The tech industry has, historically and in aggregate, had pretty solid rates of returns. If I was sitting on a dwindling store of natural resources as my primary store of wealth, I would probably want to try to diversify that wealth into other areas and grow that wealth aggressively while my potentially limited income source is still highly profitable.
I'm not sure that more nefarious aims need to be posited than simple avarice.
There is a lot of Saudi money and they are willing to invest it. And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.
> And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.
maybe you didn't mean it this way, but i was struck by the nonchalance of this statement, as if being able to spend money justifies taking the investment. and i presume that's exactly why the article was written, to question that kind of stance.
now i love tech, and will defend our ability to progress and advance and make new things where there were none. and sometimes that requires compromise, like taking money from flawed people and institutions (as we all are). but none of us gets a free pass from morality, not even in business. these need to be considered, weighed and balanced decisions.
just because we codify our morality in law and abdicate enforcement to police doesn't mean that we shouldn't hold each other acccountable as well. in fact, holding each other accountable is crucial to ensuring a fair and just society. sometimes we must sacrifice a bit today to make sure we have justice tomorrow. a functioning society requires that we keep each others' avarice in check.
> but none of us gets a free pass from morality, not even in business
What? That's news to me. What about the entire defence industry? What about all the politicians that take a cushy job in the companies they helped during their time in office and who can be directly held accountable by the electorate? And why should anyone question the Saudis when they just signed a multi billion dollar weapon deal with the US government. Your statement sounds very naive.
> So you are saying you don't have any use for the idea of morality.
To a degree I agree with this statement though. Morality in politics and corporations seems to be purely a tool for those without morality. That is to say, "X would never do that, why do we need laws for it?"
As far as I'm concerned, morality is for a person, unique and without power. If any (meaningful, I guess) power is obtained, such as in companies and politicians, checks and balances need to be in place to prevent abuse, corruption, etc.
We seriously need vast and in depth auditing in politics, because morality is long failed the world.
Of course - but why would we trust politicians to have the ethics/morality to construct their own checks and balances?
My point is that politicians cannot be relied upon to have morality. Checks and balances are needed to ensure even those without morals adhere to some sane laws.
yes, you should be upset at those things. that's exactly what i'm talking about. don't just accept unethical behavior as fait acccompli. say something about it. let your voice be heard, by the people involved, as well as the people around you. particularly when it involves institutions like corporations and governments that people like to hide behind.
I think they have the correct understanding of the is/ought dichotomy. You absolutely shouldn't get a free pass from morality. It doesn't change the fact that, most of the time, you absolutely do.
To the list of examples of people getting a free pass from morality, I'd add the entire advertising industry, and quite a lot of stuff done in journalism. And many small business owners.
The population is large and diverse. There are lots of people willing to begin startups. Some won't accept Saudi money, some will. Those who will survive better. It's as simple as that - Saudi money created a lot of the tech industry, so the survival bias is what creates a tech industry willing to accept that money.
Nice words, but unfortunately money is all that matters at end of the day.
If most people had the same philosophy you described, USA would have stopped ALL oil imports after 9/11, and start massive investments in electric vehicles and public transportation right then.
What if the US investor is Harvey Weinstein and you've just found out he's a terrible person? Are you obligated to go find other investors at (presumably) worse terms and buy him out?
> but none of us gets a free pass from morality, not even in business.
What? It's certainly not the business role to make any moral decisions - while we don't yet have true simple responsibility principle in our society, we're thankfully have some separation of responsibility. If you think that a certain country is immoral and we shouldn't do business with it, lobby for sanctions - this way all businesses will have to abide, without (1) doing things that are completely out of their responsibilities (passing judgement) and (2) failing at their main mission - ROI - by voluntarily giving up competitive advantage.
> What? It's certainly not the business role to make any moral decisions
You forget that businesses don't make decisions at all. A business is not a person, it has no capability to make decisions. The employees that work for the company make the decisions, and they certainly have an obligation to behave ethically.
> they certainly have an obligation to behave ethically
What? How exactly did they enter into this obligation? Also, how on Earth can you have an obligation that involves a term that everyone interprets in his own way?
US government has proped up Saudia for years US states and cities and have taken billions in investment form Arab countries I don't get why this question is being asked of the US tech industry alone.
Because traditional media like newspapers, even one like NYT that's handled the last couple of decades as well as any, never miss a chance to take a potshot at the upstarts over in SV, especially when something like the current election influence brouhaha has them already on the back foot.
You're right; it would be much more honest to ask about the influence of Saudi money and Saudi oil in American business, government, and society more generally. But that's not a conversation anyone close to power wants to have; for one thing, the conclusions are uncomfortable, and for another, no one's hands are clean.
yep kind of confused to. The silicon valley is a for-profit sector, when they write "diversity, inclusiveness, fairness" and so forth on their banners they are very much qualifying this within a business context.
People need to be a little more honest and accept that those slogans are marketing messages, nobody in the valley is seriously going to turn an investment away for moral reasons
I wouldn't say "nobody." I am personally aware of people who have, for example, turned down money from Yuri Milner/DST for reasons that were at least somewhat moral in nature. So it does happen. But these people had other good options so it was really a choice of who they were going to take money from.
It's when you don't have a choice or a questionably moral party offers significantly better terms that it's hard to turn it down.
Just curious, what's the moral problem with Yuri Milner? I don't know much about him except that he's Russian, which I sure hope isn't considered a moral problem in its own right.
I took that as people need to be a little more honest and accept that those slogans are lies and bullshit.
This kind of attitude is exactly the problem. Sure, they are for profit, but since when is that the only thing that matters? I would never knowingly take blood money from a dictator, even if it meant I lived an impoverished life. If the company I worked for took such money, I would begin looking for alternate employment.
No one is asking why do people take money from bad people, no one is that naive and it's naive to think that they are. We're all familiar with the concept of greed. What they're asking is why do we let this happen in a country that boasts about its commitment to democracy and human rights?
> What they're asking is why do we let this happen in a country that boasts about its commitment to democracy and human rights?
don't get me wrong, I care about this as much as you do. I'm just saying that the valley itself is not the right place for this, it's a political matter. we shouldn't waste our time going on a deep introspection tour into 'tech values', they have a duty towards their shareholders as much as BP or Exxon.
