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Comment by washbrain | Hacker News Reader

TSLA also has a lot of labor related discussions open about workplace safety and racism.

(I'm not weighing in on their validity, but it's absolutely truthful the allegations and lawsuits are there.)

> it's absolutely truthful the allegations and lawsuits are there.

I want to make sure I understand you. You don't know if people's accusations are true, but you do know that they are making accusations. Is that correct?

Yeah. I'm not in a position to judge the veracity of the allegations, but the allegations are definitely there.

You see how bizarre it gets. If you discuss workplace safety and racism (even without any proof of any wrongdoing, just talking about how to treat people better - and I'm sure there are always ways to treat people better), you get a ding on the score. If you suppress any discussion on the matter, you score is perfect.

There's absolutely no evidence Tesla is more racist or unsafe place to work than Shell. If anything, Shell should be, in theory, more risky, safety-wise - they are much bigger, so more opportunity to screw up, and they do some things that are inherently risky, like mining and extraction. But I have a serious suspicion that the score has much less to do with safety statistics than with politics and donating to certain people and NGOs, somehow.

Your hypothesis is that people are more likely to sue their employer if their employer is Tesla, rather then Shell?

I don't know the actual statistics (does it exist even?), all I say is making decisions on the basis of "discussions" as if it were derogatory information makes no sense. It doesn't also make sense to treat accusations as if they were a proof of wrongdoing - though a lawsuit slightly raises the probability of there being some wrongdoing, as we can assume at least some potential claimants would be deterred by the fact that their accusations are false - but we should not overestimate it, there are a lot of false accusations flying around, and even more accusations that aren't provably false but also not proven true - e.g. when a person has no success working for the company and claims it was because of discrimination of one sort or another. The person may genuinely feel that way - but it does not mean necessarily that's actually what happened.

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