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Comment by nocoolnametom | Hacker News Reader

Musk may end up being the most influential person to:

1. Electrify our vehicular infrastructure

2. Get humans to the Moon, if not to Mars

3. Accelerate the unionization of Silicon Valley tech workers

His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat. Just as he's loudly supporting public free speech as long as it's his speech, I predict within a few months of taking over Twitter (assuming he doesn't just eat the penalties for dropping out of the agreement) he'll be loudly proclaiming his support of democracy as long as it's not within his companies.

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Are the people working at SpaceX and Tesla "Silicon Valley tech workers"? I think most of them aren't.

> he'll be loudly proclaiming his support of democracy

Unlikely, given his dependence on China - he'll stay quiet, just like Tim Cook does at Apple.

I rather suspect that Musk's definition of democracy aligns well with the Chinese government.

Why does it feel like I'm on reddit? what kind of nonsensical statement is this?

>Are the people working at SpaceX and Tesla "Silicon Valley tech workers"? I think most of them aren't.

I think they are.

"Silicon Valley" is an idea or abstraction now, rather than a geographic location.

Is it though? I’m a FAANG engineer in NYC and explicitly don’t consider myself an SV engineer.

I should have just left out the "Silicon Valley" part of that, true. Unionization of developers and technology workers is starting, but remains slow because unions are usually formed when the cost of speaking out becomes worth more than enduring the negatives and unreasonably low pay is usually one of the biggest issues for workers and we don't really have pay issues. Musk's approach to treating his employees as cogs in his machines, to the point of becoming belligerent when they assert their human individuality, could be an accelerant in forming unions even in this high-pay sector.

I think anyone in the tech sector that wants to be apart of a union should go work for the government for a few years… then decide if that is what they really want…

Because Union and Government are, of course, as everyone knows, unmistakeably, just another name for the same thing...

Right, right, as everyone knows all unions and all government jobs are pretty much the same, and your phrasing clearly demonstrates your deep experience with both.

Do you guys really just think of unions as just being a good thing? you see no issues with this massive unions at all?

First, have you ever asked (even if just yourself) if anyone sees an issue with massive corporations?

The second thing is that it isn't the right question. Anything make by humans is imperfect. The question is, does union representation lead to better outcomes for a larger number of people? And the answer is pretty clearly yes.

The answer to "massive corporations" isn't another massive corporation. These unions operate in the same manner as corporations but produce nothing. The ones at the top get massive bonuses and get filthy rich from your paycheck.

Also the amount of corruption within these organization is insane. They also lobby like corporations (just ask biden) They ARE "corporations" masquerading as a good cause, does that remind you of any tech giants?

I think they both have a significant number of software engineers but I think astrophysicists, aeronautical engineers, and etc likely fall in a similar bucket as software engineers as far as supply and demand / leverage go.

I'm sure recruiters at Boeing, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic are lighting up phones today.

> as long as it's not within his companies

Where does the idea originate that there has to be a democracy in a private company?

If I were to take my money and start a company, and risk it all, I would go to great lengths (within the law) to make decisions that make my venture successful.

That does involve exercising my rights to choose employees that further this goal, and firing those that don’t.

Democracy in politics where we have an inalienable right to vote, happens in a different domain.

I fail to understand why everyone gets so worked up.

Because he markets himself one way but acts another. As you point out, one can be both a champion of democracy and someone who runs a company with a standard hierarchy, but he doesn’t market himself that way. It’s fugazzi.

> democracy as long as it's not within his companies.

Can you name a single company that operates as a democracy?

John Lewis [1] springs to mind, although I don't know how deep that runs.

[1] - https://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

What features of democracy are you concerned with? It’s not hard to find employee-owned and/or cooperatives.

CHS, Inc up here in St. Paul does almost 40 billion in revenue as a cooperative.

