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>(Almost) everything is political. I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political.

nemothekid 6y ago
Do you believe end to end encryption is political? Do you believe that companies should disable E2E encryption in order to be "apolitical" in the eyes US's attorney general? How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives? Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?
- chii 6y ago
  But you're deliberately avoiding the point that coinbase wants to make - which is that if the topic is relevant to the business (as determined by the owners of the business), then it's considered on-topic for work place political discussion and activism. But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.
ardy42 6y ago
> I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political. Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper: > Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.
yokaze 6y ago
From entering "define political" in Google: 1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country. Not the one the parent probably means: 2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle. Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country. Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way. And that I think had very much a place at work. The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times. I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed. Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  It's safe to say that a company can impact the public affairs of a country by creating economic value without taking an official speculative stance on e.g. the racial distribution of unjust police killings. It's pretty obvious to me when people talk about "leaving political topics out of the workplace" they mean "topics which are unrelated to one's work". Arguments like "abortion is highly related to site reliability engineering" are pretty overtly disingenuous in a very clear-cut fashion. > Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports. Sports don't cause the same degree of strife in the workplace. No one is demanding anyone's termination because they like a different sports team or because they were caught in a photograph gesturing in a way that looks vaguely like the hook 'em horns gesture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
SolarNet 6y ago
HTTPS is political (see attorney general of united states). Do you use HTTPS on your websites? (a step against the U.S. government position) Have you turned HTTPS off in your browser? (a step towards the U.S. government position) Do you implement forward perfect secrecy for HTTPS connections? (more against U.S. government position) How do you weigh it's threat to national security against it's protection from criminals for individuals and companies? All of these actions can be viewed as political statements. Everything is political.
- RIMR 6y ago
  The DOJ just today announced that they are drafting new regulations on Cryptocurrency markets. Coinbase is intrinsically political. They're a financial institution. Their product is subject to both laws and public scrutiny.
  - SolarNet 6y ago
    Absolutely, which is why their apolitical stance is absurd.
RIMR 6y ago
This does seem to be the standard Libertarian worldview, but no matter how much you intend to ignore the world around you, it exists and you're a part of it, and you answer to your neighbors.
- disposekinetics 6y ago
  >you answer to your neighbors Fundamentally, this is our disagreement.
  - mrguyorama 6y ago
    That's like not agreeing that water is wet
- ardy42 6y ago
  > This does seem to be the standard Libertarian worldview, but no matter how much you intend to ignore the world around you, it exists and you're a part of it, and you answer to your neighbors. One clever way to deeply entrench a political decision is to convince others that it's not a political decision at all. If you're successful, you've erected a barrier against your opponents by interfering with their ability to even conceive opposition to your position. It's sort of like the concept of Newspeak.
  - winston_smith 6y ago
    The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. > Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality? You're talking about something completely different. What I'm talking about is basically falsely depoliticizing a political decision, so people think it's something that cannot be changed, like nature or something. The reference to Newspeak, which was imagined as a way of dismantling the mental machinery of political opposition, should have made that clear. That you missed it is ironic given your username. If you want to map the experience of a gay man in Saudi Arabia onto what I was talking about, he would marry a woman and not even think things could be any different.
femto113 6y ago
Even deciding what is political or not is political. If you try to limit the definition to something putatively objective like "directly relating to the function of government agencies" a great many topics are immediately ambiguous: institutionalized racism? marriage? the environment? the economy?
- disposekinetics 6y ago
  That's totally fair, I hadn't considered it from that perspective. In my mind politics are things like the tax rate. So a social issue could never be political.
- chii 6y ago
  > Even deciding what is political or not is political No, the distinction is not whether somebody _decides_ if a topic is political or not, but that the conversations' intension is to convert the other party that your point of view is correct for society. I.e., you have to undertake political activism towards something for the topic to be political. It's like religion as a topic of conversation, vs religious conversion. Two people can be talking about religion, but if neither is trying to "convert" the other, then this is not a religious conversion. But if one party is talking with the intent to convert the other party to said religion, then it's a religious conversion. And the argument is that this should not happen in the workplace.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
To me, "everything is political" is a bumper sticker version of the assertion that what is and isn't "political" in the sense of "political statement" is often way more subjective than we sometimes recognize it is. If a coworker talks about his husband, is that a political statement? To some people, absolutely, right? How about someone mentioning a concert that they've gone to, for an artist that's outspokenly political one way or another? Just a concert, right? What about talking about a great movie or TV show, if those are, I don't know, "Sorry to Bother You" or "Lovecraft Country"? Can you mention that you went to a gun show, or a shooting range? Can you recommend a Jordan Peterson book? Can you put an NRA logo on your car? What about a BLM logo? What about on your T-shirt? If a coworker goes through a gender transition, how does that get handled in a way that everyone, across the board, considers apolitical? Good luck with that: the very act of transitioning is, to a significant portion of the population, itself political. So, I mean, sure, not literally everything is political, but if you give the statement a bit more of a generous reading than "Come on, are you saying ice cream is political? Harrumph!", you can see the point being made. (Also, re: ice cream: what about Ben & Jerry's?)
- chii 6y ago
  To me, the deciding criteria is the intent of the person undertaking said action. Are they taking an action to express their allegiance to a political movement? Are they taking action to attempt to convince/recruit people to a cause they believe in? Or are they taking action not for such purposes? For example, a gay person talking about their spouse to a colleague without the intent to change any political beliefs of anyone around them?
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    That seems like it'd be a tough standard to apply in practice -- how do you prove intent?

