the entire "third wave" of "unicorn startups" are counterfeits and it will (once again) all end in tears and recrimination...
WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
291–300 of 440 posts
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why can't they be held responsible for the foolishness of their actions? Because it's politically difficult. Sometimes, infeasible. The public often pays for defrauded grandmas' mistakes. There are also positive externalities to stable business environments. Diligence costs money. Putting some of that cost on the issuer, once, is more efficient than each investor incurring it. Consistent rules around fraud and disc…
Erm... okay, but grandma couldn't have invested in WeWork unless she was an accredited investor, and if she's an accredited investor, I'm not so sure we need to be feeling a lot of sympathy for her greed.
> grandma couldn't have invested in WeWork unless she was an accredited investor
Which is a protection around American private capital markets.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is an "acceptable" return? No one has a right to achieve any particular return.
Treasuries and money markets basically return zero after inflation. So, at least more than zero.
I never understood how anything can return more than zero after inflation "in the long run". If it did, then over time people with that asset would have all the wealth. But if they did, then they would buy things with it, raising prices of everything else.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#294I like the way this Matt Stoller writes words. RSS feed subscribed.
Where can I find his RSS feed? I’d be v grateful for a link
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At least Uber and Lyft provide something new (calling taxis from phones) It's less than that—they provide the ability to call taxis from an app . You've been able to call taxis from phones for significantly longer, you just had to dial a number. I know this isn't a common way to call taxis everywhere, but it was in some locations. I went to college in a small-ish city called Saratoga Springs. If you wanted a taxi,…
I think what they uniquely provide is actually tracking the cab to your door. I probably called 3 cabs total before I was aware of uber, and my experience each time was wait for around an hour, even if you had pre-arranged the pickup, and when calling the dispatcher, they would just say the cab was 10 minutes away, no matter what was actually going on.
And, you know, they always say their credit card reader isn't working, nor their fare meter.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon had an in-built 5-10% advantage for a very long time because they weren't required to pay tax. This clobbered small retail--and bookstores in particular. Now that they are on an equal footing and have to collect tax, Amazon's retailing isn't doing as good.
I don't understand this comment. Amazon didn't invent mail order. They never have had a monopoly on websites that sell stuff to be delivered by mail, either.
> Amazon didn't invent mail order.
And were particularly bad at it for a long time. Selling books was the only thing keeping the company afloat during that span.
> They never have had a monopoly on websites that sell stuff to be delivered by mail, either.
Actually, they did on books. You seem like you may be young. In 1994-1996, credit cards were nowhere near as ubiquitous and certainly the online use of them was even less so. Online gift companies were still a big thing and not simply a given even into 1999-2000.
The big bookstores at the time all had physical presence. If they attempted to ship you book and not charge tax, some taxman was going to show up at their door. This stifled the development of the online websites for those companies.
Amazon had no presence that people could go after, so could skirt tax laws with far less danger. That gave them an in-built 5% advantage over everyone. And the small bookstores took it in the chin particularly hard.
The success of people like Bezos becoming huge by skirting the law is why we have people like Kalanick who thought they can become huge by skirting the law.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#297edit: I think the article is deeply confused about whether it wants to talk about how shitty WeWork and it's associated investors are, versus why pumping loss-leading companies full of cash is a bad idea. The former is just yellow journalism and not very interesting (also well-aired already), the latter is important (imo). The point is a simple one, I think. It's well understood that capitalism breaks if an actor is…
"We've made this illegal in the past, we should consistently enforce such laws as exist, and improve them to bring them into 2019."
It seems to me that this sort of thing is the direct opposite of the "quarterly profits mentality" that people complain about. While you can say there must be a happy medium, I don't really believe there is, because every business can be framed in terms of the "short term focus" or "predatory and trying to take over the world" extremes.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#298For me, this whole WeWork fiasco has shown just how valuable the SEC and the S-1 filing process is. Let's be clear -- Neumann was fired because any investor who read the S-1 was mortified and wouldn't touch the company with a 10 foot pole. If anything, this shows how lawless the private markets are and the lack of guardrails that are present to protect private investors -- perhaps this will lead to some reform in the…
While you're right, I also wonder why anyone cares if a bunch of cash-rich, overconfident private equity funds get fleeced? They're more than capable of taking care of themselves.
"Counterfeit capitalism" in the era of cheap money is probably a net benefit to the average Joe because it subsidies his co-working space/taxi trips/meal deliveries/etc.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bookstores provide a lot of service value, a decent bookstore will allow you to find similar material, allow you to browse as you please (instead of the skimpy sample pages), usually contain an expert that can offer advice and allow you to walk out with your purchase. Additionally it's common to see a heavy effort at investing in the atmosphere. Amazon has succeeded at beating bookstores in none of these categories -…
I buy a lot more books from Amazon than I did before Amazon existed. The reasons are simple: 1. I can get pretty much any book ever printed, not just newly printed books. 2. Prices are usually better. 3. The friction to buying them is very low. If I want to buy books by the lot, such as every book in a series, I usually go to ebay.
1. True for mainstream books, absolutely not true for academic special interest titles. Many books simply aren't available - including some still-in-print titles from academic publishers.
2. Ditto. Pricing algos and greed can do insane things to prices. When I needed one out-of-print academic title recently the copies on Amazon were going for four figures. Luckily the author had uploaded a PDF to his web site.
For other books I've looked at, three figures aren't rare. Communicating with sellers directly has sometimes brought the price down to something more reasonable - a sale now being worth more than a listing that may take years to pay off.
3. This part is true - pay, wait, receive. Although it's not infallible, because some of the bigger sellers play an arbitrage game where an algo checks possible sources for tens of thousands of titles and then if found, adds a percentage to create an auto-listing. I've had orders cancelled when this process has failed, for whatever reason.
Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
See cable companies.
What do you conclude from cable companies? On the one hand, competition is legally restrained. On the other hand, the cable companies are still somewhat constrained by imperfect substitutes - for instance, wireless is not a great substitute for cable, but it's enough for me to live without it.
Not as much as they use to be from what I understand. Other providers can get right of way access via the city, but building out infrastructure is not easy and is costly and as soon as they build out the incumbent will reduce their prices low enough to not make it worth switching.
The only company that can compete with the cable company at scale is usually the local phone company.