hogFeast

It explicitly criticises the inability of the economy to create enough jobs. It says that Marx was correct about capitalism (btw, contrary to what people think, this is a fairly common view amongst conservatives who tend to be well-read enough to know that Marx's critiques of capitalism are quite distinct from Marxism). It is a fairly traditional conservative critique of capitalism that actually predates Marx by five decades (capitalism is dehumanizing, it breaks down traditional relations, capitalism is destructive socially/culturally).

You should have read to the end...you also probably should have actually read more about what conservatives think, rather than what people who aren't conservatives say conservatives think.

The point isn't that McKinsey is solely to blame but that a hugely powerful consultancy firm that expounds upon their higher morals at any opportunity was recommending something that was, at the very least, morally bankrupt (and btw, it was also financially catastrophic for any firm that took that advice in the end).

A great example is Valeant...long forgotten today but the stock went from $10 to $250 to $10, it was a huge story at the time, and was in the news every day when their stock was at the peak. The guy who masterminded this actually worked at McKinsey as an outside consultant for Valeant before he became CEO. This was the McKinsey special strategy: jack up prices, reduce R&D spending, make acquisitions and repeat step 1 and 2 (ofc, there was accounting fraud and the CEO tried to make off with multiple billions...again, this guy was a very senior consultant and was one of the most greedy kleptomaniacs I have seen in corporate life...this is not a coincidence).

Also, this strategy was McKinsey's brainchild. I have seen this over and over where a consultancy firm gets known for their a certain strategy in a certain industry, and they sell it everywhere and it looks like they all just came up with it independently. This strategy was not common pre-Valeant to any great degree, Daraprim happened far after. It became huge because McKinsey were recommending it to clients.

Ironically, I have an almost identical story from another industry. In the early 2010s, some consultant (I never was able to find out from execs who, they referred to an NDA) suggested to housebuilders in the UK that they pull back on capex. These housebuilders controlled a good portion of the land that was available for planning permission in the UK, the industry is heavily consolidated so they control the market for new houses, the market was in massive shortage, and then house prices would go up. Right on cue, pretty much every major housebuilder announces within the space of a year that they are going to begin returning capital to shareholders...in a housing market that is in shortage by roughly 200k homes/year, and in which any housebuilder could have taken massive share in a free market. Either way, new house prices go through the roof (the govt also announces a subsidy program), margins are now 20% against the 5-10% previously, everyone is making out like bandits. That wouldn't have happened if the consultant didn't come along (because the only way it worked is if other housebuilders knew this consultant had been around the industry, and knew other firms would cut back on production too).

Consultants have an absolutely huge role in determining company strategy, and they do deserve blame if they recommend things that are unethical (the fortunate thing about US pharma is that politicians came down on these firms like a ton of bricks, this didn't happen in UK housing). They are totally unaccountable too because when you talk to management, they just refer to some faceless consultant who is pulling the strings...if you are a shareholder, what do you do? The CEO is the monkey, not the organ grinder but it is the CEO who is the public face (and ofc, the Board are totally uncommunicative about what is going on). It is a huge problem because, as happened in pharma, it ended up with lots of companies doing things that were legally questionable and incinerating massive amounts of capital (Valeant had something like $40bn in debt at the peak, and equity was worth near $100bn at peak). ESG investing becomes impossible because there is no governance.

Saying that management bought at prices higher than model is not the same thing as saying they bought houses expecting to lose money. All that was said was that management increased the prices they would pay and changed the model so they could pay more. Nothing validates the model (again, this is a common-sense conclusion given the informational disparity that Zillow was at).

Seriously? Berlin's tower blocks are the favelas of the developed world.

Also, the reason why Berlin hasn't had the same pressure is because it is one of the few cities in the developed world that has actually shrunk over a multi-decade period. It is very easy to limit population density when there is no pressure on housing. And, ofc, the historical division of the city meant that it had to develop more than one centre. These factors aside, afaik, the development of Berlin hasn't been exceptional...they built suburbs when there was pressure on housing in the early 20th century, built public transport, those suburbs eventually integrated into the city...very few cities have grown through greater intensity in the centre because cost is prohibitive, regardless of regulations.

