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As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no pub

As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support. In this kind of climate, for a business or other entity to involve themselves in politics would be consciously choosing to more or less blacklist themselves from doing business with the other side or run the risk of having their brand tarnished via social media for whatever stance they take. Finally, a business that takes a political stance does damage not just to themselves but to their employees as in the current political climate, both sides have no problems harassing a person or worse if they are viewed as not "on their team". Once a company takes a political stance, it doesn't matter if what that employee believes or does nor does it matter that said employee might be working for this company because they have a family to feed and don't have the luxury of quitting and looking for a new job, the very fact that they work for said company means that they should be treated as persona-non-grata. Make it simple, a company can't vote, so a company doesn't have a political affiliation (unless of course, it is some kind of lobbying company etc).

baby 6y ago
American companies can legally affect politics via lobbies, so it is hard for large American companies to stay apolitical.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > American companies can legally affect politics via lobbies As opposed to non-American companies who never expose their preferences to leaders?
- winston_smith 6y ago
  > can legally affect politics via lobbies, so it is hard for large American companies to stay apolitical I think they could manage it by, stick with me here, not lobbying. Especially on issues unrelated to their core business.
Consultant32452 6y ago
>a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. In the modern world with a weaponized/activist media this will not work. If you don't block the wrong-thinkers major media outlets will write article after article about how you platform Nazis or whatever, even though there's no Nazis in sight. If you stand up to them they will go after the advertisers. "Why are you advertising on a site that platforms Nazis?" And there's not really consequences. When Youtube, Paypal, etc. ban these people there's barely a blip in their business.
- lc9er 6y ago
  Sounds like consumers exercising the power of their spending.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    Correct. The point is that if you just try to go about your business without taking sides you will get the spotlight put on you and forced to take a side. You will either crush the minority customers in your business/platform or the majority will crush you. Being apolitical is no longer an option.
    - lc9er 6y ago
      Do you have real examples of this? Any time I see someone complaining of political blow-back, it’s because they chose to air their thoughts on social media or donate to specific causes publicly. The one person I know that felt put in this position, due to his lifestyle business, felt pressured by competitors to aim his thoughts, not by his customers. He only faced pushback when his thoughts, that his customers hadn’t asked for, came off as selfish and tone deaf. He shot himself in the foot.
      - Consultant32452 6y ago
        Probably the largest incident in memory is when someone tried to use the customer-only restroom at Starbucks without making a purchase, refused to leave, and then was arrested. This was a national scandal that resulted in Starbucks closing its 8,000 stores for racial bias training. Do you remember when Chic-Fil-A was getting boycotted and harassed for the owner's donations to evil homophobic charities? Those charities were The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Seriously, that's who it was. The Salvation Army and youth sports. Not exactly top of anyone sane's list of "problematic" charities. Chic-Fil-A caved. Every few weeks I see blue check Twitter going after some nobody to get them banned, but I don't keep track of those things.
runarberg 6y ago
> the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. You make it sound simple, but it’s not. If you operate a SAAS company, and ICE approaches you to buy your service, you suspect it might be used in the family separation program. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to sell them the service, you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics. If your workers use open source software and ask if they can contribute back upstream, but you deny them on grounds of intellectual property, you just did politics. The same if you allow them. If you pay your workers above market rate, allow them to unionize, have a liberal vacation policy, or force them to work on-site, you are doing politics. Albeit on a more personal scale then in the previous example. If most of the other offices in your downtown building where your startup resides put a BLM flag in their window, but you opt not to, you just made a political decision. If an employee puts a prominent Palestinian flag on their desk, and you ask them to take that down, you do so on a political basis. I hope you get the point. Businesses simply don’t have the option of not doing politics. The power dynamics involved simply prevent that from being a possibility. “Not doing politics” is more often then not simply an excuse for doing highly questionable politics.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  Unless you only want to work for ICE but not for an emigration lawyer thats not a political choice thats an agnostic choice. When Google employees decided who google should work for THATS political.
- Nimitz14 6y ago
  You seem to not have read the sentence you quoted? In that case the product is directly related to politics.
  - Jarwain 6y ago
    They never made any statement about what the product Is, so how can we make a determination about how related the product is to politics? The example product could be like Trello, but using the boards to organize their family separation programs. It's not directly a political product, but it's a tool that can be used to further some political policy. What about a SaaS product that provides facial recognition services for any usecase? It's not Directly political, but could definitely be used that way.
