ha.

Sure, 50 years ago MAYBE this would have been valid, but I'm doubtful.

Are we going to ignore that companies in Germany were profiting off of the Nazi regime? Lockheed-Martin, BAE, etc pushing us into infinite war. Oil and gas companies lying about climate change. Coinbase is taking the side of those types of companies.

Climate change has been hijacked as a political issue. Lobbyists from companies are constantly arguing in favor of more damaging and exploitive rules for society.

So, no you can't be apolitical. Armstrong is being selfish and privileged. He's signaling to employees that they need to shut up and make money. If I was working there, I'd be glad this was exposed now instead of later.

I speculate that this is a way for Coinbase to carry out its first round of layoffs.

No one owes anyone anything and there are not really any rules here. Consequences and outcomes yes but no real rules.

So the people that work at Coinbase took some action (walkout) and the CEO is taking some action (blog post/policy/vision clarification/severance offers to leave). His job is to convince and use his power to get his desired outcome. But employees have a similar amount of power to change the vision and direction of the company too. They don’t often wield it well since it’s been in business owners best interest to convince workers they don’t have this power at all.

It will be interesting to see if the employees realize any of this and how they respond.

Furthermore, 6 months severance is on the lighter side for 3yrs of service in cases where the company did something remotely controversial. Setting the aside the issue of allowing politics at the workplace or not, actual implementation of the policing invites all sorts of non-standard harassment and first amendment claims. Any of the lawyers in the Bay Area who helped Uber employees negotiate severance could likely get a deal like this doubled, especially if the employee is a manager or senior-level. While 6 months of salary is nothing to scoff at, there's a time and a place for major company ideology changes and COVID is not the time to make employees worry about their employment.

Now bringing these ideas to work and using that as a vehicle for change is not something I’m comfortable with, but if you as a company have a mission, you can’t expect your staff to not also have missions that might be aligned or orthogonal to the company.

It might make your company work better getting rid of politics (that disagrees with yours anyway) from the workplace by paying people. I wonder if it leads to a filtering out of potentially difficult conversations that people should have.

Anyway I’m against corporate stuff like this and I think you can cut this down quite a lot without the fluff. I wonder what the specific internal conversations were to prompt this public plea for apolitical-ness outside of the company’s political mission.

They would have a leg to stand on if they were part of a worker's cooperative, because then they'd be owners. The juicy job market for tech workers may obscure this fundamental fact, but when the rubber hits the road any overpaid engineer is still considered hired help and forever "below the salt". Until workers build up a co-op sector to compete with private sector companies, they will never have a say, no matter how much they kick and scream.

So either sit your ass down and sell your soul like you already said you would, or get out there and start building. Not just for yourself, but for all of us. Because we will never have true democracy as long as most of the wealth the people generate gets sliced and diced at board meetings without even the veneer of representation.

I feel the whole argument against being apolitical is just being made in bad faith to support radicalism, political acceleration and extremism.

Why would you wan't a workplace of radicals always fighting? If you can't argue this then you can't argue against being apolitical.

Initially the king used the Wahhabi extremists as troops and it was quite a successful partnership. But eventually it went sour as the king tried to modernize the country bringing in phone lines and roads and he was attacked by his former extremist friends who were opposed to the sinful modern world. Eventually the king enlisted the aid of the British with airplanes and machine guns and the Wahhabi were subdued (with a large number being killed).

A couple of parallels and potential lessons here.

Beware of getting in bed with unreasonable and fanatical extremists. They will turn on their former benefactors fairly quickly and the danger often isn't worth the risk.

And, if you are an fanatical extremist (not passing judgement on just noting), you likely won't actually ever take power for long and will be quickly disposed of when no longer useful or you become problem which you will shortly. Cynical people will take advantage of your idealism for their own purposes but you won't see the benefits.

Now if you feel like your power as a citizen has dwindled and you can't meaningfully enact change through democratic means, it makes sense to try and "weaponize" your job, especially if you work for a powerful company and you're a valuable highly skilled worker.

But in the end if you're dissatisfied with your company and you know that there's a fundamental ideological incompatibility it probably makes more sense to just quit, especially when you're a software dev and you can probably find some other job fairly easily.

I guess an other possibility would be to have proper unions but for some reason I don't see that happening in the USA any time soon...

Take for example NFL management telling the players not to kneel in solidarity. That is the players' most effective (and frankly, peaceful, and not particularly disruptive) way to send a message. But if you don't agree with their message, moving to shift it to a less visible place is absolutely a political attempt to neuter it.

