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Comment by wheybags | Hacker News Reader

You inadvertently argued against your own point. Your friend's startup died, that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do. Whether the specific instance of sanctioning was justified is another matter of course, but the point is that the economy was damaged. That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.

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> that is what economic sanctions are designed to do

Agreed - that is the point. To hurt ordinary people so that they care (not said lightly). Sanctions are designed to punish a whole country.

While messed up, you can't just affect/punish the leadership. If you could we would already be doing that. The way to hurt the leaders is to hurt the ordinary people such that they vote, rise up, etc against the governmental actions.

Russia's ruble has dropped up to 40%+ because of the sanctions and the people are pulling their money in droves. This puts huge pressure on Putin to rethink what he's doing by making it incredibly expensive to wage this war.

> That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.

40,000+ people died in Venezuela because of sanctions.

[0]: https://cepr.net/press-release/report-finds-us-sanctions-on-...

This is an super exaggerated number to attributte only to sactions, our TOTALITARIAN REGIME actions killed those people and the reality is that sanctions just helped them

Before the sanctions, (that started in 2015), we had already huge economical problems (and problems of kinds), mainly due the goverment focusing on making one of the greatest corruption acts of all times [1] and focusing on systematically making the venezuelan population poorer, sicker, hungrier and dependant, in order to keep the power and keep stealing money.

The thing is, sanctions did absolutelly NOTHING in favour of venezuelans citizens and their freedom, in fact, they made it easier for the Venezuelan totalitarian regime to justificate their acts (forcing hunger, violating human rights [2], etc) and made it stronger in a way that since our country got alienated, we got more support from other totalirian regimes such as China and Rusia.

So hurting the ordinary people, as that post say, was just putting an extra nail to the coffin of every venezuelan that died of hunger and sickness.. Was just encouraging more people to fight for freedoom with rocks vs guns and died or got detained [3] [4]...

All for nothing, and 6 years later, over 300billions usd stolen later, 2.000.000% hyperinflation later, 7.000.000 venezuelans gone later, over 400 people killed in protest later, over 5,000 political detentions later, the govt is still there and... blocking venezuelans from using stripe, transferwise, etc, is going to help us haha ..

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Venezuela

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Venezuela

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_protests_(2014%E2%8...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Venezuelan_protests

If sanctions kill any amount of people greater than zero makes it a deadly weapon against innocent people and should never be used. Additionally, anyone who uses sanctions should be considered committing an act of terrorism because of their intended effect being killing innocent civilians.

By that reasoning the west would never have invaded Nazi Germany. Lots of innocent people on both sides died in that invasion, and yet the world is now a better place because of it.

Well you won't know without knowing the difference. Just say that we've a different order but for ordinary people probably make no difference.

You born after that so did I. Is like saying that the world is better place now because Napoleon invaded Europe. Well, you won't know what would be if he didn't so your argument has no logic (and, in addition you have no idea how life was during that time)

His argument also fails with the Ukraine situation. The world may be a better place today because the USSR disbanded, but Ukraine would not be being invaded by Russia today if the USSR never disbanded.

Uhm, no? If the USSR never disbanded, hundreds of millions would still be suffering under a broken system instead of starting on the path to recovery a few decades ago.

The breakup was unquestionably a good thing for humanity.

Are you actually arguing we should’ve let the Nazis be and slaughtering every non-Aryan in sight?

Luckily sanctions don't directly kill anyone so it's not an issue.

Have you ever lived under sanctions? Have you lived your whole life in a country who has only been an imposter of sanctions?

Yes. No.

Instead of trying to use some vague "you haven't lived it!" argument, it would be nice if you could provide an example of someone directly killed by sanctions.

If you need a medicine to live and I take away your access to that medicine which results in your death, I have killed you.

Would you agree? If you do, then sanctions directly kill people.

No, that is indirect. Thus when that same medicine gets delayed en-route due to a large rain storm, one wouldn't say you were "killed by the rain".

So you want NATO to start bombing Russia, or...?

I'm firmly anti-war so that means I'm anti-bombing as well as being anti-sanctioning.

