Every company is spending "their own money" to pay employees. It doesn't matter if there are a thousand shareholders or just one. There is still a corporate structure and formal employee relationships. They are employees, not serfs, and they deserve the respect that entails.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employees-reveal-most-...
A former production employee who worked at the company over 10 years ago said he was surprised by his coworkers' attitude toward Musk.
"When he walked by, people would bow down to him," the former employee said. "That was kind of surprising to me."
If you're claiming his paying them out-of-pocket, can you provide a citation?
If it is the former it is really uncalled for and downplays the struggle of African Americans in the United States.
(Work at home, used to work in an awful office, still nowhere near slavery)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Secondly, you have some gall to compare a CEO setting policies that are well within the confines of labor laws with human slavery. Beyond the absurdity of your comparison, don't forget that Twitter employees literally have the right to walk away. That is the antithesis of slavery.
You are doing your own argument a massive disservice by making such absurd accusations. Instead of arguing on the merits of remote vs. in-person work, you invite an argument on your analogies. This is the same as calling anyone you disagree with politically a Nazi. Not only does it debase the absolute evil practiced by actual Nazis, it ends any chance of effective debate.
Be better than that, please.
(To be sure, if OP had used the "N-word" I am quite sure there would be much more condemnation though that would have unfortunately then entirely missed the point.)
That is exactly the problem. The analogy was that Musk akin to a plantation owner, and his prerogative vis-à-vis twitter employees (by virtue of being CEO, a position he gained through a takeover with his "money") is akin to the rights plantation owners practiced vis-à-vis slaves on the plantation. This is exactly what the person I replied to implied.
The problem I had was never with whether a CEO has a right to set policies like banning employees from remote work. The problem is that the analogy directly compared employees to slaves. The former have the right to walk away, the latter never did (without risking death). No matter what the antecedent is (CEOs vs. plantation owners) the subsequent is a false likeness (slave vs. employee).
And I agree that using the "n-word" would have probably been flagged immediately. And if it wasn't, it would be the focus of the comment and not the content. My argument is that functionally this is a distinction without a difference. Saying "Negros" may have insulated the poster from the immediate flagging, the thesis of their argument was equally as flawed independent of the words used. Elon Musk is not a slave-owner[1], Twitter employees are not slaves. No amount of hedging could make that analogy accurate.
[1] Whether the Musk family benefited from de facto slavery within the emerald mining business is a different argument. One that should be discussed, but in the context of exploitation of labor in third-world countries. Furthermore, as others have pointed out in this thread, the treatment of workers in China building Tesla models could be more justifiably argued to be a form of modern-day slavery, as the worker has far less agency to actually quit and still survive. Neither of these points were mentioned in this specific thread, and neither would have much bearing on whether Twitter employees are akin to slaves.
Beyond that, all behavior is not reasonable just because it's done with ones own money.