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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

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood still defends Polanski. Hollywood still attacks RMG. Hollywood still defends Ben Afflec. Hollywood still has not kicked Tarantino/Clooney/Matt Daemon out for covering it up. Netflix/Amazon/HBO still has not dropped everything that Harvey the Stain makes money off from its catalogs. House of Cards has been canceled but not pulled. It is simply posturing.

> Netflix/Amazon/HBO still has not dropped everything that Harvey the Stain makes money off from its catalogs. For what? Hasn't being fired from his company, etc, stopped Harvey the Stain from making money anyway? If not, make that happen. It's stupid to drop all movies he produced; I'd probably cancel Netflix if they did that.

Because if the solution is to punish a person not an entity that protected that person then nothing would change.

Also, he operated as an officer of the company.

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

#142
post #91

These stories of malfeasance by elected officials, where the representatives act so clearly against their office and the public good, present a conundrum. The campaign contributions even at a national level simply aren’t enough money to incentivize the given level of corruption. I really want to know: what are the incentives? Are there secret payments? I remember Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted for receiving…

For the politician being bribed, the relevant calculus isn't the size of the service done for the briber - it's their perceived risk of discovery and punishment, which is already low enough before taking into account the human tendency to undervalue low-probability risks.

This implies that the moral cost of corruption (knowing you are responsible for banrupting the city you represent for example) means absolutely nothing to the elected official.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giantbomb doesn't, as far as I can tell. Jeff Gerstmann started the site shortly after he was let go from GameSpot (rumored) for posting a low-score review of a game which was advertising heavily on their platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann#Termination_fro...

They openly talked about it when CBSi (also owners of Gamespot) bought Giant Bomb back in... 2012? I forget what year, but it was pretty open about his Kane and Lynch review got him fired.

Was there. Can confirm it was Kane and Lynch.

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

#144
post #50

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

I risk to devolve this into a flame war, but I think it would be a good idea to wait what Muellers investigation finds with regard to influences on the presidential election, so money spend by third parties to help get someone elected can be attributed to the corresponding campaign.

No flame war here, but as someone who has friends and family in Appalachia and middle America who voted for Trump, I tire of the "Trump won, and we didn't foresee it, so it must have been Russia tricking stupid, dumb rednecks into voting for him" narrative. I dislike it because if Hillary had won, nobody would be looking into this at all. They would simply accept that in a free republic, policing what people hear is impossible, and you have to just trust the voters to not be fucking morons. But she didn't win, so we on the collective left have decided we can't trust voters to not be morons, and need to clamp down on the source of these people's misinformation. Does anyone here know a single person who switched their vote from Hillary to Trump? I don't.

Trump didn't magically get votes that Romney didn't. Instead, the data shows that Hillary didn't get black voters to turnout in the numbers that Obama did. She got them to turnout in the numbers that John Kerry did, and subsequently lost. Is this because she's white, and a significant minority of black people who voted for Obama simply choose not to participate when a non-black candidate is nominated by the Democrats? Nobody has the guts to ask that question.

We on the left need to get off of the "Trump stole the election with Russia's help" narrative, and get on the "Hillary doubled Trump's spending, had 5 times as much campaign staff, and according to Donna Brazille hijacked the DNC and the primaries, and still lost" narrative. We have two corrupt political parties in this country, not one. And both sides act like the other party is the only one.

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

#145

I feel like things like this are a fundamental social problem. How can this be prevented?

A culture of expectations that businesses behave ethically and do not bribe their governments. Campaign finance reform. Powerful government regulators that actually scare companies. A department of justice, for example, that observes this and decides to nationalize Disney, break it up, or delete it from the universe using existing anti-bribery or anti-trust laws. A state of California that decides to prosecute executives or at least threaten them with jailtime. Maybe send SWAT teams to raid their mansions and shoot their dogs, like they do with suspected poor black pot dealers.

