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Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

nytimes.com

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Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#71

Post by lovich »

AlexB138 wrote: post #60
TuGuQuKu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living standards, calorie consumption, GDP, literacy and life expectancy skyrocketed higher and faster for more people anywhere in history under the early years of the USSR and PRC but we tend to only talk about those metrics when they're convenient.

Does that math only include people who weren't deliberately starved to death or murdered? Seems difficult to reconcile those claims with history unless you're excluding pretty wide swaths of people.

If we're going to include that then you need to take into account the costs of the other side like the trail of tears, Tuskegee experiments, bananna republics backed by the CIA, the attack on greenwood Tulsa, Cuba having giant sanctions on them that destroyed their economy, etc.

I'm perfectly fine discussing the outcome of systems, or the individual aspect of systems, but you can't compare the net outcome of system A to the individual problems of system B

Edit: before anyone questions what my hisses might be they are as follows. I believe that capitalist US ended up better on a whole than communist USSR for the betterment of humanity. I also believe its inaccurate to different aspects of their systems and pretend one way was wholly better than the other

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#72

Post by adventured »

ck425 wrote: post #64
joejerryronnie wrote: post #52

The reason Jack Ma is stepping down from Alibaba is that he was becoming too powerful and influencial in China. Jack is very smart and knows that you can build your wealth and power until you begin to threaten the party, then you either need to step down or you will be forcefully taken down.

Interesting thought. Can you provide any historical examples of this?

You can look at his existing behavior for clues to that being the case. When he took control of Ant Financial from Alibaba, spinning it off, he gave himself 2/3 of the business. That diluted position would still be worth around $80-$90 billion today. Instead of holding onto that, he proceeded to massively dilute his ownership and control of Ant. The reason he did that, is the same reason he was allowed to take it away from Alibaba without proper compensation (Alibaba was majority owned by multiple foreign shareholders): strategic national interest, an edict from the government. The major banks are all directly state controlled. A very large share of all online transactions in China flow through Ant Financial, the government couldn't allow that to remain in one person's hands. Jack got his orders.

In China as a business person it's extremely dangerous to become too powerful or rich, especially now. Maybe you could have gotten away with it 15 years ago. China of today is very different from China of the late 1990s and 2000s.

If Jack Ma had held onto his original contrived Ant position, he'd nearly be the richest person on earth, with a potential chokehold on finance, industry and retail in China. That position could have plausibly been worth several hundred billion dollars to him personally over time. That's not something you want to aspire to currently in China.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#73

Post by PakG1 »

jjeaff wrote: post #46
PakG1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try reading the above linked NASDAQ link? Total overall revenues: Alibaba reported revenues of RMB80.9 billion (US$12.23 billion), up 61% from the prior-year quarter. Also, revenues came in slightly above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of US$12.25 billion. Total revenues related to selling exports: · International commerce retail business (6% of the total revenues) - Revenues in the quarter were RMB4.3 billion…

I think you misunderstood what they were saying... That it's possible the domestic customers that make up the majority of Alibaba revenue may decrease their spending on the platform if their own incomes rely on exports.

Yup completely misread and misunderstood, my bad. :)

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#74

Post by adventured »

lovich wrote: post #19
maxerickson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gap is increasing but the poor are overwhelmingly getting richer, not poorer. I'm talking about in real terms, standard of living has gone up across the world for decades, even as the population has grown.

It's gone up in the developing world. It hasn't gone up in the US. Infrastructure that the common man relied on is crumbling or is just gone, ie Flint water, and the rich are just importing everything they need to themselves

> It hasn't gone up in the US.

It has gone up in the US.

The poor in the US are radically better off today than they were 40 or 50 years ago.

Medicaid only came into existence in 1965. Today, after decades of expansion, it covers the bottom ~22% of people in the US with free healthcare.

The Food Stamp Act came into existence in 1964. In 1990, 20 million people received food stamps. Today, after decades of expansion (including large expansions under the Bush Administration, an unpopular fact), it covers 40 million people. The SNAP program has gone from paying out $15 billion in 2001, to $63 billion in 2016.

The real per capita income transfer, for welfare policies, has nearly tripled since 1980. The US social safety net is almost infinitely better than it was in ~1967 near the peak of global US economic dominance post WW2. There was hardly any social safety net back then. And it's considerably better than it was in 1980 or 1990.

