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Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

reuters.com

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Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#111

Post by rtpg »

amou234 wrote: post #74
throwaway4good wrote: post #10

I was listening to Nicolai Tangen's interview with Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai: https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-found... Alibaba co-founder and Chair: China, Jack Ma, AI and basketball And while smart and sympathetic, I cannot help to think that Alibaba is a company of the past belonging to a time of a certain US-China order that is no more. The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that…

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies.…

Aren't you presenting a false dichotomy here? Perhaps they are having their cake and eating it too, so to speak. Not to comment on the supposed economic malaise of the moment.

Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#112

Post by amou234 »

rtpg wrote: post #111
amou234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies.…

Aren't you presenting a false dichotomy here? Perhaps they are having their cake and eating it too, so to speak. Not to comment on the supposed economic malaise of the moment. Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

It's a bit hilarious that there are attempts to convince people on a board for hackers and startup founders that state owned enterprises are great and amazing!!

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#113

Post by spaceguillotine »

nindalf wrote: post #107
nebula8804 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man, from the outside looking in it seems like despite this arrangement, the people doing the day to day work are fiercely competitive and they want it all. This is just an anecdote but I have seen talks where the Chinese look at the silicon valley grind culture of long working hours and sacrifice and think how can these people be so lazy? Maybe state ownership will collapse it all, maybe the coming demo…

No one doubts that Chinese people work incredibly long hours. They do so because there’s been a strong link between input and output. The harder you work, the wealthier you get. That has been incredibly motivating … so far. In an economy that isn’t growing quite so fast, people might not see the same returns for their labour that they did between 2001-19. They might not work as hard. That’s speculation though. What w…

there is zero link between hard work and wealth. There is a link between wealth and exploitation.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#115

Post by logicchains »

rtpg wrote: post #111
amou234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies.…

Aren't you presenting a false dichotomy here? Perhaps they are having their cake and eating it too, so to speak. Not to comment on the supposed economic malaise of the moment. Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

>Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

But it's extremely unlikely, given how often the opposite occurs instead in historical data.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#116

Post by logicchains »

spaceguillotine wrote: post #113
nindalf wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one doubts that Chinese people work incredibly long hours. They do so because there’s been a strong link between input and output. The harder you work, the wealthier you get. That has been incredibly motivating … so far. In an economy that isn’t growing quite so fast, people might not see the same returns for their labour that they did between 2001-19. They might not work as hard. That’s speculation though. What w…

there is zero link between hard work and wealth. There is a link between wealth and exploitation.

If you define hard work as intellectually challenging work, there absolutely is a strong link between hard work and wealth in China. Even the corrupt bureaucrats have to pass a difficult exam to become bureaucrats.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#117

Post by logicchains »

winrid wrote: post #109
roenxi wrote: post #2

Just going by appearances, the story at the time looked a lot like Jack Ma fleeing the country for a bit. One minute he was disturbing the tranquillity in China then the next he was picking up some Zen among the cherry blossoms. It is interesting to compare-and-contrast Jack Ma and Elon Musk who seems to me the nearest analogue in the US. How their host countries treat them says a lot about the real cultural differen…

Jack Ma didn't just try to build wealth like your average mid sized software or HVAC company. He built a monopoly and the company was fined for it and eventually broken up [0]. He obviously didn't like this and left the country to do billionaire things. To me there's nothing 1984 or dystopian about this. The guy was building a company that was hurting the people. If anything we need more of this in the US. [0] https:…

It was only a harmful monopoly if you take the Chinese communist party's word at face value, which is a pretty naive thing to do.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#118

Post by dav43 »

rtpg wrote: post #111
amou234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving Not at all. The future of Chinese tech is state owned enterprises [1]. Just like other Chinese industries, such as state owned real estates [2] or state run communal restaurants [3]. Just like Soviet Union, before it fell. "The Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed the market capitalization of China's top 100 companies.…

Aren't you presenting a false dichotomy here? Perhaps they are having their cake and eating it too, so to speak. Not to comment on the supposed economic malaise of the moment. Sometimes state-owned enterprises might be able to outperform a private structure!

State owned enterprises will outperform private in this environment when there is no option to compete as a private structure

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#119

Post by jimmydef »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #64
throwaway4good wrote: post #10

I was listening to Nicolai Tangen's interview with Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai: https://www.nbim.no/en/publications/podcast/alibaba-co-found... Alibaba co-founder and Chair: China, Jack Ma, AI and basketball And while smart and sympathetic, I cannot help to think that Alibaba is a company of the past belonging to a time of a certain US-China order that is no more. The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that…

> The future of Chinese tech belongs to companies that are much more fast moving, fearless, and aggressively deep tech than what Alibaba aspires to be. Being all of that is exactly why Jack Ma got beat down by the party. The party doesn't want fast moving, fearless, aggressively deep tech, they want control, compliance, and stability.

I think the main reason alibaba got beat down was because it was moving from "tech" into finance offering unregulated loans and jack ma criticizing regulators did not help at all.

And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.

Re: Jack Ma steps out from the shadows with morale-boosting post

#120

Post by logicchains »

somedude895 wrote: post #99
RangerScience wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/Personally/, I’d attribute that more to authoritarianism than communism, but the two have been commingled since Lenin so it’s not necessarily an important difference.

I'd agree it's basically just a form of authoritarianism. Then again, different regimes have simply adapted communism to their own interpretation. You get North Korea with their Chuch'e, the Chinese call theirs "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics", you had Ba'athism in Iraq. But yeah, communism in its pure, traditional form these are not.

>communism in its pure, traditional form these are not.

Achieving communism necessarily entails authoritarianism because you need an authoritarian state to seize the property of existing landholders and business owners, and to prevent the creation/operation of new private businesses.

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