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LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

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Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#61

Private company does not invite random media outlet to movie screening. How is this news?

Private company is also spending suspicious amounts of money on political action committees, and receiving suspicious favors from local government; and the news outlet reported on this before being barred from screenings.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#62

So let's assume the people who run Anaheim are not idiots. My question would be did they run the cost analysis of these tax breaks for Disney versus the expected boon to the city from other incomes? If the income from externalities is greater than the actual income would have been from Disney, it seems like it would have been a decent decision. This is of course ignoring political principles of fair taxation.

Being an "idiot" is not the only or even the most probable reason for making a bad political decision (if this is one). You're committing the common fallacy of oversimplifying by assuming that the principal and the agent are identical, which is never true in government,by definition. Anaheim is not a person who makes its own decisions: there are politicians who make decisions on behalf of the city of Anaheim (and its…

Well said.

On a related note on of my most memorable classes in college was Philosophy of Business Ethics. One of the many takeaways I had was that business do not make decisions. People (agents) in the business make the decisions. Disney did that, Disney decided this, what's best for Disney is, etc. But in reality people are making these decisions, not some nebulous company concept. Same concept as you are pointing out.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#63
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a funny joke, but empirically not true as of this last election. Hillary massively out spent Trump.

Trump got several billion dollars in free coverage. No one would care about Trump if he was not Trump.

I don't think that's intellectually honest. The last presidential election was a clear counterexample of the "money buys the presidency" narrative.

After the fact you can always think of a reason that the counterexample is a special exception, and doesn't really invalidate a claim.

Someone who likes Trump could just as easily call his campaign grassroots from an outsider who didn't try to use his vast wealth to buy the presidency, but instead made a strong message for the voters.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#64
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below I've linked a few more. It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: whichever media outlets don't participate in the boycott will have a competitive advantage when they put out early reviews, but it hurts all outlets if Disney is able to pull off the intimidation power play. http://flavorwire.com/611229/an-editorial-note-re-disney-and... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/11/06/w... https://www.avclub…

Implying people go out of their way to read Disney movie reviews. People who go see these movies are probably parents with children. Your average 5-yo doesn't make the decision whether or not to see "German fairy tales 5: Snow white harder" based on the review in Hollywood Tribune.

Disney is a massive studio that includes Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar and TV shows on ABC and ESPN.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#65
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below I've linked a few more. It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: whichever media outlets don't participate in the boycott will have a competitive advantage when they put out early reviews, but it hurts all outlets if Disney is able to pull off the intimidation power play. http://flavorwire.com/611229/an-editorial-note-re-disney-and... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/11/06/w... https://www.avclub…

Implying people go out of their way to read Disney movie reviews. People who go see these movies are probably parents with children. Your average 5-yo doesn't make the decision whether or not to see "German fairy tales 5: Snow white harder" based on the review in Hollywood Tribune.

Disney is more than just movies for little kids. It's Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and more.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#66

This is similar to the tactic used by Harvey Weinstein to discourage newspapers from reporting on rape allegations against him. Journalists that participated in the cover-up got access to his film premieres, parties at award ceremonies, interviews with celebrities and so on. Turns out that was enough to get every entertainment journalist to cover up his crimes for years. Apparently people in Hollywood don't see any p…

> Apparently people in Hollywood don't see any problem with this!

I suspect the bigger problem is that there are so few honest people involved in the business that you would have to shut down if you broke off association with everybody doing shady things in Hollywood.

While I'm pleased to see Weinstein going down, I keep scratching my head about "We know that there are people in Hollywood doing far worse things. Why the focus on Weinstein in particular? Something smells kind of fishy ..."

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#67
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Below I've linked a few more. It's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma: whichever media outlets don't participate in the boycott will have a competitive advantage when they put out early reviews, but it hurts all outlets if Disney is able to pull off the intimidation power play. http://flavorwire.com/611229/an-editorial-note-re-disney-and... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/11/06/w... https://www.avclub…

Implying people go out of their way to read Disney movie reviews. People who go see these movies are probably parents with children. Your average 5-yo doesn't make the decision whether or not to see "German fairy tales 5: Snow white harder" based on the review in Hollywood Tribune.

Which makes you wonder how YouTubers monetize their baby and dog videos. The internet is a magical place where money materializes for bad reasons.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#68
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most money offered gets to be president. But even that doesn't work. In 2016 for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton's campaign had $790M USD versus Donald Trump's $408M USD. She had double the money 'to buy the presidency' and she still lost. https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16

Does that count the amount of free press Trump received during the campaign?

[deleted]

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#69

I think municipalities should be free to make the best deal they can with large employers like this. Chips fall where they may. They are all elected officials so therefore directly accountable. Seems like the system is working just fine here. Doesn't seem like this is anyone else's business.

Part of holding those officials accountable is reporting on what they're doing.

And, quite frankly, no, they should not be able to make deals like this. Not without the city voting on it. There is precisely zero reason why this is needed.

Re: LA Times barred from Disney movies after report on corporate welfare

#70
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump got several billion dollars in free coverage. No one would care about Trump if he was not Trump.

the vast majority negative. what it really shows that it takes an incredible level of personal wealth and fame to beat the two party system and even then he had to usurp one of parties to do it. I have no problem with his wealth and fame, I have a problem of it being an example of how much it takes to break the stranglehold those two parties have on our system. worse they use people and wealth like his as the means t…

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity...
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