211–220 of 255 posts
[1] Not him specifically, but a bald man described as an "Internet mogul" who is "one of the richest people on Earth" with "tentacles in every aspect of daily life", including "smart speakers in everyone's home"
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what job do you want the FTC to do here? I assume you think there is an antitrust angle on this potential acquisition? I am an economist and that is my field. I disagree with your take, if that is what you mean. This is a vertical merger. Vertical mergers are quite different in their welfare effects to consumers than horizontal mergers. Vertical mergers can frequently be welfare-improving to consumers. Indeed, this i…
The vertical integration of the distribution of media and the production of media is extremely problematic because of the way copyright operates in this country. I think you have to examine vertical integration in copyright affected industries differently than you would in, say, the vertical integration of steel production with a company that consumes steel. The interaction with copyright invariably creates issues fo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
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Amazon could pay and treat their employees better. That would be an investment that would make me consider using their service again.
Amazon already pays their Warehouse workers $15/hour or more. How much should they get paid?
There reality of current equity valuations is such that, if sustained, there is some some pretty savage consolidation to come. The only limit is antitrust, or fear of. $9bn is 0.5% of AMZN's current market cap, so $9bn represents a daily price fluctuation. They also have $45bn in cash reserves, so amazon could buy 5 MGMs without borrowing or issuing stock. That's not even a lot! Apple, Google & FB have $200bn, $140bn…
datacenters for all 4 are a huge capital investment. Perhaps less so for Apple, but Amazon, Google and Facebook all run their own datacenters and all of them will have to continue expanding their datacenter footprint if they continue to grow. That being said, it does seem like equity markets are in a bubble. Tesla at least is absurdly overvalued. If i had signifcant stake in TSLA I would be getting out asap and let s…
Then they weren't.
The argument for Tesla, much like Uber, is that they are going to figure out the rest. It's really almost a faith based investment, either way.
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Amazon could pay and treat their employees better. That would be an investment that would make me consider using their service again.
Amazon already pays their Warehouse workers $15/hour or more. How much should they get paid?
Costco is a good example of how to treat workers.
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The better way to address this would be reducing copyright lengths to 20 years or something reasonable.
That means losing out exclusivity on endless remakes, reboots and sequels. Since that's the majority of Hollywood money, I sincerely doubt it will change.
(Even Disney has publicly recognized to their shareholders their mistake in backing the previous copyright extension act and have no further reason to back more extensions because they've proven the trademark and trade dress moat is plenty sufficient. Seriously, try to make a commercial Steamboat Willy derivative all you want without using Mickey characters or concepts from later shorts/movies/pop culture. Try to do it without violating Disney's long held trademark on Mickey's general head shape. Or to use a different huge empire's with a giant moat of properties, some of the earliest Batman stories just finally entered the public domain, but there's almost no way to commercially create a new Batman story without accidentally using later still copyrighted ideas/characters [early Batman used a gun, feels sometimes unrecognizable to modern expectations; most of his favorite rogues didn't show up for decades later] and without violating extensive trademarks on Bat emblems and the cowl shape, etc.)
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One glaring difference between 1948 and 2021 is that distribution is basically free now. Whereas in 1948, one's ability to consume media was dictated by their physical location, today there is close to zero marginal cost to deliver digital media and low barriers to entry for new entrants. Just consider how many streaming services there were 10 years ago vs today. No human consumes enough TV media to warrant subscribi…
The distribution argument would be true if pay per view was the dominant form, but subscriptions are. And in the studio days, how many people didn't have access to at least one theatre of each in range? I might be mistaken but I don't think that limited film choice in rural areas was the main concern back then. Now we have subscriptions. It would be as crazy as it sounds, we are almost at the point where a preference…
There reality of current equity valuations is such that, if sustained, there is some some pretty savage consolidation to come. The only limit is antitrust, or fear of. $9bn is 0.5% of AMZN's current market cap, so $9bn represents a daily price fluctuation. They also have $45bn in cash reserves, so amazon could buy 5 MGMs without borrowing or issuing stock. That's not even a lot! Apple, Google & FB have $200bn, $140bn…
What about data centers?
Maybe now we'll finally get a new Stargate series.
Maybe now we'll finally get a new Stargate series.
Stargate: Origins was a "new series" (2018) that was recently made. It just only ever "aired" on the Stargate-only streaming service that no one paid for. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7161862/