> that's one of those "you're either with us or against us" type of deal - which is not the right way to deal with anything imho.

I think it's more like saying you can't truly be unbiased. Try as you might, it's arguably impossible to truly be unbiased when making decisions an interacting with people. Journalists try their best, by presenting "just the facts" but even that is tough as which facts you chase down and which you deem important is colored by your biases. The flavor of words you write is also thus colored. I know they go through lots of training to account for this, and the truly great journalists we know of are mostly those that achieved some measure of success here, thus earning the respect of their peers and those that they interview.

So, you can try to be apolitical, but it's perhaps one of those impossible goals, because our political views are a form of bias, and if highly trained journalists still have trouble with this, everyone else will as well.

Companies are change agents, even if it's just to get people to use their product over somebody else's. But in Coinbase's case, it's more than that. They're trying to change the way the world exchanges goods and money. That would be a big change to how we all live, and thus it touches on politics in many places. As far as Coinbase is concerned, this makes sense. Many people are finding that just "having a job to collect a paycheck" is not fulfilling enough. They want to change the world as part of their jobs too. So they find jobs that align with their views. Awesome for them.

> I think it's more like saying you can't truly be unbiased. Try as you might, it's arguably impossible to truly be unbiased when making decisions an interacting with people.

That's the point of blinding yourself to the people you interact with, isn't it? If you pick and choose who to do business with, I agree. If you have a website where people buy things that get mailed to them, there is no biased decision making.

> if highly trained journalists still have trouble with this, everyone else will as well

Not sure about this bit. Journalists today (at least for Europe) tend to be politically active first, journalists second. They view their role as educators of the masses, not information presenter, that is, to explain to their audience, why they should believe whatever the journalist believes, not provide facts to their audience and let them decide. I don't see a lot of evidence for individual journalists and even less so companies trying to be neutral.

I understand the argument to be more that, if you don't actively fighting for whatever you believe should be the way society operates, then you're implicitly actively fighting for whatever way it currently operates. I don't agree with that at all. It would include that a doctor who saves a person's life without checking whether they are for or against some issue would be considered putting their weight on one side of the issue. They're not, they are doing their job and saving a life.

> Not sure about this bit. Journalists today (at least for Europe) tend to be politically active first, journalists second.

Then that is pretty sad. But, not surprising, and it's often the same way across the pond. Take a look at the Journalism Code of Ethics [0] and see if your news sources abide by it. This is what I hold my reporters accountable to, as much as I can.

Needless to say, I disagree that what you describe should be considered OK and normal.

> It would include that a doctor who saves a person's life without checking whether they are for or against some issue would be considered putting their weight on one side of the issue. They're not, they are doing their job and saving a life.

Agreed. But, have you thought about why the Hippocratic Oath exists in the first place? The very point of it is to force doctors to consider all lives equal and, to the best of their ability, ignore their personal beliefs and do their job. It's literally trying to prevent people from following their base instincts. Very similar to the Journalism Ethics, in a way. That said, it's not perfect; there are many studies showing that, statistically, minorities have higher rates of mortality and other adverse effects in hospitals. That's not causation, but it does point to some potential troubling behaviors.

Anyway, I digress. Not all jobs are considered equal, which should be obvious. If you only want to save the lives of your favorite political party, you should really not become a doctor. Or you will hopefully be found and reported by other doctors / law enforcement and rightly put in prison. Programmers, for better or worse, do not have the same issues.

[0] https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

> Programmers, for better or worse, do not have the same issues.

I think they do, and we generally expect everyone to behave that way, but we're making it very explicit for doctors and lawyers and some other professions. Of course, it's not as immediate when you're dealing with programmers, but viewing the economy not as a total war with temporary alliances between buyers and sellers but as a way to get things done with the market place being the most efficient way to do so (which, I believe, is the more appropriate way, and it's also the way we look at it from the nation state perspective which will happily disable the market place in times of war or catastrophic events), discriminating with regards to politics when selling your services is throwing sand in the machine.

It's not outlawed for many professions (but usually is once you have a monopoly in some location), but it's neither wide-spread, nor encouraged or accepted, I believe.

IMHO it's job-dependent.

For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.

On the other hand, if you own a bakery being apolitical is a lot simpler. Avoid the Masterpiece Cakeshop case and there's as little politics as you'll find anywhere.

It's funny you bring up bakeries. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled that a NY law limiting daily working hours for bakers was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v._New_York). The point of the law was to keep overworked and tired bakers from making a mistake and blowing the place up (aerated flour is quite the accelerant). This ruling began the era of the Lochner court during which many of the labor protections we take for granted like child-labor laws and overtime protection were struck down under the 14th. Fortunately, we have since pivoted, but that bakery owner's seemingly benign decision to work his employees a bit harder had massive political ramifications for years.

It's not as easy as one thinks to just steer clear of politics. Just about everything has an impact.

The announcement from Coinbase specifically says that issues concerning working conditions are in bounds:

> Of course, employees should always feel free to advocate around issues of pay, conditions of employment, or violations of law, for instance. Hopefully the above sets some clear guidelines.

One might make the argument for related vs unrelated politics. (Though the line between what's related and unrelated is fairly subjective)

A bakery is obviously going to have an interest in politics directly related to operating a bakery and the employment laws affecting it. A bakery might reasonably avoid political stances on something unrelated, such as nuclear power, foreign conflicts, etc.

This is a bit off topic from the original discussion, but I think you definitely can be a gun shop owner and be against guns at the same time, albeit still in a political sense. Having a gun shop provides you with the best possible venue for educating your customers about guns "from the inside", hence being able to push your agenda in the long term.

That being said, running a gun shop is definitely a political statement. I guess you could control what you sell as well, like "I only sell hunting rifles - for hunting" and refusing to sell hand guns or automatic rifles. Sorry for the example of guns, I'm swedish and have no insight in what is commonplace in US gun stores.

But owning a gun shop would by its very nature makes you pro-gun from a conflict of interest standpoint. Your very livelihood would require that the laws stay lax. It might even require that you actively advocate against any proposed legislation that might damage your business. To remain apolitical or even anti-gun would be failing your duties to your family, employees, and shareholders (if you have any) to grow and sustain the business and keep them fed, housed, employed, and paid.

> But owning a gun shop would by its very nature makes you pro-gun from a conflict of interest standpoint.

No it most certainly doesn't. A person can hold the opinion that many people can engage in some activity responsibly, while not everyone can.

Being a gun store owner that favors regulation on the ownership of guns is not all that different from a beer brewer that favors regulation of drinking age or laws against operating vehicles while inebriated.

Ignoring morality for a moment, there's a business argument in there too. A bunch of drunk hooligans causing car accidents is bad for business. Anyone in the business of dealing in "harmful" products is aware of potential public backlash from irresponsible people and will seek to mitigate that in some form.

Sure, I suppose our disconnect comes from two things: 1. The laws I imagined when I was drafting my comment were more akin to taking away guns completely, not something like more stringent background checks or cool down periods. That was my mistake 2. I personally believe the dollar has more political power than any vote by way of directly enabling or disabling the ability to act in any manner. In that regard, I feel that businesses are political in, for example, the supply chain activities (environmental impact, labor practices, etc) that they choose to fund. Merely by existing and directing money towards real world consequences, a business is political.

“Hunting” rifles and semi-automatic rifles that are erroneously referred to as “assault rifles” are functionally the same. Almost nowhere can you readily buy automatic rifles.

Not to dive too far into the politics or semantics of this, but I feel like OP meant "hunting" rifles to mean "bolt-action" or "single-shot" type rifles.

Also, OP didn't actually say anything about semi-automatic rifles, at all. So it's really a nothing statement to make that distinction; I guess I took the bait, though.

For most people, the debate about "assault rifles" seems to be a misunderstanding about the language being used by the other side. For people who label semi-automatic rifles as "assault rifles", they think of hunting rifles as small capacity, bolt-action rifles. Whereas folks like you do not make that distinction.

