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Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

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Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#91

Post by therobots927 »

latch wrote: post #51
therobots927 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations are never held accountable in America

Isn't the problem exactly the opposite? A corporation has personhood which shields its executives?

Fair enough. That’s a more accurate way of putting it. Corporations are shields for the ruling elite to get away with pretty much anything. And in addition to that the corporation can be sued by shareholders if it doesn’t maximize shareholder value by externalizing costs. It’s the kind of policy that would be very popular among cancer cells.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#92

Post by testing22321 »

k4rli wrote: post #75
testing22321 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. They were trying hard to make a TBM that was faster than the current literal snails pace and cheaper than existing ones. It doesn’t appear they’ve had much success, though I’d rather they tried than just sticking with the status quo forever. > The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite em…

Regulations about using their own tech to drive inside their own property? The problem rather appears to be with the tech itself being unable to perform "full self-driving".

Yes. There are regulations about how you transport the public.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#93

Post by whamlastxmas »

AlexandrB wrote: post #5

The Boring Company seems like a total nothingburger at this point. The Las Vegas Loop is not particularly impressive and it's taking a long time to expand it. Nothing about this feels revolutionary or even evolutionary. Just novelty. The fact that Teslas can't navigate autonomously even in these controlled, enclosed environments is also quite embarrassing.

They literally autonomously drive through a Boring tunnel when they leave the manufacturing plant to park in a parking lot. I have no idea why you're stating they can't.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#94

Post by hvb2 »

ETH_start wrote: post #66
hvb2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does left or right even matter? This is ordinary stuff that should be covered? If you've read the article, you can see how - they were told to stop, and refused - lied about what they did to make the problem look smaller - reversed corrective action as soon as they thought the inspectors left This has nothing to do with bias. A right wing outlet should've covered this too. They might have used some different word…

The systematic bias arises from story selection, not from whether a specific investigation is accurate. So I am absolutely not suggesting this story is not accurate or that Boring Company isn't at fault. In the long run selective coverage creates an inaccurate picture of reality: constant stories about private greed, almost none about institutional self-dealing within the state.

So what outlet would choose to not cover this? One that doesn't care?

I think you misunderstand the whole concept of journalism. They report, you interpret. Left wing or right wing might matter in what words they choose, to influence your perception.

Not reporting something like this is not bias, that's just not caring.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#95

Post by hvb2 »

charcircuit wrote: post #76
hvb2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit margin? What a weird point of view. They should just follow the rules, period. And any fine should be larger than the amount of money they saved by their illegal behavior and cover the corrective actions. Here's a thought experiment. They're tunneling beneath your house and, because they skip all normal precautions, your house collapses. Sure, you don't mind as long as they're fined a decent amount, right?

>What a weird point of view. It's not weird. It would be bad if the government was unable to have the funds to clean up the damage. And when someone is charging you with >300% profit margins, that's a sign that you should find another way to solve the issue. >Sure, you don't mind as long as they're fined a decent amount, right? I would mind, but I would feel that I was made whole if they paid me >3x the damages to th…

Treating environmental law as a way to make money is, odd. If the financial Harm is minimal that implies that in your worldview it shouldn't be punished?

You must view jails and prisons as a terrible outcome, since you're essentially paying money to punish someone.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#96

Post by shakna »

binary132 wrote: post #89
shakna wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't [0] always work out [1] this way. But it does seem like a consistent theme across civil wars - when the divide between a ruling class and the average is too large, then something violent eventually happens [2]. Lets hope we rebalance before reaching the point where everyone loses, this time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution [2] https:/…

The Russian and French Revolutions are hardly examples of “a different way” to be pointed to. I’m a Rerum Novarum appreciator personally.

If "Let them eat cake" isn't an example, I don't know what is.

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#98

Post by sharkjacobs »

atmavatar wrote: post #47
sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

[flagged]

> 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'…

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.

[1]https://www.ontario.ca/page/2016-2020-environmental-penaltie...

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#99

Post by throwworhtthrow »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
throwworhtthrow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be specific. Which article and which citation? Otherwise this is insinuation or even slander. Edit to add: what you've done here is defame every member of the ProPublica staff, past and present (because you don't name a particular writer or article). There is no way for anyone from ProPublica to refute this. If you want to critique ProPublica honestly, quote a particular statement they've published.

> Be specific. Which article and which citation? Otherwise this is insinuation or even slander I’m literally calling out a liar. Not sure how you missed that. But sure. This is the article [1]. Excerpt from my e-mail to the author: “I came across your post through Dealbook today. In your article you mention that it is ‘argued that [Sarbanes-Oxley] would hurt initial public offerings, which it didn’t.’ You link throug…

Thank you for this. Count me as one more person who's been influenced by your exchange with Eisinger.

Edit: My layperson reading of the source makes me think the ProPublica article would be accurate if its link to the source had the text "which it mostly didn't" rather than "which it didn't". I don't have a problem with the article as it's written, but this is a good reminder that journalists writing for a general audience will often omit qualifiers, sacrificing accuracy for readability. (I, on the other hand, cling dearly to my qualifiers.)

Re: Boring Company fined nearly $500K after it dumped drilling fluids into manholes

#100

Post by charcircuit »

hvb2 wrote: post #95
charcircuit wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What a weird point of view. It's not weird. It would be bad if the government was unable to have the funds to clean up the damage. And when someone is charging you with >300% profit margins, that's a sign that you should find another way to solve the issue. >Sure, you don't mind as long as they're fined a decent amount, right? I would mind, but I would feel that I was made whole if they paid me >3x the damages to th…

Treating environmental law as a way to make money is, odd. If the financial Harm is minimal that implies that in your worldview it shouldn't be punished? You must view jails and prisons as a terrible outcome, since you're essentially paying money to punish someone.

>If the financial Harm is minimal that implies that in your worldview it shouldn't be punished?

Yes. If I step on a patch of grass technically that may damage the grass, but I don't think such an action should be punished since the amount of damage is very small.

>You must view jails and prisons as a terrible outcome, since you're essentially paying money to punish someone.

No, I view it as a positive outcome as it removes malicous actors from the system.

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