Mr. Neumann, who has purchased more than 3,000 apartment units in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta and Nashville, aims to rethink the rental housing market by creating a branded product with consistent service and community features. Flow will own and operate the properties Mr. Neumann had bought and also offer its services to new developments and other third parties. Exact details of the business plan could not be learned.
Source: WeWork Founder Adam Neumann’s New Start-Up Is Backed By Andreessen Horowitz – The New York Times
“In the future, you’ll own nothing, and be happy.”
The middle class was born out of the post-war boom, and the iconic thing that defined the middle class was home ownership. Those times are simply gone now, as any economic chart can show. The housing market is experiencing a huge bubble, and what’s left of affordable housing is being gobbled up by private equity and “startup” monopoly power plays like this one. If the US were run by elected representatives, there might be a change to put a stop to this. But it’s not, any more. It’s being run by the very companies who want to own everything, and rent it back to us.
In the very near future, there will no longer be a “middle” class. Not as a category. Of course, there will be people who fit the description, but it won’t be some broad strata like it has been. There will only be people who own capital, and those that labor in it and for it. I suppose it’s just Capitalism, fully-formed, with a capital “C.” It’s weird, but the US is reinventing feudalism, right under the nose of the Constitution. The oligarch billionaires are the new monarchy, the government does whatever they tell them to do.