Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

Hacker News is influential. Upvotes can easily be gamed.

Noise is added to mix good info with misinformation to confuse and frustrate people sifting through comments trying to make sense of things.

These people will make weaker arguments against Tesla's actions so those arguments can be easily discredited. People making stronger arguments against Tesla will be clumped with them.

Trolling increases noise and frustration. It makes people not want to read adversarial comments.

Denigrate, dismiss, discredit.

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Highest upvoted comment is usually gamed, because it makes the most lucid argument (it was pre-written) and is seen as the most solid piece of info amid the noise.

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You say this but Tesla got absolutely spanked in the last 3 quarters in its auto division by the supposedly inferior unionized likes of Chevrolet, Fiat, Nissan and Toyota. ALL of them got much more affordable offerings out to market before the Model 3 was ready. Fiat managed to get refurbed and quite enjoyable 500es on sale for under $13000. The Leaf has enjoyed brisk national sales that picked up substantially last year. Toyota's Prius Prime and Chevy's Volt are sophisticated large-bank hybrids with outstanding reviews. The real kicker is Chevy's Bolt, which is pretty much competitive directly with a model 3 and gets outstanding reviews, with Chevy dramatically retooling to convert their Sonic lines to start selling more Bolts (an act that was curiously misrepresented by a lot of traditionally very pro-Tesla press, btw).

These EVs are moving well anywhere the economy is in okay shape, bucking the trend of slowing car sales as the market is glutted by used cars that are flatlining in value due to oversupply.

This idea that labor unions area a conspiracy to decrease productivity is difficult to prove, and given the magnitude of that allegation the lack of performance on Tesla's part with the Model 3 seems pretty damning for your argument here.

> So while I strongly support organized labor in abstract, it's difficult to blame Tesla for wishing to make its workforce less vulnerable to attack from big labor. Like many interest groups, big labor is mostly concerned with its own survival and growth, and is not really about the workers at all.

This, "I am sympathetic but actually these people are distilled evil, lie about everything including their mission, and are actually made up of saboteurs" line is the pinnacle of disingenuous discourse. I hope you don't think this passes muster for rational discourse here.

You obviously do not, "support organized labor in abstract" if you view a unionization effort (which you centralize into some kind of phantom called "big labor" as if it isn't actually made of a multitude of loosely cooperating worker-run-and-governed groups) nor do you seem terribly interested in "the workers" or their fate when productivity might be at stake.