Coinbase Inc Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong has offered a severance package to employees unwilling to cope with the cryptocurrency exchange’s new policy of not entertaining discussions on societal and political issues.
Armstrong’s email, which a source said was sent on Tuesday, follows an earlier blog post published on Sunday, where he said the company would not engage in issues unrelated to its core mission.
The firm would not advocate for any political causes unrelated to its mission, he said.
In the email to employees, the CEO detailed packages which include four months’ severance pay for those who have been at the exchange for less than three years, with long-term employees receiving six months severance pay.
– Reuters
Bravo!
I would love to see every company do this. When I go to a coffee shop or a bank, I am not interesting in their views about politics or social issues, indeed, I actively do not want to know. I just want a fucking coffee or to arrange something financial (hopefully not confusing the two). If they want to tell me about how yummy their products are because their beans are lovingly rubbed with civet poo, or how well they are looking after their depositors’ money, that is fine.
But pretty much anything else… please just STFU unless it is directly related to the business. I get that certain ‘life style’ brands might want their logo in a Formula One car or on Eddie Izzard’s frock. But I am not interested in how inclusive the local bookstore is, nor do I want to hear that an auto-parts shop is proud of the blasted NHS.
I do not even want any companies declaiming how much they support causes I like, let alone ones that I either oppose or which just make me roll my eyes at the sheer presumption of their marketing department. For me, this is negative marketing. I already avoid certain shops and restaurants that prominently display their ‘social awareness’ to me: they are actually doing the opposite, emphasising that I am not their target market. So I take them at their word and if I can easily get what they sell elsewhere from someone who doesn’t, that is what I always do.
Make companies product-focused again.
I used to buy spices from Penzey’s. Then I started getting e-mails from them with liberal propaganda. So now I buy from Spice House, which has the courtesy not to presume that I want their political opinions. I sent Penzey’s an e-mail about this, but I don’t suppose it did any good.
I have marketing friends who tell me that, if you sell a non-ideological product – if your product isn’t one that sells mostly to non-progressives – coming out for Progressivism is an almost sure-fire win.
You cement in half of your customers forever, two-thirds of the remaining half won’t care and so stick around, you lose one-sixth, and you gain more new progressive customers than the conservative ones you lose.
It doesn’t work the other way because conservatives don’t boycott or froth.
bobby b
It doesn’t work the other way because conservatives don’t boycott or froth.
And perhaps that is the problem? I was thinking about this today when I was watching a youtube video which had an ad every five minutes, frequently, two ads every five minutes. Ad frequency and intrusiveness seems to have grown very considerably. How do they get away with that? Only monopolies can do that and there really is no reason for YT to be a monopoly. I have asked many times here — why does Google not have a lot more effective competitors?
BTW, it reminds me of what I have often called the libertarian dilemma. We advocate for solutions not involving the government so for us to make political moves (in our case to get rid of government) goes entirely against our grain. Which libertarian wants to be a politician? Even a politician to bring the temple down? The left may advocate for their own position but their position involves ceasing power to force others. Our position demands that they be allowed their own opinions, and the right to advocate for them. Theirs demand that the crush us. And so we are left in a very asymmetric position.
Mr. Orr –
The reason Google, YouTube, et al, have very little competition, is due to them having a conscious policy of buying out any competing platforms and their intellectual property. They proceed to absorb or simply shut down those companies and their customers. They have sufficient $$ and social media control to effectively stymie any anti-monopoly efforts. So far. They are allowed to act as both publisher and platform, claiming whichever is to their benefit at any given instant, without consequences as they shift back and forth.
Death of freedom right there.
Surely the non-agression principle allows the policing of advocating destruction of liberty. By exile or separation if nothing else. Otherwise it’s just a murder victim’s promise to surrender to the knife.
I work for a Fortune 50 corporation. Our stock is down 30% from 12 years ago. But, we are tops with LGBT, our CEO has ‘Started the difficult conversation’ and I get to watch videos from Ben and Jerry cofounders, learn to understand black culture and discover my hidden biases. WFT. So glad i have less than 1,320 days till retirement.
I simply don’t believe it. Conservatives may not ‘froth’, but I suspect they do indeed boycott. Not organised boycotts, they just start buying elsewhere.
