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Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

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Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#51

Post by dehrmann »

harimau777 wrote: post #43
dehrmann wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a government enforced monopoly on their content Sure, but they're just the only company selling Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. Someone else is selling DC, Illumination, and Star Trek content. They're all competing in the entertainment space, so it's not a real problem for pricing. If Disney opened a $2500 per night Star Wars hotel, I'm pretty sure you'd see market forces react.

I'm not sure that there's any way that the market could react. It's Star Wars that's a major part of American culture, not whatever alternative a competitor comes up with. It would be like if a single corporation owned King Arthur or Journey to the West.

At some point you get "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin."

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#52

Post by bdw5204 »

nicoburns wrote: post #19
bdw5204 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever there's something that looks like a market failure, there's almost always a governmental grant of monopoly privilege or some government regulation to prevent competition. Why are prescription drugs unaffordable? Because of a grant of monopoly privilege called "patents" that allow a company to monopolize a drug for around 2 decades. Why is health care so expensive? Because the government subsidizes employer p…

While this can be the case, numerous of the examples you have given (medical costs and the labor market to name two) have fewer problems in countries with much stronger government intervention/regulation. If your government creates poor regulations then maybe that should be tackled directly (by electing less incompetent/corrupt officials) rather than concluding that regulation itself is bad.

I'm actually in favor of some government intervention to fix the mess it created or where that is politically more plausible than a free market solution. Antitrust action to break up large companies would be great as would banning non-competes and addressing the culture of companies requiring absurd numbers of interviews to get a job. I also favor regulations to stop fraud such as making it illegal for airlines to sell more seats on a plane than they have.

In medical care, I'd prefer a Singapore style system where the government covers catastrophic care but you have a savings account for everything else. I think that's more viable than a pure free market because a college student who comes down with cancer or gets shot in this very high crime country probably can't afford to pay out of pocket for medical care. Likewise with somebody who gets laid off because their employer wants to increase its stock price.

In general though, I like that we have had significantly higher economic growth than European countries over the past generation and want it to stay that way. So I prefer libertarian solutions over socialist solutions wherever possible.

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#53

Post by saurik »

khazhoux wrote: post #40
saurik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To checksum, do you also believe that The Little Mermaid should still belong to Hans Christian Anderson?

No, and Mickey does not belong to Walt Disney either. If Hans had created a business that sustained to this day, then that would be different situation.

So you don't mean a "permanent monopoly" without any considerations or constraints, then? More of a "use it or lose it" situation?

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#54

Post by bdw5204 »

tzs wrote: post #25
bdw5204 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever there's something that looks like a market failure, there's almost always a governmental grant of monopoly privilege or some government regulation to prevent competition. Why are prescription drugs unaffordable? Because of a grant of monopoly privilege called "patents" that allow a company to monopolize a drug for around 2 decades. Why is health care so expensive? Because the government subsidizes employer p…

For IP there is a market failure if you don't have government regulation. IP is non-rival and non-excludable, and non-rival non-excludible goods don't really work well with free markets. There are three general ways to address that. (1) Ignore it, which tends to lead to underproduction. (2) Have the government pay for production of IP, which becomes public domain. The downside of this approach is the government has t…

I think there's a case for short term copyrights (28 year terms or less) but I don't think patents are necessary for innovation. You generally can't stop people from copying your food products but we still have a ton of new foods on a regular basis because inventing new food is lucrative even without a government monopoly. The extreme competition and the ability of grocery stores to come out with a store brand copycat keeps big food honest and prices low. Recently, many people have started buying store brands instead of name brands which is why there are tons of signs at the grocery store about price reductions these days.

I do think it'd be hard to make sufficient money to fund a video game or a movie without copyright because they are inherently non-scarce goods once created that can be copied at effectively zero cost. I don't think it matters for books, most of which don't make money for their authors anyway. I also don't think it matters for music because the money there is from live performances and people only care about Taylor Swift's songs because she's singing them.

If we got rid of copyright, government could subsidize the production of works that would be copyrighted by creating a UBI and/or returning to the old norm of a single income household. Many people already create these kinds of works for free and/or ask for donations.

The FOSS community, which only uses copyright law (in the case of GPL) to force FOSS code to stay FOSS or (in the case of MIT) to require attribution, illustrates what the software industry would look like without copyright. Some people, including myself at one point, even work for companies writing FOSS code. Most software companies already make money by selling support contracts, cloud services or ads rather than from selling licenses to copyrighted software so fully abolishing copyright would have surprisingly little impact on tech.

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#55

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

bdw5204 wrote: post #52
nicoburns wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this can be the case, numerous of the examples you have given (medical costs and the labor market to name two) have fewer problems in countries with much stronger government intervention/regulation. If your government creates poor regulations then maybe that should be tackled directly (by electing less incompetent/corrupt officials) rather than concluding that regulation itself is bad.

