Alibaba breaks itself up in six
economist.com
economist.com
It sounds silly since nothing really changes, but it has to do with the way investors calculate the value of public companies.
What you are saying might be how it turns out in the end, but it is not a given.
https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/decisions-decisions-or-why...
Split up each business could be valued with direct competition in market and the same PE ratios applied to evaluate value and market cap. It caused a noticeable jump in overall stock value while nothing actually changed other than how businesses reported to the market.
If the units all get too independent, based on my view at ground level in China, is that they will all get more powerful in their respective markets. Nobody was happy with the value erasure.
On the other hand a fuckton of value has been irrevocably erased - entire ed tech sector isn't coming back to pre crackdown levels. If anything CCP hasn shown little regard for crippling soft tech since it will redirect talent towards strategic hard tech where job and wages have been booming. Baba getting proper rectification if it incentivizes future talent to reorient towards SMIC seems to be part of the plan.
It's demise is a self reflection on the beyond limit of control that has to be relieved for the long term stability
The ed tech industry's value is about meaningful as the scam industry
“Investors cheer the move as signalling the end of China’s tech crackdown”
If this is government action then why would this be the “end” of government involvement?
They prefer individual businesses not to get to big, monopolistic or dominant across multiple sectors, as this would give the business undue influence over politics? And of course they're operating on the idea that the political sphere governs the market and not that the biggest businesses should be the most powerful lobbiests.
So this is an end to it because it effectively neuters the one super company by making it into several more easily regulated companies?
It's about power. From the article:
> Communist authorities dislike the idea of anything, let alone a large private business, outshining the party. And the country’s leaders bristled at the high profile of Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, an icon of Chinese enterprise who every now and again dared question their decisions.
So it is a little more complex than that.
What is the basis of this hope?
On a political level, there are only so many Chinese companies with enough power to actually threaten the CCP, and Alibaba is probably enough of an example to keep them in line - further crackdowns are probably unnecessary.
The USA is different in that the political fabric is myopically focused on personal individual wealth growth in a very short sighted obsession with only being re-elected usch that they can insider graft/trade and expand personal/familial wealth.
The fact that we dont even openly talk about this problem... is the problem.
Nancy pelosi (and family, dont think for a second she doesnt share her insidere trading info with her close circle, including her son who has also grifting business in ukraine.) is a prime example.
Also, they've just got to ease up at some point right?
Nope. There is absolutely nothing (other than whatever good judgement they might have) that would prevent them from flying the entire craft straight into the ground.
Agree that the problem for Jack Ma was he was becoming a threat to CCP power. He may have been able to pull it off and make a new countervailing power, but he spoke up too soon and CCP/Xi figured out the threat and took action. Maybe another player will be smart enough to stay below the radar for much longer, but it'll be years if not decades
> Over the next few months the government [...] disappeared Jack Ma.
Huh, I've never seen "disappear" being used as a transitive verb. I kinda like it and I think I'll put it in my language toolbox.
Government forces (not revolutionaries) which use either their official militaries/police (often) or their secret police (less often) to detain individuals without recourse to the law, then take them to illegal detention centers where they are tortured and eventually killed (in Argentina, some detainees were simply drugged and dropped alive to the Río de la Plata river, where they drowned -- our so called "flights of death" -- and others sometimes simply shot). The key thing that sets "disappeared" people aside from other ways of execution is that there is no official acknowledgement of their fate, and their friends and family are never truly sure of how they died unless their mortal remains are ever found by chance.
If this sounds horrifying, always remember our militaries in Latin America were trained in these tactics by the US government, in things like the School of the Americas [1], under the guise of "learning how to fight insurgency".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
Of course it requires two things: murderers and those willing to train and support them.
PS: "nice try" my ass. This piece of history I'm telling you is widely acknowledged, this is not some kind of conspiracy theory.
To be clear: I do consider our dictators and murderers as worse people than those who trained them in the School of the Americas. Because, like you rightly put it, "who chooses this path?".
It's hard to choose a good path if a major world power is making sure all the good ones get shut down.
But this isn't what I said. I definitely didn't say "the USA did it". What I said was:
> always remember our militaries in Latin America were trained in these tactics by the US government
Which is both fair and accurate. The US was definitely involved one way or the other in most Latin American dictatorships of that era, enabling atrocities under the guise of fighting communism and insurgencies in their "back yard".
