"...Or at least have a bit more financial security to show for it. My designs have generated roughly 2 billion dollars for the people lucky enough to be cashing in on it. Not bad surplus value for someone on an 88k salary."""
88k AUD is less than 60'000 USD, and as this art director worked one year on this, the raw ratio of wage earned to this is 0.00003, so 0.003 percent.
Sure there were other people involved, but even if this art director's year of repetitive strain injuries is only worth one percent of the value of Bluey, then still it managed to capture only 0.3 percent of the value. This 99.7% makes the 30% Apple-tax on developers look good. I think it shouldn't.
The lesson for me is: creative endeavours are meant to die in our society.
Would be cool if there was a middle ground between risking destitution by claiming a share of the income made and giving up your fair share of the billions made in return of a modest salary.
The middle ground is usually to buy shares in your employer. In this case it seems like it’s the BBC who have hit the jackpot, so I guess the real winner is… the British public?
There is! You can negotiate a lower salary and higher participation. Obviously they have to want you, but when a show like this is starting up and not at all sure to even make it one season, an art director who would work for 25% pay and 1% of future profits would be snapped up.
The way around Hollywood accounting is to negotiate points on gross revenue or royalties rather than profit. That’s SOP in TV/movies for people with decent representation and the leverage to ask for it. Points on profit are largely seen the same way tech people view startup options.
Perhaps even via basically free 0.03% expense ratio index fund that automatically gives the owner access to business success across the entire economy.
Bluey is also made by the government, so technically, there is no equity gains or profit to be had at that level, it’s just a negotiation of compensation.
This is not a forum that is capable of factoring in power dynamics in any economic discussion. The market is always perfect, everyone has equal opportunities to capitalize on their own labor as an entrepreneur, just negotiate with your employer, etc.
She's an artist, not some poor wage slave. The fact she gets paid a living wage at all for doodling in a notebook is thanks to the miracle of consumer capitalism.
Van Gogh couldn't trade his paintings for stale bread.
The content is never less valuable than the marketing. Marketing and distribution is essentially a gatekeeper that maximizes profit, people would watch bluey without it but capturing the revenues would be more difficult.
Exploitation? Thousands of people are getting paid $90k to paint pointless characters nobody will ever see. It's not exploitation because one of them succeeds.
It's a technical term. She produced immense value and she didn't receive it, someone else took it. That's exploitation in Marxism.
I also don't get where you get these idea that there's this huge glut of artists producing work that's unpopular and getting paid for it. If you're at the point you're getting paid 90k a year, you're working in studios that almost certainly turn a profit.
The entire reason someone takes the risk is for the chance to have a ‘positive’ expected value, which in startup land means the company gets really big, hires a lot of people, and makes a lot of money for the owners (founders & investors) by selling a product for more money than they pay the workers.
Startup investors often treat this like an odds game, expecting that while 9 out of 10 investments might fail, one of them will return better than 10x, which turns into a net profit on investments.
The “risk” might be relatively big for small investors, but it’s quite low for the bigger savvier institutional investors.
Startups are economically interesting, but they are not the majority of the economy. When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
> Startup investors often treat this like an odds game
Yeah, it's not free profit though. If you're not good at choosing investments you end up with 9 out of 10 failing, and 1 only making 2x. That's what I mean by there are no guarantees of it
It's very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair.. and miss the 9 other shots they took which lost money. Or hell the 90 other shots, and they're still in the hole overall
> When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
Yeah these are definitely a different ballgame. Not sure where I stand on it - I don't know enough about the economics of that
I agree, and it’s objectively true, that there are no guarantees on investment. I don’t think GP was making any arguments that implied otherwise.
> It’s very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair
“Unfair” is subjective and an insanely deep topic we can’t even begin broach here thoughtfully. It’s always true that a profitable company has incomes that exceed its costs, by definition. Since costs include employee pay, it’s always true in a profitable company that employees are collectively providing a greater value to the company than they are capturing for themselves. You’re still arguing from a failed startup perspective, and by and large, failing and failed startups are not running the economy, nor are even a significant portion. The majority of people in the economy are working for someone else’s profitable company. People who have money do take risks on startups for the chance make it big, but those people had money to begin with.
Yeah unfair was the wrong word. I mean just to focus on exploitation in the Marxist sense suddenlybananas was using it
The economics are the same for a startup and established company, no? I was just talking about that because that's what Bluey was. Walmart was also once a tiny business and the returns are still happening today. We're all free to own part of them through publicly traded stocks. Of course the returns are a lot lower now simply because there's less risk
If they're extracting so much extra from employees that they're overpriced in the market, that leaves room for a competitor to offer lower prices. "Your margin is my opportunity"
If they're getting outsized margins by paying tiny salaries, it opens up room for a competitor to get the best people to work for them by paying more
Worker co-ops are still an option under capitalism, also
It's not a perfect system but it seems to work fairly well?
> those people had money to begin with
Well.. are we not posting this on a VC firm's website? There are options to getting money if you're starting with none
I can very much get behind removing generational wealth. That benefits no-one
> The economics are the same for a startup and established company, no?
No, I don’t think so at all. A startup founder and a startup investor are starting from completely different places and have completely different risks from a minimum wage Walmart or McDonalds employee, and they usually occupy different social classes.
Workers in a co-op are part owner, so they become, in part, the capitalists. They might be fractional capitalists, but they are part worker and part owner. That’s fine, and it’s not what Marx was worried about. Marx was worried about the plight of the laborer who gets no share of the ownership at all. Startup founders are sometimes also owners, they are capitalists. Investors are more pure capitalists, they use their money to buy ownership of companies in hopes of making more money. Stock purchases are also a way to be a fractional owner in a way, that’s one way to look at it. Most minimum wage employees don’t have any stock, most of the lower class doesn’t have any stock.
Nobody said that owners don’t take risks in capitalism. They do take risks with their capital when they invest.