The cynics take this to mean the US economy is much worse off than in eg 1980 or 1990 (Rhetorically does that mean Denmark's economy is collapsing? Their welfare state is far larger than the US welfare state as share of the economy). That's not the case, the US welfare state has been expanded to include more people. That has helped push homelessness and poverty to near record lows currently.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#75

Post by schuke »

ck425 wrote: post #64
joejerryronnie wrote: post #52

The reason Jack Ma is stepping down from Alibaba is that he was becoming too powerful and influencial in China. Jack is very smart and knows that you can build your wealth and power until you begin to threaten the party, then you either need to step down or you will be forcefully taken down.

Interesting thought. Can you provide any historical examples of this?

Xiao Jianhua, Wang Jian (HNA) are recent examples. When Bo Xilai was purged, Xu Ming, a businessman with very close ties to him, were arrested for bribery, and later died mysteriously in prison. Given the turbulent political scene it could be a good move to distance himself from everything, at least for some time.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#76

Post by supergirl »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #52

The reason Jack Ma is stepping down from Alibaba is that he was becoming too powerful and influencial in China. Jack is very smart and knows that you can build your wealth and power until you begin to threaten the party, then you either need to step down or you will be forcefully taken down.

tinfoil intensifies

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#77

Post by ksec »

schuke wrote: post #75
ck425 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting thought. Can you provide any historical examples of this?

Xiao Jianhua, Wang Jian (HNA) are recent examples. When Bo Xilai was purged, Xu Ming, a businessman with very close ties to him, were arrested for bribery, and later died mysteriously in prison. Given the turbulent political scene it could be a good move to distance himself from everything, at least for some time.

When one stands in front of the Many Faced God, all the money they had, even if it were trillions are literally useless. Many may have read about it for a while, but it was only these recent events that makes you truly understand. Why they are willing to paid millions for "services" to move their "millions" out of China and live outside.

Fan Bingbing is another example, and countless others.

And it proves that China, is still no different to how it operate in the Qing dynasty or all dynasty before hundreds to thousands years ago.

But of coz my guess are many of these stories don't get covered by Western Media.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#78

Post by dnomad »

adventured wrote: post #69
aslkdjaslkdj1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal for foreigners to own a Chinese company. A shell company based in the Caribbean is publicly traded. It owns no assets. https://www.barrons.com/articles/beware-the-pitfalls-of-the-...

It is not illegal for foreigners to own part of Chinese companies. It's generally illegal for a single foreign entity to own a controlling interest. Softbank and Yahoo invested into Alibaba relatively early on. It was incorporated in China. Their positions represented the majority of shares in the business, just not individually.

> It's generally illegal for a single foreign entity to own a controlling interest.

This is also not true. China, like all developing economies that have reached the global stage, allows WFOEs and FICEs [1]. There's significant taxes involved but these taxes are being decreased all the time .

(It's quite remarkable the stuff people believe about doing business in China. Really have to wonder where these ideas come from.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_Foreign-Owned_Enterpris...

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#79

Post by baybal2 »

PakG1 wrote: post #43
baybal2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the guy was a no name "overseas business development manager" for all 5 years. He was one of first foreigners in the company.

I don't ask this flippantly. Is it possible that he simply wasn't as good as he thought he was? In situations like this, I often find the company culture can suck, but I also often find that people overrate themselves and aren't willing to develop. I'd say my observations are about half-half.

Given what a business Aliexpress became under his watch, nobody will challenge his contribution

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#80

Post by icelancer »

TuGuQuKu wrote: post #49
icelancer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is basically where we are at today. Apparently we are to hold every rich person to some esoteric standard because every wealthy person made their money by exploiting others; none of them were positive-sum contributors to society. And when someone donates a lot of money, we just say they are buying PR and have calculated the ROI like the terrible capitalist they are, with zero evidence at all this is the cas…

>Apparently we are to hold every rich person to some esoteric standard because every wealthy person made their money by exploiting others; none of them were positive-sum contributors to society. Yes, that's correct. What, you think Bezos and Ma are genius visionaries for coming up with the idea of buying things on the internet? A democratically managed worker's co-op could have accomplished the same things as Amazon…

Then they would have, or we would have more examples of said practice.
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