It's a good thing to try to be so generous with supporting an exit over values alignment. It's unfortunate, though not surprising, for Armstrong to want Coinbase to be like other for-profit financial firms -- quietly amassing wealth and influence vs. noisily in the spotlight.

Politics is not something that happens twice a year in a voting booth, or even something that happens on TV; it's how you and I engage with civic society at large, and to say that the workplace should, or even could be divorced from that seems almost silly.

Coinbase doesn't walk to talk about politics at work? That's neat, and sounds nice. But they're making that statement in a time where "not talking about politics" is something that very much works in favor of some groups and against others.

I know that we're engineers, and we want to spend our days building and shipping. I wouldn't ever fault anyone for that desire. But we have to acknowledge the fact that neutrality favors, and will always favor, one side of a debate. To protest that politics are something that "doesn't happen here" is to bury one's head in the sand.

I was taught politics isn't polite to talk about it.... illogical (what politics are to me ...a pissing match driven by billionaires on each side fueling fires for their side and their sheep almost mindlessly following along ) views aren't a welcoming or warm human experience that fosters teamwork.

All companies should follow with this stance ..letting all know discussing politics at XYZ company is frowned upon and if troubles arise from it (other employees feeling harassed and or uncomfortable by it; report it) then XYZ company isn't the place for you!

A company deciding between "everyone work from home" or "everyone come into the office and sit in open seating" has to engage with the realities of what the virus is, which necessitates taking a stand on issues which are political.

This is doubly impossible for Coinbase since cryptocurrency is the most overtly political area of technology.

https://www.icpas.org/information/copy-desk/insight/article/...

Encouraging explicitly amoral stances from companies and retaliatory actions such as this may be appealing to some but is ultimately harmful to the company and society in general. That's a debatable assertion of course but the more we learn about white collar crime and companies which disregard the harms they do the more we find that individuals lacking empathy are core players.

Because I have the right to provide for my children and ensure they can live their best life.

I don’t care if it’s “not fair” or if I “lucked out.” My family comes in first. Not the government, not anyone else - if I make something or earn something, it is my right to provide for my family.

> largely by being born in the right place, at the right time, with the right parents etc. etc.

Why is anyone obligated to a level playing field?

And the polarization of unions is far from a forced move. I do not think Republicans made this happen: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democratic-socialists-am...

It's more like that centralized top-down economy is much more comfortable for the union leadership than chaotic horizontal competitive economy. It's much easier to enforce certain policy by the power of the government than negotiate it privately with each employer. That makes unions a natural ally of socialists. And of course there's nothing like government subsidies and regulations - which can be exchanged for votes and donations - to hide the inefficiencies of inflexible unionized setups and deflect the competitive threats from more agile and enterprising newcomers. Again, here the unions are the natural allies of centralized regulatory state. And the effects of this are pretty obvious: https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-th... https://www.nj.com/news/2018/06/money_for_nothing_working_th...

That's not Republican party's fault.

The cleavage you’re describing between ideological and material concerns is one that was introduced as part of the neoliberal ideology of the 1970s, in which Capital intentionally carved out a narrow space for identitarian claims to better defend itself from the multi-constituency groups that were attacking it in the 1960s. But it doesn’t reflect the real history of how solidarity functioned in the period.

There is certainly a shift in white-collar workers beginning to understand themselves in terms more akin to their working class predecessors, especially as it relates to hierarchy and power dynamics in companies. But this is not too terribly surprising given that massive wealth inequality has produced an even greater degree of proletarianization, even among the highly educated workforce. Google has more contract employees than regular employees now, for example.

These are progressive ideals pushed usually by people who share other progressive ideals, but employee representation is not itself ideologically motivated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)

I think that was exactly the OP's point. The kind of activism we're talking about here is low-key activism by privileged people. I can't think of any examples either - that didn't mean they didn't happen, it just means they weren't important enough to make the history books because they were settled without any violence.

> from roads

The Interstate Highway System, while technically impressive, essentially entrenched the US as a car-centric society from the top-down.

> public health

The vast majority of our healthcare problems can be attributed to the fact that it's tied to employment, which was caused by Federal policies.

> even the Internet

DARPA falls under "organize national defense". The EU also has EU-level agencies that work on space research (ESA). Advanced research can also be organized among the States in a CERN-like model.

On the flip-side, US States are larger than many nations. The State of Massachusetts has more people than Norway, and enjoys a similar HDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Insofar as "localities" are ill-suited to governing, the States are a sufficient mechanism for top-down control.

Everyone wins when competitors try different things and find out what's efficient and what works well and what doesn't. Marijuana legalization and gay marriage started as experiments by states and localities, which could find and set the example to be adopted federally.

Everyone loses when an entrenched monopoly (here the federal government) can forcibly impose one way of doing things with no room for deviation.

