Maybe because the crown prince is a 32 year old who grew up seeing bill gates as an idol? Maybe this is because they want to move away from oil by exiting Aramco and moving their money to VCs?
Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
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Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#72Saudi Oil Fuels the NYT's vehicle. It's time to Ask Why?
Why it's Saudi? Or why it's oil?
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#73Earlier 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…
I take your point, but I never found SV to be particularly more moral or just than any other money hub. We aren't particularly surprised when Wall Street makes decisions purely based on money.
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I see your point, but practically speaking they can give tech company is money and still stop women from driving. It seems like they take the profits from trade and give it to terrorists, so we should probably brainstorm other solutions and not create dead ends with pseudo-platitudes
We've come from far, far worse. To suggest that global trade is a dead end is an absurdity -- founding the UN and fostering trade has brought enormous and unprecedented levels of progressive prosperity across the globe.
Dead end? Only if you're ignoring the last century of history.
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#75Earlier 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.
A very good explanation of why capitalism is an imoral system. Anyone who can't understand this simple fact is just losing their times. The shadier your scheme for making money, the further away you get (as long as you don't go to jail) because that's the whole nature of the beast.
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#76The 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…
It's not clear what you mean by "tech industry", but total VC returns have been negative for at least a decade
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#77This article is really, really light on reasons why you wouldn't take Saudi money. Is he really suggesting we reject money from a citizen of any country that's been "criticized for its human rights record"? Would there be any money left?
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#78Earlier 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.
A very good explanation of why capitalism is an imoral system. Anyone who can't understand this simple fact is just losing their times. The shadier your scheme for making money, the further away you get (as long as you don't go to jail) because that's the whole nature of the beast.
You can't blame a cow for doing what all the other cows are doing. It is in the nature of the cow.
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#79Earlier 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
Sometimes moral reasons can be the profitable decision if those morales are something that includes peoples economic decisions.
Re: Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why
#80If you're going to call out something in particular, you'd think it'd be the weapons deals instead of investments in Twitter, Uber and so on. Feels like this might have been slanted this way just so they'd have something to put in the "Technology" category on the website.