Henry Ford's personal newspaper wrote at length about the Jewish problem, was the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf (and impressed Hitler so much that the idea of the Volkswagen came from the Model T), and was awarded Nazi Germany's highest civilian award.
Prescott Bush (George H W Bush's father, and George W Bush's grandfather) among others attempted a fascist military overthrow of the US government known as The Business Plot.
And Walt Disney attended Bund meetings in the US through the 1930s, and was widely known as a Nazi sympathizer.
I don't understand how American businesses didn't learn their lesson in Cuba in the 60's?
US and American businesses did fine business with the Cuban dictatorship of Batista:
"Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (/bəˈtiːstə/;[1] Spanish: [fulˈxensjo βaˈtista i salˈdiβaɾ]; born Rubén Zaldívar;[2] January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1944, and as its U.S.-backed military dictator from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution."
I guess the takeaway is: "Do business with friendly dictatorships we helped install, as opposed to independent ones".
Most NBA team owners are already billionaires. I believe most of them are self-made and have signed the giving pledge, meaning they will donate much of their wealth to charities at or before their death. If anyone can afford to take a stand, it would seem to be them.
The jersey sponsor of the LA Lakers is Wish.com, a company doing drop shipping from China.
LeBron James is sponsored by Nike (as are all of the jerseys) and Nike has significant interest in keeping the Chinese market open. LeBron is leading production of Space Jam 2. He won’t jeopardize international acclaim and box office revenue for this.
This is the same for every other player. Sponsorship deals with apparel companies are a huge source of income. Few stars are untouchable and the ones who are wont risk other business interests.
I'm suspecting there are quite a number of other business dealings between China and those who sit on boards of American companies. That would create an enormous tangle of conflict of interest. China doesn't need a military to conquer, as these business relationships seem to be doing the job well enough.
Quick google search for NBA stars' pay: https://www.shmoop.com/careers/basketball-player/salary.html
At the top you have folks with $30m in salary and $30m in endorsements. Even if they lose all endorsements (and they won't), there's still $30m in salary left. Average stars make $5m/year for 5 years. That's certainly enough money for a lifetime of pretty good living. These are the folks who can afford to take a stand, is what OP means. In contrast, if the average office worker takes a stand and loses their $60k/year job, life would be really difficult for them.
1. Invade Iraq. 4000+ Americans dead, over 1 million Iraqi died.
2. Bombed Libya, it is now a $democratic_wonderland.
I'm not putting Afghanistan here because I think it's justified, but then why are we still there after Bin Laden's dead?
How about just minding our own business. If China don't want to watch NBA, then so be it. If you don't want to buy shit made in China, then don't buy it.
A foreign country telling Americans what they can and cannot say very much is my business.
#2 Sell regular folks the idea that they _may_ one day become billionaires too, convince them that they should vote down any tax increase on the 1%; Continue brainwashing them that there's plenty of room at the top, maybe, just maybe room opens up for them as well.
#3 Monetize on the image of billionaires and sell luxury goods and billionaire lifestyle to poor cretins
If you create something (a company, a video game, other IP), and people value that thing at a billion dollars, then you’re a billionaire. Notch became a billionaire after selling Minecraft because almost 100 million people play it.
What do you expect should happen if someone creates a thing of value worth a billion dollars? Do you not want these things to be created? Do you not want them to be sold? (Ownership has to change hands eventually; people don’t live forever). How are you expecting society would work?
Reaping what you sow provides the incentive to work hard in our society. Related: http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html
Let them have 50 or 100 million, then put the rest in the hands of the other people that worked to make it happen. If all of those people are now rich, then use the excess money to help the impoverished.
> Reaping what you sow provides the incentive to work hard in our society.
It's not binary. People don't get all the money or none of it. You can still have ridiculously large amounts of monetary incentive without it being possible to hit a billion dollars.
Debatable depending which business, and also highly subjective. Amazon is valuable to Wall Street, yes most certainly. It also generates massive amounts of garbage, pollution, and human suffering. Are we including those in the value statement or are we going by the capitalist axiom that as long as the number went upward, the non-financial cost doesn't matter?
> If you create something (a company, a video game, other IP), and people value that thing at a billion dollars, then you’re a billionaire. Notch became a billionaire after selling Minecraft because almost 100 million people play it.
