51–60 of 289 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is really asking "why does the tech industry accept Saudi money?", not "why does Saudi Arabia invest in tech companies?"
Same answer: simple avarice. There is a lot of Saudi money and they are willing to invest it. And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You apply pressure on companies taking investment from the Saudis collectively. If you can’t support Uber because of an atmosphere of sexually harassment, how can you support them when their investment dollars are coming from a country that subjugates women? That creates an indentured servant class from imported labor? That sort of argument. It’s blood money, and that’s the narrative you use (if one was so inclined).…
You apply pressure on companies taking investment from the Saudis collectively. That's just rephrasing it... how do you apply pressure? Everyone needs oil, many don't care about these issues, so how do we make them toe a line? What pressure do we exert? How much political capital do we burn without a hope of return? At the end of the day though, you say "blood money" as though both sides aren't drenched in it. Moreov…
I’d agree with your sentiment that they’re too much of an ally for anything meaningful to be done about their investments, but the winds shift quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is really asking "why does the tech industry accept Saudi money?", not "why does Saudi Arabia invest in tech companies?"
Same answer: simple avarice. There is a lot of Saudi money and they are willing to invest it. And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.
People need to be a little more honest and accept that those slogans are marketing messages, nobody in the valley is seriously going to turn an investment away for moral reasons
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same answer: simple avarice. There is a lot of Saudi money and they are willing to invest it. And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.
yep kind of confused to. The silicon valley is a for-profit sector, when they write "diversity, inclusiveness, fairness" and so forth on their banners they are very much qualifying this within a business context. People need to be a little more honest and accept that those slogans are marketing messages, nobody in the valley is seriously going to turn an investment away for moral reasons
It's when you don't have a choice or a questionably moral party offers significantly better terms that it's hard to turn it down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it isn’t nefarious, maybe we still shouldn’t let them profit off our liberal democracy while they exploit their own citizens, enslave foreigners, fund terrorism, and abuse women. Maybe we shouldn’t let them have their cake and eat it too. Make them pick between human rights and investing in the S&P500.
Maybe the problem is the point where they exploit their own citizens, enslave foreigners, fund terrorism, and abuse women - not where they do all that and then invest money in US tech industry? Otherwise it sounds like we're ok with all this enslavement, abuse and all, but just to a point - and the breaking point where we say "no more! we really need to have a serious talk about it now!" is buying AAPL stock. Doesn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if it isn’t nefarious, maybe we still shouldn’t let them profit off our liberal democracy while they exploit their own citizens, enslave foreigners, fund terrorism, and abuse women. Maybe we shouldn’t let them have their cake and eat it too. Make them pick between human rights and investing in the S&P500.
The best way to bring countries into the fold of western civilization, to convince them to adopt our beliefs and values, is to engage with them in trade. Exclusionary tactics have not had great results, historically.
The tech industry has, historically and in aggregate, had pretty solid rates of returns. If I was sitting on a dwindling store of natural resources as my primary store of wealth, I would probably want to try to diversify that wealth into other areas and grow that wealth aggressively while my potentially limited income source is still highly profitable. I'm not sure that more nefarious aims need to be posited than sim…
There is something to this argument, but it's ruined. The author and many others don't like Saudi Arabia and Russia. That's the main reason for advocating a boycott of their investment money, because while the author mentions the poor human rights records of those two countries as the reason, there are plenty of other countries with such records. The main example of which is China, which is of course not mentioned. T…
> you should mention more than
> the easiest targets, if only
> to avoid the appearance of
> bias