It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and realize that neither side understands the most basic definitions of the other. It's super common in gun debates. And very, genuinely strange.

> It's so weird to see that conversation play out, and realize that neither side understands the most basic definitions of the other. It's super common in gun debates. And very, genuinely strange.

it's not symmetrical that way. the way gun control advocates use "assault rifle" is usually pretty vague. I have friends who would call a semi-automatic MP5 an "assault rifle". to a gun enthusiast, an "assault rifle" is a specific type of gun that is quite difficult to legally own as a civilian. I suspect 2A folks understand what the other side means by "assault rifle" (as well as they do themselves, at least), but choose not to give it the dignity of acknowledgement.

the inverse occurs in discussions about racism. the left uses "racism" to mean "power + prejudice", while the right understands it simply as "discrimination on the basis of race". folks on the right don't necessarily understand through context which definition is being used (if they're even aware of the "power + prejudice" definition). folks on the left absolutely understand the source of confusion, but pretend they don't to leave their interlocutors looking stupid.

in both cases, you essentially have one side mocking the other for not having done their homework. not unfair imo, but probably not the most productive way to have the discussion.

To be honest, in the second case I refuse to acknowledge because it is newspeak: redefinition of words to mean whatever benefits the party now. (it has been a few years since I read 1984, but I think I remember this correctly.)

It is immediately clear even as a foreigner what racism really means and whoever tries to redefine it as a general slur deserves to be called out for it, just in the same way as they try to redefine assault rifle to mean any scary looking gun.

That said, have my vote: you seem reasonable.

I can see why you would feel that way, but I don't think it's malicious usually.

the way I look at it is the "power + privilege" definition comes from "racism" as an academic term of art, a meaning that everyone engaged in a certain kind of study/research agrees on. a comparable example from CS would be "syntax" vs "semantics". when people scold someone for arguing over semantics, they mean something more similar to the CS definition of "syntax". if you, a CS person, interpret them using the CS definition of "semantics", it would sound quite ridiculous. I often see left-leaning people (esp college educated) using certain words with their academic meanings. they're not being deliberately misleading, but they don't always do a good job of handling the confusion that ensues when addressing a broader audience.

Lots of hunting rifles have an internal magazine with a smallish fixed capacity.

That's functionally quite different from a rifle with easily swapped external magazines with high capacity.

Chambering also matters a little bit. Weapons with a military lineage tend to have smaller rounds than rifles for big game. The smaller rounds make it easier to pack large amounts of ammunition and reduce fatigue.

Of course assault rifle is a meaningless term, but that's a result of many efforts to warp the discourse and not because the weapons used for war are literally the same as a weapon that is sufficient for hunting.

Assault rifles are marketed as "sporting" rifles by their manufacturers. My rifle doesn't accept detachable magazines which is one of the features of assault/sporting rifles.

>For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun

What do you mean "pro-gun"?

You're fundamentally trying to reduce something that's a range to a binary and you're gonna lose a lot of accuracy doing that.

There's lots of gun shops owned by fudds who support various things from the "anti gun" wish list. Just by virtue of being older the "people who own gun shops" demographic is likely less extreme on the pro-gun spectrum than the average person on the pro-gun spectrum.

Obviously this is gonna generalize pretty well to other issues. Anyone running an abortion clinic is gonna be pro-life to some extend but selling the service doesn't necessarily mean they're at the super extreme end of it.

> For example, can you be a gun shop owner without being pro-gun? Some would say actions speak louder than words.

That's a false dichotomy. There are multiple stances on guns besides "guns should be completely unregulated" and "civilians shouldn't be allowed to own guns".

Working at a gun shop is, for example, very compatible with the notion that people should be subject to buying background checks before being able to buy a gun. After all, it's the brick-and-mortar gun shops who have to abide by background checks; the more these shops dominate the market, the smaller the market will be for gun shows where such background checks aren't required.

You're repeating a common misunderstanding about gun shows here which is that there are different rules for gun shows. There aren't. All licensed firearms sellers, i.e. all the people with booths, must do all the same background checks they would when selling from their stores. Meanwhile, all the non-gun-dealers (i.e. attendees) follow the same rules they would any other time of the year, which is that private-party transactions don't require background checks in some states. But that would be the same as if they sold a gun on Facebook or whatever. The dealers at the gun show are all doing the background checks as required by federal law (and additionally many states have more checks and/or waiting periods that also must be obeyed).

Fair enough, and thanks for the correction.

In any case, working for an actual gun dealer is still compatible with a stance of "I support universal background checks and closing the private-seller loophole", which is still a form of gun control and a departure from the status quo.

I don't know what political issues affect bakeries today, but infamously, being any sort of consumer business in the US (particularly in the South) in the 1950s and 1960s was extremely political.

I'm not one of them myself, but I know people who would argue that the ubiquity of sugary foods in our diets is a bigger net negative to society than guns.

It's an easy case to make:

Causes of death (U.S., approx., annually) strongly related to metabolic health which is strongly affected by diet:

Heart disease: 635k, Cancer: 598k, Stroke: 142k, Alzheimer's: 116k, Kidney disease: 50k

Causes of death related to guns:

Suicide: 21k, Homicide: 11k, Accident/Negligence: 500

I don't totally disagree, but you have to go a little further to really make the point. excess sugar seems to cause more deaths than guns, but how many years does it take off of people's lifespan? a poor diet killing someone at 65 instead of 78 is not quite as bad as a healthy 20yo being shot dead in an instant. to go even further, what's the cumulative impact to quality of life, even if one does live to a ripe old age?

A counterexample is mysql: its licensing scheme combines both proprietary and copyleft ideas.

Mormons can own liquor stores but generally Mormons are thought of as being against alcohol.

It's only possible to believe this if you are in a majority with a majority opinion. If this was 60 years ago, during Jim Crow, is the apolitical thing for a company to do when it comes to their workers? Were companies in the right to have separate bathrooms, to hire less or no minorities so that they didn't have to maintain separate facilities? Saying those acts are ok is a political opinion endorsing Jim Crow simply because it was the law.

The entire mission of a company doesn't have to be front and center in politics but there is no such thing as being apolitical for any company interacting with the world in a meaningful way

Coinbase is an exchange for people to access cryptocurrency. The gradual adoption of cryptocurrencies weakens central governments’ currencies. Their entire business is by nature, political.

Libertarian.

Yes but it is also subject to the powers of the market. As lonng as they don't use lobbying to give their product an unfair advantage, it's (literally) people paying with their wallets.

If you think that the market is a apolitical I have some socialists who'd like a chat...

> not let your political views affect what you do

That's a political stance. As long as you're part of society, you'll always have a political stance. That's what the other commentor was getting at.

Why would you ever want your views to not influence what you do? If not yours, whose perception would you use to inform what you do? And why would you want to keep your views private?

If you think that your views are so inappropriate or unimportant that you can't share them, that's a view in of itself and that's what people will see.

> You do not try to change anyone else's political views as part of your job

Whether you should try to actively change someone's view is a big question. It's a very different question than whether or not you should have/share your worldview. Whether you like it or not, your views are what they are because of others sharing theirs (explicitly or implicitly).

> It's a very different question than whether or not you should have/share your worldview.

the very act of sharing your view (implying it's unsolicited) is trying to change someone else. Let me use as an obnoxious example: vegans trying to sell the idea of veganism to non-vegans.

The view you just described is active support for the status quo.

One fairly non-controversial part of the status quo right now is our dependence on fossil fuels and co2 emissions to keep our economy running.

Saying "I'll keep my views private" means I'm giving an okay to what's happening now. If every individual shares the thinking at every company then it is impossible to even imagine how the most catastrophic climate change can be avoided.

Beyond even this example, it's is politically naive to believe there is some "normal". The status quo today is the politics of the current dominant power (which is largely market forces). Agreeing to be "apolitical" is actively support of this system. Your view is the one that is strongly "with us or against us" in that any opinion other than the dominant political ideology is supposed to be silenced at work.