Nothing to do with regulations, everything to do with historical circumstance (also, the guy you replying to is quite correct...if you actually look at housing regulations in the US, they have been a tool for racial/economic segregation...being real, that is why the limit on multi-family housing exists, the US has very low population density, saying they will become Delhi if they reduce regulations is hysterical).

They didn't eliminate their fees (fee is the wrong term to use). Their model was built, maybe this changed, on being within 200bps of breakeven. Obviously, they only bought when the model would say: this will make money. Or are you saying they looked at the model, the model says you will lose money, and they decided to do it...that makes no sense, even for SV.

Flip this around, are you saying that if the model was correct they wouldn't have made money? The problem was the model saying something was a good buy when it wasn't. The model was bad. Sellers do have good information, at least better than Zillow.

Generally, this is a misconception about how things like quant investing actually work (this was an attempt to apply quant investing to housing). Some people, usually people without actual market knowledge, view quant systems as providing greater information. In reality, most quant systems are just responding to changes in liquidity. The amount of actual fundamental information these systems provide is very minimal, and will always be beaten by a knowledgeable human. The reason why is simple: there is a huge amount of private, non-quantifiable information with these domains (and this is true in investing and property, doing this in resi housing is nonsensical).

I have seen fundamental quant investing work but only when you combine quantitative work with a knowledgeable human. I have seen the same thing in sports betting syndicates too (it does vary though, in some games quantitative data does capture more of the relevant information and machines can beat humans in those instances...but if there is substantial private, non-quantifiable information then it stops working).

This is hard for people to accept because lots of people spend lots of time and effort at university being taught that ML is effective. But ML is only as good as the information you put in. The demise of value factor investing is a perfect example: collect a ton of PHd quants and finance professors, they start doing fundamental investing but without doing any research themselves, and it has done nothing but haemorrhage cash. It takes an extraordinary amount of education to supress common sense here.

You have to understand the domain. You have to understand the information you are putting in. Zillow did neither, they thought ML would save them.

I am not sure what your point is about intention. Institutional and systemic causes of what? You are extremely non-specific about what your actual argument is, you just say repeatedly how in vogue it is and that people intend things different to outcomes...but I think my earlier reply would likely be repeated.

Right, you are hung up on the idea that the purpose of the OP is to prove "reality". Again, reality is nothing to do with it...it isn't relevant, it makes no sense in the context of this discussion.

And it does reflect the deployment of the concept because college students are humans who have thoughts...so you can use the same tools that are used in a clinical setting because you are also dealing with humans there. As I mentioned, cognitive distortions occur in all people to some degree, that can result in something that needs treatment, it can have no effect...it just depends. But the point of the OP is to highlight that cognitive distortions are correlated to safetyism, it is not a diagnosis of anyone, it is nothing to do with any clinical phenomena.

Again, if you just look at the Wiki on cognitive distortions, it is fairly clear how the authors get to this conclusion. I would say that safetyism is a cognitive distortion (you are weighting improbable threats highly, attempting to read the mind of people you don't know, ironically making generalizations about people...this seems, to me, like it should be obvious...as is the situation we are seeing now where anxiety about this stuff has actually increased).

Cognitive distortions are explicitly defined as a thinking pattern that occurs regardless of reality...that is why it is a distortion. Referring to a specific example makes no sense because it is a pattern of thought. Referring to reality makes no sense because the thought occurs regardless of reality.

As an example, a hypochondriac will believe they are sick when they are not. That does not mean one should not feel anxious about being sick, it means that one should not feel anxious about being sick when you have no evidence that you are sick. The reason for observing that such a person has cognitive distortions is to examine the impact of those thoughts on feelings and behaviour, not engage in a debate about the meaning of reality. Most of these distortions occur in people who are have poor mental health, it is not academic, it is a clinical treatment.

If you are curious, read more about CBT rather than jumping to conclusions wildly. You can disagree with the theory of mind used, but what you have said seems to misunderstand fundamentally what the paper is about.