> they have a duty towards their shareholders as much as BP or Exxon
Or as little. The concept of fiduciary duty is just a hack to keep corporations working in the service of capital, rather than, you know, the common good or whatever. It's neither a legal standard nor an economic imperative, just a convenient myth. I guess it can be encoded into the charter of a company, in which case it is their imperative, but I digress.
But I totally agree that it's absurd that this debate is being scoped to the tech industry.
I guess some people see it troubling that the guardians of human rights of modern world are so willing to take funding from nations that doesn't value such rights.
Basically Silicon Valley companies are very vocal about protecting human rights (which is good), and turn around and accept funding from nations that don't value them.
And it's not like these SV Companies didn't have any other source of funding.
> What they're asking is why do we let this happen in a country that boasts about its commitment to democracy and human rights?
The let part is very curious for its implication. What would the proposal be exactly, other than using violence and bureaucracy (every investment goes through an inherently corrupt government investment approval board) to curb free association and dictate capital flows through a command & control filter?
Want to invest in Coca Cola? No you may not, they've killed millions of people with obesity, diabetes and cancer over decades. So says some government tyrant dictating what you're allowed to invest into.
Want to start a marijuana company and take an investment from another marijuana company? No you may not, it's a schedule one drug that is evil, according to some government drug enforcement tyrant. They're not about to let you do such a thing.
You'd have to isolate yourself from half the planet economically to follow it to its proper conclusion. That includes: China, most of Africa, most of the Middle East, half of South America, several Eastern European nations, Russia, along with plausibly India and the US. And really where would we draw the line (other than arbitrarily by previously mentioned government tyrants)? Let's review the historical slave trade practices of various European nations for example, surely that counts against them in this absurdist premise. No investments are to ever be allowed from the Netherlands accordingly.
I'm sorry, exactly what kind of socioeconomic policy do you support? You speak as if you are a proponent of free market capitalism. Is that so?
We live in the real world, where things are not black and white, but that line you talk about? It's called law and we will be spending at least the next couple of centuries working out the kinks.
I really doubt it, not your virtue signaling but the fact that you think your money is even remotely clean.
Did you take money from a VC?
Heck did you take money from a Bank? Would you surprise you to know that virtually every bank actively launders money for drug lords, terrorists and every other sort of undesirables?
Money by definition isn’t clean, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the likes have one of the largest investment funds in the world you can’t withdraw a dollar from a bank without touching that money.
Do you think I'm an idiot? I know that basically half the things I own are at the expense of others, like my nice monitors and other electronics. However, this is a huge step away from taking money from dictatorships and slave traders. Let's be sure we are both talking about the same thing here. I hope to one day apply the skills I have gained at the expense of others to better the lives of the less fortunate to a much greater extent than I have harmed them. It is my ethical duty to do so.
I'm not some confused idealist and I don't appreciate your condescending attitude. I do not personally have a bank account. It is unavoidable that my company has a bank account, and the fact that the money is dirty is a separate issue and needs to be addressed. On the other hand, it isn't unavoidable to turn down investments from bad characters. In the event that my company would knowingly accept such money, I would leave. So I don't understand your point.
You're not the first person to try this angle, and honestly others have made a better argument than you. Stop playing devil's advocate, and let's talk about the reality we actually live in.
If my wife hates me for not taking blood money, I have failed to find a compatible life partner.
If my children hate me for it, I have failed to educate them about morality.
Whatever kind of ill will falls my way as a result of sticking to my guns and valuing the herd over the individual, I will take it with a smile. Because I can sleep at night knowing that I didn't decide that my own petty little problems are more important than the problems faced by people living under dictatorship.
Love can be an incredibly powerful thing. Love can be an incredibly selfish thing. Love can bring peace to all who accept it. Love can be the spark that leads to war. It is neither purely a good or evil thing. It cannot be used as an excuse for supporting the systematic degradation of human rights. That is love being selfish. Because it's not about the wives and children of the world, it is about your wife and your children.
I love all you write. I'm this close to pretending to disagree just to make you argue more :)
> If I had a friend and loved him because of the benefits which this brought me and because of getting my own way, then it would not be my friend that I loved but myself. I should love my friend on account of his own goodness and virtues and account of all that he is in himself. Only if I love my friend in this way do I love him properly.
-- Meister Eckhart
> If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person. [..] Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of the man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he just has to wait for the right object - and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it.
The point is made in the article that a lot of this money was not taken in order to stay alive at all. The concrete example is Slack taking $250 million that they haven't even earmarked for anything in particular, just "operational flexibility".
It's a nice play on emotions to bring up "wife and children", but that's not reality here.
It's hard for people to understand it, and this is not the first time I've been accused of lying about this very thing... But when I say never, I mean it.
My principle on this matter is more important than any emotion I may have.
Some people feel like it's ok to be selfish as long as they don't directly see the results of their selfishness. Yet imagine if every time you went to pick up your check, you were forced to watch a woman get stoned to death because someone raped her, and the ones doing the stoning were the ones handing you the check.
Any person that is okay with this scenario is a scourge on this planet.
Any person who isn't okay with this scenario, but is ok with taking blood money from foreign countries where they do not have to see the violence actually taking place, well honestly I just pity them for living their life in such a state of confusion.
Yeah. Mark Twain's story (warprayer.org) comes to mind.
People love to argue for the abuser. Any argument you can make for "having" to, say, become an SS officer to feed your family, is outweighed by the much more justifiable need to kill that SS officer to protect many more lives.
The people who are on the receiving end of stuff like this usually don't get to post on HN, and to signal obedience towards their murderers, while giving no real thought to those they murder, well... as Ilse Aichinger said, to forget the dead is to murder them again.
> Even if you would need this money to keep your own wife and children alive?
If I'd live under circumstances where I indeed had no other choice, maybe. Luckily, I live in Western society, so the answer to your question is "can't happen here".
so the answer to your question is "can't happen here"
... right now. But it could not that long ago, and when the wind changes, maybe it could again. Why does the West take oil/blood money? Because we are - no pun intended - a society built on sand.
The problem is that even if you have benevolent leaders in charge of the major players in a market, all it does is create opportunity for some immoral actor to enter the market to realize the profit opportunity.
I can't think of an example that a modern corporation has done something against their benefit for purely for moral reasons.
This is the responsibility of effective government regulation and consumer choice. If we leave it up to the market, we will be continually disappointed.
