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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Saudi wealth is seeking to diversify, so its using its patrimony to seek alternative income streams to oil. So good for Saudis. This fund is seeking opportunity in many places, among them SV. That’s also a good thing, for the most part. In short, I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. It’s funneling research away from oil

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For me it’s not the oil that’s the problem. It’s the wahabi sect of Saudi, the weekly public execution of bloggers and dissenters. The international kidnapping and torture of journalists, the constant bombing of schools and children in Yemen. It’s THAT money. I worked there on a foreign military sale contract and I saw a lot that disgusted me. The male Filipino workers told me they grow facial hair to make themselves less attractive to be raped by their male employers and employer friends. I’d walk through chop chop square on my way to get to the gold market downtown as they were power washing the blood off some feminist activist off the ground of the square (officially named Deera Square). I worked with sensitive elements of their military and am aware of indiscriminate bombing. Hell they shot down one of their own fighters when his wingman accidentally fingered the trigger while inspecting the lead plane for fuel leaks he thought he was having so you can imagine the incompetence around dropping bombs on targets, not to mention viewing Yemenis as subhumans.

Imagine if the westboro Baptists accidentally struck oil and became billionaires and tried to export that version of Christianity and we see why maybe it’s not good that they are allowed to participate in the international community and invest their money that happens to come from oil into these startups. It’s like if Epstein gave money. It doesn’t matter where it came from but from whom.

This is exactly why Saudi investment should be rejected by the first world. No different than the outrage over Epstein donations and MIT.

It’s different; it’s much worse. Epstein was retail evil. Saudi Arabia is wholesale evil. Unfortunately, human nature makes it much easier to grasp retail-level evil, so we’re much more horrified by it.

> Imagine if the westboro Baptists accidentally struck oil and became billionaires and tried to export that version of Christianity

Lemme tell a story bout a man named Fred...

Your story is quite short.

... it's a riff on the Beverly Hillbilly's Lyrics + Fred Phelps who is the leader of the church in question.

I think the perceived negative is more that it comes from the Saudis, and less about the oil per se.

I don't really disagree. America (e.g.) does some fairly disgusting things but at least we (most of us) recognize women as first-class human beings, don't throw people in dungeons and/or whip them in the public square for being critical of the government, and so on. These things are gimmes.

Assuming liberal democracy doesn't totally collapse in the near future, I wonder if a rising tide really does lift all boats—if accepting Saudi investment is the fastest and least bloody way to help those oppressed under their dogshit ass-backwards regime. Right now it almost seems like the reverse is happening.

You don’t see it as a negative that SV has received billions in investment money from a Saudi prince who had a journalist brutally dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul?

It becomes positive when the wealth is transferred and lost. If wealth is increases this isn't a good outcome.

Investments aren't simple wealth transfers.

The questions is about taking money from “Oil wealth”. It’s not about who owns the money per se. if that were the case, people would be refusing lots of money. Lots of institutions would have refused Epstein after the first indictment... but they didn’t.

> I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil.

I don't believe that's the actual problem. If it was Norway investing its oil money, this wouldn't be an issue. It's oil money from a state that is very much not aligned with the values SV companies claim.

I guess you and I have different ideas about SV company values! I think that SV has very lax attitudes on censorship and data collection, and frankly I think that some of these companies practices would be much better accepted by the ruling parties Saudi Arabia than in most of America

Possibly. But the values they claim are very different from the Saudi values. I'm not here to judge whether they are virtuous or not, just pointing out that the article wasn't about "oil money" as "money made from oil" but specifically about oil money coming from countries that are openly opposed to the values SV claims to stand for. I'm sure that the argument would be the same if the money SA invests didn't stem from their oil exports but from Hajj tourism.

Are those SV companies aligned with the values they claim?

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