Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beaconstudios | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I do think that we should look at these choices through a utilitarian lens and consider both the immediate and long term impact of such decisions. I do think that innocent Russian civilians will inevitably get caught in the crossfire with sanctions, which is unfortunate. I still believe that it is a moral good to penalise colonialism and other unethical activity through withdrawal of material support because this increases the cost of such actions. I'm not sure what justification there could be that continuing material support for an expansionist government during an invasion has positive utility, it smells like an argument for consistency to me but I'd be happy to be corrected.

Something that comes to mind is the argument against aid NGOs in places with dire poverty and hunger. When an NGO comes to your town, where you are trying to build a farm business, and delivers months worth of free rice, can you afford to run your business? Similarly, can any russians make successful software as a service that analogues FOSS offerings? No they cant, because the alternative is available and free.

Remove the free rice and you satisfy your egos necessity for first order moral resolution via punishment- bad people dont get rice- but as for second order effects? Perhaps now it becomes feasible to build a sustainable farm (or apache competitor)

The aid NGO question comes down to whether locals can build a self supporting economy and whether the aid is hampering economic development - but it isn't a binary question because you can subsidise farmers or reduce aid commensurate with local supply.

I'm familiar with second order effects, and nth order effects and nonlinear causality. If we restrict Russia's access to Apache Web server, sure, they will eventually develop a local equivalent. So, over time they transition from being disadvantaged to simply leveling the playing field. That's a pretty good outcome, especially if many more open source projects could withdraw from Russia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com