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Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

latimes.com

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Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#141

Post by theptip »

koolba wrote: post #62
theptip wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was that Netflix came along with up-front pay packages because taking a residual-heavy deal was not attractive back when streaming was unknown. No mustache-twirling required, just a business model that made sense then and is no longer equitable. The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. That is an existential threat to the profession; no act…

> The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. Wtf? Is this really a thing?

Pretty crazy if true, eg https://twitter.com/feliciaday/status/1679582315104829446

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#142

Post by Shawnj2 »

fnord77 wrote: post #60
lacrimacida wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it in perspective for you: Hollywood the actors and writers are on strike because Hollywood, the money making machinery decided to replace them with a product from SV. I don’t care for Hollywood and indeed it has gotten quite garbage anyway but I do support the actors and writers striking because they can. For the rest of us it remains to be seen how we’re going to handle it or whether we boil slowly.. In…

if they're being replaced, what good is a strike going to do?

They’re not, they want legal protections to stop companies from replacing them

For example paying someone for a day, scanning them, and using their image forever in AI content is both legal and allowed under SAG guidelines. Even if you think that what writers currently do can be done well by AI I’m pretty sure most reasonable people think that companies being able to do that is BS and you should get residuals or a really fat check if a company wants to pull that shit. It’s also about generally deteriorating conditions for actors and writers like shit pay and steaming companies not paying residuals. I actually think the AI part of the writers strike is mostly off the mark because ChatGPT is nowhere near good enough to replace a human writer and won’t be for years but general mistreatment of entertainment industry workers is totally a thing

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#143

Post by smegger001 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #47

It is caused by tech and by tech quite exclusively by Netflix, for sure. But nothing recent or magical thinking is to blame here. In the past people were dumbly forced to pay hundreds of dollars for a cable package they never truly utilized fully. They bought CDs for 10-15 bucks a piece. They bought DVDs in Walmart for movies they never would have paid any money for otherwise except maybe because it’s now in the disc…

there is only so much studios can do to grow their slice of the pie. They can't make much cheaper content reality TV is about as low cost as they can go and not be beaten completely by YouTube. They could make less total content but higher quality that was HBO's modus operandi. But AT&T didn't know how to run a media company and sold them to discovery which is run by a producer of the lowest quality reality TV. so now that's looked at by other producers as a bad strategy even though it more a case of bungled management. from their perspective the only way forward is to cut production cost but the unions probably strong enough to outlast them with new and current productions on hold

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#144

Post by slowmovintarget »

WalterBright wrote: post #104
slowmovintarget wrote: post #76

I think the more compelling tale is that Hollywood execs are infected with Wall Street thinking. Maximum profit extraction, the kind of product is irrelevant, as are the customers.

Do you enjoy watching the hit TV shows and movies produced by the Soviet Union? Who is your favorite Soviet movie star?

I don't know what on earth you're talking about.

I'm talking about how billionaires like Bob Iger are essentially trying to squeeze "labor" to extract more profits, which is what Wall Street did to the newspapers, to radio, to television, the music industry...

We're getting ever crappier products in nearly every consumer category, because short term profits for shareholders are prioritized over the long term viability of the firm. Wall Street likes to shred firms for "value" and move on.

I want healthy capitalism, not scorched earth financialism.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#145

Post by connicpu »

phpisthebest wrote: post #3
monero-xmr wrote: post #2

The economy goes from boom to bust, bust to boom, new technologies and ideas come, the novelty wears off and reality sets in (but the gems stick around!), so on and so forth. One thing that was unique this cycle was the extended period of near-zero interest rates in the rich world - this made the boom very big. I’m not sure it’s “Silicon Valley” thinking other than as a euphemism for subsidizing losses in hopes of fu…

>>The economy goes from boom to bust, bust to boom, it does not have to. boom and bust is a direct result of fiat currency and manipulation of that currency by central banks

Ah yes, back in the days when money was based on the gold standard we never had recessions or depressions!

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#146

Post by joe__f »

pie_flavor wrote: post #66

This seemed like a pretty tortured explanation of what's going on here, as though the punching bag was selected before the mechanism was figured out. Then I realized the guy they were citing was Adam Conover, who drafts explanations like that for a living. Mystery solved.

Haha I was watching some of him on YouTube yesterday and he has some quite interesting views and choices of topics but I was thinking the whole time, "something about his style is really grating"

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#147

Post by Ekaros »

connicpu wrote: post #145
phpisthebest wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The economy goes from boom to bust, bust to boom, it does not have to. boom and bust is a direct result of fiat currency and manipulation of that currency by central banks

Ah yes, back in the days when money was based on the gold standard we never had recessions or depressions!

Yes, the currency was always entirely trustworthy... No one lied or played games...

I wonder how many of modern day businesses would be ready to deal with real physical gold, silver or whatever. As any digital or paper based one can't really be trusted in long run.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#148

Post by Ekaros »

Turskarama wrote: post #68
contravariant wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's just a gold standard with internet gold. Anyway I'd also like to express my sympathies to the moderators here, as I seem to have upset a whole botnet of them.

Crypto is the opposite of the gold standard. Instead of backing currency with a physical object with inherent value, it's backed by absolutely nothing and grows at a pace governed by people whose primary goal is to benefit off a pyramid scheme. Fiat currency gets a bad rap because it can be mismanaged, but a metal backed currency isn't compatible with rapid growth and we've yet to find a better alternative.

And with gold. Dealing with actual physical gold is lot of work.

And with any type of certificates be it paper or digital someone will immediately start playing games... And thus you can not trust them.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#149

Post by contravariant »

Turskarama wrote: post #68
contravariant wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's just a gold standard with internet gold. Anyway I'd also like to express my sympathies to the moderators here, as I seem to have upset a whole botnet of them.

Crypto is the opposite of the gold standard. Instead of backing currency with a physical object with inherent value, it's backed by absolutely nothing and grows at a pace governed by people whose primary goal is to benefit off a pyramid scheme. Fiat currency gets a bad rap because it can be mismanaged, but a metal backed currency isn't compatible with rapid growth and we've yet to find a better alternative.

I'm not saying crypto is like a gold standard, I'm saying it behaves more as a commodity (like gold) than a currency. There's a couple of properties that make gold really useful as a form of money (rare but available, easily divisible, easy to transport) some of which are shared by crypto. The main difference is that gold also has some intrinsic value, but I reckon most of its value comes from its use a store of value. If not convincingly gold looking jewellery should have a similar price, and I don't think that's the case.

Not sure if a metal backed currency is harder to mismanage. Lowering the metal content in coins or simply lowering the corresponding amount of metal have both happened. I'm pretty sure the US simply reneged on their promise to exchange promissory notes for gold at some point.

Frankly I think that no matter the currency bankers are going to abstract it into something that they can work with eventually.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#150

Post by pests »

WalterBright wrote: post #80
theptip wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was that Netflix came along with up-front pay packages because taking a residual-heavy deal was not attractive back when streaming was unknown. No mustache-twirling required, just a business model that made sense then and is no longer equitable. The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. That is an existential threat to the profession; no act…

If Hollywood wants to full body scan me so my likeness becomes famous forever, I'm all for it. Fly me down, give me a day pass to Disneyland, and I'm good.

That's easy for you to say because you have no skin in the game.

Imagine a service where a system can scan all your programming and engineering knowledge and expertise into an AI that then can be hired out to other companies infinitely and forever.

You might care then because this obviously reduces the profit you can now extract from your labor.

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