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ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

english.martinvarsavsky.net

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Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#81

Post by tunap »

melvinram wrote: post #71
mjburgess wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have this thing called "The American Dream" and you have an entire cultural history tied to self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier"... Clearly every single american isnt subject to the same cultural pre-occupations, that's absurd. But there are only certain cultural phenomena possible in one place or another. A right-wing party in the UK could not even begin to use any of the ideas or rhetori…

"The American Dream", self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier" are all good things IMHO. However, they aren't the same as "unreflectingly capitalistic" and "pre-occupied with monetary success". I'm not going to address the rest of your America bashing because the response requires a nuanced answer that I don't have the time to write today. I'll leave that to others.

[quote]"The American Dream", self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier" are all good things IMHO.[/quote]

Everything in moderation. Here in the US, however, moderation has no place. It's all or nothing mentality, like a fricking casino bet. Fair compensation for effort is dead when everybody is taking risks for maximum rewards and training their work-force to pander the lowest common denominator... the hard sell. Everywhere I go retail workers are badgering me to upsell, banks & home improvement chains are the worst, IMO. That's what happens when there are 100's of candidates for every job opening and all the competition has been killed off by the oligops. Everywhere you go in the US, if it's a large enough customer base, it's oligops all the way down.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#82

Post by mjburgess »

melvinram wrote: post #71
mjburgess wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have this thing called "The American Dream" and you have an entire cultural history tied to self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier"... Clearly every single american isnt subject to the same cultural pre-occupations, that's absurd. But there are only certain cultural phenomena possible in one place or another. A right-wing party in the UK could not even begin to use any of the ideas or rhetori…

"The American Dream", self-motivation, entrepreneurship and "pushing the frontier" are all good things IMHO. However, they aren't the same as "unreflectingly capitalistic" and "pre-occupied with monetary success". I'm not going to address the rest of your America bashing because the response requires a nuanced answer that I don't have the time to write today. I'll leave that to others.

> However, they aren't the same as "unreflectingly capitalistic" and "pre-occupied with monetary success".

They have become inextricably linked. Maybe early in the 19th C. you'd be right. After the rise of american industry and maufacture and its corresponding propaganda (edison, etc.) AND after the cold war, "capitalism", "democracy", "patriotism" all became intertwined. Such that today The American Dream is almost purely capitalist and pragmatic.

The American Dream has, to my eyes, for a long time been directed towards individuals - it is their dream. A person achieves their dream. Once, perhaps, The American Dream was a dream for Americans - a common enterprise, with common goals, something achieved for everyone or no one, etc.

The author of this article did not explain why ONO was part of a common enterpise, which its activity was making all our lives better and helping us achieve our ideals. He said,

"built originally by Eugenio Galdon and mostly by my friend Richard Alden between 2001 and 2011, is in the process of being sold to Vodafone for around $9.5bn, and nobody cares."

If that's doesnt read hollow and pathetic to you I dont know what could. It's complete mythologising of two people "building" a company, it's display of hurt feeling over the fact that $10bn doesnt impress people enough, its utter pre-occupation with self-aggrandizement and money.

The rhetoric in this article is almost suffocating its message and very few can tell - because this rhetoric has become the language in which we phrase our dreams today.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#83

Post by genofon »

jessaustin wrote: post #74
genofon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" richest and most powerful country in the history of the world..." not even close http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-modern_great_powers

So many disagree with this proposition because it does not convey the meaning you apparently intend. "Most powerful" might conceivably be a relative measure, but there's no way that "richest" is. Most nations of Europe (probably not Moldova, Slovenia, and a few others), on both a total and per capita basis, consume much more than anyone on that list. In a military contest most modern European nations would by more co…

as technology improves and time pass seems obvious that mankind is richer and have better military than the past. You can probably say that nowadays Slovenia could win against 1600 Spanish empire, so the only comparison that is reasonable a relative comparison, that's why I didn't specify.

