Do you personally sanction all countries that commit atrocities or is it specific to Russia? I don't care what you do or don't support with your money, but I'm genuinely curious about the mindset.
It is not possible for any one person to maintain 100% awareness of the entire planet, nor is it feasible for most people to simply live in the woods as a hunter-gatherer and take nothing from others who might do wrong elsewhere.
Once we accept that each of us is a human rather than a morally perfect literal supernatural angel, each of us must decide: If we cannot sanction all wrongdoers, does that mean we sanction no wrongdoers, or some?
If some, how do we decide which ones? One good metric would be "minimum impact on my own life". Another would be "amount of badness I'm personally aware of that entity doing". A third would be "how closely is the entity that I'm actually affecting ties to the group committing the atrocities?"
So; I personally sanction some countries that commit atrocities, one of which is Russia.
But you don't sanction the country directly, but any company that may or may not support the war in Ukraine.
To me that seems incredibly unfair to normal russian people(who still exists) while still buying oil from saudi arabia for example. Ask Kashoggi about it. Or any of those other poor bastards that got rid of without anyone caring about them.
In general, collective punishment is maybe not the way to improve the world I think. But targeted action or boycott.
> To me that seems incredibly unfair to normal russian people
Life's not fair. Among the unfairness experienced by a median Russian citizen, a random American's disinterest in supporting Yandex is probably low on their list.
> In general, collective punishment is maybe not the way to improve the world I think. But targeted action or boycott.
Sure. And again, here we are discussing the targeted action of boycotting Yandex and other corporations that are economic arms of the Russian government.
Ok, I did not know those specific details, thanks for providing. I was more talking general. Different story here it seems, but boycotting kagi because of it still sounds extreme to me.
> Once we accept that each of us is a human rather than a morally perfect literal supernatural angel, each of us must decide: If we cannot sanction all wrongdoers, does that mean we sanction no wrongdoers, or some?
But you should absolutely feel free to do so if you are so inclined!
I've never thought about it like that. To me, this is the most interesting part:
> If some, how do we decide which ones? One good metric would be "minimum impact on my own life". Another would be "amount of badness I'm personally aware of that entity doing". A third would be "how closely is the entity that I'm actually affecting ties to the group committing the atrocities?"
I wonder how different people decide on different metrics. For me, I probably don't even realize I'm deciding, making it mostly emotionally based I guess. Thanks for sharing with me!
Your question doesn't seem to be made in good faith - you seem to be implying that there is no way OP sanctions "all countries that commit atrocities," because of course they don't - that would be impractical. And furthermore, "committing atrocities" leaves a lot of wiggle room.
For most people there is a tradeoff that happens between being informed, the value provided by a service, and the ethical or moral cost.
For something like internet search, which is a commodity, it's quite easy to eschew one service for another.
Let's assume the question has been asked in good faith.
Yes, I actually do. And I lose money because of that, significant amounts, because I run a SaaS, where I (as an example) stopped service to all customers from Russia when the full invasion of Ukraine started. So it's not just about not paying, it's about refusing money as well.
It's easy to fall into the "whataboutism" trap and do nothing, because one can always say "but what about… [insert country here]". I decided to draw the line somewhere. With Russia it's actually easy: an unprovoked invasion of another country, targeting civilians, raping and murdering, there have been few wars where things were so black and white in the history of mankind. With other countries it's more difficult, but I still draw a line, and state-sanctioned genocide falls beyond that line.
Some people say one should not "punish" entire countries or populations for the actions of their leaders. I disagree. Leaders are leaders because they have been elected, and/or have support within the population. And in 21st century there should be consequences for choosing, supporting, or allowing the growth of power of a leader that is a war-raging lunatic.
You can also donate to the Ukrainian army directly.
Or to amnesty international. Or a tons of other options instead of collective punishment.
What is the ordinary russian against the war supposed to do? They don't even have a real option of leaving the country as most other states don't want them because they are russian.
In my opinion this helps Putin in his propaganda that the west just hates russia.
Majority of Russian Federation population support occupation of Ukraine - independent polls at the start of open invasion. They would stop only when faced consequences.
Just because you decide to do something, it doesn't mean that you have to do everything. Even if you wanted to, it's likely that you can't.
> In my opinion this helps Putin in his propaganda that the west just hates russia.
It does help him, but you're not going to support those who do nothing or feed the machine waging war just so Putin's propaganda gets a bit weaker.
If the average Russian doesn't understand that the reaction is due to their (well, mostly their governments) actions, then that's another problem that only them can fix.
Why should I?
How about not mixing up civilian and military targets?
Current trajectory is heading straight into total war, I simply would restrain on target military targets.
> It's easy to fall into the "whataboutism" trap and do nothing, because one can always say "but what about… [insert country here]". I decided to draw the line somewhere.
That's a good point. It's a nuanced topic and I was genuinely curious. I'm not involved in any international business with Russia, so it's interesting to hear about it from the perspective of someone affected by it financially.
