I was looking for the perfect analogy and this is it - would India and other countries be justified for sanctioning the US government for something private companies did? Sanctions are something governments do to each other and this is an issue between private citizens. It just gets messy because it's international, but AFAIK we can't do anything from the US aside from investigating to get suspects then requesting extradition.
The Indian government is pretty clearly complicit. At a large enough scale, there is no difference between permitting something and encouraging that thing. And other countries are free to impose economic sanctions on the USA for the shitty things it allows/encourages US companies to do.
If there is a market incentive for companies to do something bad, and the government can, but does not act to correct/neutralize that incentive, then the government should be blamed. India is a democracy, so that blame also falls on the electorate.
As a US voter I grudgingly accept my ~4e-9 proportion of the blame for the shitty things the US allows.
Just because people come from the country that gave the world Enron, Bernie Madoff and FTX and celebrates the exploits of Frank Abagnale and Jordan Belfort doesn't necessarily mean they can't feel that foreigners are somehow much more complicit in crimes committed by their fellow countrymen...
How many people in India have lost money to crypto scams based in the US or US-aligned places? The US has sports arenas named after crypto Ponzi schemes.
This is a global problem. It boils down to the Internet and modern telco networks opening up cheap ways to address many millions of people, allowing scammers to troll for marks at scale. Gift cards, easy wire transfers, in-app purchases, easy card charges, and crypto have made it easy to get money from people with low friction too.
That sounds an attack on the people of India for something a private company is doing. I also don't think the US has jurisdiction there, so I'd much rather see an investment in education or public infrastructure to help with it.
If this was similar to the Russia stuff where the goal was to affect the election and was sponsored by the govt then sanctions kinda make sense, but this is a problem of international communication between private citizens. If we wanted to make some law for this that seems cool but it'd need to be done at the UN, not in the US
> That sounds an attack on the people of India for something a private company is doing.
It's the responsibility of the Indian government to police what happens within its borders. The Indian government has turned blind eye to scammers in their country targeting the US, they're effectively endorsing it.
Why should the US continue to do business with a country that leeches off of the US citizenry?
Historically, the US has done the same thing to Japan, and more recently, China, when their businesses undermine US businesses. Either by not respecting US IP or by running US businesses under through collusion.
I don't agree with the Russian sanctions, you're doing collective punishment on a population of people, many of whom presumably don't even support the war. It may be an effective strategy but that alone doesn't justify it
How do you punish and manipulate a government without punishing its people, either as a side effect or direct goal?
Even if you come up with some way to somehow target specifically how the government functions but entirely spare the citizens from externalities, the government will just hold its citizenry "hostage".
I don't think we should be coercing their government to do anything, we should educate our own citizenry, build infrastructure to protect against it, lobby the international community to make a legal process for it, or all three
Why should the US invest in Indian education and infrastructure when India, by its inaction, is responsible for such parasitism against US citizens? It sucks that sanctions would cause collateral damage, but India is a democracy. No voting citizen is absolved of guilt.
I'm saying we should invest in educating people in the US to stop falling for the scams, or for infrastructure to stop in here in the US.
As another comment notes, the US is responsible for plenty of parasitism (MLMs, ponzi, crypto) that is likely a higher total value, but I suspect most citizens would feel it's unfair to sanction them because of some bad actors in the economy
I think this is an "ought VS is" thing - I know realistically the US could just hit people until they agree, but this is something that would need to be handled by an international governing body. If someone in NY scams someone in CA, CA can't just unilaterally prosecute them, it becomes a federal crime because it's across state lines. Similarly this is between countries and I don't know if we even have international laws for stuff like this, so it may not even be truly illegal. The US could request extradition but I think that's the extent of the legal actions the government could take.