I think the way forward is not organised boycotts but just pointing out to people it is ok to take one look at that sign in the window and decide to take your money elsewhere.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I am saying I disagree. For example, the misandrist Gillette campaign from 2019 triggered exactly the sort of boycott you claim doesn’t happen. That cost Gillette $8 billion in 2019 and those customers ain’t going back.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-46874617
George Atkisson (October 1, 2020 at 4:40 am) is correct about why YouTube and Google lack competitors. To grow big enough, a competitor must pass through the “small, but starting to look threatening” stage, and then has to say ‘no’ to getting a lot of money in return for retiring early (or starting another new project) – and if there are shareholders, enough have to say ‘no’ too.
This is not unique to social media platforms. One of the larger insurers in the US grew out from a single-state enterprise and went through a phase where top management were ruthless in concealing their competitive advantage in public fora, to the point where they once ordered an about-to-win team to withdraw from a technical contest – afraid their competitors would notice and mount a take-over bid. You have to be a bit like Trump – determined to see your name on the completed building, not just to make a profit – to do that.
The right do boycotts worse than the left, but buycotts better (we are better at supporting and worse at hating than they are). The strategy of starting up by targeting the guestimated sixth of customers that bobby b (September 30, 2020 at 11:45 pm) mentions, or the much larger number suggested by such ‘Get Woke, Go Broke’ examples as Gillette (John Galt, October 1, 2020 at 8:36 am) seems viable to me. But you then have to have the will not to sell out during the several years when your growing size is in the danger zone – and be privately owned or else trust that your shareholders feel the same.
Most firms fail. Many an impeccably woke startup has crashed and burned. We should not see the odds as irrevocably stacked against us – just appreciate the obstacles.
“…those customers ain’t going back.”
I signed up for a Harry’s Razors account as a reaction to these ads. Better razors, better shave gel, obviously I’m not going back to Gillette. I’m sure Harry’s must have benefitted immensely from the ads. The linked article speculated that they were expecting a reaction and were hoping that the publicity would cancell out the negative reaction.
@ William H. Stoddard – us, too. Oddly-enough, Penzey’s seems br struggling and is closing retail stores.
Fun fact – did you know that Bill Penzey, CEO of Penzey’s Spices, and Patty Erd, co-owner of the Spice House, are brother and sister? Must be fun Thanksgiving at their house.
llater,
llamas
The thing about conservatives and leftists (I don’t say liberals, because classical liberals are too sparse on the ground these days) is that by and large, conservatives are busy. Leftists are looking for something to do. So when a chance to protest comes along, conservatives are still busy, but leftists say “Fun!” or “They deserve my wrath!” or things of similar nature.
This is called asymmetric warfare.
This post was written from the POV of a consumer. I’m a shareholder in a few public companies and a few years ago signed up for all of their shareholder info emails.
Holy shit.
So much leftism, SJW cant and general anti-capitalist bullshit. I have been slowly dumping the worst of them. “Get woke, go broke” as the Instapundit says.
‘ The reason Google, YouTube, et al, have very little competition, is due to them having a conscious policy of buying out any competing platforms and their intellectual property.’
Probably true but also we are into ‘me too’ territory. Why would a consumer move to another product unless it is the same & cheaper (free at point of delivery removes that possibility) or better/different? There is just no way to differentiate on-line video or social media from what is established.
Competition will come from innovation or new technology which will deliver something completely different – like CD/DVD v Compact Cassettes, or digital photography v analogue – and that will likely come from a start-up or small company and take down the big guys who won’t see it coming or react swiftly enough as is nearly always the case. Companies suffer from ‘not invented here syndrome’ and ‘it won’t catch on’.
There may even be an alternative to the Internet/Web in a few years time.
John B: Well, I moved from Google to Duck Duck Go because I don’t approve of Google’s stance on privacy, and also because I dislike their politics. They do have competition.
@John B
Probably true but also we are into ‘me too’ territory. Why would a consumer move to another product unless it is the same & cheaper (free at point of delivery removes that possibility) or better/different? There is just no way to differentiate on-line video or social media from what is established.
That isn’t true, as I stated in my original comment, the way to distinguish yourself is be bugging me less with ads. If there was a meto that didn’t make me watch an ad every five minutes, I’d definitely switch. And I am happy to accept the bargain of watching some ads, but the constant battering of ads that YT is doing right now is to the point that is ruins the content.
And secondly, if YT is censoring the content I want to watch, I have to go elsewhere.
And finally if YT is constantly wagging its finger at me, or trying to manipulate me in its suggestions etc. then I want to go away from the annoying nag.
And here is the point — it is VERY easy to switch both for the consumer and the content producer.