Mental illness is not passion. Cognitive distortion do not mean someone is mentally ill, people can have all kinds of thoughts that are not based in reality with no impact on their life. At the same time, cognitive distortions can be ruinous for other people. Would you say someone with anorexia was just very passionate about winning their joust with Reason? No. Again, the point of "cognitive distortions" is the idea that your thoughts impact your feelings and behaviour which can lead to poor mental health if those thoughts are not accurate in some way. There are several very common cognitive distortions that occur with anxiety and depression, for example, which should indicate that they are not totally fictional.

Also, I am not really sure why this is controversial or unexpected. Some of the most common cognitive distortions are word-for-word how people explain what the OP calls "safetyism"...it shouldn't be a massive surprise. It is quite reasonable to ask whether everyone else in society needs to adjust their behaviour (to be clear, everyone can adjust their behaviour ad infinitum, it will make no difference to how these people feel...I think it is self-evident that increasing "awareness" or whatever has actually added to the anxiety because the media has taken the view that good journalism is triggering...it is unbelievably toxic, whether this stuff makes you unusually upset or not, ironically I know a psychologist who is remarkably even-handed and they stopped reading the news because they felt it made their life worse...again, is this helping anyone? It is just a race to the bottom).

It takes an extraordinary level of ignorance about basic elements of how business works (which I am sure the investors in this company have in spades) to think this makes sense.

In order for someone to make money for something, there has to be an activity that generates a cashflow. There is no cash flow being generated, there is no outside money, what value are these people creating for other people? If you are playing a game to make money, you have to be providing some kind of value. So far, this company has convinced people to put money in, the rest of the money is probably coming from investors...there is no other money (and btw, the people playing the game are clearly much smarter than Andressen & Partners, they are taking out whatever isn't nailed down and making a swift exit).

If you look at poker, it is obvious why some people are paid to play that game: they provide liquidity, they provide someone to gamble with, they provide the capital to take risk. It is the same with a bookmaker. This example has none of these characteristics because there is no outside money (the quote from a partner at Andressen's firm is incredible, I worked in fund management, I have seen some incompetent people, people who are truly clueless...what we are seeing in VC is unlike anything that has occurred in financial culture since the 20s).

This reminds me of Football Index: the details of this are complex but they essentially paid people to play a game, there was no outside money, investors didn't understand this, management didn't fully understand this, they went bankrupt earlier this year taking down tens of millions in client money (no-one who plays this games understand that they are investing in an OTC product secured against the developer, it is nothing to do with the underlying game).

Saying that a non-dividend stock is a Ponzi is like saying a private business that doesn't pay dividends is a Ponzi...it misunderstands how a company works at a fundamental level.

I am baffled how this makes sense to you.

You are complaining about the State Department censoring news but imply that the CCP which literally controls all information isn't as bad? Again, you realise that the US being as bad as China doesn't make China good?

And, again, the doublethink is being unable to understand that the question of whether you have to trust government makes no sense in the US. You don't have to trust the govt, that is freedom. Indeed, the US govt is constructed on the principle of multiple sources of power so it doesn't even make sense to say that authority arises from one source, there are competing sources of power (ironically, this is what the CCP finds incomprehensible about the US). The US govt does not censor the internet, most of the news sources you cite are not "trusted", people are sceptical of the media, people are sceptical of the govt. The point I am making is that people are unable to sceptical in China because they have no choice, the question you are posing makes no sense in a US context.

Again, the doublethink is amazing.

My point is precisely that people in democracies are not forced to trust the govt. They don't have to trust the media, they are totally free. The only context in which your logic makes sense is one in which you believe the govt controls truth. You are living in a mental prison that you created.

The reason why it has spread is American retailers, particularly Amazon, entering international markets.

In the US, Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year so American retailers discounted on that day. As they went into other countries, they began offering sales on that day too. In the UK, Boxing Day was traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year but most shops close on this day now. Wikipedia tells me that Boxing Day used to be the busiest shopping day in Canada.

I think the reason the practice is spreading into the rest of the month is because of the higher level of competition online. One retailer does Black Friday, then another retailer tries to jump earlier, then another. In the UK, we have had companies trying weekly and monthly sales.

