They might as well give up that money now. The conditions on keeping it will only become more draconian with time.
NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
231–240 of 477 posts
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#232It's not much of a dilemma though, is it? Already-rich folks kowtowing to fascists for a quick buck is beyond pathetic. US companies should stop targeting China for growth. If they don't steal your IP completely, they'll eventually freeze you out like they just did the NBA. It's happened to many companies and will eventually happen to you too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
They're communists.
It's not really correct to say China is a communist country.
Under Deng Xiaoping, China gradually undid the economic structures that define communism and moved to a market-driven economy. Today it is essentially a free market economy with maybe a little more government intervention than most other free market economies. China is communist in name only.
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Already-rich folks kowtowing to fascists for a quick buck is beyond pathetic. Most NBA team owners are already billionaires. I believe most of them are self-made and have signed the giving pledge, meaning they will donate much of their wealth to charities at or before their death. If anyone can afford to take a stand, it would seem to be them.
"can afford to" doesn't overlap much with "is likely to". hell, the rockets ownership allegedly discussed removing "one of the best GMs in the league": https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/10/6/20901828/daryl-morey... and give me a break about the giving pledge. when people are dead, access to their money doesn't matter. if they want to earn some sort of altruistic "cred", they can donate 90% of their net worth, today,…
> "one of the best GMs in the league"
I suppose China has no small part of the greatness. Maybe removing that part actually make him removable and far from "one of the greatest"?
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#234It's not much of a dilemma though, is it? Already-rich folks kowtowing to fascists for a quick buck is beyond pathetic. US companies should stop targeting China for growth. If they don't steal your IP completely, they'll eventually freeze you out like they just did the NBA. It's happened to many companies and will eventually happen to you too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
>Already-rich folks kowtowing to fascists for a quick buck is beyond pathetic. Most NBA team owners are already billionaires. I believe most of them are self-made and have signed the giving pledge, meaning they will donate much of their wealth to charities at or before their death. If anyone can afford to take a stand, it would seem to be them.
NBA team owners are self-made billionaires ... in what universe is this again?
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Already-rich folks kowtowing to fascists for a quick buck is beyond pathetic. Most NBA team owners are already billionaires. I believe most of them are self-made and have signed the giving pledge, meaning they will donate much of their wealth to charities at or before their death. If anyone can afford to take a stand, it would seem to be them.
The owner of the Nets is an executive at Alibaba. He will follow the party line and has (calling Hong Kong protestors “separatists”, etc.) The jersey sponsor of the LA Lakers is Wish.com, a company doing drop shipping from China. LeBron James is sponsored by Nike (as are all of the jerseys) and Nike has significant interest in keeping the Chinese market open. LeBron is leading production of Space Jam 2. He won’t jeop…
The counterpoint is that LeBron James already makes over $35 million per year (not counting endorsements -- his net worth is in the hundreds of millions) and therefore is actually in an excellent position to take a stand against a dictatorship. After some threshold, ludicrously rich people aligning themselves with dictators just so they can become even more rich makes them just as bad and worthy of denigration.
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a reason that, historically, fascists cozied up to the ownership class. People who operate on the assumption that they must profit over everything else are easily coerced into aligning their interests with those of fascists.
It is more accurate to say allied rather than coerced. They use the fascists to stabilize societies on the brink of rejecting them and the fascists use the rich to fund and empower their movements.
Exactly. Ford was a big fan of Hitler and actively helped Franco. Not because he was coerced, he was too clever for that, but because fasciste state keep the working class crushed which is perfect for capitalist like him.
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Already-rich folks kowtowing to fascists for a quick buck is beyond pathetic. Most NBA team owners are already billionaires. I believe most of them are self-made and have signed the giving pledge, meaning they will donate much of their wealth to charities at or before their death. If anyone can afford to take a stand, it would seem to be them.
The owner of the Nets is an executive at Alibaba. He will follow the party line and has (calling Hong Kong protestors “separatists”, etc.) The jersey sponsor of the LA Lakers is Wish.com, a company doing drop shipping from China. LeBron James is sponsored by Nike (as are all of the jerseys) and Nike has significant interest in keeping the Chinese market open. LeBron is leading production of Space Jam 2. He won’t jeop…
> He will follow the party line and has (calling Hong Kong protestors “separatists”, etc.)
Is 'Hong Kong separatist' any different to 'Ulster unionist' in acceptability to each side? It sounds like a neutral description to me.
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#238Is it just me, or are there a lot of stories now about China throwing its financial weight around to influence speech? We had the Blizzard/War of Omens thing [1], and the Houston Rockets remark being rescinded [2], and the South Park cancellation [3], and now this, all in the span of about a week. [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/blizzard-removes-blitzchung-from-h... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/houston-rockets-g…
The reality is, our political and corporate elites made a deal with the devil two decades ago, because the $ to be made off-shoring manufacturing and gaining access to Chinese markets was too good to pass up. They lied to the public that China posed no economic or military threat going forward, and that our glorious free markets would inevitably lead to a bottom-up liberalization of China. Instead, we've played ourse…
20 years ago? I'd pin it on Nixon's visit in 1972, nearly 50 years ago. Without that I'd bet China would have civil warred and bootstrapped its self into Democracy.
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a reason that, historically, fascists cozied up to the ownership class. People who operate on the assumption that they must profit over everything else are easily coerced into aligning their interests with those of fascists.
It is more accurate to say allied rather than coerced. They use the fascists to stabilize societies on the brink of rejecting them and the fascists use the rich to fund and empower their movements.
The rich have historically just been open fascists as well; in a lot of cases they're not distinct colluding entities, but instead one and the same.
Henry Ford's personal newspaper wrote at length about the Jewish problem, was the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf (and impressed Hitler so much that the idea of the Volkswagen came from the Model T), and was awarded Nazi Germany's highest civilian award.
Prescott Bush (George H W Bush's father, and George W Bush's grandfather) among others attempted a fascist military overthrow of the US government known as The Business Plot.
And Walt Disney attended Bund meetings in the US through the 1930s, and was widely known as a Nazi sympathizer.
Re: NBA's China dilemma: $4B at risk as Chinese TV cancels game broadcasts
#240[deleted]