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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Inspiring but simply false
Lest we forget, there are many people who support the structural inequality.
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.
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.
This is a political stance. You have involved yourself in politics. There's really no way out.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Very well put and I’m terrifyingly surprised at how many people are arguing for the opposite. That is literal subversion.
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.
"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.
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).
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
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?
Was my assumption wrong? Did the leadership of that company not make that decision?
It certainly can be.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I also point out that "not giving a shit" and "considering more important" are synonyms for "not mattering" and "mattering", respectively.
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. ;)
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).
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.
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)
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?
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)?
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.
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.