Once companies needed to make profits to be successful. Now that seems so 20th century. Uber, We Work, Lyft, make ever more spectacular losses. Last year Uber lost a staggering 15 million dollars every day, 5 billion dollars a year. Yet, as their losses have grown their stock market value has risen massively.
Are these huge Ponzi schemes that will at some point go bust creating chaos and disruption? Is their value based on the idea of future monopoly profits that are bad for the economy, bad for competition, digital workers and the consumer? Or are they a sign that capitalism is working well, promoting radical change and generating the long term investment needed to bring it about?