"Just do you job and don't voice contrary opinions" is a pretty radical political opinion if you ask me, so your definition of "apolitical" is only "A"-political because you are so intensely in opposition to non-status quo beliefs that you disregard them completely.

Being apolitical at work is not active support for the status quo. It’s simply not using your role as an employee for your company as a vehicle to advance your political agenda. An agenda which is most likely irrelevant to the mission of your company.

You can be apolitical at work while still opposing the so called status quo with your vote. Or you can oppose the status quo in an explicitly political organization outside of your job.

> your political agenda

And the alternative is the company's political agenda. So you are saying we must all, 8+ hours a day, support our employers political agenda, and then in the time remaining we can try to counteract that a bit.

If you think political action begins and ends at the vote then you have a lot to learn about the nature of politics in practice.

> we must all, 8+ hours a day, support our employers political agenda

Isn't this the whole point of work? Exchanging your own preferences and time for money?

> in the time remaining we can try to counteract that a bit

Ideally you wouldn't be working for a company who is diametrically opposed to your own beliefs. This is why I will never work for Facebook.

> Isn't this the whole point of work? Exchanging your own preferences and time for money?

In our current economic system, yes for some people; but less so for some individuals, and again even less in economies with UBI.

A founder, for instance, is often not looking to trade preferences but instead to actually make an impact on the world while sharing in the profit of that impact. This is different than just trading things away: you are collaborating actively. Of course, that’s currently mostly available for small groups such as founders and small-business owners.

And you may note that… all of this has political ramifications :) Small business owners are heavily impacted by political regulation; the ability of workers to organize and take a joint ownership over their work is governed by laws too.

None of this exists in a vacuum. We are who we are because of who we all are, and we do what we do because of what we all do. That’s political. Some people just want others to be passive.

You aren’t being paid to promote your political agenda, you are being paid to perform your function as an employee. If you don’t support your company’s agenda, why would you work there?

While we're focused on the purely "Political" agenda in this conversation, politics of a company include anything from how on-calls work to how sick days are counted.

You can work at a company and advocate for changing things and it can be as comparatively small as ensuring on-call rotations are fair to ensuring the company voices support for and takes actions in line with supporting Black Lives Matter. These are all political in the spirit described up thread as saying that politics is the figuring out and deciding of these issues as a group.

The decision of how many sick days, etc. is relevant to the business of the company. Social justice movements like “black lives matter” are not relevant to the mission of companies like Coinbase, as determined by their leadership.

> Social justice movements like “black lives matter” are not relevant to the mission of companies like Coinbase

That's the whole issue, and you're just affirming the consequent by saying this. Structural equality is unavoidably the concern of every person and group in a society.

> Structural equality is unavoidably the concern of every person and group in a society.

Inspiring but simply false

Ah yes good point - it’s of concern to every FAIR MINDED member of the group.

Lest we forget, there are many people who support the structural inequality.

> it’s of concern to every FAIR MINDED member of the group.

Also false. Many fair minded people simply don’t have time to concern themselves with politics.

Not to mention that in many cases political actors who justify their actions on the premise of “structural inequality” end up reducing fairness.

Not having the time to concern yourself with politics isn't a position of neutrality or agnosticism. You can only adopt that position if the status quo of a society provides you sufficient protection, stability, prosperity, etc. to allow you to tune it out. If those conditions aren't true, it's not possible to "not concern yourself with politics" in a Maslow's hierarchy sense. And so doing so is unavoidably a tacit defense of the status quo.

Also false, many people who you would claim are affected by “structural inequality” and who are more focused with improving their individual conditions also do not have time to concern themselves with politics.

Example is myself. I am a child of poor immigrants. I am neither white nor wealthy. I do not care about involving myself in your politics, I spend my time focused on working and being productive for the sake of supporting my family. Frankly your politics destroyed my country.

> I do not care about involving myself in your politics

This is a political stance. You have involved yourself in politics. There's really no way out.

You’re twisting words to make your point vacuously true. I do not care about changing federal government policy or who runs the federal government. Call that whatever you like, doesn’t mean I have ever received special benefits from the system any more than anyone else. That is my stance because I have better things to do with my time, like being productive.

The fact that you are able to not care about these things is a privilege you enjoy. And not caring about them is a political decision that you've made.

It’s literally a privilege everyone enjoys. No one is forced to care about politics at all. That’s a false premise. It’s always a choice, it’s not a privilege.

If you are a trans person and need to use the bathroom in a conservative state, then you are forced to care about politics. If you are a black person who is stopped by the police and rightfully fear for your life, then you are forced to care about politics.

False in both cases

I mean, obviously you're wrong.

By definition, if you're able to ignore politics, you are not part of the demographic that I'm describing.

What demographic are you describing?

> politics of a company

that's not a political stance - that's negotiating your working conditions. It's private and individual, and only affect you (and your colleagues). It doesn't affect society at large whether you have on-call or how sick days are counted _at_ your place of employement.

But to use your position as an employee to push for universal sick leave, or for BLM, which affects society at large, not just yourself, is a political stance.

You take for granted current working conditions which were won via hard-fought political battles and which affect us to this day.

Also what about Maternity leave? Paternity leave? Are those not political?

How is negotiating working conditions not related to "how we engage and collaborate with each other as a society"? It's inherently (little p) political even if the engagement is at a company similar to how politics on your local HOA is still politics.

edit: typo

I think you’re conflating issues relevant to the business of the company, which might be considered political, and political issues which are irrelevant to the business of the company. The former is okay, the latter is not. The subject of OP is the latter.

Broadly, it's incorrect to claim the issues at hand here are irrelevant to the business of the (or any) company.

What issue are you claiming is relevant to the business of every company?

In this case: basic and functional equality of the members of a society. Like pornography, this is hard to define precisely, but I know when the violations are egregious enough, and the functional equality of black Americans through in the eyes of the police right now is certainly egregious enough.

Police brutality of black Americans is simply and factually not relevant to the business of every company.

Insofar as it represents a fundamental and existential inequality in society, it certainly is.

Really not. Many businesses are not impacted by inequalities in society.

> ... that's negotiating your working conditions. It's private and individual, and only affect you (and your colleagues).

No. That's an "it depends" thing. If the "political issue" in question is something team or working condition related then it's not necessarily private and individual affecting only you.

Some people will care about that and want to potentially co-ordinate. Other people won't consider it important, and/or have other priorities.

> It's private and individual, and only affect you

You must be aware of the existence of unions. You're mentioning US-political concerns, so you're almost certainly familiar with the notion that the mere existence of unions is highly political. Whether or not you are a union member, union activities effect US workplaces.

Ignoring their existence in this discussion is itself a political position.

It’s very brave if you, in the middle of a pandemic, to say that “sick days are private and have no impact on society at large.”

You must have missed March and April when sick days at “essential work” (such as grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, and more) was in fact a matter of national conversation: sick people going to work spread disease. The number of sick days was also of debate: most low wage jobs don’t offer more than 1 sick day a month or two. Not so good when someone needs two weeks off.

This kind of short sightedness and inherent support of the status quo as “it’s fine, I see no problem here” is exactly what the other commenter(s) are talking about.

Personal monetary relationship between employee and employer is business, not politics.

You honestly don't see how what you're describing is a fairly radical political opinion? You are now arguing that you should choose your means of survival as a political statement. If you don't lock-step agree with the politics of tech companies in general, you should find a lower salary someplace else that agrees more with your political beliefs.

I would love if people who are privacy advocates could get facebook salaries working for the EFF.

It looks like what you are advocating here is that not only should you silence non-status quo opinions, but your income should strongly correlated with your alignment with dominant political powers.

The premise of your argument is that you have no choice in your employment, which is false. There are hundreds of tech companies to work for, if not thousands.

No one is forcing climate change activists to work for oil companies. As a corollary it would be absurd for a climate change activist to argue that oil companies must employ them to allow their companies to be destroyed from the inside out.

I’m simply saying your employer does not pay you to advance any agenda other than their own and that using your employer’s time to advance a political agenda irrelevant to theirs is theft, for lack of a better term.

