1638

Good post, but there’s a problem here. Germany sits right next to France which powers the majority of its nation on Nuclear and has for generations. There’s no reason the Germans should be seeing nuclear as an “American” thing. They can look to their friend and neighbor, who has the same ideologies as they do for inspiration.

1639

I don’t think they see it as “American” really. I just think that the combination of factors that shaped modern Germany included forces that biased them against nuclear power. And the fact that the French did something…well, that alone is probably enough to make the Germans do the opposite!

1640

Thanks to the EU, national power grids are very well interconnected these days. So Germans have the (politically) much better option of being able to buy nuclear power whenever the renewables generation curve fails to match up with the demand curve without ever having to have that nasty radioactive stuff on German soil. Win win!

1641

Netflix will have to carry 20 Russian State TV channels, and of course they will capitulate.

1642

Well, I’m not sure there is much reason to expect them to do otherwise. There are no downsides and plenty of upsides from the C-suite perspective. And as the Internet is global, it seems somewhat unreasonable to think everyone is going to have the same conception of good and evil that we as individuals might have. The only way to stop stuff like this would be to actually control enough voting shares in a company to direct its actions I guess, which is hardly likely to occur for most of us. Even if we did magically gain such control, when faced with the stark reality of paying millions (or more) for the privilege of making a political statement that would have zero impact on the government in question, I’m not sure we’d stick to our guns anyhow. I know it would be a struggle for me, with that much money on the line.

1643

There’s the massive downside of them having to set up a Russian subsidiary, subject to the Russian “legal” system, and with real humans as employees to be used by leverage by the Russian government.

1644
1645

Yeah, that qualifies, though we can assume if they agree to that they don’t feel it’s much of a downside compared to the potential revenue loss.

I mean, Russia, like a lot of countries unfortunately, behaves horribly, and does stuff that many of us, including myself, find reprehensible. I’d love it if companies just said, screw 'em, not gonna do business there, but realistically I don’t see much leverage to make that happen.

1646

Thing is if the French had a Chernobyl-level incident, it’s probably gonna really suck to live in… Germany.

If Germany had one, it would suck to be Poland and Ukraine.

1647

Face it, Chernobyl-level mishaps suck for everyone!

1648

There is quite a bit, imo, but it involves people. And money trumps people nearly every time.

1649

I mean, Bad Things Germany Does for Points East has a bit more of a relevant history than nuclear disasters, if we’re being honest.

1650

I with I had saved it, but I saw a tweet a few days ago that claimed that ~ 50 natural gas ships were in transit from the USA to Europe. The way it read, Russia had forced either supply drop or price increase to their companies that sell gas. US suppliers can now bid under Russian prices & are doing so right now.

1651

What could possibly go wrong?

1652

Yes, Russia drastically raised the rate cost of natural gas on Germany in the last few weeks. I thought this was well known which is why I didn’t mention it as part of my nuclear argument.

1653

I love it when people call for boycott of a company with foreign stakeholder (usually China cause Russia doesn’t have a lot of money to do that) for doing something in accordance to Chinese laws. Those companies don’t really have a choice. Netflix and Google and all the other companies collaborate with those governments because otherwise they’d make less money. They rarely catch flak for this.

1654

Google does not operate in China, and hasn’t for more than a decade. (Not the search engine, not YouTube, not the Play store). But it does say something that when you’re reaching for an example of tech companies collaborating with China and Russia, you’re picking the one example that doesn’t rather than e.g. Apple who is completely dependent on China for their manufacturing and do 25% of their sales there.

1655

Google works with Chinese market. I’m just naming obvious examples, we can list examples from movies and videogames all day cause those are more visible.

1656

Eh, I’m not “calling” for a boycott of anything. I’m not sure boycotts as such do anything much, unless they are executed at a level of commitment that would beggar the imagination and thus is rather unlikely. And yeah, I made the point as well that by the rules of the global game, you still have to abide by the laws of the sovereignties that still control the meat space in which your customers exist, and have to operate under the requirements of capitalist economics. Doesn’t make it any less unfortunate, but it does point towards looking at other solutions besides boycotts.

Another factor is the asymmetry of the whole situation. Western countries for centuries imposed their laws, rules, customs, and practices on non-Western societies, and by no means were all of those impositions beneficial or benign. As soon as those former colonial or imperial playgrounds gain the ability to enforce their own, indigenous rules, though, the West screams foul and highlights just the small subset of so called Western values that they see being over-ridden. Sauce for the goose and all.

Still, Russia and China have governments that do some really horrible stuff, and whether or not the USA or other nations also do bad things doesn’t change that of course. The fact is, most of humanity lives under pretty nasty regimes in some form or another.

1657

Not sure what you mean. Google makes no movies, and distributes them only on platforms that they don’t operate in China (YouTube, Play). Likewise for games.

And did you even read that article before posting it? One project that never launched, and a bunch of examples of allowing Chinese companies to use their services outside of China.

My point here is that there clearly is no point in a company to not do business in China, when the one company that did it (to the cost of hundreds of billions in market cap) is the one people think does it. And you’re even so convinced that it’s true that you’re now doubling down on the claim. It’s not even that there is no PR cost to doing business with them, it’s that you’re making only the innocents pay the cost.