> Your margin is my opportunity
Tell that to the low-paid & minimum-wage workers across the country. Somehow competition has failed to result in the minimum wage going up on its own. Somehow competition hasn’t eliminated the working poor.
BTW most of the ultra rich capitalists are wildly in favor of generational wealth, since it benefits them and their families. Historically it was true that the majority of ultra-wealthy people had inherited their wealth, despite all the rags-to-riches and startup stories we’re told.
It’s not weird at all; in other circumstances we call it a bonus.
You get baseline security by trading away the unlimited upside, but you are still incentivised to produce your best work by knowing if you help create a huge success you’ll get additional compensation for it.
This is an insane point of view. I genuinely don't understand how you can hold it. You don't think the person who actually made the product is the one who made the value? Do you believe in magic? Are capitalists just bestowing magic juju that creates value and any actual labour and hard work is irrelevant?
The product is a cartoon (and associated services, merchandise), not the idea. There were countless people involved in creating the set of products, even if just one person came up with the concept.
Sorry, I think we're talking cross-purposes here. I agree that the workers are the ones who should receive the profits. The art director is one such worker (out of many).
Not at all familiar with animation or the broader industry but could they have at least offered the potential for royalties or some sort of sales based bonuses?
I believe most of the value of Bluey is captured by the BBC. The whole thing is a real shame for Australia. We’ve had a couple of the best children’s entertainment ever: Wiggles and Bluey. Don’t know why they didn’t negotiate a bigger piece of the pie with Bluey.
Why didn't ABC fund the whole shebang? I suspect the BBC has a much bigger warchest to deploy - recalling the ludicrous amounts invested into Top Gear or the numerous David Attenborough nature shows.
Even the BBC war chest appears to be dwindling. Or at least it’s become harder to produce things on their own. The latest seasons of Dr Who are produced in collaboration with Disney.
But yes, they would have had bigger reach, and we might not have gotten this far without the BBC. I just want the ABC to have got a more significant chunk.
A certain 19th century German thinker wrote abundantly on that issue :-) It's not just creative endeavours.
The fact that access to capital is not evenly distributed means that those who don't have it have to surrender their surplus value to those that have it.
It's the story of the United Fruit Company (UFC) all over again.
The oligarchs have put in place roadblocks to free distribution and free enterprise with many historical parallels.
UFC deliberately acquired lands containing key water sources, which gave them control over entire agricultural regions.
Major streaming platforms acquire exclusive distribution rights to popular IP franchises, controlling access to valuable content "watersheds" that audiences already want.
In countries like Guatemala and Honduras, UFC company built extensive irrigation systems that they controlled exclusively, making surrounding farms dependent on their cooperation.
Dominant platforms control recommendation algorithms and user interfaces that determine content discovery, making independent creators dependent on these "irrigation systems" to reach audiences.
UFC secured favorable water rights legislation in many countries, often through political influence, giving them priority access during droughts or shortages.
Large media conglomerates lobby for favorable copyright and licensing frameworks, often extending protection periods or creating barriers that disproportionately benefit established players.
In some cases, UFC would redirect water to their plantations, leaving independent farmers with insufficient irrigation during critical growing periods.
Platforms can suddenly change recommendation algorithms or promotional strategies, redirecting audience "flow" to preferred content and leaving independent creators with insufficient visibility.
UFC built and controlled private railroad networks (like the Northern Railway in Costa Rica) that were often the only viable way to transport bananas to ports before they spoiled.
Major platforms control the technical infrastructure for content delivery, forcing creators to use their systems under their terms to reach audiences before content becomes irrelevant.
UFC owned or controlled most major port facilities needed for export, creating a bottleneck they controlled entirely.
Key content aggregation points (app stores, streaming platforms) operate as essential "ports" that creators must pass through, with these gatekeepers taking significant revenue percentages.
In more remote regions, UFC maintained the only usable roads, effectively controlling who could move products to market.
Social media platforms maintain the only viable pathways to audience building in many genres, controlling which creators gain visibility through opaque algorithmic decisions.
UFC's fleet of refrigerated ships controlled the actual export logistics, completing their vertical integration.
The largest media companies control integrated marketing, distribution, and monetization systems that independent creators cannot replicate, completing their vertical integration advantage.
This infrastructure control meant that even farmers who maintained their land independence faced a stark choice: sell to UFC at their offered prices or watch crops rot without access to transportation networks. Many small farmers eventually sold their land simply because independent operation became economically impossible under these conditions.
Just as farmers with technically "independent" land still couldn't effectively operate without UFC's infrastructure, many content creators today maintain technical ownership of their intellectual property but face nearly impossible odds without access to the distribution infrastructure controlled by major platforms and media companies.
If you’ve seen the show, you’d know that this artists’ work was deeply instrumental to the creation of the wealth. It would be one thing if the author was an associate grabbing coffees and scheduling meetings.
In this case, not getting a royalty for their contribution is shameful.
Are you sure you read the parent post? It was not about wealth being immanent at all as I read it, it was about capital ownership granting full access to work-created value.
> It was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation, with BBC Studios holding global distribution and merchandising rights.
The government part is a good point, this is not the best example of a capitalist endeavor.
> What capital is there to own?
The rights you mentioned is part of the ‘capital’ - these days capital and ‘means of production’ certainly involve intellectual property. I think it always did - capital was always referring to ownership - but the mix is starting to lean heavily on intangibles now, with software running so much of the world. The ABC & BBC capital used to include tons of high power broadcasting equipment, but maybe that mostly going or gone now?
I didn’t mean capital in the accounting sense, I meant receiving capital as remuneration as opposed to a salary. The more accurate word would have been equity, but I was using the term polotics used:
>it was about capital ownership granting full access to work-created value.
What do you mean? @plotics wasn’t talking about remuneration for products or services, nor equity. “Capital ownership” in the sentence you quoted is referring to the company, the ol’ ownership of the means of production. “Granting full access to work-created value” means the owners (investors, CEO, etc.) would split profits among workers rather than keep the profits for themselves.