The easiest of all positions to take.

It is the best position to take. How many civilian deaths is too much for you, if not zero?

Ignoring regime change for a minute, the two big levers EU/USA seem to have is sanctions and proxy war (by funding and equipping Ukraine). Anything else like bombings are immediately off the table due to nuclear deterrence. Not doing anything seems like the second worst possible outcome as appeasement will only lead to disaster in the inevitable follow up wars. If we take minimizing civilian casualties as the goal, is your position that equipping Ukraine and leaving Russia alone otherwise is the best option?

It is by far the weakest position to take. Your world with no aggressors is fantasy. The only person who had the choice to do nothing was Putin. Our failure to respond to him would result in many more deaths. Incidental casualties from sanctions are unfortunate, but in real life we always have make compromises.

Are you willing to die for this better world? It is strictly immoral to condemn others to death at your benefit while others must die for your gain.

If your children or siblings or parents had to die for you to live, would you choose that?

That isn't even a good attempt at a straw-man. Let's be honest, what qualifies as "my gain" in your argument here is "less death." So yeah, I'm willing to do what it takes to reduce death.

You're arguing that we should do nothing and let Putin go on his rampage unopposed, as if that will result in less death. To say that I disagree with you would be pretty redundant at this point, and you're not making good faith arguments, so I'm out.

You are making the assumption that people _must_ die. Not only that, but the people that must die should be dying because of sanctions, which means those that must die should be civilians.

The gain I mentioned was that you and your loved ones live. You and your loved ones get to enjoy a longer life with the price of other peoples loved ones dying from sanctions. You believe that's the best way forward.

People _must_ die when one country invades another with their military. That's how military invasions work.

Believe it or not, the Russian soldiers that invaded Ukraine weren't shooting paintball guns.

Do you have any proposal as to what the rest of the world should do while Russia brutalizes a country it has no business in attacking? It's definitely not a "defeat them in the marketplace of ideas" kind of situation.

Killing Russian civilians isn't a solution which is why I am firmly anti-bombing and anti-sanctions.

So what is a solution?

> that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do

They're designed to cause regime change, or at least diplomatic changes. That has failed in Venezuela's case (and Cuba's, and North Korea's, and Iran's, and so on).

What's funny (actually, it's very sad) is that any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis; we would see a repeat of 2008 (likely worse due to some factors having changed since then). Be careful what you wish for, as those who virtue signal naively today, thinking it'll only affect citizens in faraway lands, may themselves face frozen ATMs, credit cards, and bank transfers in a few months, if the worst-case (i.e. their dream scenario) occurs.

"any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis"

You'd need to back this up with some real evidence for it to be convincing.

As it stands right now the freezing of Russian reserves is in effect and international markets are essentially untouched, what are these additional sanctions you are referring to?

I am not an expert in this area but is seems to me that if Russia disappeared from the financial system, with an annual GDP of 1.4 trillion, nobody would really notice after the initial write-downs. It is one tenth of China, and has been chasing away FDI for over a decade - thus reducing its international impact. But I am open to explanations as to why this is a big deal, let me know!

I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.

The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).

It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.

I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?

Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).

And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.

> I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.

> The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).

> It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.

> I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?

> Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).

> And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.

That didn't answer their question at all.

Your reply doesn't seem to address my point directly. The appeal to "time" doesn't really work given that that Moscow stock exchange has been closed since last Friday and seems unlikely to open this week.

Cuba has changed quite a bit in the last half century, I would look into it if I were you, most resorts in the country are Cuba-FDI joint ventures - it is complicated but sanctions where most of the world actually disagrees with you are a lot more difficult than this situation.

In this particular case it seems that the work-arounds are not generally available. The Russian government was not prepared to have their own reserves frozen.

Not really, his point is that sanctions do more harm to regular people. Kenya right now is the only country pointing out how this will cause a humanitarian crisis, because they know what that looks like. We should stand together against autocratic imperialists regimes, sanctions should be targeted at the regime and russian oligarchs

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docindex/v1...

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