Though most normal people don’t know it, there is currently a business deal underway that will perhaps end up being the largest merger in world history, with huge ramifications for America’s embrace of corporatism, as well as the collapsing Western world’s addiction to entertainment.
I’m talking about Disney’s $66 billion acquisition of Fox.
As I’ve said before, despite my personal feelings about the false Societal Programming it has permanently introduced into the human condition, Disney is one of the most well-run and effective companies in the history of business. It started about 90 years ago in a tiny studio and today runs a vast, world-wide business empire that rivals anything we’ve ever seen.
In addition to its own numerous and profitable properties (movies, characters, licensing, theme parks, and on and on), Disney also owns Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, ABC, ESPN, 30% of Hulu, 50% of A&E (which owns shows like Breaking Bad)… and now soon, 20th Century Fox.
Fox is already a vast empire in and of itself. It owns, to name just a few properties, The Simpsons, the Avatar franchise, the Ice Age franchise, Empire, Family Guy, the Alien franchise, X-Files, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother, the FX channel, National Geographic Channel, most regional sports channels and shows (which is the most profitable part of the deal), Star India Network, 39% of England’s Sky network, and another 30% of Hulu (bringing Disney to 60% ownership of Hulu). Fox also owns the gigantic Fox lot which is an iconic, multi-billion dollar facility. In addition, Disney would receive back all of the Marvel properties that it now doesn’t have, including the X-Men, Deadpool, and the Fantastic Four.
And on, and on, and on.
And soon, Disney will own it all.
The only thing Disney isn’t getting is the Fox News channels. This is because Disney doesn’t care about distribution; it just wants content. Why?
To compete with Netflix. Despite the fact that it loses money every year, Netflix is a seemingly endless supply of billions of dollars of new content. They plan to spend a staggering $8 billion on original content in 2018. Amazing.
Well, Disney doesn’t like that one bit. They want their own streaming service. And with the Fox properties plus their own, they’ll have it. Likely they’ll re-brand Hulu as some kind of gigantic Disney streaming service, where you could subscribe to it for $9 a month and get instant access to every Marvel movie, Star Wars movie, Alien movie, and numerous other franchises or TV shows, on top of original content, which, knowing Disney, would probably be very good (the new dreadful Star Wars movies excepted of course). It would be a serious rival to the seemingly indestructible Netflix.
As usual with corporatist moves like this, this acquisition will result in massive layoffs at Fox. Estimates run anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 people will lose their jobs. I personally think those are conservative estimates and the final number will be well north of 10,000.
Disney already has 21.8% of market share for movies, which is the highest of any other company in the world. Fox has 12%, and this acquisition moves Disney to 33.8% of all movies, which is almost double the next highest entertainment company (Warner Brothers which is at 18%).
This also means that the deal will give Disney 40% of all box office revenue in the world.
Simply staggering.
This is what happens under corporatism. Over the years, both Fox and Disney have received countless billions of dollars of taxpayer money from the government, either as subsidies or special treatment[*][*][*]. This allowed Disney to become a massive behemoth that would never have been possible under real free market capitalism. Then these public/private monsters merge and become titanic de facto monopolies with way too much market share and power.
Left-wingers believe that monopolies are because of too much capitalism, but they are demonstrably wrong, since a pure free market entity with zero government backing becoming a monopoly has literally never occurred in all of human history. All of the big monopolies of the past (the railroads, AT&T, etc) were corporatist beasts backed by massive big government funding and collusion, not free market creations.
And so here we are again, one gigantic corporatist entity about to become almost half of all visual entertainment in the world, as eager customers soak up the entertainment just like during the Fall of Rome.
Where will this all end?
Probably nowhere good.
Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.
Leave your comment below, but be sure to follow the Five Simple Rules.
PK
Posted at 05:19 am, 18th March 2018Reminds me of a political cartoon I saw years ago when Disney bought ABC. It was a drawing of a Mickey Mouse watch but instead of “tick, tick, tick”, the caption said, “take, take, take”. 🙂
Makeshift
Posted at 08:58 am, 18th March 2018True patricians have already left Hollywood behind and are now watching hentai and anime exclusively.
axld
Posted at 09:00 am, 18th March 2018I look at it like this:
Netflix can/will become monopoly. Only Disney can prevent it. It is better to have Netflix/Disney duopoly than just Netflix.
Tk
Posted at 10:13 am, 18th March 2018Amazon is also moving to become a third player in the streaming space- they’re putting billions into their own programming as well, and gobbling up other large profitable companies. Something like 60% of all households in the US are amazon prime members, so depending on how their original content goes, they could definitely be a third mega competitor, and I’ve also heard rumors about Apple following suit to become a fourth…
joelsuf
Posted at 10:43 am, 18th March 2018My answer to people who think that capitalism is bad: When in the last century have we had real capitalism. Do you think we’d have stuff like the Military Industrial Complex and government bailouts if we were a REAL Capitalist economy? Monopolies don’t become monopolies because of a free market. They become monopolies because of a free market that is manipulated by a ruling class. Even Karl Marx, as utopian as his thinking was, knew this.
Their answer: Silence.