> Granting full access to work-created value” means the owners (investors, CEO, etc.) would split profits among workers rather than keep the profits for themselves.
This is remuneration, the reward in exchange for your effort/wares/risk.
In this case, the artist would have had to ask taxpayers (or the taxpayers’ representatives) to sell them a piece of the taxpayer’s equity. Or some type of royalty/revenue sharing agreement.
Obviously, that was not going to happen for a small time artist (that kind of stuff is reserved for well connected people when it comes to government assets).
But the second best option the world has come up with is public equity markets, where the common people can invest and gain access to equity, which is also very liquid.
You asked what the capital is, and the government assets reserved for well connected people is the “capital” in this case.
You can call capital equity or remuneration, but that seems slightly weird even though there’s overlap of concepts. Either way, I don’t think that’s what the phrase @plotics used was referring to. The “capital” in that case was referring to the money, goods, and other means of production used to finance the project before any remuneration occurs. Capital is the leverage by which the well connected people assert the rights to the future profits. Workers not having equity is indeed what not having access to the full value means, which keeps workers from building capital.
I think we’re probably in agreement. And even though there’s an analogy to capital, Bluey wasn’t a capitalist operation so definitely not clear Marxist ideas apply here.
After the number of times I’ve seen people invoke the HN guidelines to trample good spirited discussions there should be a guideline against quoting the guidelines.
How do you think wealth works? Regardless of your political stance or economic beliefs, that doesn’t seem like a very informed or thoughtful summary of Marx, who I assume is who the parent comment was referring to, and was one of the more influential economists of all time. Have you read Marx? He might have thought and written about wealth more than both you and me. FWIW he didn’t argue that wealth somehow exists, he argued that for business owners, wealth stems from the discrepancy between what laborers are paid and what their employers collect. He went much further than that, but that much is technically true, right?
What a fantastic write-up. As a Brisbane native and software developer I often feel similarly to the author about Brisbane's software dev scene. Brisbane so often feels like a backwater, with the big dogs down in Melbourne and Sydney, and the 'peak of industry' in the US.
I'd love to move to Seattle and work for Amazon or something to get 'relevant industry experience' but what I'd really love to do is make a go of it here because - like the author - I believe Brisbane is secretly still the best city in the world ;-)
I lived and worked as a dev in Seattle for 8 years before moving to Sydney. I want nothing more than for Australia to have a thriving tech scene but I haven’t seen much progress in that area since I moved here 5 years ago. I still love it and have no plans to go back. I just wish there was more opportunity here and not so much constant pressure to move back to the US for increased salary and challenge.
Funny. I lived in Seattle for 5 years before I moved to Sydney, where I lived for 5 years. That was a different era though, tech wasn't the industry it is now and the internet still felt new. I moved down in 2003 and my American accent helped me land a job I wasn't qualified for (having self taught myself some php and java in Seattle, mostly working as a bartender though). In 2005 I started a small software shop with some friends. Back then (2003) the Ruby user's group was too small to get a reservation at a pub so we'd have to partner up with the Smalltalk guys. Rails came out a year or so later and that changed.
I got back into web stuff when I moved to the states and have been up and down the stack many times since, but I have a ton of nostalgia for the stuff we did back then. Web 2 was an annoying new buzzword and we were still mostly writing software for kiosks, device drivers in C, bridging that with Lua, and using Flash for the interface b/c everybody else in the space was using shitty C++ Motif interfaces. . . . memory lane.
Imagine that Newtown and the Inner West are a lot different than when I lived there, but I do miss that time.
I just don’t see _as much_ self-directed ambition or obsession? Going to a meetup in Seattle or SF in the early 2010s there were serious obsessives. Masters of domains like Go or JavaScript and someone from Sequoia at the Startup Weekend. Always flocks of folks looking to start their next business. That same bug just never hit here?
This I find weird, surely there are people who can sense opportunities unlockable by tech and Australia is not at all easier or any less expensive than the U.S., I still can’t quite put my finger on it. For me there’s still a magical cultural element to a place like SF, and to an extent – Seattle, when it comes to creating new opportunities.
Two factors I think: (1) obsessives have a higher likelihood to follow their obsession into immigration-a factor which works to the advantage of certain parts of the US, to the detriment of most of the rest of the world; (2) Australian investors tend to have a more risk-averse attitude, they will offer less money and demand a bigger stake for it, many of them will prefer later stage startups to the truly early stage ones
Lots of factors involved, some more regulatory others more cultural. One is that Australia’s property market has been so hot for so long it sucks up a lot of investment; the US market, while recently being quite hot as well, has historically been much more mixed (the US had a big price drop around the time of the GFC, Australia saw some declines but they were a lot smaller). Another is the US legal system tends to be more borrower-friendly in bankruptcy, foreclosures, etc, making people more willing to take out loans to fund their business ideas
Australia in some ways is the opposite of the US. Too much regulation and not enough effort to help people start businesses. It really needs to change and they’re missing a big opportunity to make the start up scene better. Just as long as we don’t do it while throwing out sensible regulations.
I live down the street from Amazon's relatively nice suburban office (you couldn't pay me to step foot in Seattle).
Let me save you the trip, you don't want to work for Amazon at the money they pay. They would have to 1.5x it or maybe even double it to make it worth the suffering of working there.
Life is short-- work somewhere else, or failing that, on your own thing :)
As someone who’s from Brisbane but spent the last 7 years in London you’re 100% correct. Brisbane is the best city in the world. I’m excited to eventually move back.
"I believe Brisbane is secretly still the best city in the world"
Personally the 3 times I visited Brisbane, were all in all quite neutral for me, not great, not bad. But friends had way worse experiences and when I found a iconic backpackers book, "No shitting on the toilet", I had a good laugh about those passages:
"A friend of mine would never leave a place until he’d had a good time there. Another friend would not leave a destination until he had learnt something encouraging about the people and their culture. Both are currently stuck in Brisbane."
So .. I would have been stuck there as well.
So please no offense about your home town.
