Saudi Backlash Threatens U.S. Startups
wsj.com
wsj.com
No, taking blood money is a risk - and now a bunch of companies who took the money and repetitional risk are now going to have to pay for the harmful externalities of the greedy mindset: "we want money, doesn't matter the morals attached to it"
Everyone makes mistakes and it is clearly a mistake to take money from repressive regimes. The #metoo movement should take a look at some of these companies.
One must be prepared, of course, for the ramifications of asking a question and getting an unpleasant answer.
Public, Open markets are there for a reason.
They cost more, but are more ethical.
They aren't.
If you go public, you have zero control of who owns your company. It's not more ethical - it just launders your ethical responsibility.
There are plenty of people or organizations - who also happen to have a horrific ethical record - who can buy shares in a private company. And there's nothing you can do to stop that.
Is it clearly a mistake to take money from the CIA? The DoD?
A couple of current Silicon Valley giants have been seeded by that money.
Really? One still answers to a democratically, elected president and Congress. One does not.
This isn't comparable.
Just because you live in a democracy doesn't mean you can wash your hands of it. The British empire was a parliamentary democracy, and it has done a lot of truly abhorrent stuff over the 18th and 19th centures.
I mean, I would prefer ethical sources of funding, but drawing the line at "Sadui bad, China bad, Russia bad, American agencies/companies/individuals good" is tribalism.
A detail: They had a monarch with real power in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as a parliament.
If you want to split hairs, we can say that it was settled more definitively in 1661, when Cromwell's head was put on a spike outside Westminster hall.
The empire was governed by Parliament.
The queen/king had some power, sure. Today, Larry Page has some power. Rupert Murdoch has power. The Koch brothers have power. Aristocrats, throughout history have had power, even if they have no formal posts in government. Just because a few well-connected individuals have power in a country, doesn't mean that it isn't a democracy.
Also, I've never heard the UK of that era referred to as a democracy. Here it says that under Queen Victoria (1837-1901), the role of the monarch transformed from one that exercised real power to one that was purely ceremonial:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Victoria-queen-of-Unite...
> If you want to split hairs, we can say that it was settled more definitively in 1661, when Cromwell's head was put on a spike outside Westminster hall.
Those are both wrong. It was settled in 1911 when George V made clear he would intervene by appointing new life peers if necessary to assure passage of reforms which would strip the House of Lords of its power to reject legislation, which finally settled that the Commons would henceforth be effectively the sole decisive ruling body of the Empire.
Prior to that, the Commons (democratic, approximately) and Lords (decidedly not) had an ebb and flow of power, with the Lord's sometimes being more powerful and the Commons sometimes being more powerful (including, for a period, the Commons abolishing the Lords with Cromwell's support, but that, like Cromwell, didn't last.)
Not particularly; I mean, the Commons was democratic and Parliament largely governed the Empire, but the Commons wasn't really the sole meaningful house of Parliament during most ifthe period of the Empire.
Most are against due process, so it is difficult for me to take the movement seriously.
Then they passed it on the culture-at-large saying everyone has this problem, when it is vastly concentrated in Hollywood, which has lead to social breakdown [2].
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/asia-argento-...
If you work at a company that's backed by Saudi Arabia, the proceeds of your work are funneling up into the hands of an increasingly autocratic and persistently repressive government. You have the power to do something about it.
Disclosure: I work at Lyft, which has among its investors Al-Waleed bin Talal. Al-Waleed bin Talal is a member of the Saudi royal family but (apparently) does not have much influence in the current regime.
For what it's worth, the West always had a myopic and sledge hammer approach to solving these issues with threats and violence.
Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are culturally based and therefore subject to a person's individual choice. We can all decide what is right for ourselves. You decide what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me. Moral relativism says, "It's true for me, if I believe it."
Unless there's some actual backlash I think this will blow over and thus far I don't see any "actual backlash". The Google censorship thing barely touched the evening news so I'm not gonna hold my breath.
Let them reap what they sow. Hopefully this serves as a lesson to the next generation of technology companies.
I don't have sympathy for these companies not doing due diligence and taking money from despots.
China regularly disappears its citizens, and now openly is sending them by the hundreds of thousands to re-education camps.
