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Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

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Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#161

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 can't $1M be the most?

A) inflation b) try to buy a house for 1M in a hcol place. Why would you set the max wealth less than that of a house, something that most humans have been able to own for most of human history, now out of reach for a generation.

You need to realize that absolute numbers are meaningless, they are all relative to costs and inflation. Trying to lock down fiat absolutes is a moving target.

What is a realistic wealth limit for BTC, out of 21M?

Should nobody own more than 1/21Mth the Bitcoin? Less? More?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#162
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is dead.

Bold claims like this is what make people look like idiots when things turn around. With experience though, you can tell that people who make bold claims like this were always idiots gambling away their credibility, hoping the 50/50 lands in their favour.

Still hodling beanie babies?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#163
post #113

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…

That's an arbitrary cut off and it's not just about whether they will work less hard or not. It's about effective capital allocation. If they earned their wealth through smart capital allocation, why would you want to remove capital from proven allocators and forcibly move it to the least effective allocators? TLDR. Elon makes vastly better use of capital than the government does. He turned $180M into SpaceX and Tesl…

Lots of hidden assumptions here:

1. The objective of public policy is to maximize the efficiency of capital allocation.

2. Who is efficient at capital allocation is independent of public policy.

3. Efficiency of capital allocation is measured by stock market capitalization.

1) would assume that building a Lamborghini Veneno Roadster is a better allocation of capital than building 10 homes. Or treating 100,000 cases of malaria.

2) would assume that someone who benefits from government subsidies is intrinsically better at capital allocation than someone who doesn't.

3) would assume that tulips sellers were really, really, good capital allocators for a while, and then suddenly were terrible capital allocators. Or that the number of cars produced isn't really a relevant metric for an auto company.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can put a wealth tax on billionaires without putting taxes on poverty level workers ($500/month in the US). You're making bizarre nonsensical arguments here--slippery slope, strawman, etc.

Wealth taxes seem so dumb to me. In many cases it's forcing sale of private or public company ownership from those who know the company best often to - you guessed it - institutional investors. It's bad enough how much control institutional investors have, but to force it by law seems even more ridiculous. There has to be a better solution.

To the concentration of wealth? Like what? Wish their was, but I haven't heard of it.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#165

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…

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.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#166
post #113

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…

That's an arbitrary cut off and it's not just about whether they will work less hard or not. It's about effective capital allocation. If they earned their wealth through smart capital allocation, why would you want to remove capital from proven allocators and forcibly move it to the least effective allocators? TLDR. Elon makes vastly better use of capital than the government does. He turned $180M into SpaceX and Tesl…

> they earned their wealth through smart capital allocation, why would you want to remove capital from proven allocators and forcibly move it to the least effective allocators?

1. You'd certainly want to remove it before they pass it on to their children -> 60% of all wealth in the US is inherited, mostly by the very wealthy.

2. Those most likely to scoop up redistributed capital are the efficient capital allocators at current time, which is better than calcified structure of efficient capital allocator from 1970 who has just put their money into index funds and passed their wealth on to their children.

3. Diminishing marginal utility of the dollar means strong first-order utility gains from redistribution of wealth which would need very large second-order impact on capital allocation effectiveness (and impact on behavior) to harm net utility.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#167

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…

Would you happen to know how RSUs are factored into this equation? Or is it just salary?

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#168
post #49

I honestly thought the pandemic would be the trigger for a recession. Clearly that wasn't the case (or at least it was a delayed effect). This doesn't seem to be a case where a single event triggered a recession (eg subprime in 2008). It seems to be a combination of events. Inflation is a big one. This one is interesting because the two biggest factors (housing and gas) are completely artificial price hikes. Housing…

> I honestly thought the pandemic would be the trigger for a recession

Um, did you miss the 2020 recession? It was the sharpest decline in GDP and employment in national history. It was also met with an historic government response to stave off poverty. And you can absolutely still point to the current inflation as unwinding from pandemic.

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is obviously no exact dollar amount. I don't believe everyone should have the same amount, but there should probably be some lower and upper limit. Maybe it is possible to calculate the difference between the two. Perhaps the upper limit would be 10000x that of the lower limit. Just as an example. There being a lower limit also implies some kind of universal basic income. Theoretically partially supplied by the…

What happens to the excess is what’s interesting. And if it’s in volatile assets, how do you shave off the top? E.g. your stocks go way above the limit in a bubble but then crash by 50% right after you got taxed.

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

Re: Coinbase lays off around 1,100 employees

#170

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…

> 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.

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