> choose your means of survival as a political statement...[or] find a lower salary someplace else that agrees more with your political beliefs.

or, compare how much you like a higher salary, vs a company that agrees with your political views. And choose appropriately.

What's not appropriate is to choose the company with the highest salary, but whose owner's political views differ from your own, and then try to change that to something more suitable to your own. Or use such a position as leverage to push your own political views to a wider audience than you could on your own.

A lot of people need to lie to themselves and others that they’re not complete sell outs who forfeited their morals for a high salary. Being loud at work and social media is one way of doing that. It ends up with no real traction in reality though because the companies they work for don’t prioritize it over profits.

> What's not appropriate is to choose the company with the highest salary, but whose owner's political views differ from your own, and then try to change that to something more suitable to your own. Or use such a position as leverage to push your own political views to a wider audience than you could on your own.

Very well put and I’m terrifyingly surprised at how many people are arguing for the opposite. That is literal subversion.

This is entirely appropriate. Why do you think it isn't?

> What's not appropriate is to choose the company with the highest salary, but whose owner's political views differ from your own, and then try to change that to something more suitable to your own.

Why is that inappropriate exactly? If my boss’ opinion is “unions shouldn’t exist because I think I’m entitled to treat people however I want/play them off each other/depress wages” why am I not allowed to rebel against that and organize with my coworkers? In fact, the right to do this very thing is enshrined in law.

Did you read the Coinbase blog post? The conversation has really devolved away from the original topic. Coinbase issued a statement saying they are focused on their mission as a for-profit company. You're spinning it into something its not.

"I don’t think companies can succeed trying to do everything. Creating an open financial system for the world is already a hugely ambitious mission, and we could easily spend the next decade or two trying to move the needle on global economic freedom."

What exactly do you disagree with about their statement? What are you proposing that Coinbase do differently? Should they collectively vote to align the company with a political party?

It's a business not an activist group.

If you think that politics is an overriding consideration at all times - that every hour you spend working for someone is an hour spent supporting their political agenda - I don't think you have any choice but to choose your means of survival as a political statement. I agree that this is a pretty bad outcome, which is why I'd encourage you not to embrace such totalizing views of politics.

I think what they’re suggesting is an employee who focuses more attention on work at work will outperform the employee who doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what the subject is.

If you feel like a change should be made at a company you'd probably advocate for it.

You just believe that 'politics' is outside the scope of the company. Other's believe that it is not.

> You just believe that 'politics' is outside the scope of the company. Other's believe that it is not.

I believe this is a strawman. The issue at hand is political issues that are explicitly irrelevant to the mission of the company.

Issues that are relevant to the company should be discussed and potentially acted upon, if that furthers the agenda of the company (and not just some irrelevant political agenda that you might be passionate about).

I have seen companies claim that the things that their customers do with their product is not their responsibility. They have claimed that they are right to ignore that issue because they believe it is "political".

Naming something as political can be used to shutdown conversation that can and should be happening in a company.

Let's get concrete with this:

Do you feel like a soft drink maker has an obligation to disengage with countries that have set up systemic discrimination and regularly violate human rights conventions?

It really doesn't seem within the mission of providing the world with sugary carbonated water.

It's hard to imagine cutting ties with a country due to disagreement with how they treat their population as non-political.

And yet 34 years ago this happened:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-18-mn-11241-...

But wait you say: it's just a prudent business decision because the economics were against them and it was a "PR" win.

It doesn't matter. It's political.

This is an inherently political statement:

“Our decision to complete the process of disinvestment is a statement of our opposition to apartheid and of our support for the economic aspirations of black South Africans.” -Donald R. Keough

That was a decision that the leadership of that company made. I don’t see how that justifies employees bringing their irrelevant politics into an environment.

Employees were publicly advocating for boycotts and performing strikes at the time.

https://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1982/07/coke.h...

EDIT: why did you assume it was a decision made solely by leadership and that employees or other stakeholders did not have a publicly held opinion?

> why did you assume it was a decision made solely by leadership and that employees or other stakeholders did not have a publicly held opinion?

Was my assumption wrong? Did the leadership of that company not make that decision?

To put food on the table

Usually money.

Yes. When you join a company, you are signing onto their political agenda. If you don't believe that, then I wonder if you'd have an aversion to working for Jeffrey Epstein.

> Being apolitical at work is not active support for the status quo.

It certainly can be.

It can be but not must be and in most cases likely isn’t.

> The view you just described is active support for the status quo.

A passive stance is, by definition, not active support for anything.

Coinbase is actively working on financial infrastructure. That's what they "actively" do.

> Saying "I'll keep my views private" means I'm giving an okay to what's happening now.

No, it means that what's happening now is, while certainly important to many employees as people, not a part of or in any way related to the company's business.

> A passive stance is, by definition, not active support for anything.

Passive support for the status quo is that we all have to work and survive in this world. If you have to work for an airline to live, but hate what co2 emissions is doing for this world, you are passively supporting the currently political narrative.

Insisting that any belief that is non-status quo be silenced is active political action. You can pretend that it's passive, but that is just a cowardly way of abdicating political responsibility.

So, if I tell you about the issues of South African droughts in Capetown and now that you know this but haven't done anything about it and any excuse you give me like 'I don't live there' or 'I don't have the time' or 'I don't have the money', don't those all fall under 'we all have to work and survive' and thus you're passively supporting the status quo of bad things?

I think the next step is then I can assail you with facts of every bad thing going on in this world and if you do nothing about it, you're cowardly abdicating your political responsibility, neh?

I might go a step further with your position and say that silence/speaking out are really two sides of the same coin. After all, silence and 'talk' is cheap. If you really want to fight the status quo you ought to commit your life and the majority of your money to the causes you believe in.

> thus you're passively supporting the status quo of bad things?

Absolutely, as a relatively well-off Westerner, me and my way of life absolutely are the direct and indirect cause of a lot of violence and harm around the world. I likewise creates a lot of CO2. Filling up my gas tank causes a lot of bloodshed. Doing this things is a part of the life I am used to, but absolutely yes I am passively supporting these things.

An activist against these things will likely take active steps to resist this passive support.

> if you do nothing about it, you're cowardly abdicating your political responsibility, neh?

No. My point is precisely if I tell you "we don't talk about those things, it's not polite, I want this to be an apolitical statement" that I am switching from passively supporting the status quo to actively. But by claiming that this is somehow "apolitical" that is the cowardly abdication of political responsibility. What I mean here is being responsible for your political choices.

Saying that "wow I do passively contribute to co2 emissions, I don't know what to do about it but I don't like it." is taking political responsibility. Say "don't talk about that at work!" and claiming your taking the neutral ground is abdicating that responsibility.

> If you really want to fight the status quo you ought to commit your life and the majority of your money to the causes you believe in.

This is literally the definition of activism, and I of course support it. But the source of all activism is 'talk', which is not a cheap as you make it out to be. People who 'talk' about unions at Google tend to lose jobs. People who 'talk' about questionable legal practices at their company tend to lose jobs. And 'talk' is the seed of activism.

If I followed you around at work all day pestering you about obscure political issues irrelevant to your job, you wouldn't be able to get any work done.

Sure but I have not seen anyone advocating for that in this thread.

> If you have to work for an airline to live, but hate what co2 emissions is doing for this world, you are passively supporting the currently political narrative.

no that's just surviving. It's not politically supporting "the status quo".

> abdicating political responsibility.

implying that everyone _has_ to have some political responsibility.

Not everyone cares enough - they believe climate change, but they also don't want to expend energy fighting it - that' snot a political stance. It sucks, but that's the majority of people.

Yes: everyone in a society necessarily has political responsibility.

"Silenced" strikes me as a uselessly broad category. If I tell my friends to stop yelling about politics because we're trying to have a nice dinner, that isn't an active political action.

The financial infrastructure that Coinbase is working on brushes up against the lines drawn by the law in many countries. Working with Bitcoin could be seen as a somewhat political act in itself.

