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ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

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Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#61

Post by seanmcdirmid »

genofon wrote: post #49
odonnellryan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with you. To quickly cite another WikiPedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_f... How many of those figures are of the US? Not trying to start a pissing contest. Sorry.

the OP is talking about nowadays US, so no Rockefeller, Ford and friends. As it's difficult to compare richness through history I was focusing on relative power. Can someone challenge US now? yes: Russia, China, Europe. Some past empires didn't have any counterpart because they were too powerful for anyone.

China or Europe can challenge America? The Chinese can barely float a carrier and have only a few nukes. Europe depends of the USA for most of its defense. Russia counts, since this is the nuclear age with MAD and all, but it hardly counts if it's suicide.

Economically, china is still not into high income yet, while Russia is stuck in a natural resources trap with lots of corruption. Europe is quite fine though.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#62

Post by lifeisstillgood »

rjtavares wrote: post #57
mjburgess wrote: post #13

Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…

Beautiful... except it's not true. A quick google search through negocios.pt (probably the biggest Portuguese business newspaper): * Whatsapp: 41 results * Ono: 4 results Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories.

> Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories.

this.

Plus, to be fair, I have never heard of ONO, mostly cos no matter how much of a single European market we are, we are not a single European language, so we are not a single European news feed.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#63

Post by seanmcdirmid »

genofon wrote: post #43
spindritf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any of those countries come close to the GDP of, say, Alabama ($160bn)? Sure, comparing the value of organic wine form Rome to a car from Detroit is not straight-forward but technological progress and compound interest generally ensure that powers of today absolutely dwarf those of even a hundred years ago, not to mention a thousand years ago, or two. The ancient empires had troubles feeding their populations at…

GDP is a modern concept made to measure today's economy. But if you talk about power US is the most powerful country but not dominant (see Syria and Crimea). The British empire at his peak held one fifth of the worlds population. The Roman empire conquered everything was worth conquering and he was providing free food and gigantic games to his poor citizens. If you consider modern Europe his GDP is very similar to th…

> The Roman empire conquered everything was worth conquering and he was providing free food and gigantic games to his poor citizens.

The Han dynasty coexisted with the Romans, and I think they had a lot more people and land in their empire.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#65

Post by _delirium »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #62
rjtavares wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beautiful... except it's not true. A quick google search through negocios.pt (probably the biggest Portuguese business newspaper): * Whatsapp: 41 results * Ono: 4 results Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories.

> Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories. this. Plus, to be fair, I have never heard of ONO, mostly cos no matter how much of a single European market we are, we are not a single European language, so we are not a single European news feed.

Yeah, I think in Denmark the media mainly notices American and Danish business, and not as much those from rest of Europe, unless they do something that really impacts people. People definitely care about what Danish businesses are doing. It's true that monetary success isn't the only measure people care about, e.g. Copenhagen Suborbitals, a nonprofit, gets a ton of startup-like tech press. But people also care about monetary success of Danish businesses. If ONO were a Danish company, it'd be on front pages of newspapers. But it's a Spanish telephone company nobody's heard of, so people aren't really interested.

I think part of the WhatsApp news wasn't only the location but the "lightweight" aspect. There was a lot of, "wow a company sold for $16b just by making a phone app?!" By contrast people aren't surprised that classic capital-intensive, "heavyweight" infrastructure companies like telcos can be worth billions. Plus, nobody cares about infrastructure unless it's their own infrastructure. DONG Energy recently sold a minority stake to Goldman Sachs for $2 billion, which made huge news in Denmark, but did anyone else read about it?

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#66

Post by mjburgess »

melvinram wrote: post #38
mjburgess wrote: post #13

Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…

Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed. Financial success is important because it allows their organization to continue functioning but it's hardly the top motivator for business owners I've spoken…

You have this thing called "The American Dream" and you have an entire cultural history tied to self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier"...

Clearly every single american isnt subject to the same cultural pre-occupations, that's absurd.

