@piggo and we thought Germany was the impostor...
@piggo That’s a great shame indeed. For now there is a significant push in the country to “move something” about this, but I wouldn’t have high hopes for it to go anywhere. We’ll see. Ostrich politics at work in this little land of innocent and ignorant.
But let’s not pretend it’s all rosy elsewhere. I recommend reading kamilkazani’s twitter - it is very instructive - the guy is stirring the pot on German, Czech and other military exports to Russia quite a bit (especially Rheinmetal et al). For instance this thread (and related ones from September) are a good start: https://nitter.it/kamilkazani/status/1567882093585203200#m
And his findings lead to news stories later picked up - for instance that Czech stuff ended in October in mainstream press in CZ and the German connection findings too.
@FailForward @piggo
IMO it's on governments to check the exports and block those that would violate agreed upon embargos (and also to make sure the embargos they agree upon are effective and don't have major holes).
@wolf480pl I agree. But either way, it’s on us, the civic society to check on them too - after all, money tends to trump morale, so relying on the govt only is probably naive.
@FailForward @piggo
At the same time, I don't think companies and NGOs should apply sanctions extrajudically, nor be pressured by the public to do so.
At the start of war I saw many organizations jump on the hype train of "russia bad" and do whatever they can to be mean to Russians without any government coordination or thought whether such actions will be effective or whether they'll just make ordinary Russians hate the West more without any effect of Russia's capability to wage war.
@wolf480pl We are living in a free society. Individuals and companies are free to “apply sanctions” as they see fit, there is nothing wrong about it - as far as they are also wiling and prepared to bear the consequences of those decisions. I am not obliged to do business with people I don’t like, or don’t want to do business with. Is it stupid from somebody’s perspective? Maybe. Silly? Perhaps too, but that is how freedom works. I don’t need to coordinate with my government on that.
Whether I am interested in not alienating ordinary Russians is also besides the point. They do the job better than I ever could (c.f., e.g., https://nitter.it/JuliaDavisNews, or francis_scarr’s feed).
@FailForward @piggo
AFAIU if a company refused service to a customer because said customer was black, or a Muslim, that'd be illegal in most countries.
And where it wouldn't be illegal, it would be wrong by our western morality.
Why should this principle not extend to nationality of the customer?
@FailForward @piggo
Also, for example, in Poland, refusing to sell a product that is intended for retail sale is a civil offense, except when such sale would be illegal.
Now this would not affect selling CNC machines to a business but it's another example that no, just because we live in a free society does not mean business owners can refuse service to anyone they don't like
@wolf480pl And yet we agreed not to sell alcohol to under-18s, or weapons to members of societies we don’t like. See, it’s not all black or white. I guess we both agree what is going on and why it is so. Where we perhaps differ is where we stand on the spectrum between the reality vs. where we wish the reality were.
@FailForward @piggo
We agreed through the means designated for it by legal orders in each country - for example by voting for representatives who then voted for acts of law that establish a bill that prohibits sale of alcohol to under-18s.
Same how we can agree that someone should be put in prison by passing laws and then having a court of law hold a trail and find that said person did commit the acts that warrant sanctioning them with prison.
We don't just go out and lynch people.
We don’t just go out and lynch people.
Sure. And that’s a good thing, I hope we agree on that. I also don’t observe e.g., Czech companies doing it - which was start of this interaction. So where do we disagree?
@FailForward @piggo that refusing service to a customer abroad is equivalent to the country you are in harming the country your customer is in
@FailForward @piggo In other words, can we all agree that the government should have monopoly on discriminating based on citizenship and countey of residence?
@wolf480pl While I see where you are probably coming from (philosophically), I rather believe that in terms of social interactions people are free to do whatever they want as far as (at least) 1) it’s legal in their jurisdiction; 2) they are not harming other people, and 3) are ready to bear consequences of their decision.
While 1 is clear, to add to 2, I do not see personal refusal to engage with somebody else as harm. At the same time, when a group of people does the same, that is different up to a point of becoming discrimination which is harmful indeed. And somewhere in between lies a thin boundary when a freedom of group of people negatively affects safety of others and that is to be tackled. As for 3, anybody is free to dislike me back, no problem with that. Yes, it hurts sometimes, yet, it is people’s right and also their personal responsibility.
@wolf480pl But of course there are many subtleties to all this (which are however irrelevant to our original discussion). Such as behaviour called “stonewalling” in romantic partnerships. That type of non-engagement is harmful indeed. But that’s a different story than simply refusing to do business with a company my company for whatever reason dislikes.
@piggo
Ok, so let's focus on the case where a group of people does the same.
Or in this case, a group of companies (which I don't think deserve to have the same freedoms a person would, but maybe that won't matter here).
If a group of companies refuse to to do business with a certain country, does that mean they harm the country?
If a group of companies refuse to to do business with a certain country, does that mean they harm the country?
No, not necessarily. Unless they are driven by some malevolent collusion scheme - which would be a case of cartel, in which case for most jurisdictions the touched country could probably start an arbitrage case.
Excluding such a collusion and not assuming their respective governments forbidding them to do business with the said country, you can bet one of the competitors would jump in and start selling. Because that’s how markets work. Companies are (for better or worse) not driven by morale, but by profit (or the lure of it). So if for whatever reason your competitors do not engage with an attractive market X while you legally can, you’d be stupid not to. And that is what indeed happens and how this conversation was started: because US and West-EU companies had qualms about delivering dual-purpose technology to Russia, Czech and some German companies (and possibly Slovak intermediaries) happily jumped in and now they pay reputation price for doing so. Business as usual.
