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1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

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Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#191

Post by asabjorn »

ABeeSea wrote: post #174
asabjorn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you by complicity [1] mean the critical social justice concept that all white (or people that believe in classical liberal culture) people are complicit in the maintenance and harms of systemic racism (stopping a perfect equity utopia) and white supremacy (continuation of individualistic western liberalism, instead of collectivist group-based critical social justice)? [1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-complicity/…

What is “classical white culture?” I’m not aware of any global culture associated with skin color. But feel free to enlighten me.

Because I was communicating with someone I believe is a critical social justice (CSJ) adherent I was trying to use the language from that faith. However, I changed it as it may overall be confusing.

What I meant was classical liberal culture, which by CSJ adherents is termed as white culture by perpetrating whiteness. Whiteness is not about color, although its assumed all white people by default are this, but is about you adhering to liberal western culture instead of CSJ dogma.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#192

Post by jimmygrapes »

afavour wrote: post #160
fleddr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're mixing up different political topics here. The one I think you're talking about is the US workers' struggle to defend or increase basic worker rights. Which indeed is a political struggle of workers versus management. If I'm not mistaken, the Coinbase case is about social justice types of topics like feminism, BLM, trans rights, colonialism, the like.

My point is that positions like Brian's require there to be a clear and bright line between "political" and "not political". I think it's at least slightly easier to draw that line in European workplaces where the nature of employment is not as politically fraught. Just to take two of your examples: feminism and trans rights. Both have healthcare implications. Your employer controls your healthcare. Should the health…

I always hear this argument that the employer controls your health care in the U.S. and it is quite wrong. The employer MAY offer one or more options for a subsidized health care plan in which the employer contributes some or all of the cost of the selected plan. There is zero requirement for an employee to select or use such a plan, and there is absolutely nothing stopping an employee from seeking an alternative plan or additional uncovered treatments through other means available to them.

Maybe there is a point to be made about the overall cost of health care plans being too expensive for an individual to afford without the employer subsidy, but that is orthogonal to "employer control" of healthcare.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#193

Post by woodruffw »

dntrkv wrote: post #176
woodruffw wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody disagrees about his basic financial mission! He's a CEO, and that's what CEOs (are supposed to) do. The farce here is in claiming that Coinbase's mission is somehow "apolitical," even beyond the standard (& correct) observation that everything is political: they are explicitly a financial services company with a political message of economic freedom. They are explicitly advocates for an explicitly political fo…

Certain politics are relevant for certain companies. This idea that because everything is touched by politics, you should be free to bring every aspect of politics into any organization is ridiculous. Coinbase should be involved in the the political discourse surrounding crypto (and other finance-related) legislation. They should not be involved in the discourse surrounding a woman's right to abortion (just an exampl…

> Coinbase should be involved in the the political discourse surrounding crypto (and other finance-related) legislation. They should not be involved in the discourse surrounding a woman's right to abortion (just an example).

I don't agree with this, but to be clear: you're arguing for something very different than Armstrong is. Armstrong is saying that Coinbase isn't besmirched by any politics, which is patently false -- their entire mission is explicitly political.

As for why I don't agree: political positions are not hermetic. It wasn't acceptable in 1961 for lunch counters to "not be involved" in desegregation, because "not being involved" is tantamount to support for segregation in a segregated society. But again, to be very clear: this is above and beyond the claim that Armstrong is making.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#194

Post by joshuamorton »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #137
tshaddox wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The challenge I have with this line of thinking is that you can literally apply it to any and all issues. That's not a challenge to this line of thinking, it's just another way of wording the exact same thing.

I suppose I could have said "The problem I have with..." instead.

I mean yes and no. Yes there are infinite problems and there will always be worse of people who I could do things for. Guilt tripping someone into addressing all of them is unprodictive.

On the other hand, the fact that I can choose which struggles I engage with, and am able to avoid ones I don't want to involve myself in is absolutely a privilege. Someone who may need an abortion may not be able to avoid caring about that issue. Someone less economically secure may not be able to avoid worrying about unemployment or healthcare policy. There's countless similar examples.

You can absolutely acknowledge that you don't have the spoons/time/interest to deeply invest yourself in every social cause or issue. But you should also recognize that there are tons of people who also don't have the spoons/time/interest either, but have to anyway because the issue affects them and they can't afford to ignore it either.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#195

Post by fleddr »

ABeeSea wrote: post #168
fleddr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Silence means just that, silence. It could mean anything: I don't know. I don't care. I might care but don't have time to look into it. I care but it's not in my top 10 issues. None of these options support the status quo.

I doubt quoting MLK will change your mind, but considering what the Black community in America went through for 100’s of years; it’s worth consideration… >Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. >Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. >The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflic…

Change my mind about what? I was merely explaining how you can't draw strong conclusions based on silence.

