Putting this here as opposed to the Musk thread since it has broader implications...






Elon is forwarding the view that American workers don't have the drive to succeed as compared to the Chinese.


Elon Musk says Americans 'are trying to avoid going to work at all,' unlike Chinese workers who 'will be burning the 3 a.m. oil'

- Elon Musk said China would produce "some very strong companies," praising the country's workforce.

- By contrast, he said, "in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all."

- Musk famously slept on the factory floor during the Model 3's "production hell" back in 2018.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said he expects China to produce "some very strong companies" because of the country's workforce.


..."There's just a lot of super-talented, hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing," Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday.

"They won't just be burning the midnight oil. They will be burning the 3 a.m. oil," he continued. "They won't even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all."

Musk himself famously slept on the floor of Tesla's Fremont factory during the "production hell" for the Model 3.

"I wanted my circumstances to be worse than anyone else at the company," he told Bloomberg in 2018. "Whenever they felt pain, I wanted mine to be worse."

Last month, workers at Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory were required to sleep at the facility as production resumed following a three-week shutdown, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. A memo, which Bloomberg reported, indicated that each worker would be provided with a sleeping bag and an air mattress and expected to work 12-hour shifts with one day off per week.

But workplace tides may be shifting in China after tech workers there protested the "996" schedule that had many working 72 hours per week, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for six days.

...

Re above ^^^


As a serial entrepreneur myself, i am sympatico with Elon's view that the CEO (especially of a young, not yet profitable company) should be willing to work harder and longer than anyone else. I was always first one in the office and last one out, during the formative first few years and any trouble periods. It is not just optics but a necessary sacrifice imo.

But that said the calculus is not the same for employees who have an hourly wage or salary. The owner is being directly compensated for that 'extra labour' if fruitful in a way an employee is not, thru his equity growth.

Here is the reality for the workers in the US and that is despite their contribution to the success of the companies, and despite the increases in their productivity, they are compensated less and less while the Owners get more and more.




That does not create any dynamic of shared pain for gain and instead says, 'we can share the pain (lets all sleep on the factory floor) while only I (the owners) get the gain.










America is broken.

The elite have won the messaging battle and convinced the ranks of workers that the only path to success is the American dream of ownership and any thing short of that, you should just be grateful to your masters that you have a job. Any job.

This will never change as long as a huge percent of workers but that as true. That they have no right to the gains, or vacations, or healthcare, or anything else and any crumbs that fall from the owners is something they just need to be grateful for.

How does this dynamic change? What will it take?

The only thing that will fix that is unions, which have stood at the front of pretty much every gain in worker's rights for the last two centuries. Things like livable wages, 5-day work week, limitations on daily hours the employer can demand, work safety, injury compensation, ending child labor etc.

Which should make sense to even the most hardened capitalist. If you view work as selling your labor, aka a business transaction, then not organizing means you are constantly negotiating that sale as one seller among millions of potential sellers. So your negotiation power is dangerously close to zero, unless you happen to be one of the lucky few with a rare skill-set. Given that a passable wage is necessary for a decent life (and in some places and cases, for survival), it is a pretty sucky area to hold low to no negotiation leverage.

But unions in the US has suffered a lot of blows from both internal corruption scandals and massive external campaigns (political, legal, social and economical) to render them impotent. I think the US union membership is now in the sub 10%? That means they are basically powerless, with the possible exception of some specific industries.

I fear you are correct and know you largely are with regards to unions.

But it should not only be Unions. Sadly though the Financial Market 'Day Trader type, pull all value out now forces' have won out over the more Buffet style 'build for the future, build for value, build to last' forces.

The markets are far more focused on stripping value and inflating value and then taking profits and moving on than building superior type Buffet like returns over decades that raise all Boats, including the middle Class and below.

And sadly Unions historically were their own worst enemy and many individuals, like myself who had the displeasure to work in a union shop at the apex of their power found that model to be absolutely broken for those individuals who had real motivation to be other than a cog in the machine, well paid but with a focus on minimizing work. There is an entire generation of people like myself who look back and speak with disdain recalling being part of a union shop. And you can't make that go away quicky. And it does not mean every union shop was that way but enough were that I have found it far more likley in small talk to hear people express disdain for their union days.

And i am very pro Union now. But more the German union type model than the US one, which I believe automatically leads to diverse interests and the parties working against the other.