Many other companies and factories are open, workers are not required to show up, and if they do they're following guidelines developed from the factory presence in China with thousands of unharmed employees. This is on top of most of the state being effectively open for weeks already.
"Is wrong." OK, and just by force of personality Elon establishes that? Since when is Elon an epidemiologist? Sounds like about as much as he's a underwater rescue expert and ventilator manufacturer.
Take a step back, he's a troll juicing his stock price 80% of the time. Read elsewhere where he has a $700B bonus hanging in the balance here, and so how is that not the simplest explanation? There's your "good reason."
I believe the people who say it's still unsafe. If you don't and want or need the work, I think they're hiring in Fremont, or will be soon.
The TSLA bonus is $700 million, not billion. That's less than 2% of his current net worth and changes nothing in his life. It seems the simplest explanation is that he really does care about the company and the people as evidenced by his continual investment into his ventures at the risk of bankrupting himself several times.
And Elon is not alone in this, he's joined by millions across the state and country that want - and need - to open up to counter the economic disaster that will create far more suffering and chaos. It's an absolute fact that this virus is nowhere near as fatal as first thought in March. Everything has a cost and risks must be weighed. The 3rd leading cause of death in the US is medical errors, but we don't shut down hospitals because of it, do we?
You're free to believe whoever you want and stay inside for your safety, but not everyone has that luxury as they face hunger, suicide, depression, overdoses, diseases, surgeries, domestic abuse and violence, and other life-altering stress that has nothing to do with covid19 and hasn't conveniently stopped because this virus came around. The people want choice, and I believe their freedom to make that choice is of utmost importance.
It seems the simplest explanation is that he really does care about the company and the people as evidenced by his continual investment into his ventures at the risk of bankrupting himself several times.
His care "about the people" is belied by his inability or unwillingness to care for "the people" as the union he is fighting so bitterly would do. Perhaps he really dislikes unions because they take too good of care for their members? Not to put too fine a point on it, but I can think of another prominent American who is proudly waving their negligence at the nation.
he's joined by millions across the state and country that want - and need - to open up to counter the economic disaster that will create far more suffering and chaos
"Want" doesn't protect people against viruses. "Should Elon incur liability for this?" is a question I want to see discussed. To be sure, there is chatter in DC about giving employers immunity for this, but nobody other than the Chamber of Commerce will associate their name with it, so I assume politicians know it might be a damaging issue to get behind.
But the virus is here, and again by force of personality this can't be changed. What people are clamoring for is some kind of a safety net, and they've been inculcated with the idea that a job is the only safety net they have, or can control. This is not the be-all end-all, because this is all the government's job, another aspect of the crisis in which they are being negligent (certainly the corporate 'stimulus' didn't involve complicated forms and crashing websites and time limits).
Yes, hunger, suicide, depression, and all the rest are due to the hopelessness that an ineffectual government, what some are calling a failed state, is declining to provide in an emergency. $1200 is a pittance.
The people want choice
There is no "choice" in virus exposure, it is not available. It is not subject to politics nor policies. That people believe that it is, is a travesty and I'd say a crime against humanity for convincing people to act against their own interests where their life hangs in the balance. In the service of capitalism, all because people in power don't want to use the tax dollars we pay to provide a less suicidal environment for us with our own money, within which to endure an extended quarantine. So we can stay alive.
Do you really think this should be portrayed as a luxury?
You meant "it's legal". Then you would have to concede that people should be able to do legal, unethical things. You may think Elon is a jackass, that does not mean he has to close his factory.
There's no such thing as "unethical." Everybody has values and reasons why they do stuff. Other than that I don't understand your first two sentences.
You're right that Elon being a jackass doesn't mean he has to close his factory, but at the same time it can be the reason why he wants to contravene public orders and policy to reopen it.
> There's no such thing as "unethical." Everybody has values and reasons why they do stuff.
I have values and reasons that guide my own actions. There’s a much larger space of values and reasoning that I personally don’t adhere to, but consider valid for other people to choose for themselves. Anyone acting according to values or reasoning that falls outside this space is behaving unethically in my view. Whether or not something is ethical depends both on the internal motivation of the actor and the beliefs of the observer, but it’s still a useful concept as long as the relevant people in this formulation are properly udentified.
This variation makes it a shaky basis for law, which is a somewhat blunt instrument. It will inevitably allow some acts that some people view as unethical to go unpunished by the courts, and will probably disallow some acts that some people consider morally required: There’s too much variation in the personal beliefs of the populace for there to be a frontier that neatly encompasses all the guiding principles for their personal actions and also stays within the bounds of what people consider acceptable behavior from others.
You're simply using the wrong (though popular) word. The "un" in unethical" means "without," not "different."[1] This is basic English (and Old High German, and Manx, and...). However, if your goal is to disregard and negate the basic intelligence and/or humanity of another person or group, then it might be the right word, but this path leads to some very bad places.
>Whether or not something is ethical
You eating a hamburger when I think meat is murder doesn't mean you don't have any ethics.
>There’s too much variation in the personal beliefs of the populace for there to be a frontier that neatly encompasses all the guiding principles for their personal actions and also stays within the bounds of what people consider acceptable behavior from others.
You're describing morality, AKA a shared set of ethics, and people have been fighting to establish their preferred morality on other people (AKA "stop doing that thing I don't want you to do") for as long as people have had shared identities. Everybody who had participated in that history has acted according to a set of ethics, but the way you use the word, whether one of those people has any ethics depends on what side you're on. Not true.
I know I'm pissing in the wind here, but it's simply the wrong word to use.
The “un-“ prefix in “unethical” means “violative of; contrary to”, and the word as a whole refers to something that is in violation of an ethical standard. It is generally used discursively, to refer to the speaker’s ethics rather than those of the actor performong the action being discussed.
I know how you're trying to use it, I brought up the etymology. Your usage isn't new, I'm just adding rigor. Even "violative of; contrary to" categorically negates the validity of the actor's reasoning. Taking the descriptive position is your option, but I hope we can agree that that would be "literally"-ing the word, given the science.
I’m fundamentally a descriptivist when it comes to language: words mean what people use them to mean, not what they “should” mean based on etymological history. Negating the validity of the actor’s reasoning is generally what people who call things unethical intend to do, and I see no evidence that usage has changed significantly in recent years. As their intentions are clear, I see no benefit in claiming the concept is nonexistent.
In fact, deigning to judge an act as either ethical or unethical is implicitly admitting that the actor has agency and therefore reasoning powers: someone’s reasoning cannot be invalid unless it exists.
