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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

coindesk.com

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#351

Post by boringg »

ausbah wrote: post #316
sillysaurusx wrote: post #15

I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. Coinbase was also extremely generous with severance. 12 weeks plus two for every one year at the company, I think. I've had the experience of being let go without notice and without severance. Devs seem a little more griz…

>I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. sorry but this reads like you drank the whole bowl of US corporate kool-aid. the insecurity and stress the comes from not knowing if you'll have a job tomorrow in literal insanity. 14 weeks severance shouldn't be seen an…

What glorious risk-free world do you live in? The low volatile relatively risk free last decade and a half just vanished the next 5 - 10 years is going to be a much rougher ride.

14 week severance bare minimum at a private company? That sounds very rich.

[edited for better manners]

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#352

Post by Johnny555 »

krrrh wrote: post #341
jerry1979 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not settled on this yet. I'm from the USA, and one thing that concerns me is the geopolitics of billionaires. What happens when USA taxes billionaires out of existence? Russia and China still have billionaires. Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? Is there such a thing as "our" billionaires? The other question I have has to do with feudalism. If we let "our" billionaires exist, does tha…

Billionaires provide value as alternate sources of power to the state. Distributed sources of philanthropy that can target areas neglected by government are one thing (Carnegie’s libraries, Bill Gates work on tropical diseases, Frick’s art collection which he donated to the American people, alternate media and educational projects (Ford foundation’s continued funding of NPR, Soros’ Open Society Foundation, Koch fundi…

A wealth tax wouldn't prevent the Gates Foundation from existing, it would encourage it -- instead of keeping personal wealth that's going to be taxed, the would-be billionaire can set up a charitable foundation like the Gates Foundation to spend the money.

Since the charity is run by a board and bound to abide by its charter, it's not the same thing as the person controlling the wealth himself. The Gates Foundation is not going to buy Bill Gates a private island with a $100M super yacht to get there.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#353

Post by Arrath »

rglullis wrote: post #347
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

Why stop at 100M? Why not 50M? Why not 10M? Why not 250k? Trying to control the amount of wealth one "should" have is misguided. We should have ways to limit the amount of power that can be concentrated. If we did that, we would have a better shot at having a more equitable society: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641

In that case we will need to decouple money from power, somehow.

Starting by no longer equating giving money to politicians as an exercise in free speech would be as good a place as any to start.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#354

Post by boringg »

tschellenbach wrote: post #346
ausbah wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think if employees feel slighted by being fired, they're fooling themselves. The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow. It gives you clarity and purpose. It also happens to be the truth. sorry but this reads like you drank the whole bowl of US corporate kool-aid. the insecurity and stress the comes from not knowing if you'll have a job tomorrow in literal insanity. 14 weeks severance shouldn't be seen an…

It does seem insane to me that healthcare is tied to employment.. that's just crazy

This part never makes sense to me. I've had friends stay in jobs to keep getting healthcare treatment - it's not great.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#355

Post by toephu2 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #193
toephu2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? What are you going to get out of it? Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? If so, riddle me this: Name one efficiently-run government organization.

> Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? Because they take a lot of value out of a shared society and concentrate too much power on their hands. > What are you going to get out of it? Reduce the power discrepancies, mostly, and money too. > Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? Yep. You are asking about government efficiency, but one of the reasons for the lack of ef…

The government is going to take all that new tax money from the billionaires and do what with it? Do you believe the government can efficiently manage the tax revenue to help the poor?. SF gov spends $60k/year per tent for the homeless [1] ..that's called a mismanagement of tax revenue (and probably massive corruption).

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#356

Post by tomcam »

shrimpx wrote: post #298
xur17 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other "fun" side effect of this is that the government is slowly going to become the majority owner of every business.

Yeah. I guess that model implies that the govt will take a percent ownership of whatever you own. I think it would destroy the prospect of high risk high reward ventures like Tesla. Maybe the tax rate can be divided by a volatility metric so investors in high risk ventures aren’t severely punished randomly.

Do you feel random government employees would be more productive and knowledgeable than the owners of the business whose shares were taken away by this scheme? Do you feel good businesses would continue to be good when handled by bureaucrats? Bonus points for the name of a bureaucracy that has done this kind of thing well.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#357

Post by arrosenberg »

kordlessagain wrote: post #291
Johnny555 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? The fact that you're even asking that is a reason we shouldn't have billionaires -- world power relationships shouldn't be based on the wealth of individual citizens. For example, what did Musk really talk about when he met with the president of Brazil? Did he represent American interests, Amazon Inc's interests, or Elon Musk's interests?

So then you are also OK with gutting capitalism and limiting company's abilities to make mad profits? Because, you can't have one without the other.

Or distribute the profits more broadly? No need to be dramatic.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#358

Post by Johnny555 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #336
jerry1979 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not settled on this yet. I'm from the USA, and one thing that concerns me is the geopolitics of billionaires. What happens when USA taxes billionaires out of existence? Russia and China still have billionaires. Does that do something to the power relationships in the world? Is there such a thing as "our" billionaires? The other question I have has to do with feudalism. If we let "our" billionaires exist, does tha…

Also, billionaires' wealth isn't parked in a vault, right? It's invested in companies, so it's working in the economy whereas it would otherwise go to the government. It's not obvious to me that the government is going to provide more value for the public in general than industry, but I would like for that to be the case (an easy solution for inequality that doesn't shrink our economy overall).

A wealth tax wouldn't change that. No billionaire is going to sit around and watch his $1B fortune be whittled away in 5 years by a 20% tax. Instead he's going to divest -- he'll put the money into other companies or charitable foundations.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#359

Post by toephu2 »

weakfish wrote: post #264
toephu2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire Why does everyone want to tax the billionaires? What are you going to get out of it? Do you think taxing the billionaires is actually going to help the poor people? If so, riddle me this: Name one efficiently-run government organization.

The postal service is a marvel of efficiency

Right.. which is why it is running at a net loss?

"USPS's operating revenue was $77 billion for the 2021 budget year, an increase of $3.9 billion, or 5.3%. It reported a 2020 net loss of $9.2 billion."

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-postal-service-reports-4....

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#360

Post by bezier-curve »

systemvoltage wrote: post #212
Johnny555 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep pointing to Armstrong's $110M house like it's some sort of injustice. If you think billionaires should exist at all, then that's one of the least-bad injustices imaginable Ok, I'll admit it, billionaires should not exist at all, there should be a heavy wealth tax that makes it hard to become a billionaire. Will a CEO work less hard if he (and his peers) can only ever gain $100M in net worth before a wealt…

We need more billionaires to exist. They create wealth through enterprise. It is astounding how many people naively just think "Too much money = bad". Billionaires don't really have cash sitting in their houses. They created companies, often from scratch, that wouldn't otherwise exist. https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth GDP per capita grew because the wealth was created, not stolen. The entire pie got larger.…

You don't need an economics education to understand the implication of wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few people. This idea that billionaires generate wealth is myth.
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