The libertarian "Minimize the federal government" is an extremely misguided fanatical view which is devoid of any fact-based reasoning. Federal investments have lead to transformative change in most sections of the US economy. Federal Reserve keeping the interest rates low and providing unlimited liquidity is whats keeping the stock market from tanking today. Federal investments will be key to de carbonizing the US economy and reducing income inequality (e.g. by increasing the minimum wage).

For the same reason that Google tells Congress 'You need to let us run free to fight those Chinese giants', the US needs federal level regulation to play on the same level as those companies, if it had the guts.

No, my argument is that the EU tries to "have it both ways" by taking away fiscal and monetary sovereignty but leaving cultural sovereignty intact. The result is that Greece, Ireland, Spain, etc were not really able to regulate their economies in any meaningful sense to prevent the kind of blow-up we saw in 2008, particularly because, when you share a currency and trade zone with a heavy exporter like Germany, their surpluses are your deficits.

The Spanish, Irish, and Greek housing bubbles were underwritten by the profits of German exporters. Greek fiscal malfeasance was overlooked because it was considered politically more important to grow the EU and the Eurozone than to let anyone at all have the authority necessary to enforce healthy fiscal and trade balances.

The United States does not actually work this way, because the federal government engages in countercyclical transfers between the states. The wealth of New York and California gets recycled, through taxes, to pay for military bases in Maine, pensions and Social Security checks in Florida and Arizona, and timber conservancies in Idaho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Minotaur

Is the current wave of political tension in workplaces limited to tech/SV companies, or is this a more general thing? Have there been any significant incidents/announcement in other areas?

Good God, your firm exists to facilitate trading in speculative assets peddled by libertarian internet millionaires and that just so happen to be exceptionally useful for laundering money - enabling a whole online industry of shadow markets that were thought impossible a decade ago.

I understand that your values dictate that association with this unsavory bunch is an acceptable compromise when pitted against the grave dangers of government overreach and surveillance - I am of the same opinion. But social revolutionaries you are certainly not, just opportunists speaking the slogans of the day while lining their own pockets. So Armstrong's sincerity and lack of pretense is refreshing.

Their 'social activism' as its presented in that post includes trying to conflate BCash with Bitcoin to noobs who were unaware of the fork in order to bolster the price of a alt coin with no value or usecase just as mainstream attention (read: non-technical users) was being gained, and by extension they promoted Ver/Jihan/Bitmain's agenda and failed coup. If that dishonest behavior of their user's wasn't enough they would later report its users to the IRS and then, as released earlier this year [0] they are DIRECTLY offering Blockchain analytics to the IRS and DEA. And then ban Wikileaks account from their platform.

I regret to say that as a Community we never learned our lesson in the MANY pitfalls of allowing the growth of a cancerous central point of failure after Mt Gox, and that the path of 'least resistance' to on-board people into this tech had many (predictable) dire consequences. I've used centralized exchanges before, but it didn't feel as a enthralling as when I went to a meetup, spoke to like minded people in the Community and bought some in a p2p manner--its really a night and day experience contrast. Or simply got tipped by total strangers online for a project or an idea I wanted to explore as I had in the early days.

What were supposed to be training wheels to gradually create an ecosystem primarily driven to be a p2p currency, as was intended, became a crutch that atrophied and poisoned the general curiosity which denied it's users the rewards that often followed which made this really remarkable.

This neglect has allowed Coinbase as a single entity to now hold a large percentage of the total Bitcoin in existence, not including the large amounts that they hold custody of its user's who simply do not take possession of their funds.

To say Bitcoin can be a-political is grounded in the very ignorance that created the aforementioned consequences; it is by default the reaction to the perpetual failures of the politicizing of State-based currencies and the corruption of Central Banks. It's very Genesis Block states why it was created: as an alternative to the bailouts of 2008.

I honestly don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Coinbase represents the very worse, and the toxic nature of what YC can bring into existence. That sounds entirely scathing, and perhaps unwarranted to those unaware of the dire nature, but this is really no different than enabling how FAANG has created a business model that has pretty much them an extension of many countries Intelligence Agencies who directly sell their user's data/information to the highest bidder. The difference being that this Trojan horse was only possible because YC funded them in the early stages.

Who's to say they won't, or haven't already, created another?

0: https://decrypt.co/31485/coinbase-license-analytics-irs-dea

I would expect a government to have proper separation from church and state, so why is it weird to want a company to separate politics and mission?

I can't see any good coming from being in a work environment where the company supports a political issue I'm strongly against, it would make co-workers and myself feel like opponents and likely make for a hostile work environment.

