schipelblorp comments on Picard writers doubling down on criticism

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 24 points 5 days ago (3 children)

That sentence used to be a lot longer, but it all does boil down to stupidity.

I heard a theory on the Adam Conover show recently that said product people--that is people that understands products and their customers--no longer run companies. Instead, we have finance people that know how to talk to investors and see their products as conglomeration of characteristics, maximized for mass appeal, and see their customers as numbers on a spreadsheet.

I find this a very compelling theory and you can see it across all forms of media--from movie, to TV, to games. The root cause of this problem has been unstated, but I see it as somehow a result of wealth inequality and concentration of power. Bad decisions can continually be made because competition is limited, at the same time, being "in" with powerful people is career insulation from constant failure.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 3 child comments

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (2 children)

There's currently much more money to be gained from attracting investment than there is from generating profit, so companies that don't prioritise selling to investors over selling to customers just won't get as big, and the feedback loop ensures that investors who invest in things that other investors will invest in later will have more money to reinvest later than investors who invest in companies that can make a profit. Historically, investors who invested in companies that couldn't become profitable lost their money, so couldn't invest in other things in the future. The system kind of does do what it's intended to, and efficiently allocate capital to where it generates the most return, but that's become decoupled from the implicit goal of most effectively providing goods and services.

If I had to guess at the root cause, a good candidate would be that after the 2008 financial crisis, when quantitative easing was (successfully) used to stop nearly everyone losing their livelihoods by ensuring investors had access to enough money to avoid feeling pressure to pull out of all their sane investments and in doing so collapse all major employers, because it was never undone through quantitative tightening, there was enough excess money sloshing around afterwards that investors could afford to risk investing in dumb shit, and dumb shit could attract enough follow-up investment later that the early investors were rewarded.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 2 child comments

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (1 child)

I don't understand how what you're saying applies to movies. Do earlier rounds of investment get a higher return? The idea is there is a budget and you don't start the movie until you've raised the money. In that case, the only two things that matter is that there are enough investors to start the project, and that the project is a success.

But it's all a bit shortsighted, whatever is happening, because all the profit maximization is actively alienating customers. Console gaming is flat-out dying because games suck. Though, in the case of Microsoft, there is an investment angle, because they bought a lot of companies and saddled themselves with debt, so they can't afford to take risks... but refusing to take any risks across an entire ecosystem is a guarantee of failure...

permalink

fedilink

source

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 1 point 4 days ago

It only applies to movies and because they're expensive enough to make that the major titles almost all are things funded by a few major producers, and the investor-first approach has been pervasive long enough that the major shareholders of the studios are that kind of investor, so they pick people to be on the board who agree with them, and the board selects C-suite staff that are good at talking to investors rather than that are good at making their company produce good movies. The kind of movie they then want to make is the kind of movie that costs a lot so they can tell investors that it's the most expensive ever and therefore the best ever and therefore will make a morbillion dollars (and also says nothing so it offends no one and can be marketed to everyone) rather than making lots of mid-budget movies that might make many times what they cost or might barely break even or might become a timeless classic that makes a profit for decades. If their morbillion dollar movie flops, but the share price is higher than before it was made because investors expecting it to do well invested, the company's still considered to be better off, and they'll happily do it again.

permalink

fedilink

source

parent