So the system works because the system is working? This is circular logic at it's finest. I don't care what Microsoft decided Minecraft was worth, they're an equally diseased part of a diseased system. It's like saying "this cancerous tumor isn't a problem, because the other cancerous tumor vouched for it." So what? I don't place value on the opinions of capitalists on the value of the capitalist system. Can you justify it without citing a capitalist?
> What do you expect should happen if someone creates a thing of value worth a billion dollars? Do you not want these things to be created? Do you not want them to be sold? (Ownership has to change hands eventually; people don’t live forever). How are you expecting society would work?
You're working all of this from the viewpoint that markets, capitalism, and competition are the only ways to generate stuff. Not only is that not the case, and I would cite the entire open source community as evidence to that fact, but I reject outright the assertions that:
1) The only things that have value are the ones where the value is expressed in currency
2) That the only arbiters of value are those who place values in the form of currency
There are tons of examples of things created with no monetization plan that are great. There are tons more things created with a monetization plan out of necessity, because without one they could not exist.
Again and again criticism of capitalism is met with this assertion that "well things have value and therefore we need to respect the market" and I flatly reject that. We're all locked in the same prison, every idea, every concept rung through this machine that decides whether or not something deserves to exist by it's ability to contribute to a market. A market built by people, allegedly for people, that is for some reason simply beyond reproach. Capitalism has ballooned to practically another religion, and you are a follower of it, so dedicated to it's holy texts you've entirely forgotten that human civilization existed for THOUSANDS of years before we had a bloody market.
Sod your market.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Your rhetoric is naive at best and racist at worst. It’s racist because you are disenfranchising the potential voice and sovereignty of a whole ethnicity and country because private interests in your own country can’t get their way over there.
The hong kong protestors have started getting their way. They don’t need poorly informed observers to fan the flames (on either side).
In general, one has to be careful about conflating the interests of the Chinese government and the Chinese people. They're not the same thing, although the Chinese government tries to portray it as such. Speaking out against the Chinese government is not the same as speaking out against Chinese people.
We know who the dictator is, it isn't billions of people, it is one man.
Yes there are other Chinese in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, but that's not the point here. Just because the racism doesn't target those Chinese doesn't mean there is a sense of cultural and moral superiority being levied on a different culture here.
Keep in mind that Singapore is also very authoritarian, but does not get as much flak for whatever reason (probably because they are not rivaling the US).
In the end it's all just criticism of a specific government. Doesn't need to go further than that.
For example, the Chinese government has not "lifted millions out of poverty", that's pure propaganda. Human society lifts itself out of poverty when not prevented from doing so by totalitarian governments. Japan was destroyed by war and became a rich first world nation within decades. South Korea became fully developed in also just a few decades. Plenty of other examples of that.
China is behind the rest of the world because of its government. If it weren't for the Great Leap Forward and then decades of economically devastating communism, China would be as developed as the USA or South Korea is by now. The fact that its people are still so poor can be laid squarely at the feet of its government.
But how many Chinese will think that? Probably not many. They are stuck in a system designed to mould them into loyal subjects from birth.
Got any other zingers you want to tell me with a straight face?
You gauge by whoever takes political action, whether or not you think they are properly informed.
Is 'Hong Kong separatist' any different to 'Ulster unionist' in acceptability to each side? It sounds like a neutral description to me.
The fact that someone as prominent as Joe Tsai made such a factually incorrect public statement is a bit bothersome; and seems to suggest that there's truth in that Chinese media really wants to portray the protests as separatists movements (which is not true) to its people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_the_2019_Hong_Kon...)
The thing is, Joe is right in the rest of his post -- everything about China's sensitivity to territories and separatists movements. It's that his categorization of Hong Kong's movement is wrong, which makes the whole argument invalid.
Devil's advocate here...Are they not separatist? If not, shouldn't they be?
It's hard to imagine your "country" working on a death clock. In 2047 it all ends. So, what is the point of fighting the good fight at this point? Why not face the inevitable and leave while you can? Or fight for a final independence now, while you can?
Most separatists are probably protestors, but that does not imply most protestors are separatists.
It's to stop calling it a riot and release anybody who is arrested because of it.
Just because you're rioting for democracy, doesn't mean it's not a riot, and it doesn't grant those who used it as an opportunity to vandalize shops and destroy subways a free pass. That directly conflicts with the rule of law.
