California officials reject subsidies for SpaceX over Tesla spat
reuters.com
reuters.com
That’s not an essential activity; it’s just greedily risking California lives to serve luxury car consumers abroad. I’m not surprised that California is none too happy with Elon.
When did this become the norm? It happened sometime in the last decade, this idea that life is the ultimate metric with which to measure the utility of some action.
I agree that life is precious and up there in importance, but I do not agree that it is the most important variable to optimize for. There are things more precious than life, such as freedom. Specifically, freedom that can be guaranteed for the next generation.
I worry that the "save lives" crusaders will eventually win and everyone will be safely enslaved in a brave new world of a super powerful government that doesn't let you do anything except have sex and do recreational drugs.
Once you speak about someone else's — no, life is the most precious part you need to preserve. The reason is simple: any material things can be replaced, but a life, once stopped, cannot be reinstated.
The trouble with deep economy shutdown, though, is that it becomes a trolley problem: do you want to save some more lives today at the risk of having more people die later because of the consequences? I think this is where the war mentality should kick in: we need to fight and have our commanders risk our lives, so that the other people we care about would live. It's not that bad yet, though, except for the medical personnel.
I think Musk could have fared better working with the government to make it feasible to work in the Tesla factories and limit exposure and provide a model for other businesses. Instead he just went ahead and has no guarantee that his employees won't be exposed.
And most importantly driving is a privilege that can be taken away if someone repeatedly fails to comply with the rules. So not really a rational rationale
Business taking insufficient safety measures pose a risk to their employees and the wider community. Due to the broad and delayed nature of the risk and the effort required to deal with it, it's not clear that business will voluntarily take the best course of action.
For the sake of protecting employees from unsafe conditions and protecting the wider community from secondary effects in a timely manner it's better to implement broad measures first and deal with the details later.
The cost of temporary unemployment is nothing compared to the cost of surpassing the capacity of healthcare services.
A persons right to pursue happiness does not trump other people's rights to do the same.
Willing spreading an infectious virus is not an act of nature.
Event still, this isn't HIV we're talking about here, and it will presumably be seasonal going forward. Most people who even contract this will walk away perfectly fine.
There are currently 36 million jobless claims from the shutdowns. How long be before streets everywhere become inundated with freshly homeless people? How long until people riot? When does the shutdown outweigh people's livelihood and freedom?
The shutdown isn't a solution, it's a way to buy time and prevent things from getting worse while we adapt and find solutions.
If you want to shift the debate from whether the shutdown has merit to how long it should last then it's a matter of judging the progress being made.
As for the nature of the virus, it's certainly not as deadly as HIV but it's a lot more infectious. Most people would be fine but if half the population is infected the resulting death toll will be enormous. I wouldn't presume it will be season either, from what I can tell the consensus is that we will be dealing with this until vaccination is widespread.
You can enforce it on how a government responds to natural events, however.
If your answer is no, please make the same argument but replace the word 'mask' with 'pants'.
The argument being made for warheads is the same as that for staying inside: not doing so would pose an outsize danger to others. Whether I agree or disagree isn't the point personally, I'm arguing that the curtailments follow from the same basic premise and are likely legal. We'll see how it plays out.
There is no general Constitutional right to commercial activity.
That would be illegal, but isn't what is happening. An outright ban on all work would certainly be unconstitutional (life liberty, pursuit of happiness etc). But temporarily shutting down a business because of a virus, safety issues, lack of insurance, pollution worries, failure to pay taxes, inadequate lighting in the parking lots, to preserve a crime scene, or because the road out front needs work ... local governments close businesses all the time. So long as the reason is reasonable and the shutdown is temporary the courts will find it acceptable.
If you want to win in court, disobeying a law is generally not the best path. Musk isn't Rosa Parks. Musk doesn't have to be arrested before he can challenge the law in court. By acting like this he isn't helping his case(s). I'm sure his lawyers are pulling their hair out.