That is how it ought to be!!!!!! Activism and politics tends to divd people. Keep it out of work is a great thing!

There is no point to talk about anything like activism or politics.

Just do it!

Just weigh it up like that. I might have to delete the app

It's kind of funny to hear DLC/Clintonian Third Wayists described as “old-school liberals”, since when they rose to dominance “liberal” in American politics meant about what “progressive” is used for now and they were very much associated with the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, with an economic policy that synced up so well with that of the Republican Party that the period between their rise and the sharp rightward jump of the Republican Party that was a response to the resulting shift of the left edge of the Overton Window became known as the “neoliberal consensus” period in economic policy.

The real old-school liberals are the progressives.

> This seems like a fallacy. X may be undesirable, but it's impossible to completely rid ourselves of X. Therefore it's pointless to even worry about reducing X.

No one said anything about it being pointless.

And, no one said undesirable. Politics isn’t good or bad. It’s just part of life. In the sense that people are inherently social and will always be discussing, civilly or not, how things should be done.

To me, if I live in a democracy, what would be undesirable is a citizen who is not, in some form or fashion, active in the body politic since a democracy depends on an active (and educated) citizenry in order to function! :).

The NRA is "more political" in the sense of their daily activities, of course, but I think you could construct a great argument that the IETF has more impact on world politics (or, let's say, the governments of the world) than the NRA. Everyone knows the NRA is taking an absolutist give-everyone-an-AR-15 stance; they work very hard on it, but at this point they're almost an anchor. Some parts of the US give easy access to guns, and they're going to do so regardless. Other parts (NYC, where I live) make it very hard to access guns, and the NRA isn't able to do much more. And the rest of the world doesn't care. Meanwhile, the IETF, in how it chooses to distribute power to network operators vs. service providers vs. end users, which protocols it facilitates standardization work on, who is in the room, what sorts of threats cryptographic protocols protect against, etc., has a lot of influence on who has power over digital communications.

I think I'd even argue that it's more important for someone at the IETF to be aware of the political implications of their work than someone at the NRA. The NRA has an obviously political mission; whether you choose to pay attention to it in how you do your job and what you prioritize or not, you're going to further that mission. (Imagine, for instance, being a gun-control advocate at the NRA and see how much impact you'll have.) The IETF's mission is more open-ended, which means you can develop protocols to facilitate government surveillance or to subvert it, depending on what you think is more important.

And the people most inclined to discuss politics in the work place tend to be the people who take it personally.

> There is likely a very large contingent of closet republicans.

Whether the minority is outspoken or not, my point is just that it's a minority.

It specifically does:

> We won’t: Debate causes or political candidates internally

The products and tools and services they sell are specifically designed to permit the circumvention of the law.

They are no different than people who make lockpicks in that respect. Technically the company couldn't care less what you do with the lockpicks. Maybe you're a hobbyist, or a locksmith. Maybe.

Some of their employees may be okay looking the other way, but not all of them will be. Based on the way this is going down it sounds like there was some internal drama about this, and they feel like it's best to part ways with the pro-law crowd.

All peaceful human interaction falls outside of that.

Most people would agree that talking about your flight "around" the world is OK, even if it takes a side in the somehow-controversial debate on the shape of the earth.

What about talking to your coworkers idly and you mention "Oh yeah I've been keeping my kids at home cause I'm worried about coronavirus". Controversial, some people think that's fake.

Talking about how you got married last month? If you're gay, that's suddenly controversial.

Talking to your manager about how you need to take time off because a family member died, they ask what happened, turns out they were shot by the police? Suddenly very controversial...

Politics isn't some weird abstract thing, it's life and the events that are happening around us every day. If we live in a world where literally the shape of the earth is a marker of political identity -- how do you expect people to avoid mentioning topics that people might find controversial? Or do you think it's possible to draw a stark dividing line somewhere between "shape of earth" and "police reform" that can be justified in an objective way?

And what happens when it's not the case? When people don't just treat people of foo group normally, and it's happening throughout the company? What should foo group do?

Ask the company to get to an apolitical state where they can just do their job? Let people in the company know that it's going on? By you definition, that's political and wrong. Or do they just bear the cost of it while others continue doing what they're doing?

> I don't see why this is concept would be so hard to understand

Because (In my opinion) you're starting with a fundamentally flawed premise that there isn't already politics in the work place. There always has been. The important difference is that the only thing that gets branded as "politics" is anything different from the status quo. If it's politics aligned with the status quo it's not seen as politics even when it it.