nemothekid 6y ago

Do you believe end to end encryption is political? Do you believe that companies should disable E2E encryption in order to be "apolitical" in the eyes US's attorney general? How do you believe Coinbase, a cryptocurrency corporation, will remain "a political" in the design of their systems given the changing political climate around crypto? Does that just mean bowing down to whatever the administration says? Do you believe Coinbase will remain "apolitical" is the US begins to enact policy that causes Coinbase users to find alternatives? Do you believe Coinbase employees will have no opinion on the way the justice department handles cryptocurrency?

chii 6y ago
But you're deliberately avoiding the point that coinbase wants to make - which is that if the topic is relevant to the business (as determined by the owners of the business), then it's considered on-topic for work place political discussion and activism. But if it's unrelated to the business, then the business is no place to undertake such activism.

ardy42 6y ago

> I'm curious what your definition of political is, because my gut feeling is that (Almost) nothing is political. Politics is more than just the rituals of government officials or what gets written about in the politics section of the newspaper: > Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά, politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics) For instance, this effort to create an "apolitical workplace" could probably be understood as political project to stamp out elements of bottom-up democratic political culture in favor of a more autocratic political culture. At work we keep our heads down and follow the edicts (mission) of our leaders.

yokaze 6y ago

From entering "define political" in Google: 1. relating to the government or public affairs of a country. Not the one the parent probably means: 2. (DEROGATORY) done or acting in the interests of status or power within an organization rather than as a matter of principle. Whatever a company does, it relates in some way to the public affairs of a country. Either in what you offer, or what you need to produce your offer. Your company is hopefully affecting the public affairs of your country in more than one way. And that I think had very much a place at work. The delineation between public affair and private matter seems to be quite arbitrary at times. I would say abortion is a private matter, or who you marry or which combination of sex chromosomes you have, but all those things are very high on the list of things being discussed. Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports.

throwaway894345 6y ago
It's safe to say that a company can impact the public affairs of a country by creating economic value without taking an official speculative stance on e.g. the racial distribution of unjust police killings. It's pretty obvious to me when people talk about "leaving political topics out of the workplace" they mean "topics which are unrelated to one's work". Arguments like "abortion is highly related to site reliability engineering" are pretty overtly disingenuous in a very clear-cut fashion. > Here I have to say, I'm more likely to give the point, that those topics are not professionally relevant, but neither is sports. Sports don't cause the same degree of strife in the workplace. No one is demanding anyone's termination because they like a different sports team or because they were caught in a photograph gesturing in a way that looks vaguely like the hook 'em horns gesture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%27em_Horns).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

SolarNet 6y ago

HTTPS is political (see attorney general of united states). Do you use HTTPS on your websites? (a step against the U.S. government position) Have you turned HTTPS off in your browser? (a step towards the U.S. government position) Do you implement forward perfect secrecy for HTTPS connections? (more against U.S. government position) How do you weigh it's threat to national security against it's protection from criminals for individuals and companies? All of these actions can be viewed as political statements. Everything is political.