I don't know of a better idea than a system of checks and balances between gov, private corporations, and the people.
The thing is each of those serves useful functions so it would be harmful to eliminate or neuter any one of them.
So it seems clear to me there is a lot of value in a division in power between all three. But the trend has been towards more government power, and to more private capital in fewer hands.
I'm sure there is a better way than having this framework, I just don't know if anyone has come up with it yet.
The question that comes to mind then is whether moral or profit (or something else not on the moral end of the scale) was the driver of that decision ...
Surely there's some people they'd turn down money from. I doubt anyone in the valley is gonna accept a check publicly from harvey weinstein right now. You're right that it's a business decision more than moral, but given enough pressure, the business decision will tilt the other way.
A very good explanation of why capitalism is an imoral system. Anyone who can't understand this simple fact is just losing their times. The shadier your scheme for making money, the further away you get (as long as you don't go to jail) because that's the whole nature of the beast.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the fruit of this is going to be. It's a nice reminder that most business/industry is outside of morals. It's not that all of it is immoral, but rather that it exists without any moral requirement and most of the times not having morals is an advantage.
Also, if people really thought SV had any care at all for ethics and morals even before this they must've missed pretty much all of the news about SV for years and years. Not caring about what's right is expected, as long as you don't get caught. It's just a risk/reward thing.
I move among different circles of friends. Some studied philosophy and political science, others arts in general, and others computer science.
It's scary that tech people have this very "blase" attitude (oversimplification perhaps?) that one's motive when it comes to how to handle distribution of money comes down to simple "meritocracy" and/or "greed."
As if the very fact that blaming the innate human debility of giving in to avarice or greed does not presuppose much more problems, such as ulterior motives, cultural bias, nepotism, etc.
There is, of course, the notion that the bigger a corporation gets (e.g., a conglomerate), the more dehumanizing it is. With such large sums of money being moved around (to whatever end or outcome) comes more "bottom line" interests and "corporate interests," and as such, it is less about the individual. The repercussions of this, which are pretty evident to me, is that it creates an institution or entity or agent ("corporation," if you want) that does not have a moral framework or acts not humanely but immorally, while its shareholders and investors can sleep comfortably at night because they distance the self from the company, so it is not the person acting immorally, but some "unknown force" (the Company), which, using reason, cannot actually be "immoral," because surely only humans can act in such a way.
Objects are amoral. When humans create structures in which they align themselves with immoral incentives, they're being immoral. The failure to be good is being evil in my books; there is no neutrality and there is no mediocrity, there is doing your part or guilt.
And no, nobody is 100% innocent and nobody is 100% guilty. Nobody made themselves out of nothing. Everybody started out as a helpless baby and the range of experiences one can get exposed to before even being able to attempt defend oneself is vast. But so what if every abuser got abused in some way or another, or was withheld some crucial things needed for development? Then don't hate them, but absolutely stop them.
Contrary to popular belief, economy is not a binary system. There is a huge range of decisions that can be pursued and each decision has a particular interest. Modern societies have decided to take the "market-friendly" decisions each step of the way instead of the human- and environment-friendly decisions with the excuse that this is the least of "two" evils.
This is an economic system created and maintained by humans. The morality or immorality is a property of those who maintain it, no matter how much these people try to dissuade others of this simple fact.
Agreed. Occam's razor is well applied here. Everyone else is investing in tech to get rich, I see no reason to suppose card carrying capitalist Saudi's wouldn't be driven by the allure of profit as well.
> I'm not sure that more nefarious aims need to be posited than simple avarice.
Without making any comment on the issue of Saudi money, I take issue with the reasoning there. That's effectively saying "there is a simple potential explanation, therefore there's no need to investigate". It's not like being simple therefore means it is the correct explanation, not does it mean that other potential explanations are therefore wrong or invalid.
Are we more likely to see more inherited value come from net negative cash ROI investments? (example - campaign donation) Sure. However, I think it's wrong to assume that just because we return a net positive cash ROI on a financial investment that we shouldn't assume that a non-cash ROI value is achievable.
You mean aside from tarring all Muslims or all Saudis as the same as ISIS (a millennial cult) and Norway isn't as pure as you might think - Scandinavia kept on with eugenics long after the rest of the world recoiled in horror
You seem to be picking very narrow but randomly arbitrary things to compare both countries with, or making wild assumptions about what others would use to compare them on.
How about an overall view of broader things like human rights, corruption, democracy etc?
I don't get the reasoning to be against it. If your goal is "global liberation", taking money from oppressive regimes its a pretty darn fast way to do it. You make the oppressors pay for the future liberation. We should applaud if thats whats happening.
I think it's naive to think that taking money from oppressive regimes has no other effect than depleting their cash reserves. Google and Facebook seem to have no qualms about acquiescing to Chinese censorship demands. I think it's folly to think Saudi money won't or doesn't have at least some nefarious influence somewhere. It's worth at least taking a look.
Its worth 'taking a look', sure, but its definitely been the other way around. The article itself reminds us of how Twitter was important during the Arab Spring. Wouldn't that Saudi money have been instrumental in the opposite of what the article points at?
It is not “definitely” the other way around. Quite the contrary.
The Arab Spring began in 2010 and lasted several years. The (first) Saudi investment in Twitter didn’t happen until December of 2011, and by then much of the region was already on fire. In fact, it’s notable that after the $300M investment, the following summer is when Syria devolved into total Civil War - with February being when Assad invaded Homs.
So, no, I’m still skeptical that we should be allowing this. Given the regional alignment of the Saudis, seeing Syria (an Iranian ally) devolve into chaos wouldn’t have been something they’d exactly move mountains to stop.
"I’m still skeptical that we should be allowing this."
Who is we. It's a very different thing to say that there is an ideological compromise or hipocrisy, to State enforced commercial blockades.
And the dire situation of syria doesn't have anything to do with Tweeter. Its as relatable as saying that we should ban dates because they come from the middle east, funding terrible wars.
Oh yeah? Don't know about the US, but certainly here in Europe criticism of Islam is verging on thought crime these days. If you want to know who rules over you find out who you are not allowed to criticise.
Well if you want to talk sanctions, I'd say selling them $110 billion in weapons a few months back is slightly more concerning than slamming shut the bank counter screens on them.
Selling weapons to Saudis has been going on for decades, Trump, Obama, Clinton, Bush... all have been selling them weapons for billions of dollars.
