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You inadvertently argued against your own point. Your friend's startup died, that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do. Whether the specific instance of sanctioning was justified is another matter of course, but the point is that the economy was damaged. That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.

> That hurts ordinary people yes, but - this is a war. Better an economic hit than being bombed or shot.

40,000+ people died in Venezuela because of sanctions.

[0]: https://cepr.net/press-release/report-finds-us-sanctions-on-...

This is an super exaggerated number to attributte only to sactions, our TOTALITARIAN REGIME actions killed those people and the reality is that sanctions just helped them

Before the sanctions, (that started in 2015), we had already huge economical problems (and problems of kinds), mainly due the goverment focusing on making one of the greatest corruption acts of all times [1] and focusing on systematically making the venezuelan population poorer, sicker, hungrier and dependant, in order to keep the power and keep stealing money.

The thing is, sanctions did absolutelly NOTHING in favour of venezuelans citizens and their freedom, in fact, they made it easier for the Venezuelan totalitarian regime to justificate their acts (forcing hunger, violating human rights [2], etc) and made it stronger in a way that since our country got alienated, we got more support from other totalirian regimes such as China and Rusia.

So hurting the ordinary people, as that post say, was just putting an extra nail to the coffin of every venezuelan that died of hunger and sickness.. Was just encouraging more people to fight for freedoom with rocks vs guns and died or got detained [3] [4]...

All for nothing, and 6 years later, over 300billions usd stolen later, 2.000.000% hyperinflation later, 7.000.000 venezuelans gone later, over 400 people killed in protest later, over 5,000 political detentions later, the govt is still there and... blocking venezuelans from using stripe, transferwise, etc, is going to help us haha ..

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Venezuela

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Venezuela

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_protests_(2014%E2%8...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Venezuelan_protests

If sanctions kill any amount of people greater than zero makes it a deadly weapon against innocent people and should never be used. Additionally, anyone who uses sanctions should be considered committing an act of terrorism because of their intended effect being killing innocent civilians.

By that reasoning the west would never have invaded Nazi Germany. Lots of innocent people on both sides died in that invasion, and yet the world is now a better place because of it.

Well you won't know without knowing the difference. Just say that we've a different order but for ordinary people probably make no difference.

You born after that so did I. Is like saying that the world is better place now because Napoleon invaded Europe. Well, you won't know what would be if he didn't so your argument has no logic (and, in addition you have no idea how life was during that time)

His argument also fails with the Ukraine situation. The world may be a better place today because the USSR disbanded, but Ukraine would not be being invaded by Russia today if the USSR never disbanded.

Uhm, no? If the USSR never disbanded, hundreds of millions would still be suffering under a broken system instead of starting on the path to recovery a few decades ago.

The breakup was unquestionably a good thing for humanity.

Are you actually arguing we should’ve let the Nazis be and slaughtering every non-Aryan in sight?

Luckily sanctions don't directly kill anyone so it's not an issue.

Have you ever lived under sanctions? Have you lived your whole life in a country who has only been an imposter of sanctions?

Yes. No.

Instead of trying to use some vague "you haven't lived it!" argument, it would be nice if you could provide an example of someone directly killed by sanctions.

If you need a medicine to live and I take away your access to that medicine which results in your death, I have killed you.

Would you agree? If you do, then sanctions directly kill people.

No, that is indirect. Thus when that same medicine gets delayed en-route due to a large rain storm, one wouldn't say you were "killed by the rain".

So you want NATO to start bombing Russia, or...?

I'm firmly anti-war so that means I'm anti-bombing as well as being anti-sanctioning.

The easiest of all positions to take.

It is the best position to take. How many civilian deaths is too much for you, if not zero?

Ignoring regime change for a minute, the two big levers EU/USA seem to have is sanctions and proxy war (by funding and equipping Ukraine). Anything else like bombings are immediately off the table due to nuclear deterrence. Not doing anything seems like the second worst possible outcome as appeasement will only lead to disaster in the inevitable follow up wars. If we take minimizing civilian casualties as the goal, is your position that equipping Ukraine and leaving Russia alone otherwise is the best option?

It is by far the weakest position to take. Your world with no aggressors is fantasy. The only person who had the choice to do nothing was Putin. Our failure to respond to him would result in many more deaths. Incidental casualties from sanctions are unfortunate, but in real life we always have make compromises.

Are you willing to die for this better world? It is strictly immoral to condemn others to death at your benefit while others must die for your gain.

If your children or siblings or parents had to die for you to live, would you choose that?

That isn't even a good attempt at a straw-man. Let's be honest, what qualifies as "my gain" in your argument here is "less death." So yeah, I'm willing to do what it takes to reduce death.

You're arguing that we should do nothing and let Putin go on his rampage unopposed, as if that will result in less death. To say that I disagree with you would be pretty redundant at this point, and you're not making good faith arguments, so I'm out.

You are making the assumption that people _must_ die. Not only that, but the people that must die should be dying because of sanctions, which means those that must die should be civilians.

The gain I mentioned was that you and your loved ones live. You and your loved ones get to enjoy a longer life with the price of other peoples loved ones dying from sanctions. You believe that's the best way forward.

