Not sure how valid but I think a case from this hypothesized Chinese Government perspective can be made even without criticizing Netflix itself.

When Hollywood was built in the 1920's it was not exactly the backbone of the economy. The article argues that the Chinese Government sees value in the economy beyond GDP goes up and cash flows good. Technology and manufacturing are important to national security.

The article quote Xi Jinping saying “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.” I guess the national question for the other super power is how important is this "real economy" to itself. Is too much talent and labor sucked up in profitable activity that is suboptimal for a nation? Are these 21st century company's like Netflix good enough for our nation?

> “we must recognize the fundamental importance of the real economy… and never deindustrialize.”

This is a valid point, and I tend to agree with it. However I see entertainment as part of the "real" economy. It's an incredibly old industry, provides real value to nearly every human being, creates high-, medium-, and low-skilled employment across a wide variety of disciplines, can allow your culture to punch above its weight, and produces art that endures across generations and centuries (for example, Shakespeare).

The real problem is that when the basic infrastructure that maintain the entertainment industry is gone, then the whole thing breaks down in shambles. For example, someday there might be a global shortage of electronics due to geo-political factors, and then you will have no chips to make those fancy consoles and PCs with.

That's the thing about the entertainment industry though. It's been around since the amphitheater was the pinnacle of technology.

Literally all you need to entertain people is talent and a space.

Communication has also been always around. The problem is the abundance - same with fat and sugar and cocaine. A little is fine, a lot is bad.

Entertainment on TV has been abundant for nearly 50 years, ever since the advent of cable.

there is subtle, yet important difference between TV and Netflix ...

Netflix provides on-demand all you can view content. It doesn’t require any “cooling period” before the next episode. You don’t have to engage with family, friends or work. You can stream all day and live in fantasyland.

That's been the case with books before Netflix too...

To be fair, the quantity and availability of novels/fictions was pretty low before the fifties, so I guess there is some truth to it... Though the timeframe is definitely longer then only Netflix's existence

With books you have to actually read. It’s an active thing. Vegging out on the couch or bed even, is passive. Often you don’t even have to think because it’s mostly action with lots of repetition and little mystery.

You're moving the goalposts. Whether reading is better than watching is an interesting debate unrelated to the topic at hand.

I'd happily veggie out on a couch with a favorite book series and live in fantasyland for days (alas, real world interferes...).

I don’t think so. Of course we can read pulp. Evenso, I doubt people would read as much pulp as they’d watch all you can stream programming.

Given the option of gorging on books or gorging on Netflix over a long weekend dawn till dusk, I bet most people would choose Netflix. If you randomly divided the people into those two groups and made them read and the others watch, more readers would wash out than watchers.

Just wait until VR fulfills its hype.

> You can stream all day and live in fantasyland.

I tried that. It soon becomes utterly boring, no matter how good the show is.

It probably depends on inner will and psychological stage of mind. Do you mind being unproductive and such.

Maybe I'm different. Passive entertainment is dull to me. I don't watch other people play sports, I want to play them myself. Traveling and looking at sights rapidly gets very dull.

Yes, I'd say you're not the "binge watcher". It's a phenomenon.[1] According to some researchers, this is an understudied phenomenon which may have negative correlation with mental health[2]. Of course Netflix would be loath to admit this.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge-watching

[2]http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/stories/2019/04/kruger-binge-wa...

TV has been like that since the advent of cable.

> TV has been like that since the advent of cable.

No, it hasn't. It has been somewhat since the much more recent introduction of “on demand” programming to cable, but that was basically just the introduction of streaming into cable in response to streaming services.

Sorry, I meant once cable rolled around, there's always been something to watch on TV. It may not have been interesting to normal people, but to an addict that's not going to matter. There was also the option of buying or renting a ton of movies or DVDs and watching them one after the other. This honestly reeks of a moral panic to me.

I think "on-demand" is a blessing. We are no longer tied to broadcaster schedules, have to remember to "program the DVR", writers don't have to write a cliffhanger every 12 minutes for an ad break.

That was the case with cable and, before that, radio.

Netflix has one of darkest UX patterns hidden in plain sight. Or not even hidden maybe.

Can you be more explicit? Are you talking about auto-play?