atomi 6y ago
> American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's I don't know how anyone can say this and be considered a serious person. One American party denies climate change, downplays COVID19, tries to take healthcare from millions, tries to disenfranchise anyone not voting for them, limits legal immigration and asylum seekers, and refuses to admit there is a problem with systemic racism. But by all means, remain "apolitical," since apparently this isn't about policy anymore. Wacky stuff man...
- ksk 6y ago
  What exactly is wacky about limiting legal immigration and/or asylum if that is what the citizens want? IMHO, Those don't seem like insane ideas when there is crazy amounts of unemployment in the country.
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    Well, some of it's illegal according to treaties the US has ratified.
    - ksk 6y ago
      I'm taking everything that is being proposed in good faith. There is a legal manner in which a country controls who gets to come in. Whether they have to modify treaties or not, I don't know - I'm not an expert on international jurisprudence.
  - atomi 6y ago
    Whatever your political views are, my point was that there is a clear delineation between parties. Being apathetic to politics is consequential in and of itself. As to your claim about immigration, I'm not interested in defending any particular policy position. But, there is some research that indicates immigration boosts overall labor participation [1]. http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/peri_sparber_task_specialization_immigration_2010.pdf http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/per...
evrydayhustling 6y ago
Here are a few ways the role of a US corporation may not translate everywhere: - Employers have a direct role in the social safety net, for example choosing health care and retirement savings options for their employees. - Related to above, because there are limited gov't protections for things like vacation and childcare leave, and firing in general, employer policies form a bigger part of work/life tradeoffs. - The US workforce has more diversity than most countries along several axes, including race, age, and immigration status, so employer policies about minority protections impact more employees. Since stances on the policy areas above form the main battleground for American politics, companies make many decisions that are politically valenced.
- winston_smith 6y ago
  This is the same level of cleverness as saying "everything is made of atoms so everything is about physics".
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Not really? The point I get from GP is that the way America is set up, corporations have a lot of say in (de facto) health care and employment policy. In most other countries, these things are decided democratically rather than though the market. We could have arguments all day on which is a better system, but it's hard not to admit that the American system makes corporations into more political actors.
    - winston_smith 6y ago
      They just listed off a standard set of "europe good, USA bad" talking points. The "everything is political" argument lets you tie any political issue you want to any company you want, so that you can pressure them into being more political about the issues you care about.
      - lazyasciiart 6y ago
        So do you feel that it is a politically neutral choice for an employer to decide that the health insurance they sponsor for employees cannot be used to cover an abortion?
TomMckenny 6y ago
I'm am guessing you do not live in Hungary, Poland, Brazil or Turkey either. Everything in the US is political now: face masks, 5G networks, vaccines, mail. Facebook dominates people's lives yet is an endless spam of politics. Google search is facing anti-trust because it is "liberal", while the ISPs and other monopolies are strangely un-molested. Every tech company, apolitical or not, is automatically suspected by half of the country mostly because of their address. But just for clarity, the major US debate is whether the election was fraudulent or not which is considerably higher stakes than a contest of identity. You can hedge your corporate bets by having no opinion on the mater but necessarily one of those parties is directly subverting the democracy. For anyone ok with that, then silence is undoubtedly a profitable path: why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?
- adnzzzzZ 6y ago
  Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't), it's not the purpose of a business to defend democracy. If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people. Also, what does Brazil have to do with this? I live here. Are you under the impression that Brazil is under the rule of a dictator or something?
  - TomMckenny 6y ago
    >Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't) https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330137267680186371 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13301372676801863... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330487246236028935 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13304872462360289... https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1330186217355350020 https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1330186217355350020 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330367988621594625 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13303679886215946... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330555645213483016 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13305556452134830... https://twitter.com/TeamTrump https://twitter.com/TeamTrump > If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people. Different people have different opinions about right and wrong. A different set behaviors by a large number of people would bring about a different outcome. Left unchecked, the luxury of dissent becomes more and more painful for company and individual.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity We have confused being politically active with being partisan. Even this article conflates the two. Yet there is a world of difference between taking a policy stance and promoting a candidate or a party. Companies have a legitimate stake in policy that commercially affects them. Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. One may disagree, but it’s coherent. (Hobby Lobby taking a stance on gay rights, on the other hand, is incoherent.) Companies must be politically active because nothing is apolitical. But companies shouldn’t be partisan. And when you are doing your work, the partisan affiliations of those around you should not matter.
