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Stepping away from hiring/firing practices, I had a very visceral reaction to this: >“Five years ago,” says Richard Greenfield, a media and technology analyst

Stepping away from hiring/firing practices, I had a very visceral reaction to this: >“Five years ago,” says Richard Greenfield, a media and technology analyst at BTIG who happens to be Netflix’s most vocal proponent on Wall Street, “we wrote a piece saying that the networks shouldn’t license to Netflix because they were going to unleash a monster that would undermine their business.” This exposes to me how capitalism, for all it's very real benefits, also has big flaws. "Don't do this thing because people will want it but you won't be the one to profit" is a bad attitude for society in general. Sure, it means there's a profit motive for someone else to fill that niche, but the point of creative works is that they are unique. If Shakespeare is too expensive you go to Marlowe...but then you never get Shakespeare. That's a survivable choice, but not the most beneficial result. I don't have a solution, and I'm not saying to tear down the system. I'm just saying quotes like this make me cringe.

dexterdog 10y ago
But Netflix was just a distributor then and not a creator. The biggest problem in this is middle men. People want to pay the creators for their work, but there are layers upon layers of middle men that end up getting a far larger slice of the overall pie than the people who actually create the stuff. With the technology we have and systems similar to (but more open than) Netflix, we should be able to have a proper compensation mechanism.
- ergothus 10y ago
  Perhaps, but I can also see the middleman as a value add. When I paid Netflix and could see most anything, it was great, though a few things I couldn't see. Now I pay Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, pay for devices (e.g. Roku) to access them, have to hop accounts, and STILL can't see everything. Heck, Netflix's library has gotten less reliable. ("Want to see Groundhog day? let's see if it's currently in or out of catalog"). Middlemen aren't evil. Middlemen that want to gouge money WITHOUT providing value coughcoughRIAAcough* aren't evil either, but they're a lot less "good". Frankly, I'm a fan of competition, and in general when competition revolves around trying to offer more value to consumers, it's a bunch of winning (except for the companies that fall behind). Too often we see a competition to AVOID that scenario (Coke/pepsi & exclusive deals, everything about Comcast, HFT, the examples are numerous).
  - dexterdog 10y ago
    My point is middle men should make a cut in line with typical commissions (like 15%) so that the financial transaction is largely between the creator and the consumer. Netflix may be close to this model while virtually nobody else in the industry is.

dexterdog 10y ago

But Netflix was just a distributor then and not a creator. The biggest problem in this is middle men. People want to pay the creators for their work, but there are layers upon layers of middle men that end up getting a far larger slice of the overall pie than the people who actually create the stuff. With the technology we have and systems similar to (but more open than) Netflix, we should be able to have a proper compensation mechanism.

ergothus 10y ago
Perhaps, but I can also see the middleman as a value add. When I paid Netflix and could see most anything, it was great, though a few things I couldn't see. Now I pay Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, pay for devices (e.g. Roku) to access them, have to hop accounts, and STILL can't see everything. Heck, Netflix's library has gotten less reliable. ("Want to see Groundhog day? let's see if it's currently in or out of catalog"). Middlemen aren't evil. Middlemen that want to gouge money WITHOUT providing value coughcoughRIAAcough* aren't evil either, but they're a lot less "good". Frankly, I'm a fan of competition, and in general when competition revolves around trying to offer more value to consumers, it's a bunch of winning (except for the companies that fall behind). Too often we see a competition to AVOID that scenario (Coke/pepsi & exclusive deals, everything about Comcast, HFT, the examples are numerous).
- dexterdog 10y ago
  My point is middle men should make a cut in line with typical commissions (like 15%) so that the financial transaction is largely between the creator and the consumer. Netflix may be close to this model while virtually nobody else in the industry is.