I love Queensland. And Bluey. And would give your hometown a chance again.
But I do know people who never ever want to go there again. (But it also has been some years.)
Oh I can 100% see where all of that comes from too.
I think a lot of Brisbanes secret beauty is well hidden from people just visiting. The temperate rainforests, glasshouse mountains, some of the best beaches in the world all within an hours drive. The strange birds, the general attitude of the public. I think it's all quite nice. My only personal gripe is that I think it's far too hot in summer!
I'm also extremely biased though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Brisbane does have an awful lot of mediocrity too, but I'm still proud of it, and keen to show it off in 2032 with the Olympics!
As someone who struggles to make anything that looks good, I am fascinated by designers ability to take a brief and bring it to life using their own unique artisic voice.
For me, at least, this shows the same emphasis on Story (talked about in part 4) - the animation is decent if not great, but the character does exactly what you expect him to at the end, and that's Story.
I now avoid jobs that pressure everyone into thinking a good show or project can only be created at the expense of everyone’s well being. Even if the IP they’re offering you a chance to work on is exciting (and unfortunately I’ve seen way too many times now how this can be used as a bargaining chip to mistreat people). It doesn’t have to be that way. You can make something great without killing your crew.
I came across a game studio a few years ago here in NZ that does it right. I worked in a hot desk place that housed their studio in a space - they were never working past 5.30, had amazing staff reviews (they did them in a space where I could overhear them), have a good IP, good wage packages, excellent internal mentoring, a good gender split, recruit diverse staff.
I'm pretty sure there's a few other studios here too which are good. I'm just sharing this 'cos, well... it's nice to hear the positives.
> You can make something great without killing your crew.
You could get many counter examples of projects that did very well and where everyone was in crunch mode for the last 6 months. There is no rule out there and one team being successful once doing things one way is not a proof of anything
Don’t think Catriona was commenting about whether or not it’s possible to make something great period. More that greatness doesn’t excuse not treating people like human beings
As a brisbane resident, seeing aspects of my city skyline lovingly created for kids TV is fantastic. I like to imagine small people the world over seeing the story bridge or "the zip water heater" state government building or the brown snake and to them it's just Shelbyville without a monorail but to anyone from Brisvegas..
>there’s a huge amount of calculated work and effort that can put yourself in a position for luck to occur.
>I truly realised that if you create what YOU want to create, the jobs and opportunities that will creatively satisfy you the most will come out of exuding that energy into the world.
This is all about the commercial application of art, but I find it can work for science as well.
Your perspective of “popular” is incredibly far off. Popular among people in your circle of socioeconomics and interests is not that same as popular among the general population.
quite the opposite. look at the almost exactly linear growth of the 2 biggest sites, fb and youtube. there is nothing special about the early 2010s, no acceleration in growth.
sites that myspace and orkut, which were already moribund by 2010, were popular under any normal definition eg alexa ranking. FB had 500mm users and a hollywood movie about it come out by 2010, a year or 2 later it had a billion users. She doesn't know what she's talking about. Sure it got steadily more popular, so what she means is "It was the early 2010s, and social media reached the point that it was replacing all social interactions..."
Wow the money shot of this I think is the quote:
"...Or at least have a bit more financial security to show for it. My designs have generated roughly 2 billion dollars for the people lucky enough to be cashing in on it. Not bad surplus value for someone on an 88k salary."""
88k AUD is less than 60'000 USD, and as this art director worked one year on this, the raw ratio of wage earned to this is 0.00003, so 0.003 percent. Sure there were other people involved, but even if this art director's year of repetitive strain injuries is only worth one percent of the value of Bluey, then still it managed to capture only 0.3 percent of the value. This 99.7% makes the 30% Apple-tax on developers look good. I think it shouldn't.
The lesson for me is: creative endeavours are meant to die in our society.
But if Bluey (like most shows people will work on) hadn’t been a huge success, he would still have kept his 88k
That’s the inherent trade off in a salaried position - you are trading potential wealth for guaranteed security
Would be cool if there was a middle ground between risking destitution by claiming a share of the income made and giving up your fair share of the billions made in return of a modest salary.
There's the option of being a freelancer and establishing a co-op with your freelancer friends.
Easier said than done, but some people I knew from college actually managed to pull this off.
The middle ground is usually to buy shares in your employer. In this case it seems like it’s the BBC who have hit the jackpot, so I guess the real winner is… the British public?
There is! You can negotiate a lower salary and higher participation. Obviously they have to want you, but when a show like this is starting up and not at all sure to even make it one season, an art director who would work for 25% pay and 1% of future profits would be snapped up.
Pessimistically, I'd then imagine they get burnt by Hollywood accounting and end up fully empty handed
The way around Hollywood accounting is to negotiate points on gross revenue or royalties rather than profit. That’s SOP in TV/movies for people with decent representation and the leverage to ask for it. Points on profit are largely seen the same way tech people view startup options.
Such as buying shares of Disney stock?
Perhaps even via basically free 0.03% expense ratio index fund that automatically gives the owner access to business success across the entire economy.
Bluey is also made by the government, so technically, there is no equity gains or profit to be had at that level, it’s just a negotiation of compensation.
It's not like she was offered equity and chose a meagre salary. Don't paint exploitation as a trade-off.
This is not a forum that is capable of factoring in power dynamics in any economic discussion. The market is always perfect, everyone has equal opportunities to capitalize on their own labor as an entrepreneur, just negotiate with your employer, etc.
She's an artist, not some poor wage slave. The fact she gets paid a living wage at all for doodling in a notebook is thanks to the miracle of consumer capitalism.
Van Gogh couldn't trade his paintings for stale bread.
"doodling in a notebook". Are you aware of how big of a thing bluey is?
Yes, and are you aware the role that the massive distribution and marketing machine played in making it that big?
The content is never less valuable than the marketing. Marketing and distribution is essentially a gatekeeper that maximizes profit, people would watch bluey without it but capturing the revenues would be more difficult.
