> In 1866 there was a bank called Overend, Gurney and Company [..] they went bust. They invested a whole bunch of money in the railway industry and then the rai

> In 1866 there was a bank called Overend, Gurney and Company [..] they went bust. They invested a whole bunch of money in the railway industry and then the railway bubble burst. Thing is, if you invest a bundle in railways and lose it, there are still railways, people can still use them. But that's increasingly not how investment works. A lot of companies, especially tech companies, borrow money not to make anything, just on the promise that they will eventually make it back. > Let's take a case study: WeWork. WeWork are an American company that provide office space. They dress it up as revolutionizing your workplace and bringing people closer together(, but we're doing materialism, remember?) They own a bunch of offices, and if you need one you can rent it from them. They're landlords! [..] In summer of 2019, WeWork was valued at $47 billion. Now, just a few months later they're worth.. Well actually, it's not clear how much they're worth but nowhere near that. > So what happened? Was there some kind of disaster? Did the offices burn down? No. The truth is, they were never worth 47 billion. > [..] > Their business model was just owning stuff and charging rent, and if nobody wants your stuff or nobody can afford the rent, then all the money that was invested in you can just vanish. From: The Trouble with the Video Game Industry | Philosophy Tube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYkLVU5UGM8&t=1000s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYkLVU5UGM8&t=1000s at 16m and 40s) This was published in November 2019, before the pandemic. I am amazed that WeWork is still around. Citation on that segment: Grace Blakely, Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation