The Coinbase post was 100% right. Here's what you can do about it | Hacker News Reader

The Coinbase post was 100% right. Here's what you can do about it

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30 pointsihm21 comments

Make more companies Public Benefit Corporations. Make Profit not the only written, legal goal.

>Make more companies Public Benefit Corporations. Make Profit not the only written, legal goal.

Good idea. Who is going to go first?

There is a type of company that is socially responsible (CSRs). I've only heard of wine companies, and industries where image is really important, jumping on that bandwagon.

I believe Kickstarter and Dreamhost reorganized their companies that way when it became possible.

The issue is that this post sweeps up both "evil capitalists" and "laws that prevent sex trafficking and money laundering, financing terrorism, and generally bad things" right into the same bucket.

I chuckled out loud that the article had both: "right-wing radicalization which has resulted in widespread political violence [and] distribution of misinformation" as something evil that companies do, right along with "control of platforms which allows them to censor unfavorable currents in the culture at large". Sorry, but pick one - either you get very strong free speech and have to deal with things you don't like, or you get to play the censor and enter that minefield which nobody will ever navigate successfully.

Oh, and on "an enormous carbon footprint", have you looked at bitcoin mining lately? Not a good place to throw stones from given the horrendous power usage of mining rigs.

It's easy to denounce those evil people over there and much harder to propose real and actual change of the system. You want to get rid of KYC laws - are you OK with financing sex traffickers then? You want there to be no regulation on money - are you OK funding terrorists?

Everything is politics. People need to come to terms with this.

Only of you let it take over everything in your life.

Or you can treat politics like a sewage plant; necessary for the functioning of modern society, but best left out of conscious daily thought.

> "discouraging employees from thinking about politics, and encouraging them to focus on profit-making".

It's not what the post is saying. It's saying that they will focus on building a team with a focused mission, not an environment where politics create division.

The beautiful thing about posts like this is they are useful data for future job searches. It's coming straight from the founder, so is more useful data than, say, Glassdoor reviews.

So the greedy myopic attitude that you acknowledge has destroyed the web is now good because blockchain? Is there anything it cannot do?

Oh sorry- if it wasn’t clear from the post I think it’s terrible and not only corroding human society but also our planet. The post is arguing for building a tech workers’ movement to oppose capital.

From the Coinbase post:

> Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world.

Change the global financial system! Break the shackles of fiat money! But, like, not in a political way.

Could be they're inherently political in one way, but that doesn't mean they have to be in other ways. They might just want to focus on their vision and let others focus on other (political-in-nature) visions.

He clearly states that they are open to political advocacy if government regulations threaten their mission, but it is not plan A, or their goal:

> "Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we may engage here, but we normally wouldn’t engage in policy decisions around healthcare or education for example."

I don't think the crypto crowd really get what sovereignty enables governments to do. Crypto monies presents an threat to central banks. I wouldn't say an existential level of threat. But probably large enough for the established players to be a little less than civilized in their response. Crytpo may get crushed by tax law, or other regulations that the people in the real world are accountable to. Or more likely bankers knowing how to make a buck, will Embrace, Extend, Extinguish the currencies in their current form and all the feel good anarchist vibes of crypto will be replaced by another system that has built in inequality.

,,I don't think the crypto crowd really get what sovereignty enables governments to do. ''

Of course they do. At least the ones who put their whole life on it, like Dr Adam Back who was risking getting into prison for ,,exporting classified munitions'' on a T-shirt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Back#Cryptography_softwar...).

Also the risk to central banks is real, and the change will be huge. People still underestimate how hard the 21 million Bitcoin limit is, and how hard it will be to own 1 Bitcoin in the future (it's just possible for 1 in 400 people in theory, but in practice it will much harder than getting in the 99.9% percentile).

Coinbase is not part of this crowd though, they just want to push altcoins so that they can make money from day traders.

I don't understand what you think the significance is of owning 1 bitcoin? You can deal with tiny fractions just fine.

Why can't people just start their own profit/non-profit organizations that codify their social and policy goals? Why are activists relying on capitalists to create the organizations they participate in?

We should fight for and stand on principles. The problem today is we're having two sides of relativists fight where neither side even believes in the concept of principles.

I have to wonder how HN would have reacted if Zuckerberg had written that blog post telling his employees to shut up and code. I doubt it would have been the broadly encouraging and celebratory nature of that other thread.

>I have to wonder how HN would have reacted if Zuckerberg had written that blog post telling his employees to shut up and code.

The people who want to drag politics into everyone's work-life would have hated it, and the people who want coworkers to shut up and code would have loved it, I reckon.

I don't envy people working in these environments...

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