> agree fully
.. The US was definitely involved one way ..
how are we not in agreement now?
They were called los desaparecidos (“the disappeared”) and for years once a week their mothers would silently carry photos of them and walk in circles at the Plaza De Mayo in Buenos Aires.
Everyone loves Magical Trevor 'Cause the tricks that he does are ever so clever Look at him now, disappearin' the cow Where is the cow hidden right now?
Musk certainly used to have decent business accuumin - he hit it big several times, that’s not just luck. From all accounts he’s a half decent engineer too, which is rare in many CEO levels.
However his behaviour over the last 3 years has been very surprising. He seems to be less interested in the tech and more in the politics, which is a shame.
One thing he's demonstrated from the beginning is a stark undersupply of emotional intelligence. There are noises that come out of his mouth that my 15yr old would roll her eyes at for being too self-centered and immature.
The two are not the same.
It is like calling someone an idiot because they won't do what you want and ignoring what they want.
You have to admit that it may not be a priority for Elon to maintain his reputation with you in your 15 year old
I'm not interested in chatting with the Weird Nerd defending Elon Musk from Valid Criticism.
I am guessing this couldn't have been just luck either.
You imply that skills are context-free black or white - that is a terrible way to think about people or the world IMHO. And you can’t ignore changes over time either.
But, the fact that he so clearly doesn't know when he is out of his depth in the first place is the real tell.
A computer engineer without those skills is merely an amateur physicist. That's enough knowledge to light things on fire. A software engineer without those skills is merely a programmer. Ask a quant with no engineering background to put their ad-hoc scripts into production one day and let's see how that goes once other people start depending on it.
Musk might know some science, maybe he's written some scripts in his day, but none of that makes him an engineer. He's proven he doesn't know the first thing about keeping a lit boiler from exploding.
Once you have x dollars and own companies government is aware of it comes as no surprise
He's a narcissist. People used to worship him - and given just how hard Tesla kicked the butts of the ICE car industry or how SpaceX just completely obliterated Boeing/ULA, rightfully. But let's be honest, both are mainstream now and don't get as much attention as they once did... and then, his wife leaves him for Chelsea Manning and one of his children comes out as trans and sticks the finger to him.
A bad enough combination of events for normal people to handle (getting dumped by a partner is one of the chief causes that sends people into depression and other mental health disaster loops), but for a narcissist with no real support structure to fall back on and already on the edge? No surprise he blames everyone but himself and allies with those that are against those whom he feels "wronged" by: the far-right.
Note, this doesn't excuse any of his actions. He needs to come out of this rabbit hole either by himself or, when he finally hits rock bottom and commits something that he can't just buy himself out of prison, by the government.
The odds of any given entrepreneur getting lucky several times in a row is very small.
Given a large enough entrepreneurs, the odds of one of them getting lucky several times in a row gets very large. We just don't see all the ones who tried and failed, or succeeded once or twice and fizzled out.
I don't doubt that Musk has some skills and appropriate personality traits as well, but luck is likely the dominating factor.
That either seems extreme luck or there’s something else
What an hilarious amount of bad faith! What drives you to resent him that much? Envy? It's okay: he's achieved a lot, but maybe you can too if you work at it.
However, I think it's an unhelpful mindset for others to believe that Musk is some sort of model for entrepreneurial success.
Then maybe you should scrutinize who you get your information from: intelligent people who have worked with Musk, or random journalists and forumers that repeat talking points such as "this immense success over several decades of active executive role is just pure luck".
> However, I think it's an unhelpful mindset for others to believe that Musk is some sort of model for entrepreneurial success.
What an interesting thing to think! The person with arguably the greatest track record of entrepeneurial success alive should, under no occasion, be taken as some sort of model for entrepreneurial success. If you have contenders for this position, I'm interested.
There is a far stronger underpinning to the American attitude to wealth: It's not "equate wealth with ability", it's more "equate wealth with virtue and morality" - that the owners of wealth "did something right" generally has nothing to do with ability. Even the founders of Hewlett-Packard aren't remembered for their technological advances but for the "HP Way", a marker of virtue rather than business acumen.
The absolute veneration of "hard work" as a marker of success over connections/which hoo-ha you accidentally fell out of is rarely raised, despite their being overwhelming evidence that to be successfull in the US, you have to be born on 3rd base.
When it comes down to it, it should be absolutely no surprise that these billionaires with feet of clay rarely live up to the image that is built for them by the fanboys. Musk's family had a history of bizarre, he has simply not fallen far from the tree.
