▪️”People need to understand” typically means “I’m talking out of my ass about something I don’t understand” on social media. Instead of actually looking at Netflix’s financial statements this meme creates their own version of reality, which isn’t even close.
▪️The meme takes 292M subscribers X $20/month to get their phantom revenue, but Netflix has only 238M subscribers and most pay far less than $20/month. In Europe they avg $10.87 per subscriber, in Latin America $8.58 and just $7.66 in Asia. But you’d have to actually read their financials to know that.
https://ir.netflix.net/financials/quarterly-earnings/default.aspx
▪️Netflix had a gross revenue of $8.2B in the 2nd quarter, on track for ~$32B this year, or $2.7B/month. But they have expenses, they can’t spend all of their revenue on movie budgets. There’s so much this meme doesn’t factor in, like the cost of licensing all the movies and shows they keep on the platform, that Netflix has $14B in long-term debt and $27B in liabilities, etc.
▪️Currently, Netflix is doing well and making solid profits (which is its purpose). But it’s in an extremely competitive space, with Disney, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, NBC, etc. all vying for consumer’s limited money for streaming entertainment. Other big players like Apple are also in the mix.
▪️The notion that Netflix, or the others, don’t care if they have a 2 year hiatus of show production because “they’re billionaires” is absurd. Nearly their entire revenue stream relies on subscriptions, which would dry up quickly with no new content.
▪️They have no hold on the market and are probably aware that what Netflix did to Blockbuster could happen to them at any moment if they aren’t smart and innovative. Part of being smart in business means not thinking like this meme does.
▪️These pages have a childlike view of business, where everything is simple, money flows by the billions forever, so the only explanation for stalled contract negotiations is greedy CEOs. They know nothing of the business itself or finance, they just create a fantasy out of thin air to whirl themselves into outrage.
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
