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So many companies are making these decisions very quickly. So many that I don't think it has anything to do directly with the war. They are pulling out becaus

So many companies are making these decisions very quickly. So many that I don't think it has anything to do directly with the war. They are pulling out because their money people, the only people who really matter in a large corporation, are in a panic. Nobody knows whether it will even be possible let alone moral to do business in Russian. How do you get money out when the banks are delisted? How do you get money into Russia without violating sanctions? How many of your Russian "business partners" are the subject of sanctions? Is paying tax in Russia a sanctions violation? As the Russian government struggles for cash, will any of your corporate assets be seized? If they are, will insurance cover such seizures? (No.) The money people also look at the dramatic fall in the value of Russian currency. Therefor, setting aside all the moral debates about wars and violence, from a purely financial perspective these are all prudent financial decisions. The PR statements on twitter about supporting Ukraine are just window dressing.

stingraycharles 5y ago
I completely agree, and I was already wondering why this wasn’t brought before. Obviously all these corporations will have tremendous difficulty doing business in Russia at all: you simply can’t get your money out. I consider these companies backing out of Russia just pragmatic: by getting out, at the very least you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the near future, avoid the risk of any negative publicity “because you’re still doing business with Russia!”, and also generate some positive publicity around all this.
pessimizer 5y ago
I think that while anti-Russian sentiment was building to a frenzy in the US since the 2016 election, a lot of companies gradually untangled themselves from Russia or put it at arms length to avoid any extreme nationalistic outporing erupting into a serious PR problem. The real panic would be about China. On the surface, it seems like they're getting a break from being painted as the evil force bent on destroying our heroes, but companies that are there can't give up being there. I look forward to the furious PR wave from industry trying to separate China from Russia, and the fake insider stories about how Chinese officials are worried about Russia's latest move. Just recently, Maduro got promoted to being president again*, so there's a lot to be gained while the US PR hate cannon is fully pointed at Russia. * https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220307-us-envoys-held-energy-talks-with-venezuela-s-maduro-w-house https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220307-us-envoys-hel...
blihp 5y ago
This is exactly the effect economic sanctions are supposed to have. It's no secret that businesses respond to fear and greed rather than calls for moral courage.
- mr_spothawk 5y ago
  Courage is a characterization of one kind of response to fear. You can't have courage without possible negative consequences to be fearful of, and then to be courageous in the face of.
lmkg 5y ago
Yes, but so what? What you're basically saying is that companies are acting in accordance with certain moral values, even though they don't intrinsically have those moral values. That's great news! That's downright fantastic! Instilling "true" morality is a difficult problem. We have bypassed that problem and gotten the same observable results by replacing it with a much simpler one. Corporations are supposed to be automata that optimize an objective function. External pressure was applied, via both sanctions and public sentiment, and behold! Their behavior changed. The sanctions had the effect that was intended. That's better than you could say for many other policies.
- slibhb 5y ago
  If you don't actually have moral values then you're merely acting according to various pressures. I don't think this decision is good (not selling to Russians) but we can imagine much worse decisions that follow from companies yielding to, say, social pressure.
  - lmkg 5y ago
    A corporation is a legal simulacrum of a person. Personally I think the best you can hope for is a simulacrum of morality. I really do view them as automata, without an "internal personhood," and I think that influencing their behavior with external influences is a desirable and achievable goal. Government sanctions are applied by a democratically-elected government, which has a variety of checks and balances in it. I agree that social pressure can go off the rails. In this particular case my gut is that social pressure is encouraging them to go along with the sanctions quickly and enthusiastically.
    - slibhb 5y ago
      > Government sanctions are applied by a democratically-elected government, which has a variety of checks and balances in it. I agree that social pressure can go off the rails. In this particular case my gut is that social pressure is encouraging them to go along with the sanctions quickly and enthusiastically. Is Red Hat responding to sanctions? I don't think so: > (from the link) While relevant sanctions must guide many of our actions, we’ve taken additional measures as a company. Effective immediately, Red Hat is discontinuing sales and services in Russia and Belarus (for both organizations located in or headquartered in Russia or Belarus). This includes discontinuing partner relationships with organizations based in or headquartered in Russia or Belarus. What we're seeing is the social outrage machine taking its turn at geopolitics. We'll see how that goes but I am not optimistic. I don't think any of this helps Ukraine but I'm more worried about the precedent it sets.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AniseAbyss 5y ago
So the sanctions are working?
axiosgunnar 5y ago
So you're saying the sanctions are working? That's great I guess?
- squarefoot 5y ago
  They're working, but their harder effects will come with time. Unfortunately Ukraine doesn't have the same amount of time, which is the reason we should help them as much as we can to build an effective resistance. Time works against Russia, and Putin knows that, to the point that he allows fake negotiations while continuing to bomb indiscriminately everyone, including civilians.
hnov 5y ago
Yeah exactly, people get emotional and forget that a lot of times private interests feed people by the thousand into a meatgrinder for profit. If someone stops doing business in Russia, it's because they did some math and figured out it wasn't worth it.
sebow 5y ago
I don't know if you ask these questions rhetorically. Not caring about the ethics of were you put your money and your actions it's "your"(i mean the entity doing that, obviously) problem, nobody else's[because not everyone cares about ethics & morals]. So yes, whether you stop doing business in Russia and that affects both russia and your business, everybody should think twice before doing any business with anybody. It's easy to hide under the umbrella of "just making money" without taking into account ethical and moral concerns. Because ethics and morals rarely come after-the-fact, whereas people who truly think about those things preoccupy themselves with those issues since day one. By the way,this is not a "bug" of capitalism, it's a bug of people mindlessly not caring about the ramifications of their own choices and decisions, which is nowadays everything and every action being subjected to pay for/sell. Also, I hate virtue signalling, but at the same time one could argue getting rich, making money throughout all means, it's also a "signalling" of some sorts, especially in US. Now whether or not making money is considered a virtue, that's a more complicated subject.
zhengiszen 5y ago
How ironic that sanctions and boycotting seems to be used in the case of Russia and we were always told to be not helpful in the case of Israeli oppression and war crimes against Palestinians.... Hypocrisy ? Racism because we empathize with Ukrainian more than with Arabs ?
- Etherlord87 5y ago
  Ethnicity is not the only discriminator between these two groups. Ukrainians are also closer (at least to me in Poland), their culture is more similar, their history is more similar (and so there are some international bonds) and I just witness the Ukrainian tragedy more, because I have a better contact with them both on the streets (or at work) and on the Internet. Also Palestinians bombed Israeli citizens in the past. Some of the arguments I mentioned above I consider "incorrect" in the sense that they shouldn't affect a moral person, but still I decided to list them.
luciusdomitius 5y ago
Well. What do you expect. Since 2008 Fed has more or less been determining who wins and loses and now ESG is just an equivalent to China's Social Score, but for companies. Sad truth is that we are more of a planned economy than the bald midget's wannabe reich. Really sickens me.

