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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

#831

Post by kurisufag »

akoncius wrote: post #681
stevenjgarner wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that successful technologies have mostly been developed by corporations which have appreciated in value from their innovation, do you favor a Luddite lifestyle, eschewing technology? Or do you think investors would rush to put their capital at risk for no return? I believe the technologies on which we are enjoying this conversation would never have emerged if a wealth tax hit silicon valley after WW II.

internet was created by two universities, not private companies. and usually universities are funded by governments. private companies ruined internet actually.

as much as I enjoy longing for the time when using the internet meant browsing 5-6 boards that weren't all that populated, private companies "ruined the internet" by giving the average person access to it.

you can argue that has been a net negative for the Internet, but it is clearly better for society generally.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#832

Post by bmitc »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #604
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…

A wealth tax implies a tax on unrealized appreciated assets, which is beyond bizarre IMHO. So you buy a house for $500k somewhere. It surges in value to $1.2 million. You therefore have an unrealized capital gain of $700k. You are NEVER going to get that money until you sell it, and when you do you are going to pay a whopping amount of capital gain tax. But a wealth tax implies you pay that capital gain tax now. Okay…

> A wealth tax implies a tax on unrealized appreciated assets, which is beyond bizarre IMHO.

No, it doesn't. For example, if I'm super rich and take out a loan using unrealized assets as collateral, then I could be taxed on the loan amount received. There are several such strategies that either force the sale of unrealized assets or tax other portions of the transactions when those unrealized assets are used as collateral.

What is bizarre is that somehow people making less than $200,000 a year can be heavily taxed while if you're a multi-millionaire or billionaire, suddenly things become so drastically difficult that you couldn't possibly be taxed on anything you do with your monopoly money.

The example you gave is, quite frankly, pointless in the context of discussing billionaires. Discussing real estate assets far less than $2 million is completely irrelevant to a discussion about people with net worth exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars, if not tens of billions of dollars.

> It is not wealth until you have it.

If that's true, then stop allowing people to turn it into wealth, which they do all the time.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#833

Post by kurisufag »

jerojero wrote: post #689
imdsm wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people seem to be in the mindset that it'll never be them so it should never be anyone else. It's not just in the US, here in the Uk we have the same mindset too. A lot of people dislike/hate Elon Musk for example, and usually they focus on two things: his tweets, and his wealth. Conveniently forgetting that prior to his work at SpaceX and Tesla (which he's driven) reusable rockets weren't a thing and EVs we…

Ive done basic research, even worked in a lab that was doing cancer related research. Whatever you do now, anything, is not just your own genius but its the accumulated genius of society. It would be quite literally impossible for anyone that "cures cancer" to have done it on their own. Not only it is extremely unlikely that they could do all work just by themselves (though possible) but they will have to rely on the…

>So why would one person at the end of the line get to benefit so much from the collective work put by all of humanity to that point?

because the possibility of being the one to finally crack would be what motivates every preceding researcher as well.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#834

Post by lifeplusplus »

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…

at a company which provides finance software where you buy/sell securities starts with B, i told manager i had covid and next thing she said, here is liz from HR and i learned i'm fired right then.. i knew i was under review for missing few deadlines, but didn't think i'd be let go right so abruptly and right after i had covid, mind you i used 3 my OWN PTOs, not even sick days.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#835

Post by vasco »

ceres wrote: post #819
credit_guy wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because they created an outsized amount of value and jobs for society. You can say those would have happened anyway but that's a pretend world we never saw working yet.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#836

Post by kurisufag »

UncleMeat wrote: post #783
Aeolun wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels weird I’d have to pay anyone just for owning something. Besides, how would you price private companies? Are those just going to be free?

It only feels weird because there is a concerted effort to make you feel that way. It is absolutely identical to property taxes on homes, but that doesn't make people feel icky in the same manner.

