Elon Musk is a thin-skinned twit (see what I did there?). I think we have all pretty much learned that beyond a shadow of a doubt this last couple of weeks since he took over twitter. He has trashed the company's reputation with advertisers based on ill-thought out plans that people who actually understand social networks told him would be problematic, he has tweeted out blatantly incorrect information about how the system works, he has fired people who have politely corrected him about said tweets and now he is apparently paying people to trawl through the internal Slack and public tweets of employees and firing those that criticize him. All of that makes him a giant hypocrite, a whiney man-baby, and an all-around putz. But the reaction to his firing of employees who criticizing him, no matter how polite or mild, shows a deep rot that capitalism has injected into our society.
Many people seem to agree with the notion that it is morally acceptable to fire people who criticize him -- that if you talk back to the boss publicly, this is what you should expect. That is a level subservience that even serfs would be hesitant to embrace. What is worse, the pushbacks to that notion are largely superficial and don't address the root immorality of it. First, people note that the culture at Twitter, apparently written into their employee handbook, explicitly encourages such feedback in company channels and Musk has made no official announcement of a change to those policies. Second, firing people who tell you when you are wrong is a guaranteed way to be more wrong. Both of those are true. You should not be allowed to yank the rug out from under people without warning them (and legally, you may not be able to. I am sure employment lawyers are looking at the viability of suits now) and anyone who doesn't want to be told they are wrong is not someone you should trust with anything more important or dangerous than a piece of string. A very short piece of string.
But those points miss the larger corrosive issue at play. They both accept the idea that owning or running a company means that you should be allowed to fire employees for being people. The idea that just because you are the boss means that you can fire someone for politely disagreeing with you represents a kind of subservient mentality that is corrosive to democratic values. It implies a hierarchy of absolute control -- that your livelihood and perhaps even your life (food, housing and medical care are all paid for through work, after all. And in the United States especially, the safety net is woefully inadequate to supply any of these to almost anyone) is subject to the whims of the people on the ladder above you. That premise runs counter to the basic foundation of democracy and human rights. Freedom must exist in all spheres of your life if you are to be considered truly free. Blindly accepting that some people can and should be allowed absolute control over such an important aspect of your life conditions you to accept the notion of absolute hierarchies in all aspects of your life.
There are nuances to this, of course. Freedom comes with responsibilities. Being insulting to co-workers, including your boss, could very well be a reason for termination. Denigrating your company or its products as well. being a constant source of complaints rather than solutions could rise to the level of counter-productiveness that necessitates you being removed. There may not be bright lines around all of these conditions. As with everything in life, context matters, and some things may need to be left to the idea of shame and public sanction rather than the law. Which is why it is important that as a society we do not accept the notion that the boss can do what the boss wants because they are the boss.
All societies have informal and formal methods of control, of establishing what the society things should be acceptable. By accepting that bosses like Elon are within the socially acceptable bounds to fire people for whatever they want, we create a society that has an unhealthy respect for hierarchy, less respect for individuals, and less respect for democratic control. It is corrosive to our civil society in ways that make it more accepting to creping authoritarianism. Democratic control and individual rights cannot stop at the workplace door. What you do in the place where you spend the majority of your waking ours obviously condition how you behave outside those doors, how you see the world beyond them. The defense of firing people for the most human of reactions -- polite disagreement -- shows just how much we have already lost as a civil society. It is vitally important we don't lose any more.