These are their demands (more or less):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_protests#Object...
Full-on separatism would give the PLA a more plausible reason to declare an insurrection and go full Tiananmen Square. Also, a lot of HKers who support the existing demands would not be on board with it.
Because there's still 28 years to go, and a lot can happen in 28 years.
A lot can happen in that time. Given the direction of things, do you think it will be better? I guess I don't.
When HK is supposed to hand itself over to China's rule in 2047, do you think there will be ANY international support for their independence? I don't. That would be directly against the deal that was struck.
Wouldn't it be better to use China's interference as a pretext for independence, claiming it was China who has broken the bargain?
American independence wasn't about a tea tax or a few soldiers defending themselves in Boston. It was about inevitability and using those events to propel it.
In 1982, pretty much everyone assumed the Soviet Union was still going to be around in 1992, but it wasn't.
Who knows what China will look like in 2047. A lot can happen in 28 years.
hell, the rockets ownership allegedly discussed removing "one of the best GMs in the league": https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/10/6/20901828/daryl-morey...
and give me a break about the giving pledge. when people are dead, access to their money doesn't matter. if they want to earn some sort of altruistic "cred", they can donate 90% of their net worth, today, and still be in the 100 millionaire club.
go ahead and let me know when any one of these people does that.
I suppose China has no small part of the greatness. Maybe removing that part actually make him removable and far from "one of the greatest"?
This is the same guy who has two former employees, one is a newer Supreme Court Justice that he allegedly spent $10 million in dark money helping and the other is a US Senator whose running for President. He also happens to own Coachella despite fighting legal weed and donating to anti-gay groups in the past.
Why do you believe this? As far as I can tell Dan Gilbert is the only one I see on that list.
Not saying that NBA and basket generally speaking is not important anymore for Europeans, because it is, but there was a slight moment during the timeframe I mentioned when the likes of Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Larry Bird, Sabonis or Toni Kukoc were more famous than many footballers of that time. But in the second part of the '90s something happened and apart from a few exceptions (like LeBron or Kobe) no big NBA names from across the Atlantic have been widely known in here. Which is to say that it's totally possible for the NBA to lose the Chinese market.
This ignores human nature and basic incentives. Of course it's not much of a dilemma for you and me. We aren't the ones who stand to gain or lose hundreds millions of dollars. It shouldn't be shocking that many people with skin in the game feel differently.
And I don't think it has much to do with being rich. I suspect plenty of thousandairs would happily kowtow to fascists for a few weeks in return for a six-figure payday.
I liked Silver's response. Respectfully but firmly refusing to get into regulating the politics of however many players and employees.
fascist != authoritarian, it also about long term business opportunities. Selling NBA product for decades to come is hardly quick buck.
You are mostly right on the rest though - for the spherical cow in vacuum type of corporation that can ignore 1/6 of the world's population.
China is big player. Ascending superpowers tend to like flexing muscles and rocking the boat.
Tim Cook was Apple's strongman who basically blackmailed Apple's entire Chinese supply chain to meet insane shipping and quality standards. Amazon has done it with their local delivery contracts with third party vendors. Forcing them to meet unrealistic delivery goals all the while detaching themselves from any responsibility for what happens when their vendors push themselves too much and people start dying.
I do agree wholeheartedly about how any company, in the US or abroad should stop targeting China for their growth.
Foreign organizations wishing to do business in US encounter restrictions and conformity that they too would find foreign. Dont criticize Jewish people or Israeli policy if you want to do business in the US. Easy! But a foreign concept to many. In the US its people and private sector will cause most of the headache, and you might find some discretionary import privileges stonewalled by ITC or other gov agencies.
Its really not that different just because China has top down control which it arbitrarily flexes on a topic that coincidentally is much more important to you. We believe that publicly made speech in an unofficial capacity should have no consequences from state level actors, surprise. We believe that the speech on this particular issue is the right thing to do, surprise there are consequences and China doesnt want you opining on “sovereignty issues”.
If you want to do business there you have to understand that.
Now you know why Jackie Chan says pro beijing things. If you’re perceptive and want favor from that very large market thats how you do it.
Exiting any market is always an option.
I don't recall Apple demanding that their Chinese suppliers stay silent about Apple concentration camps or otherwise risk losing the business.