Yes, it would be a necessarily political act in direct furtherance of the company's mission, not a misdirection of finite resources and effort.

No I don’t think so. Upper management yes. Not rank and file. It’s like if the company vision failed and their next big product fails. That’s on management but not on the rank and file.

> A passive stance is, by definition, not active support for anything

You are sitting at a bus stop and you see a man having a heart attack in front of you with nobody else around. If you call the authorities and send for an ambulance, you will save his life. If you don't, he will die.

Whether you just passively sit there and wait for the bus, or whether you take action to save the man's life, you are making a decision and that decision will have consequences.

There is no such thing as being apolitical. Not making a choice is making a choice.

The reason the word 'political' exists is that some things are very political and many things aren't. To be political in your example would be to base your decision to call an ambulance on whether the victim is wearing a maga hat or blm shirt. To be apolitical is to set aside your and their views of government and focus on the thing at hand that has very little to do with government, which is that someone is dying and you can save them with a phone call.

The point was just to illustrate that inaction is an action. Not taking a political stance is taking a political stance. It is a game you cannot help but play.

Politics is more than government. It's our society, it's how we deal with each other. It's how we approach the economy, the family, the church. It's intrinsically linked to being human, or as Aristotle put it, the "philosophy of human affairs".

If your business does not actively support a reform, they are actively supporting the status quo. Which is fine, humans disagree. But to pretend it's something it's not is disingenuous or naive.

The "you are either with us or against us" mindset will keep people from building bridges to approach each other.

> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action" MLK

Ultimately the people that don't care enough about a specific reform are the reason it isn't happening in the first place. I'm not trying to advocate for tribalism and polarization or promote a "mindset". I'm just stating a truth.

I too was just stating the truth.

> The view you just described is active support for the status quo.

Not really. I can do my job from 9 to 5 in a non-political way and then actively try to change the status quo on evenings and weekends. That doesn't align with how you are describing being apolitical at work means.

> If every individual shares the thinking at every company then it is impossible to even imagine how the most catastrophic climate change can be avoided.

Because many individuals can sincerely believe that the way to deal with climate change goes via individual or citizen advocacy groups changing cultural attitudes and then exerting pressure on the Governments to bring in the necessary regulations. Companies should not be engaged in climate change politics (or global poverty or abortion rights) if they want to avoid it.

> The view you just described is active support for the status quo.

It's really not.

It's just not giving a shit about whatever the thing is the political argument is about, instead putting time and care into other things you consider more important. eg kids, family, etc.

"Kids, family" aren't necessarily in opposition to "political argument". When you watch a political protest, you should see people fighting FOR their children's futures. Whenever politics has a multigenerational timescale, that's what it's about.

I also point out that "not giving a shit" and "considering more important" are synonyms for "not mattering" and "mattering", respectively.

Well yes. Some person may feel that their particular hot issue is "the most important thing ever". (!)

Other people don't, and care about other things.

Claiming that people who actively put their time and effort into stopping that change ("supporting the status quo") are the same as people who prioritise other things (eg "looking after their sick sibling"), is outright dishonest. And seems both silly, and like it would generate a bunch of negative things by trying to push it.

To illustrate, lets take a dumb example...

Lets say my sister is dying of cancer, and I need to pay for her treatment, her family's housing and costs meanwhile, and whatever other expenses come up. So, I'm doing bulk hours at my job to make that work.

In that situation, someone pushing an agenda of "there needs to be more sausage rolls in the canteen" (!) can go to hell. I have more important (to me) things to care about. I don't care about their hot issue in any way.

But if they keep on trying to take up my time with it, they're not going to get a positive reaction as they're literally wasting time I could be using productively. ;)

It is.

> "Just do you job and don't voice contrary opinions" is a pretty radical political opinion if you ask me, so your definition of "apolitical" is only "A"-political because you are so intensely in opposition to non-status quo beliefs that you disregard them completely.

Which is your personal opinion on the matter. What do I suggest for you? Start your own company and allow your employees to have their political views expressed as part of your ethos (or Manifesto if you can relate more to that).

Perhaps I want the status quo at my job. If I worked somewhere truly objectionable I would quit working there and rally against it in my own time. I get paid to produce services that we sell. I don't get paid to change the world as powerful as we'd like to think we are. Also I don't expect my employer to pay me to be an activist unless they really wanted to. I have every other hour than the 40 I work to do whatever I want.

I admire people that are willing to put in the time to advocate what they believe is right and just. And they are free to do that whether I agree with them or disagree with them. I just don't want to be at work where just coming in and wanting to do your job is considered insufficient and you have to be saving the world somehow. That doesn't mean that I disagree with the cause or won't contribute in my own time. I just want us working on the goal for our company. It could work both ways. Like what if an oil company gave you days off to counter protest at climate change events? If you did not attend, it would be questionable and perhaps ruin your career. So I think as a whole we support activism because it is the activism we like but it might not always be that way.

Will you be OK with everyone else doing the same, including people you deeply disagree with?

Because those people also have strong opinions, not because they are evil, but because from their point of view it is the right thing to do.

I'd say: unless you are OK with both Trump supporters, Biden supoorters, Pro-Lifers, Pro-Choice etc etc all bringing their politics to work, be careful about trying to use work for politics.

Edit: let me also add the Communist party, Jehovas Witnesses, the Catholic Church, Hinduism (a number of my colleagues wanting to learn meditation got stuck between two factions arguing loudly and angrily about some detail regarding reincarnation), the local NRA and everyone else. Unless you want to accept them doing activism on company time: don't be the one who starts it.

> in opposition to non-status quo beliefs that you disregard them completely.

Many of us disagree strongly with the status quo because we find it is way too little conservative.

Do you really want us to start using harder tactics instead of sticking to our current strategy:

- hoping the kids on the left will grow up soon. Traditionally in generation after generation they abandon the dumbest ideas after a decade or so. (And yes, this holds true for me too, I was influenced by socialism as a teenager even though I never torched anything.)

- be nice so that others will be nice to us, or at least think twice who they want to support

- stand up for others and hope others will stand up for us (and yes, despite me being deeply "conservative" that also means standing up for immigrants. I do that.)

- vote

- pray

- depending on location: make sure we are able to defend ourselves and our families if police cannot be expected to do so (we don't need to think about that here as crime rates are low and police arrive quickly if you need them)

> The view you just described is active support for the status quo.

I hear this all the time but I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is "active support" isn't it at most passive support? If you were actively supporting it, you'd be taking political actions and therefore not being apolitical?

It is not active support for the status quo. No one is saying to quit being political entirely. Just during work hours.

I don't agree. Opponents of the status quo can get an advantage by defecting from an apolitical equilibrium, by bringing politics into spaces where people who disagree with them aren't willing to. But when everyone starts being political, opponents of the status quo lose, because almost by definition their views are less popular.

> The view you just described is active support for the status quo. [..] fossil fuels and co2 emissions to keep our economy running.

So there's really no difference between doing nothing, and donating to FUD campaigns against climate science? They're both equally active in their support for fossil fuels, both equally "apolitical"? Or have you diluted the term "apolitical" to the point of meaninglessness, if it can describe such wildly different behavior?

Would you describe yourself as "actively supporting" Kony (or some other, similar warlord)?

No one said equally active.

This is an extreme example but imagine someone knocks on your door and says “help, the secret police are after me.”

You don’t help them, and, you don’t turn them in.

In January 2017, several of my coworkers were banned from reentering the country to go home to their families, while they were on business trips to visit other offices. How is anyone supposed to be apolitical in that context? How are the people who can't ever come home supposed to pretend everything is fine?

A functional definition of privilege is that politics doesn't matter that much to you. No matter how it turns out, you'll be fine, so you're able to mentally compartmentalize it and go about the rest of your business. There are many people whose lives are not like that, and it's unreasonable to expect them to treat politics as a game separate from real life.

> A functional definition of privilege is that politics doesn't matter that much to you.

The more privileged a group is the more they tend to be involved in politics. So a better definition is that privilege is when you have time and energy to spend on politics.