stingraycharles 5y ago

I completely agree, and I was already wondering why this wasn’t brought before. Obviously all these corporations will have tremendous difficulty doing business in Russia at all: you simply can’t get your money out. I consider these companies backing out of Russia just pragmatic: by getting out, at the very least you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the near future, avoid the risk of any negative publicity “because you’re still doing business with Russia!”, and also generate some positive publicity around all this.

pessimizer 5y ago

I think that while anti-Russian sentiment was building to a frenzy in the US since the 2016 election, a lot of companies gradually untangled themselves from Russia or put it at arms length to avoid any extreme nationalistic outporing erupting into a serious PR problem. The real panic would be about China. On the surface, it seems like they're getting a break from being painted as the evil force bent on destroying our heroes, but companies that are there can't give up being there. I look forward to the furious PR wave from industry trying to separate China from Russia, and the fake insider stories about how Chinese officials are worried about Russia's latest move. Just recently, Maduro got promoted to being president again*, so there's a lot to be gained while the US PR hate cannon is fully pointed at Russia. * https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220307-us-envoys-held-energy-talks-with-venezuela-s-maduro-w-house https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220307-us-envoys-hel...

blihp 5y ago

This is exactly the effect economic sanctions are supposed to have. It's no secret that businesses respond to fear and greed rather than calls for moral courage.

mr_spothawk 5y ago
Courage is a characterization of one kind of response to fear. You can't have courage without possible negative consequences to be fearful of, and then to be courageous in the face of.

lmkg 5y ago

Yes, but so what? What you're basically saying is that companies are acting in accordance with certain moral values, even though they don't intrinsically have those moral values. That's great news! That's downright fantastic! Instilling "true" morality is a difficult problem. We have bypassed that problem and gotten the same observable results by replacing it with a much simpler one. Corporations are supposed to be automata that optimize an objective function. External pressure was applied, via both sanctions and public sentiment, and behold! Their behavior changed. The sanctions had the effect that was intended. That's better than you could say for many other policies.

