[stopads]

Calling it a "victimless grift" as this writer does is just naive and silly. The thousands of people who got laid off while Adam got billions in golden parachute funds is the very definition of the word victim.

Just because we've grown accustomed to decades of golden parachutes and widening income inequality and excessive equity based compensation to dodge taxes at the high end doesn't mean any of this is normal or victimless. The victims are everyone who isn't an executive.

[koolba]

> The thousands of people who got laid off while Adam got billions in golden parachute funds is the very definition of the word victim.

Not in my book. They got a few years of a cushy job and now move on to something else.

Otherwise this sounds like calling the people who were evicted for not paying their mortgages “victims”. Sure they lost their homes, but they also got to live in the house for a while for free.

[corporateslave5]

Adam Neumann played SoftBank and gave them what they had coming. We need people like Adam to keep the markets from bubbling too much. It’s part of the checks and balances in a healthy capitalist system.

[Uhhrrr]

There are plenty of businesses with more realistic goals and well-intentioned founders which go under. You don't need people like Adam.

[jasonmp85]

I love this comment which just straight-up comes out and says that lying sociopaths and narcissists are an integral part of a “healthy capitalist system”.

Tankies couldn’t have written a better indictment.

[Mirioron]

There's some truth to the comment. You can't have people become so complacent that they just trust people on their word. You need somebody to actually verify that what they're doing could actually work.

Take Theranos for example. That whole thing is a huge case is scientific illiteracy. What they were suggesting was essentially impossible to achieve, yet people invested in it anyway. Nobody demanded to even see it working properly as a prototype. There are enormous kickstarter campaigns for things like "self-filling water bottles" or "solar roadways" and people fall for them.

[lotsofpulp]

> Nobody demanded to even see it working properly as a prototype.

Quite a few people did and recognized the fraud that it was long before it was public. But there were quite a few vested interests in making sure the price the equity would sell at was more than what they purchased at.

[corporateslave5]

I’m not a psychopath, but it’s just part of human nature. And softbank just wanted to dump a shitty company on the public markets and rip off retail investors. Neither side is good here.

[lotsofpulp]

Lying sociopaths and narcissist are always going to be wrong. What keeps them in check are those who know this and value objective truths or measurable metrics rather than prose and charisma.