It's pretty big hypocrisy of US, on one hand you consider Iran the most evil nation state in the world (or at least ME region) and have been sanctioning them for decades (with slight easing of that approach recently), on the other hand nobody bats an eye for selling weapons to SA and treating them as a great ally and friend.
I never could understand this big glaring hypocrisy from my European point of view. Perhaps it has something to do with politics in US but even then it's hard for me to understand why the one is ally and the other enemy.
> I never could understand this big glaring hypocrisy from my European point of view.
Surely you're joking. All the major European nations have been masters of exactly what you're describing for centuries. It has been historically routine European behavior.
There are plenty of modern examples of it. See: the French, UK and German relationship with Iraq pre Gulf War and their assistance with Iraq vs Iran. Germany massively supplied Iraq with the ability to make chemical weapons.
Before the US made the mistake of deeply intertwining itself throughout what goes on in the Middle East, the major European nations had been at it for centuries (and several of them are still very actively doing exactly the same things the US is doing, usually in proportion to their economic or military capabilities).
I'm aware of it. The difference is most European countries have no real way to extend their military or economic power meaningfully.
Only US is capable of invading almost any country it wants relatively easily due to its huge navy and aircraft and military bases all over the world. With its huge economy only US can really put meaningful sanctions on foreign countries (US navy basically singlehandedly controls international maritime trade). Notice that almost all sanctions are led by US as EU just nods in agreement and does whatever US tells them to do.
So similar hypocrisy from European countries is less dangerous but US with its power akin to British Empire before can literally rewrite borders around the world and overthrow governments at whim. So when US says Saudi Arabia is an ally and Iran is enemy, that dictates the policy of the whole western world basically.
> They eventually came to an agreement that centered around U.S. support and military training for Saudi Arabia, then a fledgling country surrounded by stronger nations, in return for oil and political support in the region.
Maybe the problem is the point where they exploit their own citizens, enslave foreigners, fund terrorism, and abuse women - not where they do all that and then invest money in US tech industry? Otherwise it sounds like we're ok with all this enslavement, abuse and all, but just to a point - and the breaking point where we say "no more! we really need to have a serious talk about it now!" is buying AAPL stock. Doesn't sound good to me.
Isolation has been proven not to spread capitalism as well as trade. China, Iran, and more got better at human rights with free trade with free capitalistic societies
I take your point, but I never found SV to be particularly more moral or just than any other money hub. We aren't particularly surprised when Wall Street makes decisions purely based on money.
SV is not particularly moral in relationship to the rest of the society, neither should it be - there's no reason why knowing how to program or assemble electronic gadgets makes one more morally advanced.
However, when all that stuff in Saudia happens, I don't see too many articles in the Big Press worrying about it day and night. But when they buy some AAPL stock suddenly NYT wakes up and cries out for the inhumanity of the Saudi regime. Where were you all the time before?!
I wouldn't expect any particular moral advancedness from SV and Wall Street. But I would expect that the same people who slept through decades of Saudis being around, doing what they do, sending money into the US and buying all kind of stuff won't wake up now and start crying "but how can SV accept money from evil Saudis!"
I mean it's good we're talking morals. But it is very questionable that we are only talking morals in very isolated cases. It is good to have principles, but when principles are taken out of the pocket when it's convenient and hidden back what that is more convenient, those aren't principles one can respect.
We don’t have any moral or ethical ability to police the Saudis or any other foreign state on those issues, and moralizing from afar accomplishes nothing.
But the tech industry and the individuals within it can choose who we do business with, cries of “fiduciary duty” notwithstanding.
The best way to bring countries into the fold of western civilization, to convince them to adopt our beliefs and values, is to engage with them in trade.
Exclusionary tactics have not had great results, historically.
I see your point, but practically speaking they can give tech company is money and still stop women from driving. It seems like they take the profits from trade and give it to terrorists, so we should probably brainstorm other solutions and not create dead ends with pseudo-platitudes
We've come from far, far worse. To suggest that global trade is a dead end is an absurdity -- founding the UN and fostering trade has brought enormous and unprecedented levels of progressive prosperity across the globe.
Dead end? Only if you're ignoring the last century of history.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but we aren't innocent either. I'd say perhaps on a spectrum they are worse than us on human rights, but there was the Iraq war, Vietnam , etc. Are we supposed to no longer pay taxes or use government provided infrastructure?
You are correct, but not quite applicable in this debate.
SV companies didn't actively order/control invading other nations or violate human rights. In fact, they are very vocally against US/West doing such things.
But the sovereign funds from ME that are providing funding are pretty much the same people in charge of those nations.
Ensuring human rights for everything in the tech value chain is going to be almost impossible.
Also consider that if you do this, then the investors will just set up trusts. They'll invest in the companies that invest in the investment companies.
You apply pressure on companies taking investment from the Saudis collectively.
If you can’t support Uber because of an atmosphere of sexually harassment, how can you support them when their investment dollars are coming from a country that subjugates women? That creates an indentured servant class from imported labor? That sort of argument. It’s blood money, and that’s the narrative you use (if one was so inclined).
You apply pressure on companies taking investment from the Saudis collectively.
That's just rephrasing it... how do you apply pressure? Everyone needs oil, many don't care about these issues, so how do we make them toe a line? What pressure do we exert? How much political capital do we burn without a hope of return?
At the end of the day though, you say "blood money" as though both sides aren't drenched in it. Moreover, whoever the Saudis are killing, it's with our weapons systems. They're newcomers to a game that the US has been playing for centuries, and Europe much longer. They're something between our rogue asset in the region, and our abusive soon-to-be-ex-spouse. Everyone sees it coming, especially the Saudis who are going so far as to clean house and contemplate an Aramco IPO to avoid being reclaimed by the desert.
Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. We’re not to the rock yet.
I’d agree with your sentiment that they’re too much of an ally for anything meaningful to be done about their investments, but the winds shift quickly.
Minimum standards of conduct before a nation is allowed to do trade another nation or to join a trade agreement...or basically like most other negotiations.
This is the same country that the US funnels weapons into, and uses for leverage in the region. Does it make the US complicit in the actions that Saudi Arabia does? Now does it make sense to ask for Saudi Arabia to be sanctioned when it comes to business investments?