As to the “google buys them up” argument, I don’t find this convincing. There is a LOT of money to be made in this and capital is available from sources other than google. If new-video.com can produce more money for return on investment dollars elsewhere they should be able to attract capital from other investors beside google. Google might pay a premium to maintain its monopoly, but although Google might have a big bank account it is nothing compared to the amount of capital in the system. I find it hard to make the same argument against Google that was made against Standard Oil, and frankly this is exactly the same argument.
It is clear that there are plenty of companies who have the resources to capture part of this market (and remember, grabbing 1% is a gold mine.) Microsoft, Amazon, Fox News, IBM. These are all companies that could definitely invest in this and give Google a run for their money. IBM for example, is a sclerotic old org, but Ginny Romney is on the way out, a new CEO could come in an really make a name for themselves by turning IBM into the alternative Google.
Regarding IP, I agree this is a horrible problem, and I have commented on my loathing of IP law many times here. But when it comes to software, it is much less of a problem in software and business processes since patents are much harder to obtain and enforce in that field.
Like I say, I am very uncomfortable accepting arguments about Google that I would reject out of hand with Standard Oil. It is FAR easier to switch from Google than it was for Standard Oil. The easy of switching is the very essence of the Internet, and I am continually frustrated that this beautiful promise seems to have been stolen.
Maybe some concentrations of power are to inimical to human freedom, commercial or government.
Too easy to find cash to do the sneaky implied book deal advance bribe. Blair and Obama only had their countrymen to sell…..
Agreed. I moved to StartPage for similar reasons. Same applies with operating systems and browsers. A year ago I was running Chrome under Windows 10 and unhappy with both. I now run Brave browser under Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and I’m much happier. I get less intrusion from bullshit and more privacy.
I clicked on a Google.com link sent by a friend the other day and it would not let me proceed until I had accepted their terms and conditions for violating my privacy. Noped my way out of that by simply closing the Brave browser tab.
It seems to me that Google and Chrome have transitioned into the space where Microsoft used to be with their innovation stifled by their organisational problems (bureaucracy and internal Woken SS employees).
Fuck ’em all.
YouTube wins not becsuse Google buys putative competitors but because it is in a “winner take most” market. You want videos of KLR/650 shock fixes? A hundred of them at YouTube. I bet there aren’t ten in the entire rest of the internet.
A *lot* of bands post their music/video stuff on Vevo (and pay for it) because of the tools and control.
Which gets to the point: does Google make money with YouTube? Probably not, actually, but they are getting pretty close. But they’ve been dumping BILLIONS a year into it since 2007, so they have quite a ways to go.
-XC
PS – Uber thought they were in a “winner take most” market but that was because they managed to get enough capital to buy the traffic, almost worldwide, for quite a number of years.
Likewise. I use DuckDuckGo & Brave browser. Increasingly with more and more products, I put my eyeballs & money where my mouth is. Don’t just talk about it, do it. And judging by the state of Disney these days, it seems more and more people are actually doing just that.
If I simply cannot get what I want (at the requisite quality I demand) from a producer who isn’t on my shit list, well fine. But I am not cost sensitive & am willing to spend considerable time deciding who gets my dosh & figuring out who the alternatives are.
@-XC
YouTube wins not becsuse Google buys putative competitors but because it is in a “winner take most” market. You want videos of KLR/650 shock fixes? A hundred of them at YouTube. I bet there aren’t ten in the entire rest of the internet.
But that is not necessarily true. It is trivial to have a tool to let you upload your video to fifty different sites at the same time, and not much more difficult to have a tool that “syncs” your YT channel with any other video site so that they all have the same videos. I mean YT even gives you for free an API for doing precisely that. That is the point of the openness of the internet.
If there were other video sites that provided a reasonable approximation of YT and less of the hassle and bs of YT (including their interminable ads), then content producers can easily spread their videos at the click of a button.
Why they don’t I am not really sure. I am particularly not sure why it hasn’t happened in light of the whole banning and demonetizing of videos that has been going on. If I ran Fox News you can bet your ass that is what I would be focused on.
BTW, FWIW, I use DuckDuckGo because it is better than google search. Specifically for images. Because of legal bs google doesn’t link directly to the images it finds in image search whereas DDG does, which makes it MUCH better for image search.
Unfortunately a vast number of individuals work in jobs where virtue signalling IS the product. I work in asset management. Almost every single conference or event has at a minimum one segment on ethical investing or climate change. Everybody wants to make a difference and this is a very easy win. Many asset owners are also not highly technical so this is a way in which they can be seen to be active – much more interesting and easy than trying to shave a few basis points off investment costs.
