A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world fne8w2ah @lemmy.world 8mo ago

WeWork founder remains a billionaire even with firm’s bankruptcy | The Straits Times

www.straitstimes.com WeWork founder remains a billionaire even with firm’s bankruptcy

WeWork never figured out how to make money. Mr Adam Neumann sure did. Read more at straitstimes.com.

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I said it once, I'll say it again:

Residentjal property shouldn't be allowed to be an investment. Or heavily taxed to make it unprofitable unless you live there yourself.

"Flow will operate multi-family residential properties that aim to foster a feeling of ownership and community"

How cynical...
- No single word in the English vocabulary grates against me more than when I hear owners of residential property refer to it as "units".
  
  It's so dehumanizing. Rather, it's monetizing humanity.
  
  Indeed. This euphemism triggers easily.
  
  You can't spell humanity without unit after all.
  
  Reminds me of "human resources". My experiences with HR have also been largely negative. They're there to protect and make sure the humans are a resource to the company, not for the humans and humanity.
- Selling the “feeling of ownership” to the have-nots. Wow.
  
  Aye. This one hits nicely. Even though it wasn't the topic at all.
- aim to foster a feeling of ownership and community
  
  Sounds like EA got into property management
  
  Every room a dlc. They'll never repair the broken shit. Prices go uo regularly. On your windows are ads. And they'll ring your doorbell every hour to ask money or cookies. Sounds about right 😁
- Residentjal property shouldn't be allowed to be an investment. Or heavily taxed to make it unprofitable unless you live there yourself.
  
  Why would anyone build new apartment buildings if that were the law? We desperately need to be building more housing, and denser housing.
  
  There also is a thing called public property. Some time ago our government build and owned buildings. Everyone had a cheap home. The moment you privatize a thing you become an investment.
  
  They'd build them so they can sell them. You can own apartments too.
- Just build more houses.
  
  We have like 10 empty houses for every person experiencing homelessness. How many more do we need to build?
- I agree with the spirit of your comment, and I would only add that the practical implementation may need to allow for some leniency.
  
  For instance, you shouldn't be forced to sell and buy elsewhere if your life circumstances change temporarily. The law in general could allow for renting somewhere and renting out elsewhere. But I would be onboard with the overall intent of such regulation.
  
  Yeah sure. My statement is an oversimplified summary. You're totally tight.
I worked in Tech Startups in London a few years ago, and what was overwhelmingly the main goal of Founders was to make a company that IPOed or was bought out by a larger company.

Not one's company to lead and guide to achieve some kind of vision (like Steve Jobs with Apple) and which one could pass one to one's children, but rather something one could quickly sell for tons of money.

And, guess what, something which is basically a scam whose numbers can be beautified and which only works during a period with very specific and historically unusual conditions, absolutelly achieves such a core objective as long as one's "exit strategy" (one of the main things Founders and Early Investors cared about) is executed before conditions change.

It's not by chance that the domain is riddled with all sorts of scammy business ideas, up to and including outright scams.

So this article is not at all surprising for me.
- don't forget the role masayoshi had in pissing money away in 30 minutes. charisma and Kool-aid runs (ran?) SV.
- I worked for a VC for several years, and this rings true so much. Even outside of exiting, there were so many fabrications in getting funding, even from investors that didn't know the difference between a "hit" and a "visitor".
  
  I've got many of my own opinions of the tech scene here, but one thing that was often said by outside investors was that in the UK, someone will make £1m and sell up, whereas in North America someone will make £1m and pour it into their next venture. It probably explains why the UK has always struggled in tech, despite having 4-5 elite level universities, and dozens of top universities used by people all around the world. There just seem to be so few real success stories here, and a lot of that is probably down to the political climate.
  
  It's a cultural problem in the UK at several levels.
  
  For example, a founder who has tried and failed in the UK is finished and will not be given more chances whilst from what've heard in the US it's actually treated as a positive because it means he or she will start his or her next venture with more experience.
  
  Other problems are in the broad access to opportunities: the UK is very classist - to the point that upper classes have theit own accent - and there is quite a well entrenched structure, involving even the mechanisms for access to the best universities (the pair being often named Oxbridge, for Oxford & Cambridge) that means that almost everybody from the upper classes has access to some opportunities and that specific network of interpersonal connections but only a small fraction of people from other social layers have it. That means that the pool of people who have the opportunity to gain the qualifications relevant to be a founder in Tech is limited mainly to those from a subset of society (about 10%) quite independently of merit AND on top of that not having the right accent and language (i.e. the "right" upbringing) results in those who aren't from those layers of society to be descriminated again.
  
  As for Tech specifically, in the UK an Engineering degree is considered lesser than, say, Law or Political Sciences (quite likely because of the whole mechanism that guarantees upper class people can get into the top universities independently of educational merit and capability, and one can't really talk one's way through a degree in Hard Sciences or Engineering as one can in Law) - to the point that for people there an "engineer" is a guy who drives trains or installs heating boilers - or people from Finance (a surprising meritocratic industry there for positions up to Managing Director).
  
  Unsurprisingly, during my time in there what I saw was that the techies were overwhelmingly foreigners, whilst the founders tended to upper-middle and upper class locals.
- I was a founder once and I had a very lofty vision for the future. I was very surprised when people started asking me for my exit strategy. What the hell, yo? I am trying to make the world a nicer place, not just fill my pockets.
  
  What happened in the end?
Didn't he separate from the company a long while ago? Whatever's happening in WeWork right now isn't his business anymore
- Oh. Are you not aware of the background of this whole thing? The company didn't fail after he left. The company was a scam right from the start and he was directly involved. He's just a grifter.
  
  https://jacobin.com/2019/11/wework-adam-neumann-con-artist-grifter-entrepreneur
  
  I am very aware, not saying he wasn't involved, just that he is no longer involved and hasn't been for awhile
- Yes.
He's not associated with the business anymore. Why would he be impacted by its bankruptcy? He was bought out years ago.
- But he retained ownership of the offices We work was renting
  
  Well that's just stupid on the people doing the buying out lol
The scam economy, brought to you by Late Stage Capitalism. Super cool and fun.
- *scam and enshittification economy
Shoutout to ColdFusion, who did a nice video on the topic 3 years ago - https://yt.drgnz.club/watch?v=QHQTzeve7OM

Also Adam Neumann's newest scam https://yt.drgnz.club/watch?v=bmQFc4kMOU8
I hate waking up every day and being told scams and crimes are the best route through life.
“CEOs get paid so much because they ASSUME ALL THE RISK”

(bs)

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