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WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#321

Post by dv_dt »

helen___keller wrote: post #52
legitster wrote: post #35

> WeWork then used this cash to underprice competitors in the co-working space market, hoping to be able to profit later once it had a strong market position in real estate subletting or ancillary businesses. > This is of course Amazon’s model, which underpriced competitors in retail and eventually came to control the whole market. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The difference is Amazon saw what the marginal costs coul…

> The subprime crisis is completely unrelated! And if anything it was proof that money-making assets should be scrutinized more. The subprime mortgage crisis is basically godwin's law for finance. Want to make something look awful? Compare it to CDOs or mortgage-backed securities.

That’s because it’s such a massive example of a systematic corporate private capital failure that was bailed out by equally massive public power while regular people were left on the hook.

No other industry has gotten that kind of bailout that far into supposed maturity.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#322

Post by lbatx »

legitster wrote: post #35

> WeWork then used this cash to underprice competitors in the co-working space market, hoping to be able to profit later once it had a strong market position in real estate subletting or ancillary businesses. > This is of course Amazon’s model, which underpriced competitors in retail and eventually came to control the whole market. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. The difference is Amazon saw what the marginal costs coul…

> There are just as many counterfactuals to this strategy as there are examples. The scooter market is an especially bad - there is so much capital from so many companies - if you were trying to establish monopolies that would be a bad bet.

That's not a counterfactual. The fact that the strategy wasn't executed in this market, or was poorly executed, or was executed by too many people, doesn't mean it's not a strategy. It's just a strategy that is imperfect.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#323

Post by byeadam »

> If you can counterfeit something for cheap, the counterfeit will eventually take over the entire market and drive out the real commodity.

This is definitely true in the case of parmigiano reggiano cheese which is a $1.2 billion dollar a year business from the real cheese. The fake cheese, called parmesan, makes $100 billion. 99% of Parm cheese sold each year is fake.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#324

Post by celticninja »

WalterBright wrote: post #235
munk-a wrote: post #224

Earlier 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.

There is so much tat though that you can't browse like you can in a bookstore.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#325

Post by byeadam »

So many gems in this.

> Across the West, the basic problem of a corrupted productive process is becoming a quiet crisis. The reason is simple. The people that do the work in organizations are increasingly excluded from the decision-making about the work. That is why Boeing is losing its ability to build planes

The best managers simply stay out of the way of the people working, but most managers these days are in it to aggrandize themselves and cause suicides. Are you listening Facebook?

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#326

Post by ytwySXpMbS »

johnfactorial wrote: post #120
jamiequint wrote: post #40

> This is of course Amazon’s model, which underpriced competitors in retail and eventually came to control the whole market. This is false. First, Amazon is far from controlling the whole market. They control close to 50% of e-commerce which itself represents less than 12% of total retail sales. Second, Amazon didn't predatory price, or if it did, it didn't for long, certainly not long enough to achieve its current m…

> They control close to 50% of e-commerce which itself represents less than 12% of total retail sales. Both of these numbers are surprising to me, can you source them? Particularly the first one, which I assume is a global measure, and I'd be interested to know what % of North American e-commerce Amazon controls. I wager I could walk outside my home and ask 100 people on the sidewalk to name one e-commerce site and f…

I'm not the original commenter, but here's two sources [1] [2] for the 50% number, with [1] saying this represents 5% of US retail sales. It's 50% of US e-commerce.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/amazon-to-take-almost-50-per...

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#327

Post by kizer »

luckydata wrote: post #201
kizer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not under any time pressure in this discussion; there's no need to prioritize. Pointing out "low blows" which and writer should strive to be above is pressing, in my opinion.

That's not at all a low blow. It's pointing out one of the many signaling methods this conman used to swindle investors "look at me, I make no sense because I'm so unconventional..." It's crazy to me that a forum full of the self proclaimed intellectual elites can't get the meaning of that sentence without a full blown explanation.

Ah, I see your point. That is deceptive; I thought it was just generic vitriol.

As for me I only _dream_ of dwelling amongst the ranks of the Valley's intelligentsia... many years to go before I proclaim myself a bonafide intellectual elite.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#328

Post by perl4ever »

dmoy wrote: post #315
perl4ever wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You may want to peruse some of the econ stuff from mit ocw: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/ Things don't return a lot over zero in the long run. Maybe 5-7% in the absolute best case for long term returns. Enough that even a million dollars generates maybe less than $40k of reliable income. Most people need to expend so much of their income just to live that this mostly doesn't affect the average person. But ye…

I never know if "the rich get richer" means the people on the tail of the distribution now will be farther out in the future, or if it means the people on the tail of the distribution in the future will be farther out than the people on the tail now.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#329

Post by lsiebert »

rchaud wrote: post #191
helen___keller wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The subprime crisis is completely unrelated! And if anything it was proof that money-making assets should be scrutinized more. The subprime mortgage crisis is basically godwin's law for finance. Want to make something look awful? Compare it to CDOs or mortgage-backed securities.

I think the point the author was trying to make with "counterfeiting" wrt the subprime crisis is like this: counterfeit goods offer superficial similarity to the real thing, but are made of inferior materials when you unpack them. During the GFC, toxic mortgages were bundled in with mortgages with a high probability of repayment. Since the debt rating agencies gave those mortgage backed securities a AAA rating withou…

I take your point, though counterfeit goods aren't necessarily made of substandard materials. There are plenty of ways to skimp and then take advantage of the brand's existing reputation beyond shoddy crafting.

Re: WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

#330

Post by DangitBobby »

crumpets wrote: post #229
jerf wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is pretty much exactly the same thing as seeing a character wearing a T-Shirt in a movie and trying to argue it must have just been what the actor came on to the set wearing that day.

No it's not. Actors are meant to pretend to be different people. The CEO isn't supposed to be pretending to be a different person.

I disagree.
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