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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#811

Post by hunter-gatherer »

theptip wrote: post #635
sharkweek wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of 100% taxation on anything above 999M, but my continuation here is that anyone that earns more than that gets a trophy for every additional 1B they earn put on display in a big museum in a city of their choice (Museums selectively scattered around the US).

I like the idea of getting public achievements based on your personal tax contributions. Give them a public museum name for each $B for all I care! Or more generally, just let them pick which program they want to have their face/logo on. “The Musk EV car subsidy” etc.

And if they get to say, 10 billion they get to replace a president's face on a mint. I'm for it.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#812

Post by Johnny555 »

californical wrote: post #806
Johnny555 wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, why work myself into the ground if I can no longer benefit? That's a good question for the current situation -- why does Bezos still go to work? Once you have $100B, what tangible benefit do you get from more? Surely he's not doing it for the money, another $1B, or even $100B isn't going to change his lifestyle.

It may not change his lifestyle, but it’s still a motivating achievement. If a world-class marathon runner is 4 minutes ahead in a race, and can see the finish line, do they start walking? Or do they try to push themselves even harder to see how much more they can win by? People are competitive, and are always motivated by achieving “more”, even if it doesn’t change the outcome for them. Does society benefit by billi…

So then, just like a marathon, instead of a timeclock to beat, the government can have an agency that tracks lifetime wealthy -- then the wealthy can brag over who would have had the largest pot of gold if they didn't dispose of the money immediately for tax reasons.

Does society benefit by billionaires pushing for more? I’m not sure, but I don’t think that the answer is clearly “no”.

I think the correct question is "Is there a net benefit to society", not any benefit at all.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#813

Post by californical »

UncleMeat wrote: post #778
tigerBL00D wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of wealth is in stock, which also represents control. If you tax heavily that would lead to loss or control. That's not necessarily a good thing for anyone. Besides, you can only buy a okay superyacht for 100M, definitely not the best /s

If people are worried about this then we can simply permit founders who pay taxes via ownership to retain magnified voting rights. We've already invented the idea of non-voting shares. Why is this some sort of thing that could never be solved?

Well if they are forced to sell their shares to pay taxes, what happens to the stock market then? Now this causes the company’s stock value to go down due to dilution of shares, since each share is worth a smaller slice of the company, and there are more shares available on the open market.

How do we compensate everyone who was holding that company in their 401k hoping to retire? The government billionaire taxation has actually hurt the middle class (& upper class but non-billionaires) too in this case, by taking away value of their retirement funds and personal investments.

Do we pay the shareholders the money that was taken from the billionaire to make up the difference? Because then you’ve just created dividends, which already exists, but just with more steps and beurocratic overhead

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#814

Post by amusedcyclist »

spullara wrote: post #151
ipnon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionaires are highly correlated with millionaires, which don't seem to be beyond the pale for critics of wealth inequality. Countries with billionaires rank much higher on quality of life than those without. It hurts to see Bezos and Musk in yachts but the side effect of their wealth is companies like Amazon and Tesla that have a net positive effect on society in terms of products and employment.

I'm not as wealthy as them but I have never, ever had this feeling: "It hurts to see Bezos and Musk in yachts" Why does that hurt anyone? Doesn't it just help the people that make yachts and work on them?

The yachts aren't issue, i think the issue is more the insane amount of power that kind of money gives individual people (instead of institutions , which tend to have more checks and balances)

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#815

Post by tempestn »

734129837261 wrote: post #662
raesene9 wrote: post #16

I see they cut off access for staff before telling them. not an atypical move, but I wonder if they were actually able to revoke all access, given there's systems like Kubernetes where some auth. types can't be revoked once granted.

Most people will have worked on laptops that have the software installed that allows them to completely brick the device. It just makes me wonder what they'll be doing with 1000+ laptops and other devices. Do they expect people to send it back? Probably yes. I'd personally just declare: "I have low money and I had to fire your laptop service, thanks for the work of getting it to me, I'll be keeping it now." I mean, t…

IIRC they're offering 14 weeks of severance pay. I'd rather have that than a used laptop.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#816

Post by crossroadsguy »

alx__ wrote: post #584
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…

Christ on a skateboard!? All the temporarily displaced billionaires in this thread are something else. If you require more than 100M in net worth to be "motivated" to work. There's a larger problem with you. Being a CEO/leader doesn't require some skill set that's given to you from some mythical watery being just because you're special.

> Christ on a skateboard!?

Does it mean something specific, or is it just a variant of “Jesus Christ!”? Just curious. Tried Google, nothing turned up on the first page. Not even urban dict.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#817

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

SantalBlush wrote: post #165
repomies69 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end I care about the stock going up, and now it finally seems to be doing that. The point of a company is to generate wealth for the owners and nothing else. Employees need to negotiate with the contracts according to that.

No, the point of a company is to provide a net value to society. This often (but not always) correlates with generating profits.

This comes up as excessively naive/idealistic and doesn't match up with the realities of the world.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#818

Post by space_fountain »

akira2501 wrote: post #787
alx__ wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christ on a skateboard!? All the temporarily displaced billionaires in this thread are something else. If you require more than 100M in net worth to be "motivated" to work. There's a larger problem with you. Being a CEO/leader doesn't require some skill set that's given to you from some mythical watery being just because you're special.

An odd way to attack the problem would be to demean the personal liberties of someone else based on nothing other than your own personal feelings. I don't see how either of these lines of argument achieve any useful or realistic end state. It's a topic almost perfectly designed for a useless shouting match. Meanwhile. In the 1950's, citizens in the US were expected to pay around 50% of the cost of running the governm…

Corporations are made out of people. You can’t really tax corporations, maybe you can people with capital

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#819

Post by ceres »

credit_guy wrote: post #799
theptip wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think they would have done so as a public service after they capped out lifetime income. That is definitely the big question. Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples. But even biting the bullet and accepting the premise, it’s not immediately obvious that losing all of the work from current billionaires would be a bad trade in exchange for substantially reduce…

> Given that Gates is busy donating most of his cash to charity, there are counterexamples. A charity of your choice vs being taxed more. If you had a few billion dollars to spare, which option would you choose?

Why should so few individuals have outsized social, political and economic power over the whole country? Why not tax them more and let elected officials representatives decide how best to spend the money?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#820

Post by hstan4 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #45
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…

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…

As always, why is the magic number a billion dollars? And how do you draw the line in regards to stock ownership, prevent a founder from owning a certain amount of stock once its value exceeds a billion dollars?
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