RIMR 6y ago
The DOJ just today announced that they are drafting new regulations on Cryptocurrency markets. Coinbase is intrinsically political. They're a financial institution. Their product is subject to both laws and public scrutiny.
- SolarNet 6y ago
  Absolutely, which is why their apolitical stance is absurd.

RIMR 6y ago

This does seem to be the standard Libertarian worldview, but no matter how much you intend to ignore the world around you, it exists and you're a part of it, and you answer to your neighbors.

disposekinetics 6y ago
>you answer to your neighbors Fundamentally, this is our disagreement.
- mrguyorama 6y ago
  That's like not agreeing that water is wet
ardy42 6y ago
> This does seem to be the standard Libertarian worldview, but no matter how much you intend to ignore the world around you, it exists and you're a part of it, and you answer to your neighbors. One clever way to deeply entrench a political decision is to convince others that it's not a political decision at all. If you're successful, you've erected a barrier against your opponents by interfering with their ability to even conceive opposition to your position. It's sort of like the concept of Newspeak.
- winston_smith 6y ago
  The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality?
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > The opposite strategy is to talk about politics constantly, so that it's painfully obvious who's in the minority. > Which is better for a gay man in Saudi Arabia? A company where people only talk about work, or a company where everybody is expected to take a stance on homosexuality? You're talking about something completely different. What I'm talking about is basically falsely depoliticizing a political decision, so people think it's something that cannot be changed, like nature or something. The reference to Newspeak, which was imagined as a way of dismantling the mental machinery of political opposition, should have made that clear. That you missed it is ironic given your username. If you want to map the experience of a gay man in Saudi Arabia onto what I was talking about, he would marry a woman and not even think things could be any different.

femto113 6y ago

Even deciding what is political or not is political. If you try to limit the definition to something putatively objective like "directly relating to the function of government agencies" a great many topics are immediately ambiguous: institutionalized racism? marriage? the environment? the economy?

disposekinetics 6y ago
That's totally fair, I hadn't considered it from that perspective. In my mind politics are things like the tax rate. So a social issue could never be political.
chii 6y ago
> Even deciding what is political or not is political No, the distinction is not whether somebody _decides_ if a topic is political or not, but that the conversations' intension is to convert the other party that your point of view is correct for society. I.e., you have to undertake political activism towards something for the topic to be political. It's like religion as a topic of conversation, vs religious conversion. Two people can be talking about religion, but if neither is trying to "convert" the other, then this is not a religious conversion. But if one party is talking with the intent to convert the other party to said religion, then it's a religious conversion. And the argument is that this should not happen in the workplace.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago

To me, "everything is political" is a bumper sticker version of the assertion that what is and isn't "political" in the sense of "political statement" is often way more subjective than we sometimes recognize it is. If a coworker talks about his husband, is that a political statement? To some people, absolutely, right? How about someone mentioning a concert that they've gone to, for an artist that's outspokenly political one way or another? Just a concert, right? What about talking about a great movie or TV show, if those are, I don't know, "Sorry to Bother You" or "Lovecraft Country"? Can you mention that you went to a gun show, or a shooting range? Can you recommend a Jordan Peterson book? Can you put an NRA logo on your car? What about a BLM logo? What about on your T-shirt? If a coworker goes through a gender transition, how does that get handled in a way that everyone, across the board, considers apolitical? Good luck with that: the very act of transitioning is, to a significant portion of the population, itself political. So, I mean, sure, not literally everything is political, but if you give the statement a bit more of a generous reading than "Come on, are you saying ice cream is political? Harrumph!", you can see the point being made. (Also, re: ice cream: what about Ben & Jerry's?)

chii 6y ago
To me, the deciding criteria is the intent of the person undertaking said action. Are they taking an action to express their allegiance to a political movement? Are they taking action to attempt to convince/recruit people to a cause they believe in? Or are they taking action not for such purposes? For example, a gay person talking about their spouse to a colleague without the intent to change any political beliefs of anyone around them?
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  That seems like it'd be a tough standard to apply in practice -- how do you prove intent?