Spoken like someone who has never marketed anything.
No, the marketing is everything. The product is just a floor... it just has to be "good enough".
See: pop music.
Exploitation? Thousands of people are getting paid $90k to paint pointless characters nobody will ever see. It's not exploitation because one of them succeeds.
It's a technical term. She produced immense value and she didn't receive it, someone else took it. That's exploitation in Marxism.
I also don't get where you get these idea that there's this huge glut of artists producing work that's unpopular and getting paid for it. If you're at the point you're getting paid 90k a year, you're working in studios that almost certainly turn a profit.
The vast majority of startups lose money for their founders. So if that happens the founders should have been paid? The workers were the exploiters?
I've hired people first hand for projects that ended up being a flop. They made out much better than I did
Someone has to take the risk. It's not guaranteed it'll be a risk with a positive expected value either
The entire reason someone takes the risk is for the chance to have a ‘positive’ expected value, which in startup land means the company gets really big, hires a lot of people, and makes a lot of money for the owners (founders & investors) by selling a product for more money than they pay the workers.
Startup investors often treat this like an odds game, expecting that while 9 out of 10 investments might fail, one of them will return better than 10x, which turns into a net profit on investments.
The “risk” might be relatively big for small investors, but it’s quite low for the bigger savvier institutional investors.
Startups are economically interesting, but they are not the majority of the economy. When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
> Startup investors often treat this like an odds game
Yeah, it's not free profit though. If you're not good at choosing investments you end up with 9 out of 10 failing, and 1 only making 2x. That's what I mean by there are no guarantees of it
It's very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair.. and miss the 9 other shots they took which lost money. Or hell the 90 other shots, and they're still in the hole overall
> When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
Yeah these are definitely a different ballgame. Not sure where I stand on it - I don't know enough about the economics of that
I agree, and it’s objectively true, that there are no guarantees on investment. I don’t think GP was making any arguments that implied otherwise.
> It’s very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair
“Unfair” is subjective and an insanely deep topic we can’t even begin broach here thoughtfully. It’s always true that a profitable company has incomes that exceed its costs, by definition. Since costs include employee pay, it’s always true in a profitable company that employees are collectively providing a greater value to the company than they are capturing for themselves. You’re still arguing from a failed startup perspective, and by and large, failing and failed startups are not running the economy, nor are even a significant portion. The majority of people in the economy are working for someone else’s profitable company. People who have money do take risks on startups for the chance make it big, but those people had money to begin with.
Yeah unfair was the wrong word. I mean just to focus on exploitation in the Marxist sense suddenlybananas was using it
The economics are the same for a startup and established company, no? I was just talking about that because that's what Bluey was. Walmart was also once a tiny business and the returns are still happening today. We're all free to own part of them through publicly traded stocks. Of course the returns are a lot lower now simply because there's less risk
If they're extracting so much extra from employees that they're overpriced in the market, that leaves room for a competitor to offer lower prices. "Your margin is my opportunity"
If they're getting outsized margins by paying tiny salaries, it opens up room for a competitor to get the best people to work for them by paying more
Worker co-ops are still an option under capitalism, also
It's not a perfect system but it seems to work fairly well?
> those people had money to begin with
Well.. are we not posting this on a VC firm's website? There are options to getting money if you're starting with none
I can very much get behind removing generational wealth. That benefits no-one
> The economics are the same for a startup and established company, no?
No, I don’t think so at all. A startup founder and a startup investor are starting from completely different places and have completely different risks from a minimum wage Walmart or McDonalds employee, and they usually occupy different social classes.
Workers in a co-op are part owner, so they become, in part, the capitalists. They might be fractional capitalists, but they are part worker and part owner. That’s fine, and it’s not what Marx was worried about. Marx was worried about the plight of the laborer who gets no share of the ownership at all. Startup founders are sometimes also owners, they are capitalists. Investors are more pure capitalists, they use their money to buy ownership of companies in hopes of making more money. Stock purchases are also a way to be a fractional owner in a way, that’s one way to look at it. Most minimum wage employees don’t have any stock, most of the lower class doesn’t have any stock.
Nobody said that owners don’t take risks in capitalism. They do take risks with their capital when they invest.
> Your margin is my opportunity
Tell that to the low-paid & minimum-wage workers across the country. Somehow competition has failed to result in the minimum wage going up on its own. Somehow competition hasn’t eliminated the working poor.
BTW most of the ultra rich capitalists are wildly in favor of generational wealth, since it benefits them and their families. Historically it was true that the majority of ultra-wealthy people had inherited their wealth, despite all the rags-to-riches and startup stories we’re told.
You know that if an employee works at a start up that goes under, they also face risk right? Like you're aware that people get laid off and fired?
The only risk for a salaried position is the “deal” not continuing - if the startup tanks you don’t have to give back your salaries
No I had no idea. Thanks
What studios consistently turn a profit?
They have years where they make hundreds of millions, years when they lose hundreds of millions.
It is weird to want the security of a paycheck, participation in unlikely huge successes, and no exposure to much more likely flops.
It’s not weird at all; in other circumstances we call it a bonus.
You get baseline security by trading away the unlimited upside, but you are still incentivised to produce your best work by knowing if you help create a huge success you’ll get additional compensation for it.
You don't get security. You can be fired easily. It's workers who face the consequences of the risks taken on by capitalists.
Workers absolutely do, but their upsides and downsides are limited. No worker is going to lose $1B on a bad bet.
How would her work operate under Marxism? Would she get to keep the immense value? That's not my understanding of Marxism but maybe I'm mistaken.
I'd recommend reading about what surplus labour is so that you could better understand the relevant arguments.
She didn't produce value. Someone else created value out of what she created.
You ironically and accidentally stumbled onto the very reason Marxism has always failed so miserably.
This is an insane point of view. I genuinely don't understand how you can hold it. You don't think the person who actually made the product is the one who made the value? Do you believe in magic? Are capitalists just bestowing magic juju that creates value and any actual labour and hard work is irrelevant?
