Instead, it seems that Musk is doing this just because he thinks he can get away with it, or because he is simply angry with the elected officials of his county. In such a situation, Tesla and Elon Musk should rightfully be punished for their actions.
There is also the question of which branch of government gets to have a say in the enforcement of a law. Consider California's approach to marijuana use vs the Federal government's. Or consider how there are numerous sanctuary cities that are in defiance of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
These things are complicated.
After that it really depends upon how states respond and you could be stuck in a giant game of chicken. This is where it might get complicated and risky - mostly for people trying to abide by the law. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But in this case, the government wont' really arrest you for not opening your car factory. But the state might arrest you for doing it.
In the case of Marijuana, it's really quite simple: everyone in California using marijuana can be arrested by the federal government. They just choose not to, at least usually.
ICE is a bit more complicated. They are trying to compel cooporation from local law enforcement, who is not responsible for enforcing immigration law. They aren't asking them to enforce it directly themselves though.
> to make a political statement.
I see it as more a business decision, and only secondarily a political statement.
To be fair, you can't both commit a crime and pay other people to commit crimes and get them out of the legal consequences by tweeting that you are the only one who should be arrested.
Yes.
> Especially some national law and state law seem to allow it
State law makes it a crime to violate orders of county public health officers for the control of communicable disease.
The fact of the matter is that if a business feels it's time to reopen, it should do so, cautiously of course.
Neither the employees or customers are forced to go. They have a right to refuse. They don't have a right to dictate what others decide to do with their business
Fined, maybe, but even fines can be reversed by courts.
Yes, all of it was. Or, more precisely, it was implemented under statutory authority of county and state public health officials whose orders are enforceable under preexisting criminal statutes and do not require additional criminal legislation for each new order.
In fact, Newsome's Executive Orders refer only to GOV § 8567, which only refers to procurement powers of state agencies. It specifically does not create any criminal statute, which in CA happens to be a very involved process including traversing multiple legislative committees.
In other words, he could trigger a process to confiscate your steel if he can establish urgent necessity for all of it, but he can't make it a crime to build a car. You're flat wrong on this.
This is both false and irrelevant; it's false because Newsom’s 39 (to date) executive orders relating to COVID-19 (they are almost daily) reference more than just that section—i.e, the first, EO N-25-20 (3/12/2020), references government code sections 8567, 8571, and 8572 [0]; but more to the point it's irrelevant because while the EOs have some importance in state COVID-19 response, they aren't the shelter-in-place order, which is a Public Health Order issued by the State Public Health Officer / Director of Public Health on March 19, 2020 [1], citing Health and Safety Code Sections 120125, 120140, 131080, 120130(c), 120135, 120145, 120175 and 120150, which pertain to the power of the Department of Public Health to issue such orders and the obligation of local officials to enforce them.
[0] https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/3.12.20-EO...
[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20...
http://www.acphd.org/media/572718/health-officer-order-20-10...
To quote it: "Pursuant to Government Code sections 26602 and 41601 and Health and Safety Code section 101029, the Health Officer requests that the Sheriff and all chiefs of police in the County ensure compliance with and enforce this Order. The violation of any provision of this Order constitutes an imminent threat and menace to public health, constitutes a public nuisance, and is punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both."
26602. "The sheriff shall prevent and suppress any affrays, breaches of the peace, riots, and insurrections that come to his or her knowledge, and investigate public offenses which have been committed. The sheriff may execute all orders of the local health officer issued for the purpose of preventing the spread of any contagious or communicable disease."
41601. "For the suppression of riot, public tumult, disturbance of the peace, or resistance against the laws or public authorities in the lawful exercise of their functions, and for the execution of all orders of the local health officer issued for the purpose of preventing the spread of any contagious, infectious, or communicable disease, the chief of police has the powers conferred upon sheriffs by general law and in all respects is entitled to the same protection."
The criminal statutes are cited earlier in the order, at the very beginning:
“Please read this Order carefully. Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both. (California Health and Safety Code § 120295, et seq.; Cal. Penal Code §§ 69, 148(a)(1))”
HSC 120295 is the key one (the others deal with resisting arrest and interference with executive officers): “Any person who violates Section 120130 or any section in Chapter 3 (commencing with Section 120175, but excluding Section 120195), is guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not less than fifty dollars ($50) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment for a term of not more than 90 days, or by both. He or she is guilty of a separate offense for each day that the violation continued.”
The most key part of Chapter 3 for this purpose is HSC 120220: “When quarantine or isolation, either strict or modified, is established by a health officer, all persons shall obey his or her rules, orders, and regulations.”
These 60 businesses in LA county are facing criminal charges:
https://www.lacityattorney.org/post/feuer-continues-filing-c...
Where they "get" you is if you blow off the court about resolving the fine which is contempt of court, which is a criminal offense.
It blows my mind how supposedly smart people know so little about the law. It's a lot like programming. The keywords are important and the logic used as well.
These businesses are facing criminal charges in Los Angeles for violating the Los Angeles county public health order:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-03/coronavi...
That link is paywalled, but the article title only refers to shutting off utilities.
It does not.
No, the code cited in the order is State (not municipal or county) code giving certain authority to county public health officers, neither municipal codes nor municipal officers are involved. Also, municipal codes in California can have criminal components, so the contrast drawn is false as well as not germane to the relevant facts.
> Like with a traffic ticket, they can fine for not complying. They cannot arrest you, however.
Being stopped and issued a traffic ticket is a non-custodial arrest and the “fine” people pay if they don't dispute tickets is legally forfeiture of bail. But, in any case, unlike minor traffic offenses, violating a county public health order issued to control communicable disease is a criminal offense punishable by fines, jail, or both; the Alameda County order cites the relevant state criminal law.
> It blows my mind how supposedly smart people know so little about the law.
Indeed.
Same as a person is not a nazi just because someone disagrees with them.
Same as speech is not violence.
Etc etc etc.
FYI: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/03/31/co...
EDIT> Speech is an act. That act can be violence.
Problem with your example lies in the lack of context. On the more humorous side - maybe your wife is a cunt and your children are little bastards. If you percieve any kind of abusive expression, no matter of the context, as violence, then you're just done. There is no useful way that you can contribute to culture and society, because you cannot participate in discourse anymore.
