| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago |
| if US government says who is allowed to buy and buyers collude (by pooling financial and political capital together) they can easily not fight a bidding war and lowball instead |
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| ▲ | swatcoder 2 months ago | parent | next [-] |
| Can you give an example of how the most eligible buyers might collude in a way that benefits them all equally, so that this would happen? For me, it's very hard to conceive of any concrete way that would work. It's a brand, some partnerships, and a network of users that would all go to whatever buyer, and would give that buyer a huge benefit over their existing domestic competitors. So under what circumstances would those domestic competitors allow that instead of aggresively trying to secure it for themselves? I'm open to believing you, I just don't see what you have in mind. |
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| ▲ | Larrikin 2 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Why do they need to benefit all equally? Campaign with the president, offer large amounts of money to the presidents campaign, donate huge sums to a small inauguration party, and then just be picked to get it at a deep discount. The entire point of bribes is that corruption let's you get away with things at a lesser cost. You just screw over everyone else except for the bribe receiver. | |
| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | only very few rich people can mobilize financial and political capital to pull off tiktok purchase. Larry Ellison (since he is CIA/MIC friendly and tiktok is already running on Oracle cloud) Zuck has too much conflict to acquire tiktok, but other oligarchs like Musk/bezos/gates can pull it off, given their recent meetings with Trump | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 months ago | parent [-] | | > only very few rich people can mobilize financial and political capital to pull off tiktok purchase Why do you assume only a natural person can buy TikTok? Why do you assume you need political capital? The law doesn’t provide that much executive deference in enforcement. | | |
| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago | parent [-] | | Elon musk is an example of acquisition of global social network. Political capital is needed because the tiktok question is politicized heavily (national security as a reason). Plus FTC will review the acquisition process as well. Do you have a counter example? | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 months ago | parent [-] | | > FTC will review the acquisition process as well Why? > Political capital is needed because the tiktok question is politicized heavily (national security as a reason) This is entirely meaningless. You don’t need political capital to maintain the status quo. > Do you have a counter example? To your hypothetical? My example is the law. FACA is tightly defined. Bytedance needs to divest to a non-FAC to return to the status quo. Trump could do something else to fuck with them. But that’s true of anyone anywhere. | | |
| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago | parent [-] | | Hart-Scott-Rodino Improvements Act requires FTC to approve all large M&A deals + DoJ needs to do antitrust review https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 months ago | parent [-] | | HSR is incredibly routine and politically insulated. It’s closer to a filing than actual review. | | |
| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago | parent [-] | | except when the government decides to intervene and reject the transaction. See, this seems like routine, but ultimately it gives the government an option to cancel transaction they dont like and they can always cite some bogus reason like "national security" and use racist pretext like ethnicity of the CEO or whatever | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 months ago | parent [-] | | > it gives the government an option to cancel transaction they dont like Delay. It’s not a deferential review. |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > if US government says who is allowed to buy It doesn’t. The courts do. TikTok could be sold to a Hungarian businessman. As long as it can’t be proved they aren’t controlled by China, they should be allowed to reënter app stores. |
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| ▲ | zanellato19 2 months ago | parent [-] | | Are the courts not US government? Do you think there isn't any collusion between Supreme Court and the other branches of government? | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 months ago | parent [-] | | > Are the courts not US government? Generally speaking, we tend to refer to governments in countries with independent judiciaries as being separate from their courts. The same way we refer to the government in parliamentary democracies separately from their parliaments. (Or governments separately from a country’s people, even though one is a subset of the other.) > Do you think there isn't any collusion between Supreme Court and the other branches of government? Not super relevant here. This SCOTUS barely upheld the ban with Bytedance as the owner. | | |
| ▲ | zanellato19 a month ago | parent [-] | | > Not super relevant here. This SCOTUS barely upheld the ban with Bytedance as the owner. Given that the Court has been lobbied by billionaires, I find really hard to believe they wouldn't help an US company to buy it instead of a Hungarian or any other one. |
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| ▲ | xnx 2 months ago | parent | prev [-] |
| How would that collusion work? |
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| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago | parent [-] | | syndication. Pool political and financial capital together to win the bidding from smaller less connected buyers, and share the final ownership | | |
| ▲ | xnx 2 months ago | parent [-] | | That seems like it would work, but how would they portion out the final ownership? Maybe the person who bid the most could get the most shares? | | |
| ▲ | slt2021 2 months ago | parent [-] | | Rich people can always find a common ground and negotiate deals among themselves, its what they do every day. As a rich person I’d rather get 30% of tiktok with 99% certainty by committing 30% of capital needed, rather than 100% of tiktok with 30% certainty and committing 100% of capital needed. |
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