Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw6383878 | Hacker News Reader

US imports of Russian enriched uranium, platina, cobalt... are now highest in history. Please leave empty moralising out of this.

I am paying for programming services. Traditional banking system is unreliable, so I use crypto. Nothing illegal or unethical!

View on HN

If the unreliability of the traditional banking system is due to sanctions, then that would suggest that what you are doing is circumventing sanctions and thus quite likely illegal.

Lots of caveats as I don't have enough information, happy to be corrected though.

Unless they are dead set on specifically sending money to the 7 sanctioned institutions, there is absolutely nothing illegal or unstable about this. Source: me wiring modest amounts regularly to my own accounts there to pay local taxes and other things from my regular US bank accounts.

Not sure whether it is illegal. I certainly don't like the imperialistic US view that their sanctions are globally binding. Citizens and businesses from other countries should not be bound by US laws while not being on US ground.

But I think that these sanctions against Russia are ethically justified. So circumventing them is unethical for me, whether illegal or not.

Edit: Saying that these sanctions are ethically justified does not imply that they would be the most efficient or effective way to stop the war.

A currency exchange recently got a substantial fine for allowing users to circumvent sanctions.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/crypto-exchange-bit...

> Traditional banking system is unreliable

Chase lets you send wires online for 40 bucks still to all but half a dozen banks there. There might be cheaper ways to wire, too. Not sure what's so unreliable about that, worked all of this year so far.

My experience is opposite, but never tried Chase, will look thx.

need to make sure it's not one of the 7 sanctioned recepient banks. So e.g. Sber obviously won't work, but e.g. Raiffeisen works well for me.

I claim even driving a car is unethical. Russia earns more money from energy imports now than before the war. Price is a function of supply and demand. Supply is difficult to change and certainly not in an ethical way. So everone maintaining demand supports the war, whether they want or not.

An action does not get ethical because others are worse. It's good for your conscience noting others are worse, I don't deny that.

(And I did not say that I don't do the same. I recently had to take a plane. It was unethical to make Russia's war budget grow a tiny bit by doing so, but I thought staying at home would have had other morally unpleasant consequences.)

That’s why we’ve parked the car for all trips that are even theoretically possible with transit and keep the house at 17-18 C (about 64 Freedom Degrees), aside from the toddler’s room.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com