On the more serious side - what about "psychological violence"? What about when your wife treats you like a slave and verbally abuses you on a daily basis? If your wife mistreats you, then just leave. Her words cannot stop you. What stops you is more likely the threat of being beaten, that she will make it impossible for you to see your kids and she will take your house. The violence is physical, economical and sociological, not verbal.
Going further - your comment disgusted me and I've felt that it violates some of the most important values I have in my life. Is this violence? Not at all, I will just shrug it off and continue to enjoy my day. I will get some downvotes and maybe be less frequent in visiting left-leaning websites. We lose the ability to talk to each other, but it's far from being violence. It's just stupidity on both sides.
> First of all, do not put equality sign between physical and being verbally abusive.
I am not, in general -- let's try to confine ourselves to my specific example.
> The first one is something external that you have no control over, no matter how much you fight, the second you can just shrug off and continue with your life.
This is a dogmatic assertion that is not supported by the evidence. If I were feeling less charitable, I could counter that of course you could do something about physical violence -- you just had to train harder, have better weapons, or build a coalition. People are emotionally abused. Stating that in some cases, some people can transcend that abuse is ... not really relevant. It's interesting, and should be studied so that perhaps we can confer immunity to more people.
> Problem with your example lies in the lack of context. On the more humorous side - maybe your wife is a cunt and your children are little bastards.
As soon as you admit context you admit that abusive speech could be an act of violence, as well as true speech. As you say, yourself, context matters. This is why dogmatic approaches to this issue are doomed to fail.
> If you percieve any kind of abusive expression, no matter of the context, as violence, ...
Let's just stick to my example. To disprove "speech cannot be violence", I only have to find one example of speech that is violence. I don't have believe or prove that all (abusive) speech is violence.
> then you're just done. There is no useful way that you can contribute to culture and society, because you cannot participate in discourse anymore.
This is nonsense. It's smacks of litany rather than logic. A person can be a productive member of society in many ways, yet hold beliefs that disturb you.
> Going further - your comment disgusted me and I've felt that it violates some of the most important values I have in my life.
I can't know, but your words suggest that you are looking to be disgusted. We all like to be self-righteous at times, but I doubt we are as far apart as you believe.
I have deep knowledge of computer science, artificial intelligence, biology, and emotional abuse. All of these areas teach that nature has no respect for our ontologies.
We may try to draw a hard line between violence and speech, but we mislead ourselves. Almost all of the cases worth debating occur at the fuzzy edges of these concepts.
Failure to realize this may result in the sense of having a crystalline framework, but ultimately it misleads.
Two punches, equal in their physical qualities and physical pain, one much more violent than the other. What hurts more or does more lasting damage depends on the context. There are people who have been hit as a child and have no problem with it. There are people who have never been hit physically but verbally abused who will have to deal with this their whole life.
To think violence is only violence when it is physical certainly has not much to do with how people exert force onto each other in daily life. Of course this doesn't mean that every communicative act that challenges your world view, critisises your actions, highlights you mistakes etc. automatically constitutes a violent act, although you certainly might feel bad afterwards. This is why the dictionary definition of violence has "intent" in it. If someone tells you your whole life was a lie they might not intend to hurt you with their words, even if you are devastated. If someone tells you, your hair looks shitty, they do.
Note: whether you feel hurt or not plays no role in the definition of the word violence.
"behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something."
Notice that word "physical". Liberals have tried to define the word to be associated with words or 'hate speech' in an attempt to shut down speech they don't want to hear. It doesn't mean they're correct.
1) Why is violence bad? What is it we're trying to prevent when we seek to prevent violence?
2) Are there instances of speech, which in specific contexts can, cause the same negative outcomes that we try to prevent when we seek to prevent violence?
3) Is it really true that physical violence is inescapable, while abusive speech only causes harm if the listener lets it?
Let go of left/right talking points, shallow pattern-matching, and groupism, and deeply consider these questions.
I'll take your Google result and throw you this Oxford English Dictionary result, which admits a more nuanced interpretation: https://www.oed.com/oed2/00277885
When I was growing up, we always had this phrase: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It was usually the response to a kid complaining of being verbally teased at school, in the sense that he needed to ignore it - don't bother the teacher / parents about it unless the bullies start using their fists to hurt you.
The left has tried to redefine violence over the years in order to create the idea of "hate speech" which they want punished the same as violence.
I disagree with this idea.
A more interesting example would be giving an order to fire rubber bullets into a peaceable crowd. In the same sense that someone has committed murder if they hire a hitman, we could say that the speech act of giving the order, is a violent act.
Your example of a stream of abusive language, is not the equivalent of that. If someone is punished for such an act, they are not being punished for committing a violent offence.
I do wish people would stop trying to shift the definition of 'violence'. I don't want to have to make a habit of saying 'physical violence' just to close the door on it.
Cambridge Dictionary says: violence – extremely forceful actions that are intended to hurt people or are likely to cause damage.
Nowhere does it say these actions have to be carried out with the body (and if we are pedantic here, yelling into a room can be very physical as well as you are literally moving air with your breath).
Violence is a matter of communication. If your girlfriend accidentally turns around and hits you in the face with full force, it hurts, but that doesn't mean it was violent behaviour. If she however hits you on purpose with bad intent, it can be weak as hell and still constitute violent behaviour.
This means violence is not purely physical, but also an act of demonstrating/communicating power over the other. And as an act of communication there is more to it than it's pure physical components.
Disagree. That is a violent act, but one without violent intent.
Boxing is a violent sport, but isn't criminal.
> This means violence is not purely physical, but also an act of demonstrating/communicating power over the other. And as an act of communication there is more to it than it's pure physical components.
I don't think the word 'communication' is helpful here. I think what you're getting at is intent.
intent is in the dictionary definition of the term violence, which is my point. How do you know it is intent? It is beeing communicated (be it verbal, nonverbal or otherwise).
Defining acts like these as communication has a long tradition in system theory, which among other things is used in therapy of families and relationships, so this is not really a creative act on my side.
That people at times use actions (including violent ones) to communicate is nothing new, everybody who has a child knows this.
More than that though, I'm able to have my own take on the meaning of a word.
Philosophers have no use for dictionaries when exploring the meaning of 'free will', for instance. For someone already fluent in English, the dictionary contributes nothing.
> How do you know it is intent?
