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Why Do We Tolerate Saudi Money in Tech?
- papln 7y agoWho is "we"? Recipients like getting money, obviously. Non-recipients generally don't have the power to interfere. The US government has that power, but the US government is beholden to the Saudis' control over oil.
- perl4ever 7y agoThe US has no particular interest in Saudi oil, as it doesn't provide a particularly large or irreplaceable amount of US consumption. What binds them to the US is their dependence on weapons and military cooperation to maintain power, and conversely, the American defense industry's need for foreign markets. The reason we hear so much about dependence on Saudi oil is to engender a false sense of helplessness and keep the latter relationship stable/unthreatened.
- bigpumpkin 7y agoWhy do we tolerate saudi oil in our gas tanks?
- iron0013 7y agoI feel like you're saying this sarcastically, but you should be saying it earnestly.
- perl4ever 7y agoIn general, people don't ship oil around the world for no reason, which is why US oil tends to come from the Americas.
- tracker1 7y agoBecause US position is to use the least costly sources of oil first, and that this should also lean towards using up the oil in foreign countries ahead of our own, so we run out last. I'm not saying I support this position, only that it seems to be what it is.
- rtkwe 7y agoFunnily enough only about 11% of US oil imports actually come from Saudi Arabia most comes from Canada who accounts for around 40% of imports.
- notJim 7y agoBecause it spends. Edit: Clay Davis said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5IoHf3xdg&t=256 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU5IoHf3xdg&t=256
- dorkinspace 7y agoWhy are we asking this question of the Saudis and not, say, the Chinese? Over the past few months there have been many issues of companies taking actions that seem to be based on appeasing the Chinese government. Both are awful government's actively committing crimes against humanity.
- dorkinspace 7y agoI misspoke. I do not know of any crimes against humanity that the Saudis are actively committing.
- wigl 7y agoYemen is an easy example. [2] "As of October 2018, there have been more than 1.2 million cases reported, and more than 2,500 people—58% children—have died in the Yemen cholera outbreak, which is the worst epidemic in recorded history and was, according to the United Nations (UN), the worst humanitarian crisis in the world." These numbers are also very conservative estimates, given the state of siege. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention_in_Yemen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabian-led_intervention... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%9319_Yemen_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%9319_Yemen_cholera_...
- dorkinspace 7y agoWow. Thanks for sharing these links.
- hummel 7y agoChina is also another easy sample with Concentration Camps for Uighurs, Tibet ..etc. [1]https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/world-is-silent-about-chinas-prison-camps-917659.html https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/wo... [2]https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/26/uighur-concentration-camps-surveillance-spies-china-control/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/26/uighur-concentration-ca... [3]https://www.businessinsider.com/muslim-woman-describes-horrors-of-chinese-concentration-camp-2019-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/muslim-woman-describes-horro... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
- jiveturkey 7y agoI admit I have yet to read TFA but I can answer this quite easily. We not only tolerate it, we welcome and solicit it with open arms. For the same reason we push industrial waste and exploitative labor to developing countries!
- mantoto 7y agoBecause of missing ethics. If you read this and you have enough power to influence something like this and don't consider where your money comes from -> fuck you.
- lacker 7y agoWell they are going to spend that money on something. Investing it in the US economy seems like just about the best place for it to go. I wish all fortunes held by dubious foreign entities just got sent to the American stock market. Twitter is a public company, it seems pretty unlikely that Saudi investment and Saudi spies getting hired by Twitter are related.