FailForward @FailForward@qoto.org

@wolf480pl But our conversation right now is not about necessity, rather you asked whether me deciding not to engage with customers in some country is equal to my country "harming" their country. Which I find absurd.

@piggo

@wolf480pl

> 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.

@piggo

@wolf480pl Yes, such a hypothetical company would be certainly harming Poland in this story. But what is wrong about it?

Just as a side-note to show that this situation is not very realistic even if hypothetical, suppose such a Gazprom would exist. That would most likely mean that either 1) natural gas is abundant, or 2) totally unimportant matter - in both cases to a point where commercial companies have a sovereign powers over it - in which case the hypothetical Poland would just switch the provider, because if one Gazprom could exist, then so can 2, 3 or more.

In reality, in Gazprom case we are dealing with a state owning its own resources and using them as a strategic weapon against others - and all that just covered up in a structure of a commercial company. But that is a rather normal state of affairs, isn't it?

I think your example would be more fitting if instead of Gazprom you'd say Apple (also big and important) refusing to open a subsidiary and thus do business in say, Burundi (nothing against Burundi, it just crossed my mind). And that is a totally usual configuration, isn't it?

@piggo

@freemo yes, that may be another way out of this: he'll try a, b, c, ...up to n or so, along the way (on his own failures) he'll painfully discover that the company is as it was a week ago not because of sheer incompetence, but for a good reason, he'll learn what he bought himself into and finally will get to senses and navigate out of the pit. We'll see.

But for now, him throwing tantrums about advertisers and them showing him a middle finger is not too dissimilar to when a month ago the British prime minister tried to steer hardly in a direction and then the harsh reality of the markets caught up with her.

Anyway, a lot to learn while observing this.

@mathlover @unamanic

@mathlover Nah, I don't think it's going to die. The guy will just mess up badly, harm will be done left and right, then the reins will be given to an adult, they'll steady the ship and somehow get out of the pit. Same as happened with Uber couple of years back when their CEO threw himself into a tantrum. Either way, 🍿 .

@freemo @unamanic

@freemo But it's fun to watch, isn't it? 🍿

@unamanic

@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

@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.

@piggo

@wolf480pl That seems to me a bit overreaching. Why would you draw equivalence between A) my personal decision not to engage with somebody and B) my "country" harming their country? No, we certainly don't agree that A equals B here. Nor am I able to understand why would anybody actually take that stance. Those are 2 different things to me.

@piggo

@pony Maybe yt knows something about you what is so deeply buried within your subconscious mind that even you have no clue about it 😄 .

@amytabb Welcome and enjoy!

@girls_can Welcome!

@skrimp24 welcome

@wolf480pl

> 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?

@piggo

@wolf480pl Well, our conversation started with the question whether it's OK for a company to choose where and with whom it does business with. And there indeed it's anybody's choice - as far as otherwise legal, morality is not an issue, it's a freedom of choice. Here we are sliding into a somewhat different territory.

@piggo

On the complexities of content moderation vs. Twitter + antics of Mr. Musk saga:

https://nitter.it/yishan/status/1586955288061452289

I find this thread really interesting and enlightening.

@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.

@piggo

@wolf480pl Of course you are right, there are limits to a company's and individual's freedom. In the case you cited, it would be unconstitutional in most countries I care about. But it's more subtle than that.

* **freedoms**: A company or an individual are free to do business as they see fit as far as it is 1) legal and 2) they are ready to bear consequences of their decisions. Moral or not. It boils down to a simple thing: I am free to chose my friends and business partners. And I also am not obliged to be friendly to everybody. And on top, nobody has a right to tell me who I shall be friends with. You have that right too. And I am sure you exercise it as well.

* **society in/out dichotomy** In the end, while we agreed as societies that discriminating against our own citizens/fellow society members on the basis of race, religion, etc. is wrong (for good reasons) = non-discrimination against fellow society members; note, nothing stops us (at this point in history) to discriminate against citizens of other societies = discrimination against non-members of our societies. And it is a thing happening every single day: did you notice the last time you flew different queues for "home" passport holders and "alien" passport holders? Or the whole visa, or residency concepts... In other words, discrimination against non-members of a society is at this point in history an accepted thing. And personally, I see the point of it, even if I would wish to live in a society where that were not true.

@piggo