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Comment by maxaf | Hacker News Reader

Not every place where groups of people participate in shared activities must become a forum for political battles.

To these people it must. They are aware they're disrupting the workplace but they do it because they have a sense of urgency and responsibility. They are willing to break ties with their fellow coworkers because they carry a larger social mission.

That's an interesting point - especially when it comes to the urgency a lot of people feel when considering climate change.

I feel like part of the partisan leak into the workplace might be due to the lack of responsible governance that most Americans are feeling right now - since the entities responsible for fixing the big problems are out to lunch everyone is feeling a need to try and help solve those problems themselves.

Most of this political fervor is simple grandstanding. If these people really, truly cared about the issues they advocate, they'd have abandoned their cushy jobs at Google and gone on to make a real difference.

I fully agree that the American consumerist lifestyle has run its course, and has done tremendous damage to the planet. However, those who yell the most loudly about it should also be the ones to quit it first. Go live on a self-sustaining farm in Montana and show the rest of us how it's done. Until then, stop disrupting the office: people are trying to work in order to make ends meet.

> should also be the ones to quit it first.

I disagree, that's of the same vein of reductive arguments that try to shame rich people who want higher taxes into paying higher taxes voluntarily - for these big problems we actually need to act together or there will always be a more efficient way to pursue wealth by over-exploiting the resources other people are leaving on the table to preserve.

There's a huge difference between taxes (an aspect of societal behavior encoded in law) and personal lifestyle choices. We (supposedly, allegedly) exist in a political system that allows for some participation by citizens. One could choose to run for office, or campaign on behalf of a political candidate who might pursue progressive policies when elected. Over time this adds up to real change. I can see the point that perhaps slowly nudging a large political system towards real change is too little, too late for some issues. If this is indeed the case, then change must happen outside the bounds of normal political action. Take the tax issue you brought up: there is no law that would levy a tax on wealth. This law doesn't exist. If it existed, and if it were written without loopholes, it would achieve the goal of redistributing all this wealth. Unfortunately, this law isn't a reality, so until that changes we're stuck with other ways of making the rich pay. We can shame them, refuse to do business with them, and so on; but simply bitching about this at work won't move the needle even a little bit.

Personal lifestyle choices, on the other hand, are called that for a good reason: each person can make that choice for themselves. There's a liberal echo chamber in which the choice of one person, along with the right amount of advocacy and education, can be greatly amplified leading to a critical mass of people making a similar choice. Imagine an emergent group that is just like hipsters, but focused on environmentalism and sustainable living instead of rushing to tightly pack themselves into increasingly sparse and really expensive apartments in Brooklyn. Imagine communes springing up in agriculturally productive regions, helped along by technology and innovative thinking, operating fully on renewable energy, and doing brisk business selling food. Make this model repeatable by someone without extensive education, and you have yourself real change.

Google employs plenty of people who have the right ideology, drive, and technical skills to make this happen. Instead all they do is work for a giant advertising and surveillance firm.

Quitting civilization to live on a self sustaining farm is a perfect way of limiting your political influence. It's the exact opposite of what you should do if you want real change in an issue where everybody needs to do something.

How did you arrive at "quitting civilization" after starting at "living on a self-sustaining farm"? Does the Internet experience 100% packet drop around manure or in the presence of a critical mass of agricultural specialists?

The Internet gave everyone a voice. If "everyone" includes only those who are forcibly compacted into big cities, I think this should be made clear to the rest of us.

Lastly, living on a farm does not remove a person's ability to vote.

> they'd have abandoned their cushy jobs at Google and gone on to make a real difference...Go live on a self-sustaining farm in Montana and show the rest of us how it's done

There are plenty of examples of people doing this. It hasn't made a lick of difference. No one listens to a lonely voice out in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe people work at "cushy" jobs so they can make money and donate it. Or influence their company to do the right thing, rather than the profitable thing. These things really do make a difference. For example, Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007.[1] Surely that has been influential for other companies.

1. https://www.wired.com/story/how-google-keeps-power-hungry-op...

That's the problem when you think you're "on a mission from God." You give yourself permission to do anything because this is sufficiently important.

Maybe it is. I know know. That said, what I haven't heard is any good coming out of it.

Human history is littered with holy wars. Unfortunately we're also really good at bulldozing away the resulting wreckage, which ironically feeds back into history's tendency to repeat itself.

One thing I learned in Europe is to discuss politics over food.

Food is like CS Lewis said about smoking a pipe: It gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to put in his mouth.

What that means is that people get to spend time thinking before they respond and that makes a big difference. When I did a contract in Denmark we used to discuss all kinds of politics -- immigration, cultural differences, which parties were insane, etc but always over food. And it meant we could discuss and disagree without feelings getting hurt.

if it's the Blitz, don't be the guy who shows up to tea time and tries to talk about the weather.

it isn't that tea time is the place for political battles. it's that when bombs are falling, there is little else which feels worth discussing.

Not every place where people discuss "politics" has to be a place for political battles.

People get into arguments and fights over football, for heaven's sake. Should we ban that, too?

I and my friends regularly discuss politics (on Discord, of all places) and we all have different viewpoints- everything from classical liberal to Bernie Sanders-socialist to conservative to libertarian and we all manage to get along- it's hard sometimes, and there are heated discussions, but we all leave having a good time, and, more importantly, we've learned something.

The way I see it, the problem here is that as political polarization increases, the need for frank discussion without hating people afterwards only increases, and the tolerance for it only goes down. If we want to recover even a little bit from the edge, stuff like Google's "no discussing politics" policy needs to be stopped, and replaced with "discuss politics politely or not at all" instead.

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