But there are only certain cultural phenomena possible in one place or another. A right-wing party in the UK could not even begin to use any of the ideas or rhetoric of the republican party - they'd be widespread revulsion. We dont sing our national anthem in the UK, we dont "pleg" anything, we dont consider our country "Exceptional" (hence American Exceptionalism). There hasnt been the suggestion that our prime minister is impotent for not interfering in Ukraine, at least, nothing like the inferiority-complex about Obama's lack of big-dickery.

The idea that the west is culturally homogenous is "Bullshit". As compared to anywhere in europe, americans are vastly more market-oriented, mistrustful of government, approving of business success, etc.

It is simply the case, insofar as I can see, that "business" isnt really a dream of any kind in europe. People dont grow up wanting to run/own/be in business in anyway, we dont really have an "explorer"/inventor dreams either.

A considerable amount has been written by the european experience of america and an almost ubquitious theme in the accounts is "the feeling of unlimited possibility", an ostentatiousness and pre-occupation with wealth, etc.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#68

Post by coldtea »

melvinram wrote: post #38
mjburgess wrote: post #13

Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…

Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed. Financial success is important because it allows their organization to continue functioning but it's hardly the top motivator for business owners I've spoken…

>Bullshit. What is crass is the perspective that Americans are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. Most business owners I know started their business because they saw a need for something and they wanted to deliver what was needed.

Well, most of the business people I know of, only see a need in areas that they thing are profitable. How many try to actual affect people's lives in substancial ways, instead of building the next Instagram (and now WhatsApp)?

>Financial success is important because it allows their organization to continue functioning

Preoccupation with financial success (that idea of continuous enlargment) is what has killed a lot of companies from functioning. They had good product X, people loved, it sold in droves, and then some BS managers just have to expand to field Y, and ruin all the qualities that made X and the company good in the first place.

>I will concede that there are a fair percentage of businesses that are unreflectingly capitalistic and pre-occupied with monetary success. However, to paint an entire nation with a broad stroke is ignorance at it's worst.

Well, that's how generalisations work -- and they are a valuable compass, it's not all prejudice. It doesn't take everybody being pre-occupied with monetary success to call a nation as "pre-occupied with monetary success". It just takes a more-than-usual number of such people, or a culture more open to it. If in a country X there are 1% preoccupied with such things and in country Y there are 10%, then the general sentiment that Y nation is far more preoccupied with such things is valid.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#69

Post by mjburgess »

bogs_carut wrote: post #34
mjburgess wrote: post #13

Europeans arent as unreflectingly captialistic and "frontier"sy. Americans have always seen success in business as an crowning achievement. Europeans have traditionally found this kind of pre-occupation with monetary success somewhat crass or trivial. > Europeans don’t realize that if a company that went from nothing to connecting 7 million homes is not celebrated... That's total BS. You dont need a culture of fanati…

This post contains a lot of loaded rhetoric. Are you implying that the sort of people who assume the degree of risk required to build a financially-successful business (specifically of the "home-run" magnitude implied by a multi-billion-dollar acquisition, IPO, etc) are merely "self-aggrandizing money-chasers?" Companies of that scale sometimes have the ability to improve society. There's also the potential for abuse…

> Are you implying that the sort of people who assume the degree .... are merely "self-aggrandizing money-chasers?"

Yes. That's very often the mentality, however you'd like to dress it up.

There's a distinction between small-businesses that arent pre-occupied with growth and "success" and those which are. Sure, if you have your own bakery/etc. then you're probably doing that because youre interested in the craft of baking. The fact that you own the company is kinda incidental to your passion for a craft.

I'm saying that these kind of people who build up multi-million/billion-dollar companies are basically interchangable money managers. You can take a telecoms business-genuis and put him in insurance, or manufacture, or anywhere: and people routinely do! Because the "skill" at that level is merely business as such.

All I got from this article is "people should aspire to be successful in business", which I think is kinda stupid and dangerous. People should be passionate about, eg., giving people healthcare, creating amazing art or music, writing the best novels, finding out how the world works...

that we have businesses and that they make money is something which is meant to facilitate our dreams not become them.

Capitalism abstractly is not meant as an end in itself, but almost everywhere we look today it has become one. Growth, expansion, money, "success" for its own sake - not for the sake of beauty/truth/skill/knowledge/love/etc.

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