Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

Technology@lemmy.world – 344 points – 12 months ago

Column: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley's magical thinking

Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking::Inspired by the success of Netflix, Hollywood studios pursued Silicon Valley-style hypergrowth with tactics borrowed from the likes of Uber and Lyft.

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I don't agree with this piece. Labor exploitation has been a thing for much longer than silicon valley, as well as wall street. Modern ceos are applying old strategies. They are managing to do it more effectively now than in the recent past because governments are weaker and international competition stronger

I don't think the article is trying to claim that labor exploitation is new.

This part directly admits that it is a very old phenomenon:

It’s been noted, and correctly so, that entertainment industry labor disputes often erupt when there’s a change in technology — from theaters screening projected films to the cathode ray tube of the home television, say, or the rise of YouTube and other online content in the 2000s — and that happens for a reason. Historically, executives and management use a disorienting new technology to try to justify lowering wages of their workers, and they have done so since the days of the Industrial Revolution.

As I understood it, the article just wants to explain why this is happening now, because historically it seems to happen in waves.

The reason I don't agree is that the article overlooks that old school execs have found in the silicon valley the gold rush.

A place where engineers are the miners that have allowed them to make tons of money easily, by simple, old school, well established, amoral business tactics. Their preaching poisoned the silicon valley. Mckinsey type of execs and exec consultants raveged the silicon valley's tech companies as soon as the big money started flowing in, burning everything in the meantime. For the movie industry, the newest wave of "technological exploitation" took longer because they are historically a very conservative, well established industry led by tech illiterates.

The next industry will be automotive. Which is one of the most corrupted and amoral industry out there, even without modern tech. Now that old school automotive execs are learning how to turn on a computer, the new wave of tech based exploitation will start there (and it is already starting)