It's very long, and seems to be stuffed with a copy of wikipedia, I ain't reading all that. What's that clause? Like Lucas had with Star Wars, they kept the monetization rights for some (at the time) dumb looking stuff, and they struck gold with it?
Looks to be (1269 words into the article according to wc):
> [Parker and Stone]’s lawyer, Kevin Morris, insisted that any South Park revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel would go into the pot for calculating the men’s share of back-end profits.
Though that might be a precursor to enabling this (400 words later):
> With negotiating leverage, Parker and Stone agreed to a 4-year $75 million deal and, separately, a 50/50 cut of advertising revenue for any digital property…in perpetuity.
They would get profit sharing for any income that didn’t come from airing on Comedy Central. This was in 1997 before online streaming was really a thing
it is disappointing and almost surprising that this is not the default. not doing this is how creators are get taken advantage of.
more futuristic, i think any profit that is not reinvested into the business, that is, any profit that the owners decide to keep for themselves should be shared in some form with all employees, like a tax.
I'm tied and bored, and read the whole thing. The sponsor is an AI service provider - did I get that right? So, is the article AI generated? It certainly has all the hall marks.
“A cut of revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel” went from “meaningless” to “huge significance” to “boner-inducing” arguably the greatest clause ever in TV contract history…at a minimum, it’s one of the most improbable all things considered.
South park is one of my favourite shows. I think that matt and trey aren't the usual billionaires but it would still be cool if they actually donate some of that money since they feel like the guys who don't need a billion dollars and feel humble imo.
One of the downsides of people knowing you have money is everyone on earth will judge you for what you do with it. I say let them enjoy it. If you must pressure someone to donate, pressure one of the "usual billionaires" who's funding their torment nexus with it.
There is no human alive who can ethically enjoy a billion dollars. Give them each a hundred million and say, you've hit your cap, everything else goes towards the public good.
A hundred million dollars buys you a life of comfort and luxury. Anyone with a billion has too much influence, imo.
The South Park owners don't have a billion dollars in liquid wealth each. They have ownership of south park, which is worth billions.
If you make them cut their assets down to $100 million each then they don't own South Park. And someone else gets to tell them what to write. Or they retire.
The capital gains tax could be 90%+ on any gains over $10m (and 99% over $100m), so they can still sell out, but it would cap liquid wealth at $100m dollars. However, they would still have a billion dollars of ownership, and the societal power that comes with being a billionaire, as they can leverage those assets to great effect without selling them. (As Elon Musk didn't actually pay $44b for Twitter.)
So I wonder if the government could levy a stock tax, in which every public stock was diluted by 1% per year, with non-voting stock going into a sovereign wealth fund. This would make for a gradual transition of companies from capitalist-owned to public-owned.
Yeah, the things is, ownership isn't a natural concept. It's just a social construct. Without that, you own what's in your stomach, what you can hold in your hands and what you can sit on, until the moment you walk away.
I believe that the best amount of processes for revoking ownership not zero. Revoking not as in "we take n money from you because...", but as in "we stop respecting any of your accumulated ownership rights, but you are free to accumulate new ones". A reset like the one called bankruptcy, just for positives.
Currently, in countries that do have the death sentence, ownership is even more untouchable than life. A (hypothetical..) rich person on death row you could still write their will and it would be respected. People will argue "don't punish the children!", but where's the difference really, between "don't gamble it all away, for the sake of your children" and "don't end up on death row, for the sake of your children"? Apparently, ownership is more sacred than life itself and I find that quite hard to stomach.
Note that I'm not advocating for a world where it's common for rich persons to get stripped whenever the masses get a little envious, or whenever redistribution seems convenient. Just for ac world where there is some last resort process defined and accepted that's less bloody than an all-out revolution. Ancient Rome had certain forms of exilation that went with complete property forfeitment as punishment (in reality: as the price for losing a power struggle I guess)
hardly, but there's a cut off point somewhere where additional earnings do so very little but would be life changing if fragmented into the hands of many.
Sure you can. I have no problem with billionaires as long as they are enjoying their money without hurting people in the process. Having the money doesn’t mean you actively abuse your influence.
But once you have that kind of fuck off money and insist on abusing your power, or kowtowing to other people to get more power, and other BS, then you are an evil asshole. There’s a good reason why Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk etc rub people the wrong way. It’s not their wealth.
As much I loved this show growing up, an interesting thing about South Park is that they essentially defined the alt right (in the sense of a disenfranchised young man, often lashing out at marginalized groups and political correctness etc). Am I wrong or did there use to be an article called “South Park conservative” that basically described what eventually became “alt-right”?