People _must_ die when one country invades another with their military. That's how military invasions work.

Believe it or not, the Russian soldiers that invaded Ukraine weren't shooting paintball guns.

Do you have any proposal as to what the rest of the world should do while Russia brutalizes a country it has no business in attacking? It's definitely not a "defeat them in the marketplace of ideas" kind of situation.

Killing Russian civilians isn't a solution which is why I am firmly anti-bombing and anti-sanctions.

So what is a solution?

> that damages the economy, that is what economic sanctions are designed to do

They're designed to cause regime change, or at least diplomatic changes. That has failed in Venezuela's case (and Cuba's, and North Korea's, and Iran's, and so on).

What's funny (actually, it's very sad) is that any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis; we would see a repeat of 2008 (likely worse due to some factors having changed since then). Be careful what you wish for, as those who virtue signal naively today, thinking it'll only affect citizens in faraway lands, may themselves face frozen ATMs, credit cards, and bank transfers in a few months, if the worst-case (i.e. their dream scenario) occurs.

"any sanctions strong enough to truly harm Russia would destroy the stability of the world's financial system by triggering a global liquidity crisis"

You'd need to back this up with some real evidence for it to be convincing.

As it stands right now the freezing of Russian reserves is in effect and international markets are essentially untouched, what are these additional sanctions you are referring to?

I am not an expert in this area but is seems to me that if Russia disappeared from the financial system, with an annual GDP of 1.4 trillion, nobody would really notice after the initial write-downs. It is one tenth of China, and has been chasing away FDI for over a decade - thus reducing its international impact. But I am open to explanations as to why this is a big deal, let me know!

I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.

The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).

It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.

I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?

Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).

And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.

> I think the issue here is that sanctions require usually time to really take effect. The government is already installed by the time they come. The dictators and their cronies are shielded and live lo comfortably.

> The population is either brainwashed or brutally repressed when it complains (particularly eliminating leaders).

> It’s hard to make a case for sanctions as the solution as there are plenty of counter examples: Cuba has been heavily sanctioned for over half a century and little has changed no matter how dire the situation gets.

> I wish they worked for sure, because what other resources you have against a nuclear power?

> Edit to add: also, sanctions have exceptions (usually to shielding the sanctioning countries from suffering consequences, as in this case with Russia and the energy related transactions, with the effect of keep that money flowing for Russia).

> And these tyrants workaround the sanctions in many cases with the help of other nations.

That didn't answer their question at all.

Your reply doesn't seem to address my point directly. The appeal to "time" doesn't really work given that that Moscow stock exchange has been closed since last Friday and seems unlikely to open this week.

Cuba has changed quite a bit in the last half century, I would look into it if I were you, most resorts in the country are Cuba-FDI joint ventures - it is complicated but sanctions where most of the world actually disagrees with you are a lot more difficult than this situation.

In this particular case it seems that the work-arounds are not generally available. The Russian government was not prepared to have their own reserves frozen.

> that is what economic sanctions are designed to do

Agreed - that is the point. To hurt ordinary people so that they care (not said lightly). Sanctions are designed to punish a whole country.

While messed up, you can't just affect/punish the leadership. If you could we would already be doing that. The way to hurt the leaders is to hurt the ordinary people such that they vote, rise up, etc against the governmental actions.

Russia's ruble has dropped up to 40%+ because of the sanctions and the people are pulling their money in droves. This puts huge pressure on Putin to rethink what he's doing by making it incredibly expensive to wage this war.

Not really, his point is that sanctions do more harm to regular people. Kenya right now is the only country pointing out how this will cause a humanitarian crisis, because they know what that looks like. We should stand together against autocratic imperialists regimes, sanctions should be targeted at the regime and russian oligarchs

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docindex/v1...

They have employees in Kharkiv.

If I had employees in a city being bombed out, I'd probably stop doing business with/within the entity doing the bombing, too.

It's not a PR move. If my arm is being injured, I move to protect it. I'm sure you would, too.

Very well said - the context here is key.

>It's not a PR move. If my arm is being injured, I move to protect it. I'm sure you would, too.

Stop doing business with Russians who have no power over Putin is not really "mov[ing] to protect" an injured arm. It's more like an angry wail. Which, fair enough. It's a perfectly understandable desire. I'd probably feel the same way if I were a Namecheap employee in Ukraine. But it doesn't really do anything to protect Ukraine's interests.

They are choosing to stop doing business with the country dropping bombs on their employees and their homes. I didn’t read any grandstanding into it, just an expression of moral obligation toward their employees.

That’s about as cut and dried as it gets.

I think people on this board get very much caught up in the business aspect and fail to see the human side that is driving these actions.

I don't think it's a PR move. The company has many Ukrainian employees, and those people are understandably angry now, and want to lash out at something to do with Russia; so they found a target within their reach. It's still a bad idea because it doesn't actually help anything except Russian propaganda, but I can see where they are coming from.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone said that there are more tech companies with Ukrainian employees than there aren't. Ukrainians are very educated (they keep studying to avoid being forced to join in the military) and since there's not much happening in Ukraine when it comes to employment, they move out to work elsewhere.