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- crooked-v 6y ago
  > Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. What? I absolutely hold it against them, given how much of it was pure and unpunished chicanery like tricking drivers into agreeing to 'petitions' then used in published advertising.
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  - dingaling 6y ago
    You're conflating the rationale for their actions with the execution. It was logical for those companies to take political action in those instances in order to maintain their business models. How they did so may have been unsavoury, but that's orthogonal to the justification.
    - free_rms 6y ago
ojbyrne 6y ago
Much of the article talks about Coinbase, whose mission is to create “an open financial system for the world.” That’s inherently political, and if the CEO says not to engage with broader political and economic issues, he’s basically asking his employees to support the political stance that he is advancing.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > Coinbase, whose mission is to create “an open financial system for the world.” That’s inherently political, ... he’s basically asking his employees to support the political stance that he is advancing. No one is joining Coinbase if they're opposed to Coinbase's financial system objectives. It's not a secret. If someone was actively opposed to Coinbase's primary business objectives, how would they even be a productive employee of Coinbase in the first place? It's a false equivalency to try to equate the company's core business with completely unrelated political topics.
wwweston 6y ago
> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and ideas, it is now a contest of identity Lay political discourse (and especially partisan media) does frequently fit the description of identity banners and other tribal + value markers. But it's also very, very wrong to say that politics has ceased being about policy and ideas. It is definitely true that there are marked differences between policy goals advanced by parties (and sometimes individuals within). And it's not exactly rare that you can find lay participants who have a policy or ideas that are important to them.
indymike 6y ago
"From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support." It sure looks that way if you watch american news. Reality is pretty different. Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral - or at least try to be an "agent for good" while avoiding controversy.
- mynameishere 6y ago
  He means that politics about ideas would sound like, "Should we spend more money on infrastructure vs. health care vs. lowering taxes," whereas politics about identity is "Black vs White vs. Gay vs Straight vs Native vs Immigrant, etc." There is no discussion to be had in the latter. When people are divided that way, politics is strictly negative sum.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  > Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral Not in American tech companies they sure don’t. Identity politics is always front and center.
gumby 6y ago
> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and ideas... This was long the norm in Europe and North America. Western Europe seems to have less of it at the moment, and perhaps for the last 25 years; the US had a ~30 year stretch from the mid 50s. The current situation is quite bad, but has of course been worse.
gnopgnip 6y ago
Where do you draw the line on what participating in politics means exactly? Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics? Is calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing same sex marriage politics? In practice having "no stance" means supporting the status quo
- foolinaround 6y ago
  in your example "Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics?" -- What is the status quo? same with the other two?
  - gnopgnip 6y ago
    In the US it would be location specific
    - foolinaround 6y ago
      so, if a company had offices in NYC and Dallas (just making up an example) -- where the default reaction to masks are the opposite, is'nt the company not taking any stance at all the best option?
      - gnopgnip 6y ago
        What the best option is depends on your perspective, and your goals. Focusing just on the short term bottom line, or being more progressive than the norm for the area, or more conservative could all have different effects.
- mrec 6y ago
  > Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics? Is calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing same sex marriage politics? IMO, no, no and no. Where it becomes politics is when you start trying to force others to follow your preferred behaviours in those areas, over and above what the law requires. If you want to do that then you should vote and/or campaign to get the law changed, via the usual routes, and normally outside the workplace (unless directly related).
Igelau 6y ago
> choosing to more or less blacklist themselves You know, you're not allowed to say that in a lot of American offices now. Even in a technical context where it has an established meaning and multiple alternatives are now jockeying for mainstream. It's "exclusionary", which is a new HR code word for "politically incorrect". The battle is over and lost. Everything is politicized now, and all anyone who doesn't like it can do is fall on their sword. Alone.
adrr 6y ago
Everything you do is political. Advertising on certain channels like MSNBC or Fox News will cause some customers to boycott you. Even trying to go carbon neutral is a stance. Show gay couples in your ads, that’s also a politely statement. Trying to remain neutral doesn’t work.
- winston_smith 6y ago
  If everything is political and there's no such thing as neutral, then neither of those words would exist. It's like the smartass kid who acts like he doesn't know what "clean" means because there might be a molecule of dirt somewhere.
  - echlebek 6y ago
    That's a nonsense argument. Words don't just pop out of existence if there are no instances of the things they describe.