So party A has high standards, parties B and C don't and just trade with each other. Party A withers and and its resources are eventually aligned with B and C anyway. This is not an effective way to fight anything, it's just suicide.
Just quoting @l33tbro <<Well if you want to talk sanctions, I'd say selling them $110 billion in weapons a few months back is slightly more concerning than where they invest.>>
The purpose of political rhetoric is political. The purpose of pro-human-rights language in the west is to change the political order in the west to the advantage of the orators. It is NOT to make things pro-human-rights.
So you're violating the rules. You propose actual change. This is not allowed. You only get to propose putting the current favorites into "power" (for them of course the same rules apply: they don't get to make actual change except on the edges of the sidelines. E.g. assign construction projects to their favorites).
This is as true in San Francisco as it is in Washington.
There is something to this argument, but it's ruined.
The author and many others don't like Saudi Arabia and Russia. That's the main reason for advocating a boycott of their investment money, because while the author mentions the poor human rights records of those two countries as the reason, there are plenty of other countries with such records. The main example of which is China, which is of course not mentioned.
The US itself has a poor human rights record on many things, and especially given our current president, had the author been writing from any other country, the US might have been on the list of countries whose money should not be accepted.
I'm not saying the US is as bad as China and Russia and Saudi Arabia. I'm not even saying China is as bad as Russia and Saudi Arabia. I am saying that if you care deeply about this, you should mention more than the easiest targets, if only to avoid the appearance of bias.
The bias also shows itself by considering an entire country as a single entity, when the author says we should not accept Russian investors' money. To justify it, the author says that if a Russian investor has ties to Kremlin-backed companies, they should be off limits. But that probably encompasses a large number of Russian investors. Same as the group of investors with ties to companies funded by US government money (DARPA, NSA, CIA, etc.).
I kind of agree with you, but I think you muddy your argument by getting into the weeds somewhat. For me this whole thing is pretty simple - where do you draw your line?
I mean, off the top of my head here's a rough list, in my extremely rough estimation, of human rights offenders from bad to good:
badness country
100% DPRK
90% Saudi Arabia
80% Dubai
70% Russia
60% China
50% USA
40% India
30% Japan
20% Australia
10% Norway
0% Antarctica
So where do you draw your line?
Stating "My line is 65% bad or less" is a reasonable argument.
And how do we make countries high up on that list go down?
Economic isolationism surely isn't the answer - seeing as North Korea is #1 on that list. Notice that the countries lowest on your list of badness have the closest ties to Western countries (with the exception of Antarctica). Saudi Arabia becoming more closely tied economically to Western countries is an opportunity to lessen its "badness" on your scale. Recent developments, like allowing women to drive and encouraging more women to work are still ridiculously backwards by the standards of the Western world, but represent steps in the right direction
Your assumption is that economic cooperation makes "evil" countries become more like the "good" countries they cooperate with. I don't think that holds true. Just take China and Russia, who have very strong economic ties with almost all of the world. Human rights in Russia certainly are not getting any better, and I doubt they are in China. In fact, taking recent relevations into account, those ties might just as much be corrupting the "good" countries, and not (just) working the way you assume they are.
While these countries are definitely more oppressive and have less human rights than much of the Western world, do you really think that they've haven't gotten better in that regard with greater connections to the West? I don't think many would agree that these countries had better human rights and living conditions a couple decades ago.
As others have pointed out international pressure was instrumental in dismantling Apartheid in South Africa. That is one clear example.
As said, with Putin, I think things have only gotten worse. And China seems to be settling on a benevolent dictator, too, these days. So at least recently, I don't think things are getting any better in those two countries.
It isn’t about ties but about history, culture, traditions and wealth.
Take my home country Norway, since we are on the list ;-) It is one of the richest countries in the world as well as most equal which tends to lower corruption. Poverty and inequality raise it.
But of course history and culture matters too. Norwegians have had a reputation for honesty for hundreds of years. In some ways it is self perpetuating. There was a story about a Norwegian sailor who had cheated a prostitute in a foreign city. This angered the other Norwegian sailors who made him go back to her next time the landed to apologize and pay her compensation. To them this guy was risking the reputation of all Norwegian sailors. Something they benefitted well from.
When you got a reputation you become invested in it.
You make good points. Encouraging closer two-way ties might indeed do what you say. It certainly might make your "death to america!" chants a little less enthusiastic if half your country's pension fund was invested there. "Destroy the Great Satan! Except, uh, San Francisco!"
Another factor of course is "How much is this country actively trying to undermine/is a potential enemy of my own?" which probably for most countries we'd think of as "western" puts Russia, and to a lesser extent China, at the top of the list.
There is a reason that countries like South Africa would be substantially less high on that list than they used to be 25 years ago, and increasing economic -and political- isolation is definitely one of the reasons it changed.
We see in political science that the definition of nations is somewhat circular - for a country to meaningfully exist, its recognition of a significant number of other countries is almost an essential feature. This is the reason that projects like Sealand fail, and also why revolutions attract so much international meddling.
It's a very approximate list! But since you mention it.. the migrant issue is an outlier I think. It's shameful, but an outlier (I'm Australian btw). Generally we mostly do a decent job. Manus Island makes my blood boil, but we've spent billions trying to stop the solomon islanders killing each other too (RAMSI). The aboriginal health crisis is actually worse IMO, not that it's in the news.
I put Japan there because of its more or less systematic discrimination against people of korean ancestry, lack of support for the economically disadvantaged (eg. freeters, NEET), generally outdated attitudes to women and of course their 99% conviction rate criminal justice system. But honestly, you could make a case either way. Japan's not a bad country in aggregate.
We must of-course include Israel in this list, as far as I know it is a serial human rights violator and uses technology for inciting violence and fear.
I think a better way of putting is that the founders of these startups will cringe to share a public stage or at the very mention of one of the mentioned groups but will happily take their money.
Well then you just set up a system where companies that are CNI have oversight at some level of course this does mean a lot more vetting and it can be abused like France declaring a yoghurt maker was CNI.
This article is really, really light on reasons why you wouldn't take Saudi money. Is he really suggesting we reject money from a citizen of any country that's been "criticized for its human rights record"? Would there be any money left?
If you did that, you couldn't take US money either. Especially now that we've seen Trump and his friends, does anybody really consider them better than any other powerhungry folks?