You don’t build the first successful auto startup in 70 years and revitalize the space industry by being a moron. Everything Elon Musk has ever done with Twitter (including the 2018 SEC debacle) has been the dumbest shit possible, however
I think you are spot on. There are dozens of 'Elon Musks' out there we don't notice or talk about because they didn't win. Someone was going to win in the space, the government was heavily incentivizing electric car purchases. Musk was the best salesmen and here we are. That doesn't make him a tactical genius.
And I guess now with the Twitter shitshow Musk doesn't exactly look like a genius either.
In terms of pure market cap, which I'm not sure how relevant it is, it seems that the current valuation (41 billion) is higher than when he offered to buy it (34 billion in April 2022).
Most startups of that era are.
Seems like the arch-enemy of communists
The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future https://archive.is/d9OsU
The former has a limited downside, the latter unlimited. Whatever the Central Committee decides happens to you is law with no recourse - execution, disappearing and re-education, etc. - and law enforcement and the courts are just there to justify it after the fact.
It’s clueless to publicly mouth off about the CCP if you’re a high-profile influential Chinese billionaire and therefore a potential threat to the current ruling faction, or some future ruling faction when there’s turnover. Discretion is definitely the better part of valor there.
If the downside is unlimited then you do whatever it takes to win, always.
And if there isn't currently a struggle then you prepare for the next one, constantly.
Or in other words, you only spend a small portion of your total ability and time on the job, because you have to constantly expend effort on protecting your back.
Xi Jinping himself got purged in his youth and spent that time living and working in the countryside and building his ‘man of the common people’ cred, then made it back into the CCP’s favor later. Though Xi was a princeling, his father was one of Mao’s inner circle, so he might have been untouchable and only at risk of exile and not actual execution for that reason, unlike most other CCP members and Chinese people.
And to be fair, US politicians spend most of their time fundraising for their next campaign, so in terms of total ability and time spent on the job it’s probably similar in both systems. But losing a power struggle in the US just means losing your election, and trying again in the next one. In the CCP there’s a wider range of consequences.
1. Jack Ma knows things you don't, and those things made mouthing off seem worthwhile to him. Still, he miscalculated, but not out of sheer cluelessness.
2. You, HN commenter, understand Chinese politics and power better than Jack Ma, a prominent Chinese billionaire. He is clueless.
Doesn't 2 seem a little arrogant to you?
Though I would argue that the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is not that Ma was being calculating and strategic, but that he just got cocky and said something dumb in the moment. He let all the global feting of his rise from schoolteacher to China's richest man go to his head, made an all-too-human mistake, and said something inadvisable.
He may even have been trying to defend the CCP in that moment, trying to communicate to US audiences that the CCP doesn't need to be feared because it's not scary, and thus he himself didn't fear it. But Xi and the powers that be interpreted it differently, and disappeared him. Which is always a risk in that system, but not in liberal democracies.
See also, Twitter is was not worth $44 billion in 2022.
Missing option (4). If you have billions, sacrificing a lot of wealth and power to do something you want is just another valid option.
See also, sacrificing 20% of your net worth to support "freedom of speech" is a reasonable choice, especially if you are left with an objective fortune.
FWIW I know it’s his right to do this as he owns the platform but it is relevant in the context of “but Elon didn’t do X”
It seems to be supporting Musk's freedom of speech just fine.
But one has to be clueless in order to start a power struggle with Xi. He's not like the old school CCP head at all (not even Mao), he's much more of an all-powerful tyrant like Stalin was. Starting a power struggle against such a ruthless despot is clueless.
Political struggles where commonplace during most of the Mao era, and it wasn't until the end of his reign (in 1969, amidst the cultural revolution) that Mao came to gain complete power over the central committee. (And by that time, he had done most of its harm already)
Two of the most historically important event of the period even happened after Mao lost a power struggle and was trying to get back on his foot: the great march and the cultural revolution.
The fact that they let Ali "voluntarily" restructure, and save face from having it be enforced, is interesting on it's own. I'm not really sure what to make of it.
US (and by extension NATO, doctrinally) military is very unconcerned with face in the small. For (real example) anyone on the bridge of a US ship can report to the captain of a ship that the ship is out of position (for an exercise). A buddy almost got walloped on the bridge of a ROK ship for doing that. They didn't because he was American and that's what exchanges are for.
some cultures in the west tend to value bluntness over face in the small.
