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.
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.