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Alibaba breaks itself up in six

economist.com

141–150 of 321 posts

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#141
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked for ideas. You never specified that they should be workable or logical.

Apple licensed it's MacOS back in the mid-90s to third-party hardware manufacturers. If it was forced to by the government, I imagine it could do so again.

It wasn’t forced to by the government. The CEO at the time thought it was a good idea.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#142

It's interesting to contrast China's approach of not allowing business to operate within the plane of power in which the government does, vs. the United States, which has companies whose power is certainly on the level of many state governments.

the US senate blocks mergers left and right.

Not nearly enough of them especially in the tech sector. Look at all of the damage google did when buying youtube and facebook buying instagram. Competition and innovation are supposed to be good things.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#143
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp used to charge, but really what they'd do is just charge facebook & whoever else for the data they're sharing.

Did they actually charge though? I remember hearing about that but it's been my sole method of messaging for years and I never remember setting up payments with them

IIRC it was 99 cents per year, and you could just keep "skipping" the payment. I don't think they ever cut anyone off from using it for not paying. A little bit like shareware (or nagware?).

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jack Ma truly is clueless in general. There was a talk involving him and Elon Musk and it somehow was Elon coming out as the eloquent one in that conversation.

I always do wonder about the reverence shown to billionaires around here, given the quite frankly ludicrous purchase of Twitter ($44bn!!!) and what has happened afterwards I really am not convinced they aren’t just as able as the rest of us.

Americans tend to equate wealth with ability and set aside luck, everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

Musk certainly used to have decent business accuumin - he hit it big several times, that’s not just luck. From all accounts he’s a half decent engineer too, which is rare in many CEO levels.

However his behaviour over the last 3 years has been very surprising. He seems to be less interested in the tech and more in the politics, which is a shame.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jack Ma truly is clueless in general. There was a talk involving him and Elon Musk and it somehow was Elon coming out as the eloquent one in that conversation.

I always do wonder about the reverence shown to billionaires around here, given the quite frankly ludicrous purchase of Twitter ($44bn!!!) and what has happened afterwards I really am not convinced they aren’t just as able as the rest of us.

The Twitter purchase really just shows how rich and apathetic Elon Musk is. A Ferrari is a difficult to impossible purchase for almost all of us, but rappers buy them for no reason and then trash them all the time. Twitter is that on a much larger scale, and Musk is treating it the same way because he doesn’t care.

You don’t build the first successful auto startup in 70 years and revitalize the space industry by being a moron. Everything Elon Musk has ever done with Twitter (including the 2018 SEC debacle) has been the dumbest shit possible, however

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#146

It's interesting to contrast China's approach of not allowing business to operate within the plane of power in which the government does, vs. the United States, which has companies whose power is certainly on the level of many state governments.

It's 2 different takes on Power.

The US ensures its continuation and longevity via the small group of Elite families and new wealth that is continuously being generated. They control the media and so many more, which keeps populism at bay. If democratic forces were left on their own, it would have reached the state of decline that happened to many e.g. social democratic states.

China guards the power so that it stays with the Party, and imprisons Wealth when it becomes threatening

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#147
post #55
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the complicating factor is “why”. I’m not sure why China as a government makes the calls it does. It’s not clear to me that those aren’t just as self serving as say a big company in the us operating freely and so on.

China can't print money and go in infinite debt mode like the US does? The government needs to recover from COVID. Perspective: As leader the in control, I see there's a company that has the largest payment network in the country. Well that can't happen. I need a slice of it. So let's "regulate" it.

why can't that happen?

why do you need a slice of it?

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#148
post #6

It’s always hard for me to understand the why when it comes to China’s government. “Investors cheer the move as signalling the end of China’s tech crackdown” If this is government action then why would this be the “end” of government involvement?

I'm not an expert on this, but from what I gather this all leads back to a power struggle between Jack Ma and Xi Jinping. Ma was ready to go public with AliPay and in the build up to it made a speech that criticised the government regulation as being out of date. This was viewed as a challenge to the governments power. Over the next few months the government moved to tighten regulations on companies like AliPay and d…

Wasn't there also something about Alibaba specifically working on a money lending scheme which circumvented banking regulations and which regulators feared would create vast amounts of unsecured debt and destabilize the economy?

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#149
post #122
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's informal but it used mostly for when a government illegally detains someone, often incommunicado --though historically in Latin American countries "disappearances" were a euphemism for government paramilitary forces (or revolutionary forces) taking someone behind the shed and extrajudicially executing them or in lesser cases locking them up in secret prisons. The choice of word probably stems from the ster…

In Argentina, one of the countries (along with Chile) where the term "desaparecido" (disappeared) was coined in the 70s, it means specifically: Government forces (not revolutionaries) which use either their official militaries/police (often) or their secret police (less often) to detain individuals without recourse to the law, then take them to illegal detention centers where they are tortured and eventually killed (…

nice try to pin the blame on the USA - of course USA is guilty, but also, who chooses this path.. You cannot say that the people who do this themselves, to their own, are not responsible.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#150

It's interesting to contrast China's approach of not allowing business to operate within the plane of power in which the government does, vs. the United States, which has companies whose power is certainly on the level of many state governments.

There's no bright, clear separation between governments and corporations in America. Corporate execs regularly get jobs in government, and often wind up "regulating" the very industries/companies they came from. It's also an open secret in Washington that when politicians retire they often get cushy, high paying jobs in the very companies they regulated or provided government contracts to. It's a revolving door betwe…

Hmm I don't follow. Governments and corporations are organizations of people. Just because people move between them doesn't mean they aren't different.

The origin, abilities, aims, and accountability are different.

> elementary and high school are the same its just different people moving between them competing for status.

This doesn't seem persuasive to me. Describing what some people do while in an organization doesn't define the organization.

Why not include universities in that list?

Governments exists to manage violence and through law. Corporations exist because they outcompete individuals for subsistence.

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