What’s there to admire? This is common sense and he should have set these expectations from the start. why are people discussing politics at work?
You just have to read what the activism says. It says everything is racist, sexist, etc and that in every situation you must try and identify not if things were problematic but how they were. And then “do better”, etc. so it’s impossible for these people to separate their beliefs from their jobs.
It’s far beyond politics and more a religion than anything. It would be as if a very Christian employee made it their goal to point out everything that isn’t within Christian morality and protesting the company to comply with the word of god.
I believe this is a result of the fact that Americans have turned away from organized religion in recent years (note: I'm not religious myself). There seems to be something deep inside of most people that requires a shared spiritual experience. Wokism has emerged to fill that need.
https://www.amazon.com/Kindly-Inquisitors-Attacks-Free-Thoug...
Meanwhile in the US the 90s boom was kicking off and the US was exploding into global hegemony. Why protest and fight the man when communism was collapsing and there was more to gain from getting on board the winning team.
In other words, the trend dropped off externally and internally there were a lot of reasons to assume that history was in fact ending and to jump on board with MURICA and FREEDOM.
The cynical side of me sees it as America being transformed into an economic zone instead of a country. This is just what a religion looks like when you're binding people together in one large brutalistic finance zone.
>Finally, our parasite will employ a strategy of politicization, insisting that everyone in a society be involved in the contest for political power. Since our memetic parasite is already bound to one or more political factions, politicization leaves no one with the option to ignore it, and simply live their lives. Neutrality is not acceptable. All those who are not actively infected, and who do not openly endorse the parasite, are by definition its enemies. And they will be crushed. The safest thing is to play along, and raise your children in the faith - even if you don't really believe, they will.
>At this point we've established, at least to my satisfaction, that
>(a) there is such a thing as Universalism;
>(b) Universalism is an educationally-transmitted tradition that works just like any theistic religion, and is best understood as a descendant of Christianity;
>Universalism, again, is a mystery cult of power. Its supreme being is the State. And all of the Universalist mysteries - humanity, democracy, equality, and so on - cluster around the philosophy of collective action. Christianity has been a state religion since Constantine, of course, but it always also included magical and metaphysical mysteries, which the advance of science has rendered superfluous at best, embarrassing at worst. So Universalism, unlike its ancestors, is not concerned with the Trinity or transubstantiation or predestination.
> One day in March of this year, a Google engineer named Justine Tunney created a strange and ultimately doomed petition at the White House website. The petition proposed a three-point national referendum, as follows:
1. Retire all government employees with full pensions.
2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry.
3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt CEO of America.
It's also weird how he's aware of the oversimplification involved in classifying birds and bats in the same category, and then he immediately goes off and says the equivalent of "both a birds and planes have wings and a tail, therefore planes are a subset of birds". While that statement can be true from a certain point of view for certain uses ("can this thing fly?"), in the end it's just a bad analogy and bad reasoning.
Which is all not to say that the point I think you're driving at from your selection in that article can't be correct. I would agree that post-religion, people will pick up causes to fight for and act in ways that are reminiscent of fundamentalist religions, but that doesn't mean the fundamental truth is that they're all variations of religion. The fundamental truth is some people just enjoy picking up causes that let them justify bad behavior. This used to include religion a lot more in the past, and now that humanity is moving beyond it, we're discovering new ways to justify the same old behavior that we've always had.
On some of the troop carriers going to Vietnam, soldiers starting fighting each other along racial lines; in response, the US military started a major initiative to promote racial tolerance in their training of soldiers and in their personnel policies. Similarly, according to my theory, the leaders of the other major institutions of the US realize that the performance of their institution depends on the different races getting along or at least not openly fighting each other, so they will exhibit a weaker tendency to push against a radical belief system that prioritizes racial tolerance than their counterparts in more homogenous countries will.
Also, starting with the Puritans of England, the western Europeans that chose to emigrate to the US were on average more religious than those who chose to remain in western Europe.
One in four of Australia’s 22 million people were born overseas; 46 per cent have at least one parent who was born overseas; and nearly 20 per cent of Australians speak a language other than English at home[1]
I think the key differentiator, is Australia, Canada and Britain have parliamentary democracies.
[1] https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/face-facts-cul...
But on the street they were just generic white christian Aussies who were out to slam a few beers and grab a chick parm. Not generic Anglo, but still very white and very western.
Unless said leaders have an interest in curtailing the institution's function or scope, in which case causing the institution to perform worse, or even fail in their mission entirely may be their intent.
For example, they might subscribe to an ideology that questions the legitimacy of the institution, or they may have previously been a leader in an industry the institution is supposed to regulate.
The atmosphere during the Brexit debate is/was absolutely fierce. The remain side has fundamentally a cosmopolitan-utopian worldview and the brexit side a nationalistic one (radically so compared to the orthodoxy in London and metro areas).
In other parts of Europe they're experiencing a severe decadence in culture and media because of the creeping monoculture of wokeism. They're having existential debates about their very national ideas, people don't want to have families anymore, nobody wants to defend their country and so they outsource this work to the US, while Russia and especially Asian powers have nothing of this whatsoever. Eastern Europe is caught in-between because they don't believe any of this but they don't have the size or clout to stand up to the soft economic power of Western Europe and the real power blocs elsewhere.
