Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley Runs on Saudi (2019)

vicki.substack.com

1–10 of 176 posts

Re: Silicon Valley Runs on Saudi (2019)

#8
post #6

... what is the problem here? Investment is being made and people are better off for it. Isn't this how trickle down works?

Only if you think it purely in cold hard economic terms and believe trickle down economics is a real thing.

I don't know if I "believe" in trickle down, but it seems like this is whats happening. Are people not better off that money has moved from someones bank vault into employment?

Re: Silicon Valley Runs on Saudi (2019)

#9

... what is the problem here? Investment is being made and people are better off for it. Isn't this how trickle down works?

The problem is these companies often claim liberal, progressive values and that they are forces for social good. On the other hand they are flattering and fawning to a murdering oppressive brute in person.

It's an exasperating situation to be in. We need Saudi oil so we need to be able to work with them, but they are a grievous threat to freedoms and civil society globally. It's not just MBS either, look at the way gulf rulers have their daughters abducted off the streets of England or international waters and locked and drugged up. Yet the livelihoods of millions of westerners depend on these people.

Shunning them completely isn't practical, nor is turning away their money in every case, but that doesn't mean bowing and scraping to them is acceptable.

Re: Silicon Valley Runs on Saudi (2019)

#10
Obviously there is reluctance to support a ruler implicated in murder. Yet Saudi Arabia's oil-based economy has been recognized as a problem and risk for the country's own innocent people and there have long been hopes of diversification into other industries.

That these investment schemes are linked to the Saudi government should not be too much cause for upset, because the Saudi Arabian populace benefits from a strong welfare state; the money brought in by the government does go to benefit the average Saudi. Thus outright attempts to deny any Saudi government-led investment schemes end up impacting normal people, not just the rulers. There shoukd be carefully tailored actions to punish MBS and his circle, but if the USA wants to avoid alienating the Saudi people and creating lasting resentment, then it ought not to make their quality of life worse.

Post reply on HN