Ah, I wasn't clear. I don't think violence is a matter of intent, but I think 'intent' may be a better word for what you were referring to as 'communication', unless I misunderstood your point.
I can see that it makes some sense to view violence as 'communication', in the same way evolution is steered by 'communication' between species, but I don't see that this perspective is bringing much to the table in this context.
Violence, emotional violence, emotional abuse, abusive speech, etc.
EDIT> I don't find your example more interesting. The more clear-cut an example is the less interesting it is. blah blah entropy.
Here is the thing about the Tesla culture, which is like a more subdued one then the one at SpaceX: some people are 'all in' about the cause and are putting their Lives at risk working 10+ hours everyday.
One of the reasons I decided to go work for Kimbal instead of Tesla was the mandatory Swing shift for Supply Chain (at the time) ahead of the Model 3 ramp. People were putting in 60+ hours in 4 day schedules. Burn out is not possible, its near exepected. They also offer really amazing Health Packages, like the best any other Multi-national corp ever offered me because they understood it as critical component to success in such an ambitious goal. At Kimbal's place I could do 60+ hours over 6 days, which if you've done either is taxing, but the former wipes you out and messes up your circadian rhythm, which as you get older is harder to re-adjust on the fly.
If you honestly think there aren't people waiting to just go back to work at the HQ factory to do what they joined up for int first place then you haven't met many Tesla people, let alone any SpaceX guys.
Is this fair? I think if Elon/HR has stipulated there are no consequences for those who can't or won't return, then, yes. The Factory has only just been able to recently turn things around after an amazing Manufacturing feat from the Fremont Team, only to have this stifled by the Local government, who oddly benefit a great deal from the revenue generated from Fremont.
If any of you have been to Fremont, you'll know there isn't much Economic activity there, even for the East Bay. Lots of local businesses, little restaurants and some fast food places rely heavily on Tesla employees. This is a lose-lose situation which may be due to political reasons, but if a fine is all the stands in the way of making the deliveries back-log get smaller, then its worth it. (Elon is saying he is willing to get arrested for it?)
People have paid in full for a Model Y, which has been refined due to Model 3's hard-earned lessons, the losses and missed opportunity costs are immense. If they have to move production of Y to Shanghai and re-import them to the US then not only is that a supply chain nightmare, but it completely undoes the cost-savings that made Shanghai imperative in the first place.
I don't blame him, this has also boosted the stock price above 800 again, too. So the Market agrees with his decision.
Jesus, the frickin Nazi Youth did the same thing!
Why don't people ever see the leader worship and authoritarianism (fascism) in corporations?
Personally speaking, I met a person that was Hitler Youth when I lived in Southern Germany; and for a majority it was less about a dark haired, dark eyed Austrian talking about the 'aryan master race' then you'd think, and more about not wanting to die of hunger as all the farms were Nationalized.
> Why don't people ever see the leader worship and authoritarianism (fascism) in corporations?
I've said before and I'll say it again: I'm not in the cult of Elon, I care what he enables not what he is/isn't. You cannot deny that EV has succeed in large part because of Tesla, I worked for all the major Car manufactures with a real EV program (BMW/VW/Nissan) and those are now completely shifting in large because Tesla succeeding in it's Mission statement.
SpaceX delivered on its promise of making Rockets re-usable and more affordable etc...
Those are his companies, which he founded and risked eveything to get to where they are, but its the People who work in them that I support and champion. I just find Elon funny in a meme troll-like way, especially towards those who seem to take offense to every action/indiscretion he makes.
Elon provided the majority of Tesla’s series A, but he wasn’t a founder in the conventional sense of the word.
Granted, and you're right, his role as CEO would come after all of that.
As a teacher of American History I have read countless diaries of these kids, they were brainwashed while they were in the scouts. I do not blame them either.
>Those are his companies, which he founded and risked eveything to get to where they are, but its the People who work in them that I support and champion. I just find Elon funny in a meme troll-like way, especially towards those who seem to take offense to every action/indiscretion he makes.
You could have championed the people in Hitler's armies as well.
That's the issue with hyperbole, it tends to lends itself to extremes.
> You could have championed the people in Hitler's armies as well.
Back to the Nazi narrative, no I personally wouldn't have, want know why? During the (illegal) Iraq and Afghan Invasion I was in staunch opposition, and I went to a Pro-war University and come from a Military family. Both of my cousins were vets of both Iraq and Afghanistan, one with 3 tours in total. I was supposed to be the third, but realized in the 6th grade killing for the State is still Murder and that War is not a career--I wanted to help preserve Life, not destroy it.
I'm glad I got accustomed to having to do with less, as my family practically shunned me for this position and were aghast at my Anarchist leanings and didn't support me in anyway because of my refusal to accept the BS narrative that was sold to them.
So, having lived amongst and worked with said former Hitler Youth, something I'm sure even you as Historian probably cannot say, it was ultimately an experience that led to compassionate acceptance.
He didn't want to fight in Hitler's BS war of Genocide. He was hungry and did what he was told as a child from a rural farming family who had their land stolen from them and was subject to go days/weeks without eating.
He was the 'Opa' of the family I worked for on the farm, I would bring him coffee in the morning while he sorted through the potatoes we planted, harvested out of respect, and despite what you may want to think I never saw a blood-thirsty genocidal maniac.
Instead I saw a broken man who was forcefully inducted to march and sing to feed his Family, who later became a farmer himself after the war and inevitably lost his farm due to Chernobyl's fallout, and a Man who still suffered the affects of unfathomable levels of scarcity as he would regularly take whatever looked edible from our compost bin, despite having access to the store and the farms fresh produce.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but if you're an Educator you really should have better arguments to base your views/convictions on. Nazism was a horrible system, but there are more cogent ways to convey your position than resorting to 'well, Nazis...'
Erica Pan received zero votes for her because she has never appeared on the ballot. She's an appointed not an elected official. This is her choice and the public has no possibility of direct electoral response to her decision to forbid Tesla opening.
So far, Alameda County officials have been very subdued in their response - too subdued, in my opinion. They're afraid of Musk moving his factory out of town. It's a terrible message to send that large businesses can ignore public health regulations, and avoid consequences by threatening to leave.