Politically, Musk is shooting himself in the foot. What if the local health department says that automotive factory workers must stay 10feet away from each other, all get respirators, get tested twice a day, and must take a month of covid safety training? Those will all be "reasonable" in the eyes of any court. That they would also kill any chance of Tesla turning a profit is political consequence of disobeying previous health orders.
Justice delayed is justice denied. When the courts themselves are grinding to a halt with the lockdown who knows when injunctive relief would arrive?
> I'm sure his lawyers are pulling their hair out.
Ha! With the rest of his shenanigans I’d be impressed if they have any left. The “pedo guy” episode must have caused a few Rogaine scrips.
> Politically, Musk is shooting himself in the foot. What if the local health department says that automotive factory workers must stay 10feet away from each other, all get respirators, get tested twice a day, and must take a month of covid safety training? Those will all be "reasonable" in the eyes of any court. That they would also kill any chance of Tesla turning a profit is political consequence of disobeying previous health orders.
If they target specifically Tesla with rules like that it’d be thrown out for being vindictive and targeted.
If they try to impose those type of rules on the entire State they’ll have a class action of businesses challenging them.
If rules are going to be imposed they need to be debated on facts, written by a legislative body, and signed into law. Not shot from the hip on a daily basis on the current executive’s whims.
One of those isn't in the Constitution, the other two are only protected against deprivation without due process.
This is a public health issue. This is not a civil liberties issue. Don't fall for Musk's hypocritical "FREE AMERICA NOW" nonsense.
Hypothetical:
1) Your cash-flow strapped employer, whose CEO has a history of possible SMI and legally questionable behavior, decides he has the bravery to risk lives and free the economy by opening up his factory against the advice of the state.
2) You, a 50 year old assembly line engineer with a history of smoking, are unable to find a new job because of the pandemic.
Luckily, from the server farm warmth of its reinforcement-learning heart approximation, your employers "allows" those that can work from home to do so. Unluckily for you, you can't do your job from home, so you go to work against your best judgement.
It's either that or be replaced immediately by a younger/healthier person who lost their job weeks ago because their former employer also chose not to plan for a rainy day.
Sound more like a bigger mouse trap.
allowing people and companies to make their own choices about their own well-being
The only definitive evidence that exist because of actual test has a death rate at nearly 10% which we also know isn’t incorrect.
Regardless 1% is high, as well as the hospitalization rate seems to be quite high and for some reason a lot of people are only focused on death when citing these statistics.
Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Minn., a physician in Minnesota posted on his Facebook page on April 15, "Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000."
...
PolitiFact reporter Tom Kertscher wrote, "The dollar amounts Jensen cited are roughly what we found in an analysis published April 7 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading source of health information." [1]
1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...
What is worse: A chance of dying from an illness that is inevitably spreading to all, or... An inevitable loss of jobs that will ensure otherwise healthy people dying from not being able to afford food or a place to live anymore?
Not to mention there is room for more patients in hospitals around where Tesla is at.
> Though a small amount of money, the funding was opposed by organized labor groups. Tesla and SpaceX are both nonunion shops.
California is absolutely within their right to withhold these funds. Musk is well within his right to relocate his businesses to Texas (SpaceX engine facility in McGregor is a ~90 minute drive from Austin, ~2 hrs from Dallas) or another favorable state when the next Gigafactory is sited. Let rational actors go through their motions.
In this example, Tesla and SpaceX have created at least tens of thousands of jobs in the state (Tesla indicates 50k+ if you include supplier related jobs), and California might be cutting off its nose to spite its face over $600k. That’s a very California thing to do, and if Musk loses his shit over that, it’d be a very Musk thing to do.
Our company has shifted production to states that are open, and we've heard they're unlikely to re-open in California at all.
And California, of course, by conditioning distribution of tax funds which should be equally available to every qualifying business on kowtowing to politicians and denying the funds if somebody dares to challenge their policies. That's not how these funds are supposed to work, if they serve any purpose it's not to give Newsom or his minions a leverage to shut up their opponents.