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Who Are My Investors?

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Re: Who Are My Investors?

#171

Post by afro88 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #105
dcposch wrote: post #38

Pretty much every single comment so far is cynical. "No one really wants to know how the sausage is made", lots of money is tainted anyway, it's just PR fluff, etc etc. The classic HN Middlebrow Dismissal in full effect. Counterpoint: cynicism is too easy. Actually giving a shit is harder, it's uncomfortable, it involves compromise. Yes, if you refuse investment from any country that has ever violated a human right,…

> Pretty much every single comment so far is cynical. "No one really wants to know how the sausage is made", lots of money is tainted anyway, it's just PR fluff, etc etc. It seems like a deeper problem than that, which is that money is fungible. It's the same thing as saying we shouldn't buy Saudi oil. If the only result is that you buy some other oil and the people who would have bought that oil buy the Saudi oil, n…

> It's the same thing as saying we shouldn't buy Saudi oil. If the only result is that you buy some other oil and the people who would have bought that oil buy the Saudi oil, nothing meaningful has changed.

I think this touches on another thing I've struggled for clarity on lately. How many degrees of separation do you need before you're willing to take investment from someone linked to something you find morally repugnant? 1 degree is relatively clear cut (though can still get muddy depending on how desperate your situation is). Is 2 degrees enough to decide it's ok? 3 degrees?

At a certain stage, it's arguable that benefiting one end of the chain won't result in observable benefit for the other. Where though? And at what stage does the benefit to society of your project outweigh the negatives of where the money that funds it came from?

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#172

Post by richardknop »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #105
dcposch wrote: post #38

Pretty much every single comment so far is cynical. "No one really wants to know how the sausage is made", lots of money is tainted anyway, it's just PR fluff, etc etc. The classic HN Middlebrow Dismissal in full effect. Counterpoint: cynicism is too easy. Actually giving a shit is harder, it's uncomfortable, it involves compromise. Yes, if you refuse investment from any country that has ever violated a human right,…

> Pretty much every single comment so far is cynical. "No one really wants to know how the sausage is made", lots of money is tainted anyway, it's just PR fluff, etc etc. It seems like a deeper problem than that, which is that money is fungible. It's the same thing as saying we shouldn't buy Saudi oil. If the only result is that you buy some other oil and the people who would have bought that oil buy the Saudi oil, n…

> It's the same thing as saying we shouldn't buy Saudi oil. If the only result is that you buy some other oil and the people who would have bought that oil buy the Saudi oil, nothing meaningful has changed.

I'm not sure this is true for oil. For example, long standing sanctions against Iran prevented them from selling a lot of their oil and crippled their economy quite a lot (decreasing their income).

The same could be done with Saudi Arabia if there were will to do it (there isn't, western politicians are too intertwined with Saudi money, especially so in US & UK, to a lesser extent in other western countries but without US/UK approval, no action against Saudis will happen).

Oil would come from other countries, they could increase their output while Saudis are under sanctions. I think it's not as fungible as money (and even with money I don't it's 100% fungible as bank accounts can be frozen, again see Iran).

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#173

Post by paddy_m »

grapehut wrote: post #166
lordnacho wrote: post #110

I've come across this problem a few times when running a hedge fund. To what degree does one care where the money came from, aside from following AML rules? I get the feeling you only write articles like that if you have more people wanting to invest than you have capacity for. - A friend called, asking for a recommendation for a job he was applying for. And advice about whether it was worth taking. Turned out, it wa…

> I get the feeling you only write articles like that if you have more people wanting to invest than you have capacity for. I get the opposite feeling. I suspect such virtue signalling is an attempt to attract investors who care about ethics, and perhaps more importantly accept your investment offers.

It's virtue signalling that puts a pinch on your competitors who can't turn down money from bad actors.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#174

Post by richardknop »

akiselev wrote: post #117
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much every single comment so far is cynical. "No one really wants to know how the sausage is made", lots of money is tainted anyway, it's just PR fluff, etc etc. It seems like a deeper problem than that, which is that money is fungible. It's the same thing as saying we shouldn't buy Saudi oil. If the only result is that you buy some other oil and the people who would have bought that oil buy the Saudi oil, n…

Saudi Arabia is a counter example to your point: Iran has a considerable amount of oil but because of unrelated geopolitical circumstances, it can't easily sell that to the global market like KSA can. That imbalance has little to do the nature of oil and a lot to do with the KSA-United States' petrodollar and arms deals. The geopolitics of the world put KSA in a position to capitalize on its oil wealth and trade it f…

Thanks for articulating this better than me in my reply. I also agree the oil / fungibility example was quite bad. Iran vs Saudi Arabia & petrodollar is really straightforward evidence against such argument.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#175

