enwa

I don't think the moral arguments are a distraction if they are reasonable. Any intelligent person can see that both the US and China have problems and wouldn't want to contribute to those problems. And to not do that one has to look at ones intentions, motivations and actions.

Most individuals just don't have a lot of pull and we can compensate, at least somewhat, through other means. People visiting, buying products from or to some extent working in these countries isn't the problem. Most people aren't qualified to make an assessment, can't really be expected to go out of their way and won't, hopefully, engage in propaganda.

What YC is doing is just incredibly high on that scale. If you start a company in the US chances are you don't know better, since the US has a much better reputation, or you have to be there, since you were born or just very aware of it. You can treat your employees well, protest the US government and you can sue companies, people or the government itself.

YC should not only know better but will be able to do very little of those things in China. And it will be a huge win for China in general. This makes their actual step into China much worse. You can't really come back in five years and criticize them for working with the government and their investments doing objectionable things. Well you can, but it isn't very practical.

Why do we even insist on justice? Most of us can just mind our own business and do fine. It is of course on behalf the people who get mistreated. Their condition is the actual cost of our actions. Most of us can, sort of, live with that we largely unintentional enable mistreatment of many people in the developing world. But for a small entity with a lot of impact those actions becomes a lot costlier. So such decision are and should therefor be much harder to justify.

You are the one using rhetoric like "taking of my property" and "repulsive manipulation", rhetorical questions, dictating that "there is no contradiction" and trying to bury the discussion by referring to larger theories and now even invoking climate deniers. If you don't add anything to the discussion then don't expect anything back.

If your resistance against something is motivated by a theory, then clearly what you are against exists in opposition to that theory. So by definition the theory, or at least its connection to what you are against, can't, or is very unlikely to, be well-established. At least not among the people acting against it. Which makes your argument faulty and the majority of this discussion meaningless.

I certainly think people have a greater expectation to control their living costs than they have to control companies. But that isn't even the issue.

The issue is that you say that stocks have an expectation of control regardless of justification. But then justify why there shouldn't be rent control with the same justification you were warning people against. You say your motivation for this is that, based on these theories, you agree with control over stocks, but not over rent. Which means that you are effectively saying that an expectation is only as good as its justification and not that an expectation shouldn't be affected by justifications. Leaving little practical argument left about why you can't move control away from stocks if there is a good enough justification.

I certainly think there is a contradiction. If you want to base your opinions on some grand theory that is on you. How to apply Adam Smith's theories in modern society is certainly up for debate, e.g:

https://aeon.co/essays/we-should-look-closely-at-what-adam-s...

Except your concern for "the interest of society at large" was essentially zero just a few minutes earlier when talking about stocks.

That isn't really making it work. Look at the UFC. Total spectacle when it was first acquired, now it is one of the largest sports in the US. Largely because they are ahead of the regulation. People who want to compete by being a spectacle don't get licenses and access to large arenas. If they would have known how to make it work there would be a similar situation for payment processing and free sites as well.

I think it is essentially the opposite. Speaking out does nothing since we, nor the Chinese, have any power to change the situation. All it does is makes the speaker feel good about their own situation.

The power we do have is to make our own choices. The Chinese might certainly have, what they think are, good reasons for doing what they are doing, but that doesn't mean you have to participate if you think you have better reasons for not doing so.

Chinese companies are largely forced to align with the Chinese government. US companies disagreeable behavior, including aligning themselves with the US and Chinese governments, are largely their own choosing. The reality is that Silicon Valley's moral compass is buried at the bottom of their own Superfund sites.

That is very unlikely. When you start or own businesses in China you largely give up the right to criticize the Chinese government. Not only because you have to deal with the Chinese government, but because you won't have any credibility left at home. You can't on the one hand argue that the Chinese government is oppressive and on the other that it is practical to change peoples minds.

Much more likely that anything negative about China will be deemed political, like many other subjects have been in the past, and flagged off the site. That is largely how the Chinese Internet works anyways.

Most Americans just don't care. In a few years it will be as unpopular to talk about China's exploits as it is talking about Israel-Palestine. You can argue that Europeans don't care either, but at least the work culture and society is different enough from China to make the latter unappealing. Much less so for Americans.