> Do companies run by Elon Musk violate ethical and environmental regulations much more often than other similar companies
This strikes me as a completely wrong-headed take on it. It's not OK for one company to do this merely because others do the same or worse. I'd much prefer no companies violate ethical and environmental regulations.
I applaud the exposé not because of Elon's political leanings or even because he's involved with the company at all, but because I hope it's at least a little push towards the company behaving better. Should there be other companies requiring similar exposés (and I think we all there are), I look forward to reading them if/when Politico or some other journalist outlet publishes them, regardless of the political affiliations in the offending companies' leadership.
I don't quite understand this mentality that it's not OK to investigate or otherwise bring justice to organizations considered right-leaning until it's been exhaustively proven no organization on the left is at least as bad.
If you don't want right-leaning companies being the first in the crosshairs, maybe join the team and convince them from the inside that flagrantly violating the law in front of the very inspectors sent to verify legal compliance only to resume doing it the moment they believe said inspectors left but without verifying it is really stupid.
If you have a large number of corporations breaking the law, you have to start your investigations somewhere, and the company with the giant neon sign saying "we're breaking the law!" is as good a spot to start as any.
I made a mistake if my post made it seem like I thought this article should not be written or published. And especially if it seemed like my concern was that I thought Boring Company was being unfairly targeted because of Elon's repellent politics.
I'm concerned that this article was published because Elon Musk is a celebrity, not because the offence itself is newsworthy. And if I thought that this article would effect corporate practices anyway, I would simply shut my mouth, and keep my apprehensions to myself. But I suspect that Elon will get a little dopamine hit if he sees his name in a news headline, and every other CEO of a major corporation will ignore it altogether and continue committing environmental offences whenever they think it is advantageous.
I think that Elon Musk is a bad person, I think that billionaires shouldn't exist, and specifically that the kinds of people who become billionaires are some of the worst kinds of people to wield power in society. But I don't think that Elon Musk is special. I don't think that he's a uniquely bad person, I think he is basically a very normal CEO.
> Should there be other companies requiring similar exposés
I think that there are so many other such cases that it is almost impossible to wrap my head around. I said "I wish I had a sense of the numbers" not because I want to normalize and excuse this, but because I think the scope of the problem is so much bigger than this story suggests. Here[1] is a tiny slice of what I mean, a review of environmental penalties issued in Ontario, Canada. It seems like there should be 15 to 20 such exposes in the Local News section of The Toronto Star every year.
Elon Musk, like every other antisocial monster leading a major corporation is "just" making a calculated decision comparing the risk of getting caught and the cost of a fine against the expense of doing the right thing.
I think the real story is that maybe fines are insufficient to address the issue of corporate environmental offenses, or that maybe they accurately represent the priorities of regulators, but not of citizens.
There's a problem here and it's not that Elon Musk is evil. Our society needs to be resilient to the existence of evil people.
This strikes me as a completely wrong-headed take on it. It's not OK for one company to do this merely because others do the same or worse. I'd much prefer no companies violate ethical and environmental regulations.
I applaud the exposé not because of Elon's political leanings or even because he's involved with the company at all, but because I hope it's at least a little push towards the company behaving better. Should there be other companies requiring similar exposés (and I think we all there are), I look forward to reading them if/when Politico or some other journalist outlet publishes them, regardless of the political affiliations in the offending companies' leadership.
I don't quite understand this mentality that it's not OK to investigate or otherwise bring justice to organizations considered right-leaning until it's been exhaustively proven no organization on the left is at least as bad.
If you don't want right-leaning companies being the first in the crosshairs, maybe join the team and convince them from the inside that flagrantly violating the law in front of the very inspectors sent to verify legal compliance only to resume doing it the moment they believe said inspectors left but without verifying it is really stupid.
If you have a large number of corporations breaking the law, you have to start your investigations somewhere, and the company with the giant neon sign saying "we're breaking the law!" is as good a spot to start as any.