This is about power and control. The Communist party does not want any other centers of power or control to emerge which might challenge the party. Jack Ma, and the tech industry in general, was emerging as such a power. Now that problem has been taken care of.
It could be as simple as he disagrees with the CCP policy.
For example, we don't typically look at human rights or anti-war protesters and call them Clueless, even when governments Crackdown on them
It takes a special kind of arrogance to conclude that people are idiots simply because you don't understand their actions after a moment of thought and with no information.
Doubly so when you have someone who grew up through the cultural revolution, lived in China for 60 years, and is a Communist Party member.
So yeah, I would retract what I said about him being clueless, more like careless and overconfident.
I can tell you that no one in China was surprised when Ma got smacked down; we've seen this same thing play out over the past decade.
The relevant question is if Ma was actually surprised with the smackdown, or realized it was a possible/likely outcome, and chose to proceed anyways. You seem to think Ma made a mistake, maybe so, but maybe he would make the same choice again given the same chances.
Both Ma and Musk have FU money. They have both made choices that cost them money, but we can only guess at if they actually see their choices as mistakes. They are both still multi-billionaires, so their mistakes haven't been bad enough to cost them their lives or fortunes.
If you had 20 or 200B in the bank, would you let financial risks govern every decision you make? What price tag would you put on speaking your mind or living the life you want to live? How many billion would you gamble on a long shot? Being insanely wealthy probably makes people overconfident, but it absolutely makes some people more willing to take financial risks.
Im not saying Musk or Ma are right all the time, but I don't think it is right to judge everything through a financial lens, with hindsight, and no insider information on motivation. I think that anyone who pretends to know what Ma was thinking is overestimating their knowledge and ability.
So, there's no uncertainity regarding who will be picked next and why.
Anyone putting money into a Chinese company is betting that Xi and the CCP will allow said company to do things that make them money, and won't sacrifice said company for political gain. Good luck with that! The beatings will continue until regulation stops US investment in China altogether, and then the Investors will whine about it to no end.
It's important to note that the Chinese government is not monolithic, and different factions within it may have different goals and priorities. The recent actions that have been perceived as positive by investors may reflect a shift in priorities or strategy by certain government officials or agencies.
Maybe the past. The factions have long been consolidated and eliminated.
To western eyes suddenly Alibaba seems to be kind of hero standing up to authoritarian government but from what I read what really got Alibaba in govt crosshairs was its predatory finance business. I don't think any country would have liked this type of business but many would've tolerated because "free enterprise / follow the law" thinking.
So the way I see this is "law taking its course" Chinese way and proactively taking action against business which could be socially bad in future.
When we talk about anti-trust and tech industry policy in the US, we know by default that means that it's going to involve the FTC (M&A), SEC (Accounting/Financing Practices), and the House+Senate Judiciary Committee (review M&A, Financing, and Accounting Practices decided by FTC+SEC)
The Chinese tech industry in the 2010s had a number of competing regulators - China Securities Regulatory Commission, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, State Administration of Foreign Exchange, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Cyberspace Administration of China, State Administration for Market Regulation, People's Bank of China, etc.
Because there are so many regulators/agencies stepping on each others toes, there was a lot of intrigue and bad practices in the Chinese tech industry from 2000-2020 (eg. Crypto companies like FTX and Binance bribing PBOC officials and AntPay arguing that as a FinTech it should be regulated as a tech company/by the MIIT and not financial regulators)
During 2019-2022, there was a massive regulatory reform across the board that divvied up the roles of individual agencies and created the norms that startups and companies needed to follow.
The resolution of Ant Group's whole saga is basically setting precedent on which agencies/regulators within the PRC do what, and now investors have an easier time understanding how to vet investment risks in the tech sector.
Upon settling in the countryside, I saw firsthand the power of dripping water drilling through rock. That image, which captured the spirit of persistence, has stayed with me all these years. It has become a well-worn source for contemplating life and movement.
Rock and water are two opposing elements that are used to symbolize dogged stubbornness and gentle fluidity. Yet despite being “gentle,” water will drill through “solid” rock over time.
