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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

Adobe recently blocked all Venzuelans because of an executive order.

Foreign companies are sanctionned by the US for dealing with Iranian entities even if their countries have no issue with Iran. (Huawei's executive was even arrested in Canada on behalf of the US for that).

My point is, why should we hold companies accountable for enforcing a certain national policy when A, companies have always done awful things in the name of their owners/shareholders and B, the US itself uses companies as a proxy for its policies?

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Okay, two things:

First, to your question. Ostensibly the executive order is due to an illegitimate leader refusing to cede power and causing a humanitarian crisis. This is not dissimilar to how countries sanction North Korea. I would absolutely have preferred such actions to be passed in a democratic manner, and in fact the whole executive order mechanism needs serious rethinking, but the underlying concept is different.

Second, your B) question is a tu quoque fallacy, as you're appealing to hypocrisy. Just because the U.S. does it doesn't mean we should accept it from China. We also should be (and many are) angry at the US' actions.

You forget the part where now all South-American economies are in crisis thanks to US forcing pet leaders to replace "corrupt" ones. Now 50 % of population in Argentina is poor (counting homeless too) thanks to US Foreign Policy, but for them is OK to maintain the 10 % becoming nastily rich while others pay the price.

Argentina is poor because they elect populist leaders who spend more money on social programs than they collect in taxes and eventually default. Same as Greece. It is entirely self-inflicted.

Not entirely self-inflicted. A) Argentina "populist" leaders didn't have to go to the IMF and they provided a good climate for small to large enterprises with the obvious limitations that country's market has. When the current administration (conservative, neo-liberal) got in, Argentina didn't have debts but was negotiating with foreigner speculators who took advantage during last crisis at the end of 90's. So the current administration (those administration you guys love) worsened all the conditions for enterprises and made impossible to invest in any industry. They also let financial and venture capital to take the country's destiny in their hands. Four years ago, defaulting was unthinkable. USA Foreign Policy has much to do with it when they disturbed the local political process. B) Social programs benefits a small part of population, and they really need it. Actually, the actual administration is spending even more than before on social programs, and they're not the "elected populist leaders" you refer. While we can discuss if the incentives are effective for producing a labor force (I think they fail miserably), we can't discuss the basic rights of people to have something to eat until better economic conditions are met. C) Taxes are the weakest part of the system, but alone didn't hamper Argentina's capabilities to made business locally and internationally. And you forget that their nature are not different from any other places taxes in the world. US provided political and ideological support for this complete mess and you should feel ashamed before talking about other countries.

Yes, but the circumstance that caused the collapse of most fragile democracies in South America and Africa was the 70s oil crisis and subsequent governments (dictators, old elite, crazy bastards) that ran up massive debts.

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