You can believe that the county's rules are unwise, but they're in place in order to protect public health. Right or wrong, Musk is violating those rules and thinks he'll get away with it because he runs an important company. There has to be a clear message that he won't get away with it. Fining him won't make a difference. Prison time might.
Can you provide a source for this?
I have no idea what (if any) compensation Tesla workers receive while not working during the pandemic, nor do I know if those workers will be penalized for not working - particularly for not working while the factory is open in violation of state restrictions.
Automobile manufacturing is not one of the listed exceptions, so it is illegal both to operate (for the owner) and to go to work at (for the employees) such a business.
> Prohibition is obviously a prime example of this, but if you consider various laws that once existed or are currently on the books but no longer enforced (think laws pertaining to racial segregation, sexuality, drug use, and such) you realize that...
The thing is: public safety laws aren't like racial segregation at all. If they are, I look forward to stuff like "civil disobedience" against child labor laws, etc.
> ...being a law abiding citizen does not mean you are no longer allowed to think for yourself.
That's true, but it also means being accountable and not acting without regards to others. Musk is acting like a petulant brat here, and I hope the Alameda County sheriff talks some sense into him.
I mean, new fathers, even after the other six babies, still do pretty goofy things. However, it's more putting the milk in the pantry type stuff, or mixing up coffee grounds and water.
Not daring public officials to arrest you during a pandemic and all but demanding employees to work during said pandemic.
I feel for the guy, things are tough now. I hope he finds the peace that he seems to need.
And that’s before we even get to promising to send a submarine to save some trapped kids, and when the person who actually helped save them instead of the mythical submarine says it wouldn’t work calling him a paedophile.
Its even worser In Europe due to car complexity..
I reccommend people google these events rather than take thawaway1837's post at face value.
For example, Elon asked hospitals what they needed and plenty did want CPAP machines (which are a type of ventilator). A much smaller number of invasive ventilators were provisioned (more expensive and probably harder to acquire) as well.
That there are data collection issues that mean COVID19 deaths are inflated (or undercounted! There are factors pushing it both ways) is not a conspiracy theory, it is frequently discussed in mainstream media like the BBC.
For the cave thing, Musk did in fact send people and had them make some prototype mini submarines to help rescue the kids. It wasn't a bad idea (or so the diver who actually found the kids claimed), just not the one they actually went with in the end. The guy he got into a spat with was a British diver living in Thailand who helped recruiting the British divers who actually did the work. Musk won the resulting defamation lawsuit.
Basically all of the statements in the grandparent post omit any facts that get in the way of Musk looking bad.
> That there are data collection issues that mean COVID19 deaths are inflated (or undercounted! There are factors pushing it both ways) is not a conspiracy theory, it is frequently discussed in mainstream media like the BBC.
I have not seen anything remotely suggesting we're over-counting, and honestly the idea is silly. You can't just explain away the number of excess deaths we had in April.
> For the cave thing, Musk did in fact send people and had them make some prototype mini submarines to help rescue the kids. It wasn't a bad idea (or so the diver who actually found the kids claimed), just not the one they actually went with in the end. The guy he got into a spat with was a British diver living in Thailand who helped recruiting the British divers who actually did the work. Musk won the resulting defamation lawsuit.
Yeah but... He still called him a pedophile did he not? Just because he didn't win a defamation suit for a variety of reasons doesn't suddenly make it ok.
Regarding COVID 19, the BBC has been repeatedly telling me that most countries are counting deaths with COVID19 as COVID 19 deaths (resulting in an overcount) and has been telling me that the response to the virus itself is likely causing many deaths due to things like people being more reluctant to go to hospital, higher depression due to isolation/general climate of fear, no in person access to GPs and similar issues.
On a Human level, I would agree.
Selfishly and pragmatically, I hope he never does; who else has done so much to enable the progress that is needed in the World right now? People like him are a once in a generation, not because he's a Genius (which I think he is) but because of the amount of risk he is willing to absorb and keeping going at all costs and motivating more and more to the cause in the process.
I think Dr. Zubrin said it best: he's not motivated by Money, he's after Legacy and that draws the best efforts of Humanity forward in order to be a part of it. He is an archetype character out several Sci-fi books.
6 Kids is a good shot at Legacy on it's own, but perhaps setting the bar this high for them in his Lifetime and the opportunity to out-do each other after setting the bar so high was the goal.
Id include Nikola Tesla in there as well, just because something doesn't end in a happy contrite Disney-like ending doesn't mean that it wasn't a positive, or a Life well lived that would carry on and inspire so many more to contribute to that end long after either have died.
I personally moved to CO in large part because of Nikola Tesla, and was resolved to do so before Amendment 64 was even a real possibility.
That's an Americanism, right? Your milk isn't shelf-stable?
No milk, I'm fairly certain, is shelf-stable once opened; shelf-stable (until opened) milk is widely available but not as popular as milk that isn't in the US, and the “milk in the pantry” reference is implicitly in the context of having just poured from it, so it has been opened. So, while it probably doesn't reference shelf-stable milk, it wouldn't be any different if it did.
Some of them literally taste like arse (think they’re packaged with some funky protective atmosphere), others taste like fresh milk.
These attempts at "Americans do the darnedest things XD" comments always seem so forced to me.
How about "we need to monitor all your communications, for public safety reasons. And also in order to prevent children pornography, I guess". Would this also be a public safety law, and would any form of civil disobedience be unwarranted?
What makes Musk's gesture a form of "civil disobedience" rather than dumb disrespect of law is that he actually has reasonable arguments why it'd be safe in his case. It's not "I don't believe COVID-19 exists and I've screened the factory against 5G anyway". It may be more beneficial to start defining reasonable standards for reopening. rather than semi-arbitrarily declaring X or Y "essential" with no safety standards in place.
It’s not civil disobedience if you’re getting a bunch of other people to do it on your behalf.
Elon Musk is no Rosa Parks.
It is one thing for Musk to publicly proclaim he is willing to go to jail, but are all the rank and file workers?
At what point does the civil disobedience become workers telling their employer they will not violate the law by returning to work and risk jail just to pump up the stock?
Having said that, I read somewhere that there are like 10,000 employees at Tesla's Fremont plant. Do we really think the County would actually follow through and arrest 10,000 people? Thank Goodness we do not live in such a society.. Perhaps they would arrest just the management, perhaps just Musk? Shut off the power instead? Ugh.