    - winston_smith 6y ago
      The smartass kid would agree with you. Is your claim that some things used to not be political but now literally everything is?
austincheney 6y ago
I completely agree, except this isn’t an American position and it isn’t actually about politics. It’s the culture of the valley, a tiny little geography in California and it’s about identity. Many there will form every imaginable excuse to conflate their employment with politics as a means of identity expression. Most people in the US find this subculture just as bizarre.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
The problem is, those who don't do politics can still have politics done to them. This can take two forms. One way is that the government makes decisions. Some of those decisions affect businesses. If the businesses don't give any input, the government still decides - they just decide in a vacuum. That could be sub-optimal for businesses. (I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.) The second way politics can be done to you is that someone outside decides that you aren't active enough in supporting their political side, and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left, but that's not universal.) The only thing you can do to avoid that is try to move in lockstep with the most strident voices telling you what you should do... but I've never been a big fan of appeasement. My preferred approach is to ignore them - but then, I don't have to make a payroll, so it's really easy for me to say that.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  I upvoted you as I think you make some interesting points, but I hope you don't mind me challenging them a little. > I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business. I wonder what sort of policies a coal company would view as "sane", as it affects their business. > and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left Are you perhaps limiting the scope of your consideration to just "cancel culture"? I don't want to make a whataboutist response, but it's not good to cherry-pick a single mechanism of political oppression (which is disproportionately used by people with a certain political leaning) and miss out other sorts, such as business owners firing employees, or violence by the state against unarmed civilians, or attacks by politically-motivated armed extremists.
ardy42 6y ago
> As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. Statements like yours are very easy to make and sound fine at a superficial level, but quickly run into problems when you try to actually apply the rule. For instance: does a company that sells drugs that can be used off-label for executions of human beings have a "product [that] is directly related to politics?" This problem is a lot like writing good requirements. Your rule above is a lot like a requirement of an HR system that states simply "the system will reject the resumes of all unqualified candidates." There's a lot to unpack there, and that requirement, as stated, doesn't even get you 1% of the way there.
- etangent 6y ago
  You are making it intentionally over-complicated. There isn't much to unpack at all. A company becomes political by making a political decision, not by consequence of someone else using its products to make political decisions.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > You are making it intentionally over-complicated. There isn't much to unpack at all. A company becomes political by making a political decision, not by consequence of someone else using its products to make political decisions. It's not that simple. If a gun store owner sells guns to people he knows are planning to commit a robbery, isn't he also guilty of a crime? Likewise, if a company sells materials for lethal injections to groups they know conduct executions, aren't they tacitly supporting a policy of capital punishment? Also your comment leans very heavily on the definition of "political," which you leave totally undefined. Once you try to get consensus definition of that, you'll get into the same difficulty of unpacking it's meaning that I was referring to.
    - etangent 6y ago
      That you bring up a robbery example highlights that you don't understand what political is. Facilitating a robbery is illegal. Facilitating actions of a political group, as long as it is within the framework of a law, is called "living in a society." Your second example reduces to the following: "is it legal to sell materials to facilitate lethal injections?" If no, then it is a matter of criminal justice, not politics. If yes, the political actor is the group committing the lethal injections, not the group selling materials. The kind of extreme "guilt by association" you derive cannot be considered a part of the political in terms of conscious action precisely because "the political" encompasses normal function of the society. Criminal activity, on the other hand, is not considered a part of normal function of a society, hence one can assume that everyone who "knows" a criminal but doesn't turn him in is also a criminal. In other words what you're doing is you are criminalizing normal para-political association---a characteristic of individuals with a totalitarian mindset. As a non-American, I have to say I am stunned to observe this attitude in the US.
unishark 6y ago
> As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. > From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support. Yeah I have intentionally avoided the media and political nonsense of the last decade or so, and it just seems increasingly absurd. Everyone is a radical activist these days. And to radicals, there is no neutral position.
wonnage 6y ago
What's wrong with blacklisting fascists?
- camdenlock 6y ago
  For starters, the fact that nobody can agree on what a “fascist” even is these days. And when you have a generic term like that which essentially boils down to “people whose opinions I dislike”, then you’re advocating for the blacklisting of arbitrary groups of people. Not going to turn out well, especially when you yourself get included in one of those groups.
  - wonnage 6y ago
    No it's pretty obvious, one side is literally pro-fascist
    - camdenlock 6y ago
      How so?
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  It’s fascist, for one.

