Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm not sure that more nefarious aims need to be posited than simple avarice.
There is a lot of Saudi money and they are willing to invest it. And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.
maybe you didn't mean it this way, but i was struck by the nonchalance of this statement, as if being able to spend money justifies taking the investment. and i presume that's exactly why the article was written, to question that kind of stance.
now i love tech, and will defend our ability to progress and advance and make new things where there were none. and sometimes that requires compromise, like taking money from flawed people and institutions (as we all are). but none of us gets a free pass from morality, not even in business. these need to be considered, weighed and balanced decisions.
just because we codify our morality in law and abdicate enforcement to police doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold each other acccountable as well. in fact, holding each other accountable is crucial to ensuring a fair and just society. sometimes we must sacrifice a bit today to make sure we have justice tomorrow. a functioning society requires that we keep each others' avarice in check.
What? That's news to me. What about the entire defence industry? What about all the politicians that take a cushy job in the companies they helped during their time in office and who can be directly held accountable by the electorate? And why should anyone question the Saudis when they just signed a multi billion dollar weapon deal with the US government. Your statement sounds very naive.
To a degree I agree with this statement though. Morality in politics and corporations seems to be purely a tool for those without morality. That is to say, "X would never do that, why do we need laws for it?"
As far as I'm concerned, morality is for a person, unique and without power. If any (meaningful, I guess) power is obtained, such as in companies and politicians, checks and balances need to be in place to prevent abuse, corruption, etc.
We seriously need vast and in depth auditing in politics, because morality is long failed the world.
My point is that politicians cannot be relied upon to have morality. Checks and balances are needed to ensure even those without morals adhere to some sane laws.
To the list of examples of people getting a free pass from morality, I'd add the entire advertising industry, and quite a lot of stuff done in journalism. And many small business owners.
/sarcasm
If most people had the same philosophy you described, USA would have stopped ALL oil imports after 9/11, and start massive investments in electric vehicles and public transportation right then.
If a US investor offers you $50m for 10% of your company, and a Saudi investor offers you $100m for 10% of your company -- which one would you take?
What? It's certainly not the business role to make any moral decisions - while we don't yet have true simple responsibility principle in our society, we're thankfully have some separation of responsibility. If you think that a certain country is immoral and we shouldn't do business with it, lobby for sanctions - this way all businesses will have to abide, without (1) doing things that are completely out of their responsibilities (passing judgement) and (2) failing at their main mission - ROI - by voluntarily giving up competitive advantage.
You forget that businesses don't make decisions at all. A business is not a person, it has no capability to make decisions. The employees that work for the company make the decisions, and they certainly have an obligation to behave ethically.
What? How exactly did they enter into this obligation? Also, how on Earth can you have an obligation that involves a term that everyone interprets in his own way?
By being born.
You're right; it would be much more honest to ask about the influence of Saudi money and Saudi oil in American business, government, and society more generally. But that's not a conversation anyone close to power wants to have; for one thing, the conclusions are uncomfortable, and for another, no one's hands are clean.
People need to be a little more honest and accept that those slogans are marketing messages, nobody in the valley is seriously going to turn an investment away for moral reasons
It's when you don't have a choice or a questionably moral party offers significantly better terms that it's hard to turn it down.
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631084
This kind of attitude is exactly the problem. Sure, they are for profit, but since when is that the only thing that matters? I would never knowingly take blood money from a dictator, even if it meant I lived an impoverished life. If the company I worked for took such money, I would begin looking for alternate employment.
No one is asking why do people take money from bad people, no one is that naive and it's naive to think that they are. We're all familiar with the concept of greed. What they're asking is why do we let this happen in a country that boasts about its commitment to democracy and human rights?
don't get me wrong, I care about this as much as you do. I'm just saying that the valley itself is not the right place for this, it's a political matter. we shouldn't waste our time going on a deep introspection tour into 'tech values', they have a duty towards their shareholders as much as BP or Exxon.
Or as little. The concept of fiduciary duty is just a hack to keep corporations working in the service of capital, rather than, you know, the common good or whatever. It's neither a legal standard nor an economic imperative, just a convenient myth. I guess it can be encoded into the charter of a company, in which case it is their imperative, but I digress.
But I totally agree that it's absurd that this debate is being scoped to the tech industry.
Basically Silicon Valley companies are very vocal about protecting human rights (which is good), and turn around and accept funding from nations that don't value them.