A similar example. I'm not taking a stand on it in any way here, but kneeling during the national anthem before a football game was considered a political act (which it is). One response was "keep politics out of football" (parallel to our discussion here). But again similar to our discussion here it was glossing over the fact that playing the national anthem before a sporting event is an extremely political action to begin with (ex. Should we play the national anthem before a game of Jeopardy?).

Saying there wasn't politics before / by default, is just turning a blind eye to the existing politics because it's the status quo.

Until that trans person needs to go to the bathroom.

Or are you referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent Supreme Court rulings as the "extreme left"?

Or do you mean it in the Fox News sense, where any disagreement with the president is "extreme left"?

What happens when your area of political focus crosses tracks with another area of political focus and you're faced with a trolley problem? Do you simply steam ahead regardless of the overall impact or do you consider the overall impact?

"That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" [1] applies to all policies, not simply those undertaken by states.

[1]: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html

I think governments and dedicated organisations are best placed to do this: they can better enforce compliance, and have greater visibility on all of our pressing needs.

Edit: About Europe, we almost never practice affirmative action the same way as US does. It mostly is "If two applicants has equal merit you are free to choose the disadvantaged one". See this court case for example:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-47335859

In USA there are many examples of worse students being accepted thanks to affirmative action, and it is defensible in court.

I think it's more like saying you can't truly be unbiased. Try as you might, it's arguably impossible to truly be unbiased when making decisions an interacting with people. Journalists try their best, by presenting "just the facts" but even that is tough as which facts you chase down and which you deem important is colored by your biases. The flavor of words you write is also thus colored. I know they go through lots of training to account for this, and the truly great journalists we know of are mostly those that achieved some measure of success here, thus earning the respect of their peers and those that they interview.

So, you can try to be apolitical, but it's perhaps one of those impossible goals, because our political views are a form of bias, and if highly trained journalists still have trouble with this, everyone else will as well.

Companies are change agents, even if it's just to get people to use their product over somebody else's. But in Coinbase's case, it's more than that. They're trying to change the way the world exchanges goods and money. That would be a big change to how we all live, and thus it touches on politics in many places. As far as Coinbase is concerned, this makes sense. Many people are finding that just "having a job to collect a paycheck" is not fulfilling enough. They want to change the world as part of their jobs too. So they find jobs that align with their views. Awesome for them.

For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.

On the other hand, if you own a bakery being apolitical is a lot simpler. Avoid the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and there's as little politics as you'll find anywhere.

The entire mission of a company doesn't have to be front and center in politics but there is no such thing as being apolitical for any company interacting with the world in a meaningful way

That's a political stance. As long as you're part of society, you'll always have a political stance. That's what the other commentor was getting at.

Why would you ever want your views to not influence what you do? If not yours, whose perception would you use to inform what you do? And why would you want to keep your views private?

If you think that your views are so inappropriate or unimportant that you can't share them, that's a view in of itself and that's what people will see.

> You do not try to change anyone else's political views as part of your job

Whether you should try to actively change someone's view is a big question. It's a very different question than whether or not you should have/share your worldview. Whether you like it or not, your views are what they are because of others sharing theirs (explicitly or implicitly).

One fairly non-controversial part of the status quo right now is our dependence on fossil fuels and co2 emissions to keep our economy running.

Saying "I'll keep my views private" means I'm giving an okay to what's happening now. If every individual shares the thinking at every company then it is impossible to even imagine how the most catastrophic climate change can be avoided.

Beyond even this example, it's is politically naive to believe there is some "normal". The status quo today is the politics of the current dominant power (which is largely market forces). Agreeing to be "apolitical" is actively support of this system. Your view is the one that is strongly "with us or against us" in that any opinion other than the dominant political ideology is supposed to be silenced at work.

"Just do you job and don't voice contrary opinions" is a pretty radical political opinion if you ask me, so your definition of "apolitical" is only "A"-political because you are so intensely in opposition to non-status quo beliefs that you disregard them completely.

A functional definition of privilege is that politics doesn't matter that much to you. No matter how it turns out, you'll be fine, so you're able to mentally compartmentalize it and go about the rest of your business. There are many people whose lives are not like that, and it's unreasonable to expect them to treat politics as a game separate from real life.

In nearly every case, the people who are claiming to encourage politics in the workplace are actually demanding allegiance - try supporting the other side and see how they feel.

They think that cryptocurrency eliminating the ability of nations to set monetary policy, or to enable people with enough means to escape from the impact of monetary policy, is a good thing. This is politics baked into the product cryptocurrency companies create, and it is part of their "mission."

But:

1. Doing so is a political decision. 2. Your views shape your perspective and there will be actions and omissions that you take that impact politics in ways that you are unaware of.