baby 6y ago

American companies can legally affect politics via lobbies, so it is hard for large American companies to stay apolitical.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> American companies can legally affect politics via lobbies As opposed to non-American companies who never expose their preferences to leaders?
winston_smith 6y ago
> can legally affect politics via lobbies, so it is hard for large American companies to stay apolitical I think they could manage it by, stick with me here, not lobbying. Especially on issues unrelated to their core business.

Consultant32452 6y ago

>a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. In the modern world with a weaponized/activist media this will not work. If you don't block the wrong-thinkers major media outlets will write article after article about how you platform Nazis or whatever, even though there's no Nazis in sight. If you stand up to them they will go after the advertisers. "Why are you advertising on a site that platforms Nazis?" And there's not really consequences. When Youtube, Paypal, etc. ban these people there's barely a blip in their business.

lc9er 6y ago
Sounds like consumers exercising the power of their spending.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Correct. The point is that if you just try to go about your business without taking sides you will get the spotlight put on you and forced to take a side. You will either crush the minority customers in your business/platform or the majority will crush you. Being apolitical is no longer an option.
  - lc9er 6y ago
    Do you have real examples of this? Any time I see someone complaining of political blow-back, it’s because they chose to air their thoughts on social media or donate to specific causes publicly. The one person I know that felt put in this position, due to his lifestyle business, felt pressured by competitors to aim his thoughts, not by his customers. He only faced pushback when his thoughts, that his customers hadn’t asked for, came off as selfish and tone deaf. He shot himself in the foot.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      Probably the largest incident in memory is when someone tried to use the customer-only restroom at Starbucks without making a purchase, refused to leave, and then was arrested. This was a national scandal that resulted in Starbucks closing its 8,000 stores for racial bias training. Do you remember when Chic-Fil-A was getting boycotted and harassed for the owner's donations to evil homophobic charities? Those charities were The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Seriously, that's who it was. The Salvation Army and youth sports. Not exactly top of anyone sane's list of "problematic" charities. Chic-Fil-A caved. Every few weeks I see blue check Twitter going after some nobody to get them banned, but I don't keep track of those things.

runarberg 6y ago

> the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. You make it sound simple, but it’s not. If you operate a SAAS company, and ICE approaches you to buy your service, you suspect it might be used in the family separation program. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to sell them the service, you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics. If your workers use open source software and ask if they can contribute back upstream, but you deny them on grounds of intellectual property, you just did politics. The same if you allow them. If you pay your workers above market rate, allow them to unionize, have a liberal vacation policy, or force them to work on-site, you are doing politics. Albeit on a more personal scale then in the previous example. If most of the other offices in your downtown building where your startup resides put a BLM flag in their window, but you opt not to, you just made a political decision. If an employee puts a prominent Palestinian flag on their desk, and you ask them to take that down, you do so on a political basis. I hope you get the point. Businesses simply don’t have the option of not doing politics. The power dynamics involved simply prevent that from being a possibility. “Not doing politics” is more often then not simply an excuse for doing highly questionable politics.

ThomPete 6y ago
Unless you only want to work for ICE but not for an emigration lawyer thats not a political choice thats an agnostic choice. When Google employees decided who google should work for THATS political.
Nimitz14 6y ago
You seem to not have read the sentence you quoted? In that case the product is directly related to politics.
- Jarwain 6y ago
  They never made any statement about what the product Is, so how can we make a determination about how related the product is to politics? The example product could be like Trello, but using the boards to organize their family separation programs. It's not directly a political product, but it's a tool that can be used to further some political policy. What about a SaaS product that provides facial recognition services for any usecase? It's not Directly political, but could definitely be used that way.

atomi 6y ago

> American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's I don't know how anyone can say this and be considered a serious person. One American party denies climate change, downplays COVID19, tries to take healthcare from millions, tries to disenfranchise anyone not voting for them, limits legal immigration and asylum seekers, and refuses to admit there is a problem with systemic racism. But by all means, remain "apolitical," since apparently this isn't about policy anymore. Wacky stuff man...