The worst punishment any company receives for bribing, stealing from, defrauding, or poisoning the public is a slap on the wrist that is outweighed by the profit they make committing crimes. We need to be comfortable with devastating corporate punishments (company-destroying fines, mandatory company breakups, nationalization, jailtime for executives, asset seizure) to have any effect at all. What did we learn from Equifax? Don't worry about the security of people's data, there is basically zero real consequence to posting sensitive data on every citizen in plaintext on the Internet. Money spent on security is a waste, an objectively bad business decision. That's what our government and regulatory bodies have told us. And it's what the market has told us as well, but we already expected that -- we expect the market to choose evil when given the choice, every time. That is its function.

Right now, a CEO cannot say to their board "Yes, the cost/benefit analysis and market forces suggest we should bribe the city officials and steal money from the taxpayers, but we'd go to jail so we can't" because it is not true. All they can say is "it is morally wrong" which does nothing except get that uppity CEO fired so somebody who really cares about profits can be brought on.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most money offered gets to be president. Didn't seem to work very well for Hillary... (I know this sounds like a cheap shot, but it completely breaks down your argument)

$2B in free media attention helped a bit, I'd imagine. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-t...

The "Free media attention" was encouraged by the Clinton campaign. It was their "pied piper" strategy. They wanted to go against The Donald, because they felt it was their best chance of winning. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-campaig...

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

#147
post #94

Aren't all video game review sites like this? All AAA games get inflated scores to not offend the studios.

Indeed they do - because video game journalism does not have the same ethical standards (not in the Gamergate sense) that film and literary journalism do.

How so? Until I got to college my second job (after "sandwich artist" at Wendy's) was as a paid contributor to one of the two powerhouse gaming blogs at the time (the one that wasn't Kotaku; if you were in the scene back then, you'd heard of us), back when blogging was first coming to the public consciousness and the term "blogosphere" had yet to be coined. And while in retrospect I'd classify the quality of my own writing as "tabloid amateur" at best (please, God, don't go look at it!), we held ourselves to quite high standards of integrity: we could not accept any gifts from publishers, including paying for our own lodging and airfare when traveling to events; if we attended after-parties (at E3 and such), we had to disclose our presence and acknowledge any conflicts of interest; and when receiving games to review not only did we have to disclose as such, but we were forbidden from keeping any games, so we held raffles in order to award the games to our readers (back when physical copies were the norm, remember). If even our flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants blog could adhere to standards, why is everyone so dim on the prospect of integrity for game journalists?

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

#148
post #144
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I risk to devolve this into a flame war, but I think it would be a good idea to wait what Muellers investigation finds with regard to influences on the presidential election, so money spend by third parties to help get someone elected can be attributed to the corresponding campaign.

No flame war here, but as someone who has friends and family in Appalachia and middle America who voted for Trump, I tire of the "Trump won, and we didn't foresee it, so it must have been Russia tricking stupid, dumb rednecks into voting for him" narrative. I dislike it because if Hillary had won, nobody would be looking into this at all. They would simply accept that in a free republic, policing what people hear is…

Good point, you're right on.

It amazes me how otherwise intelligent people can think so illogically consequently creating an echo chamber drawing in an entire segment tech culture. There are redpills amongst us but, for the most part, they remain silent.

Scott Adams of Dilbert articulates this phenomenon well.

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

#149
post #144
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I risk to devolve this into a flame war, but I think it would be a good idea to wait what Muellers investigation finds with regard to influences on the presidential election, so money spend by third parties to help get someone elected can be attributed to the corresponding campaign.

No flame war here, but as someone who has friends and family in Appalachia and middle America who voted for Trump, I tire of the "Trump won, and we didn't foresee it, so it must have been Russia tricking stupid, dumb rednecks into voting for him" narrative. I dislike it because if Hillary had won, nobody would be looking into this at all. They would simply accept that in a free republic, policing what people hear is…

[deleted]

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

#150
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the short lived reign of the emperor who purchased his title. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus

Ha, I specifically remember this as one of my favorite episodes from the History of Rome Podcast[0] by Michael Duncan (#98 in linked list[1]). Of some relevance is his new book that just came out, The Storm Before the Storm[2], which details the events that preceded the rise of Julius Caesar and paved the way for him to overthrow the republic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Rome_(podcast) [1] https:…

After two years of getting through the back catalog I'm almost done with The History of Rome. I highly, highly recommend to it anyone who likes history or Rome or just a good story.
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