And it's not like these SV Companies didn't have any other source of funding.
The let part is very curious for its implication. What would the proposal be exactly, other than using violence and bureaucracy (every investment goes through an inherently corrupt government investment approval board) to curb free association and dictate capital flows through a command & control filter?
Want to invest in Coca Cola? No you may not, they've killed millions of people with obesity, diabetes and cancer over decades. So says some government tyrant dictating what you're allowed to invest into.
Want to start a marijuana company and take an investment from another marijuana company? No you may not, it's a schedule one drug that is evil, according to some government drug enforcement tyrant. They're not about to let you do such a thing.
You'd have to isolate yourself from half the planet economically to follow it to its proper conclusion. That includes: China, most of Africa, most of the Middle East, half of South America, several Eastern European nations, Russia, along with plausibly India and the US. And really where would we draw the line (other than arbitrarily by previously mentioned government tyrants)? Let's review the historical slave trade practices of various European nations for example, surely that counts against them in this absurdist premise. No investments are to ever be allowed from the Netherlands accordingly.
We live in the real world, where things are not black and white, but that line you talk about? It's called law and we will be spending at least the next couple of centuries working out the kinks.
Because talk is cheap, but comfortable lies work.
The case can easily be made that part of the American rise to power was basically war profiteering.
Even Russia enjoys whataboutism wrt to American morality...
Heck did you take money from a Bank? Would you surprise you to know that virtually every bank actively launders money for drug lords, terrorists and every other sort of undesirables?
Money by definition isn’t clean, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the likes have one of the largest investment funds in the world you can’t withdraw a dollar from a bank without touching that money.
Do you think I'm an idiot? I know that basically half the things I own are at the expense of others, like my nice monitors and other electronics. However, this is a huge step away from taking money from dictatorships and slave traders. Let's be sure we are both talking about the same thing here. I hope to one day apply the skills I have gained at the expense of others to better the lives of the less fortunate to a much greater extent than I have harmed them. It is my ethical duty to do so.
I'm not some confused idealist and I don't appreciate your condescending attitude. I do not personally have a bank account. It is unavoidable that my company has a bank account, and the fact that the money is dirty is a separate issue and needs to be addressed. On the other hand, it isn't unavoidable to turn down investments from bad characters. In the event that my company would knowingly accept such money, I would leave. So I don't understand your point.
You're not the first person to try this angle, and honestly others have made a better argument than you. Stop playing devil's advocate, and let's talk about the reality we actually live in.
Are you wearing your glasses? What VC are you talking about?
I would never knowingly take blood money from a dictator, even if it meant I lived an impoverished life.
If my wife hates me for not taking blood money, I have failed to find a compatible life partner.
If my children hate me for it, I have failed to educate them about morality.
Whatever kind of ill will falls my way as a result of sticking to my guns and valuing the herd over the individual, I will take it with a smile. Because I can sleep at night knowing that I didn't decide that my own petty little problems are more important than the problems faced by people living under dictatorship.
Love can be an incredibly powerful thing. Love can be an incredibly selfish thing. Love can bring peace to all who accept it. Love can be the spark that leads to war. It is neither purely a good or evil thing. It cannot be used as an excuse for supporting the systematic degradation of human rights. That is love being selfish. Because it's not about the wives and children of the world, it is about your wife and your children.
> If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.
-- Meister Eckhart
> If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person. [..] Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of the man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he just has to wait for the right object - and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it.
-- Erich Fromm, "The Art of Loving" (1956)
I will read the Mark Twain story you referenced in the other post tonight, and will share my thoughts with you on it later.
It seems we both see the forest for the trees with this issue, and I appreciate the quotes you've left me. They've given me something to chew on.
It's a nice play on emotions to bring up "wife and children", but that's not reality here.
"But what if you were hanging from a cliff and only a job offer from Pol Pot could save you.. "
Because that's not missing the point at all.
My principle on this matter is more important than any emotion I may have.
Some people feel like it's ok to be selfish as long as they don't directly see the results of their selfishness. Yet imagine if every time you went to pick up your check, you were forced to watch a woman get stoned to death because someone raped her, and the ones doing the stoning were the ones handing you the check.
Any person that is okay with this scenario is a scourge on this planet.
Any person who isn't okay with this scenario, but is ok with taking blood money from foreign countries where they do not have to see the violence actually taking place, well honestly I just pity them for living their life in such a state of confusion.