ksk 6y ago
What exactly is wacky about limiting legal immigration and/or asylum if that is what the citizens want? IMHO, Those don't seem like insane ideas when there is crazy amounts of unemployment in the country.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  Well, some of it's illegal according to treaties the US has ratified.
  - ksk 6y ago
    I'm taking everything that is being proposed in good faith. There is a legal manner in which a country controls who gets to come in. Whether they have to modify treaties or not, I don't know - I'm not an expert on international jurisprudence.
- atomi 6y ago
  Whatever your political views are, my point was that there is a clear delineation between parties. Being apathetic to politics is consequential in and of itself. As to your claim about immigration, I'm not interested in defending any particular policy position. But, there is some research that indicates immigration boosts overall labor participation [1]. http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/peri_sparber_task_specialization_immigration_2010.pdf http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/per...

evrydayhustling 6y ago

Here are a few ways the role of a US corporation may not translate everywhere: - Employers have a direct role in the social safety net, for example choosing health care and retirement savings options for their employees. - Related to above, because there are limited gov't protections for things like vacation and childcare leave, and firing in general, employer policies form a bigger part of work/life tradeoffs. - The US workforce has more diversity than most countries along several axes, including race, age, and immigration status, so employer policies about minority protections impact more employees. Since stances on the policy areas above form the main battleground for American politics, companies make many decisions that are politically valenced.

winston_smith 6y ago
This is the same level of cleverness as saying "everything is made of atoms so everything is about physics".
- paulgb 6y ago
  Not really? The point I get from GP is that the way America is set up, corporations have a lot of say in (de facto) health care and employment policy. In most other countries, these things are decided democratically rather than though the market. We could have arguments all day on which is a better system, but it's hard not to admit that the American system makes corporations into more political actors.
  - winston_smith 6y ago
    They just listed off a standard set of "europe good, USA bad" talking points. The "everything is political" argument lets you tie any political issue you want to any company you want, so that you can pressure them into being more political about the issues you care about.
    - lazyasciiart 6y ago
      So do you feel that it is a politically neutral choice for an employer to decide that the health insurance they sponsor for employees cannot be used to cover an abortion?

TomMckenny 6y ago

I'm am guessing you do not live in Hungary, Poland, Brazil or Turkey either. Everything in the US is political now: face masks, 5G networks, vaccines, mail. Facebook dominates people's lives yet is an endless spam of politics. Google search is facing anti-trust because it is "liberal", while the ISPs and other monopolies are strangely un-molested. Every tech company, apolitical or not, is automatically suspected by half of the country mostly because of their address. But just for clarity, the major US debate is whether the election was fraudulent or not which is considerably higher stakes than a contest of identity. You can hedge your corporate bets by having no opinion on the mater but necessarily one of those parties is directly subverting the democracy. For anyone ok with that, then silence is undoubtedly a profitable path: why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?

adnzzzzZ 6y ago
Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't), it's not the purpose of a business to defend democracy. If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people. Also, what does Brazil have to do with this? I live here. Are you under the impression that Brazil is under the rule of a dictator or something?
- TomMckenny 6y ago
  >Even if what you described about current American elections was actually the case (it isn't) https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330137267680186371 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13301372676801863... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330487246236028935 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13304872462360289... https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1330186217355350020 https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1330186217355350020 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330367988621594625 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13303679886215946... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1330555645213483016 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13305556452134830... https://twitter.com/TeamTrump https://twitter.com/TeamTrump > If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people. Different people have different opinions about right and wrong. A different set behaviors by a large number of people would bring about a different outcome. Left unchecked, the luxury of dissent becomes more and more painful for company and individual.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity We have confused being politically active with being partisan. Even this article conflates the two. Yet there is a world of difference between taking a policy stance and promoting a candidate or a party. Companies have a legitimate stake in policy that commercially affects them. Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. One may disagree, but it’s coherent. (Hobby Lobby taking a stance on gay rights, on the other hand, is incoherent.) Companies must be politically active because nothing is apolitical. But companies shouldn’t be partisan. And when you are doing your work, the partisan affiliations of those around you should not matter.