The product is a cartoon (and associated services, merchandise), not the idea. There were countless people involved in creating the set of products, even if just one person came up with the concept.
Sorry, I think we're talking cross-purposes here. I agree that the workers are the ones who should receive the profits. The art director is one such worker (out of many).
Not at all familiar with animation or the broader industry but could they have at least offered the potential for royalties or some sort of sales based bonuses?
I believe most of the value of Bluey is captured by the BBC. The whole thing is a real shame for Australia. We’ve had a couple of the best children’s entertainment ever: Wiggles and Bluey. Don’t know why they didn’t negotiate a bigger piece of the pie with Bluey.
Why didn't ABC fund the whole shebang? I suspect the BBC has a much bigger warchest to deploy - recalling the ludicrous amounts invested into Top Gear or the numerous David Attenborough nature shows.
Even the BBC war chest appears to be dwindling. Or at least it’s become harder to produce things on their own. The latest seasons of Dr Who are produced in collaboration with Disney.
But yes, they would have had bigger reach, and we might not have gotten this far without the BBC. I just want the ABC to have got a more significant chunk.
For star voice actors or an animator who has already made their reputation on other shows maybe?
The interesting question would be “if at the time they had offered him 40k and points, would he have chosen that?”
That's a great point. I'm glad to know that this is the only possible option and that the world can't be any better than it is.
A certain 19th century German thinker wrote abundantly on that issue :-) It's not just creative endeavours.
The fact that access to capital is not evenly distributed means that those who don't have it have to surrender their surplus value to those that have it.
How does that remotely apply here? If she has the value, why didn't she distribute it herself?
It's the story of the United Fruit Company (UFC) all over again.
The oligarchs have put in place roadblocks to free distribution and free enterprise with many historical parallels.
UFC deliberately acquired lands containing key water sources, which gave them control over entire agricultural regions.
Major streaming platforms acquire exclusive distribution rights to popular IP franchises, controlling access to valuable content "watersheds" that audiences already want.
In countries like Guatemala and Honduras, UFC company built extensive irrigation systems that they controlled exclusively, making surrounding farms dependent on their cooperation.
Dominant platforms control recommendation algorithms and user interfaces that determine content discovery, making independent creators dependent on these "irrigation systems" to reach audiences.
UFC secured favorable water rights legislation in many countries, often through political influence, giving them priority access during droughts or shortages.
Large media conglomerates lobby for favorable copyright and licensing frameworks, often extending protection periods or creating barriers that disproportionately benefit established players.
In some cases, UFC would redirect water to their plantations, leaving independent farmers with insufficient irrigation during critical growing periods.
Platforms can suddenly change recommendation algorithms or promotional strategies, redirecting audience "flow" to preferred content and leaving independent creators with insufficient visibility.
UFC built and controlled private railroad networks (like the Northern Railway in Costa Rica) that were often the only viable way to transport bananas to ports before they spoiled.
Major platforms control the technical infrastructure for content delivery, forcing creators to use their systems under their terms to reach audiences before content becomes irrelevant.
UFC owned or controlled most major port facilities needed for export, creating a bottleneck they controlled entirely.
Key content aggregation points (app stores, streaming platforms) operate as essential "ports" that creators must pass through, with these gatekeepers taking significant revenue percentages.
In more remote regions, UFC maintained the only usable roads, effectively controlling who could move products to market.
Social media platforms maintain the only viable pathways to audience building in many genres, controlling which creators gain visibility through opaque algorithmic decisions.
UFC's fleet of refrigerated ships controlled the actual export logistics, completing their vertical integration.
The largest media companies control integrated marketing, distribution, and monetization systems that independent creators cannot replicate, completing their vertical integration advantage.
This infrastructure control meant that even farmers who maintained their land independence faced a stark choice: sell to UFC at their offered prices or watch crops rot without access to transportation networks. Many small farmers eventually sold their land simply because independent operation became economically impossible under these conditions.
Just as farmers with technically "independent" land still couldn't effectively operate without UFC's infrastructure, many content creators today maintain technical ownership of their intellectual property but face nearly impossible odds without access to the distribution infrastructure controlled by major platforms and media companies.
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If you’ve seen the show, you’d know that this artists’ work was deeply instrumental to the creation of the wealth. It would be one thing if the author was an associate grabbing coffees and scheduling meetings.
In this case, not getting a royalty for their contribution is shameful.
I agree it is shameful. This is however not the issue that is being discussed here.
Fyi, George Lucas made sure everyone involved in Star Wars got taken care of.
Are you sure you read the parent post? It was not about wealth being immanent at all as I read it, it was about capital ownership granting full access to work-created value.
Doesn’t the British government and/or Australian government own Bluey?
What capital is there to own? Maybe Ludo Studios negotiated a piece of the pie for themselves, but I doubt it is much in the grand scheme of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluey_(TV_series)
> It was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation, with BBC Studios holding global distribution and merchandising rights.
The government part is a good point, this is not the best example of a capitalist endeavor.
> What capital is there to own?
The rights you mentioned is part of the ‘capital’ - these days capital and ‘means of production’ certainly involve intellectual property. I think it always did - capital was always referring to ownership - but the mix is starting to lean heavily on intangibles now, with software running so much of the world. The ABC & BBC capital used to include tons of high power broadcasting equipment, but maybe that mostly going or gone now?
I didn’t mean capital in the accounting sense, I meant receiving capital as remuneration as opposed to a salary. The more accurate word would have been equity, but I was using the term polotics used:
>it was about capital ownership granting full access to work-created value.
What do you mean? @plotics wasn’t talking about remuneration for products or services, nor equity. “Capital ownership” in the sentence you quoted is referring to the company, the ol’ ownership of the means of production. “Granting full access to work-created value” means the owners (investors, CEO, etc.) would split profits among workers rather than keep the profits for themselves.
That is called equity (at least in the USA).