People love to argue for the abuser. Any argument you can make for "having" to, say, become an SS officer to feed your family, is outweighed by the much more justifiable need to kill that SS officer to protect many more lives.
The people who are on the receiving end of stuff like this usually don't get to post on HN, and to signal obedience towards their murderers, while giving no real thought to those they murder, well... as Ilse Aichinger said, to forget the dead is to murder them again.
If I'd live under circumstances where I indeed had no other choice, maybe. Luckily, I live in Western society, so the answer to your question is "can't happen here".
... right now. But it could not that long ago, and when the wind changes, maybe it could again. Why does the West take oil/blood money? Because we are - no pun intended - a society built on sand.
I can't think of an example that a modern corporation has done something against their benefit for purely for moral reasons.
This is the responsibility of effective government regulation and consumer choice. If we leave it up to the market, we will be continually disappointed.
The thing is each of those serves useful functions so it would be harmful to eliminate or neuter any one of them.
So it seems clear to me there is a lot of value in a division in power between all three. But the trend has been towards more government power, and to more private capital in fewer hands.
I'm sure there is a better way than having this framework, I just don't know if anyone has come up with it yet.
Also, if people really thought SV had any care at all for ethics and morals even before this they must've missed pretty much all of the news about SV for years and years. Not caring about what's right is expected, as long as you don't get caught. It's just a risk/reward thing.
I move among different circles of friends. Some studied philosophy and political science, others arts in general, and others computer science.
It's scary that tech people have this very "blase" attitude (oversimplification perhaps?) that one's motive when it comes to how to handle distribution of money comes down to simple "meritocracy" and/or "greed."
As if the very fact that blaming the innate human debility of giving in to avarice or greed does not presuppose much more problems, such as ulterior motives, cultural bias, nepotism, etc.
There is, of course, the notion that the bigger a corporation gets (e.g., a conglomerate), the more dehumanizing it is. With such large sums of money being moved around (to whatever end or outcome) comes more "bottom line" interests and "corporate interests," and as such, it is less about the individual. The repercussions of this, which are pretty evident to me, is that it creates an institution or entity or agent ("corporation," if you want) that does not have a moral framework or acts not humanely but immorally, while its shareholders and investors can sleep comfortably at night because they distance the self from the company, so it is not the person acting immorally, but some "unknown force" (the Company), which, using reason, cannot actually be "immoral," because surely only humans can act in such a way.
What a world.
but even then I disagree, just look at the life expectancy of the billions of people under capitalism.
Milton Friedman - Is Capitalism Humane?
And no, nobody is 100% innocent and nobody is 100% guilty. Nobody made themselves out of nothing. Everybody started out as a helpless baby and the range of experiences one can get exposed to before even being able to attempt defend oneself is vast. But so what if every abuser got abused in some way or another, or was withheld some crucial things needed for development? Then don't hate them, but absolutely stop them.
Islam forbids them from charging compound interest, but allows them to seek riches in the shared profits of successful ventures.
Without making any comment on the issue of Saudi money, I take issue with the reasoning there. That's effectively saying "there is a simple potential explanation, therefore there's no need to investigate". It's not like being simple therefore means it is the correct explanation, not does it mean that other potential explanations are therefore wrong or invalid.
Are we more likely to see more inherited value come from net negative cash ROI investments? (example - campaign donation) Sure. However, I think it's wrong to assume that just because we return a net positive cash ROI on a financial investment that we shouldn't assume that a non-cash ROI value is achievable.
Is it just me or does the NYC article sound screamly racist
How about an overall view of broader things like human rights, corruption, democracy etc?
The Arab Spring began in 2010 and lasted several years. The (first) Saudi investment in Twitter didn’t happen until December of 2011, and by then much of the region was already on fire. In fact, it’s notable that after the $300M investment, the following summer is when Syria devolved into total Civil War - with February being when Assad invaded Homs.
So, no, I’m still skeptical that we should be allowing this. Given the regional alignment of the Saudis, seeing Syria (an Iranian ally) devolve into chaos wouldn’t have been something they’d exactly move mountains to stop.
Who is we. It's a very different thing to say that there is an ideological compromise or hipocrisy, to State enforced commercial blockades.
And the dire situation of syria doesn't have anything to do with Tweeter. Its as relatable as saying that we should ban dates because they come from the middle east, funding terrible wars.
