>This is locking down for the sake of locking down, not an evidence-first safety driven approach. That is something I cannot support.
I hope however you do support respecting the law even in cases where you disagree with a decision.
I hope however you do support respecting the law even in cases where you disagree with a decision.
I listened to the interview and found Elon ridiculously dismissive of the risks and when he started arguing Shanghai's gigafactory not having any employees die of COVID-19 was proof of the shutdown being unnecessary, it became hard to continue listening at all. How many of those workers got infected and went on the increase community spread to non-employees? Why are we only considering employee deaths? It's as willfully ignorant as people saying things like "I don't wear a mask because I don't have any symptoms."
Read the federalist papers and the actual writings of our forefathers. You will be quite surprised. The constitution was framed to prevent the people from being stupid and killing the nation just as much as it was to prevent a monarchy.
> so in free countries the law ought to be king;
> and there ought to be no other.
>
>-Thomas Paine
The fact that someone has questioned legal authority does not mean there is no law being broken. The existence of “freemen of the land”-style tax objectors doesn't mean no law is broken when you fail to pay federal income tax.
Also laws only work as long as the citizens believe in them and civil obedience is a thing. There needs to be good reason for the shutdown and its effects, and many do not agree with the county.
There has been no federal public health order (there's been a federal national defense order to keep meat plans open to promote the spread of the virus, but that's the opposite of a public health order), there are, relevant to the case at hand, state and county orders.
> They've since changed those orders.
Yes, both the state and county orders have been updated over time. What's your point?
> The county has even less authority, especially by a single individual and in contrast to the state.
No, actually, state law makes county public health officers the main authority to issue orders for the control of communicable disease.
> Also laws only work as long as the citizens believe in them and civil obedience is a thing.
Shutdown orders have overwhelming majority support; there is a very loud (predominantly elite) but small minority opposed.
Where do you see this overwhelming majority support? If that were true, there wouldn't be any news about so many violations of these lock-down orders. They would just be arrested and shutdown. But that's not happening is it?
What is the ethical quandary here?
Take a step back, he's a troll juicing his stock price 80% of the time. Read elsewhere where he has a $700B bonus hanging in the balance here, and so how is that not the simplest explanation? There's your "good reason."
I believe the people who say it's still unsafe. If you don't and want or need the work, I think they're hiring in Fremont, or will be soon.
And Elon is not alone in this, he's joined by millions across the state and country that want - and need - to open up to counter the economic disaster that will create far more suffering and chaos. It's an absolute fact that this virus is nowhere near as fatal as first thought in March. Everything has a cost and risks must be weighed. The 3rd leading cause of death in the US is medical errors, but we don't shut down hospitals because of it, do we?
You're free to believe whoever you want and stay inside for your safety, but not everyone has that luxury as they face hunger, suicide, depression, overdoses, diseases, surgeries, domestic abuse and violence, and other life-altering stress that has nothing to do with covid19 and hasn't conveniently stopped because this virus came around. The people want choice, and I believe their freedom to make that choice is of utmost importance.
It seems the simplest explanation is that he really does care about the company and the people as evidenced by his continual investment into his ventures at the risk of bankrupting himself several times.
His care "about the people" is belied by his inability or unwillingness to care for "the people" as the union he is fighting so bitterly would do. Perhaps he really dislikes unions because they take too good of care for their members? Not to put too fine a point on it, but I can think of another prominent American who is proudly waving their negligence at the nation.
he's joined by millions across the state and country that want - and need - to open up to counter the economic disaster that will create far more suffering and chaos
"Want" doesn't protect people against viruses. "Should Elon incur liability for this?" is a question I want to see discussed. To be sure, there is chatter in DC about giving employers immunity for this, but nobody other than the Chamber of Commerce will associate their name with it, so I assume politicians know it might be a damaging issue to get behind.
But the virus is here, and again by force of personality this can't be changed. What people are clamoring for is some kind of a safety net, and they've been inculcated with the idea that a job is the only safety net they have, or can control. This is not the be-all end-all, because this is all the government's job, another aspect of the crisis in which they are being negligent (certainly the corporate 'stimulus' didn't involve complicated forms and crashing websites and time limits).
Yes, hunger, suicide, depression, and all the rest are due to the hopelessness that an ineffectual government, what some are calling a failed state, is declining to provide in an emergency. $1200 is a pittance.
The people want choice
There is no "choice" in virus exposure, it is not available. It is not subject to politics nor policies. That people believe that it is, is a travesty and I'd say a crime against humanity for convincing people to act against their own interests where their life hangs in the balance. In the service of capitalism, all because people in power don't want to use the tax dollars we pay to provide a less suicidal environment for us with our own money, within which to endure an extended quarantine. So we can stay alive.
Do you really think this should be portrayed as a luxury?
You're right that Elon being a jackass doesn't mean he has to close his factory, but at the same time it can be the reason why he wants to contravene public orders and policy to reopen it.
I have values and reasons that guide my own actions. There’s a much larger space of values and reasoning that I personally don’t adhere to, but consider valid for other people to choose for themselves. Anyone acting according to values or reasoning that falls outside this space is behaving unethically in my view. Whether or not something is ethical depends both on the internal motivation of the actor and the beliefs of the observer, but it’s still a useful concept as long as the relevant people in this formulation are properly udentified.
This variation makes it a shaky basis for law, which is a somewhat blunt instrument. It will inevitably allow some acts that some people view as unethical to go unpunished by the courts, and will probably disallow some acts that some people consider morally required: There’s too much variation in the personal beliefs of the populace for there to be a frontier that neatly encompasses all the guiding principles for their personal actions and also stays within the bounds of what people consider acceptable behavior from others.
>Whether or not something is ethical
You eating a hamburger when I think meat is murder doesn't mean you don't have any ethics.
>There’s too much variation in the personal beliefs of the populace for there to be a frontier that neatly encompasses all the guiding principles for their personal actions and also stays within the bounds of what people consider acceptable behavior from others.
You're describing morality, AKA a shared set of ethics, and people have been fighting to establish their preferred morality on other people (AKA "stop doing that thing I don't want you to do") for as long as people have had shared identities. Everybody who had participated in that history has acted according to a set of ethics, but the way you use the word, whether one of those people has any ethics depends on what side you're on. Not true.
I know I'm pissing in the wind here, but it's simply the wrong word to use.
In fact, deigning to judge an act as either ethical or unethical is implicitly admitting that the actor has agency and therefore reasoning powers: someone’s reasoning cannot be invalid unless it exists.
and that's perfectly fine, however, those disagreements happen in a court. I don't think disagreeing with a county order gives you the right to simply ignore it. If Tesla thinks this is wrong they can sue, which they did, and that should be it.
Is this somehow different? If so, how?
> California Governor Gavin Newsom said Thursday that state-level guidance allowing manufacturing to resume some production didn’t supersede county-level restrictions. The company had unsucessfully tried to argue that Tesla’s production should be considered critical infrastructure.[1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/9/21253127/elon-musk-lawsuit...
In other words that Vox article falsely attributes a quote to Newsom which he didn't say or at least their source doesn't support their claim.
> Nothing in this Order shall be construed to limit the existing authority of local health officers to establish and implement public health measures within their respective jurisdictions that are more restrictive than, or that otherwise exist in addition to, the public health measures imposed on a statewide basis pursuant to the statewide directives of the State Public Health Officer.
Tesla has simply had their lawyers argue nonsense in their filing. It’s a PR move to fool people into believing that they have any semblance of a case.
> drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,
Setting speed limits based on political goals rather than engineering principles costs lives.