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 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…

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.

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

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?

>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 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.

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?

> 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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

You just want to exploit people.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Which, in itself, is a damning statement.

ah thank you.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't understand why "4. Stay at your company and try to change culture within by organizing collectively, either through the guise of a union or informally" isn't also something you are free to do, besides that you think doing so is not "do[ing] something positive to the society", but is instead "becoming a bunch of cry babies."

Also why is 3 binary? If I am a minority investor in a company, I am not free to criticize the management? I have to buy the majority of the company and fire the management?

It kind of seems like you don't actually understand that soft power exists. The canonical book on this within organizational politics is "Exit, Voice and Loyalty". Have you ever had a social interaction in your entire life? Not everything is an ultimatum, some things are conversations.

To accomplish (4) you have to become a sociopath and sociopaths won't attempt to substantially improve culture for its own sake because they lack empathy.

Most employees never consider starting their own company, so we can strike off (2). Buying SpaceX is vanishingly unrealistic, so discount (3). My impression of working at SpaceX is that the options for employees are:

1. Keep working at SpaceX - work on truly innovative technology with a lofty mission. The work environment sucks, you work 100 hour weeks but the _work_ itself is great. Your work might land on Mars this decade.

2. Join another startup (Relativity, Firefly, Rocket Lab, etc) - no proven track record of success or work on smaller scale (but successful) projects. Work hours and culture are variable, but there is a general sense of urgency. Your work is not landing on Mars this decade but could still change the aerospace industry in smaller ways.

3. Coast and enjoy life with your family (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Blue Origin, etc). Work 38 hour weeks. You will get the chance to work on large prestigious projects. Your project is regularly in the news for being over budget and late. There is no sense of urgency. You have complete job security.

Unions are when employees get together to demand better working conditions. The only people who should be afraid of unions are those who hold capital.

It's a free market. Find another company who values your skill.

Since it's a free market - why shouldn't a group of people work together to improve their lot in it?

A free market is, by definition, free of collusion.

People with large capital don't need to collude - they already have tons of power as individuals :)

It's like the term "free market" is a thought terminating cliche or something.

The term was coined to refer to an absence of gatekeepers charging for access, though collusion is often pretty similar.

There are already systems in place in companies for you to do that. If you want to bring Unions in to the picture it means

1. Your opinions are not useful or valuable.

2. The company is poor at adapting good ideas through existing channels.

In either case you should leave the company and find another one.

Why should I be compelled to use the systems someone else designed? Who is so wise and righteous that their external control over my decision to join or not is justified?

Because the system is designed mostly by founders who built the company from ground up and had the maximum skin in the game. Employees have minimum skin in the game, never have full context on things and are easily replaceable. You are always free to start your own company according to your own rules.

A free market implies a freedom to unionize and strike.

Sure. Also for the employer to fire employees for doing that. So doing it is stupidity instead of just finding a better company that values your skill.

Well no, because organizing is legally protected.

Keep in mind these legal protections actually made unions weaker, so be careful about what you wish for.

Hell yeah.

Or just take over the company. That is easier.

Unionizing is not lame. It's about a balance of power between owners and workers.

If you want balance of power improve your skills and get job in a company that values you more. There would never be perfect balance of power. It's not real life.

It's not about perfection, quite a misnomer of an argument imo. You would be the kind of person that 100 years ago would probably be against woman getting the vote - "It's not about equality, that's not real life"

No. I would be saying them if they want to vote, move to a country which values them and give them the right to vote.

Just like millions of people ditched communist countries and moved to USA.

You are changing the goal posts. On an individual level that might all be fine 'in a perfect world', but moving somewhere else, improving ones skills, not a given at all. You sound bitter and lack empathy.

If the problem is big enough for you, you are perfectly capable of changing company or country. If not, it's not important for you or you don't care enough to put in the work.

Now that comes across as some perfect utopia. Maybe certain people don't want to stick their neck out in fear of losing job, which is not possible since they have to support a family. Etc. You live in a hypothetical dream world.

If you live in fear of loosing job you have far more important things to work on first than changing company culture.

Alternatively we unionize and see that balance of power happen.

It’s funny all this anti union speak and then when companies are faced with it suddenly their purses start opening up.

I used to have a dim opinion of unions because of some media and some political views. Now I would describe it as much more nuanced.

In working with some public sector unions though, arguing for management, I've actually seen very different focuses in play: namely efficiency. The unions with whom I work are definitely about fair labor practices, and pre-decisional input, and that is just common sense though. In working with them I was very impressed with what I saw. They never talked politics, only members, and issues confronting them regarding efficiency which was in their agreement with management.

Now, on the other hand, had a neighbor that was high up in leadership of a national union. He never talked with me about efficiency, or his members, just continual rants around a specific political party, and how he was attending political events from his political party.

I will ride the down arrow roller coaster with you. People can make a choice about where they work. Companies are not democracies. Organizing unions is a fast-track to a closed location, relocated factory, or loss of a job.

Companies exist to make profit. Unions extract profit at a disproportionate rate to the value they provide. Every business owner knows this. People who think unions add value are drinking the kool-aid. High performers are not rewarded because the ocean is now higher.

If you are an average performer, you definitely want a union. If you're a high-performer, unions are a form of arbitrage for your salary.

You might want to do some reading on why unions came about in the first place.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union

Unionizing is pure free market. Workers are holders and sellers of labour (which free market advocates typically class as a commodity). They bargain for the best contract in exchange for that labour. Why is a worker's optimization of their commodity lame and negative, whereas a company's optimization for profit is not?

"cry babies who think they deserve everything without doing any work"

yes, that's exactly what's happening, and precisely the reason why unionization happens. very perceptive of you.

Username checks out I guess. This is an extremely low-effort comment. It seems that you would _prefer_ to live in a society where job security is so fragile that a well-meaning letter can get you fired?

What makes you think all companies are like that? Get a job in a company where you won't get fired in a well meaning letter.

You mean, a company where the workers have more power? A unionized company?