Xi and Prince Salman are two sides of the same coin and if you're comfortable with one and not the other, you're just virtue signaling.
I'm just a IT guy at a business that doesn't have to do business with either regime, so I don't care where people come down on this per se, other than being tired of rampant hypocrisy.
The journey to change starts with a single action... don't disagree with the hypocrisy, but change can't happen if it's prevented from operating in some circumstances in a silo.
Google's planned submission to China's regime is just the beginning of where things have been are are going towards with Xi's China.
Since the Prince's extralegal extortion of the uber rich class in Saudi Arabia its been obvious that he's been concentrating power in his hands like Xi.
Turkey, Russia, Syria, Hungary, China, Venezuela- oppressive strong-men governments are rising like floods in narrow canyons after a storm. It is time that we identify the systemic rise of these Putin clones and decide on a coordinated and consistent response.
Children have died in the detention center with government refusing them even medical care. A 16 year old died few months back waiting for his parents. No media or press is allowed on the island.
To top it off one of their senator wanted "final solution" for their immigrants and this week the government voted for "it's ok to be White" because of racism and discrimination against white race.
That really has nothing to do with the issue of totalitarianism. Some people are treated equal, some people are eliminated, so you get more equality? I think China is just as immoral as SA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Confucius_Institu...
It’s where you say we shouldn’t act against one unless we act against both (or else be labeled virtue signalers) that this becomes whataboutism. It is not about the degree of their offences, or that ones is better/worse or significantly different, but paralyzing action or discussion unless it can always be dolled out equally every time that is the mark of whataboutism.
I remember going camping/hiking in the top of the Uintah mountains as a kid and saw something that made sense but hadn't occurred to me before that time.
In high mountain meadows there were hundreds of tiny rivulets coming off the snow pack. It was enlightening to see each of these seemingly independent rivulets gather down-elevation into brooks, streams and finally a decent sized river.
Identifying that these cults of personality that are proliferating have a common source and that we need to address them as a single phenomenon isn't whataboutism, its trying to crystallize the challenge we are facing as a global society.
The difference here is that SA killed a citizen of another country. I'm not arguing the morality of it, just pointing out the important difference.
Duh.
Many industries took a stand against conflict minerals, it was an action that could be directly traced back to a very sympathetic group. Money is a different beast, you can obscure its origin in many different ways.
At the end of the day the buck will stop with VCs and the entrepreneurs who take their money. If you have a dream and your company needs cash to fulfill that dream, how deep are you willing to go with due diligence to verify that the check you've received isn't covered in blood? Motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug.
Saudi-Arabia is filthy rich, and apparently, that makes murdering an American citizen on Turkish ground legal. I feel disgusted, and everyone who does any business whatsoever with the Saudi-Arabian government is a hypocrite.
What is a government other than a group of people who agree to work together toward certain goals and hold each other accountable to certain moral and ethical standards? Yet somehow, "government" has become the enemy, a thing to be done away with or reduced in scope.
When you do that, and replace government with "voted for with your dollars" corporations, suddenly corporations become the standard bearers of morals and ethics. Now, if I want to stand by my own moral code, I have to research every corporation I interact with. Can't buy those shoes, they employ slave labor. Can't hail this ride sharing service, they endorse autocratic regimes. Can't rent an office over there, they eat meat...or whatever. It's exhausting!
I'd much rather go to the polls, cast a vote for someone who represents my values, and have the government DO ITS JOB!
...but alas, that seems like the least likely thing that will happen in this situation.
Political ideologies do not inoculate you against supporting oppressive regimes or even the oppression of your own people.
A libertarian attitude has its place and deserves a seat at the philosophical table.
One may argue whether or not it is ever possible to avoid at least some component of ethics in purchase decision making as every company must make many decisions on how to source labor and materials. One may also argue whether or not it is ever possible to completely avoid paying for a social safety net (or lack thereof) as crime increases when poverty is rampant.
I merely wanted to point out that (IMHO) the only reason we're even having to read articles like this is because of a glaring lack of moral authority at the head of the current administration.
Probably because there's profit to be had in making deals with that theocratic monarchy. It's the same thing with China. If you're optimizing for market success as you are in free market capitalism, you're incentivized to overlook things that stand in the way of that success, like the immorality of making deals with foreign authoritarians.