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Comment by mattlutze | Hacker News Reader

Private individuals choose who they want to do business with, including who they take money from.

Your argument really goes both ways. If the sovereign citizens of Saudi Arabia want their national wealth invested in private industry, maybe they need to first change their country to be the sort of place these investment seekers want to do business with. There's great examples of positive changes toward business and investment from liberalization across the globe, which the Saudi people could take as example for how to become a more attractive investment and funding partner.

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Welfare states depend on economies of scale that only states can provide. Switching to a culture of totally private mode of investment would mean an end to the welfare state and the slipping of much of the population into precarity. So, the best thing for both Saudis and the world would be politically liberalizing moves that maintain all that state investment and high standard of living, but with authorities that aren't corrupt murderers.

However, as we have abundantly seen in the Middle East, making life worse for the populace tends to hinder those very moves towards more just government because of the resentment it breeds.

There's no need to make the question binary; plenty of liberal states have strong social systems, and yes changing federal state management structures though would be one change that could make Saudi Arabia more attractive an investment partner.

Going into business with the royal family strengthens its power globally and domestically and decreases the chance that the Saudi population could effect a change, whether they wanted to or not. It also legitimizes the actions of the Saudi royal family. That's a consideration that a private individual is under no greater political obligation to make one way or the other, and a consideration that should be made with deliberation (as should any decision of this kind be made).

We're missing I think a good argument for forcing private founders to be critical of how they run their business but to avoid due diligence on whether funding sources come from the Saudi monarchy. How the government of the US and other countries negotiate relations and sovereign trade with Saudi Arabia is a separate though indeed important topic.

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