Having the time and energy to devote to it is not the same thing as whether it materially changes your life. Often those things are anticorrelated.

> mentally compartmentalize it and go about the rest of your business. There are many people whose lives are not like that, and it's unreasonable to expect them to treat politics as a game separate from real life.

I bet the closeted gay folks in countries where that's a death sentence would MUCH rather have their coworkers compartmentalize their views.

> A functional definition of privilege is that politics doesn't matter that much to you

You're even more privileged if you're so confident in your job security and the popularity of your political views that you can spend your working hours advocating them without worrying that it'll affect your ability to feed your family.

An Iranian immigrant can't help but advocate for their political views simply by existing. Living and working in the US is an assertion that they should have the legal right to do so. Simply by being glad to have them as a coworker (the most anodyne possible affirmation that everyone generally expects from the people around them) you are making a political statement. If I say, "I'm glad you were able to make it home," I'm expressing support for the court case that invalidated the executive order that allowed them to come home.

As long as some parts of politics are working to harm the people you work with, coexisting with them and exchanging pleasantries is political.

Right, so said Iranian immigrant is for the status quo where he is allowed to work in the US and therefore would be in favor of banning discussions related to it, no? Enabling discussions would favor the people who want change, that is the people who want to kick him out, is that really what you want, do you want to help him get kicked out?

This is roughly how the people who argue against Coinbase decision sounds.

It was obviously not the status quo, because they were banned from the country.

Companies should advocate for the rights of their employees. They should demand their employees treat each other with respect. Both of those stances will often conflict with some people's politics and there's no way around it.

> You keep your political views private.

In nearly every case, the people who are claiming to encourage politics in the workplace are actually demanding allegiance - try supporting the other side and see how they feel.

This is a very salient point.

That is not what the parent comment is arguing. It is arguing that cryptocurrency has heavy political baggage it cannot shed. That is evident in the kinds of people attracted to cryptocurrency. There are many tribes, but, to take one example, there are a lot of enthusiasts who think central banking and/or national currency is a conspiracy of some kind.

They think that cryptocurrency eliminating the ability of nations to set monetary policy, or to enable people with enough means to escape from the impact of monetary policy, is a good thing. This is politics baked into the product cryptocurrency companies create, and it is part of their "mission."

Those policies aren't baked into the product. They're baked into the people. That's a huge difference.

But they are baked into the product. Coinbase’s success depends on the success of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. That is fundamentally related to questions of wealth inequality, banking, state economies, and crime.

Would you say that Facebook is an apolitical product since it is just its users that are affecting public behavior?

Absolutely I'd say that! If a tool just improves communication efficiency, that efficiency improvement doesn't necessarily mean that the medium is political.

If coinbase and its cryptocurrencies improve the means of wealth and capital exchange, that doesn't mean that cryptocurrencies are political. That makes it a tool, just as a shovel and rifle are tools. How they're used by people is what makes them potentially political.

Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the fact that it improves communication. They're deciding what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such choices for users.

> Facebook's choice to moderate content that isn't advertiser friendly is what makes it political, not the fact that it improves communication. They're deciding what other people see. Cryptocurrencies make no such choices for users.

Coinbase has. They've done things like blacklist wallets that they believe were involved in crimes or scams.

> they believe were involved in crimes or scams.

which is not a political action. You can argue they are acting extra-judicially - which is true, but it's not a political action. If coinbase refuses to serve a customer because they are anti-whatever-political-stance-of-coinbase, then coinbase is acting politically.

Sure it is. How is this different than refusing to work with ICE because you believe what they are doing is illegal or wrong? Scammer wallets were never given any trial.

Banking has purely technical user experience problems due to stagnation, that cryptocurrency doesn't have.

You can be apolitical in that you are not interested in politics.

But:

1. Doing so is a political decision. 2. Your views shape your perspective and there will be actions and omissions that you take that impact politics in ways that you are unaware of.

It's very destructive to discourse to force people to polarize to one side or another. Most people when intimidated to "choose sides" will choose the side of the person NOT trying to pressure them into taking sides.

To give you an idea of the types of historical figures that used the "you're either with us or against us" most famously...

Benito Mussolini

Vladimir Lenin

George W Bush after 9/11

Recep Erdogan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_either_with_us,_or_ag...

You seem to be arguing anyone who is political is either for or against every political issue if they aren’t allowed to claim to be neutral in general.

But to people who are arguing that being “neutral” is actually a political stance and usually supporting of the status quo, you try to say they’re tantamount to Mussolini.

Really? Someone disagrees with you so your go to response is to bring up Mussolini?

If you don't want to be compared to a Nazi, don't regurgitate fascist dogma.

You really don't see the irony that you believe your side, what you currently view as "neutral" is so absolutely unquestionable that any one who critiques it should be silenced?

You're not even allowing for the idea of opposition to exist which is a radical view pretty similar to the ones held by all the people you have mentioned.

No one is saying opposition to the so called status quo should be silenced. Simply that political advocacy may be outside the scope of your role as an employee for your company.

You're not even allowing for the idea of opposition to exist which is a radical view pretty similar to the ones held by all the people you have mentioned.

You are mischaracterising the point and assuming bad intent.

What I am saying is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.

Right, and the person you’re replying to is stating that many questionable political leaders have used that same argument to bully people into submission.

It's also kind of destructive to say that people you disagree with are like Mussolini, but here we are.

If you don't want to be compared to a Nazi, don't regurgitate fascist dogma.

Taking a non binary position is still a position. Ignoring the divisive nature of political discourse doesn't keep one from having to deal with the political and economic reality that it's creating for everyone. Crypto itself is fairly heavily married to libertarian politics which most now see as the gateway to the unfairness->nihilism dialogue being promoted by the right as a cover for their political machinations.

Crypto is also very capable of moving huge amounts of money from hostile foreign nations to disruptive factions anywhere in the world. Claiming libertarian alliances could be an easy cover for those kinds of activities. That whole space has been a cesspool.

>It's very destructive to discourse to force people to polarize to one side or another.

Do you mind quoting the GP on where you feel like he's trying to force people to polarize and why that makes you feel that way?

edit: Could those downvoting me please make an effort to help me understand parent comment's viewpoint instead of making low effort downvotes? I really don't feel like asking for clarification on something warrants a downvote without response.

You can have political stance, you just don't need to put it everywhere.

That's an easy stance to have just as long as nobody is trying to politicize your gender, sexuality, skin color, ethnicity or other things that you literally can't do anything about or go anywhere without. Your skin color is either white or "political". Your gender is either male or "political". Your sexuality is either straight or "political". If you are not in the group that is protected under the status quo, then being asked to not "politicize everything" is the same as being asked to accept being stepped on. They didn't pick this fight, the people that decided to politicize their very person did.

I think you and at least the person you’re responding to are using different meanings of “political” here.

When the people in this thread are arguing for being apolitical, they’re arguing for companies not being involved in seeking to lobby for change in formal, legislated power structures. They’re not arguing for companies to not take a stance in cultural power imbalances, because to them, power imbalances enforced by a government and power imbalances enforced only by social norms are not the same thing, and only the former is actually covered by the term “politics”, i.e. the thing that politicians do for their job. The latter, in most countries, is usually just called social — and there’s nobody arguing that companies should avoid taking social stances.

Forming a company to do something is inherently a social stance — a stance in any culture-wars that might be shifted by the product or service the company provides. But forming a company to do something isn’t inherently a political stance. For a company to take a political stance, someone from the company would need to actually talk to a politician at some point, in their capacity as a representative of a company — i.e. to do the thing we call “lobbying.”

Tangent: associating “politics” with attention paid to cultural, non-legislated power imbalances, is really mostly a US thing. I think this might be because most other developed, democratic countries have a lot fewer such cultural, non-legislated power imbalances; for painful historically-segregationist reasons, their entire populations are mostly formed out of what in the US would be considered a single mostly-uniform voting bloc. And so politicians in most countries, can’t really base their platforms on the cultural stances of any particular bloc — there’s not enough variation in such stances that highlighting one would win you any points.