Fortunatly for the US there are checks and balances hindering Trump from doing most of the evil he wants to. Don’t be naive and think he would be nice if he had dictatorial powers.
He has already publicly complained that he can’t use the FBI for whatever he wants to, like going after his political opponents.
Just imagine if the US had secret prisons, policies of torture, autonomous killing machines, an unaccountable surveillance apparatus, and worst of all, a government that outright lied about some of these things without consequence during a presidency awarded a Nobel Peace prize.
>He has already publicly complained that he can’t use the FBI for whatever he wants to, like going after his political opponents.
When his political opponents take money to approve a deal to sell one-fifth of the United States's uranium production to Russia [0], perhaps the FBI should be going after them.
So no actual abuses, just some hyperventilating on the left? Presumably Trump could do things like, oh, I don't know, use the IRS as a tool to harass his political opponents.
Their interests aren't conflicting - their interests are making sure that the entrenched powerful class in those four countries continues to be the entrenched powerful class. Surveillance technology, weakened protections for labor (cf. paulg's factually-correct comment about how any industry that still has unions is ripe for disruption), a dependency on access to capital, etc. are in all of these countries' interest.
It's like the European monarchies of a couple hundred years back: even if the countries fought wars against each other for territorial squabbles or whatever, their deeper interest was in maintaining the system, and on that they were all allied. So they married each other, met in the Congress of Vienna, etc., because they knew that in supporting each other and the current balance of power, they themselves would be much more likely to keep power.
Yes, and this is largely the point. The reason foreign governments invest in U.S. tech is because they see it as a path to good relations with the U.S. government. Or at least good enough to avoid getting bombed and having their assets frozen. It's not about making money, it's about reducing geopolitical risk. If these countries wanted to make money then they'd just sell weapons, traffic drugs, build stuff with slave labor, etc., all of which are a lot more profitable than workplace smoothie delivery or whatever.
That isnt the main reason. They do it to make money, or at least protect the money they have without overheating their own economy. The Chinese don’t buy treasuries to make friendly with the USA, they do it because they don’t have any better options to deal with their trade surpluses. There is just nowhere else liquid enough to park a few hundred billion as needed.
Why they fund startups is even more self interested, they really do want to make money, and believe it or not, it is much easier and profitable to do that through investing then to become a rogue state.
Why seems pretty obvious. Instead of asking why, it would be better to ask how. I don't know of any Saudi VC firms on Sand Hill Road. But then there's a ton of Saudi money out there. Softbank just opened a Saudi fund with $93B.
>The money from regimes that have been criticized for their human rights records — from Saudi Arabia’s government in particular, which has plans to funnel potentially hundreds of billions of dollars into tech companies through its state-controlled Public Investment Fund
Lots of sovereign wealth fund cash, also people within the monarchy with money to throw around.
classic whatabout-ism that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and more importantly doesn't matter.
"America is also bad!" would not be a defense to selling chemical weapons to Hussein. It's not a defense to helping build the Great Firewall. Your actions' consequences are your fault.
It's not whatabout-ism. The question was why is Saudi money accepted. Human-rights violations is totally irrelevant. If it were a leading concern then companies couldn't accept American money either. SpaceX basically couldn't exist. Humans rights is about political power nothing else. Saudis are already dancing to the USA's tune so the US doesn't roll out the human rights and democracy trope. Instead they trade.
This article is quite hypocritical. If you are going to single out Saudi money as immoral or let's say unethical, you have to apply the same meter to all countries. And this isn't just Russia which is currently being sanctioned hard but also notably China or some other ME and African countries.
Now, if you want to know my personal opinion, I am very critical of Saudi Arabia and if Russia and Iran are treated as enemies and sanctioned I think the treatment of SA should be the same.
The developed world already transfers gargantuan sums of wealth to the Saudis for energy supplies, and has done so for many decades. What exactly is the moral distinction here? From a 50,000 ft view, it seems that the social bargain we have with the Saudis is what it is, and the particular modes of capital flow aren't the critical issue.
If nothing else, massive inputs of fossil fuels are required to sustain the Valley tech economy, too, in all kinds of direct and indirect ways. Tech has been helping make the oil autocracies rich since forever.
I disagree. The human rights abuses of Israel are if anything over reported. How often do you e.g. hear about Israeli abuses vs Sri Lanken, Indonesian etc?
No country had gotten as many UN resolutions or attempts of it against itself despite in the grand scheme of things they don’t make the top 10. Typically these resolutions are filed by arab countries with far worse humanitarian record.
The question is not why would the Saudis want to invest, it's why an industry that always talks about how progressive and innovative it is is so happy to compromise those values.
This presents a conundrum. Tech companies are fond of pseudo-revolutionary mission statements that extol the virtues of diversity, tolerance, freedom of expression and other progressive ideals. They have argued that their technologies are part of a force for global liberation — that forging more open communication and economic productivity through technology will loosen the grip of tyrannies across the globe. For much of the last year, Silicon Valley has also promised a revolution in its own culture, with large and small companies alike vowing to become more inclusive of women and minorities.
To outsiders it looks fake, hypocritical, and a little immoral. $300 million is nice, but why sell your soul for it?
I think the answer is that Silicon Valley is all those things. They are caught up in a moral panic. Look at their history: pro women's right's publically, but sexist privately; anti-school choice for the average person, but sends their kids to private school ; reject new water pipeline for farmers because piped water over long distance is unnatural; keeps existing water rights to their cities. Silicon Valley is not and probably never has been virtuous ; it has often virtue signaled.
I'm reminded of the "values of the carphone warehouse [of which there are none]" bit.
Employees have values. Companies have employees and assets. They are a moral compromise by their very nature. Big (public) companies especially, have little interest in being "ethical", as by their sheer size, their economical duties are enormous.
I do believe this would dwarf any concerns short of... Well, what issue can you have that's big enough to risk the livelihoods of thousands or millions? I can think of none.
(I'm trying to describe things as they are, not as I would like them. The lesson is that to change the way companies behave you have to change all of society. In my humble opinion, "values" are the result required for homeostatis, and almost never the motivators.)
> $300 million is nice, but why sell your soul for it?
This is what "taking money" means. You don't need to be more specific about the investor. You cannot take any money if you are not willing to give your soul in exchange. Even a $30k/year paycheck requires that in many regards.