And as the saying goes, if I'm either with you or against you, then I'm against you. It doesn't matter what your object-level goals or values are, because you have clearly stated that you care more about using those goals as a pretence to attack anyone who isn't willing to subordinate themselves to your particular movement than about actually achieving said object-level goals.

As an example: I strongly oppose oil pipelines, but a couple of years ago I had to assist with emergency network maintenance on a very large, very controversial pipeline that I do not like at all. My job required me to do what I was hired to do, and I didn't let my politics get into the way. The issue was resolved in a couple of hours, and I returned back to the projects I was working on for other customers.

But we still had a conversation at our company about what it means to support customers that we were uncomfortable with, and we ultimately decided that the views of employees should help guide how we conduct ourselves as a business. That if we noticed that our customers are doing harm, and we believe ourselves to be contributing to the harm, we should voice our concern and decide if we are operating morally and ethically.

The pipeline was whitelisted, because we don't actually help build it on native land, and we don't help drill the oil out of the Earth. We only help keep the sensors working, and those ultimately exist to keep the pipeline from failing and doing damage.

But we have preemptively decided that there are certain businesses that could use our services to contribute to harm, and so we have a process for keeping ourselves in check.

I worry about "apolitical" companies, as they have decided that they no longer care about judging the moral or ethical issues surrounding their business decisions, and have instead decided to operate entirely based on what is legal.

And it goes without saying that acting in accordance with the law is not the same as acting morally and ethically.

I think they do, and we generally expect everyone to behave that way, but we're making it very explicit for doctors and lawyers and some other professions. Of course, it's not as immediate when you're dealing with programmers, but viewing the economy not as a total war with temporary alliances between buyers and sellers but as a way to get things done with the market place being the most efficient way to do so (which, I believe, is the more appropriate way, and it's also the way we look at it from the nation state perspective which will happily disable the market place in times of war or catastrophic events), discriminating with regards to politics when selling your services is throwing sand in the machine.

It's not outlawed for many professions (but usually is once you have a monopoly in some location), but it's neither wide-spread, nor encouraged or accepted, I believe.

In any case, working for an actual gun dealer is still compatible with a stance of "I support universal background checks and closing the private-seller loophole", which is still a form of gun control and a departure from the status quo.

Other people don't, and care about other things.

Claiming that people who actively put their time and effort into stopping that change ("supporting the status quo") are the same as people who prioritise other things (eg "looking after their sick sibling"), is outright dishonest. And seems both silly, and like it would generate a bunch of negative things by trying to push it.

To illustrate, lets take a dumb example...

Lets say my sister is dying of cancer, and I need to pay for her treatment, her family's housing and costs meanwhile, and whatever other expenses come up. So, I'm doing bulk hours at my job to make that work.

In that situation, someone pushing an agenda of "there needs to be more sausage rolls in the canteen" (!) can go to hell. I have more important (to me) things to care about. I don't care about their hot issue in any way.

But if they keep on trying to take up my time with it, they're not going to get a positive reaction as they're literally wasting time I could be using productively. ;)

This is roughly how the people who argue against Coinbase decision sounds.

So you take this political stance outside of work. If enough people can be convinced that collective bargaining is a good idea, it will get enshrined into law. Employers will have to comply.

On the other hand, organising during work time (which is being paid for by your employer) is unethical - and regardless of my feelings of the idea of collective bargaining, it should not be done on someone else's dime.

No it most certainly doesn't. A person can hold the opinion that many people can engage in some activity responsibly, while not everyone can.

Being a gun store owner that favors regulation on the ownership of guns is not all that different from a beer brewer that favors regulation of drinking age or laws against operating vehicles while inebriated.

Ignoring morality for a moment, there's a business argument in there too. A bunch of drunk hooligans causing car accidents is bad for business. Anyone in the business of dealing in "harmful" products is aware of potential public backlash from irresponsible people and will seek to mitigate that in some form.

When the people in this thread are arguing for being apolitical, they’re arguing for companies not being involved in seeking to lobby for change in formal, legislated power structures. They’re not arguing for companies to not take a stance in cultural power imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by a government and power imbalances enforced only by social norms are not the same thing, and only the former is actually covered by the term “politics”, i.e. the thing that politicians do for their job. The latter, in most countries, is usually just called social — and there’s nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking social stances.

Forming a company to do something is inherently a social stance — a stance in any culture-wars that might be shifted by the product or service the company provides. But forming a company to do something isn’t inherently a political stance. For a company to take a political stance, someone from the company would need to actually talk to a politician at some point, in their capacity as a representative of a company — i.e. to do the thing we call “lobbying.”