The thing is that is how things are done legally, but Musk is putting the cart before the horse by breaking the order. In other words right or wrong say police show up to enforce the order and order the factory shutdown and musk/employees fail to obey...failing to obey the officers orders in generally a charge unto itself at that point never mind the violation of the county order.
Or at least, that Musk has decided that it does.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23164535
You have an ugly habit of trying to silence critique by talking down to people using specific claims and relying on their inability to research when it is your claims that are false.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23164535
I've responded directly to that post with direct links to the relevant orders, but it's funny that you make that claim and point to a post (of yours, I note) that is both derisive in tone and almost wholly unsupported by fact (making a claim that is both literally false and which refers to a set of state orders that isn't, and doesn't include, the only state order relevant to the discussion, the shelter-in-place order issued by the Director of Public Health.)
I've responded directly to that post with direct links to the relevant orders
"...the order, which cites its statutory authority (to shut down Tesla et al)"
And today's Wisconsin Supreme Court overturn of its Governor's shelter in place order clearly demonstrates that even a Governor can't exceed his authority, even if s/he thinks it well-intentioned.
Nope, I never said any of Newsom's orders did that; I said the state and, relevant here, Alameda County public health orders (neither of which was issued by Newsom) both cited the relevant statutory authority to criminal enforcement. I've even linked directly to both orders and reproduced the citations from both orders, and even pulled out and quoted the most relevant section from a broad chapter cited in the county order. You, on the other hand, have made an inaccurate description of the authority cited in the irrelevant governor's executive orders to support the rest of your unsupported inaccurate claims.
Newsom's 39 executive orders on this emergency (at last count, which was yesterday so I might have missed a couple) are waivers of state law under the governor's emergency powers which are separate from the public health orders that are at issue here. (They are only tangentially relevant in that one of them provides the authority for the 5/7/2020 revision to the State Public Health Order bypassing some usual procedural requirements.)
> And today's Wisconsin Supreme Court overturn of its Governor's shelter in place order clearly demonstrates that even a Governor can't exceed his authority, even if s/he thinks it well-intentioned.
That point was never in dispute, but sure.
> Please read this Order carefully. Violation of or failure to comply with this Order is a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both. (California Health and Safety Code § 120295, et seq.; Cal. Penal Code §§ 69, 148(a)(1))
> UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF CALIFORNIA HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTIONS 101040, 101085, AND 120175, THE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE COUNTY OF ALAMEDA (“HEALTH OFFICER”) ORDERS:
Nobody is at risk here other than Elon and executives, but there will be plenty of prosecutorial discretion used to settle this smoothly rather than cause more civil unrest.
That's an important point.
But is he paying them more to show up than they'd otherwise be paid if they didn't show up?
That would be reasonable, to compensate for risk and going above-and-beyond?
But if they're being paid nothing otherwise, one could make the argument that it's coercive. Still, this is the US, and it's arguably unfair to expect Tesla to pay nonworking employees indefinitely, even though Musk is a billionaire.
If giant companies like Ford and Boeing are having trouble, it's not hard to imagine that a new car company that just recently crossed profitability is going to have solvency issues by staying closed.
But it will surely gets noticed, who did show up and who did not and so anyone wanting a career at Tesla better shows up.
Car factories are much less immediately essential. I can't see how you'd begin to argue otherwise.
Billionaires are citizens too. They are bound (imperfectly) by laws. Therefore they too encounter situations where practicing civil disobedience makes sense.
If he wants to sell $10M or so to buy a nice house and a new car, do you think he doesn't deserve to do so? Where do you draw the line?
How do you even picture that claim? Is it Bezos literally building every warehouse with his own two hands? Is it him being at a thousand places at once dealing with paperwork, marketing and packaging all by himself? For every billionaire out there there are thousands of workers that were denied their share of the success. I would say the only way someone could be a honest "self made" billionaire is by mugging an other billionaire in a dark alley.
Besides that, there are some billionaires that did get their wealth honestly in my estimation, like JK Rowling and Markus Persson.
A good point. I wasn't aware that she was a billionaire and she apparently gave most of it away by now, dropping her well bellow a billion again.
> Markus Persson.
I remember that there was a lot of controversy around Minecraft, but I can't accurately recall the details to counter that.
- Significantly higher marginal tax rates further up the income ladder. US high end marginal tax rates are historically and relatively low; at the same time the US runs an incredible deficit. It’s crazy.
- Increasing tax rates on dividend earnings for individuals, so that they converge to the income tax rates based on some income/earnings thresholds. Large share holders like Bezos can make millions via dividends, and get a far better tax rate than you or I. It doesn’t make any sense. For mutual funds and companies, etc., dividend taxation could be treated as now without much negative impact.
- Increasing tax rates on capital gains when realized. If Bezos wants to sell $10M of stock to buy a fancy new house and car, great, but at some level of capital gains it makes sense for the rates to rise as it otherwise becomes another kind of income tax dodge.
- Inheritance taxes increasing steeply with the amount of the estate. Sam Walton worked his ass off; his kids didn’t. It’s perfectly normal to want to leave your kids something, but after a certain point it seems rather a social anti-pattern to have a trust fund class, especially at extreme amounts of wealth (which is what we are talking here).
- Limits on loss depreciation for individuals. Perhaps not quite as important but also subject to a lot of abuse.
Of course, I also think there’s much that needs to be done with campaign finance reform, lowering corporate tax rates, automatic antitrust provisions that come into play when a company becomes relatively too big, and increased penalties for corporate externalities (like privacy violations, pollution, etc.).
Hope this helps. What do you think we should do?
Certainly with someone like Bezos, unless you take it all there is going to be a number that will still net him a billion after all of the taxes. And if you do "take it all", then maybe the next Bezos, Zuckerberg, or Gates starts the next company in another jurisdiction with less of an appetite for taxation, drawing away with it the capital and all of the follow-on effects it provides (jobs, spending in the community, etc.). And given the lengths we know that rich people will go to protect their money, that line has to be drawn at far less than "all" to keep them.