Does accepting investments from Saudi Arabia represent a compromise of those values? Are Saudi Arabian investors attempting to limit diversity, tolerance, and freedom of expression?
I fail to see how accepting investments from Saudi Arabia is selling once's soul or compromising on those values. If anything, the fact that Saudi Arabia is diversifying its investments and becoming invested in the economies of Western countries is likely a driving factor of their latest pushes towards more egalitarian (but, relatively speaking, still backward-as-hell) values.
Companies, except Twitter and Kingdom Holdings, take money from Softbank's Vision Fund. This fund incidentally has a lot of backing from the Saudis. Softank is a famous name in the VC and tech circle.
So, I am wondering how many tech startups do a reverse due diligence on the companies offering them money? Is that a normal expected practice?
Similar questions can be asked about our 401Ks/pensions. Our retirements partially ride on the backs of companies that have done no-so-great things to society.
Plenty of “green” and “social” funds if you’re worried about that, and I note that sovereign wealth funds and public sector pension funds do indeed concern themselves with questions like this
It's worth noting that the larger companies mentioned like Uber, Slack, and Twitter which received money from the Vision Fund occurred in their later respective funding rounds, often shortly before going into an IPO or full-on acquisition by a publicly traded company. My guess would be that this fund is targeting modest returns while not wanting to incur the both the risk associated with a company in its earlier funding rounds, and a guaranteed path towards liquidity if the fund managers desire to exit. I see this purely as an investment vehicle since investments at these stages aren't expected to provide the investors with significant numbers of voting shares.
I think you could argue that it is actually inhumane to deny certain people the right to investment gains from american companies. Sure you may not like the Saudi Arabian government but ultimately they are trying to create a plan to secure the future of real people who are not all evil, though it may look that way from our cultural vantage point. The Saudis haven’t tended to try and influence their investments, they are mostly a silent investor so far. So if they are not doing anything evil and providing additional liquidity and demand to American capital markets, why go after them or the tech companies that sell them shares?
> Do we know this somehow? Beyond a doubt, if they have power they will use it.
I remember reading this somewhere, but I can't find a source. It is conceivable they may choose to be more "activist" with their holdings in the future, but thus far I can't think of any examples of them using their holdings to exert influence over the company's they invested in. Certainly they must be cognizant of the fact that doing so at this time would make most companies reluctant to accept their investment.
Israel is much more closely tied to the US tech industry and is also a flagrant abuser of human rights yet this article ignores this obvious comparison?
Maybe we should ask how human rights abuses plan to persist if their proponents are funding new platforms of self expression and better flows of information that offer tremendous empowerment for the average person to learn about and speak out against such injustices. This seems a poor strategy if the goal is to keep the people ignorant and subject to the ancient stupidity of religious dogma.
I daresay you are a few years behind. Social networking hasn’t proven to be quite the platform for self-expression and resistance to oppression that it may have seemed a decade ago. A number of authoritarian states now have deep social network penetration, but they have managed to neuter political criticism. Requiring that one use one's real name and identifiable details (like a mobile phone number; in many countries you have to show your ID to buy a SIM card) helps ensure an atmosphere of self-censorship, where people don’t air strident views too much because they worry about the consequences.
> the goal is to keep the people ignorant and subject to the ancient stupidity of religious dogma
The present wave of fundamentalist Orthodoxy in Russia (demanding a ban on screenings of the film Mathilda, attacking other arts figures or those who would try to shield property from Church repossession, etc.) is actually mobilized in large part through social-networking platforms.
Saudis are smart to invest in tech when future of oil is questionable. That's despite the game of thrones "fun" going on there right now. And tech despite its "progressive" PR doesn't care about source of money anyway; purity is for tech plebs, not for rulers.
I would expect an article with that kind of title to be published in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times, not the technology section. I'm wondering whether this might be motivated by the Times's financial interests.
> By accepting these investments, tech companies get to revel in the branding glory of global good while taking billions from a government that stands against many of those goals
It seems to me that all (or at least almost all) of the companies cited in the article are now (as of Nov 2017) public companies, how are they supposed to not accept investments? On the one hand I understand the criticism because many of those investments came before those companies went public (e.g. the one, cited in the article, that Twitter took in 2011) but what would be the proposed action now? The article seemed to me a bit simplistic.
If humanity wants to improve the net balance of human rights, what better way than to reallocate available financial capital away from regimes that subscribe to undesirable religious dogma, and toward a new generation of leaders who believe in progress through the erosion of ignorance, by creating platforms of empowerment and enlightenment by means of a freer flow of information, via digital channels that transcend obsolete political and cultural borders. If the Saudi agenda is to propagate Islam, then the internet is a terrible thing to invest in.
This is a more interesting angle than merely looking for ROI. The power of social media to bring about unrest is definitely an incentive for regimes to control said social media. OTOH, we are now getting decentralized social media such as Mastodon.
Well, Saudi money comes from oil revenue, which is measured in US dollars. So really Saudi Arabia is just putting that money back into your pockets, so why all the hate ? (And please if you could step down from your high arrogant western horse for one moment and avoid the old "yeah but women can't drive" rhetoric, that would be much appreciated).
Sensational pseudo-journalism making an issue out of nothing. There will rarely be a company that has the luxury to turn down funding on some misplaced moral high ground. Should we enact an embargo? Sanctions always work, right? Or at least they make the poorest inhabitants of the country suffer (see NK, Cuba, Yemen).
My best guess, is that Saudi Arabia has been pushing very hard against Qatar lately, who has enormous amounts of capital and influence in media through it's advertisement contracts (via lots of companies and holdings directly or virtually controlled by them)...
Another option, the recent detention of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal (same reason, money and influence over media).
For what it's worth, I don't trust the process of corrupt organizations "cleaning house" in general. The housecleaning could easily be of people with insufficient loyalty.
There are more incentives (i.e. more eyeballs) to talk about the latest news and people who are in power today. If Congo becomes a global investiment power in the future, you'll hear more about Congo.
Of course we should all be wary of market manipulations by people with easy access to lots of eyeballs but this article is too widespread to have any direct impact on the market or a specific company.
No, its time to stop pretending that the "tech industry" is some sort of champion of freedom and goodness. There is nothing inherently good about tech or the tech industry. Governed properly, platforms and services like Twitter and Google can be valuable tools in creating and sustaining a free and open society. Nothing about their behavior suggests this is the case. Virtually every tech company has crumbled without much hesitation when put under pressure from authoritarian governments from China to the United States. Not only are these tech platforms quick to acquiesce to the requests(and threats) from governments, but they have proven just as willing to engage in shady and subversive practices to support their business model (and those of their advertisers and clients).