What we are seeing is very much a problem of too much affluence. Guess what, that’s going to change.
Look at the competition for Twitter. Right now, it’s primarily GAB. Aside from the difficulties of just attracting a user base, they’ve been shut down by the ideological vertical integration of the entire tech world.
Just this week, they finally secured their own servers, after having been shut down repeatedly by the commercial hosts. That’s one barrier down.
But, as Paul Marks has been saying for quite some time, the barriers extend much further. Now, Gab is going to need to find some way to secure payment processors and DN registrars. Both have been instrumental in shutting GAB down in the past.
IN addition, GAB can’t advertise its service on any of the Google/Amazon galaxy of sites. It cannot distribute its app via the big app stores. It cannot be freely discussed in polite Big Tech society.
So it’s not just that Big Tech is too good for us to give it up. They’re actively interfering with competition.
(FYI: https://news.gab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ECs34loXoAEnEIu-768×432.jpg ) (Image listing all of the various techie layers that have shut down on GAB.)
But then what do you do?
If you keep coming out for Progressive issues, then you continue to lose one-sixth each time you move to a different topic. Because Lefties have always been the ones to schism — currently it is TERFs vs Trannies in the limelight, but there are plenty of others. If you are seen to be actively progressive, then there will always be pressure to take sides on difficult issues.
And then you get it wrong, and it all comes crashing down. You make a “wrong” move, or your product simply ceases to be trendy because some other company becomes the social media darling.
Better to avoid politics, and focus on making good products. Competitors will flame up in front of you then fade.
There’s a huge mistake in that analysis, which given the dipshits in marketing I’ve known probably is what they believe. The world isn’t split between conservatives and progressives. It’s split between a minority of noisy activists and intellectual, and way larger numbers of ‘normies’ with confused but broadly practical views who really don’t see things in those terms at all.
If some asswipe in marketing actually thinks half the population are ‘progressives’ (& marketing departments are full of asswipes with GIGO market analysis models), they really don’t understand the world at all.
@bobby b
So it’s not just that Big Tech is too good for us to give it up. They’re actively interfering with competition.
OMG!! A company is trying to interfere with the competition? That has NEVER happened before. 😉
(FYI: https://news.gab.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ECs34loXoAEnEIu-768×432.jpg ) (Image listing all of the various techie layers that have shut down on GAB.)
Nearly everything on this list has many, many alternatives. There are many, many registrars, tens of thousands of hosting companies (plus you can build your own) and most of the others are pieces of software, of which there are many options.
On this I am reminded of Fraser’s rule of political parties: when a Democrat sees a problem he thinks of a regulation, when a Republican sees a problem he thinks of a tax cut, when a libertarian sees a problem he thinks of a business opportunity.
There are, though, two choke points: payment servers and app stores.
You can’t just set up your own payment server because of course it is massively, heavily regulated by the government. Now I’d rather these things weren’t regulated by the government, but insofar as they are then for sure the government should ban any form of discrimination in the type of customers they accept. I wonder if it is even legal to do that.
App stores are definitely more difficult, especially the Apple App store. Google though you can install access to a different app store. It is more difficult that out of the box, but I guess that is a matter for the developer of the alternative app store to make it easy as possible. (For example, Amazon runs a different app store.) It is also, I might add, in a highly regulated business — cell phones. It seems to me that the FCC is going to grant exclusive access to phone companies to use the bandwidth that we all own, then it is only right that they demand that the devices that use that bandwidth provide access without discrimination.
FWIW, as far as I can see it might already be illegal to discriminate in banking and on the airwaves, and if it isn’t it is surely within the purview of an Executive Order. So it seems to me that the government could quite legitimately act to free up these barriers, and perhaps you are right that is in part a source of a lot the barriers to competition.
Yeah, let me phrase that more carefully:
Companies are making ideology-based decisions to stifle certain customers instead of profit-based decisions. (With, perhaps, the caveat that banning paying customers for ideological reasons might well also be profit-motivated if they fear that taking those customers’ monies will offend their progressive customers, who are more numerous.)
bobby b: Are we talking about companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter? If so, the people who use them as search engines or social media aren’t really customers. “If you don’t pay, you’re not the customer; you’re the product.”
(Decades ago, I read a Marxist journal article about television which argued that what television was producing was audience. When you watched a broadcast, they were selling your eyeballs to the cash customers. The point made sense to me, and it remains true for newer media.)