On the other end of the extreme, even if he never sells a share those shares still allow him to wield a tremendous amount of power. So in the short run, all the taxes in the world would change nothing (Amazon does not pay dividends). It would just give him more time to figure out how to evade the taxes in the long run. :)
I am moved by the argument that Walton's kids shouldn't get it all, but I'm not sure that transferring some or all of his property to the government is a good idea. You would then just have a "trust fund class" of politicians and bureacrats! (BTW your Walton comment has got me pumped for season 3 of "Succession")
I like your overall thesis, I just think we should be less punitive with those exceptional people who do indeed add tremendous value to our economy and society.
So yeah. A line can and should be drawn somewhere.
The accumulation of wealth by a single individual is not inherently harmful for society, it all comes down to the intention for which accumulation happens and how is that spent.
Edit: typo.
Present day accumulation of wealth creates a huge power imbalance, billionaires are citizens, just as I am, why should they have more power, as a citizen, than I do?
If you defend that billionaires should exist then, in my opinion, it's required to design a way to protect the rest of society from this class of people amassing more and more power.
The problem isn't money, it is our power structures. Right now, being a billionaire is almost inherently bad, every billionaire is a policy failure.
Besides that, hierarchies of power exist outside of realm of money. And they are a natural occurrence. You will not only find billionaires with more power than you, but also a lot of other citizens that belong to these other hierarchies that have achieved their power via their competence.
Power in itself is not dangerous or undesirable, power that becomes tyrannic is.
What is more dangerous is inequality, specially inequality of opportunities. Certainly some times of inequalities of outcome can also be dangerous in certain situations if not kept at check, basically because they may become a source of violence.
We're all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos.
This is true in terms of orders of magnitude, but gets hilariously true when looking at the absolute numbers.
The difference in wealth of a homeless person and a (barely) millionaire is about a million ($1,000,000).
The difference in wealth of that millionaire and Jeff Bezos is about a Jeff Bezos ($138,999,000,000).
Why is that more important than any other moral axiom?
Are you really going to pick height as a comparison point for being a billionaire? Did tall people take their height from short people? Is height taxed?
It is more complex than you are making out. Cultures that denigrate the great men don’t produce as much or innovate as much as those that revere them.
If anyone, thank Tim Berners-Lee for inventing the World Wide Web, without which none of the aforementioned online shops could exist. And last I checked he didn't become a mega-billionaire from that invention.
Groceries are the last thing I'd buy there, also there are online delivery stores by actual professional supermarkets.
Amazon has exactly zero positive influence on humanity.
What is with the embarrassing Bezos worship? These people organize other people's labor, take their economic surplus and take credit for their ideas.
I agree in general that workers should get a bigger piece of the pie, but if entrepreneurs and executives aren't providing any value, then why aren't groups of workers getting together en masse and forming their own companies? It seems pretty clear that this "organizer" role is essential and can't be done by just anyone.
Let's be real: Bezos is not "organizing" Amazon so much as he organizes a cabinet of Executives who do the same recursively until some worker does the actual work.
> When governments have tried, they have tended to fail miserably
So the federal government, which must coordinate the efforts of over 2 million employees across a more broad spectrum of activities and labor than Amazon does, doesn't count?
And is the job so hard as to mean hundreds of billions? Or is that just want the market will pay to keep Bezos around? I could understand that part, as it means the market believes Bezos current activities are worth that much. But does that mean he deserves it? I should hardly think those arguments are the same.
Organizing a cabinet of executives (who then organize recursively down the hierarchy) is also very difficult and stressful, so I'm not sure what the point is here? Again, it seems clear that this role is necessary and important, otherwise we should see lots of big and successful companies running without CEOs or executives.
"So the federal government, which must coordinate the efforts of over 2 million employees across a more broad spectrum of activities and labor than Amazon does, doesn't count?"
While I don't think anyone would point to the US government as a model of efficiency and innovation, I'll grant that they do organize a lot of labor, but it primarily concerns the responsibilities of governing that we have specifically decided are special cases that the state should take care of (in spite of whatever inefficiencies it may cause). When states have tried to organize labor more generally, in order to do things like extract resources, grow food, build stuff in factories, set prices, etc., it has not gone well in most cases.
"And is the job so hard as to mean hundreds of billions? Or is that just want the market will pay to keep Bezos around? I could understand that part, as it means the market believes Bezos current activities are worth that much. But does that mean he deserves it? I should hardly think those arguments are the same."
What someone "deserves" is subjective. My point is just that it seems we do need to provide entrepreneurs and managers some kind of incentive if we want people to create and manage businesses, since doing so is hard work that requires unique skills. How strong that incentive should be is debatable, but if you have one, there will always be people who put way more energy into pursuing it than others, and so are much wealthier than others.
The point of the essay is to exhibit disobedience to government when that government is perpetrating injustice. Somehow halting the production of luxury cars for a few more weeks, with the explicit intent of trying to save lives, doesn't seem like an injustice to me.
Forgive the cliche, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
"Trying to save lives" is the new "think of the children". It's the same mentality that gives us legislation like the EARN IT act.
--
The question we should ask is, (1) has the government provided a reasonable justification for placing such limits on commerce, freedom of movement, etc. And (2), is the strategy we're pursuing, from a public health perspective, the right one?
My answer to both (1) and (2) is "hell no". The rules our government has ruled out are arbitrary and capricious and are largely based on superstition. Case in point: closures of public parks and beaches.
Arguing (2) is out of the scope of this comment but suffice to say that my belief is the negative externalities introduced by our COVID-19 response are far, far worse than COVID-19 itself.
--
FWIW, I am not a fan of Musk in general. I am inherently suspicious of people that are trying to save humanity. As we have seen with Musk - for example, how Tesla factory workers are treated in the pre-COVID-19 era - because he is working tirelessly to save humanity, he is willing to sacrifice actual humans to achieve his goals. Because after all, in the scheme of things, if you're talking about fighting existential threats like climate change or being stuck on one planet, what's the cost of even 100,000 human-lives' worth of wellbeing in comparison? It's not even close.
But when it comes to COVID-19, I absolutely think Musk is right. Yes he has made some absolute asinine comments/predictions but his general points about suspension of civil liberties, and statements that COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal as we were told...all of that is totally true in my book.
Is not "but what about my freedom" the same thing? This is a nonsense argument.
> But when it comes to COVID-19, I absolutely think Musk is right. Yes he has made some absolute asinine comments/predictions but his general points about suspension of civil liberties, and statements that COVID-19 is not nearly as lethal as we were told...all of that is totally true in my book.