More concretely, the tech industry does good if and only if people reading this (and others like them) do good, including by advocating for good to their peers, employers, etc. There is nothing inherently good about the industry, or about you and me.
How to do it is complicated. If people like the Saudis offer money, consider the consequences. Consider your power to say 'no' to the influence they may wish to wield and how much you are legitimizing them by association.
As an example, Chinese censors now influence Hollywood. The Chinese government threatens to deny their market to those who don't cooperate, and so Americans and the world see films that are effectively censored, to a degree, by the Chinese government. For example, in the 1990s Disney made the film Kundun, about the Dalai Lama. China penalized Disney heavily in the domestic market.
In October 1998, [Disney head Michael] Mr. Eisner met Zhu Rongji, who had just been named prime minister, at China’s leadership compound in Beijing. Mr. Eisner apologized for “Kundun,” calling it a “stupid mistake,” according to a transcript of the meeting.
“This film was a form of insult to our friends, but other than journalists, very few people in the world ever saw it,” Mr. Eisner said during the meeting. (“Kundun” bombed, taking in just $5.7 million against a production budget of about $30 million.)
Maybe because the crown prince is a 32 year old who grew up seeing bill gates as an idol? Maybe this is because they want to move away from oil by exiting Aramco and moving their money to VCs?
Aside from simply diversifying their portfolio are there any prominant deep state theories as to why Saudi Arabia would want to prop up tech? For example, one such theory could be that Apple is being funded by Saudi Arabia to specifically build addictive technologies so the American public is enmeshed in confusing contradictory media sources rendering the US public largely ineffective and allowing them a secret backdoor to collect data on the American public.
If you're going to call out something in particular, you'd think it'd be the weapons deals instead of investments in Twitter, Uber and so on. Feels like this might have been slanted this way just so they'd have something to put in the "Technology" category on the website.
Is it fair/unfair to chalk this down to plain objectivism? That the source of money isnt that important as long as it gives me a chance to Change The World™..?
You're right, it doesn't matter. Thirty years ago it didn't matter, there was no such thing as criminalizing the source of money before then. This is a fake stigma, you don't have to rationalize it either.
Unparalleled economic growth continued to happen because it didn't matter to anyone of importance and status.
Whatever fake stigmas were shoved down the throats of the morally subscribed underclass only serve to keep them squabbling and maintaining the social and economic order which has always been here.
Same reason they invest in Fox News—aim the weapon at your enemy, like Iran. It’s no coincidence the media is always screaming about Iran, who is actually more moderate than our supposed ally Saudi Arabia. It’s a way to buy themselves a free pass from criticism.
Funny how this gets so many downvotes just for saying Iran may be more moderate than Saudi Arabia. If you really compare both countries it's really hard to say who's "better". Both disagree completely with our values.
It may improve somewhat under Mohammed. But you know, starting from almost 0% it's really easy to improve and still be far, far away from 100%.
> "Iran may be moderate, but they are also aligned with Russia."
Why is that a problem? The Cold War is over. The Russian influence on the world stage is not what it once was (China has definitely superseded it), and it's a capitalist society so their interests are mostly aligned with capitalist societies elsewhere.
> [Russia is] a capitalist society so their interests are mostly aligned with capitalist societies elsewhere.
Clearly their interests are not aligned with most capitalist societies, including the ones in Europe, East Asia, and the U.S. Russia overtly calls these nations their enemies, those nations see Russia as a threat, and Russia regularly threatens them militarily and interferes in their domestic politics at an extreme level (short of war).
Which countries in East Asia are you referring to?
As for the EU, the 'enemy' status is over a battle for control of Ukraine, and the trade sanctions that happened as a result of Russian invading Ukraine to stop Ukraine becoming a member of the EU. More detail about trade sanctions:
In my opinion Russia is in the wrong here, I'm just pointing out the reason behind that 'enemy' status. In countries that conduct business with Russia, that enemy status is far less pronounced.
> As for the EU, the 'enemy' status is over a battle for control of Ukraine
Ukraine is a continuation of and part of a much larger struggle. Russia is interfering in European countries' elections and domestic politics; they also annexed, unofficially, part of Georgia; they are pushing countries to abandon or not join the EU; they are working against European countries in other regions, including in the Mideast; they are trying to divide NATO by building an alliance with Turkey ...
Honestly, if someone offers you 300 million plus would you say no, because this someone belongs to a different culture group? The discussion as well as the headline of the article seems quite strange. I mean you want a free market or not. If you want, then all these examples should make you proud not worried.
So, not respecting human rights is a cultural difference we should accept?
And if I want free markets, and I notice that free markets lead to people being murdered, then I should be proud when people do get murdered? Otherwise I would necessarily have to reject free markets? Or what exactly is your point?
(a) Why does paying $300mio to Twitter results in people getting killed?
(b) Why do you think your government/companies/people would do better?
(c) What you should be proud of if you like free markets is that everybody with money and interest in a company can put their money in that company. In a non-free market like China you are way more limited with foreign investments.
(d) "Free" means everybody can do what they want. If you want to limit what people are doing you are not talking free markets. That's in fact a reasonable argument from the Socialist spectrum. Don't allow people to run around freely, harming themselves and each other. One really has to decide what one likes in that spectrum. Each direction has their own pros and cons.
> (a) Why does paying $300mio to Twitter results in people getting killed?
Who claimed it did?
> (b) Why do you think your government/companies/people would do better?
What makes you think I think that?
> (c) What you should be proud of if you like free markets is that everybody with money and interest in a company can put their money in that company. In a non-free market like China you are way more limited with foreign investments.
Why should I like free markets as a primary value?
> (d) "Free" means everybody can do what they want. If you want to limit what people are doing you are not talking free markets. That's in fact a reasonable argument from the Socialist spectrum. Don't allow people to run around freely, harming themselves and each other. One really has to decide what one likes in that spectrum. Each direction has their own pros and cons.
If you want to limit my ability to erect a government that limits what you can do, then we are not talking freedom. Agree?
I'm not sure that more nefarious aims need to be posited than simple avarice.