Zuck has structured the company in such a way that he'll be at the helm until he is 90 or gets bored.
Given this situation why doesn't he attack regulators and politcians who attack him?
In the long run acquiring the reputation of somebody who doesn't just lay there and take it would serve him and the company better.
It seems to me that after 2/3 years of disputes, he'd acquire such reputation and would be left alone. No politician has enough political goodwill to sign off a Facebook breakup and survive, not even Biden himself, so why doesn't he make this clear for the doubters on Wall Street.
By making it clear I mean going on the attack , knowing that they can't do much to hurt him.
As these news drop he should be saying stuff like:
"They are trying to destroy and disintegrate Facebook and Instagram"
Seems to me Facebook and companies in general have to enter the culture wars battlefield
Doesn't management and C-suite executives lose the respect of technical people in the company when they do media appearences and sign off this sort of overtly-optimistic PR pieces?
I'd rather have my money in the hands of Microsoft and Google vis-a-vis Federal and State Government (in the case of Europe it's Regional)
They not only return money to government via their mega cash warchest (which is made up of T-bills) but they also have more productive ways to employ those dollars compared to governments.
Also even if they were to pocket them, at least they are far away, whereas the corruption of governments causes your hated neighbor or the asshole mayor to pocket government cash .
Interpersonal violence and confidence in yourself go hand in hand at the societal level.
Places where interpersonal violence abounds has people being so arrogant and believing in themselves that they have no qualms attacking others, because they KNOW that they can't possibly lose. This is Africa
Places where interpersonal violence is low has people being very conservative and avoiding confrontations because they are scared of losing or succumbing to them: this is clearly Asia and Europe to a certain degree
The US is in a sweet spot, actually it was in a sweet spot in the 80s, now it has abandoned it and moving towards European type society. Still it's the closest place to a sweet spot it once occupied and still benefiting from the time it spent in that sweet spot
> My understanding of life as a young professional in China or Korea is that the competition is almost unbelievable to someone from North America.
South Korea and China competition is "working harder". In the US it's all about "working smarter"
Also with all due respect for South Korea and China...very risk averse.
The big jumps happen when you take a risk and beat the odds, not the endless grinding which goes on in Asian societies.
Asian societies lack the arrogance of the creator/founder, which abounds in the West, especially American Jews.
Imagining something new and having the arrogance to think that it will be a great success and you'll be the one bringing it into the world. This is the trademark American Jew mindset.
Zuck turned down 1 Billion for Facebook...Larry and Sergey 1 million for Google. It takes guts and arrogance to think you'll beat the odds and say "no thanks" to 1 billion (and to 1 million too! considering it was back in the 90s and it was a very good deal for the effort they put into it)
Ideally the turnover of businesses should be really high
Meaning outflow from business bank accounts older than 5 years should be really high and inflow in business bank account younger than 1 year should be high as well (all as % of GDP)
As much as people like Bezos claim "it's always day one" they won't risk the company on moonshots like they did back in the days.
Partially because they feel they can't win as if the big bet were to be successful then you can't cash on it because the antitrust would immediately dissolve a 5 trillion dollar company.
The only crazy coked dude out there still pushing is Musk, but he has a taste for picking industries which make terrible businesses, and I think will retire before any of his companies generates positive FCF
This sadly means that people aren't betting on themselves anymore.
When assets skyrocket, usually business formation and funding goes down.
Banks have better data but anecdotally this is what is happening
Ideally if somebody in here works for the big boys such as JPMorgan , Wells Fargo or Barclays and wanted to decipher such phenomenon you'd look at something like:
(Turnover in business bank account opened in the past year - outgoing payments to insiders,beneficial owners and companies controlled by insiders and beneficial owners) / GDP
Yet another metric of risk taking:
No. of hires + no. of people who quit. This gives you an idea of how confident business are in their growth and how confident people are in their personal growth.
Of course stuff like the stimulus and paying people to stay home distort stuff so much that such data can't be compared to say 2005
"Women are saying that a guy had an interaction with them"
So all our brain emergency signals flare up. That's because somebody who is not ourselves having interactions with women triggers an immediate response...that guy is, in fact, an enemy from a reproductive standpoint. Deeply rooted in our brains there is the idea that WE should be interacting with those women and that we must destroy that guy because he's ahead in the reproductive race
This happens subcounciously.
Even standup guys like Bill Gates aren't immune to it, if you want to hurt a guy reputation and you have nothing, absolutely nothing on him...well just say that he's a playboy and a philanderer.
If you claim those things you immediately ruin his reputation with women and with smart/family men. All he's left with the approval of less smart men who are no use for guys who have ambitious goals such as Bill Gates or even the Pasquale VC of the main article. They'd have lost so much "approval rating" among smart men, as well as men who are capable of reading the room and don't want to be associated with a guy who is under attack by the mob.
But the important thing is that clueless buyers didn't put together the above reasoning
Or think somehow blockchain and AI can be used the amazing technoutopian future™ to combat piracy (including piracy of the image or video of the NFT they bought it)
US Dollars in one's bank account are used by people to measure their self worth.
Unfortunately they are also the tool which the Fed uses to stabilize the financial system and to inject liquidity.
6.5 trillion dollars printed, people feel that the Fed is effectively diluting their self-worth... and they are scared as hell about it, that's the reason why BTC is flying .
>> Even if you do good for self-glorification and to remind everyone how awesome you are
Bill Gates behaves like a politician because he was violently attacked by the government first. That's mostly because he didn't engage with politicians or didn't act like one.
He seeks to be in the public eye because that's the only way of preventing people gang up against you like it happened in 1999 when the DOJ decided to violently attack Microsoft just because Gates was so extremely rich.
His only problem is that he's very socially incompetent and will appear for like 30 minutes on prime time tv and the average person will hear a monotonal voice talking about concepts way above thier heads. He doesn't use typical politician tactics such as US v THEM, doesn't use empathizing phrases. It's only a matter of time until everybody sees the uncannyness and think this guy is an enemy. Which is exaclty the reason why all conspiracy theories are around against him, and seems to me you bought into them as well.
Bezos is the Seattle billionaire 2.0 , although his company had a rougher trajectory compared to Microsoft and the initial vision wasn't as ambitious and profitable as Microsoft, then AWS came along and changed the game..
Bezos is much more socially competent than Gates, and if he decides to follow Gates path he won't repeat his same mistakes. He'll use USvTHEM and all the social tactics to make sure that he doesn't become a scrapegoat for all humanity problems like it has happened with Gates
It never stops to amaze me how of all places people in here are so blind to it.
Game should recognize game, especially on HN. The way Musk operates and Tesla finances scream that this is not unlike your run of the mill startup whose survival is 50:50...but of course the founder and CEO is doing media blitz after media blitz to promote the company and get a better valuation for the inevitable equity raise.
Just because you are on the other side of the invisible line doesn't mean your reputation doesn't get a hit when you are sued or even by hersay