As a metaphor for people, this is the embodiment of a certain moral character: it is the willingness to rise to fight each time one falls and the courage to sacrifice oneself. A single drop of water is small and insubstantial. It will die a cruel “death” in any battle with a rock. Yet in that brief moment of “sacrifice,” even though it cannot see its own value and achievement, it is embodied within the countless drops of water that have already fallen, and the triumph of finally drilling through the rock. From the perspective of history or development of an economically disadvantaged area, we should not seek personal success and fame. Instead, we should strive to make steady progress one small step at a time and be willing to lay the groundwork for overall success. When everyone doing our work models themselves on a droplet that is ready to sacrifice for the greater good, we need not worry that our work is not important enough to make lasting change!
As a metaphor for things, dripping water is a demonstration of dialectical principles that use softness to overcome hardness, and the weak to control the strong. I believe in the invaluable spirit of that drop of water, which bravely goes into the breach with no thought of retreat. Those of us who are involved in economic development will inevitably encounter complications in our work. We can either rise to the challenge or flinch and run away. It all depends on whether we have the courage to adhere to philosophical materialism. If we allow ourselves to be filled with trepidation, the kind of fear that comes from standing at the edge of an abyss or treading on thin ice, we will lack the courage to do anything. We will accomplish nothing. Nevertheless, courage alone is not enough.
When dripping water takes aim at a rock, each droplet zeroes in on the same target and stays the course until its mission is complete. The drops of water fall day after day, year after year. This is the magic that enables dripping water to drill through rock! How can it be that our economic development work is any different? Just look at areas where the economy is lagging. Historical, environmental, and geographical factors have all played a part in holding back development. There are no shortcuts. Nothing can change overnight. Instead, we need to focus on the long haul by turning quantitative changes into qualitative changes. We need to be the dripping water that drills through rock. When talking about reform and opening up, we cannot assume that help will be coming from left and right, nor can we afford to wait until conditions are perfect enough to ensure success. Instead of building palaces in the air, we need to square our shoulders and get down to work. When talking about economic development, we cannot simply race to build high-rises and open up big factories, nor can we focus on dramatic results at the expense of necessary infrastructure. Otherwise, success will be elusive, and opportunities will be easily missed.
Instead of daydreaming about overly ambitious or flashy projects, we need to have a firm footing in reality as we take concrete steps to reach long-term goals. Instead of “setting three fires” in the hope they will succeed, we need to work steadily and make solid progress. Our work calls for the tenacity to keep chipping away. Working by fits and starts will not get us anywhere.
When I describe my awe upon seeing the power of droplets drilling through rock, I am praising those who have the willingness to rise each time one falls, and the moral character to sacrifice for overall success. I am expressing my admiration for those who develop a solid plan and then have the tenacity to see it through to the end.
It is the investor you should be questioning. And if you are cynical, ( Comparatively speaking, in US terms ), Wall Street will use anything as an excuses to get the results they want.
It’s not clear to me that those aren’t just as self serving as say a big company in the us operating freely and so on.
The government needs to recover from COVID.
Perspective:
As leader the in control, I see there's a company that has the largest payment network in the country. Well that can't happen. I need a slice of it. So let's "regulate" it.
why do you need a slice of it?
> why do you need a slice of it?
Greed!
The People’s Liberation Army, People’s Armed Police and Militia answer to the Central Military Commission which is subordinate directly to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
It isn’t like the United States or Europe or even Japan or Korea. Your basic assumptions vis a vis how we work and therefore how they must work will never work when trying to serve as a proper lens for interpreting the PRC because the PRC is itself an institution subordinate to a Party which considers all aspects of Chinese society both public and private subordinate to the Party including State, Religion and the activities families and businesses of their subjects which in their eyes doesn’t stop at the border if you are of Chinese descent.
So if a business like Alibaba or a businessman like Jack Ma is challenging anything about that framework, or the laws of the PRC and policies of the CCP, they can’t afford to let that stand because the most important thing to them is maintaining their internal cohesion and power. Everything else is secondary or tertiary.
"The arc of communism is long and it leans towards oppressing the fuck out of people. It’s a tendency of all governmental systems. Communism rests most of its power in the hands of government without a moneyed elite to oppose them, so it tends to move to authoritarianism faster and with less resistance."
My understanding is that economics and governance are largely - though not completely - orthogonal.
Since it breaks down by divisions, so for example taobao would still be the top e-commerce competitor. Not to mention, despite being huge, I can't say Alibaba has monopoly in any of their services.
In the US, if the FTC decides to block your merger or the government wants to split up a company, the company can bring the government to court, on a equal footing and argue it's case.
