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Comment by baron_harkonnen | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

To put food on the table

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.

> 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.

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?

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

Usually money.

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?

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

> 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.

It is.

"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. ;)

> "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.

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