The sales aren't bad, I think some retailers (Amazon, particularly) don't offer great value...ironic given they started Black Friday here in the UK...but if you hunt about, you can usually find some decent deals.

Suffering for people who have never suffered. This comes up on here again and again (the last one was why rich people do triathlons). People who have done well in life need to justify themselves with some organised (and usually artificial) suffering. No-one does middle-class guilt like a Brit.

Also, this guy lives in Manchester. He lives next two spectacular national parks (Lake District and the Dales), and he goes to Morocco. Could have gone to the Highlands if you wanted remote. Inexplicable. Smh. Embarrassment.

The West's propaganda is just as clumsy, civil servants everywhere are far removed from real people (the stuff the US used in Iraq/Afghanistan is comic, I believe they are used leaflets drops in Syria too...you could also include public health campaigns and "nudges" in this, lots of comic nonsense).

The difference is that the West has the media which puts its own propaganda, people on the internet putting their own propaganda, etc. There is a market. In China, that market is limited.

A distinction that the CCP is clear to confuse. I believe his wife is Chinese, he lived in the country for a long time and his videos clearly show that he has no real problem with the Chinese people (if you had a problem with Chinese people...why would you move to China? It makes no sense, there must be some psychological bias where people see bigotry everywhere), he just doesn't like the CCP (tbh, his account of why he left China justifies that view, he may not be telling the truth, I don't really care tbh but that is his story). For some reason, people will view not liking the CCP as a slight against all Chinese people but those same people will usually dislike America with same venom they see in others...funny that.

But yeah, his videos are partisan, there is nothing wrong with being partisan and having an opinion. People are free to have opinions whether other people agree or disagree, whether they are justified by reason or changes in the stars. You can also watch a video that is partisan, agree with some of it, disagree with some of it without attempting to generalise that person's views as totally correct or incorrect...most people are not totally correct or incorrect all the time (ofc, this notion of truth is something that authoritarian govts fundamentally disagree with, having a monopoly on objective truth is a source of political and cultural control).

It is truly bizarre to me that someone who is taking a very pro-CCP stance will justify this with reference to propaganda that other nations create...it is really something. Every nation creates propaganda, every nation does not have media controlled by the state, every nation does not have massive propaganda departments that are present at all levels of society...they aren't equivalent, the only reason to draw the equivalence is because you understand that something is wrong but (for whatever reason) have to justify that to yourself by claiming everyone else is just as bad.

It is like the Communist criticism of democracy: oh, elections are all rigged by wealthy people anyway...said from a country with no elections and a one-party state. Ofc.

Johnson, Eton. Cameron, Eton. Douglas-Home, Eton. Macmillan, Eton. Eden, Eton. I am not sure what you are trying to prove to yourself. You are grasping as straws trying to prove that Blair, who went to fee-paying schools was actually a working-class man of the people...why? It is a very odd exercise (do you not understand that becoming a Minister is a different process to joining the FCO as a civil servant? If you just Google, 55% of diplomats went to a public school and 33% went to a public school and Oxbridge...the only job with a higher proportion in the UK are senior judges...btw, this is nearly double the rate for chief executives). Does Philips-Exeter and Groton have the same route into govt specifically (which is surprising given that money is more important in US politics, and the US has far wealthier people at the top end)? No. It is a very odd argument to take (and btw, not one made by anyone in these positions, the FCO has said publicly they need to change hiring and have been trying for years now, the Tory party came to this conclusion about two decades ago...you have picked the strangest hill to die on).

No, I am not referring to rotten boroughs. I am referring to how MPs are selected. That is why I said specifically that not many people understand this (because not many people actually know about their political parties work or know MPs). All you have to do is convince the local constituency party or some other small group of people in a safe seat (again, both Cameron and Blair have reformed this, although Labour's recent issues with selection should demonstrate that the system is still problematic). The US has primaries, it has caucuses...there are some safe Tory seats where the constituency party is literally 10-20 people, the selection process for Labour can be even more opaque (again, this is why the Tories decided to reform, they just kept selecting the clubbable old boys but they still have issues, particularly in Scotland, where the constituency party is very small/weak...one recent addition to the Scottish Parliament was the 21 year old son of a current MSP...meritocracy?).