I'm actually in favor of some government intervention to fix the mess it created or where that is politically more plausible than a free market solution. Antitrust action to break up large companies would be great as would banning non-competes and addressing the culture of companies requiring absurd numbers of interviews to get a job. I also favor regulations to stop fraud such as making it illegal for airlines to se…

The problem with that is if you have some. Non recognized illness. Maybe something that gives constant pain but hard to detect. If you are a student, it would be really bad.

What if you have diabetes and are a student?

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#56

Post by CatWChainsaw »

gamblor956 wrote: post #14
aidenn0 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Disney having a government enforced monopoly on their content that lasts for about a century, combined with changes in technology w.r.t streaming that allow them to never create a "first sale" and thus make it illegal for anybody to possess a copy of their content without paying them a monthly fee that they get to set?

You could also just...not watch it. You don't have a right to consume someone else's creations just because you want to.

Is this your stance on the creation of the datasets used for training of song-generating and image-generating models as well?

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#57

Post by CatWChainsaw »

c3534l wrote: post #2

This feels... grotesque? The free market is meant to ensure that competitors lower their prices to compete with Disney+. If instead corporations raise prices to compete with... profits over marketshare, then it feels like something has gone terribly wrong.

In Monopoly, you win the game when every other player is in a state of permanent poverty/precarity and can never break your power. Don't ever be duped into thinking Monopoly, The Real Life Game, has an end goal that differs in any meaningful sense.

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#58

Post by effingwewt »

alberth wrote: post #29
teruakohatu wrote: post #21

Like Hollywood I expect Disney accounting to be a lot of smoke and mirrors. Disney has a massive back catalog, the oldest movie on the platform is nearly 90 years old. I am sure Disney is renting Disney+ ancient content at premium market rates and so the platform appears to be unprofitable.

I’m not so sure that’s the case here. Disney+ massive loses was cited as a major reason for the previous CEO being ousted by the Board, and Iger reinstituted. The difficulty with screaming is that you can no longer create $100M big budget movies and expect to show a profit from a service costing just $10/mo. https://insidethemagic.net/2024/04/not-a-profitable-business...

I find the difficult part of screaming to be the strain on my vocal chords.

I'm sorry, couldn't help myself. As I get older Dad jokes become funnier.

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#59

Post by BytesAndGears »

bdw5204 wrote: post #52
nicoburns wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this can be the case, numerous of the examples you have given (medical costs and the labor market to name two) have fewer problems in countries with much stronger government intervention/regulation. If your government creates poor regulations then maybe that should be tackled directly (by electing less incompetent/corrupt officials) rather than concluding that regulation itself is bad.

I'm actually in favor of some government intervention to fix the mess it created or where that is politically more plausible than a free market solution. Antitrust action to break up large companies would be great as would banning non-competes and addressing the culture of companies requiring absurd numbers of interviews to get a job. I also favor regulations to stop fraud such as making it illegal for airlines to se…

I appreciate your ideas and do tend to lean libertarian myself overall, but let me offer another perspective as well.

As someone who has lived in both places (European country with many social programs & the US in several states) — yes, wages and “economic growth” are lower in Europe, but the standard of living is very high.

Most people, in the European country that I lived in, ate healthy high-quality food that was cheap compared to the US. There were many bars and restaurants nearby where friends would regularly meet up, but there were also lots of parks that would be filled with people having picnics.

Registering for healthcare was mandatory, but it was cheap — even with our high salaries, we only had to pay 100€ per month for unlimited everything-is-fully-covered healthcare.

The police were generally trustworthy and hands-off. They had a bit of a reputation for being lazy and not responding for non-emergencies, but the streets were incredibly safe - me and my (female) partner were both totally comfortable walking alone at night throughout the city or countryside, and nobody we knew had major problems either (other than teenagers being weird).

Sure, it looks economically worse to ride your bike or take the train to work and walk to the grocery store, since those things don’t cost nearly as much as driving. And having a picnic in the park with a friend and a baguette doesn’t add to GDP like spending $40 on DoorDash to eat McNuggets in your basement.

But the human element is that life is actually much more satisfying and rewarding to get exercise and be a part of your community.

My point is, without having lived experience, it’s not very informative to just compare economic growth alone.

Re: Leaked Disney+ financials may shed light on recent price hike

#60

Post by gamblor956 »

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #56
gamblor956 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also just...not watch it. You don't have a right to consume someone else's creations just because you want to.

Is this your stance on the creation of the datasets used for training of song-generating and image-generating models as well?

That's not even remotely related...

And my stance on the creation of AI training is that if they want to use someone else's IP, they can try to negotiate a license and pay for it what the creator/rightsholder wants for it.

And if they don't get a license, then they can do without.

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