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The owner of the Nets is an executive at Alibaba. He will follow the party line and has (calling Hong Kong protestors “separatists”, etc.) The jersey sponsor o
by tyre 7y ago
The owner of the Nets is an executive at Alibaba. He will follow the party line and has (calling Hong Kong protestors “separatists”, etc.)
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.
- godot 7y agoI know that your point might be "there's too much to give up", but I believe OP's point is why can't these people give them up? Quick google search for NBA stars' pay: https://www.shmoop.com/careers/basketball-player/salary.html 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.
- paggle 7y agoAs Michael Jordan didn't say... "Republicans buy sneakers too." Billionaires didn't get to be billionaires by leaving money on the table. We need large scale political action against China.
- badrequest 7y agoWe need to adopt an economic system that doesn't prize currency above human dignity.
- dexterdog 7y agoSo we should be like the Chinese and prize power over human dignity instead?
- munificent 7y agoFalse dilemma much?
- pixelpoet 7y agoIsn't that what communism/Marxism is supposed to be? "Each according to his ability to each according to his needs?"
- dmix 7y ago"supposed to be" is the key part of the sentence.
- FussyZeus 7y agoBillionaire's shouldn't exist. Name literally one benefit of having a billionaire in our society. Any one thing we wouldn't otherwise have.
- Consultant32452 7y agoTesla, SpaceX, and ending polio?
- mruts 7y agoI csn’t think of one benefit of you existing either.
- dang 7y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- onemoresoop 7y agoBenefit #1: Make a top list of billionaires and have people gossip about it. #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
- FussyZeus 7y agoAre these supposed to be benefits?
- Pyxl101 7y agoThe benefit of billionaires existing is that they made extraordinarily valuable businesses. Take Steve Jobs or Bill Gates - if they didn’t exist then Apple and Microsoft wouldn’t either. If Notch didn’t exist then neither would Minecraft. 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 http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html
- Aperocky 7y agoLet's look at some large scale political action in the past: 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.
- nyolfen 7y agohe said political, not military
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> How about just minding our own business A foreign country telling Americans what they can and cannot say very much is my business.
- runj__ 7y agoYou can say whatever you want, but they might not want to throw money at you if you start shit talking their regime and it's values. Is that not free speech?
- snowron6 7y agoI mean, its only because the company let's them isn't it? The NBA, and pretty much every company, has could totally ignore China telling them what to do, but they would rather take the money.
- Aperocky 7y agoI think that's a false equivalence, China has no power telling you what to do and you know it. And any customer would have the power to not buy your product and its their right.
- darepublic 7y agowhy would afghanistan be justified?
- chrischen 7y agoYes because I’m sure you know what's best for billions of Chinese. They must be all dying to overthrow their government. 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).
- repolfx 7y agoMight seem persnickety, but criticism of mainland China can't be racism because Taiwanese are the same race and people aren't criticising them for this kind of thing (because they don't do it). It's really not even criticism of the Chinese people, who have no say in the matter either way and tend to be harshly punished for disagreeing. In the end it's all just criticism of a specific government. Doesn't need to go further than that.
- chrischen 7y agoAnd the vast majority of Chinese people in China do support the government, for doing, among other things, bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty. The primary beneficiary of the Chinese government is the Chinese people there, and attacking the government is an indirect attack on the people there because The USA government, Australia, or any other non China government is not going to take after Chinese citizens.
- repolfx 7y agoUh, do they? How do you know? The opinions of mainland Chinese about their government are completely worthless; they simply aren't allowed to disagree or learn about the world in a neutral manner. 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.
- Nuzzerino 7y agoDisney owns ESPN, and also has had to deal with recent censorship of Winnie the Pooh in China (which is a different story altogether). 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.
- IanDrake 7y ago>calling Hong Kong protesters “separatists”, etc. 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?
- CharlesColeman 7y ago> 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? Because there's still 28 years to go, and a lot can happen in 28 years.
- IanDrake 7y agoThanks for hitting the heart of the matter. 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.
- CharlesColeman 7y ago> When HK is supposed to hand itself over to China's rule in 2047 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.
- roywiggins 7y ago> Devil's advocate here...Are they not separatist? If not, shouldn't they be? These are their demands (more or less): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_protests#Objectives 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.
- nilkn 7y agoThe counterpoint is that LeBron James already makes over $35 million per year (not counting endorsements -- his net worth is in the hundreds of millions) and therefore is actually in an excellent position to take a stand against a dictatorship. After some threshold, ludicrously rich people aligning themselves with dictators just so they can become even more rich makes them just as bad and worthy of denigration.
- cco 7y agoAnd provide a powerful lesson for the children in his sponsored school, there is more to life that money and standing up to bullies is the right thing to do even if you must have consequences.
- OJFord 7y ago> He will follow the party line and has (calling Hong Kong protestors “separatists”, etc.) Is 'Hong Kong separatist' any different to 'Ulster unionist' in acceptability to each side? It sounds like a neutral description to me.
- godot 7y agoI don't know if it's neutral or not, but it's just factually incorrect. The five demands of the protestors (now six actually) do not include anything about separatism/independent state. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_protests#Objectives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_protests#Object...) 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_Kong_protests#Mainland_China_reactions 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.