Forget the nonsense and call it for what it is. It has nothing to do with civil liberty. It has to do with money, power, and influence.
People actually suffering and not knowing where their next check comes from, well, we don't really care about them. But when finally the rich software engineers get a little less comfortable, the screeches for freedom would make even the largest eagle blush.
This is quite literally about them. Knowledge workers and others sitting comfortably at home are the biggest opposition to opening up business.
I disagree. The rich people who can avoid the poor are the biggest proponents of opening up business. In fact, I see this sentiment on hacker news more than anywhere else- because software engineers are rich and benefit from the working poor everywhere, they want the economy to reopen so their portfolio grows again.
The problem is that govt is slow and payments by themselves are not effective because of the cascading effects of economic shutdown (you cant spend money when services aren't running in the first place). It's the lower and middle class workers that are suffering the most without a paycheck.
Also, in case you missed it, the stock market has been on a rapid rise for a month now and the NASDAQ is currently positive for the year. Portfolios are doing just fine.
If the stock market is doing fine then perhaps we don't need to rush to reopen. Or maybe it's completely propped up based on nothing, countless measures of pumping money into industry, and monetary policy.
> (you cant spend money when services aren't running in the first place). It's the lower and middle class workers that are suffering the most without a paycheck.
Aide shouldn't be for spending money on Tesla's and other junk. It should be for rent, food, etc, utilities, etc. So this argument is pointless.
The poor and middle class have already been suffering for years - expensive healthcare, lower wages, less pensions, regressive taxes. Yet now people suddenly care? It's basically all a lie. Just admit it - you don't want to lose money for yourself, and you don't care if other people you don't know die or get sick or work in poor conditions.
I'm a startup founder who has lost major revenue. I personally know dozens who have lost their businesses and jobs and a few who have gotten sick. More aid is not going to make any difference and the economic disaster is going to cause much more suffering and death. Supporting family isn't free. These are known effects and must be balanced against the new data we have about covid19.
But now you're resorting to baseless accusations and personal attacks so let's end it here.
In the US, the megacorps got theirs. Now the populace has to work. No tests, just work comrade. For Mother US!
This is an arbitrary goal post. There need not be any secret motive of the county officials to make their reasoning incorrect or the law not right. Their motives could be completely public and still scrutinized and found to be incorrect.
I think that they intend to save lives but that their understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the best way to address it is so overly simplistic that the myopic policies they are instituting are going to lead to larger mortality over the long-term. Which is the pattern we see at the broader scale as well when we examine the US' response to the pandemic.
So, like I implied above, their intentions are good, but intentions are largely worthless.
I recommend learning more about these ideas before building them into your narrative. You may realize, for example, that the people who have been working on COVID response full time for months have put a lot more thought into it than you.
That's in the abstract. Let's take this concrete example. Say there is some worker in this factory. They don't want to go to work. They don't feel safe. Now they are torn between two authorities. What happens if they do show up? What happens if they don't show up? Will they be seen as "not a teamplayer"? Will their career stall out compared to their yes-men colleges? Maybe even get fired without any cause given. Half a year later so as not to make it obvious?
Yes, I think pretty much exactly that would happen. (I'm not super up-to-date on the CARES act or other legal measures that they might be able to take, or if unemployment pays out to people who "quit" their jobs currently, so there's a small chance that those are options)
However my conclusion is that's an example of why forcibly shutting down businesses was a terrible idea in the first place and never should have been done.
But yes I totally agree, our governmental systems are not set up to handle these questions.
I must confess that when the "flatten the curve" meme started spreading around and the initial 4-5% case fatality rate and 20% hospitalization rate numbers were being given, that I actually believed in flattening the curve and thus initially supported the lockdown. I should have known at the time that the goalposts were going to be moved. In retrospect it's incredibly obvious.
The math didn’t check out on “Flatten the Curve” from the very start. It is very, very hard not to get caught up in the panic response, and in that moment the sheer number of people who would accuse you of endangering lives for even doubting the response was necessary, correct, proportional, scientific, or even legal, was enormous.
In MA ~60% of COVID deaths have been in nursing homes. That’s 3,000 deaths in an extremely narrow population (< 50,000 people) and the state was busy shutting down life as we know it and totally failed the people actually at risk. In NY they sent known COVID cases into their nursing homes. In RI 70% of their total fatalities have been in nursing homes.
We need the end of lockdown, we need to halt the drift into totalitarian and draconian tracking measures, and we need strictly targeted and laser focused protections for the at-risk population.
As far as TFA, it’s the typical Elon lightning rod effect but the fact is all the other auto manufacturers have reopened, and Alameda County is no hotspot. It should be entirely uncontroversial that Tesla is reopening and in the meantime challenging any continuing shutdown order in court. I doubt a preliminary injunction would be granted based on the required legal standard, although judges have surprised me in the past!
Exactly. And if we had been prepared with enough testing capability and protective equipment, that would have been the way to go. But we were not prepared. So we had to go with plan B. The US is not good at health care. There are consequences for that.
The rallying cry around ending the lockdown is complete and utter bullshit considering other countries that have tried reopening (including South Korea and parts of Japan) were slammed by a second wave of infections.
Opening up won't stop the at-risk population from being afraid to work, nor will it stop people from getting sick and being unable to work.
We have over 20 million unemployed (probably a significant undercount) through a self-inflicted lockdown in just a couple months. Leading economic experts such as the US Secretary of the Treasury and Chairman of the Federal Reserve have warned strongly of “permanent economic damage” if we continue the lockdown. I would speculate this lockdown is firmly ushering in the next era of “essential” mega corporations and the utter destruction of small business.
And in New York, the majority of new cases in the last few weeks have been from people “strictly observing social distancing.”
Like focusing a laser increases the energy that can be brought to bear on a single point and magnifies the overall effect, so too can highly targeted common sense measures save more lives than this “utter bullshit” general lockdown.
I’ll give the specific example again. While we’re doing ~30k tests a day nationwide, we still haven’t tested every nursing home patient and worker. In fact, NY Times reports many nursing homes have not gotten access to barely any testing at all, even for their recently deceased. So a sub-population of 1.3 million residents is bearing 35% of total fatalities (in 14 states it’s more than 50% of all fatalities) and this lockdown diverts massive resources and energy away from saving those lives.
