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by AstralStorm 2921 days ago
There is but one risk which USA has seen in the past. When the company owns your living space, there is even stronger pressure on you to stay there, be productive and accept lower wages. When it also owns your food source, the threat is even greater. The result would be replacement of wages with "benefits" such as living. Technical indentured servitude also known as soft slavery. Technically you could move, except you cannot ever possibly afford to.

Additional stress would be put on people not in this arrangement as they would potentially have to spend more money to get at the same level. (Albeit there could be less pressure in the housing market.)

The next step in this slippery slope would be inheritance. Since company owns everything, your kids inherit little. Either that, or they inherit a position... Welcome to actual indentured servitude again. Company branded kids straight out of a few known dystopias.

Mostly because moving is a special kind of hell, especially with kids. Communities cannot form either way.

Some people like it, they're a minority though as far as I know.
2 comments
stakhanov 2921 days ago
...the thing about WeWork, however, is that you don't work for them, they work for you. Corporate housing was also done a lot in the post-WW2 reindustrialization of Europe. But coupled with strong tenant protections, it's not such a destructive force at the end of the day. A corporate couldn't kick you out of corporate housing just because you no longer worked there.
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AstralStorm 2921 days ago
All of this is fine until collusion...

With current US competition protections a cartel likely will happen a few times or more. Since there is "competition" between companies, even if all of them are doing the same thing.

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coldtea 2921 days ago
>...the thing about WeWork, however, is that you don't work for them, they work for you.

Give it time. Besides, when there's as large a dependency as "I get my livelihood through the services they offer" it might as well be the other way around, as one can't just drop them that easily.

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ronaldl93 2921 days ago
Golden Handcuffs
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