On an unrelated note, Italy has never had a tech startup worth a billion dollars.

- Telecom Italia (telecommunications services): $83.6 billion, up 12.5%

- Atlantia (infrastructure, mobility networks): $48.7 billion, up 17.3%

- Leonardo (aerospace, defense): $30.1 billion, up 12.4%

http://www.worldstopexports.com/italys-top-10-major-export-c...

"We pioneered a “space-as-a-service” membership model that offers the benefits of a collaborative culture, the flexibility to scale workspace up and down as needed and the power of a worldwide community, all for a lower cost. Through iterative product development at scale and significant investment in technology infrastructure, we have demonstrated that we can build better solutions for less money. We are changing the way people work globally and, in the process, we have disrupted the largest asset class in the world—real estate."

Edit: I just noticed that it continues with a MUCH better statement on the next page:

"Technology is at the foundation of our global platform. Our purpose-built technology and operational expertise has allowed us to scale our core WeWork space-as-a-service offering quickly, while improving the quality of our solutions and decreasing the cost to find, build, fill and run our spaces. We have approximately 1,000 engineers, product designers and machine learning scientists that are dedicated to building, integrating and automating the complex systems we use to operate our business. As a result, we are able to deliver a premium experience to our members at a lower price relative to traditional alternatives."

So uhh, honest question. What were they trying to build with those 1,000 engineers/designers/ML scientists? The company literally leases (not buys) office space to then lease out to their customers. I never understood why this business model needs "significant investment into Tech infrastructure"

if the company made a bad hire and kept that person around does that count as mis-managin? What if they had to fire them to save the company?

I don't think any private company should have any interference by the Govt. BUT every founder/owner/CEO should think about their people first. Is this even possible ? I really hope so. "Moral Capitalism" anyone ?

Disclaimer: I run a small private company of 12 of us and I struggle with this everyday.

It's not a problem that can be solved by individual business owners, no matter how moral they are, because at its root it's a collective action problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem). The more business owners sign on to a platform of "moral capitalism," the bigger the opportunity created for the first business owner willing to act immorally, and thus the greater the temptation there will be to do so. Eventually the temptation becomes great enough that someone breaks ranks, and then everyone else has to follow or risk being put out of business. The race always ends in a sprint towards the bottom.

This is why we have regulation; the only way to cut this knot is for some external entity to force everybody to play by the same rules. It's the only way to prevent honest businesses from getting eaten alive by the dishonest ones. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best one anyone's come up with so far.

This amounts to an ideological viewpoint, however it doesn't map to reality. If the government doesn't step in, the worst of the worst will sift up to the top, and the most complacent will sift to the bottom. It's how things naturally fall into place.

Exploitative people in an unchecked market have an unmatched advantage. If you believe in real market competition, then pure capitalism cannot work because it stifles competition by creating unfair disadvantages for CEOs who think about their people, discouraging them from acting benevolently.

The problem is that you see the government as this authoritarian beast who must be kept in a cage for the safety of its people, when in reality a healthy government is its people. Government regulations in a free market are a result of the consumers who participate in the market wanting protection.

In the end, you either favor consumer protection or corporate protection. Which seems more moral to you?

Pick one. Couldn't have said it better. This is what people ALWAYS have to remember. And as a reminder, the corporation will always take care of the corporation.

One theory of ethics holds that it is in your long-term interest to behave ethically, even if you can't know for certain what the constraints are. They encode a heuristic wisdom for survival, and that's why we have ethics at all. But many will fail to follow that, and if they are punished in the end, it's only after many others suffer -- and are not made whole by your punishment.

Who are we to judge what price you put on things and what you are willing to pay?

no one is being forced to do anything here

I don’t see how anyone else’s net worth is at play here

As far as the employees go, anyone working for a company clearly not making any money needs to move along. Whatever consequences you suffer are at your own risk.

And as far as what this might look like under socialism, the government would take money from people who have nothing to do with any of it and give it to all of the people involved in order to maintain an organization that nobody wants to do business with.

“Late stage capitalism” and “socialism” is a false dilemma. We can see the known, evil effects of late-stage capitalism, and it is appropriate to pin the blame on the systems which encourage this behavior even while acknowledging the benefits of those systems and while holding accountable actors within these systems.

"Sombart, at that time, was an important Marxian, someone who used and interpreted Karl Marx — to the point that Friedrich Engels said he was the only German professor who understood Das Kapital. Sombart called himself a "convinced Marxist,"[1] but later wrote that "It had to be admitted in the end that Marx had made mistakes on many points of importance."

Edit: ah, here they are to come downvote me

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Regardless of my agreement or disagreement with your points otherwise.)