Yes, the UK doesn't have gerrymandering...how did the Sixth Boundary Review work out? No controversy according to you? Ofc. It is nothing to do with a small number of votes deciding elections, that is just irrelevant, the outcome of an election is the outcome, it being close has nothing to do with anything.

FPTP isn't undemocratic. I would look at what the word democratic means. It is unrepresentative, it is most certainly not undemocratic. And there is nothing wrong with unrepresentative democracy (and that has nothing to do with the topic either).

It does your career good because you can get into Oxbridge with very little competition from students who go to schools that don't teach those subjects, and get a job in the Civil Service...or advertising, or banking, or PR, or any of the professional jobs that overindex towards people with a the right background. The point is that it has no value, and that things that have no value are rewarded. You can believe that there is no advantage (again, an odd take given the preponderance of evidence and the fact that most institutions have accepted this is happening)...all that would indicate to me is that you don't actually know anyone who works in any of the places I mention...that is it.

If you were a scholarship boy, don't try to waggishly quote Latin. People can see through you like a window, it impresses no-one.

Yes, despite what I said, I don't think comps have been the answer. Bullying is rife, the stats on sexual abuse of girls in UK schools is unbelievable (one of the highest in the world, bullying is only as high in Europe in Finland another comp education system), it isn't possible to succeed in a comp because you are stuck with a load of people who don't want to be there.

The playing field can never be level. Where I am the grammar schools are as good as the private schools, but they are only in places where property prices are prohibitively high (ofc)...but they are the only effective way out (Sajid Javid went to a comp, it is possible but it is very rare and requires support from family that isn't available in most of the UK). The way to move forward is to aggressively stream students (not necessarily by ability, I went to a school with a guy who was thick as pig shit but went into St. Andrews because he worked hard, took his A-levels three times iirc), improve teaching, and offer more opportunities in poor areas (maybe even through positive discrimination, i.e. offer kids from poor areas a chance in a decent school...the UK used to have state-funded places in private schools).

You are right though, it isn't only cultural. Part of the reason why this group is so far ahead is their education system is far better.

That is because no-one in the US could possibly conceive of a system in which college wasn't the thing that separates people. But if you are a Brit, you understand that almost all of the people you name went to the same high school and have the same background culturally...it is like all the Presidents you name not only going to the same colleges but also going to Philips-Exeter or Groton and having grown up in the North-East with parents who largely did the same jobs...that kind of thing is basically inconceivable to people from the US (the reason for this is a subtlety in how politicians are selected that, again, people unfamiliar with the detail of UK politics don't understand...to become an MP in some parts of the UK, particularly in the past, you only needed to win over at most 50 to 100 people...that is it, I am not talking about hundreds of years ago, I am talking about a decade ago...this changed slightly as both parties brought in changes to selection processes, but it is still hugely undemocratic in a way that would make no sense to anyone from the US).

Also, as I was careful to mention, the issue isn't necessarily that PMs went to the same university (although they did, your reasoning is backwards about Oxbridge...the UK has a large number of other very good universities that are better than Oxbridge in some subjects, the perception that it is a cut above is because all the PMs went there not because it actually is). It is cultural, and it is throughout govt...so in the US, you still see the same elite representation in the civil service...but it is nothing like the UK where there is close to 100% representation (the FCO is notorious for this, you need the right university, right high school, right primary education, and right parents...I know a guy who went to a £30k/year private school, parents went to Oxbridge, he got a first in IR from St. Andrew's a top university for IR, then got a distinction at KCL for IR again a top university globally for the subject, 4 high A grades at A-level...didn't even get an interview with the FCO). This is often very subtle because you have private schools teaching subjects like Classics...these subjects aren't really taught at all outside private schools, so if you go to a private school you can get into Oxbridge even if you are a relatively mediocre student if you apply to this subject (Theology is another, Land Economy is another...most students in the UK have no idea these routes into Oxbridge exist).

Barclays is largely US after the LEH acquisition, and is run terribly (and largely by Americans). Lloyds isn't an investment bank. Rothschild is a mid-market (and is actually a combination of British and French). Natwest Markets is part of RBS now, and RBS investment banking was shut down after the govt acquired most of the company in 2008.