The US is unique in that it ended up as one country composed of many extremely-divergent blocs, but with there being basically no formally-recognized, legislated divisions between most such groups†. Compare to all-of-Europe or all-of-Asia (which are the most sensible comparisons, given the land areas involved): the people within those continents have long ago assorted into relatively-like-thinking groups, splitting off into their own smaller countries, historically not granting citizenship to those who are “not like them”, and so becoming each much more internally-uniform in both makeup and viewpoints. (And then, if one of those countries went on to conquer the other, the introduced power-imbalance would be a formal, political one, with real legislation — the sort of thing you do “politics” about — determining the relative power of the two sub-nations within the new merged nation.)

† The US does have one formally-recognized, legislated division, where both sides explicitly sit at a negotiating table within government: that division being the one between native/indigenous Americans and N-generations-naturalized-immigrant Americans. And guess which group in the US isn’t heavily invested in the culture war? That’s right, the native population. Because they form a politically distinct group — effectively an annexed nation, as above — whose problems are raised to the level of actual politics, rather than social debate.

Yes, you’re right, we’re using somewhat different definitions interchangeably.

No, I think that many are arguing for companies not to take a stance in cultural as well as legislative power balances. (I would argue that legislative power structures and cultural power structure are not so easily separated, as they inform each other).

Both concepts are covered by the term “politics”. The colloquial “office politics” is just such an example of that.

To sum up, I appreciate the direction you took to uncover the crux of disagreements that ate going on but I feel that your analysis is flawed because you assert that the issue is cut down a particular line (which I believe it is not) and then invalidate the opposing half through a projected misuse of the term “political” (when it is in-fact mot a misuse of the term “politial”).

To your aside: I would hesitate to say that this is a uniquely US thing. Womens rights would appear, to my relatively lay self, to still be a prevalent source of cultural and legislative power imbalance in many countries and blocs across the world.

The only people who are actually in career (and sometimes physical) danger based on their political views in America right now are right-wing Trump supporters.

Sure but you can’t help the fact that your actions and omissions to act have political outcomes.

People do make big sacrifices when they work for an employer. They literally sell a sizable fraction of their lives which they could spend doing something else.

If everything is political then nothing is political and the term loses all meaning

Perhaps that is because, in this instance the term “political” has 2 meanings which we need to tease out to see why your statement is false.

1. Political intent - acting or omitting to act because of a political view point. 2. Political outcomes - the results of actions or omissions to act which impact politics.

I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.

We should also agree what “politics” means. I’m not simply referring to the science of government but to the decisions around the distribution of power, resources and status in groups of people.

> I guess my point is that your actions and omissions have political outcomes whether you want them to or not.

It does not even stop there. If we choose to understand what's political in this way everything that humans choose to relate to (even things that do not exist beyond human imagination) have, of course, probably some influence on political outcomes.

Rain, an escaped alligator from the local zoo, the color of a button in a web form, etc.

I think that this second idea of what's political is merely the realization that we can choose to view everything according to it's political impact. Like a pair of glasses we might wear or might want others to wear.

...to stick with my example: One might end up making a long term study on how news about escaped zoo animals affect election outcomes. That might lead to surprising results. It's just not always guaranteed to be a very productive use of time.

I think there's probably a healthy middle ground here. It's not hard to argue that there's some reasonable moral expectations regarding company decision making. Like, don't construct gas chambers. (Local example from my German home region.)

On the other side it's easy to see that insisting on questioning every minor decision will lead to almost instant gridlock.

That's why I think that both radical positions are pretty hard to defend. A better society might hide behind pragmatic decision making with some reasonable, probably even academically shallow moral questioning of ones own actions. Not in corporate apathy or zealotry.

You’re constructing a hypothetical “what-if” that sometimes could be true, but is not guaranteed to be true.

I could just as well say “no one should ever argue anything because then people could argue about every little thing and it would be impossible to do anything at all.”

I don't think it's a hypothetical. Overpoliticization is already at this point. There was a week or so at my company where a slack bot would automatically scold us for not being inclusive if we used the word "guys".

What is the situation at your company currently?

There's still a soft ban on some terms like "slave", "whitelist", etc., but "guys" is allowed again.

On a recent project we decided to use the term “main” instead of “master” for our primary branch.

At first I was like “ugh” - not a big fan of that kind of language change, but then I was like, well, if it does matter to some people, what is my investment in this particular term anyway?

I could see how it gets trickier as a company policy, as opposed to something chosen collectively by the group.

Nonetheless, with everything going on in the world right now - and I say this as an advocate of free speech and of freedom of expression in art - this seems like such a small thing to stress about.

Tbh if this is your big fear then I’d say maybe read more news?

Being excoriated for an honest slip Of the tongue or absent mindedness is a different story though and there are definitely people that do that.

In some ways I think the conversation to be had around changing how we use certain language is equally or more valuable than the change itself :).

If anything, I'd say the news is what causes me to be concerned in the first place. I don't personally know anyone who's been fired for not using precisely the right language, but I've read a lot of news stories about it.

I feel like that's kind of a manager-conversation thing, plus, like many policies, will depend on the workplace culture to begin with.

IMHO the tricky bit is that, there is both an honest and genuine way to express concern around using "precisely the right language", so to speak, and, a malicious, not-an-honest-partner-in-the-conversation, gum-up-the-works way.

And also, I guess a "this-is-all-unpleasant-and-I-just-don't-want-to-think-about-it-or-think-about-the-historical-context-for-why-we-are-talking-about-this-in-the-first-place-I-have-enough-on-my-plate-as-it-is" kind of way.

Of course there is also virtue signaling or what have you; that's a thing. Human foolishness has no bias.

Obviously HN is not the right place for discussing specifics, but, IMHO, that's maybe the only way to have a real conversation around this stuff. Which takes trust and a shared safe space.

Which can be hard to come by these days.

That said, IMHO my patience decreases a bit, sadly, every day when I read the news. There's a context to all this, after all. And a very real history.

What is your point?

My point is your parent is right and you are wrong.

Artificially extending what's seen as political to excess is a pointless exercise that removes all meaning and usefulness from the concept.

That's bad because a shared understanding of some political sphere (which comes into existence through its boundaries) is really important for democratic discourse.

That sounds nice, but how, and as importantly who decides what those boundaries are?

In a best case scenario those boundaries are continuously questioned in the democratic discourse.

Some moral entrepreneur might argue: Politics should govern the bedroom for [reasons]! ... and others might object: No; the bedroom is a private sphere where politics has no say for [reasons].

... and over time there should emerge a shared understanding of which aspects of life are political grounds and which are taboo.

The bedroom case is mostly decided today. One side won (mostly LGBTQ&Friends) and now we see the bedroom as something that should be free from politics. ..like I think that the vast majority of people in the western world now sees sodomy laws as bad fit for modern democracies.

But there are other issues that are more contemporary: The idea that speech is violence, for example, is prime moral entrepreneurship. Western societies regulate violence in a certain way and this equivalence would suggest to treat both equivalent, one way or the other.

... and it's far from decided how speech will be treated in the future and we all have many open arguments on the matter.

It's a healthy thing for societies to continuously re explore their specific boundaries of politics.

I have difficulties seeing the "everything is political"-trope as anything but the proposal to be reckless regarding the process of a shared understanding of the boundaries of politics.

> It's a healthy thing for societies to continuously re explore their specific boundaries of politics.

To rephrase: through political action (such as activism, lobbying and campaigning), societies should continuously reevaluate what topics are within the political sphere.

If how we decide what is or is not "acceptably" political is itself a political process, how can you honestly say certain things aren't political.

Claiming that bedrooms "aren't" is naive. There are still absolutely exist people who have and are and will continue to try and control what people can do in their bedrooms. Just because one side, and the side you presumably agree with, appears to have won the argument for now, doesn't mean that things are finished.

There are lots of things that I think should be outside of the realm of politics: basic human rights, white supremacy, a woman's right to choose. And yet.