Do I have that right? 0.4% of the population has seen 35% of the total deaths? Over-represented by 87x. By the way that’s an undercount because only 33 states actually break out data for nursing home deaths. But instead the political response is fear mongering, preaching a new normal, and shaming people who go to the beach.
Those are the current stats I believe. The IFR is of course lower, but probably not wildly lower. As of yesterday the UK's chief medical officer was estimating it at 1% or a bit less.
Lots if snark and point scoring and no charity any more.
Should never have given the unwashed masses internet access... /jk
This is just greed and putting profits before people.
Less than one week ago we were all cheering for an high level engineer leaving Amazon against working condition in their center. And now we try to justify Tesla reopening a factory?
That said, I see a lot more reports about poor working conditions at Amazon than Tesla, so it's entirely possible to criticise Amazon but agree with Tesla.
Things appearing as civil disobedience for money issue are virtually always terrible - as soon as "radicalism" or "iconoclastism" becomes a business, it's worst business.
Prohibition was a terrible policy but the people that fueled the defiance of prohibition were mobsters, scum that had a terrible and arguably on-going terrible effect on the country.
Even 1960s drug proponents became awful at the point they became drug dealers.
I'm not interested in casting Elon Musk as some sort of heroic figure, and if it turns out he has coerced his workers or endangered them in practice, not just theoretically, he should pay for that.
But the freedom to work is absolutely a human rights issue.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
What is described is something like the right to be considered for work if one is qualified. Maybe to the provision of work. But saying that this article guarantees a factory owner the right to restart that factory when they feel they'll be providing work along with making a profit, does not ring true.
I read an amusing analogy, we have what we call the "Schrodinger's disease".
The government tries to protect me from the disease and suspects me of spreading the disease - all at the same time.
Even though I don't want that protection and I am not sick. Doesnt' matter, I have to oblige.
It is really not how it should work at all.
Assuming everyone is infected at all times is both absurd and most importantly unworkable and counterproductive. The net effect is the opposite of what it wants to achieve.
Mature democracies should have the ability to carefully and responsibly limit some rights in times of great crisis, such as wars and pandemics.
[citation needed]
Why point the finger at California? The federal government has done so too.
* making it illegal for homeless people to exist in cities (loitering laws etc. when the homeless cannot help but break the law)
* taking away the right to bear arms as soon as black people started carrying firearms for self defense
* a long history of police brutality in the LAPD against minorities
* Los Angeles refusing to protect Asian Americans during race riots
* The California Dept of Labor refusing to enforce minimum wage laws regardless of the citizenship status of workers (only the federal government has to enforce border and immigration laws)
We're talking about California in this thread. If you want to talk about the federal government you're free to do so.
And it is absolutely the right of a government to prevent you from working.
Many jobs requiring government approval for example a doctor, lawyer, builder.
The UNCHR has begged to differ since 1948. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...
One could argue that putting yourself or others at risk of infection is not a “just and favorable condition”
Governments have no rights. There is nothing that is owed to them due to their existence as governments. Were a particular set of people not to form a government, no other government could rightfully enter to assert their 'right' to govern.
Work is one of the main purposes and goals an individual may have, together with family. Denying that to anyone is simple and plain tyranny.
What gives you the right to decide that?
Human beings have rights.
[1]https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/
Though suggesting that Musk's "human rights" are being violated through closure of his car factory in the middle of a pandemic is making a complete joke out of both his argument and out of the concept of human rights.
Anyway, I would think that being unable to open your own factory while your competitors are allowed to be open when you have done nothing wrong, would be quite "unjust and unfavorable". I mean it isn't like he can conduct this type of business from home instead.
Edit:
Here is the full sentence according to Article 23 from the Universal Declaration of Human rights:
1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. [1]
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/en...
"Right to work" has a completely different meaning than "Right to work in just and favourable conditions".
The latter refers to the fact that IF you are working then it should be in a safe environment not that you have the right to work at all.
Here it is in full form under Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. [1]
[1] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/en...
And just in case you're going to ask what proximity has to do with the matter of justice, it is because as his competitor's factories are located elsewhere than Alameda they fall under different jurisdiction, do his competitors ever have any regulation based on where they are located that they can then refuse to obey because Tesla's Alameda factory doesn't have to do it that way?
If there is unfairness here it is of the same sort of unfairness engendered by the world being a large globe with different climates, countries, governments, currencies, and cultures and where you choose to place your factory means your natural greatness of being must be hampered by the base restrictions of existence.
This nicely illustrates the folly of trying to reason about a situation from a pithy statement of some cherry-picked "right." Are we violating the "right to work"[1] of young children when we forbid them from quitting school getting a a factory job? Maybe, but it's pretty obvious that overriding factors are more important in that case. It's the same when we consider an employer who wants to "to work" employing his employees in conditions that some may consider unsafe.
I'm not sure what point that's meant to make, but it supports what I was saying. You'd never be able to derive that exception from:
>>> Well, the UN definition of "Human Rights" includes the "right to work"[1].
There's loads of different competing rights, exceptions to those rights, and other social practices that need to be weighed to make a judgement a situation like this. Focusing too closely on reasoning about this one "right to work" ignores all that, and thus leads to less than enlightening conclusions.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States#The_C...
Your first example is also impacted by this. General advocacy of violence was upheld as constitutionally protected speech, it's very unlikely that hate speech could ever meet the brandenburg test.
That's not to say that your point about one person's right to work vs another person's right to live is wrong. In fact, I think the court would likely agree with you on that matter. I just think your first couple of examples are flawed.
There's also the opposite example, of people showing more tolerance for arbitrary and authoritarian political decisions out of fear. It's very visible here in Europe right now and for the first time it seems like people didn't wise up since the 1930s at all, the mechanisms that convincingly explained how Nazi Germany and Austria could happen, still work.
Give me irrational civil disobedience over this any time.
Elon is just being a grandstanding idiot.
For example, look at the Logan Act and its justification for spying on politicians.
Prohibition is obviously a prime example of this, but if you consider various laws that once existed or are currently on the books but no longer enforced (think laws pertaining to racial segregation, sexuality, drug use, and such) you realize that being a law abiding citizen does not mean you are no longer allowed to think for yourself. Read up on "Jury Nullification" or "Jury Equity".