> Granting full access to work-created value” means the owners (investors, CEO, etc.) would split profits among workers rather than keep the profits for themselves.
This is remuneration, the reward in exchange for your effort/wares/risk.
In this case, the artist would have had to ask taxpayers (or the taxpayers’ representatives) to sell them a piece of the taxpayer’s equity. Or some type of royalty/revenue sharing agreement.
Obviously, that was not going to happen for a small time artist (that kind of stuff is reserved for well connected people when it comes to government assets).
But the second best option the world has come up with is public equity markets, where the common people can invest and gain access to equity, which is also very liquid.
You asked what the capital is, and the government assets reserved for well connected people is the “capital” in this case.
You can call capital equity or remuneration, but that seems slightly weird even though there’s overlap of concepts. Either way, I don’t think that’s what the phrase @plotics used was referring to. The “capital” in that case was referring to the money, goods, and other means of production used to finance the project before any remuneration occurs. Capital is the leverage by which the well connected people assert the rights to the future profits. Workers not having equity is indeed what not having access to the full value means, which keeps workers from building capital.
I think we’re probably in agreement. And even though there’s an analogy to capital, Bluey wasn’t a capitalist operation so definitely not clear Marxist ideas apply here.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
After the number of times I’ve seen people invoke the HN guidelines to trample good spirited discussions there should be a guideline against quoting the guidelines.
If anyone's entitled to quote the guidelines, it's the mod you're replying to.
Announcement: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43558671>
Or maybe the people who actually build that wealth deserve to keep it.
How do you think wealth works? Regardless of your political stance or economic beliefs, that doesn’t seem like a very informed or thoughtful summary of Marx, who I assume is who the parent comment was referring to, and was one of the more influential economists of all time. Have you read Marx? He might have thought and written about wealth more than both you and me. FWIW he didn’t argue that wealth somehow exists, he argued that for business owners, wealth stems from the discrepancy between what laborers are paid and what their employers collect. He went much further than that, but that much is technically true, right?
Was this quote removed from the post? I'm not seeing it.
it's in the 4-parts series, the whole is well worth a read
What a fantastic write-up. As a Brisbane native and software developer I often feel similarly to the author about Brisbane's software dev scene. Brisbane so often feels like a backwater, with the big dogs down in Melbourne and Sydney, and the 'peak of industry' in the US.
I'd love to move to Seattle and work for Amazon or something to get 'relevant industry experience' but what I'd really love to do is make a go of it here because - like the author - I believe Brisbane is secretly still the best city in the world ;-)
I lived and worked as a dev in Seattle for 8 years before moving to Sydney. I want nothing more than for Australia to have a thriving tech scene but I haven’t seen much progress in that area since I moved here 5 years ago. I still love it and have no plans to go back. I just wish there was more opportunity here and not so much constant pressure to move back to the US for increased salary and challenge.
Funny. I lived in Seattle for 5 years before I moved to Sydney, where I lived for 5 years. That was a different era though, tech wasn't the industry it is now and the internet still felt new. I moved down in 2003 and my American accent helped me land a job I wasn't qualified for (having self taught myself some php and java in Seattle, mostly working as a bartender though). In 2005 I started a small software shop with some friends. Back then (2003) the Ruby user's group was too small to get a reservation at a pub so we'd have to partner up with the Smalltalk guys. Rails came out a year or so later and that changed.
I got back into web stuff when I moved to the states and have been up and down the stack many times since, but I have a ton of nostalgia for the stuff we did back then. Web 2 was an annoying new buzzword and we were still mostly writing software for kiosks, device drivers in C, bridging that with Lua, and using Flash for the interface b/c everybody else in the space was using shitty C++ Motif interfaces. . . . memory lane.
Imagine that Newtown and the Inner West are a lot different than when I lived there, but I do miss that time.
Similar story but Melbourne.
I just don’t see _as much_ self-directed ambition or obsession? Going to a meetup in Seattle or SF in the early 2010s there were serious obsessives. Masters of domains like Go or JavaScript and someone from Sequoia at the Startup Weekend. Always flocks of folks looking to start their next business. That same bug just never hit here?
This I find weird, surely there are people who can sense opportunities unlockable by tech and Australia is not at all easier or any less expensive than the U.S., I still can’t quite put my finger on it. For me there’s still a magical cultural element to a place like SF, and to an extent – Seattle, when it comes to creating new opportunities.
Two factors I think: (1) obsessives have a higher likelihood to follow their obsession into immigration-a factor which works to the advantage of certain parts of the US, to the detriment of most of the rest of the world; (2) Australian investors tend to have a more risk-averse attitude, they will offer less money and demand a bigger stake for it, many of them will prefer later stage startups to the truly early stage ones
Lots of factors involved, some more regulatory others more cultural. One is that Australia’s property market has been so hot for so long it sucks up a lot of investment; the US market, while recently being quite hot as well, has historically been much more mixed (the US had a big price drop around the time of the GFC, Australia saw some declines but they were a lot smaller). Another is the US legal system tends to be more borrower-friendly in bankruptcy, foreclosures, etc, making people more willing to take out loans to fund their business ideas
Australia in some ways is the opposite of the US. Too much regulation and not enough effort to help people start businesses. It really needs to change and they’re missing a big opportunity to make the start up scene better. Just as long as we don’t do it while throwing out sensible regulations.
Hey there, I’ve been in Sydney 5 years same as you (after a 7 year stint in SF) and feel exactly the same way.
If you’re around in the next week or two it’d be great to grab coffee and talk about it! Coffee being the great Aussie connector and all.
You can find my email on my profile.
I live down the street from Amazon's relatively nice suburban office (you couldn't pay me to step foot in Seattle).
Let me save you the trip, you don't want to work for Amazon at the money they pay. They would have to 1.5x it or maybe even double it to make it worth the suffering of working there.
Life is short-- work somewhere else, or failing that, on your own thing :)
As someone who’s from Brisbane but spent the last 7 years in London you’re 100% correct. Brisbane is the best city in the world. I’m excited to eventually move back.
