[mtalantikite]

“I personally am afraid to associate myself too publicly with a political stance, lest I be wrong and/or the environment changes.”

I can understand this fear, but generally if you choose a stance based on compassion for all beings you’ll be in the right in the long run.

This particular issue was sparked by Coinbase not taking a stance on Black Lives Matter, which they are wrong about. Standing for dismantling racism is always correct.

[knorker]

On the other hand working with crimecurrency is always wrong, so already there we can say that every coinbase employee who stays is evil.

> Standing for dismantling racism is always correct.

As opposed to standing against it, yes. As opposed to "we're just building a juicer, man", no.

Not every group of people "must" take an active stance on every social issue. If they did then they would do nothing but that.

This is why I'm hesitant to invest in Silicon Valley stock at the moment. If this trend continues they'll spend 100% of their time "making a stand", and not innovating or trying to fulfil their stated mission.

I have a responsibility to keep my own house in order. To make sure I'm not racist, homophobic, etc... I don't have a responsibility to spend my life on a cause you select for me, even if that cause is just.

If I were to pick a cause it would be that the central organization for a leading religion is actively harboring and protecting child rapists from international law enforcement. But still I would not, like you, say that every organization that doesn't march under that banner are "wrong about" that.

Companies are not "supporting status quo of child rapists" if they don't put up banners on their website. They're just not. That's nonsense.

You can't condemn me for not marching with you. That's fascism.

[mtalantikite]

I mean yeah, I agree. Except maybe the not investing money part, that was a little extra. But everything else, for sure.

[tuna-piano]

Funny, I don't see anyone complaining that Fruit Gushers hasn't taken a stand on child pornography?

I will disagree somewhat with the people who say that companies never have a place for political stuff. If you are any company involved in South Africa during apartheid you should choose a side on apartheid and voice that position.

If BLM means just the simple definition of what the words imply (that black lives matter), there's no point in saying it. Because there's literally no one on the other side. I suspect that's not what it means, because saying a broader statement "All Lives Matter" seems to be considered a kind of slur.

So "Black Lives Matter" means something deeper. More like "Black people are killed indiscriminately by police in this country. The cops get away with it, and it's a huge problem." That is full of assumptions and political beliefs that reasonable people can disagree about. And I don't see why every company should take a side on that issue.

[tshaddox]

> Funny, I don't see anyone complaining that Fruit Gushers hasn't taken a stand on child pornography?

Child pornography, from what I can tell, is not a controversial issue. Most companies haven't made statements about their views on murder, theft, and slavery either. But if the nation were prominently split over whether murder, theft, slavery, or child pornography are good things, I would hope some companies would make a statement.

[tomp]

Actually child pornography is a controversial issue, because it’s often use as a “think of the children” excuse to censor the internet or ban cryptography.

[jiuahweruihawi]

The nation isn't prominently split over whether racism is bad or whether black lives matter.

It is, however, prominently split over whether the specific, contentious version of "anti-racism" though promulgated by the likes of Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo - "Critical Race Theory", to call it by its academic name - is the One True Anti-Racism that it claims to be, or whether it's counterproductive, divisive, anti-liberal and on track to set race relations back by decades.

Companies have as much moral obligation to state support for CRT as they do to state their support for Trotskyism or Randian Objectivism.

[hnracer]

Standing for dismantling racism is always correct, but that's distinct from explicitly stating support for the Black Lives Matter political organization.

If you don't agree with some of their stated objectives, tactics, leadership, it should be OK to refuse to offer support, and that doesn't automatically imply a tacit support of racism, and it doesn't automatically imply resistance to lower-case black lives matter.

[Kiro]

> but generally if you choose a stance based on compassion for all beings you’ll be in the right in the long run

I like capitalism and the free market because I think it's the best system to give most prosperity to a broad spectrum of society. I believe that I take this stance based on compassion but I can assure you that this view is not popular among other people who are in the compassion camp.

[mtalantikite]

You can disagree about the methods to achieve the thing while still agreeing about what the compassionate stance is. We would likely agree that moving people out of poverty is a compassionate thing, even if we disagree about what the best way to do that is.

No one is asking Coinbase to take a stance and say that the police must be abolished, or that the way forward for Black liberation is X policy. They were simply asking them to acknowledge that racism exists and Black lives do in fact matter.

[knaq]

Standing for dismantling racism might always be correct, but burning down predominately black neighborhoods doesn't seem to relate to that in a positive way. You can't dismantle racism by causing devastation in the name of black people.