Re:SoftBank Is Selling Wag Stake Back to Company
by TheOtherHobbes on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:55AM
(#21761633)
That's a good point, and one that can't be made often enough.
Conventional accounting excludes externalities, including consequential losses to third parties. AirBnB can pride itself on "providing value" but in fact it massively distorts local economies, and has a very detrimental effect on the availability of affordable long-term rentals.
Tenants in that market suffer directly because their rents are higher, and there are fewer properties available to them.
That's a net cost to them, as a group, and of course it doesn't appear on AirBnB's accounts.
If you want to claim you're "providing value" the burden of proof is on you to provide an economic summary that accounts for externalities and is demonstrably non-zero-sum.
Doing this realistically would reveal that many corporations are essentially rent-seekers, oligopolists, and trivial arbitrageurs, not value creators.
IMO it's going to be impossible to avoid making this change to accounting standards - probably by the middle of the century, at the latest.
Which is good, because genuine value creation is a wonderful thing and deserves all the support it can get.
Conventional accounting excludes externalities, including consequential losses to third parties. AirBnB can pride itself on "providing value" but in fact it massively distorts local economies, and has a very detrimental effect on the availability of affordable long-term rentals.
Tenants in that market suffer directly because their rents are higher, and there are fewer properties available to them.
That's a net cost to them, as a group, and of course it doesn't appear on AirBnB's accounts.
If you want to claim you're "providing value" the burden of proof is on you to provide an economic summary that accounts for externalities and is demonstrably non-zero-sum.
Doing this realistically would reveal that many corporations are essentially rent-seekers, oligopolists, and trivial arbitrageurs, not value creators.
IMO it's going to be impossible to avoid making this change to accounting standards - probably by the middle of the century, at the latest.
Which is good, because genuine value creation is a wonderful thing and deserves all the support it can get.