows you to see all possible outcomes and interactions in all possible worlds.
It's also possible that sacrificing the people who actually know how to make things in order to facilitate profit and ego will lead to the annihilation of the society.
-- Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kahn.Shit must be real bad over there if they are attempting to unionize, if you notice the only places that still have a union in the US in spite of union busting are where the employer has made it an absolute living nightmare to work, hence the union to back the workers up.
Each of those factors alone can make for a bad work environment, combined it is a living nightmare. Plus the pay is very low, so its not as though you are able to afford much.
I'd never want to do any of those jobs, all three of them have positively awful working conditions, with the last usually resulting in lifelong mental damage from repeated jarring of the head (in addition to injuries), and most school districts & airlines push their teachers and pilots to the edge of the law, whether it be student load (and putting special needs students in classes with overloaded teachers illegally), or leaning on pilots to fly with the absolute minimum fuel they can get by with, despite regulations.
> leaning on pilots to fly with the absolute minimum fuel they can get by with, despite regulations
You mean, asking pilots to use the minimum amount of fuel that is safe. Do you have any evidence that a major airline has ever pressured pilots to use less fuel than the (generous) regulated minimum?
If Tesla's management really believes they are changing the world and having a non-negligible impact, then they might easily justify to themselves that while they aren't the most benevolent of employers, they make up for it with what they do. The problem is that a) people may not even agree their goal is beneficial, or b) accepting the prior as true may not agree the degree to which their actions are beneficial in the end, or c) accepting both the prior as true may not care because those actions may disproportionately affect the person in question.
In any case, I don't think it's as simple as you make it out to be.
"If a tree falls in a forest"
This is not directed at you personally, but the view that humans are all that matters is a kind of species narcissism. In fact, we derive all sorts of benefits from other species, such that if all of them were to disappear, so would we.
We gain a ton of benefits from other animals, obviously. But if we don't exist, then those animals no longer matter. We wouldn't benefit from them anymore. Anyway, this is getting a bit in the weeds.
Forget about competing with China. We can raise the standard of living here for our workers. Union bosses have a seat at the board room table in Germany, why can't we do that here? Unionization (democracy in the workplace) is not just a right, it's an essential need. And it stems from the capitalistic fallacy: "You (the worker/producer) do not control the wages." And it shows in the devastatingly large surplus value that's caused crash after crash and recession after depression and the crippling wealth gap between rich and poor.
From what I heard, they are sitting so often together at the "board room table", that you can't really seperate them from the ordinary bosses ...
I'm not against unions, but I think mandating them is a bad idea. Smells like a recipe for disaster. What if everyone's totally OK with their workplace? Government would be requiring an external (perhaps redundant) bureaucracy (with all its waste and inefficiency), supported from a cut of everyone's paycheck, regardless of whether people wanted it or not.
American workers should realize that they are competing with Chinese workers who will give life and limb to work in the environment that Tesla is providing them. They should either compete or let the Chinese do the work for 1/10th of the cost instead of whining about not getting diet soda in vending machines.
And the Vietnamese worker should feel lucky his job isn't shipped to Bangladesh!...
And the Bangladeshi adult worker should feel lucky his job isn't given to Bangladeshi 9-year-olds!...
Seriously, you are right that if wages go too high and it's convenient for the company, they will take production elsewhere. That's not an argument for workers shutting up and taking scraps; it's an argument for a global minimum wage.
They are realizing this - which is why they elected Donald Trump and his protectionist rhetoric.
> They should either compete or let the Chinese do the work for 1/10th of the cost instead of whining about not getting diet soda in vending machines.
"Let them eat cake."
People are working forced overtime and cannot afford to pay for their housing. Critics like you are just polluting the discourse with these type of dismissive phrases.
This is not an effective way to advocate your point of view.