That's not happening in China.
I'm not accusing you of making those silly arguments, but those silly arguments are a frequent end of this line of reasoning, so they are worth watching out for.
Contrast that with
> China’s parliament has about 100 billionaires
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-...
Like all communist nations, there is a ruling elite.
Corporate execs regularly get jobs in government, and often wind up "regulating" the very industries/companies they came from. It's also an open secret in Washington that when politicians retire they often get cushy, high paying jobs in the very companies they regulated or provided government contracts to.
It's a revolving door between corporations and governments, and it's misleading to think the one is truly separate from the other.
A better model is to look at the corporate-government interaction as competing elites vying with one another for money, power, and influence, and just as often collaborating with each other on shared interests.
the other way of seeing that is that if you want to regulate a domain you're going to want to have people who know the domain
> when politicians retire they often get cushy jobs, high paying jobs in the very companies they regulated or provided government contracts to
again, it makes sense for the company to buy the services (and the address book) of someone who knows everyone in the space.
of course all this creates a big incentive to cosy up to those companies, but it's not as black as you are suggesting
Sure, but not people who have a vested interest in minimizing regulation.
The origin, abilities, aims, and accountability are different.
> elementary and high school are the same its just different people moving between them competing for status.
This doesn't seem persuasive to me. Describing what some people do while in an organization doesn't define the organization.
Why not include universities in that list?
Governments exists to manage violence and through law. Corporations exist because they outcompete individuals for subsistence.
Recall the FB head of security that was walked out of the building at MPW for sexually harrasing/inappropriate actions
Or the other head of security who came from NSA, then left FB to go back to NSA, to leave NSA and go back to FB?
Or the time that FB built a 'government liason office' in DC?
Or the time that zuck employed ex SS agents as his personal guard?
Or the time CNN admitted to having CIA handlers on the editing staff (remember the quashing of the epstein story by media, because the CIA told them to)
Or the time when Maxwell, who was media heiress' daughter of double mossad agent was convicted of trafficking kids to REDACTED
Or the time it was reported that the FBI and twitter had an open channel on what, who, when to censor information?
Or when Cisco was required by the NSA to incorporate backdoors in all routing devices for them...
Or when the CIA intercepted CISCO devices en-route to [FOREIGN ADVERSARY] to install physical back-doors into said routers? (mid 1990s)
Or when AT&T was required to install carnivore in SF IDF on Folsom (same building that served the nascient startup 'Twitter')
Or when NSA required Intel to install certain security instruction sets for monitoring code/exploits
Or when it was announced that Twitter had a 'firehose' of all tweets to the library of congress (NSA) for sentiment mining...
Or the time when the most public pedo, aside from BBC's Saville, MITs big donor Epstein was called out for having Marvin FN Minsky in his clientelle - and the fact that a podcast revealed the big BDSM culture of MIT. (I cant find this video for some reason)
Or the time that a c-founder of reddit was suicided for allegedly stealing reasearch papers, but really was going to reveal the ties to pedo elite via the grift at MIT...
Or the time that every session on netflix/prime is a PR campaign for how bad-ass and rogue an ex CIA/NSA/COP can be when he is pursuing the current narrative and constant movies about clandestine operations is made to emotionally drive you to sympathizing with our good looking, adept, secret agents who are saving society from raving lunatics... literally 50% of movies/shows on these platforms are pushing the PR narrative of just how bad-ass a single CIA/NSA/COP agent can be.... else, watch many of the shows that are literally called lucifer... so many weird evil shows....
Or the time when CERBERUS investment group bought MAE-WEST (1st street san jose) and forced them to install carnivor to monitor internet traffic
Or when they sold it after install
Or when they bought PAIX (the Palo Alto Internet Exchange) which convenietly routed all network traffic through that facility AND also had international fiber terminated there AND AND also was the primary IX on the west coast (not MAE-WEST) as it had international and secret lab traffic - so they monitored all out of Stanford...
There are so many data points, and if like data, then pay attention to the points that matter, such as the above.
Yeah - corp-gov is so intertwined in the US its nuts. Actually insane - as its a third-rail to even discuss in media.
https://www.wired.com/2006/04/whistle-blower-outs-nsa-spy-ro...
The US ensures its continuation and longevity via the small group of Elite families and new wealth that is continuously being generated. They control the media and so many more, which keeps populism at bay. If democratic forces were left on their own, it would have reached the state of decline that happened to many e.g. social democratic states.
