https://www.thedrive.com/news/26727/tesla-had-3-times-as-man...
Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined
CEO Elon Musk once called California OSHA the 'most stringent' safety organization in the US.
The Musk apologists in particular are very keen to never talk about this, since based on documents produced under oath, Musk himself is extremely vengeful and personally oversees the retaliation.
E.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
There is more of this coming down the pipe in a few weeks, but it's not like the Tesla fans will care. I mean you can basically google "Tesla whistleblower" or "Tesla injury" and get hundreds of results of awful stories that probably don't even happen in sweatshops, but clearly if you're "saving the planet", destroying a few lives is excusable.
Like I've said before, Tesla is to EV what blood diamonds are to jewelry.
You shouldn't put it this way. The point is he was a dick when he didn't need to be. That's not okay. But if there was a button that said "save the planet but destroy a few (<50) lives," it wouldn't be unreasonable to hit it.
Of course, you are assuming the button actually does what it says. Maybe it just kills 50 people and saves a tree.
There mindset reminds me very much of religious men rolling into colonies and being ok with any kind of thing so long as they could maybe save a savages soul or two.
Once the argument hinges on grandiose intentions, damn near anything becomes "reasonable" and that is cause for alarm.
Seriously though, "the end justifies the means" is a perfectly valid argument, and there's no point thinking yourself in circles, trying to bend the rules of logic so that it stops supporting a conclusion you don't like.
Instead, it's better to investigate assumptions and applicability - and there you'll note that humans are far from perfect rational actors, that people plan badly, miscalculate and forget about past costs all the time, and that power corrupts over time - and with those assumptions, a flat-out ban on "the end justifies the means" is now absolutely reasonable. Not because it's not a rational view (it is), but because it doesn't work for humans, with our faulty, hostile wetware.
Do you believe there is a future of humanity in which we don't figure out how to handle this? Does this seem like the kind of thing that can be figured out through group discussion, or is it better approached by strong leadership?
My personal philosophy is that we should operate like a game with players and refs. The refs technically have power, but aren't allowed to tell the players what to do. The players do not get to make the rules.
I think people should very clearly delineate between phases of their life where they are taking responsibility and focusing on society (refing), and phases of their life where they're just enjoying it (playing). No mixing the two. Either serious mode, or fun mode, but the moment you mix the two you get a conflict of interest: players should not ref. Fun people have a hard time being taken seriously, serious people aren't much fun.. it's just a bad thing to mix.
At the same time, refs need to know how to play. If a ref hasn't played for a long time, then their heart can't really be in the game. So refs are somewhat obligated to just let go sometimes, and later maybe they'll come back, remembering that the power is not what's important; the game is what really matters.
Especially because nobody ever completes the original phrase...
"The ends don't justify the means, because the means make the ends."
If you use war to prevent suffering, you get suffering. If you use hate to stop hate, you get hate. etc.
This is a long way of saying, we become the very thing we fight. Humans aren't capable of using "the ends justify the means" without that happening, due to our faulty, hostile wetware... as you note!
Sure, it just tends to be incredibly destructive, like you imply at the end of your comment. For me, this makes it bad.
You really assumed the worst of me. Of course the button does what it says, that's the point of the thought experiment. The point is that it's _not_ what Elon is doing, and it shouldn't be put in that context. The point is, if Elon was doing that, then by all means please continue. The problem is people believe he is saving earth, not that saving earth is a bad idea (even at the cost of many, many lives).
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/1...
Federal OSHA is basically the bare minimum as to what can be implemented. Most states layer on additional regulations as they see fit. California's Department of Labor, "Cal/OSHA", has the most stringent standards beyond federal OSHA's standards.
Honestly the OSHA enforcement I've seen has been a joke. One summer when I worked a landscaping job, my employer was fined $5,000 because I was caught using a weed-eater while wearing shorts. (It was hot out and I didn't care if I got an occasional pebble flung at my shins.) My coworkers had similar stories.
That seems like the point. People learn what risks to take from experience; the employer has more experience than new/young employees, so you force them to care. I "didn't care" initially about breathing drywall dust, but later I changed my mind.
I'm an adult and I can accurately evaluate the risk of pebbles hitting my shins. Unlike dust or toxins, there's no lag between my actions and noticeable harm. Also, the maximum possible harm is limited. Nobody was ever crippled or killed by a weed-eater throwing pebbles at their legs. OSHA's action in this case was entirely unnecessary.
Stories from my coworkers were equally ridiculous. One time the company got fined because a worker was wearing earplugs instead of earmuffs. Both block sound just fine! If anything, the earplugs should work better because safety glasses can break the seal of earmuffs.
Plenty of people get lacerations and other injuries from weedwackers but your employer has a duty of care to you to prevent the possibility of that happening. This has been codified by safety laws.
If you're using a weedwacker in your personal life feel free to do it nude for all I care but as others have pointed out if it's optional and unenforced that effectively means that employers won't do it.
After the fine, I wore shorts for the rest of the summer. So did plenty of other workers. OSHA didn't seem to notice.
As it happened we were being sued by a welding contractor company who'd sent us unqualified personnel who were not making safe steam welds. We had to cut them all out and we all had them around the shop as "trophies". It was an expensive lawsuit -- hundreds of $K. Since he was a nice guy and clearly knew his stuff, when he asked about them we showed him some and told him about firing the contractor. He said, "give me a copy of that lawsuit". And a few days later that was the end of it!
Funny thing about steam pressure vessels: there's no safety barriers against them blowing up (just tons of rules to try to keep that from happening). If that vessel had exploded it would likely have taken out the entire city block, and possibly the elementary school across the street. So we were delighted to follow all the rules. When I was perched on a ladder tweaking some instrumentation I was comforted that that if anything went wrong I'd never know.
Some of the California county toxics agencies on the other hand....some too strict and some, IMHO, excessively lax. Word to the wise: f you want to run a (legal!!) drug lab do it in San Mateo county not Santa Clara County.
I mean crap like the Santa Clara County inspector insisting that our solvents go into metal secondary containment because they are potentially flammable. But they are corrosive and per the MSDS shouldn't be in metal, though plastic is safe. When I asked what she wanted she said, "Are you arguing with me?" In the end I put metal trays (turns out commercial pan pizza pans meet the spec) under the plastic bins.
When we moved in there was a copper pipe from one lab to another marked "nitrogen". The previous tenant had had the building declared safe (we had the paperwork) and moved out. When it was our time to move out (raised a large B round, were hiring like mad!) we couldn't get the facility cleared because of this damned copper pipe. Not only did they want it removed but they wanted remediation (I guess in case nitrogen leaked into the atmosphere). I am a packrat so had the previous tenant's paperwork and only that spared us the agony. We were manufacturing product for human clinical trials there -- the last thing we would want was anything toxic or dangerous around!!
(the city of Santa Clara had a nice map showing where the water came from and we were on well supply. For the reason you mention we had bottled water brought in, something I would normally refuse to pay for. If you live in Santa Clara don't worry -- only the industrial districts have this problem. The residences are on a safe supply, I think it's even hatch hetchy water).