Tangent: associating “politics” with attention paid to cultural, non-legislated power imbalances, is really mostly a US thing. I think this might be because most other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer such cultural, non-legislated power imbalances; for painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so politicians in most countries, can’t really base their platforms on the cultural stances of any particular bloc — there’s not enough variation in such stances that highlighting one would win you any points.

The US is unique in that it ended up as one country composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with there being basically no formally-recognized, legislated divisions between most such groups†. Compare to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the people within those continents have long ago assorted into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into their own smaller countries, historically not granting citizenship to those who are “not like them”, and so becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance would be a formal, political one, with real legislation — the sort of thing you do “politics” about — determining the relative power of the two sub-nations within the new merged nation.)

† The US does have one formally-recognized, legislated division, where both sides explicitly sit at a negotiating table within government: that division being the one between native/indigenous Americans and N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess which group in the US isn’t heavily invested in the culture war? That’s right, the native population. Because they form a politically distinct group — effectively an annexed nation, as above — whose problems are raised to the level of actual politics, rather than social debate.

If coinbase and its cryptocurrencies improve the means of wealth and capital exchange, that doesn't mean that cryptocurrencies are political. That makes it a tool, just as a shovel and rifle are tools. How they're used by people is what makes them potentially political.

Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the fact that it improves communication. They're deciding what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such choices for users.

Also, OP didn't actually say anything about semi-automatic rifles, at all. So it's really a nothing statement to make that distinction; I guess I took the bait, though.

For most people, the debate about "assault rifles" seems to be a misunderstanding about the language being used by the other side. For people who label semi-automatic rifles as "assault rifles", they think of hunting rifles as small capacity, bolt-action rifles. Whereas folks like you do not make that distinction.

It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and realize that neither side understands the most basic definitions of the other. It's super common in gun debates. And very, genuinely strange.

That's functionally quite different from a rifle with easily swapped external magazines with high capacity.

Chambering also matters a little bit. Weapons with a military lineage tend to have smaller rounds than rifles for big game. The smaller rounds make it easier to pack large amounts of ammunition and reduce fatigue.

Of course assault rifle is a meaningless term, but that's a result of many efforts to warp the discourse and not because the weapons used for war are literally the same as a weapon that is sufficient for hunting.

It does not even stop there. If we choose to understand what's political in this way everything that humans choose to relate to (even things that do not exist beyond human imagination) have, of course, probably some influence on political outcomes.

Rain, an escaped alligator from the local zoo, the color of a button in a web form, etc.

I think that this second idea of what's political is merely the realization that we can choose to view everything according to it's political impact. Like a pair of glasses we might wear or might want others to wear.

...to stick with my example: One might end up making a long term study on how news about escaped zoo animals affect election outcomes. That might lead to surprising results. It's just not always guaranteed to be a very productive use of time.

I think there's probably a healthy middle ground here. It's not hard to argue that there's some reasonable moral expectations regarding company decision making. Like, don't construct gas chambers. (Local example from my German home region.)

On the other side it's easy to see that insisting on questioning every minor decision will lead to almost instant gridlock.

That's why I think that both radical positions are pretty hard to defend. A better society might hide behind pragmatic decision making with some reasonable, probably even academically shallow moral questioning of ones own actions. Not in corporate apathy or zealotry.

the way I look at it is the "power + privilege" definition comes from "racism" as an academic term of art, a meaning that everyone engaged in a certain kind of study/research agrees on. a comparable example from CS would be "syntax" vs "semantics". when people scold someone for arguing over semantics, they mean something more similar to the CS definition of "syntax". if you, a CS person, interpret them using the CS definition of "semantics", it would sound quite ridiculous. I often see left-leaning people (esp college educated) using certain words with their academic meanings. they're not being deliberately misleading, but they don't always do a good job of handling the confusion that ensues when addressing a broader audience.

I think the next step is then I can assail you with facts of every bad thing going on in this world and if you do nothing about it, you're cowardly abdicating your political responsibility, neh?

I might go a step further with your position and say that silence/speaking out are really two sides of the same coin. After all, silence and 'talk' is cheap. If you really want to fight the status quo you ought to commit your life and the majority of your money to the causes you believe in.

no that's just surviving. It's not politically supporting "the status quo".

> abdicating political responsibility.

implying that everyone _has_ to have some political responsibility.

Not everyone cares enough - they believe climate change, but they also don't want to expend energy fighting it - that' snot a political stance. It sucks, but that's the majority of people.

Ultimately the people that don't care enough about a specific reform are the reason it isn't happening in the first place. I'm not trying to advocate for tribalism and polarization or promote a "mindset". I'm just stating a truth.

Isn't this the whole point of work? Exchanging your own preferences and time for money?

