Netflix Now Streaming Social Justice

Netflix has announced that they will be offering unlimited paid leave for up to one year for both mothers and fathers to care for a newborn or newly adopted child. That's terrific. Any company should be free to offer whatever compensation and benefits they wish.

Netflix is not a private company, however; they are publicly held. Their shares are owned by pension funds and other investors, who may or may not agree that this is the best way to retain employees.

Let's take at face value the statement made by Tawni Cranz, Netflix's Chief Talent Officer, who says that "Experience shows people perform better at work when they’re not worrying about home." What about people who are caregivers to elderly parents? Or a cat with separation anxiety? Once one class of employee receives an unearned benefit, the class discriminated against starts agitating for the same benefit.

And let's start the countdown clock to Democratic politicians advocating for a similar paid benefit for every federal worker, then, for every private sector employee. The Netflix example will be used as an anecdotal argument in favor.

Netflix is a tech company, but it's one that enjoys government largesse. They benefit from the cronyism rampant in Washington, D.C. The recent FCC ruling in favor of "Net Neutrality" rules benefits Netflix, who lobbied for Title II regulation.

I do consume Netflix, right now watching Portlandia. But I also use Amazon Prime, and for $9.99 a year, get superior content to Netflix, which is $7.99 per month. It seems as though it would be easy for other competitors to enter Netflix's space. They could offer a little more for existing content and build out server farms in China or Vietnam. Netflix exists in the cloud, and the cloud can originate anywhere.

Netflix has some original content, but the prison dyke melodrama is already played out.

Right now, Netflix is riding high in the saddle. Today's stock price of around $123 per share puts the value of the company at more than $52 billion. Someone who purchased just seven months ago has paper profits of nearly 200%. The trailing P/E is 277. Shorting a stock is a very risky proposition, but the chart is looking like a blow-off top.

What happens if and when Netflix starts posting losses? They have already saddled themselves with very expensive employees, so they would have to fire them. They could have all the unpaid family leave in the world, then.

Which sets up the next stage of employee benefit. There would be employees experiencing low morale, and despondency about losing cherished co-workers. Start the countdown clock to the first company that offers a health insurance policy that covers assisted suicide. Also available as a severance package.