That's no excuse to do stupid shit.

Namecheap is entitled to terminate its business relationship with RU entities, just as you are entitled to do the same with Namecheap.

I, for one, will be moving my own personal domain to Namecheap at next renewal. This is a political issue, and I am on the side of sanctioning the invader.

He’s right. It just ends up hurting regular folks.

Putin and friends are doing just fine under sanctions. They expected sanctions for a long time.

This effectively does nothing except make the lives of the non invaders harder.

If you actually want to help Ukraine pick up a gun and go fight.

It’s the regular folks who could wake up from their comfy lethargy and actually protest their government.

Yes, economic sanctions have limited potential to actually topple a totalitarian leadership. With Russia, the concern goes deeper. This country is armed to the teeth and poses a massive threat to Europe. Hence, the point of these sanctions is very much to also weaken the Russian economy and curb its capacity to finance more wars.

> It’s the regular folks who could wake up from their comfy lethargy and actually protest their government.

The problem is that many of those who use namecheap are already against the regime because they know English, have access to another point of view on actions taken by the regime in Ukraine.

Fucking them up may turn some of them back to the regime because current narrative of the propaganda is "West companies do not care about you and they will do everything in their power to screw you".

Speaking personally, I would not turn back to the regime, that would apply that I liked it once. I never liked it.

Who do you think you are calling people struggling to get by to wake up from their “comfy lethargy” and “actually protest”?

People don’t protest when they’re struggling to make ends meet and civil institutions are weakened.

The only effect of the inhumane economic sanctions has been tightening the ruling class’s grip. They did not work in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, not even Syria. They have however caused enormous human suffering.

I also don’t like that the Russian people have to deal with the consequences of Putin’s delusions, but I can’t think of another option for governments and companies like Namecheap.

That said, I think you’re very wrong about this: “ People don’t protest when they’re struggling to make ends meet and civil institutions are weakened.”

I believe most revolutions are a result of “struggling to make ends meet”.

e.g. First example I could think of extreme struggle leading to revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution, another more relevant example where extreme struggle led to revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution, and history has a lot more (the US from the UK, India from the UK, the UK from the UK - i.e. the Magna Carta). Meanwhile, sadly history has almost zero revolutions where the population wasn’t suffering.

I’ll say again tho. This is me pointing out examples from history. I don’t like or enjoy that the world works the way it works.

The people who are supposed to wake up already did. The people who don't give a shit will not give a shit.

Putin is with a democratic party. Do you know how big it is? It's more than half the country.

Now, waking up in this context means civil war.

>If you actually want to help Ukraine pick up a gun and go fight.

Killing people is better than inconveniencing regular folks?

Even if you were of that opinion and if namecheap ceo were to do that, it would most likely have less of an effect than what he just did.

I'm Russian. My mother is 78 and her life depends on regular supply of imported medical drugs. If the supply supplies stop due to sanctions, agree dies in 7 days max.

She was opposing Putin's power with everything at her disposal. So 'sanctioning the invader' will kill her.

Sanctioning namecheap users will not hurt Putin at the slightest. It will hurt people who are opposing him, so instead of protesting Putin - and IT people are the most of protesting group of Russians - they'll have to worry about their projects and having food. Good job, namecheap and their supporters.

I won't be trusting namecheap ever again after this. Also, targeting groups of people by their nationality, without individual guilt is something that fascists do.

I'm not from Russia but moved my domain from namecheap to gandi. I saw a lot of people here and on Twitter complain that they got the termination email but have nothing to do with Russia. Now I pay 2 more Euros per year but I have peace of mind that the domain I use for my main email won't get shutdown because I fall into hastily setup filters, atleast I hope so.

Let me know how many domains you’re transferring out of Namecheap so that I can transfer that many back in. For everyone upset about this decision, there will be 100s who applaud it.

And for every 100 that applaud this performative virtue signaling nonsense, there will be 1000 that will see through it.

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The point is to mess with Russian lives so they don’t put up with Putin as their ruler and world destroyer. Any way we can put pain on the Russians right now that doesn’t include nuclear war is better then the alternative.

As a russian who is going to move from NC - you are being very unproductive at least.

The russians who are using nc's services are mainly the ones who are protesting actively and who are concerned about their privacy for this reason.

Quite often NC is (was?) used to host email domains and such. This decision hurts people who are already anti-war and anti-government. Most of Putins supporters never even heard about Namecheap.

On the one hand, sanctions are bad because they often harm citizens of the targeted regime than they do the leadership they're meant to influence. Any right-thinking person should sympathize with the toll that they have on ordinary people.

On the other hand, sanctions are believed to work -- at least in the long term -- precisely because of this effect. The (usually unspoken) theory is that eventually the people won't be able to bear the impact on their day-to-day lives and will rise up and overthrow their leadership. Hopefully Venezuelans, like Russians, will eventually do just this.

These idiots are doing it so that they get free publicity for doing stupid shit like this.

I will be moving my domains to epik.com

as will I

Any recommendations anybody?