So we return to the original question: how come those topics are "political", but in your opinion "bedrooms" aren't? (And would someone in the UK agree with you? They probably would, despite laws that affect them).

Who decided that bedrooms were off limits but uteruses weren't? How? Why? Can I change that? Those are all political questions.

And when you start into this meta-discussion of how do we make something political? The answer is pretty straightforward: you find people who are that there's an issue and you make noise about it.

When lots of people see a problem and make noise about it that problem becomes political. Disagreements, on a societal scale, are politics. So "this shouldn't be political" isn't much more than "I don't think the status quo is worth spending resources on". And, well, the people who think there's a problem will disagree on that. And thus: politics.

Yeah there are things that I wish we didn't disagree about, but I also am willing to stand by my convictions and say I disagree, instead of hiding behind "this isn't even a discussion, you're not allowed to bring up this complaint because this isn't acceptable politics". If you're fine with the way things are, say that.

> through political action (such as activism, lobbying and campaigning), societies should continuously reevaluate what topics are within the political sphere.

No that's not what I've said. I talked about discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse

This difference is important since the discourse is in itself not framed by any material boundaries. This difference also answers your question on whether political action deciding on the scope of politics might be incoherent.

> Claiming that bedrooms "aren't" [political] is naive. There are still absolutely exist people who have and are and will continue to try and control what people can do in their bedrooms.

A shared understanding of what is political does not require every single person to agree on the scope of politics. In the end it's all about relative stability, not unanimity or majority or something like that.

> Just because one side ... won the argument ... doesn't mean that things are finished.

There I agree. I don't think the concept of "finished" exists in any human context.

> Who decided that bedrooms were off limits but uteruses weren't? How? Why? Can I change that? Those are all political questions.

This question on who specifically might make a specific decision seems to be a reoccurring theme in our dialogue. In modern societies that's usually a multitude of interlinked processes. Very rarely there's an isolationable agent/action relation relationship. ...and that's, of course, a good thing.

> ... this isn't even a discussion, you're not allowed to bring up this complaint ...

Who forbade you anything, by the way? I don't get why this conversation should be so confrontational or accusatory.

I have no strong feelings on any of the many crossroads in debating social science epistemology or democratic theory in general.

Politics is how groups make decisions (literally that's the definition). Discourse with the intent to influence how a group makes a decision is political discourse.

> Who forbade you anything, by the way? I don't get why this conversation should be so confrontational or accusatory.

You've said that certain topics are not acceptable. Presumably this means one can't discuss them. Maybe you don't intend to enforce this beyond the force of your moral condemnation, but you're still saying "you're a bad person if you bring up this topic because it's not part of the political discourse and we're only discussing political stuff".

Politics is many different things depending on who you ask. Obviously. Luhmann wouldn't agree with Foucault who wouldn't agree with Rousseau who wouldn't agree with Arendt, etc.

In our previous conversation I'd argue that politics as power relations or as a specific set of societal institutions might be the most productive definitions just because both are compatible with our main argument.

Nobody said they can't discuss something. It's a good example though:

You might believe that someone who argues that something does not belong in the sphere of politics does not want to or is unable to discuss something at all primarily because you already very strongly believe that politics necessary includes everything.

If you were to step back from that premise for a second you would see that there might be other human endeavors, think science, philosophy, math .. and that those are discussed by people completely without any connection to politics (..or as you would probably argue: they're willfully ignorant of the political dimension of their actions and might even be motivated by subversive, ultraconservative intentions.)

I just of course can't make you realize that this is only one very specific worldview out of many. ..which might have its place and usefulness but probably wasn't meant to act inhibiting on its enthusiasts.

Some do believe that every action needs to be reflected according to its compliance with some religious dogma. For them, ignoring the religious dimension in any action is very suspicious, because they are able to see a religious component in any action. Surely others must appear as stupid or willfully ignorant to them.

They're driven by a specific set of religious premises and that's completely okay. We just wouldn't want them to be literally unable to understand that there are other worldviews out there with their own premises.

A strong conviction is born through the understanding of its opposing ideas.

> You've said that certain topics are not acceptable. [...] you're still saying "you're a bad person

Oh dear goodness, where? Would you mind to quote me on that?

Because I don't think any of this is true.

You seem to agree with me despite denying it. Everything is political, there are complex interrelated systems by which decisions get made and people hold power. Arguing that some things aren't within the sphere of acceptable political discourse is naive and pointless since you can't actually enforce it at all.

> that's one of those "you're either with us or against us" type of deal

And as the saying goes, if I'm either with you or against you, then I'm against you. It doesn't matter what your object-level goals or values are, because you have clearly stated that you care more about using those goals as a pretence to attack anyone who isn't willing to subordinate themselves to your particular movement than about actually achieving said object-level goals.

There's still plenty of room for nuance.

As an example: I strongly oppose oil pipelines, but a couple of years ago I had to assist with emergency network maintenance on a very large, very controversial pipeline that I do not like at all. My job required me to do what I was hired to do, and I didn't let my politics get into the way. The issue was resolved in a couple of hours, and I returned back to the projects I was working on for other customers.

But we still had a conversation at our company about what it means to support customers that we were uncomfortable with, and we ultimately decided that the views of employees should help guide how we conduct ourselves as a business. That if we noticed that our customers are doing harm, and we believe ourselves to be contributing to the harm, we should voice our concern and decide if we are operating morally and ethically.

The pipeline was whitelisted, because we don't actually help build it on native land, and we don't help drill the oil out of the Earth. We only help keep the sensors working, and those ultimately exist to keep the pipeline from failing and doing damage.

But we have preemptively decided that there are certain businesses that could use our services to contribute to harm, and so we have a process for keeping ourselves in check.

I worry about "apolitical" companies, as they have decided that they no longer care about judging the moral or ethical issues surrounding their business decisions, and have instead decided to operate entirely based on what is legal.

And it goes without saying that acting in accordance with the law is not the same as acting morally and ethically.

I think the issue is “How do you decide what is political and what isn't?” e.g. if you're a communist, then the existence is shareholders is political support for capitalism. So how do you remain “apolitical” then?

I think the answer is, you both use your own intelligence and judgement, and both talk with and listen to other people.

> So how do you remain “apolitical” then?

Outside of your job, you can be as politically active as you wish. Nobody is saying you should stop all political activism.

But if i walk into a store intending to buy something, i don't want to be blasted with any political message or be asked to sign up for a rally or donate to some cause i don't care about.

And an employee should work on the job they are being hired to do, not spend work time undertaking political activism unless explicitly allowed by their boss (for example, your company may allow you time off for charity or such activities).

If, for example, your political view is that of communism, then you will have to suffer in silence in the USA while working for shareholders/owners of property. Or quit your job if you cannot stand it. What you can't do is use your job as a resource to push that view further than you could on your own.

So that's unions out then. Sounds like a political stance to me if you ban people from advocating for collective bargaining in the workplace.

collective bargaining starts at the level of government - not within the workplace. It would obviously be in the interest of the employer to stop it from starting up.

So you take this political stance outside of work. If enough people can be convinced that collective bargaining is a good idea, it will get enshrined into law. Employers will have to comply.

On the other hand, organising during work time (which is being paid for by your employer) is unethical - and regardless of my feelings of the idea of collective bargaining, it should not be done on someone else's dime.

> collective bargaining starts at the level of government - not within the workplace. It would obviously be in the interest of the employer to stop it from starting up.

I dunno where you live, but organizing at work is a protected right that workers have in the US and Canada (and other jurisdictions, but that's where I've been employed). An employer forbidding that is actually a violation of labor law.

> the existence is shareholders is political support for capitalism

You are only political when you try to change the minds of others. Just existing is never political support for anything. If the communist argues that the shareholders shouldn't exist then he is political. If the company fires the communist for thinking that shareholders shouldn't exist (lets say he said that on his own time, so he wasn't political at company time) then they are political. If the company allows pro capitalist opinions but not pro communist opinions they are also political.