The author and many others don't like Saudi Arabia and Russia. That's the main reason for advocating a boycott of their investment money, because while the author mentions the poor human rights records of those two countries as the reason, there are plenty of other countries with such records. The main example of which is China, which is of course not mentioned.
The US itself has a poor human rights record on many things, and especially given our current president, had the author been writing from any other country, the US might have been on the list of countries whose money should not be accepted.
I'm not saying the US is as bad as China and Russia and Saudi Arabia. I'm not even saying China is as bad as Russia and Saudi Arabia. I am saying that if you care deeply about this, you should mention more than the easiest targets, if only to avoid the appearance of bias.
The bias also shows itself by considering an entire country as a single entity, when the author says we should not accept Russian investors' money. To justify it, the author says that if a Russian investor has ties to Kremlin-backed companies, they should be off limits. But that probably encompasses a large number of Russian investors. Same as the group of investors with ties to companies funded by US government money (DARPA, NSA, CIA, etc.).
I mean, off the top of my head here's a rough list, in my extremely rough estimation, of human rights offenders from bad to good:
badness country
100% DPRK
90% Saudi Arabia
80% Dubai
70% Russia
60% China
50% USA
40% India
30% Japan
20% Australia
10% Norway
0% Antarctica
Stating "My line is 65% bad or less" is a reasonable argument.
Economic isolationism surely isn't the answer - seeing as North Korea is #1 on that list. Notice that the countries lowest on your list of badness have the closest ties to Western countries (with the exception of Antarctica). Saudi Arabia becoming more closely tied economically to Western countries is an opportunity to lessen its "badness" on your scale. Recent developments, like allowing women to drive and encouraging more women to work are still ridiculously backwards by the standards of the Western world, but represent steps in the right direction
As others have pointed out international pressure was instrumental in dismantling Apartheid in South Africa. That is one clear example.
Take my home country Norway, since we are on the list ;-) It is one of the richest countries in the world as well as most equal which tends to lower corruption. Poverty and inequality raise it.
But of course history and culture matters too. Norwegians have had a reputation for honesty for hundreds of years. In some ways it is self perpetuating. There was a story about a Norwegian sailor who had cheated a prostitute in a foreign city. This angered the other Norwegian sailors who made him go back to her next time the landed to apologize and pay her compensation. To them this guy was risking the reputation of all Norwegian sailors. Something they benefitted well from.
When you got a reputation you become invested in it.
Another factor of course is "How much is this country actively trying to undermine/is a potential enemy of my own?" which probably for most countries we'd think of as "western" puts Russia, and to a lesser extent China, at the top of the list.
We see in political science that the definition of nations is somewhat circular - for a country to meaningfully exist, its recognition of a significant number of other countries is almost an essential feature. This is the reason that projects like Sealand fail, and also why revolutions attract so much international meddling.
Late 19th century unbridled mercantilism killed millions
I put Japan there because of its more or less systematic discrimination against people of korean ancestry, lack of support for the economically disadvantaged (eg. freeters, NEET), generally outdated attitudes to women and of course their 99% conviction rate criminal justice system. But honestly, you could make a case either way. Japan's not a bad country in aggregate.
I had to think of something!
> you should mention more than
> the easiest targets, if only
> to avoid the appearance of
> bias
He has already publicly complained that he can’t use the FBI for whatever he wants to, like going after his political opponents.
amirite
When his political opponents take money to approve a deal to sell one-fifth of the United States's uranium production to Russia [0], perhaps the FBI should be going after them.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton...
It's like the European monarchies of a couple hundred years back: even if the countries fought wars against each other for territorial squabbles or whatever, their deeper interest was in maintaining the system, and on that they were all allied. So they married each other, met in the Congress of Vienna, etc., because they knew that in supporting each other and the current balance of power, they themselves would be much more likely to keep power.
Why they fund startups is even more self interested, they really do want to make money, and believe it or not, it is much easier and profitable to do that through investing then to become a rogue state.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/21/technology/saudi-softbank-te...
KSA investors seem to be acting as extremely large limited partners which makes a lot of investment sense for them.
Dunno if CFIUS can look at this but isn't that what they're there for?
I mean shouldn't a distinction be made between the government, the zealots, private investors, citizens and so on?
Lots of sovereign wealth fund cash, also people within the monarchy with money to throw around.
TBF the US well and truly falls into that category too.
