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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

#411

Post by Arrath »

rglullis wrote: post #386
Arrath wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- no business entity can have more than 150 people." How is that supposed to work with any labor intensive process? E.g. I work on a construction project where there are over 220 field craft workers on day shift alone. Office staff and inspectors are another 100 or so. Night shift adds yet more. Should each of those be its own business entity?

Yes, or your company will have to invest in automation. Both alternatives are good. Third option, we stop working on such large projects, and focus our collective efforts on making our societies and our environments more human-scaled. Again, it is an option that I see as good .

At first brush, it seems that any gains in automation will immediately be offset by duplication of administrative minutiae in all these new, smaller business entities. Administration, payroll, regulatory compliance, safety programs, training programs etc etc this is the absolute opposite of improved productive ability, is it not?

As to the third option, 'human scale' is just cresting 8 billion individuals. We will never escape the need for massive infrastructure projects.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#413

Post by izzydata »

tomcam wrote: post #378
izzydata wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. I don't care when someone has 1000 cars or 100 houses and owns a jet plane or whatever. I do care about how it enables them to unfairly direct other peoples lives to their personal agenda. I also care when people have too little that they can barely feed themselves and have nowhere to live. I feel like there must be some way these two problems can help solve eachother.

How has your life been badly affected by someone who owns 1000 cars?

It probably hasn't very much which is why it doesn't bother me. Which is what I said.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#414

Post by xapata »

Apocryphon wrote: post #396
boringg wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a complete relic from the WWII era.

It's a relic from the days when Americans only wanted "upstanding citizens" to get subsidized healthcare.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#415

Post by yellowapple »

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.

If we can't have capitalism without neofeudalist exploitation of the working class for the sake of enriching a privileged ownership class, then yes, I would very much prefer to gut capitalism.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#416

Post by Apocryphon »

Johnny555 wrote: post #333
tomcam wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines excessive? How do high risk ideas get executed when there are no billionaires?

How do high risk ideas get executed when there are no billionaires The same way most of them do now -- through venture capital firms. Or maybe if they had more tax revenue, the US government could sponsor more speculative research and companies.

It would be nice if there was more public funding for basic research. Why aren't the benevolent billionaires this thread is talking about paying for that?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#417

Post by rglullis »

guelo wrote: post #398
smsm42 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not btw? I mean, why is it worse for somebody to have power because he worked and invested for decades and made optimal decisions (and probably some luck) than for somebody to have power because he was born into the right family, knows all the right people in The Machine, has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? I get that "wealth gets power" is…

> has nice hair and is able to conceal his rampaging cocaine habit long enough to make himself too big to fail? You are indoctrinated into believing that democracy cannot work and good government is impossible.

> good government is impossible.

At the scale of continental countries like US (or any BRIC country), it is. The decision makers are simply too far removed from the people who get to live with the policies.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#418

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Aarostotle wrote: post #321
FabHK wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fairly sure inequality is more extreme than that (top 10% hold 70%) at the moment, and it was less bad in the second half of the 20th century. The top US marginal income tax rate was 90% in the 1960s, and 70% in the 1970s, and it did not seem to discourage GDP growth or innovation. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highes...

We live in the most equal time in human history. The actual standard of living of the average person in most developed countries rivals that of royal families from just a couple of centuries ago. Don't confuse monetary inequality with wealth inequality. Measure by the standard of living, not monetary units. What are the actual differences between the life of the average American worker and Jeff Bezos? It's not that b…

Lots of America struggles under the weight of trying to pay for basic health care and dental (50% of Americans have medical debt[1]) and for many education is utterly out of reach. 11.4% of America lives in poverty (poverty being defined as "a lack of those goods and services which are commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society"). It's disingenuous to look at the state of things and say that because we have cellphones and cavemen didn't we're all doing fine.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/debgordon/2021/10/13/50-of-amer...

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#419

Post by daenz »

alphabetam wrote: post #395
boringg wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

c) European.

According to this[0], the absolute most generous package is the Netherlands, which offers 1/3 of your monthly salary for each year of employment. To receive 14 weeks of salary, you'd need to work at a company for 10 years. Coinbase was founded in 2012.

Other "European" countries have much worse severance packages. So what Coinbase offered seems to be better than even the best country in Europe.

0. https://www.claimsattorney.com/2020/05/understanding-severan...

EDIT>> Correcting years

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#420

Post by owisd »

criley2 wrote: post #320
RyanHamilton wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What source are you basing that on? You can find countless sources that show the 0.1% owning an ever greater share: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/13/us-wealth-i... "Over the past three decades, the share of household wealth owned by the top 0.1% has increased from 7% to 22%."

I'm basing that on global numbers, not national numbers. Sure, I don't doubt that in developed economies inequality is getting worse. But in the past 4 decades, I'll remind you that around 800,000,000 Chinese (that's eight hundred million people) were lifted above the global poverty line and were able to stop subsistence farming. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l... So to say that global in…

There's a good video on how that $1.90 is arbitrary and too low, and if you try to come up with a poverty line from first principles, you end up more in the $5-$12 range, where it doesn't paint such a great picture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo2gwS4VpHc#t=19m16s
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