They also have substantial foreign assets that can be sold. The situation in Japan is very unusual because the financial system has a massive synthetic net short JPY position. Because rates are so low, savings have been effectively dollarized in an economy that isn't dollarized (this is why USD/JPY is so correlated with rate differentials)...so I don't think anyone really knows how this will works out (there aren't a lot of historical examples, no country that held so many claims denominated in a foreign currency has been such a large part of the world economy...this is the end game of the export-oriented, mercantilist political economy...Germany is a ways down the same road).

It makes no difference whatsoever that JGBs are held domestically in practice because it is harder to push through a debt restructuring politically when voters are the ones losing money (you have seen this in Italy too, they have "bailed in" domestic savers which has significantly reduced their options...if the debt is owned by foreign investors, you can usually restructure and point at them: look at these greedy capitalists, terrible...but we have no choice).

On some of the other stuff mentioned above, the reason why Japan is in such a mess is because their financial/corporate sectors is totally screwed. There is no real demand for money, corporate balance sheets are loaded down with cash, no-one wants to invest, demand for money is so low that Japan's savings banks are huge players in US corporate lending, banks seem to have no actual capacity to make corporate loans...they don't know how, they just buy US bonds and call it a day, monetary policy (counter-intuitively) is making this worse, it is reducing the supply of "safe assets" but hasn't increased the capacity of institutions for "non-safe assets", it has led to a significant reduction in lending within Japan because rates overseas are so much higher...it is a real shit storm, but it all comes down to monetary policy officials not understanding money transmission (unusually for Japan, in the 1980s the govt was involved in directing lending on a loan-by-loan basis so they have a history of real control over monetary transmission).

This is specifically not what this is. Banks in Japan have a central role in the economy so the govt has no wish to remove the ability of banks to create money (they are also have a lot of political power). The digital currency will be backed by bank deposits, and the aim of this appears to be creating a interbank payments system that can run with lower costs.

Yes. Still a great uni but known more for the people who studied and went elsewhere than the people who stayed (in AI).

It is everything.

Customers too risk-averse, class boundaries still endemic (it is amazing the US tech companies went into this, Google/Facebook/etc. seem to have hired the Notting Hill set as soon as they came to London), companies too conservative about investing margin in sales, very relationship-driven sales culture (as opposed to product-driven) that is closed to "outsiders", reluctance to cold-call, etc.

It is cultural because it can be anything else, do people from the UK have a different biology? No. I think if you look at politics in the UK, it is self-evident that the culture of the UK is not exactly entrepreneurial...unless you believe that a group of probably 30-50 people who went to the same school, went to the same university and largely studied the same course should rule the country...it is very weird.

The commercial culture in the UK is, generally, nothing like the US. You have companies with great products that refuse on principle to hire lots of salespeople. I actually can't think of a SaaS company that is as aggressive in investing in sales and marketing as you see on average in the US. And this is rational because the return on investment is usually very poor (fintech in the UK is probably the best example, supposed to be the "best of the best"...pretty much unanimously weak results/growth from companies that are largely British). Autonomy/Darktrace is a possible exception (they have a lot of US people tbf) but given what happened to Autonomy...the jury is still out.

And CS courses in the UK have a very academic bent. This is a rather complex cultural point but, ultimately, it comes down to the teaching. What kind of things are prioritized, what kinds of things have value, and teachers in the UK value complexity for it's own sake (to give you an example, I studied somewhere that was doing AI research back in the 60s, was offered huge grants from military and corporates...all turned down, research stagnated, grad students all leave...the uni is feverishly trying to connect professors with funding now, all totally non-commercial nonsense...once this starts it is very hard to reverse).

Also, using the example of a US-based company opening an office in the UK isn't very helpful. The UK has lots of US investment banks doing very well in the UK but only one home-grown investment bank (and that one has been taken over by people from the US, and isn't doing very well). There is a reason why this is the case. Companies that are based overseas in the UK tend to be different in fundamental ways from ones that aren't. In tech, the big problem is that the UK is largely used as an outsourcing hub (particularly in development) because there is no real commercial expertise (this isn't obvious to people in the London tech bubble, most of the tech industry in the UK still exists that bubble).