"America is also bad!" would not be a defense to selling chemical weapons to Hussein. It's not a defense to helping build the Great Firewall. Your actions' consequences are your fault.
Could you elaborate how you came to this conclusion?
Ah, but America has also done this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegle_Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War#Iraq_2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq%E2%80%93United_States_rel...
Now, if you want to know my personal opinion, I am very critical of Saudi Arabia and if Russia and Iran are treated as enemies and sanctioned I think the treatment of SA should be the same.
If nothing else, massive inputs of fossil fuels are required to sustain the Valley tech economy, too, in all kinds of direct and indirect ways. Tech has been helping make the oil autocracies rich since forever.
No country had gotten as many UN resolutions or attempts of it against itself despite in the grand scheme of things they don’t make the top 10. Typically these resolutions are filed by arab countries with far worse humanitarian record.
Why is this complicated?
This presents a conundrum. Tech companies are fond of pseudo-revolutionary mission statements that extol the virtues of diversity, tolerance, freedom of expression and other progressive ideals. They have argued that their technologies are part of a force for global liberation — that forging more open communication and economic productivity through technology will loosen the grip of tyrannies across the globe. For much of the last year, Silicon Valley has also promised a revolution in its own culture, with large and small companies alike vowing to become more inclusive of women and minorities.
To outsiders it looks fake, hypocritical, and a little immoral. $300 million is nice, but why sell your soul for it?
I'm reminded of the "values of the carphone warehouse [of which there are none]" bit.
Employees have values. Companies have employees and assets. They are a moral compromise by their very nature. Big (public) companies especially, have little interest in being "ethical", as by their sheer size, their economical duties are enormous.
I do believe this would dwarf any concerns short of... Well, what issue can you have that's big enough to risk the livelihoods of thousands or millions? I can think of none.
(I'm trying to describe things as they are, not as I would like them. The lesson is that to change the way companies behave you have to change all of society. In my humble opinion, "values" are the result required for homeostatis, and almost never the motivators.)
talk is cheap. Action speaks louder than any words. Any company that doesn't action on issues they claim they care about doesn't really care about it.
This is what "taking money" means. You don't need to be more specific about the investor. You cannot take any money if you are not willing to give your soul in exchange. Even a $30k/year paycheck requires that in many regards.
I fail to see how accepting investments from Saudi Arabia is selling once's soul or compromising on those values. If anything, the fact that Saudi Arabia is diversifying its investments and becoming invested in the economies of Western countries is likely a driving factor of their latest pushes towards more egalitarian (but, relatively speaking, still backward-as-hell) values.
Because people make investments all of the time that produce more than just currency returns. That's the argument and hence why it's complicated.
So, I am wondering how many tech startups do a reverse due diligence on the companies offering them money? Is that a normal expected practice?
I think you have a point in general, but let's not take the proclamations at face value.
> The Saudis haven’t tended to try and influence their investments, they are mostly a silent investor so far
Do we know this somehow? Beyond a doubt, if they have power they will use it.
How would you know? Such things are rarely disclosed; both parties prefer to keep them confidential.
> they must be cognizant of the fact that doing so at this time would make most companies reluctant to accept their investment
Many companies make deals like that all the time. Look at the influence of China in Hollywood:
> the goal is to keep the people ignorant and subject to the ancient stupidity of religious dogma
The present wave of fundamentalist Orthodoxy in Russia (demanding a ban on screenings of the film Mathilda, attacking other arts figures or those who would try to shield property from Church repossession, etc.) is actually mobilized in large part through social-networking platforms.
That's simultaneously a reference to George R. R. Martin and Toys for Bob!
It seems to me that all (or at least almost all) of the companies cited in the article are now (as of Nov 2017) public companies, how are they supposed to not accept investments? On the one hand I understand the criticism because many of those investments came before those companies went public (e.g. the one, cited in the article, that Twitter took in 2011) but what would be the proposed action now? The article seemed to me a bit simplistic.
At least we're getting some of the money back in investment.
But yeah, a major investor, especially in hard times can have clout and can influence a lot of things. With one suggestion...
It worked.
What's your point? This article cannot be accidental.
Another option, the recent detention of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal (same reason, money and influence over media).
There are more incentives (i.e. more eyeballs) to talk about the latest news and people who are in power today. If Congo becomes a global investiment power in the future, you'll hear more about Congo.