China guards the power so that it stays with the Party, and imprisons Wealth when it becomes threatening
But as it has always been on the U.S.-dominated English-speaking Internet and media, facts and objectiveness do not matter when it comes to any topic related to China. Anyone can twist, spin, or literally invent anything to fit their own narrative about China and people will believe it without question as long as it leans on the antagonizing side.
Yes there are tons of nonsense online about China. But it is not helped by the total dragnet there is over there. And by the fact that some of the over-the-top stuff about China is indeed true.
I mean Jack Ma really _was_ disappeared right after the speech.
Tim Cook stepped off Trump’s board of CEOs and did not disappear. Jack Dorsey banned Trump from Twitter and didn’t disappear. Elon Musk constantly goes after Biden for no reason. He has not disappeared.
Replace "China" with pretty much every topic, they do this with everything to draw attention from viewers.
1. Cloud Intelligence
2. Taobao Commerce
3. Local Services
4. Cainiao Smart Logistics
5. Global Digital Commerce
6. Digital Media and Entertainment Group
إِنَّ اللّٰه وِتْرٌ يُحِبُّ الْوِتْرَ
"Truly God is One and loves odd numbers" - hadith
Arguably it is natural that belief in chance ("luck") and a supreme being would be at odds (npi). Odd number do seem to have a greater claim to authenticity than even numbers. Even directly implies division and multiplicity, whereas odd numbers are the children of unity, thus the 'world' and its chance events fall under the even numbers, but the reality is all about 1 and its odd children.
although the rule of threes seems to be a universal constant. Just something about it.
> The U.S. should continue investigating splitting up Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
It’s not clear China’s government actions are “really” for the purposes as that comment indicates…
And frankly the list of companies is borderline nonsensical.
If you force government to be smaller and less powerful than corporations then corporations become government.
Microsoft into OS and other software and cloud.
Amazon into cloud and web store(s).
Google into ads and web software that serves ads.
Apple hardware should be incentivized to make great hardware for any operating system.
Apple software should be incentivized to sell to many manufacturers and also to not obey apple hardware's demands for locks to prevent things like the replacement of batteries.
Their union could be a great thing, but apple decided to use it to be a bunch of monopolists, so your break them up like all the others.
People buy apple hardware for the integrated experience. e.g. I am not gonna buy a Dell running macOS or a Mac running Windows11.
There are cheap ones too, but that's the whole point of choice.
But they do lil bro/sis
Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Presicion/Latitude or HP Elitebook for companies aint cheap. Gaming laptops. Android phones, the top ones.
etc
i prefer just being able to say "buy an iphone/macbook" whenever i think what has quality rather than having to research options for 3 hours on what's the current state of the art in tech.
Right. Just buy a Macbook...
Except, don't get the 12". That one was an overheating flop, should have never made it to market (nor the i9 16" Pro). Also, avoid the 2016-2019 ones with the butterfly keyboard. While you're at it, don't get the 13" Pro either, since it's a bit of a scam for the touchbar that wasn't that big of a hit. For all of these machines you'll want to upgrade them from the base memory to 16gb to make them last longer, and if you don't upgrade the storage then there's a good chance you'll only get single module speeds, which is significantly limited.
Simple!
Ive seen plenty of people buy a current Mac just for Apple to relesase something new 2 weeks later.
Also, for phones atleast, Samsung Galaxy has been pretty consistent in quality.
society has decided that some behaviors are in and of themselves bad, whether or not said threshold of yours is surpassed (for example monopolistic behaviors)
in the amount equal to how much you like any such benefits, other people dislike the downsides of monopolistic behavior, so we decided that it's bad even if maybe some good comes with the bad
> having or trying to have complete control of something, especially an area of business, so that others have no share: She did not consider the fine a sufficient deterrent against monopolistic practices by big producers. The company is accused of monopolistic behavior.
Apple has completely control over Apple products and services, but not of the entire market, since there are plenty of other choices available in every market category they operate in. People who say they dislike Apple for its monopolistic behavior tend to seem to dislike Apple in general, and would rather not anyone buy their products, rather than just making the personal choice to not buy their products (because they indeed have many other choices and so can avoid buying Apple products and services).
as for like vs dislike, the company isn't important enough for me to form such personal opinions about it, they're simply a company engaging in monopolistic behavior just like any other company engaging in monopolistic behavior
the same goes for your personal opinions as to the meaning of such a conclusion -- while I'm sure you are a great person, and appreciate you respectfully commenting, such opinions are neither convincing nor relevant to the topic at hand: whether this one company in question (Apple) is engaging in monopolistic behavior (they are)
> I get really nervous when people say [...] I should be forced to live again under a market that I absolutely loathed.