“Social Responsibility” Collectivism first appeared in “Business Schools” as far back as the 1970s – if President Trump went back to Wharton today (the oldest business university in America) he would not find the conservative place he graduated from in the 1960s. The far left (indeed DISGUISED Marxist ideas) that were in a few universities in the 1960s are now dominant even in the Business Schools – and it was made much worse by President Obama who, by a skilful “interpretation” of Article Nine of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, made answering back (dissenting) from the leftist agenda of most universities unacceptable – answering back was deemed to be creating a “hostile environment” for groups of students that the left support (or claim to support) so students who openly dissented from Frankfurt School of Marxism doctrines (which was quite common as recently as 2008) could be punished by the universities under the “guidance” of the Obama Administration – thus crushing Freedom of Speech in education.
It is much the same in the United Kingdom – accept that here there was no need for any “skilful interpretation” as there is no First Amendment to get round.
So students have, for years, left British universities filled with “Social Responsibility” disguised Marxist doctrines – and become Corporate Managers.
Besides which modern Corporations tend to look to the state and the Central Bank – rather than to CUSTOMERS (looking to customers is considered vulgar – money should come by state and Central Bank direction, very Saint-Simon, indeed one can trace it back all the way to PLATO).
However, Perry points to a fight back among some Corporations – a desire to do business with CUSTOMERS. Rather than “educate” or “enlighten” people about their evil racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic and anti environment ways.
I wish businesses who reject “the Agenda” (“Sustainable Development” “Build Back Better” “Totalitarianism NOW!”) every success.
How many British companies have campaigned for an end to Covid restrictions – very few.
How many British companies have campaigned for more government Covid subsidies – very many.
This is a sign of the Progressive attitudes of managers. Due to their “education”.
I’m just glad that so many TV advertisers have shown me that mixed-race relationships between vegans are the norm. It’s costing them my trade and I don’t even watch much TV.
GamecockJerry – Same here. Our last big corporate communications webcast featured two main points – first the company was going to restructure in response to business losses and shed 6% of the workforce. Second, we were launching another inclusion push internally (have just kicked off a major program 9 months earlier). More time was spent on the second item of course.
At a local site meeting I got to watch our business president, a 2nd generation Indian-American, go on about how he failed to understand his white privilege and was determined to do better.
Fortunately the company still gives a nice severance package, and I was getting close to the end anyway, so the restructure will be my chance to take the money and run.
bobby b
Companies are making ideology-based decisions to stifle certain customers instead of profit-based decisions. (With, perhaps, the caveat that banning paying customers for ideological reasons might well also be profit-motivated if they fear that taking those customers’ monies will offend their progressive customers, who are more numerous.)
Right, this is due to what the Soviets used to say, the decadence of the west. Why are they doing this? Because they can. When a company is as vastly profitable as Google the managers are empowered to indulge themselves and their goals. Fortunately, the free market offers a solution to this — competition. Competition is a tool to squeeze these inefficiencies out of the market. And that is really the solution to all of these problems. Nonetheless, as our prior discussion seems to conclude, I think the real source of the prevention of competition is the banking system and the app store system, and I think that the government does have a role in ensuring no such discrimination appears there, since they are so highly regulated already.
(If we had a free market banking system it would be easy enough to set up an alternative to paypal, but doing so is a regulatory nightmare which overwhelmingly favors the big established players.)
Nonetheless, it is fair to say that it is ridiculous for, for example, GAB to come along and in a year be highly competitive with Twitter. Twitter has spent tens of billions of dollars getting to the point they are at, and GAB, if they want to get to a similar position may well have to do so too. If twitter wants to milk the gigantic, expensive cow they have created, it seems perfectly legitimate for them to do so.
It is a curious thing, don’t you think, that one of the arguments in favor of patents is that inventors have all this sunk cost that the competitors can skip. But the situation in the tech world seems to belie that argument.
Yes, this is the crux of so many problems.
This relevant article in The American Conservative startups who are eager to be just successful and innovative enough to sell themselves to the domain-dominant company who will shut them down, and what might be done to improve the situation.
Off topic, I don’t know what shaving products Harry’s sells but ebay sells razor blades from various lesser known manufacturers, for instance in packets of 5 blades. I recently paid £10 for 10 years’ supply, previous to that I paid £6 in 2009 and jokingly said to the wife that these blades will last for 10 years. I use the Boots black cheapo razor which isn’t aggressive. I shave twice a week.