A comedy show is just a comedy show. We're all responsible for who we become. If some purposefully terrible animated pixels inspire me to be a disgusting person, that's on me. If I play a shooting game and end up hurting someone, that's on me too (or my parents, if I'm young!). And if I spend too much time on HN, thinking AI is garbage, and then lose my job because I fell behind, that's also on me! (As well as starting to write my own comedy here on HN, knowing exactly what I'm getting into!)
> If something in the water makes a million people into disgusting mass shooters, we should look into it
You're using a completely made-up extreme example to make your point, but we're surrounded by real-world examples of free speech being heavily impacted. We don't need to invent scenarios.
You aren’t wrong that there is/was a group of people that consider themselves South Park Conservative but the creators reject the notion that South Park is specifically liberal or conservative, because their intent is to parody any people they can. The creators dislike political correctness but they also dislike the forceful nature of conservatives applying their beliefs on other people. Read the South Park wikipedia page, it explains it pretty well.
Insinuating that South Park conservatives evolved into the alt-right is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Trey and Matt didn’t invent disliking political correctness.
I concur with this take. Like many facets of culture, some people/groups will project what they want onto a given cultural entity (South Park, in this case), but that doesn’t mean one should assume they speak for it.
For example, the “men’s rights activists” group appropriated the idea of “the red pill” from The Matrix. They certainly differ wildly in worldview from the Wachowski siblings.
I consider myself liberal on most issues - strong social safety, universal healthcare , pro vax, strong separation between church and state, and hate the demonization of other.
I as a Black guy was also put off by the forced indoctrination that BigTech did post 2020 (when I worked there) with all of the “ally ship”, “DEI” crap I had to endure. I just wanted to do my job, get my money, get my RSUs and bounce after 4 years.
I too believe in universal healthcare and welfare social nets to catch people who fall, but think we've focussed too much on "feelings" over facts or people wanting to score "social justice" points that don't do anything to fix the ills of society.
Here's another example of political correctness going too far, this time related to tech.
If the legal language mandates an equal split between men and women, where could that possibly leave non-binary people, other than without representation, right?
I’m curious especially as a black guy, why this wouldn’t land for you. Imagine a legal body obligated to be composed of equal representation, racially, that explicitly requires white, brown, red, and yellow members - but doesn’t mention black.
That hardly sounds fair, does it? So why deride efforts to institutionalize inclusivity, integration, and equal representation as ‘crazy?’
It was a “policy” decision that had nothing to do with the law.
I would think it was just as crazy if the committee had language around they must have an equal number of Black and White members and if one person was a biracial …
If they had a committee focused on women’s health issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, should they include transgender women?
What happens in the case where they want equal representation if my mom had a Black father and White mother and my dad had an Hispanic father and Japanese mother?
But from a real politick angle, this was dumb and cringy knowing the mood of the majority of Americans. The job is to win elections. Bill Clinton invented the “Sister Souljah” moment and Obama followed suit by distancing himself from the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson wing of the party.
A lot of moderate Democrats and Republicans who have no issue respecting anyone for whatever life they decide to live, find that the left has gone too far.
As much as I distrust the police and the entire justice system for instance, I thought the phrase “defund the police” went too far and I understood the point they were making underneath.
It’s the same with enforced (he/him) labels on everyone and having to be really sure you aren’t accused of being some type of “ist” because you only speak in “heteronormative terms”.
If (hypothetical) you want to call out your preferred pronouns, go for it and I’ll respect them.
“This has gone too far” is the war cry of people enforcing that they refuse to educate themselves on the real meaning of the phrases and come to the table for discussion. It is a cop out and you will look back and think “why was I so unreasonable they weren’t asking for much”.
It is a sign that you aren’t really resistant to the ideas but looking for a way to resist because it’s change.
> if they had a committee focused on women’s health issues surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, should they include transgender women?
This is the entire problem with the “this has gone too far” crowd. You’re making up hypotheticals and claiming them as active truths. In your situation it’s pretty clear humans are capable of forming committee's relevant to the topic. You don’t have to over apply policy to make it fair. Furthermore, most of these types of committees are probably and have been historically staffed by white men. Why do they get a double standard?
Was anyone actually negatively affected by DEI policies? No. You just had a bunch of handwringing from “this is too far people” and executive leadership teams. No one has actually any proof of these so called negatives though. So much so they have black people saying “let the white man handle it again”.
The “alt-right” have always been part of America or have you never heard of Jim Crow and segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”?
> They had an episode mocking Al Gore about climate change and then did an episode years later where they basically admitted they were wrong.
Eh, I wouldn't say that. Nor would I say they were really taking a stand on climate change in the first place. They just thought it would be funny to have Al Gore tilting at windmills (and indeed it was), and then thought it would be funny to have him proven right (and indeed it was). One of the things I appreciate about Trey and Matt is that they do what they think is funny first and foremost, rather than try to make the show a mouthpiece for their beliefs as many creators do.
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