> but that doesn't make people feel icky in the same manner.

speak for yourself! a property tax makes sense in theory: you're contributing to the entity that ensures your land is safe in the first place, but basing it on valuations instead of something like flat rates based on sqft is preposterous.

I'd go so far as to say that the degree to which the knowledge of such a tax affects your decisions relating to the property is enough to constitute a violation of natural property rights.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#837

Post by nostrademons »

pessimizer wrote: post #578
nostrademons wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you advocating against billionaires & capitalism, or against power relationships? In theoretically egalitarian systems like communism, a committee makes decisions about how to allocate resources. Then whoever holds most sway over the committee holds sway over resource allocation. If you do it by direct democracy, then whoever owns the news media & ad platforms (or has money to do massive PR campaigns and ad buys)…

The question is who they're beholden to, i.e. who they derive that power from. The problem with the person with the most sway over a committee being able to make a decision is less because: 1) The fact that it's necessary to " hold sway " is a result of the power not actually being held by that person, but being loaned to that person by the rest of the committee in a way that can be withdrawn at any time. 2) The comm…

Power is always loaned, and always beholden to someone (or a large group of someones) else. That's what makes it power: the ability to get other people to do what you want them to. If they don't do that, you don't actually have power, while if they do, you've got the power regardless of what the formal power structures (which are often misdirections anyway) say.

The rest of your post is largely true, but also applies to billionaires. They derive their power from people being willing to trade money for the goods and services produced by the assets they own. When people cease to make that trade, their money and their power evaporate. Just look what's happened to the shareholders of Kodak, Xerox, Pan-Am, GM, Sun Microsystems, Lehman Bros, etc.

Note also that systems without billionaires have existed, and have often been worse in terms of distributing power to many people. See eg. Soviet Communism, where power rests in the Politburo, and the local party apparatchik holds outsize sway over everything regardless of competence. Or even post-WW2 U.S, when the top marginal tax rate was 90% and executive compensation was far lower because there was no point in paying a lot when the government got 90% of it. Corporations instead compensated their top execs in-kind: usage of private jets, corner offices, ability to influence what every American thought through advertising and mass culture, influence on policy makers. Orwell's 1984 and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent were about the 1945-1980 period, not the post-Internet era. Power was significantly more centralized during that time period than it is now.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#838

Post by vasco »

greycol wrote: post #703
Aeolun wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a firm believer in a maximum of like 50% tax on income. Anything more just feels like a punishment for working.

If you could push a button once an hour that gave $1,000 to you and $99,000 to the government you are saying you'd feel like you're being punished for pushing it? Let's not pretend that billionares are working 1.44 million hours a week to earn 18000 times what the janitor earns working two jobs in an 80 hour week. The quality of a billionaires 'work' is different than 'real work' so what you feel intuitevely about wo…

Anyone can push a button, not everyone can create a billion dollar company.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#839

Post by throwawayarnty »

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…

This is a naive view of the world.

Most self-made billionaires in western countries exist because they have made something valuable that the public can’t stop buying or investing in. The public are just as selfish humans trying to do what is best for themselves, just like the billionaires.

Think of J.K. Rowling. She is a billionaire because parents are selfish and want to give their kids the best stories to read and watch.

Bill Gates made his wealth because people and companies wanted to use his software for PCs, and investors want a return on their stock investment.

Society can’t stop giving these modern billionaires money because what they have to offer is such a good deal.

The only way to make Bezos stop accumulating wealth is to have everyone stop using Amazon and sell Amazon stocks, which is impossible at this point.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#840

Post by peyton »

int_19h wrote: post #507
IMTDb wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes the famed 0 sum game. If that was the case, it should work both ways: when Bezos "lost" $20 billions of May 1st, how many skimmed labourers suddenly were able to afford $1 million houses ?

The notion that employers are unfairly collecting economic rent from their employees doesn't require it to be a zero-sum game.

Who’s paying less than they expected in today’s market? If anything it’s the other way round right now—lots of people are taking jobs for more money than they expected.
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