Post by richardknop »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #137
akiselev wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi Arabia is a counter example to your point: Iran has a considerable amount of oil but because of unrelated geopolitical circumstances, it can't easily sell that to the global market like KSA can. That imbalance has little to do the nature of oil and a lot to do with the KSA-United States' petrodollar and arms deals. The geopolitics of the world put KSA in a position to capitalize on its oil wealth and trade it f…

> Saudi Arabia is a counter example to your point: Iran has a considerable amount of oil but because of unrelated geopolitical circumstances, it can't easily sell that to the global market like KSA can. That imbalance has little to do the nature of oil and a lot to do with the KSA-United States' petrodollar and arms deals. It has little to do with oil and much to do with Trump making the Iran deal a campaign issue an…

Trump is not an important player in this saga (yet, maybe after 2 full terms, if he would get reelected, he will have more of an impact). Iran has been sanctioned and prevented from selling their oil to global markets easily (thus crippling Iran's income and economy) for a long time before Trump and through multiple presidents from both parties. Sure, Trump made the Iran deal a campaign issue but this goes decades back.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#176

Post by richardknop »

BeetleB wrote: post #132
ssijak wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can know. It is not like this was the first bad thing Saudis have done under his command.. Not to mention the usual evils of such oil nations like spending bilions on personal yachts, art, mansions, etc..., having slave-like labor in your country, kidnapping, behedings for many non-crime (in civilised world) things, etc. "reformer" thing is a joke and a mask.

>Yes you can know. It is not like this was the first bad thing Saudis have done under his command. Depends on how bad you're talking about. Saudis are not known as people who kill in other countries . They actually have a robust reputation of kidnapping them and bringing them to KSA (and even of the known kidnapped ones, I think all are still alive). Even within the country, they're known more for making people disap…

> Saudis are not known as people who kill in other countries.

What about Yemen? What about so many extremist Islamist organisations having roots in Saudi Arabia? The 9/11 highjackers, Muslim Brotherhood, funding and military support Saudis give to "rebels" in Syria and Libya?

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#177

Post by BeetleB »

richardknop wrote: post #176
BeetleB wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes you can know. It is not like this was the first bad thing Saudis have done under his command. Depends on how bad you're talking about. Saudis are not known as people who kill in other countries . They actually have a robust reputation of kidnapping them and bringing them to KSA (and even of the known kidnapped ones, I think all are still alive). Even within the country, they're known more for making people disap…

> Saudis are not known as people who kill in other countries. What about Yemen? What about so many extremist Islamist organisations having roots in Saudi Arabia? The 9/11 highjackers, Muslim Brotherhood, funding and military support Saudis give to "rebels" in Syria and Libya?

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say. The killing of the journalist is nothing like all the other things you mentioned - and some are so broad it's almost like saying "Saudi Arabia is a country with an intelligence arm."

It again is a case of the opposite Halo effect. Because an entity is evil in many ways, are we just going to assume they're evil in any way we like?

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#178

Post by unknownkadath »

lordnacho wrote: post #110

I've come across this problem a few times when running a hedge fund. To what degree does one care where the money came from, aside from following AML rules? I get the feeling you only write articles like that if you have more people wanting to invest than you have capacity for. - A friend called, asking for a recommendation for a job he was applying for. And advice about whether it was worth taking. Turned out, it wa…

It seems to me that this post is distilled evil.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#179

Post by roenxi »

readhn wrote: post #153
howlgram wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to mention that Gaddafi brought a lot of development to Libya and his death did nothing for his people. It's easy to say "oh he was a dictator and dictators are bad" but it's not so simple.

the same could be said about a lot of dictators. these guys make it so that there is no other option (by killing opponents) for the country.

Obviously a functional democratic society will stomp a dictatorial one on pretty much any axis you care to think of.

Having acknowledged that central point, we can't just say "dictators are bad". We can say "democracy is better", but there are instances where democracy doesn't work.

For a realpolitic example, great powers have a long history of quietly corrupting and overthrowing democracies where their interests conflict with our interests. It might be that a country has their democratically elected government toppled by the CIA/Russian version of the CIA/Chinese version of the CIA and then ends up as a dictatorship.

It is far too simplistic to then say "well, the dictator is at fault". Maybe the dictator isn't very nice, but there are political realities to attend to.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#180

Post by forgingahead »

Interesting that "educational endowments" made it onto the list of "ethical" LPs -- one could argue the opposite, given that the size of most of these endowments are directly due to the easy credit market of student loans, which is now a $1.6 trillion monster.[0]

[0]https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/05/pf/college/student-loan-sta...

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