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crooked-v 6y ago
> Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. What? I absolutely hold it against them, given how much of it was pure and unpunished chicanery like tricking drivers into agreeing to 'petitions' then used in published advertising.
- deleted 6y ago
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- dingaling 6y ago
  You're conflating the rationale for their actions with the execution. It was logical for those companies to take political action in those instances in order to maintain their business models. How they did so may have been unsavoury, but that's orthogonal to the justification.
  - free_rms 6y ago

ojbyrne 6y ago

Much of the article talks about Coinbase, whose mission is to create “an open financial system for the world.” That’s inherently political, and if the CEO says not to engage with broader political and economic issues, he’s basically asking his employees to support the political stance that he is advancing.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> Coinbase, whose mission is to create “an open financial system for the world.” That’s inherently political, ... he’s basically asking his employees to support the political stance that he is advancing. No one is joining Coinbase if they're opposed to Coinbase's financial system objectives. It's not a secret. If someone was actively opposed to Coinbase's primary business objectives, how would they even be a productive employee of Coinbase in the first place? It's a false equivalency to try to equate the company's core business with completely unrelated political topics.

wwweston 6y ago

> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and ideas, it is now a contest of identity Lay political discourse (and especially partisan media) does frequently fit the description of identity banners and other tribal + value markers. But it's also very, very wrong to say that politics has ceased being about policy and ideas. It is definitely true that there are marked differences between policy goals advanced by parties (and sometimes individuals within). And it's not exactly rare that you can find lay participants who have a policy or ideas that are important to them.

indymike 6y ago

"From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support." It sure looks that way if you watch american news. Reality is pretty different. Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral - or at least try to be an "agent for good" while avoiding controversy.

mynameishere 6y ago
He means that politics about ideas would sound like, "Should we spend more money on infrastructure vs. health care vs. lowering taxes," whereas politics about identity is "Black vs White vs. Gay vs Straight vs Native vs Immigrant, etc." There is no discussion to be had in the latter. When people are divided that way, politics is strictly negative sum.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
> Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral Not in American tech companies they sure don’t. Identity politics is always front and center.

gumby 6y ago

> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and ideas... This was long the norm in Europe and North America. Western Europe seems to have less of it at the moment, and perhaps for the last 25 years; the US had a ~30 year stretch from the mid 50s. The current situation is quite bad, but has of course been worse.

gnopgnip 6y ago

Where do you draw the line on what participating in politics means exactly? Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics? Is calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing same sex marriage politics? In practice having "no stance" means supporting the status quo

foolinaround 6y ago
in your example "Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics?" -- What is the status quo? same with the other two?
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  In the US it would be location specific
  - foolinaround 6y ago
    so, if a company had offices in NYC and Dallas (just making up an example) -- where the default reaction to masks are the opposite, is'nt the company not taking any stance at all the best option?
    - gnopgnip 6y ago
      What the best option is depends on your perspective, and your goals. Focusing just on the short term bottom line, or being more progressive than the norm for the area, or more conservative could all have different effects.
mrec 6y ago
> Is wearing a mask during a pandemic politics? Is calling someone by their preferred pronoun, or recognizing same sex marriage politics? IMO, no, no and no. Where it becomes politics is when you start trying to force others to follow your preferred behaviours in those areas, over and above what the law requires. If you want to do that then you should vote and/or campaign to get the law changed, via the usual routes, and normally outside the workplace (unless directly related).

Igelau 6y ago

> choosing to more or less blacklist themselves You know, you're not allowed to say that in a lot of American offices now. Even in a technical context where it has an established meaning and multiple alternatives are now jockeying for mainstream. It's "exclusionary", which is a new HR code word for "politically incorrect". The battle is over and lost. Everything is politicized now, and all anyone who doesn't like it can do is fall on their sword. Alone.

adrr 6y ago

Everything you do is political. Advertising on certain channels like MSNBC or Fox News will cause some customers to boycott you. Even trying to go carbon neutral is a stance. Show gay couples in your ads, that’s also a politely statement. Trying to remain neutral doesn’t work.

winston_smith 6y ago
If everything is political and there's no such thing as neutral, then neither of those words would exist. It's like the smartass kid who acts like he doesn't know what "clean" means because there might be a molecule of dirt somewhere.
- echlebek 6y ago
  That's a nonsense argument. Words don't just pop out of existence if there are no instances of the things they describe.
  - winston_smith 6y ago
    The smartass kid would agree with you. Is your claim that some things used to not be political but now literally everything is?

