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A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#441

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

celdon25 wrote: post #409
rednerrus wrote: post #330

My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. I'd gladly go work at a company where I didn't have to engage with endless political activism. If I want to hear everyone's opinions on everything, I'd find their facebook page or the HN usernames and follow them.

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS h…

Wait, really? Dont many (most?) 501c3s have highly political missions? E.g. EFF, ACLU, NRA?

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#442

Post by jariel »

uniqueid wrote: post #85

I could see this working out badly. I think Coinbase will now attract/retain fewer conscientious employees. The kind of employees who definitely won't leave are the ones with careerist/mercenary personality types. If that becomes a vicious cycle ( per the 'like attracts like' thing https://youtu.be/wTgQ2PBiz-g?t=75 ), the culture could lead to wide-spread ass-covering and fraud. Then again, this isn't an area in whic…

Don't think that people tho don't want to bring their politics to work are 'less conscientious' - this is in fact almost a form of bigotry. "Oh those people who don't want to bring politics to work just 'don't care'". Not true.

Life is complicated, we have a lot of things to focus on, most people like to do work at work, not get tangled in what might be suppressive or irrelevant social webs.

My bet is that 70% of people would prefer apolitical, 20% 'moderate' and only 10% activism - of course - only if it's specifically their view of activism.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#443

Post by celdon25 »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #441
celdon25 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS h…

Wait, really? Dont many (most?) 501c3s have highly political missions? E.g. EFF, ACLU, NRA?

Those organizations (if they are 501(c)(3)) are permitted to discuss politics within the narrow scope of the organization's mission. As I said, the laws are nuanced.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#444

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

RIMR wrote: post #250
skybrian wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missions are often in pursuit of political goals. (It's a political stance that promoting the use of cryptocurrency is good, and not one I share.) But, this doesn't mean an organization has to take a position on every hot-button political issue. Even the Biden campaign, a a political organization if there ever was one, needs to focus on getting their candidate elected, and not on things that divide Democrats. To agre…

But that's not what is being addressed. Not getting involved in "every hot-button political issue" is clearly advisable, but Coinbase is preemptively deciding that all political conversation is off the table while they run a highly unregulated multi-billion dollar currency exchange. There are going to be political issues that involve Coinbase, and if they're deciding already to ignore any role they play in society, w…

Coinbase is far from unregulated, they're subject to and enforce the same KYC rules that banks do, go ahead and try to buy some BTC there anonymously and see how far you get.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#445

Post by jariel »

curclerobber wrote: post #332

This began over something that doesn't feel "political" to me. For me, and perhaps many others, BLM is primarily about injustice. Is taking a stand against injustice political?

"Is taking a stand against injustice political"

That's the giant strawman if there ever was one.

"Abortion is about a woman's right to chose, who's against that?"

"Abortion is about killing children, who supports killing children?"

Everyone generally supports equality, and something like 95% of Americans including huge majorities of Republicans etc. accept that racism exists and is a problem.

Almost universally Americans want 'equal pay for equal work'.

... the question is the means, the underlying issues, social conditions, solutions, lack of recognition for other groups, the 'racial lens' that we now seem to use for everything, the double-edges sword of affirmative action, double-standards and of course accepting bad behaviour as part of the cause (i.e. riots) etc..

It's not remotely so simple, unfortunately.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#446

Post by protomyth »

celdon25 wrote: post #409
rednerrus wrote: post #330

My company is becoming increasingly political and it's terrible. I'd gladly go work at a company where I didn't have to engage with endless political activism. If I want to hear everyone's opinions on everything, I'd find their facebook page or the HN usernames and follow them.

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS h…

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels

That's not quite how it actually works. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#447

Post by war1025 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #348
f69281c wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this take rolls into the general "silence is violence" or "either you're with us or against us" refrain that has become background noise to me. It reads the same as someone telling me I'm enabling fascism by not posting a black square on instagram or whatever. I'm nearing the point of being aggressively dismissive towards this kind of attitude, because a lot of it doesn't even seem to be laid out in good faith.…

We control the information flow for billions. How the hell could that NOT be political?

> We control the information flow for billions

Who is "we"?

The majority of people here don't work for FANG

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#448

Post by jefftk »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #441
celdon25 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could consider working for a 501(c)(3) charity, where employees are forbidden by law to make most types of political statements (including in private) using company equipment or channels. The actual laws around this are nuanced and don't cover all types of political speech, but it covers enough to where the average employee will be wise to think twice before saying just about anything political at work. The IRS h…

Wait, really? Dont many (most?) 501c3s have highly political missions? E.g. EFF, ACLU, NRA?

The ACLU is a 501c4. There's also the ACLU Foundation which is a 501c3 and in exchange for being able to receive tax deductible donations accepts limits on what it can do politically. See https://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2013/04/05/explaining-th...

The NRA is also a 501c4.

The EFF is a 501c3, which limits what sorts of political work it can do.

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#449

Post by war1025 »

throwaway4715 wrote: post #218
dlivingston wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is not. Politics apathy is present across all races, all classes, all genders. Those who are politically possessed like to claim that “everything is politics” and that “it’s a privilege to not care about politics”, but every Hispanic and Filipino immigrant I’ve known (which is not a negligible number) care about family, hard work, and stability: not politics.

How does one ensure "stability" without getting involved in politics?

To quote a recent Tyler Childers song[1], by "tucking our tails as we try to abide"

Stability isn't about dominance, stability is about being uninteresting enough not to get your teeth kicked in.

[1] https://genius.com/Tyler-childers-long-violent-history-lyric...

Re: A follow up to Coinbase being a mission focused company

#450

Post by wonnage »

TedShiller wrote: post #403
wonnage wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most conservative activism is just...wrong

That's what liberals say. Conservatives will say the opposite. Hence you need both or neither, or someone will be unhappy.

conservatives are more interested in staying on power over actually being right about anything though, it's a fact
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