Tesla Tantrums: Consumer Choices in the Age of Performative Ethics

Epoch Times

08-05-2025

Commentary
The French have an apt expression for those vexing moments when, having exited a spirited exchange, the perfect rejoinder belatedly arrives. They call it
l'esprit de l'escalier
—'the wit of the staircase.'
The phrase captures that all-too-human affliction of eloquence delayed. The sharp retort, the subtle riposte—these come not in the heat of dialogue but only after one has turned his back and descended the stairs. 'If only I had said…' It's an experience with which I'm intimately familiar.
Yet every so often, I rise to the occasion. One such instance still affords a small measure of satisfaction. A visitor from England took it upon himself to scold me for driving a German automobile. He declared he could never own one, not after the destruction wrought by the Luftwaffe on England during the war. The implication was unmistakable: my vehicular choice constituted a moral failing. He drove, he proudly informed me, a Toyota Camry. For once, I replied in real time, 'Ah, well, I could never own a Japanese car, not after what the Japanese Army did to our Canadian boys in Hong Kong.' We changed the subject.
That brief exchange came to mind as I watched the recent paroxysms of hostility directed at
It is not necessary to be a shareholder, Tesla owner, or admirer of Elon Musk to find this troubling. The issue transcends personalities or partisanship. It is a symptom of a civic pathology, one where ideological grievance takes precedence over shared achievement, and where economic success is no longer a cause for celebration but a litmus test of political allegiance.
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If Mr. Musk espouses views one finds disagreeable, there are democratic mechanisms to contest them. But to vilify an entire enterprise—its workers, consumers, products—based on its founder's political eccentricities is intellectual laziness masquerading as moral conviction.
It also prompts a deeper question, leading us to the heart of the matter: which corporations, if any, are so morally unblemished that we can consume their products without public disapproval? In an age increasingly saturated with virtue signalling and performative ethics, should we now consider our consumer choices as moral declarations? If so, the standard quickly becomes untenable.
Consider Henry Ford, whose contributions to American industry were matched only by the virulence of his anti-Semitism. Ford financed the dissemination of
Or ponder
Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Nike, and
And what of legacy media organizations, whose selective coverage, ideological slant, and occasional falsehoods have sown confusion and deepened division? If we are to demand moral rectitude from our manufacturers, should we not hold our journalists and media organizations to the same standard?
The list is endless. In a fallen world, condemning every corporation and institution for its moral shortcomings takes little imagination. Yet, this is precisely the point: the moral outrage directed at Tesla is not principled but opportunistic. It is less about ethics and more about tribalism.
This is not to say that ethics should not play a role in commerce. Instead, it is to warn against the politicization of consumption, whereby our purchases become emblems of ideological identity. A society that demands moral perfection from its corporations but does so selectively, based not on a coherent principle but on partisan affinity, is not morally serious. It is merely moral theatre. The recent wave of anti-Tesla fervour has less to do with conscience than spectacle.
But moral seriousness requires more than slogans. It demands consistency, humility, and, most critically, an acknowledgment of our shared imperfection. Without these, protests that take us to task for our consumer habits are not acts of ethical resistance, but empty gestures—tribal totems in the theatre of cultural war.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.