CHS Inc is about as democratic as McDonalds. The farmers can vote, just as McDonald's shareholders can, but I'd bet that the Hispanic laborers they rely on have less of a say over their working conditions than McDonald's workers.

There are many worker coops that operate as a democracy, some of them quite large. From manufacturing to food service to coding to agriculture, they are in nearly every sector.

Maybe this is news to you, but the arrangement isn't that uncommon.

Not the person to whom you were responding but lets refine the question: can you name one at the size and scale of Telsa or SpaceX?

Mondragon has tens of billions in revenue and nearly a hundred thousand workers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

Is that Tesla or SpaceX scale? Seems like it's in the ballpark.

As someone who believes in free speech even for people I despise and opinions I find nauseating, I hate that people like Musk have become the public face of the free speech movement.

Remember when DeVore got fired from Google, and there was a massive "free speech" outcry?

Very odd that it's not happening now. People feel that it's OK to disparage lots of fellow colleagues with bad interpretations of science, but not OK to critique the CEO for specific actions are not a group of people I want to be associated with either, even though I have always been a "free speech" proponent. I just use different terminology.

Why would companies be democratic? That would be an extreme historical rarity

Unions are democratic, employee-run institutions which promote higher involvement of employees in the operations and logistical planning of companies. I'm not referring to Twitter becoming a Co-op, that would indeed be nearly unprecedented.

Well then Elon is openly anti-UAW and for good reasons, go listen to the reasons yourself from his own mouth.

His reason is that they threaten his power. That is all.

UAW seems corrupt enough that anybody would be against it

Maybe take a more critical look at the sources for all the anti-union propaganda.

You just want to exploit people.

Also I expect better from someone who could be a Satanist.

You mean so he can't segregate his factories and have a section known as the "Plantation".

Why would governments be democratic? That would be an extreme historical rarity

Eh, we vote in the top people but government's are mostly run hierarchal just as companies are and shareholders vote in board members who appoint the ceo who then runs the company hierarchal so I honestly don't see that much difference.

Well one difference is that the people who work in the government bureaucracies are still citizens, and are able to vote for or against the leaders that manage them. Workers don’t have a say in who manages the company or how they do it.

> Well one difference is that the people who work in the government bureaucracies are still citizens, and are able to vote for or against the leaders that manage them.

While technically true, this seems laughably inaccurate in practice. Government bureaucracies are almost entirely composed of unelected employees.

"There are 542 federal offices: President, Vice President, 100 U.S. Senators (two from each state), 435 U.S. Representatives, four delegates to the House of Representatives from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, and one Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico."[0]

"Federal Civilian Employment ... Total, All Areas* 1,869,986"[1]

Yes, the latter number includes Dept of Defence civilian employees.

Examination of the situation in a state of your choosing is left as an exercise for the reader, however I suspect the ratios for state employees vs elected officeholders will be similar.

[0] https://www.fvap.gov/info/about-absentee-voting/elections#:~.... [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...

Governments are monopolies. Corporations have to compete, which naturally limits their power. Democracy is a way to limit government power.

Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.

Governments compete with each other as well, and they still have a monopoly on force in the territory they govern. The owners of corporations do not have to compete for power over the corporations they own.

> Autocracy would be better for governments too, if countries were smaller and people could freely move between them.

Not if you value democracy in and of itself.

Yes, they do compete, but changing a country isn't as easy as switching a car brand.

I don't value democracy. I value freedom and prosperity. I think democracy has become too holy to criticize.

I think the perfect world would consist of small autocratic city-states. There would be a single monarch in each city-state who chooses which laws are implemented. Laws would be on Github, everyone could suggest patches or fork them, and the monarch would just have to choose which set of laws they want to implement. Lots of people would collaborate on the laws in an open-source manner. Citizens could easily check which laws are implemented in each city-state, and choose where they want to live. I think something like this would be better than huge countries with democracy.

Nobody competes. This is stupid.

I don't even know how you have survived this far by being so ignorant.

