We Will Not Forget WeWork’s Meltdown

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It’s a triumph that WeWork has come this far. This week, a scaled-down version of the startup that leases office space will go public nearly two years after investors. Saw the excitement of WeWork, company almost out of cash, and its founder walked away with a fortune.

WeWork isn’t the only high-flying start-up to falter. federal prosecutors said Blood testing company Theranos claims it can perform hundreds of medical tests using a pinprick of blood, and its founder is now on trial. My Colleague Ben Smith asked questions about whether digital media startup Ozy is overestimating its audience.

Young companies like this don’t matter much to the wider world. mostly wealthy investors can afford to lose money. (Startup employees lost their jobs and people who have misleading blood test results got worse.)

Yet WeWork’s spectacular rise, fall, and (perhaps) recovery come at a steep cost. The banking crisis of more than a decade ago and the wealthy people legal way to pay little or no taxblundering start-ups contribute to an attitude that the US financial system and economy are designed to favor the rich and connected.

To be clear: rich and powerful to do Stand up. That doesn’t mean it’s healthy for people to feel fatalistic that this is how things work.

“If people feel powerless, trust in all institutions is eroded. This is the tragedy we are experiencing right now,” he said. Anat R. AdmatiA professor of finance and economics at Stanford University who has studied the effects of the banking collapse and other corporate crises, Dr.

i am two grateful and afraid what young and occasionally brash, over-enthusiastic or preposterous start-ups have done over the past decade. He had ambition and money re-imagine old ways of doing things in health, transportation, education, housing, shopping and other sectors of life.

For more than a decade, everything tech has done us wonders that both make our lives better and a cottage industry of financially unsustainable companies that sometimes do catastrophic damage and leave us in turmoil. Complicated!

What I hit is an overwhelming smell of injustice. When start-ups were successful, they often made the 1 percent even richer. And when start-ups explode, the influential people responsible face little responsibility.

The most optimistic about young tech companies did not take this injustice into account. (One fix they tend to support is to loosen regulations to allow. more people other than the super-rich invest in startups.)

These companies or individuals generally do not break the law. Of the start-ups I mentioned in this bulletin, only Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, facing criminal charges. (He pleaded not guilty.)

Yet these examples leave us with a sense of injustice that shakes our confidence. We feel it when startup bosses like WeWork’s Adam Neumann fail and are still rewarded, and wealthy New Yorkers buy homes (relatively) cheap using a law. aimed at helping low-income families. This stinking feeling seeps into the stories of CEOs of mostly unprofitable start-ups. some of the highest paid executives in corporate America.

We can understand how greed can lead people to greed or deception, especially if no one says no to them. Injustice is not the result of individual rotten apples, but of systems that tend to the rich and powerful, and watchdogs, including government officials, being too careful or ineffective.

Stanford’s Dr. Admati said many of her students were extremely discouraged when they learned more about some of the injustices of the business and financial systems. encourages them resist this feeling.

He tells them to run for office, to push for change within their future employers, to whistle when they see something wrong – to do whatever it takes to fight the cynicism that America’s financial and economic systems are unfair and that’s how it is.


  • Today’s number of fears on the Internet: My colleague Dai Wakabayashi reports this an animal rights group sued YouTube said the website had repeated failures to enforce its policies against animal abuse videos. A well-known complaint: YouTube and other popular websites remove many dangerous or offensive posts and videos, but have trouble stopping more.

  • Google uses more electricity than the state of Maine. Bloomberg News writes about Google’s plans for: Running the company entirely on clean energy by 2030. (Subscription may be required.)

  • Art museums at OnlyFans: Vienna tourism board has an account on OnlyFans, the site popular with obscene artists, NBC News reports. It sounds silly, but there’s a serious reason: The city’s museums have been penalized by Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for posting artwork depicting nudity.

This dog pulling food from kitchen counter extremely naughty and wonderful.


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