In today’s Theodore Dalrymple Law & Liberty column, the WeWork debacle spearheaded by its shady and crooked founder, Adam Neumann, is used to inquire into the nature of our contemporary economic system.

As to the effects of this episode, at least as comic as it is tragic, on the feelings of the population, one can only say that it is likely to increase or reinforce its belief that it is living under a fundamentally unjust economic dispensation which can, and ought, to be overthrown, almost irrespective of whatever succeeds it. This is a dangerous state of mind, for it renders people susceptible to the siren-song of egalitarian demagogues.

On the question of whether there are any reforms, short of a change in human nature, that can prevent future Adam Neumann’s from making fortunes, I am agnostic. A reading of Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds suggests not.