The rest of the article is total nonsense but Britain has had these problems for decades. You see it in every industry, every part of the UK. Attitudes are slowly shifting but it is a very deeply embedded cultural thing (you actually see this in some British colonies, that is how deep it is).

The issue isn't pay itself but companies not knowing how to operate with higher wages (i.e. how to economise on labour usage) and not knowing how to deal with tight labour markets.

In agriculture, you have farmers complaining about no labour whilst they are failing to use machines that could replace the labour (and, unf, agriculture in the UK has turned into one massive IHT avoidance scheme...so most of the operators are clueless). In retail, you still have companies doing multi-day interviews with logical reasoning tests, team-working tests, problem solving exercises for shelf stacking positions (which, btw, they are getting people to do for free with no training on welfare-to-work programs).

I am not sure if I agree with the original post. Is it completely off though? No. Not at all.

I think some newspaper groups in the US had TV stations. I know some newspaper groups that own printing works have tried to sell those too. But, generally, no. The reason to buy newspapers is using the cash flow to turn around the business (again, it is very unlikely that you will survive doing this as a public company, so there is a reason to sell to a privately-run distressed asset specialist).

That guess is incorrect.

And yes, as I explained but will repeat, strikes happen within a political/legal/cultural/economic context. In some contexts, that has increased the frequency of strikes. By your account, the proportion of strikes just relates to the financial position of the strikers...I don't know how it is possible to be aware of the history of trade unionism and come to that conclusion.

For example, individuals do not choose to strike. They vote for strike action in a ballot or there is a decision taken by an executive of the union. Exactly how this occurs has had a huge role in determining the frequency of strikes (if you look at the labour history of the UK, the lack of democratic process in important unions was a major reason why they went militant, why strikes increased, and eventually why unions fell into decline).

The specifics of your account of striking is mostly wrong too (for example, it is not always true that strikers are unpaid). Most people today do not understand how unions operate...this is related to the fact that they live in countries where the labour movement committed suicide, and they are left with militant unions that misrepresent how unions can actually work effectively (again, Europe is a perfect example of this, the militant behaviour of unions today is a function of their irrelevance in society, and that is 100% a function of the use of industrial action by militant unions).

If you own a paper, and revenue starts dropping 10% YoY for multiple years then you are going to need to put in place changes to the business, finances, corporate structure that most people who owned newspapers do not want to do.

In some cases, this has been forced due to high levels of debt. But even in those cases, some change in operation is usually required because something has changed quite significantly.

So you try to sell your paper? Most corporate buyers don't want to buy a problem. Most PE funds don't want to buy a problem. Bond holders don't want to take control. The most likely buyer is a hedge fund that specialised in purchasing distressed assets. So it is the opposite of what you think: the hedge fund knows exactly what you know, that is why they are buying. The information in the decision to buy for a hedge fund is not the trajectory of the business but the price. You can buy a business in an industry that is failing, and still make money. Ofc, what journalists (outraged by someone coming in and telling them they have to earn their wage) forget is that this isn't easy work. Hedge funds that specialise in distressed assets are buying a problem...that is why someone is selling it to them.

It is is hard to generalise but from what I have seen: newspapers are still generating cash, there is a lot of scope to cut back on staff (to put it bluntly, newspapers were a monopoly business so they ran tons of staff doing things no-one read, they were a sinecure/tenure type job), digital strategy at most papers is very bad because managers worried about hurting offline, fully digital has a totally different staff model (a website is a totally different experience to a paper, all the views are concentrated in that top 10% of stories...no-one is going to hunt through/scroll down for your gardening guy), and there is scope for restructuring with debt holders. The business is declining but nowhere near as fast as other industries affected by online. Declining businesses like that are usually mispriced by the market who give them a control discount (and tbh, everyone just wants growth...look at Dillard's, they bought back effectively all their stock and the share price went up 600% in a month, people want to buy potential profit tomorrow rather than actual profit today), so taking the business private is usually very profitable.