Well, that's the problem with walled gardens. If your platform exploits a tragedy of the commons to make money, society will probably eventually realize they're being scammed and demand fairer systems. A money-ocracy is not a solution to these problems, it's a clever guise to drain your wallet and make you think that life is improving because you spend money and buy products.
Huh? I'm only referring to the Apple 2 (when Apple first changed the personal computing industry) and the 00s, when macs finally became fast and stable enough to be considered a decent value (one can argue it was the original iMac, but OS/X and then the first intel macbooks is when Macs really started making sense value wise). Apple silicon, a recent innovation, hasn't really changed the personal computing industry much.
> If your platform exploits a tragedy of the commons to make money, society will probably eventually realize they're being scammed and demand fairer systems
I don't think Apple is doing this. They are selling a decent product, which for some inexplicable reason other hardware/software producers can't seem to replicate. They seem to have a monopoly on "not sucking" but that's about it.
How can you be showing “monopolistic behavior” when you’re neither the only player in the game, nor the biggest?
In fact, splits almost always happen when it’s actually a monopoly not some vague hand-wavy goal-shifting “monopolistic behaviors”.
Our antitrust over the last few years is crazy lacking.
Wouldn't you want the burst of innovation and competition before the five to ten years of status quo monopoly if you wait to act?
That would also extend to practically every company out there unless we can somehow accurately predict the future.
Is there any money in writing operating systems? I don't see a world where people suddenly start paying for Operating Systems
Products being - for example products being iPhone and iOS and services being iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+, etc.
App Store would also likely end up in Services, which would also open up multi-app store compatibility. It's almost too good of a solution.
And search would probably make more money if they could sell ad space to other companies. And by selling information on popular search terms for particular links.
Think of everything that Apple (Meta, Google) do, think on which components would benefit from having startups replace and distrupt them and then break them up on those seams while forcing them to allow competition between their fragments (e.g. iPhone with Android OS, iOS on Microsoft phone platform, MacBook M1 with ARM Windows, iOS iPhone with Google Pay, etc. etc.).
Which of them will own Apple trademark?
Which of them will own Apple logo?
But a judge can, and will (if asked to), because - as I said - it's hardly an unprecedented situation. Just to mention one, AT&T still exists as a brand but was once broken up.
For Alphabet and Meta, I would likely pursue criminal charges for conspiracy to fix prices in online ad auctions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
Easy! Hard part: Who gets Occulus?
Who can reasonably be broken up? On what reasonable basis?
Well,
Perhaps Meta?
Maybe Microsoft?
Alphabet definitely.
Apple? They'll laugh us out of court.
If we want these changes, we're going to have to advocate for changes in the fundamental ideas behind antitrust itself. Technology has outstripped the current regulatory environment's ability to keep it in order. And we don't seem to want to admit that. We just keep crying that the law won't act. Well, that's because no laws are being broken. And the politicians and the tech bigs are desperate to ensure that no one figures that out. They'll keep feeding us crumbs so that we don't do the dangerous thing and ask for changes in law.
If there is no subsidy or special grant, it’s not a monopoly.
Often these days there are subsidies or unfair grants given in some way, and the solution is to eliminate the subsidy or grant.
That IPO was canceled by the CCP, the guy disappeared for months and now his stuff is being broken up.
The message is clear: no matter who you are, criticize the party and you will get rekt.
So it looks like Jack Ma's joke about AI meaning "Alibaba Intelligence" is coming to fruition.
I have a hard time believing this is the reason the Communist party wants to control capitalist elements… because they “outshine the party”
The CCP has nothing to do with it, I'm sure.
/s
Alibaba had nothing to do with being a monopoly, it became a power base to rival the government so it had to be broken and scattered.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-threatens-retaliation-aga...
To recap, the Alibaba break up wasn't about a monopoly, it was about a rival power base to the CCP that couldn't be allowed to exist.
https://www.quora.com/Can-an-airline-have-both-Boeing-and-Ai...
And again, Ericsson and Nokia don't have nation states threatening countries if they don't use them in all their networks.