This kind of thing is why I can’t talk about economics anymore. The right thinks that we’re good the way we are. Cool, have fun getting laid off: You’ll hypocritically be on unemployment for two years. And the left thinks that as long as they have a ruling class that fits *their* philosophies, everything will be cool. Yeah, raise that minimum wage: Have fun working 10 hours a week after.
I’m done. Its over.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:05 am, 18th March 2018Sorry about all the typos; the wrong draft of this post was posted; all fixed.
Yes, all accurate. That actually might be a good thing. Three big players is much better than one.
Exactly. We haven’t. But left-wingers will continue to knowingly call corporatism “capitalism,” and get away with it, because they don’t like real capitalism either.
It’s already been over for about 17 years. We just haven’t seen the results of it yet.
CTV
Posted at 05:25 pm, 18th March 2018It’s so funny because there is a Facebook video on NowThis or BuzzFeed or one of those stupid super Left news sites of the Disney Heiress trying to appeal to the Progressives by saying she supports higher taxes for the rich and wants the Estate Tax (The Death Tax) to stay in place so she pays her “Fair Share”.
Meanwhile! Disney buys Fox!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA
More evidence that the Rich who want higher taxes just want to make it harder for Upper Middle Class from coming up higher and Smaller Corporations from being real competition years down the line.
david
Posted at 08:35 pm, 18th March 2018“a massive behemoth that would never have been possible under real free market capitalism.”
Finally somebody gets it. Are there more of us? Seriously, this message needs to get out there.
“a pure free market entity with zero government backing becoming a monopoly has literally never occurred in all of human history. ”
I always say, as soon as a private entity accepts that sweet tax payer money, it’s no longer a private entity, but a social program.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 08:55 pm, 18th March 2018Yes. They’re called libertarians. They’re only about 2% of the population and they will never have any power.
mago
Posted at 11:34 am, 19th March 2018Hardcore socialist have the same argument “No, real socialism has never existed”.
Im not going to defend socialism or libertarianism, I need to study more history to take a side, but I’m just pointing that similarity
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:43 am, 19th March 2018Correct, neither real socialism or nor real libertarianism has ever existed. So here’s what you need to do… Examine the counties that got somewhat close to the socialist ideal (communist Russia, communist China, communist Cuba, and so on) and look at what happened. Then examine countries that got somewhat close to the libertarian ideal (USA, Hong Kong, and so on), and look at what happened. Then compare the two. I think you’ll clearly see which one is less bad.
As the saying goes, you’ve never seen people fleeing their countries, scaling walls and mountains and crossing rivers, to desperately get away from a free market capitalist country.
epi
Posted at 01:08 pm, 19th March 2018To me pop culture is worthless. It just teaches you to bury your head in the sand and masturbate.
The New Yorker
Posted at 03:12 pm, 19th March 2018Hey Caleb,
What happened in 1913 that caused the US to no longer be a Libertarian-ish nation? The establishment of federal taxation? The creation of the Fed?
And what about Hong Kong in 1990?
Would you count Switzerland and Singapore as Libertarian-ish nations in the past, present or both?
Throughfare
Posted at 03:43 pm, 19th March 2018LOL, quite literally. Season 4, Episode 11 of Seinfeld was watershed moment in American TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGhg-htVnJ0
Investor
Posted at 03:00 am, 20th March 2018Well how do you define real? Thats part of the problem. For socialism the closest thing was Husite movement in medieval Bohemia. This was the first protestant movement against the Catholic Church ever and it was kind of paramilitary organisation because they had to defend themselves against the armies sent by the Pope. When someone made something they put it in one place and if someone needed it they would take it. It worked because people didn’t take more then they needed, perhaps because of the small scale and perhaps because of the impending threat they were facing and their common cause. That would of course never work on a large scale especially without a common threat. People will always take more than they need eventually and thats why every socialism always fails. In the Soviet times they used to say everyone is equal but some are more equal.
For libertarianism what about ancient Greece city states? At least if you were a citizen, the foreigners probably had no rights and they did have slaves at that time.
joelsuf
Posted at 12:11 pm, 21st March 20181) The creation of the Fed.
2) The Gold Standard being swapped out for fiat currency. This was in its infancy, but would be finalized right before the 20s I believe. If the US was still on the Gold Standard, the may have not been a Great Depression.
3) Musings of the Military Industrial Complex because of the US’s involvement in World War I (a war that the US should have NEVER gotten involved in)
The New Deal and the Military Industrial Complex itself, both of which were created because of the US’s involvement in World War II (ANOTHER war that the US should have never gotten involved in) was the deathblow. As well as the US not being on the gold standard anymore.
All three of those (The New Deal, The Military Industrial Complex, and Fiat Currencies) were the result of massive regulations by federal governments, who spent WAY more money than necessary when enforcing said regulations.
If my history is inaccurate, feel free to call me out on it.
To which Sanders nuthuggers will argue: That wasn’t REAL socialism.
Which is why I only have six words for anyone who specifically wants socialism: “Its your funeral” and “don’t come running.”
Eric C Smith
Posted at 08:18 am, 22nd March 2018Thats a lot of power.