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I do feel like sanctions should better target large institutions. So you won’t cut off Gazprom but you’ll stop some average citizen from running their business,

I do feel like sanctions should better target large institutions. So you won’t cut off Gazprom but you’ll stop some average citizen from running their business, or in the case of Namecheap, stop them from registering a domain name? It’s like, we just don’t get it.

kstenerud 5y ago
In ideal conditions we could do that, but the world is messy. There are many competing forces that need to be balanced, and it almost always can't be done without some blowback or collateral damage or compromise. So we take a pragmatic approach based on our best information at the time, and as quickly as possible. How do you stop a dictator with the world's largest arsenal of nukes from engaging in a 19th century style land grab without destroying the world political order, world economies, and perhaps even the world itself? Now how do you do it without creating a power vacuum? It's easy to stand back observing the results and criticize in hindsight (and believe me, we'll get plenty of that in a few months), but right now people need to make quick and possibly inefficient decisions using whatever information they can gather because the consequences are so grave.
- mbg721 5y ago
  That sounds like it could also have been written to justify Japanese internment in WWII. Maybe hindsight buys us some luxuries we couldn't otherwise afford, but it's worth some hard thinking about what is really necessary.
  - kstenerud 5y ago
    If we want to go down that road to its logical conclusion, anything could be written to justify anything. But such argumentation is fruitless.
- native_samples 5y ago
  If sanctions worked really well, that position could be justifiable. In practice, sanctions rarely if ever seem to cause violent revolution. They just end up hurting the little guys who can't do anything anyway, whilst the most well connected work around them anyway. See how North Korea has Apple computers ... for the leadership.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > In practice, sanctions rarely if ever seem to cause violent revolution. Sanctions aren't supposed to cause violent revolution, particularly. They are supposed to: (1) Pressure the regime to change the course of action which caused them, and (2) Reduce the economic capacity behind, and this the effectiveness of, the targeted action so long as #1 doesn't work. Promoting violent overthrow of the regime is a manner of achieving #1, but while it is often an acceptable outcome from sanctions, it's generally not the preferred outcome. > They just end up hurting the little guys who can't do anything anyway All, even the most autocratic, regimes rely entirely on the at least tacit cooperation of “the little guy” to function at all.
Jxl180 5y ago
Do you not consider Stripe a "large institution?" If Stripe allows these payments to process, they are a large institution profiting on fees despite the sanctions.

kstenerud 5y ago

In ideal conditions we could do that, but the world is messy. There are many competing forces that need to be balanced, and it almost always can't be done without some blowback or collateral damage or compromise. So we take a pragmatic approach based on our best information at the time, and as quickly as possible. How do you stop a dictator with the world's largest arsenal of nukes from engaging in a 19th century style land grab without destroying the world political order, world economies, and perhaps even the world itself? Now how do you do it without creating a power vacuum? It's easy to stand back observing the results and criticize in hindsight (and believe me, we'll get plenty of that in a few months), but right now people need to make quick and possibly inefficient decisions using whatever information they can gather because the consequences are so grave.

mbg721 5y ago
That sounds like it could also have been written to justify Japanese internment in WWII. Maybe hindsight buys us some luxuries we couldn't otherwise afford, but it's worth some hard thinking about what is really necessary.
- kstenerud 5y ago
  If we want to go down that road to its logical conclusion, anything could be written to justify anything. But such argumentation is fruitless.
native_samples 5y ago
If sanctions worked really well, that position could be justifiable. In practice, sanctions rarely if ever seem to cause violent revolution. They just end up hurting the little guys who can't do anything anyway, whilst the most well connected work around them anyway. See how North Korea has Apple computers ... for the leadership.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > In practice, sanctions rarely if ever seem to cause violent revolution. Sanctions aren't supposed to cause violent revolution, particularly. They are supposed to: (1) Pressure the regime to change the course of action which caused them, and (2) Reduce the economic capacity behind, and this the effectiveness of, the targeted action so long as #1 doesn't work. Promoting violent overthrow of the regime is a manner of achieving #1, but while it is often an acceptable outcome from sanctions, it's generally not the preferred outcome. > They just end up hurting the little guys who can't do anything anyway All, even the most autocratic, regimes rely entirely on the at least tacit cooperation of “the little guy” to function at all.

Jxl180 5y ago

Do you not consider Stripe a "large institution?" If Stripe allows these payments to process, they are a large institution profiting on fees despite the sanctions.