But I do love MLK quotes:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#196

Post by motohagiography »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #55

Brian Armstrong was on Tyler Cowen and Tyler asked him if bitcoin was a zero sum game, in a round about way: COWEN: I’ve seen estimates that about 20 percent of bitcoin has been lost, or people don’t have their passwords, or it’s somehow abandoned or whatever. Let’s say that 20 percent were found. Those people would be better off, right? They’d have more wealth. Who is then worse off? ARMSTRONG: Yes, I suppose you ha…

Not a bitcoin fan, but this question of eating it for lunch or backing it with apples misunderstands that the fundamental liquidity backstop of bitcoin is risk. So long as you can take it to a casino (real or notional) and bet it, it has value. For it to go to zero, it would mean no two people could make a bet where one benefits from the result.

Even random shitcoins have a non-zero value so long as there are participants who can use it as a proxy for risk of any sort. The the value is a function of the risk the exchange represents. If we bet 20 randocoins on tomorrow's high temperature in a city, we've created potential value. The bitcoin bet is that its value is non-zero, and an infinite number of people can trade in and out of positions in that bet and create and extract value from it.

The only real downside risk is a bunch of smart contract derivatives that hoover up bitcoin, rehypothecate and leverage it and give you some higher risk platform token/scrip instead that has a much higher likelihood of being worthless when it defaults, but with some additional personal security.

Using Cowen's analogy, bitcoin isn't apples, it's the game token you use to play the game to win the apples.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#197

Post by gruez »

afavour wrote: post #114
fleddr wrote: post #71

Just want to say how ridiculous this is from a European perspective. I know nothing better than for any company to be mission focused. You go to work to do work. And you do so with a degree of neutrality, as you can't pick your colleagues, yet still need to cooperate with them. This doesn't mean you can't say anything at all, it means you shouldn't be overly divisive or confrontational. A company isn't your personal…

As a European living and working in the US: your comparison is very shortsighted. European countries literally have no legal concept of at-will employment. They have strong social nets that make quitting your job much easier, and more prevalent unions that fight to improve working conditions (all of these things are, gasp, political! incidentally) By comparison employment in the US is messed up enough that if you lea…

I don't get it. You argue that employment is more tenuous at US companies for various reasons... therefore employees want to stick their necks out by engaging in politics? Shouldn't we expect the opposite?

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#198

Post by dragonwriter »

malermeister wrote: post #84
fleddr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst technically correct, I still object. Many if not most things aren't political in a meaningful way, but surely you can make them political. This is how you get "water is racist" and the entire movement of social justice becomes a thing of ridicule. The strategy harms, it doesn't help.

How about this: Every economic interaction (which includes employment) is political. Would you agree with this?

> How about this: Every economic interaction (which includes employment) is political.

“Economics” and “politics” are just different lenses for viewing interactions relating to the distribution of power (equivalently, control of scarce resources.) They are the same thing; economic interactions are political and vice versa; economic power is political power and vice versa, etc.

This is also why capitalism (enabling the private accumulation of economic power) and democracy (involved the egalitarian distribution of political power), despite both initially being advanced by the same moves away from the particular structure of the monarchic/feudal concentration of both, are fundamentally in tension and ultimately incompatible.

Re: 1 Year of Coinbase as a mission focused company

#200

Post by asabjorn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #188
Jensson wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA has this strange notion where they group people by skin color and call that race and assume same skin color has same culture.

> USA has this strange notion where they group people by skin color and call that race No, we don’t. (There's two races where one of the common, not-generally-offensive names for each refers to a color, but people identified and identifying with each of those races have a wide range of skin colors, overlapping with those of most other races in both cases.) > and assume same skin color has same culture. No, we general…

>> USA has this strange notion where they group people by skin color and call that race

>No, we don’t. (There's two races where one of the common, not-generally-offensive names for each refers to a color, but people identified and identifying with each of those races have a wide range of skin colors, overlapping with those of most other races in both cases.)

Correct, most people do not believe that skin color define them or their neighbor. The notion also generally does not make much sense, as Americans are incredibly racially mixed.

However, a very aggressive and powerful minority that believe in critical social justice are enforcing racial stereotypes.

To say you are defined by race is a bit like saying you are defined by nose size. It is an arbitrary trait amongst many.

>> and assume same skin color has same culture.

>No, we generally don’t.

That is the Coinbase CEOs experience. People generally falsify preferences in public in order to not offend any Critical Social Justice activist that may ruin their life for saying the wrong thing.

However, generally Americans are friendly and welcoming people that just want to live a good simple family life next to good neighbors of any creed.

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