slibhb 5y ago
If you don't actually have moral values then you're merely acting according to various pressures. I don't think this decision is good (not selling to Russians) but we can imagine much worse decisions that follow from companies yielding to, say, social pressure.
- lmkg 5y ago
  A corporation is a legal simulacrum of a person. Personally I think the best you can hope for is a simulacrum of morality. I really do view them as automata, without an "internal personhood," and I think that influencing their behavior with external influences is a desirable and achievable goal. Government sanctions are applied by a democratically-elected government, which has a variety of checks and balances in it. I agree that social pressure can go off the rails. In this particular case my gut is that social pressure is encouraging them to go along with the sanctions quickly and enthusiastically.
  - slibhb 5y ago
    > Government sanctions are applied by a democratically-elected government, which has a variety of checks and balances in it. I agree that social pressure can go off the rails. In this particular case my gut is that social pressure is encouraging them to go along with the sanctions quickly and enthusiastically. Is Red Hat responding to sanctions? I don't think so: > (from the link) While relevant sanctions must guide many of our actions, we’ve taken additional measures as a company. Effective immediately, Red Hat is discontinuing sales and services in Russia and Belarus (for both organizations located in or headquartered in Russia or Belarus). This includes discontinuing partner relationships with organizations based in or headquartered in Russia or Belarus. What we're seeing is the social outrage machine taking its turn at geopolitics. We'll see how that goes but I am not optimistic. I don't think any of this helps Ukraine but I'm more worried about the precedent it sets.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

AniseAbyss 5y ago

So the sanctions are working?

axiosgunnar 5y ago

So you're saying the sanctions are working? That's great I guess?

squarefoot 5y ago
They're working, but their harder effects will come with time. Unfortunately Ukraine doesn't have the same amount of time, which is the reason we should help them as much as we can to build an effective resistance. Time works against Russia, and Putin knows that, to the point that he allows fake negotiations while continuing to bomb indiscriminately everyone, including civilians.

hnov 5y ago

Yeah exactly, people get emotional and forget that a lot of times private interests feed people by the thousand into a meatgrinder for profit. If someone stops doing business in Russia, it's because they did some math and figured out it wasn't worth it.

sebow 5y ago

I don't know if you ask these questions rhetorically. Not caring about the ethics of were you put your money and your actions it's "your"(i mean the entity doing that, obviously) problem, nobody else's[because not everyone cares about ethics & morals]. So yes, whether you stop doing business in Russia and that affects both russia and your business, everybody should think twice before doing any business with anybody. It's easy to hide under the umbrella of "just making money" without taking into account ethical and moral concerns. Because ethics and morals rarely come after-the-fact, whereas people who truly think about those things preoccupy themselves with those issues since day one. By the way,this is not a "bug" of capitalism, it's a bug of people mindlessly not caring about the ramifications of their own choices and decisions, which is nowadays everything and every action being subjected to pay for/sell. Also, I hate virtue signalling, but at the same time one could argue getting rich, making money throughout all means, it's also a "signalling" of some sorts, especially in US. Now whether or not making money is considered a virtue, that's a more complicated subject.

zhengiszen 5y ago

How ironic that sanctions and boycotting seems to be used in the case of Russia and we were always told to be not helpful in the case of Israeli oppression and war crimes against Palestinians.... Hypocrisy ? Racism because we empathize with Ukrainian more than with Arabs ?

Etherlord87 5y ago
Ethnicity is not the only discriminator between these two groups. Ukrainians are also closer (at least to me in Poland), their culture is more similar, their history is more similar (and so there are some international bonds) and I just witness the Ukrainian tragedy more, because I have a better contact with them both on the streets (or at work) and on the Internet. Also Palestinians bombed Israeli citizens in the past. Some of the arguments I mentioned above I consider "incorrect" in the sense that they shouldn't affect a moral person, but still I decided to list them.

luciusdomitius 5y ago

Well. What do you expect. Since 2008 Fed has more or less been determining who wins and loses and now ESG is just an equivalent to China's Social Score, but for companies. Sad truth is that we are more of a planned economy than the bald midget's wannabe reich. Really sickens me.