I live in Canada and Bluey is the reason I really want to visit Brisbane.
Queensland has bluey, margot robbie, the irwins. What has melbourne or sydney done lately honestly?
"I believe Brisbane is secretly still the best city in the world"
Personally the 3 times I visited Brisbane, were all in all quite neutral for me, not great, not bad. But friends had way worse experiences and when I found a iconic backpackers book, "No shitting on the toilet", I had a good laugh about those passages:
"A friend of mine would never leave a place until he’d had a good time there. Another friend would not leave a destination until he had learnt something encouraging about the people and their culture. Both are currently stuck in Brisbane."
So .. I would have been stuck there as well. So please no offense about your home town. I love Queensland. And Bluey. And would give your hometown a chance again. But I do know people who never ever want to go there again. (But it also has been some years.)
Oh I can 100% see where all of that comes from too.
I think a lot of Brisbanes secret beauty is well hidden from people just visiting. The temperate rainforests, glasshouse mountains, some of the best beaches in the world all within an hours drive. The strange birds, the general attitude of the public. I think it's all quite nice. My only personal gripe is that I think it's far too hot in summer!
I'm also extremely biased though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Brisbane does have an awful lot of mediocrity too, but I'm still proud of it, and keen to show it off in 2032 with the Olympics!
"but I'm still proud of it, and keen to show it off in 2032 with the Olympics!"
Maybe see you there :)
Recent and related (ok, maybe a bit much, but the new article looks good too!)
‘Bluey’s World’: How a Cute Aussie Puppy Became a Juggernaut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410874 - March 2025 (313 comments)
A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43339206 - March 2025 (215 comments)
Also:
Bluey, and the hierarchy of distractions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510482 - Sept 2024 (14 comments)
How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38875399 - Jan 2024 (430 comments)
As someone who struggles to make anything that looks good, I am fascinated by designers ability to take a brief and bring it to life using their own unique artisic voice.
The second part to this is a fine example - https://goodsniff.substack.com/p/creating-bluey-tales-from-t...
I've always wondered how they managed to make the show look and feel Brisbane, and this delivers.
The art director's graduate animation project (as mentioned in the article) from 10 years ago:
Pond Scum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2VibU-NeEI
For me, at least, this shows the same emphasis on Story (talked about in part 4) - the animation is decent if not great, but the character does exactly what you expect him to at the end, and that's Story.
I now avoid jobs that pressure everyone into thinking a good show or project can only be created at the expense of everyone’s well being. Even if the IP they’re offering you a chance to work on is exciting (and unfortunately I’ve seen way too many times now how this can be used as a bargaining chip to mistreat people). It doesn’t have to be that way. You can make something great without killing your crew.
hear hear.
I came across a game studio a few years ago here in NZ that does it right. I worked in a hot desk place that housed their studio in a space - they were never working past 5.30, had amazing staff reviews (they did them in a space where I could overhear them), have a good IP, good wage packages, excellent internal mentoring, a good gender split, recruit diverse staff.
I'm pretty sure there's a few other studios here too which are good. I'm just sharing this 'cos, well... it's nice to hear the positives.
If you're willing to share their name, I'd love to take a look at their games and support a positive place.
Runaway Play
I also hear good things about Dinosaur Polo Club
Funny! I have played both the games Dinosaur Polo Club has released.
I'll take a gander at Runaway Play later this weekend. Thank you for the pointer!
Was this in the article somewhere? I searched and didn’t see it (and I’m most interested in why she left, and haven’t found anything on it.)
Weird, I think the link changed. I was quoting from part 3, I believe, and it’s been changed to part 1.
Edit: yeah part 3 https://goodsniff.substack.com/p/creating-bluey-tales-from-t...
The article is a four part series.
> You can make something great without killing your crew.
You could get many counter examples of projects that did very well and where everyone was in crunch mode for the last 6 months. There is no rule out there and one team being successful once doing things one way is not a proof of anything
Don’t think Catriona was commenting about whether or not it’s possible to make something great period. More that greatness doesn’t excuse not treating people like human beings
Semi Related 20khtz episodes that are delightful:
The Voices of Bluey w/ Uncle Stripe https://www.20k.org/episodes/thevoicesofbluey
The Organic Sound of Bluey w/ Sound Designer Dan Brumm https://www.20k.org/episodes/thesoundofbluey
As a brisbane resident, seeing aspects of my city skyline lovingly created for kids TV is fantastic. I like to imagine small people the world over seeing the story bridge or "the zip water heater" state government building or the brown snake and to them it's just Shelbyville without a monorail but to anyone from Brisvegas..
Amazing story, and what a narrative voice! The whole thing pulls you in and pushes you off, it builds you up and breaks you down. I loved this
>there’s a huge amount of calculated work and effort that can put yourself in a position for luck to occur.
>I truly realised that if you create what YOU want to create, the jobs and opportunities that will creatively satisfy you the most will come out of exuding that energy into the world.
This is all about the commercial application of art, but I find it can work for science as well.
Somehow this is written with an Australian accent.
Nitpick:
> * it was the beginnings of social media in the early 2010s*
- IRC + NNTP newsgroups were already popular by 1989.
- Myspace was quite popular by 2004.
- Facebook was popular by... 2006 I guess?
and that's just a few platforms I can mention.
Your perspective of “popular” is incredibly far off. Popular among people in your circle of socioeconomics and interests is not that same as popular among the general population.
Your position is indeed supported by the data presented here: https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media
quite the opposite. look at the almost exactly linear growth of the 2 biggest sites, fb and youtube. there is nothing special about the early 2010s, no acceleration in growth.
sites that myspace and orkut, which were already moribund by 2010, were popular under any normal definition eg alexa ranking. FB had 500mm users and a hollywood movie about it come out by 2010, a year or 2 later it had a billion users. She doesn't know what she's talking about. Sure it got steadily more popular, so what she means is "It was the early 2010s, and social media reached the point that it was replacing all social interactions..."