Under Deng Xiaoping, China gradually undid the economic structures that define communism and moved to a market-driven economy. Today it is essentially a free market economy with maybe a little more government intervention than most other free market economies. China is communist in name only.
"Fascists" is probably not a good description of the Chinese Communist Party, since Fascism is widely regarded as always and everywhere the diametric opposite/enemy of Communism and Communists. Examples of this include [0] and [1] and [2] and [3], which are the results of me googling "is fascism the enemy of communism?" for 5 seconds. Probably you mean "Totalitarians" or "Statists" or "Authoritarian Governments" or something like that.
This is pedantic but lots of the discussion downthread seems to hinge on this point of equating "Chinese Communists" with "Fascists," and that's imho a totally false premise.
Oftentimes people say things like "Well the Chinese are commies in name only" and similar, and this might be semi-or-mostly true, but it's a bit of a leap from there to calling them fascists.
[0] "Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines..." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
[1] "In Hitler's mind, communism was a major enemy of Germany ... Hitler claimed that his singular goal was to assist the German government in "fighting Marxism". Marxism, Bolshevism, and communism were interchangeable terms for Hitler..." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Adolf_Hitle...
[2] "Fascism is often considered to be a reaction to communist and socialist uprisings..." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communism
[3] "...in the early 1920s the Nazis were only one of many nationalist and fascist political parties contending for the leadership of Germany's anti-communist movement" also from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communism
By who? Is there a reason for this?
Fascism's self-description is basically just the motto "united we stand, divided we fall". It's right there in the name. As a philosophy, I know it best for strict intolerance of public dissent. That sort of thing undermines unity.
And that's pretty much it. I would have said that "fascism" in modern American usage had lost all meaning other than as a generic term of abuse; I would never have guessed that it was supposed to mean "the opposite of communism, whatever that might mean". "The opposite of communism" is usually considered to be capitalism.
But there seem to be many good correspondences between Chinese practice today and original, Mussolini-style fascism.
First and foremost, by the inventors of fascism themselves, as I tried to show in some stealth edits in my comment above.
It's a bit like saying Tom Cruise isn't a real scientologist because Xenu doesn't exist.
The two seem to always be found near each other.
Sun Tzu said that the supreme excellence consists of defeating your enemy without fighting.
Guess what, we are ruled from Beijing now.
Anyway, I am not crying over the top 1% losing money over that, I am talking about the paycheck to paycheck workers whose means of subsistence depends on their employers doing okay.
I am not saying Chinese products shouldn't be boycotted or that China shouldn't be pressured into aligning better with western values but who is going to pay in the end ?
That's why we have unemployment benefits, and why most countries do things like have health care that's separate from employment.
I am not talking about Chinese workers losing jobs, I am talking about US citizens being collateral damage next month when Random Mother Corpo ® decides to lay off an arbitrary number of workers way down the corporate ladder in order to compensate for the bad previsions for next quarter due to $4B of revenues disappearing from the market.
edit: I believe you are intentionally derailing the conversation by moving the goal post (by moving from US citizens concerns to other countries with healthcare and social net and then reframing the problem as an environmental problem).
I think there should be policies in place to help people who lose their jobs for whatever reason.
But the company doing the layoff isn't the same as the company doing the "wrong" thing. Think of the guy selling burgers in front of the stadium not meeting the quota because ticket prices surged and less people buy burgers or the bar owner selling less drinks because suddenly the rights to show NBA games rose up in order to compensate for the $4B of revenues disappearing and he has in turn to pass the buckets to his regular who either buy less drinks or shell out more money than before.
edit: I specifically wrote Random Mother Corpo® as in NOT THE NBA . To illustrate the fact that companies and the economy is inter-connected. That boycotting some company or country has some side-effects which bring collateral damage.
Yes, a company has a fiduciary duty to shareholders, but there are lots of ways to fulfill that duty. There's no requirement that they expand into China. Many companies don't and it's fine
This isn’t the case so much for the NBA or Apple. The NBA has no equivalent and Apple has all of their manufacturing in China. Both stand to lose far more money by exiting the Chinese market than Google ever did.
US companies should stop targeting China for growth. If they don't steal your IP completely, they'll eventually freeze you out like they just did the NBA. It's happened to many companies and will eventually happen to you too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.