Of course we should all be wary of market manipulations by people with easy access to lots of eyeballs but this article is too widespread to have any direct impact on the market or a specific company.
How to do it is complicated. If people like the Saudis offer money, consider the consequences. Consider your power to say 'no' to the influence they may wish to wield and how much you are legitimizing them by association.
As an example, Chinese censors now influence Hollywood. The Chinese government threatens to deny their market to those who don't cooperate, and so Americans and the world see films that are effectively censored, to a degree, by the Chinese government. For example, in the 1990s Disney made the film Kundun, about the Dalai Lama. China penalized Disney heavily in the domestic market.
In October 1998, [Disney head Michael] Mr. Eisner met Zhu Rongji, who had just been named prime minister, at China’s leadership compound in Beijing. Mr. Eisner apologized for “Kundun,” calling it a “stupid mistake,” according to a transcript of the meeting.
“This film was a form of insult to our friends, but other than journalists, very few people in the world ever saw it,” Mr. Eisner said during the meeting. (“Kundun” bombed, taking in just $5.7 million against a production budget of about $30 million.)
Mr. Eisner said the company had learned a lesson.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/business/international/ch...
Seen many films critical of China lately?
Here's an easier one- oil is running out so the Kingdom needs to diversify. Tech provides investment and job opportunities.
Unparalleled economic growth continued to happen because it didn't matter to anyone of importance and status.
Whatever fake stigmas were shoved down the throats of the morally subscribed underclass only serve to keep them squabbling and maintaining the social and economic order which has always been here.
Think!
OKAY. Yes, keep trying to tell us what to think that worked out SOOOO well last year.
It may improve somewhat under Mohammed. But you know, starting from almost 0% it's really easy to improve and still be far, far away from 100%.
Why is that a problem? The Cold War is over. The Russian influence on the world stage is not what it once was (China has definitely superseded it), and it's a capitalist society so their interests are mostly aligned with capitalist societies elsewhere.
Clearly their interests are not aligned with most capitalist societies, including the ones in Europe, East Asia, and the U.S. Russia overtly calls these nations their enemies, those nations see Russia as a threat, and Russia regularly threatens them militarily and interferes in their domestic politics at an extreme level (short of war).
As for the EU, the 'enemy' status is over a battle for control of Ukraine, and the trade sanctions that happened as a result of Russian invading Ukraine to stop Ukraine becoming a member of the EU. More detail about trade sanctions:
https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-sa...
The US has also imposed trade sanctions for similar reasons:
https://www.state.gov/e/eb/tfs/spi/ukrainerussia/
In my opinion Russia is in the wrong here, I'm just pointing out the reason behind that 'enemy' status. In countries that conduct business with Russia, that enemy status is far less pronounced.
Ukraine is a continuation of and part of a much larger struggle. Russia is interfering in European countries' elections and domestic politics; they also annexed, unofficially, part of Georgia; they are pushing countries to abandon or not join the EU; they are working against European countries in other regions, including in the Mideast; they are trying to divide NATO by building an alliance with Turkey ...
And if I want free markets, and I notice that free markets lead to people being murdered, then I should be proud when people do get murdered? Otherwise I would necessarily have to reject free markets? Or what exactly is your point?
(a) Why does paying $300mio to Twitter results in people getting killed?
(b) Why do you think your government/companies/people would do better?
(c) What you should be proud of if you like free markets is that everybody with money and interest in a company can put their money in that company. In a non-free market like China you are way more limited with foreign investments.
(d) "Free" means everybody can do what they want. If you want to limit what people are doing you are not talking free markets. That's in fact a reasonable argument from the Socialist spectrum. Don't allow people to run around freely, harming themselves and each other. One really has to decide what one likes in that spectrum. Each direction has their own pros and cons.
Who claimed it did?
> (b) Why do you think your government/companies/people would do better?
What makes you think I think that?
> (c) What you should be proud of if you like free markets is that everybody with money and interest in a company can put their money in that company. In a non-free market like China you are way more limited with foreign investments.
Why should I like free markets as a primary value?
> (d) "Free" means everybody can do what they want. If you want to limit what people are doing you are not talking free markets. That's in fact a reasonable argument from the Socialist spectrum. Don't allow people to run around freely, harming themselves and each other. One really has to decide what one likes in that spectrum. Each direction has their own pros and cons.
If you want to limit my ability to erect a government that limits what you can do, then we are not talking freedom. Agree?