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Who Are My Investors?

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Re: Who Are My Investors?

#241

Post by jaypeg25 »

adventured wrote: post #119
jaypeg25 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're at a point now where VCs are going to have to start refusing money from nearly everybody foreign thanks to the new CFIUS rules. They're so overly broad in identifying high-tech industries that I think there's going to be a lot of issues over the next couple years of implementation.

> VCs are going to have to start refusing money from nearly everybody foreign thanks to the new CFIUS rules That isn't going to happen at all. The point of CFIUS is selective enforcement, not broad, strict enforcement. It's the exact same reason anti-trust laws are vague, so they can selectively go after anyone at any time if they so choose. The point is to be able to further control the economy, whenever that is des…

The point of CFIUS used to be selective enforcement. But the new rules require mandatory disclosures of any foreign investment into a high-tech company.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#242

Post by BeetleB »

richardknop wrote: post #185
BeetleB wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The parent post said Saudis are not known for killing in other countries. I gave examples of Saudis either directly killing in other countries (Yemen bombing which is very controversial) or funding / helping extremist groups that kill in other countries.

>The parent post said Saudis are not known for killing in other countries.

It was said within the context of current events. Let me revise my statement:

The Saudis are not know for killing their own citizens abroad in non-conflict zones.

The point was that if I take all the examples you listed, I could make an almost identical list about the US - funding and supporting questionable militants, direct and proxy wars, direct and proxy torture, funding extremists (Islamic and otherwise). But it would be a fairly big leap to go from there to something like "It should surprise no one that the US killed one of its own citizens in their own embassy."

(Personally, all the things you/I listed about Saudi Arabia/USA are a lot worse, in my opinion, then what happened in Turkey - but that's a separate discussion).

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#243

Post by svantana »

roenxi wrote: post #179
readhn wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

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

That's correlation, not causation. A lot of the "best" democracies were functioning well before democracy arrived. The main issues that make countries "bad" (bad blood between groups, mistrust of authority, warlords, force majeurs, etc) are not directly related to the form of government.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#244

Post by unknownkadath »

barrkel wrote: post #227
lordnacho wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reasonable answer to where you draw the line is: when something is no longer compatible with your value system. And if that's not clear, the issue is that you haven't yet spent enough time defining your values. That's the thing to talk about, research, consider, ask advice on, etc. People having a solid, well-tested personal value system is critical to society's function, because that informs how groups of peop…

That's a universal argument against having any morals. I wholly reject your apparent position. It is simply venal, wholly convenient for your own self-enrichment, damn the consequences - it's pretty much evil personified. You're a cog in a machine that runs on human suffering, and you're actively denying your culpability. Yes indeed, we only find out where our line is when we consider problems in isolation. But just…

Excellent point.

There is no excuse for any of us to behave like the moral equivalent of a paperclip maximizer.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#245

Post by Draiken »

tomasien wrote: post #238
Draiken wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I see is that there are literally zero incentives for a company to do that. A company is a "being" that only has one purpose: profits. Even if your company does try to stick with a moral compass, because of how capitalism works, every other company will swallow you. I'm not a finance expert, so I always had this question in my mind. Is there any way to avoid that? I can't think of a way to do that without…

First of all, the idea that companies exist only to create profits does not mean that companies need to seek profits above all else. PEOPLE run and form companies and get to make decisions about how they run and form companies based on their own decision criteria. There's nothing about starting a company that excludes you from society and moral thinking. Second of all, even thinking of the profit motive, people want…

While I agree with you, it's not what I see day to day. It all goes out of the door as soon as profits are affected.

Even more so for publicly traded companies. They will do whatever it takes to make profits. Just look at Google, Microsoft and Apple. They all started out with good intentions, but at some point they all turned into what they are today.

I really want someone smarter than me to say: yeah we just have to do X. But I'm afraid the end-game of capitalism was not really something anyone predicted (or cared?).

Every single industry out there exploits human beings for profits first, and if it makes good PR, sometimes they help people for a change.

The food industry creating a culture of unhealthy people, now even cashing in the "healthy" fad. The tech industry viciously exploiting privacy for advertising. The media also moved by the number of clicks on headlines. The health industry profiting off the sick. The list goes on.

While people run all of this, I can bet that the majority of them will make the choice that benefits "the company" over the one that benefits human beings even if only to get that promotion. Very few will sacrifice their careers to refuse doing something shady. Even at the micro scale, if you don't do it, the next guy will.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#246

Post by everybodyknows »

puranjay wrote: post #199
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.

I've found that the west has a democracy bias. It assumes that democracy is intrinsic to people and it's only a matter of "liberating" them from tyranny. But as history is proof, there is nothing intrinsic about democracy. Democratic revolutions were hardly organic in much of the world. Most countries have known nothing but monarchy and/or dictatorships. To impose democracy on them would perhaps be as cruel as lettin…

Well-meaning Westerners like to imagine that all one has to do is put on a fair election, get the "good people" in power, and all will be well thereafter. This can be effected by Western occupiers when they want to wash their hands as they exit some troubled spot.

The occupiers don't want to hear that democracy is sustained by values and habits taught by parents to children who are still young enough to listen. Once the boys are old enough to hold a gun, that kind of learning is pretty much over.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#247

Post by sneak »

wp381640 wrote: post #236
mtrovo wrote: post #87

I keep thinking what Iraqi startups would think about accepting american VC money. The thing is, international politics is really hard. I'm pretty sure that it makes sense to track where your money is coming from but every single country is going to have a different set of "worst offenders", and you will see that the list carry a lot of political interest. I mean, we're looking at Erdogan [1] pointing the finger at t…

American VC money is distinct from American government money. The same cannot be said for Saudi, Qatar, UAE, Russia, the Central Asian kleptocracies, and to some extent - China, etc.

The people who are ultimately in charge of Google Ventures fly from a federal government airport on taxpayer subsidized jet fuel, and are currently embroiled in a dispute with their labor force about building ML tools for the military’s drone program—with the leadership being the initiators of the program and the objections coming from the rank-and-file.

Don’t be so sure of the lack of integration here. If they’re willing to bend for China’s censorship, why wouldn’t they bend for any manner of much-more-palatable (to them) directives from their home government?

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#248

Post by sneak »

dcposch wrote: post #43
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #12

At any business effort beyond hyper local markets, there is virtually no way to avoid tainted money or unethical markets. You're going to have to compromise somewhere. The question is, how and where do you draw the line? At some point as a founder/fundraiser, you will cross paths with finance or supply chains that support exploitation, coercion, violence or illegality. The most successful business people don't seem t…

> I've thought through many approaches here, from realpolitik pragmatism to ethical fundamentalism but none feel correct. So, vet your LPs case by case, discuss with your partners and use your moral judgement. If a North Korean or Syrian national wants to invest, you are legally required to refuse, in the US. Saudis? Legally allowed, but you have a moral imperative to refuse. A Chinese firm, or maybe Jared Kushner's…

It goes pretty deep everywhere.

https://twitter.com/aplusk/status/1021409519098769408

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#249

Post by ska »

magicbuzz wrote: post #168
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…

If you don't draw the line at dictatorships that grind up American journalists - where do you draw the line?

If history has anything to say about this, the line is drawn - if it is drawn - considerably further into nasty business.

Re: Who Are My Investors?

#250

Post by chaostheory »

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…

The same goes for taking Department of Defense (or your own country's equivalent) money. There is so much research and innovation that just wouldn't have been funded if their principals didn't take money from the military.
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