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Comment by 0xCMP | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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