I find myself in the unusual (for me) position of wanting to boycott Tesla because Musk temporarily throttled Ukraine's satellite data a few days ago. The data are used for military purposes in Ukraine's struggle to defend itself from the invasion by Russia.

Usually, I think commercial terms are the main thing that matters. If I like a Tesla and I agree to the price, that should be the end of the relevant considerations. It would be up to regulation and the law to ensure that the behavior of the company and its leadership is within boundaries. But at the moment we have a U.S. administration that is lawless. It is particularly so because it overvalues personal loyalty and personal gains while having little regard to the erosion of norms and the weakening of institutions. In this context there is nothing to constrain Musk.

For me, this is different from DOGE abuses of data because data abuse doesn't necessarily leave a trail of evidence and by the time another administration has control the evidence may have been removed.

For me, this is different from Full Self Driving claims that proved untrue because that's a regulatory matter. It's also common sense that if Tesla engineers aren't willing to sleep a full 8 hours in a Tesla moving at full highway speed, then FSD should be confined to city speeds and to keep the steering wheel out of the hands of alcoholics.

I want to contrast this is my China and Uyghurs position because contrasting the two situations might help me get a clearer understanding of my own thinking. In the case of China, I'm still accepting the commercial terms. I still buy products from China despite the terrible things that have been reported about their treatment of Uyghurs. It's a tightly controlled information environment so we don't have the facts. Instead we have personal accounts which back up individual claims about individual abusers. (There's also the possibility of political misinformation and smears.) That's different from systematic abuse. The systematic abuse that I do find credible, the detentions for the purpose of indoctrination, are not enough to dissuade me from buying China products. I wouldn't want to be detained for my atheism and fortunately I don't live in a country that would do that. As an atheist I think zealots are crazy so for me the systematic detentions are an excessive but understandable (from their point of view) measure to ensure public safety. China's excesses in this way haven't been enough for me to want to boycott China products.

I'd be happy to see people test my views because I want to see if they're indefensible. It might be that both views are unpopular but given all the trade there is with China, I think it's the Tesla Ukraine view that is truly unpopular.

I created a quick tool that shows what your “voting power” is based on how many eligible voters didn’t vote in the last midterm elections. Where I grew up in Harris County, Texas, my vote counts for 2.6 people. And it’s higher than 3 in major parts of the country. Share it with anyone you suspect of having voter apathy!