> in the time remaining we can try to counteract that a bit

Ideally you wouldn't be working for a company who is diametrically opposed to your own beliefs. This is why I will never work for Facebook.

Very well put and I’m terrifyingly surprised at how many people are arguing for the opposite. That is literal subversion.

Why is that inappropriate exactly? If my boss’ opinion is “unions shouldn’t exist because I think I’m entitled to treat people however I want/play them off each other/depress wages” why am I not allowed to rebel against that and organize with my coworkers? In fact, the right to do this very thing is enshrined in law.

Also what about Maternity leave? Paternity leave? Are those not political?

How is negotiating working conditions not related to "how we engage and collaborate with each other as a society"? It's inherently (little p) political even if the engagement is at a company similar to how politics on your local HOA is still politics.

edit: typo

No. That's an "it depends" thing. If the "political issue" in question is something team or working condition related then it's not necessarily private and individual affecting only you.

Some people will care about that and want to potentially co-ordinate. Other people won't consider it important, and/or have other priorities.

You must be aware of the existence of unions. You're mentioning US-political concerns, so you're almost certainly familiar with the notion that the mere existence of unions is highly political. Whether or not you are a union member, union activities effect US workplaces.

Ignoring their existence in this discussion is itself a political position.

You must have missed March and April when sick days at “essential work” (such as grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and more) was in fact a matter of national conversation: sick people going to work spread disease. The number of sick days was also of debate: most low wage jobs don’t offer more than 1 sick day a month or two. Not so good when someone needs two weeks off.

This kind of short sightedness and inherent support of the status quo as “it’s fine, I see no problem here” is exactly what the other commenter(s) are talking about.

That's the whole issue, and you're just affirming the consequent by saying this. Structural equality is unavoidably the concern of every person and group in a society.

Naming something as political can be used to shutdown conversation that can and should be happening in a company.

Let's get concrete with this:

Do you feel like a soft drink maker has an obligation to disengage with countries that have set up systemic discrimination and regularly violate human rights conventions?

It really doesn't seem within the mission of providing the world with sugary carbonated water.

It's hard to imagine cutting ties with a country due to disagreement with how they treat their population as non-political.

And yet 34 years ago this happened:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-18-mn-11241-...

But wait you say: it's just a prudent business decision because the economics were against them and it was a "PR" win.

It doesn't matter. It's political.

This is an inherently political statement:

“Our decision to complete the process of disinvestment is a statement of our opposition to apartheid and of our support for the economic aspirations of black South Africans.” -Donald R. Keough

Was my assumption wrong? Did the leadership of that company not make that decision?

No that's not what I've said. I talked about discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse

This difference is important since the discourse is in itself not framed by any material boundaries. This difference also answers your question on whether political action deciding on the scope of politics might be incoherent.

> Claiming that bedrooms "aren't" [political] is naive. There are still absolutely exist people who have and are and will continue to try and control what people can do in their bedrooms.

A shared understanding of what is political does not require every single person to agree on the scope of politics. In the end it's all about relative stability, not unanimity or majority or something like that.

> Just because one side ... won the argument ... doesn't mean that things are finished.

There I agree. I don't think the concept of "finished" exists in any human context.

> Who decided that bedrooms were off limits but uteruses weren't? How? Why? Can I change that? Those are all political questions.

This question on who specifically might make a specific decision seems to be a reoccurring theme in our dialogue. In modern societies that's usually a multitude of interlinked processes. Very rarely there's an isolationable agent/action relation relationship. ...and that's, of course, a good thing.

> ... this isn't even a discussion, you're not allowed to bring up this complaint ...

Who forbade you anything, by the way? I don't get why this conversation should be so confrontational or accusatory.

I have no strong feelings on any of the many crossroads in debating social science epistemology or democratic theory in general.

Also false. Many fair minded people simply don’t have time to concern themselves with politics.

Not to mention that in many cases political actors who justify their actions on the premise of “structural inequality” end up reducing fairness.

This is a political stance. You have involved yourself in politics. There's really no way out.

Assume good faith https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A conservative guy who generated headlines because of being discriminated against because he voted for the GOP?

Also some sort of whistleblower who got fired for speaking out against anti-union activity (but may have been a personal / non-union issue)?

I think most business owners would say this is not at all sensible. If someone is a troublemaker you don't normally pay them to leave. You fire them. Brian is being very generous here, almost inexplicably so except for the fact that they're based in the Bay Area. Most CEOs would tackle it in two phases:

1. Tell people they may not attempt to bring social activism into the work place.

2. Fire anyone who keeps doing it.

Payments wouldn't enter the picture!