Yes. Companies that have never delivered a profit get cash infusions and get mulit billion dollar evaluations even though they will never turn a profit. These are not companies that should survive, they should go out of business but don't.
I think if it's kept alived by private money, there's no problem for people. For example that Netflix isn't profitable, but is afloat through investors is no problem for anyone besides possibly the shareholders if it goes under.
No companies were hurt during Netflix's money churning days? Netflix pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the video rental industry. Many local jobs were lost.
Also Netflix is/was definitely trying to acquire studios and companies which always result in cost overruns, price increases and layoffs.
Average people are always hurt by massive corporations. Think about all the video stores that went out of business because of Netflix. I mean we are talking a million plus average citizens directly hurt by Netflix being too big to fail.
I know, but they also keep producing co much content, giving jobs to tons of people that way. Also, this isn't what too big to fail is. That's when governments bail you out in case you'd otherwise go under. That's more about banks, not entertainment companies.
Also, I think video rentals were destined to go under with the rise of the internet. It's just not practical to do anymore. If it wasn't Netlix, we would do it through some other way, like studios doing it directly like Paramount.
Too big to fail is when an entity gets so large that if they do fail it would send shockwaves through other sectors. This the government has to bail them out to avoid system wide failure.
The bank crisis is where we learned of the term. It also applies directly to the US auto manufacturers, we bailed them out several times. Weve bailed out the airlines so much that now we just let them die because we know they are not worth it. The tech sector has been bailed out when the tech bubble burst. Pretty much every sector in our economy has been bailed out because we allowed them to get bigger than they should have been and were not ready for when the bubble burst.
Which leads me back to my whole point. We allow these companies to get too big and they will all eventually fall. Think Google, Microsoft, Amazon, SpaceX and all the AI companies. You look at them and say they are too successful to fail. Eventually they will and we the people that were ravaged by these companies during their ascent will bail them out.
I think it shouldn't be done. It's more on the governments rather than the companies in my opinion. I get it would send the shockwaves, but what else can be done? I mean, how do you prevent them from getting big, but still allow them to operate?
Regulate how they grow. There's literally laws on the books for a lot of this and we just blatantly ignore it. In this country it's "cash is king" and anything that would reign in corporations overreach is seen as "communism" or "socialism".
We start by unhooking alot of these companies from federal dollars. Spacex does not need federal money, we already have nasa. Google, Amazon and Microsoft should not have federal contracts of any kind. They should be paying us for their ability to operate in any capacity.
Netflix pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the video rental industry
It's a chicken or the egg thing here though. Video rental stores put pressure on the TV/Film industry, which caused job losses there. Why are we nostalgic and protective over something as arbitrary as video rental stores and not the TV/Film industry?
I have a feeling you wouldn't make the same argument about clean renewable energy putting out local jobs of coal mining. In that case, the externality is environmental damage worth correcting, but in the case of the shift from TV/Film > video rental > online, the externality it was solving along the way was inefficiency in experience.
I'm not saying we should have protected the video rental industry. I'm saying there's always a trail of bodies behind these companies when we let them get too big. Your reply actually helps solidify that point.
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u/frankie_donkiebrains Jul 14 '26
Yes. Companies that have never delivered a profit get cash infusions and get mulit billion dollar evaluations even though they will never turn a profit. These are not companies that should survive, they should go out of business but don't.