Out of the so-called West, the USA strikes me as by far the least decadent, and I'm not American. This feels to me like end-of-civilisation times as described for ancient empires. America pushing back presents some hope.
The UK presents us with a good example what happens when you spread enough fear, nationalism and protectionism. From here it seems like "end-of-civilisation times" for a once great nation that has lost its power and importance and is failing to find a new way for itself, while it tries to clinge on the status quo that is running through his hands. I think the (probable) hard Brexit will tell us quite quickly who's right on all of this.
The rest of Western Europe seems to understand that the times are changing and our cultures are getting more diverse and that this will lead to conflicts which have to be solved.
Eastern Europe, joining the EU with a strong background from its UDSSR times, wars and whatnot else, has problems adapting to "the Western Europe way". You see this especially with Poland or Hungary which have strong nationalistic, traditionalistic tendencies with "strong leader persons" at their top. But I think they'll also fail once people from the newer generations are getting more and more in charge.
edit: And the US... Well... The jokes are writing themselves.
The EU gamble is going nowhere and this is a crisis that will affect us all, regardless of Brexit. It is what it is. Europe is decrepit and best case scenario is managed decadence into a third rate bloc. Russia and EE are screwed too, of course, but not because of self-doubt. Asia and the US will shoot ahead. But that's not really a prediction, it's been happening for a while.
Russia's fertility rate is pretty much on par with rest of Europe if not lower.
Same goes for Eastern Europe. Not to mention many Eastern European countries are no strangers to overtly left wing leadership.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and...
I would argue it's a Reformed Protestant thing. Reformed Protestantism is the religious scaffolding of American culture.
My understanding is that we have had secular societies before, eg. the Soviet Union, China, which explicitly try to reduce practicing religion. Did this same kind of "new semi-religion appears to fill the void" event occur in those societies? Is it the particular "holy sacrements" that the west has adopted that is unique? Or are we unique in even having something arise the "fills the religious void"?
Eventually as the new converts temper their zeal as it hits against reality, but if it's a wave it can make a society do crazy things.
They were very secular and extremely violent and even evil (making shows out of drowning believers etc).
As much as the Catholic Church has something to answer for with the witch processes around here etc, they are small guys compared to the secular/atheists of the French Revolution.
Same goes to some degree for USSR and to a large degree for Khmer Rouge.
Anyways in case you are right it probably makes GPs point even stronger: when established religions are chased away quasi-religions - and often extremely dangerous ones - take their place.
Probably because the work these companies do is frequently political.
Let's be clear: What Coinbase is saying is, we the founders, who set the company's mission, and are doing so with a clear political view (rooted in libertarianism and so forth), are allowed to use the company to further our political ends.
But the staff? Sorry, you have no voice.
Maybe that's fine. The clear message to staff is: you are either onboard with our mission, or you can leave.
But let's not pretend companies and workplaces are apolitical. That's, at best, deeply naive.
Frankly, I wonder how much of what we're seeing now is due to the destruction of unionized labour, which were organizations explicitly designed to channel the political views of employees into collective action. Absent those structures, a) you get this bizarre perception that the workplace is apolitical (it's not), and b) staff no longer have a path whereby their views and values can be channeled and expressed.
What do the investors think? They are free to usurp the founders if they feel that Coinbase is not paying proper homage to social justice.
Investors invest in companies based on their perception of the value of a company, and that perception is of course coloured by political views.
Heck, we have an entire financial movement called Socially Responsible Investing, something which is nakedly political and a clear acknowledgement that politics cannot be, and has never been, divorced from business.
I find it infinitely more strange to think that workplaces can be apolitical at all. Choosing to work for Palantir or Coinbase or The Gates Foundation or Amazon is (in part) a political decision. It may not be a conscious or intentional political decision, but it's a political decision nonetheless.
How could anyone think otherwise?
Politics, as much as we all hate it, is engaged with everywhere in business.
Choosing to be apolitical is effectively a form of political engagement, usually resulting in a vote for the status quo and/or the pursuit of money eschewing engagement in difficult questions in society.
This can be argued about whether it is moral or not, or even if a company has much of a choice in the matter (There are many entrenched companies that do "immoral" political things that are near impossible not to engage with as a business), and this is not unique to coinbase, but it's not somehow withdrawing from judgement on morality when you say you are "apolitical", and you still should be judged on your politics and lack of engagement in society.
Let's not be naive here, any larger company, even the most "apolitical" company still has large influence, uses services, and makes decisions that are politically charged.
That said, it's not all one direction where all political activism within a company is great, but eschewing all politics is not doing so at all.
I think this brings clarity to the work relationship, as "the power to direct the political mission of the company" had been previously an unstated, unnegotiated axis of the terms of employment. People are now learning that this need to be crystal clear upfront.
One hundred percent this. There is a reason Coinbase is one of the few companies to take a stance like this.
The company's foundational value is literally based on the notion of state-free finance. They have no incentive to do anything to allow their company to be steered into engaging with conventional politics. In fact, they benefit from taking strong stances that maintain the status quo if the status quo furthers their own mission.
So, yeah, Coinbase is indeed very mission oriented.
Which other Silicon Valley company is doing this?