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Alibaba breaks itself up in six

economist.com

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Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#271

Post by not2b »

HWR_14 wrote: post #261
kdmccormick wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As reasonable as your argument is, let's apply Occam's Razor. Which is more likely? 1. Jack Ma knows things you don't, and those things made mouthing off seem worthwhile to him. Still, he miscalculated, but not out of sheer cluelessness. 2. You, HN commenter, understand Chinese politics and power better than Jack Ma, a prominent Chinese billionaire. He is clueless. Doesn't 2 seem a little arrogant to you?

Missing option (3). Jack Ma, prominent billionaire, was surrounded by kiss-asses for the past 5-10 years. In doing so, he developed a distorted sense of his own intelligence/power/allies which caused him to make a calculation about the current state of Chinese politics and power that is obviously false to an outside observer. See also, Twitter is was not worth $44 billion in 2022. Missing option (4). If you have bill…

Except that Musk's Twitter in no way supports freedom of speech. For a while he banned any mention of Mastodon, or the ElonJet account, and he's banned a whole slew of antifascist accounts and journalists who report on the far right (he will claim that it's because they violated rules, but in each case it seems it was a new rule: journalism he doesn't like is "doxxing": reporting on who did what). So sure, it looks like he is willing to lose a big chunk of his net worth to change Twitter, but his intent seems to be to promote certain speech and suppress other speech, or as he would say, to kill the "woke mind virus".

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#273

Post by djmips »

andy_ppp wrote: post #155
FormerBandmate wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bein…

Both SpaceX and Tesla nearly went bankrupt multiple times, we could just as easily be talking about an Elon Musk who had every advantage (government contracts, huge tax breaks and a fantastically wealthy family) and still failed. Maybe this is a case of fortune favoring the bold and I admire his perseverance/grit/marketing ability a lot. I've never heard him explain anything technical in any interview he's ever given…

I don't believe that Musk's family was fantastically wealthy.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#274

Post by djmips »

TobTobXX wrote: post #37
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…

Completely OT: > Over the next few months the government [...] disappeared Jack Ma. Huh, I've never seen "disappear" being used as a transitive verb. I kinda like it and I think I'll put it in my language toolbox.

The Weebls' song 'Magical Trevor'

Everyone loves Magical Trevor 'Cause the tricks that he does are ever so clever Look at him now, disappearin' the cow Where is the cow hidden right now?

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#275

Post by chrischen »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #223
carschno wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's only a cliche, because westerners are often just as obsessed with face, though having a foot in two cultures there are a few big places where the difference is noticable: US (and by extension NATO, doctrinally) military is very unconcerned with face in the small. For (real example) anyone on the bridge of a US ship can report to the captain of a ship that the ship is out of position (for an exercise). A buddy al…

Yea I remember an HN post from a US pilot trainer explaining the same culture problem in Korea in the aftermath of the Asiana airlines crash at SFO. But I see that as more of a hierarchy problem rather than saving face.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#276

Post by bigcat12345678 »

dirtyid wrote: post #268
zoom6628 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is a restructure so that CCP can show they have caused changes and for Alibaba to appear to acquiesce to instructions. Corporate “window dressing” basically. If the units all get too independent, based on my view at ground level in China, is that they will all get more powerful in their respective markets. Nobody was happy with the value erasure.

>Nobody was happy with the value erasure. On the other hand a fuckton of value has been irrevocably erased - entire ed tech sector isn't coming back to pre crackdown levels. If anything CCP hasn shown little regard for crippling soft tech since it will redirect talent towards strategic hard tech where job and wages have been booming. Baba getting proper rectification if it incentivizes future talent to reorient towar…

The ed tech industry is a CCP charged indoctrination dystopian touche rig

It's demise is a self reflection on the beyond limit of control that has to be relieved for the long term stability

The ed tech industry's value is about meaningful as the scam industry

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#277

Post by cstrat »

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.

Yeah I saw this happen with a business I was involved with.

Split up each business could be valued with direct competition in market and the same PE ratios applied to evaluate value and market cap. It caused a noticeable jump in overall stock value while nothing actually changed other than how businesses reported to the market.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#279

Post by wraptile »

quonn wrote: post #27
bioemerl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple into hardware and software. Microsoft into OS and other software and cloud. Amazon into cloud and web store(s). Google into ads and web software that serves ads.

It doesn't make sense to split Apple into hardware and software since the integration and simplicity that comes from it is the very thing that makes Apple unique.

That's exactly the issue, isn't it?

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#280

Post by flangola7 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #204
flangola7 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt his engineering abilities, but I'll ignore that. One thing he's demonstrated from the beginning is a stark undersupply of emotional intelligence. There are noises that come out of his mouth that my 15yr old would roll her eyes at for being too self-centered and immature.

There's a fine line between lack of emotional intelligence and simply not caring to placate others. The two are not the same. It is like calling someone an idiot because they won't do what you want and ignoring what they want. You have to admit that it may not be a priority for Elon to maintain his reputation with you in your 15 year old

There is a fine line, and he is clearly on the side of low emotional intelligence to anyone who does not also have low emotional intelligence
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