austincheney 6y ago

I completely agree, except this isn’t an American position and it isn’t actually about politics. It’s the culture of the valley, a tiny little geography in California and it’s about identity. Many there will form every imaginable excuse to conflate their employment with politics as a means of identity expression. Most people in the US find this subculture just as bizarre.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

The problem is, those who don't do politics can still have politics done to them. This can take two forms. One way is that the government makes decisions. Some of those decisions affect businesses. If the businesses don't give any input, the government still decides - they just decide in a vacuum. That could be sub-optimal for businesses. (I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.) The second way politics can be done to you is that someone outside decides that you aren't active enough in supporting their political side, and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left, but that's not universal.) The only thing you can do to avoid that is try to move in lockstep with the most strident voices telling you what you should do... but I've never been a big fan of appeasement. My preferred approach is to ignore them - but then, I don't have to make a payroll, so it's really easy for me to say that.

dane-pgp 6y ago
I upvoted you as I think you make some interesting points, but I hope you don't mind me challenging them a little. > I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business. I wonder what sort of policies a coal company would view as "sane", as it affects their business. > and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left Are you perhaps limiting the scope of your consideration to just "cancel culture"? I don't want to make a whataboutist response, but it's not good to cherry-pick a single mechanism of political oppression (which is disproportionately used by people with a certain political leaning) and miss out other sorts, such as business owners firing employees, or violence by the state against unarmed civilians, or attacks by politically-motivated armed extremists.

ardy42 6y ago

> As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. Statements like yours are very easy to make and sound fine at a superficial level, but quickly run into problems when you try to actually apply the rule. For instance: does a company that sells drugs that can be used off-label for executions of human beings have a "product [that] is directly related to politics?" This problem is a lot like writing good requirements. Your rule above is a lot like a requirement of an HR system that states simply "the system will reject the resumes of all unqualified candidates." There's a lot to unpack there, and that requirement, as stated, doesn't even get you 1% of the way there.

etangent 6y ago
You are making it intentionally over-complicated. There isn't much to unpack at all. A company becomes political by making a political decision, not by consequence of someone else using its products to make political decisions.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > You are making it intentionally over-complicated. There isn't much to unpack at all. A company becomes political by making a political decision, not by consequence of someone else using its products to make political decisions. It's not that simple. If a gun store owner sells guns to people he knows are planning to commit a robbery, isn't he also guilty of a crime? Likewise, if a company sells materials for lethal injections to groups they know conduct executions, aren't they tacitly supporting a policy of capital punishment? Also your comment leans very heavily on the definition of "political," which you leave totally undefined. Once you try to get consensus definition of that, you'll get into the same difficulty of unpacking it's meaning that I was referring to.
  - etangent 6y ago
    That you bring up a robbery example highlights that you don't understand what political is. Facilitating a robbery is illegal. Facilitating actions of a political group, as long as it is within the framework of a law, is called "living in a society." Your second example reduces to the following: "is it legal to sell materials to facilitate lethal injections?" If no, then it is a matter of criminal justice, not politics. If yes, the political actor is the group committing the lethal injections, not the group selling materials. The kind of extreme "guilt by association" you derive cannot be considered a part of the political in terms of conscious action precisely because "the political" encompasses normal function of the society. Criminal activity, on the other hand, is not considered a part of normal function of a society, hence one can assume that everyone who "knows" a criminal but doesn't turn him in is also a criminal. In other words what you're doing is you are criminalizing normal para-political association---a characteristic of individuals with a totalitarian mindset. As a non-American, I have to say I am stunned to observe this attitude in the US.

unishark 6y ago

> As someone who lives outside America, the obvious answer to me is unless your product is directly related to politics, a company as an entity should have no public stance on politics. > From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support. Yeah I have intentionally avoided the media and political nonsense of the last decade or so, and it just seems increasingly absurd. Everyone is a radical activist these days. And to radicals, there is no neutral position.

wonnage 6y ago

What's wrong with blacklisting fascists?

camdenlock 6y ago
For starters, the fact that nobody can agree on what a “fascist” even is these days. And when you have a generic term like that which essentially boils down to “people whose opinions I dislike”, then you’re advocating for the blacklisting of arbitrary groups of people. Not going to turn out well, especially when you yourself get included in one of those groups.
- wonnage 6y ago
  No it's pretty obvious, one side is literally pro-fascist
  - camdenlock 6y ago
    How so?
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
It’s fascist, for one.