Government is a necessary evil with a monopoly on the initiation of force, and as such a primary concern with government is restraining it. Democracy is all about restraining and also providing a (usually) non-violent pressure valve to avoid revolutions and insurrections that destabilize the entire system or threaten to cause government's restraints on the use of force to be removed.

Unrestrained government was a really significant cause of death in the early 20th century.

Private businesses have an entirely different purpose.

It should go without saying, but governments and companies are not the same things.

Companies are synthetic people; there are a lot them in one place and they can die.

Governments are not synthetic people; there is only one per place and the idea is that it lasts forever.

One can generally avoid working for a particular company if one wants. One cannot avoid the government.

Yeah I find that big Western cos are actually micro-communisms or dictatorships. Tickles me pink to think about it.

Central planning is definitely a big thing in large companies.

Companies are pretty democratic. It's constituents are the shareholders, not the workers.

Why the fuck not

Wait six month, when the Tesla stock has crashed and he gets margin called. He's going to go nuts and have an epic fall from grace.

If I might be so bold, I don’t think anyone around here really appreciates Musk’s antics very much. However Tesla and SpaceX are fundamentally sound, if overvalued, businesses. Since the start of Tesla he has had loud and obnoxious detractors who have had any number of reasons Tesla is about to implode. Instead they keep churning out solid EVs and SpaceX keeps putting stuff in space. As much as I dislike him, I would not bet against his businesses.

Fundamentally sound doesn't always matter if they are overvalued enough. Companies that take a 99% drop in stock price are likely to end up losing the last percent in a bear market based on lack of confidence from investors.

There is no last percent, it can drop another 99% and then another...

There is a "last percent" when you are thinking about drops from peak value, which is how many people think about stock prices.

If TSLA gets valued down to $7B then we're all fucked, the floor will have fallen from under the stock market as a whole.

His businesses are not just him. He's the public face. They all have shareholders and many employees.

I give Gwynne Shotwell a ton of credit for actually running SpaceX on a day to day basis.

I think a lot of the issues with Tesla exist because as far as I can tell Tesla does not have a Gwynne Shotwell.

It's Gwynne who fired these people.

I think that was the point.

Tesla is certainly a solid business in the sense that they make cars people are happy to buy. I certainly wouldn't expect the value of the business to drop to zero.

But Tesla has a Price/Earnings ratio of 100 while other car companies like Toyota only have a P/E of 10. So Tesla's stock price could drop a long way while still being reasonable.

And if Musk had got a loan against his Tesla stock to buy Twitter, a substantial drop in Tesla's price could have disproportionate results.

It's an interesting strategy, really -- build a sorta-neat stable business, and affiliate it with a buffoon who constantly overpromises to his cult following to inflate the stock price to outrageous values.

Then, your "sorta-neat stable business" has MASSIVE amounts of value from stock grants, capital it can use to hire more, pay more, finance debt for large purchases, etc. Kind of a superpower for an otherwise unremarkable company.

Of course, there's other externalities from the buffoon and his cultists. They can drive away good workers, or pivot the company in unpleasant directions, or just leave some day, tank the company stock, and then the company loses the superpower and all of the things that come with it. But if your main mission is growth, well, it makes a lot of sense...

I didn't say anything about the companies but the Tesla stock. It's going to crash when rates rise and capital flees risk.

if you absolutely certain it will crash, go deep OTM short with literally everything you have, you'll make a shitton of $$$

What's certain is that Musk is going to mobilize increasing amounts of resistance as he gets more aggressive.

2. Get humans to the Moon, if not to Mars

I think there is a misconception here, SpaceX does not send anyone to space, NASA, ESA etc .. does.

SpaceX builds rockets that's it, they don't train astronaut or have a program for space exploration or missions.

That's like saying "guns don't kill people" while technically true, having a rocket certainly helps get people into space...

This is incorrect. Inspiration4 sent astronauts they trained. This was largely true for the Axiom mission as well, and will be for the Polaris missions.