I agree that it wasn't the main point of the post i was replying to but I found that point just smug and incorrect, backed-up with cultural bias rather than historical fact.

EDIT: sorry, I wasn't clear enough, my comparison was mostly in the "most powerful" part rather than "richest"

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#85

Post by omegant »

replicatorblog wrote: post #76

This has very little to do with national moods/prejudices and much more to do with boring/atypical industries vs. hot consumer ones. ONO got no attention largely because it's "boring" to a mass audience. There are plenty of examples of this domestically, e.g. + Child focused ecommerce company Zulily filed a $2.6B IPO, but got very little attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6740927 I'd also note that there…

I think that Martin is refering to the attention that the wasup adquisition had here in Spain and how little is getting in the spanish media, a Spanish start up that's selling for that amount.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#86

Post by omegant »

_delirium wrote: post #65
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europeans love success stories as much as Americans, but we're too American-focused to notice our own success stories. this. Plus, to be fair, I have never heard of ONO, mostly cos no matter how much of a single European market we are, we are not a single European language, so we are not a single European news feed.

Yeah, I think in Denmark the media mainly notices American and Danish business, and not as much those from rest of Europe, unless they do something that really impacts people. People definitely care about what Danish businesses are doing. It's true that monetary success isn't the only measure people care about, e.g. Copenhagen Suborbitals, a nonprofit, gets a ton of startup-like tech press. But people also care about…

The problem is that isn't making the news even in Spain..

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#87

Post by RBerenguel »

ivanca wrote: post #16
RBerenguel wrote: post #12

I'm Spanish, more or less watch the Spanish media (around 3-4 times per week during lunchtime, usually I don't check most news) and I wasn't aware. So not even our media cares.

You may be watching regular news, here he is talking about the tech news scene... if there isn't one in Spain, then that's the problem.

There isn't a specific one, or at least not one I'm aware of (I guess that's enough for me). Of course, a sale of a Spanish company for 9.5 b€ is big enough that normal outlets should at least mention it.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#88

Post by RBerenguel »

muyuu wrote: post #22
RBerenguel wrote: post #12

I'm Spanish, more or less watch the Spanish media (around 3-4 times per week during lunchtime, usually I don't check most news) and I wasn't aware. So not even our media cares.

I understand it should be bigger news, but I don't understand why should anyone be celebrating. Other than the ones who are making a killing out of this deal, of course. The Spanish telecom market is not a competitive market, it's enormously rigged and regulated. Success in this market doesn't come from innovation or better business practices, but as a result from politics and power struggles. This is probably true f…

Me neither. If I had shares in Vodafone or ONO, maybe I'd celebrate.

ONO a startup? Ha! I think I've known about ONO before I even got a modem.

Re: ONO sells for $9.5 billion and nobody cares

#90

Post by taylorbuley »

omegant wrote: post #85
replicatorblog wrote: post #76

This has very little to do with national moods/prejudices and much more to do with boring/atypical industries vs. hot consumer ones. ONO got no attention largely because it's "boring" to a mass audience. There are plenty of examples of this domestically, e.g. + Child focused ecommerce company Zulily filed a $2.6B IPO, but got very little attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6740927 I'd also note that there…

I think that Martin is refering to the attention that the wasup adquisition had here in Spain and how little is getting in the spanish media, a Spanish start up that's selling for that amount.

It's easy to blame media "blindness" and inattention -- here, apparently both in Spain and on the wider Web -- but to me it just boils down to the economics of attention. If the author is right and "nobody cares" then the lack of press is pretty explainable.

In today's ad-driven world, journalists are tacitly rewarded (at the very least) for Web traffic. As such, the coveted beats are the ones that drive guaranteed interest -- Apple being the traffic gorilla when I was a staff writer. The stuff closest to consumers (porcelain) on the whole drive more interest than infrastructure (plumbing).

Starting out in the Valley I got beats like Seagate and storage (after getting the assignment, another editor joked that it was "borage"). I remember envying the consumer electronics writers for their traffic, but was always more of a pluming guy myself.

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