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Alibaba breaks itself up in six

economist.com

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Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#171

Post by bilbo0s »

quonn wrote: post #14
maxwell wrote: post #7

Great move. This will increase local competition and wages, diversify ideas and design, and make shareholders more money than as a single entity. As with Standard Oil and AT&T. The U.S. should continue investigating splitting up Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

How would you split Apple? How would you split Meta (would you start charging for WhatsApp)?

This is our problem as techies, we throw out this stuff with very little idea of the legal framework in place around antitrust. Even smaller ideas around precedent and the legal reasoning behind those precedents. I know everyone doesn't want to go to law school, but we have to at least understand that we can't go into a court and make stuff up.

Who can reasonably be broken up? On what reasonable basis?

Well,

Perhaps Meta?

Maybe Microsoft?

Alphabet definitely.

Apple? They'll laugh us out of court.

If we want these changes, we're going to have to advocate for changes in the fundamental ideas behind antitrust itself. Technology has outstripped the current regulatory environment's ability to keep it in order. And we don't seem to want to admit that. We just keep crying that the law won't act. Well, that's because no laws are being broken. And the politicians and the tech bigs are desperate to ensure that no one figures that out. They'll keep feeding us crumbs so that we don't do the dangerous thing and ask for changes in law.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#172

Post by alimov »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #68
SilverBirch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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to go public with AliPay and in the build up to it made a speech that criticised the government regulation as being out of date.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…

Also, one of Ma’s last public appearances was at an American conference, maybe TechCrunch but I’m not sure, where he said in an on stage interview something to the effect of, “I’m not afraid of the CCP”, in relation to recent revelations he was a CCP member. Then he got disappeared shortly after. He was really clueless about what kind of org he was dealing with.

Reuters reported on Jack Ma’s return to China 7 days ago. The title is: Jack Ma returns to China as government tries to allay private sector fears

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#173

Post by officeplant »

mistrial9 wrote: post #149
the_af wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We (The USA) are incredibly guilty of a lot of poor actions and choices in South America. Including active funding & training of multiple regime leaders over decades.

It's hard to choose a good path if a major world power is making sure all the good ones get shut down.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#174

Post by crop_rotation »

eloff wrote: post #170
crop_rotation wrote: post #100

The media and HN seem to be seeing this as a AT&T style breakup, which is not. It is starting with an Alphabet style restructuring, which sounds big in theory but nothing big might happen in practice. The biggest unit (Taobao/Tmall) will be fully owned by Alibaba and would not seek any external investment (Taobao/Tmall is responsible for >70% of their profits). The new Unit CEOs were not even invited to speak at the…

Also the reason the stock jumped on the news is the company is potentially worth more this way, by breaking out higher margin / faster growth units from the big retail business. A lot of Amazon investors would love to see the same with AWS. It sounds silly since nothing really changes, but it has to do with the way investors calculate the value of public companies.

This sounds good in theory but might not work in practice. None of them are profitable and depended on Tmall/Taobao for growth. Turning to the public markets would require sacrificing growth for profitability. There might be many other inter dependencies which might turn out costly to unwind.

What you are saying might be how it turns out in the end, but it is not a given.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#175

Post by rs999gti »

sva_ wrote: post #91
poszlem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came across a comment that resonated with me and seems relevant in this context, so I saved it. It says: "The arc of communism is long and it leans towards oppressing the fuck out of people. It’s a tendency of all governmental systems. Communism rests most of its power in the hands of government without a moneyed elite to oppose them, so it tends to move to authoritarianism faster and with less resistance."

> without a moneyed elite Contrast that with > China’s parliament has about 100 billionaires https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-...

> China’s parliament has about 100 billionaires

Like all communist nations, there is a ruling elite.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#177

Post by 27fingies »

> The Communist authorities dislike the idea of anything, let alone a large private business, outshining the party.

I have a hard time believing this is the reason the Communist party wants to control capitalist elements… because they “outshine the party”

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#178

Post by scythe »

avidphantasm wrote: post #135
AlecSchueler wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checking my understanding: They prefer individual businesses not to get to big, monopolistic or dominant across multiple sectors, as this would give the business undue influence over politics? And of course they're operating on the idea that the political sphere governs the market and not that the biggest businesses should be the most powerful lobbiests. So this is an end to it because it effectively neuters the…

It is my understanding that China has a long history (hundreds of years at least) of the government keeping merchant power in check, lest it lead to unrest due high levels of inequality. This is why China didn’t see Capitalist primative accumulation in the early modern period.

China had a brief nearly capitalist period with the Song Dynasty, building on growth during the Tang Dynasty, but the Song royal line, an Achilles heel of any monarchic empire, started to break down in the early 13th century, which contributed to the Mongol conquest. The next three dynasties were highly corrupt: the Yuan was overtly colonial, treating natives as an underclass; the Ming got off to a strong start but by the mid-1400s were consumed by palace intrigue and repressed the study of algebra (which was available via Islamic Central Asia) due to xenophobia; the Qing were an ethnostate again with some early Han defectors classified as "honorary Manchu", which may have inspired the "honorary Marleyan" motif in Attack on Titan.

So it is a little more complex than that.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#179

Post by digging »

namdnay wrote: post #113
pmoriarty wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and often wind up "regulating" the very industries/companies they came from the other way of seeing that is that if you want to regulate a domain you're going to want to have people who know the domain > when politicians retire they often get cushy jobs, high paying jobs in the very companies they regulated or provided government contracts to again, it makes sense for the company to buy the services (and the addres…

> the other way of seeing that is that if you want to regulate a domain you're going to want to have people who know the domain

Sure, but not people who have a vested interest in minimizing regulation.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#180

Post by carschno »

RobotToaster wrote: post #168
SkyMarshal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, one of Ma’s last public appearances was at an American conference, maybe TechCrunch but I’m not sure, where he said in an on stage interview something to the effect of, “I’m not afraid of the CCP”, in relation to recent revelations he was a CCP member. Then he got disappeared shortly after. He was really clueless about what kind of org he was dealing with.

Given China's, (and to some extent, Asia's), obsession with face, his actions do all seem pretty clueless. I wonder, could it all be part of some performance? The fact that they let Ali "voluntarily" restructure, and save face from having it be enforced, is interesting on it's own. I'm not really sure what to make of it.

Genuine question: is there any evidence that "Asia's obsession with face" has actual impact on daily business, or is it really just a cliché?
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