The New York Times admits that government protects Big Business from smaller competitors

The economy suffers from a lack of fair competition, many economists believe.  Large corporations are often able to increase profits not by providing better products than their rivals but instead by being so big that they exercise power over workers and consumers.  The government also plays a role, through policies that protect existing companies at the expense of start-ups and new entrants into an industry.

~ The New York Times, July 9, 2021

Scott Galloway on the timing of business startups (and WeWork's IPO timing)

I've started nine firms and I'm, generously, 3-4-2 (win-lose-tie). In retrospect, and I think about this a lot, the only reliable forward-looking indicator of our firm’s success or failure was … timing. Specifically, the part of the economic cycle at founding. The firms we started in recessions had an easier time finding talent, controlling costs, and getting immediate feedback about if this thing worked as clients/consumers held their purse strings closed. Then, armed with a battle-tested value proposition, as the recession ended, we enjoyed the afterburner of confidence to spend more and try new things. #disco.

In frothy markets, it's easy to enter into a consensual hallucination, with investors and markets, that you’re creating value. And it’s easy to wallpaper over the shortcomings of the business with a bull market's halcyon: cheap capital. WeWork has brought new meaning to the word wallpaper. This is more reminiscent of the cheap marbled panelling you'd find in Mike Brady's home office — panelling whose mucilaginous coating will dissipate at the first whiff of a recession, revealing a family of raccoons or the mummified corpses of drug mules. 

~ Scott Galloway, "WeWTF," No Mercy / No Malice blog, August 16, 2019