Well if you call 4month training "astronauts", those kind of training won't get anyone on the moon or on mars.

I think that's why they call them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_astronaut

To me it's more space tourism that anything else, there is a reason why it takes years to train astronauts.

As far as I can tell NASA had no plans to return to the moon until spaceX came around with starship. Hard for me to say spaceX isn’t the direct reason for the planned mission

That's not correct. The Constellation program (which would eventually morph into the SLS via Ares) have been in development with the goal of returning to the moon since before the F9 launched even.

ah thank you.

Which, in itself, is a damning statement.

Can you explain how NASA, ESA, ect.. were involved in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4 mission?

> I read only TSLAQ propaganda

Inspiration 4, Axiom 1, Polaris Dawn, ...

> His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat.

We don’t have the data to determine the long term viability of work from home. Maybe we never will - causation is not correlation, and I don’t see any RCTs happening.

Like most decisions, we can’t simply consult ”science” or ”the experts” - we have to use our instincts and our priors.

You added (3) because of your personal agenda. It may or may not be true, but it is a minuscule detail compared to first two.

Do you feel that Elon will exclude some forms of protected speech? I haven't been following that closely

I would be surprised if he didn't. He has a history of being vindictive towards critics and has a lot of grudges and is more hands-on than typical CEOs.

> His approach to remote-vs-in-office work is less that of a data-informed futurist and more that of an autocrat.

Nobody can read minds of course, but I think it is smart to not always take people at face value and consider all of their motives in saying anything. Personally I think Elon Musk is probably strongly supporting working in the office for 2 reasons. (Obviously pure speculation)

1) Forcing an ultimatum is a means of achieving a stealth layoff. Tesla probably wants a few percent of people to quit and trim expenses without losing investor confidence, as their stock price is of course inflated. (My prediction is that many businesses are probably going to be needlessly promoting working from the office to try and effectively achieve a round of layoffs by having a percentage of people quit)

2) The people who are the loudest about working from home probably are the biggest workplace trouble-makers about relative non-issues. To give an example: I know that this is genuinely a sensitive issue for some, but we all know that there are at least some people who are loudly trying to milk Covid-19 for eternity so they can stay home from work and meanwhile are going out to eat at restaurants and living life care-free.

What’s wrong with living life care free and restaurants? If they get their work done I see nothing wrong with a positive outlook on life and supporting the economy with restaurant dining.

If someone’s productivity slips from wfh then address the issue sure.

> What’s wrong with living life care free and restaurants?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's what I've been strongly advocating for during the last 2 years. Go out there and live your life normally as you see fit.

One problem is that at least some people out there are trying to milk Covid-19. Publicly, they tell their employer they're too scared of Covid-19 to come to the office so they get to stay home. Privately, they go out every weekend and interact with people normally and live their life.

Not sure about the stealth layoff take. It's too unfocused, you'll lose people you want to keep and keep people you want to lose. Severance isn't that expensive and gives a lot more control.

Agree with your second point though. There's even people absuing remote work to work multiple jobs simultaneously.

> Not sure about the stealth layoff take. It's too unfocused, you'll lose people you want to keep and keep people you want to lose.

Given how political worldview seems to be pretty correlated with concern about stuff like Covid-19 and the new labor movement that has emerged, I'd suspect that it's reasonably focused.

Another relevent consideration here is that SpaceX and Tesla are both fundamentally manufacturing businesses, which developed their processes via rapid iteration. I assume that means the managers and engineers are expected to be closer to the factory floor than in other businesses. So WFH for Musk's businesses might actually be very impractical.

or 3) Being a manufacturing business, it's bad for company culture. It further divides your executives and 'pencil pushers' as their own privileged above that of the grunts actually creating the products.

If you were not paid to write this comment I feel really bad for you.

It must suck to simp a sociopath who doesn't even know your birthdate.

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