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by rpcastagna 2795 days ago
It's weird to me you would treat this state of affairs as a static and universally-holding position. I think it's obvious (with several current examples coming to mind) that investors and business partners can be branded as "toxic" in a way that overwhelmingly devalues any money they could actually offer. In the same way the police will take a stolen watch from you after you buy it -- without much recourse on your part! -- you and your company can definitely be torpedoed by taking bad money if public opinion shifts that sharply.

These are the risks of working at the national and global scale; they have to be there, otherwise the rewards couldn't (sustainably) be so great. Even ignoring the moral arguments, the fact that anybody is making them changes the game theory perspective as well. The only way to truly stay on top is to make sure most people want you there.

1 comments

> It's weird to me you would treat this state of affairs as a static and universally-holding position.

People are going to tend to do what everyone else does. If we were to start hearing that everyone in the fund community had decided not to take money from XYZ kind of investor, we'd probably have done the same. And the arguments would be no different. You'd decide what to do, and then all the reasons that weren't enough before would suddenly be damning and certainly enough.

As for moral arguments, I'm surprised (well not really) that people think it's so simple. Anyone who's read a bit of philosophy has come across moral dilemmas that are not clear. I mean fgs there's a guy up the thread who thinks Gaddafi is defensible, and then there are people who think a guy who hires heavies is untouchable.