Felix Salmon: 1 Big Thing: The Cost of Unstable Norms: "Adam Neumann, Kevin Burns, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump were historically rewarded for breaking the rules. Now, suddenly, the rules seem as though they might matter. Neumann... WeWork, broke more rules even than Travis Kalanick... of Uber... became billionaires by losing billions of dollars, and they both awarded themselves voting control of their boards despite holding only a minority economic position.... Burns... Juul Labs, allowed his company to market its products to children and to claim without FDA permission that they were significantly safer than cigarettes.... Johnson, the U.K. prime minister, made his name and reputation by making up lies about the European Union and getting them printed in a respectable newspaper.... Trump—well, if you don't know how Trump built his career by violating political rules and norms, Axios Edge is not the place for you to find out.... Neumann and Burns were both fired.... Johnson's activity was found to be illegal in a unanimous ruling by the U.K. Supreme Court. Impeachment proceedings are beginning against Trump... Their punishment does not restore trust to the system. Instead, it reveals the degree to which trust is now absent. A world where rule-breaking and 'disruption' continue to be celebrated in both the economic and political spheres is a world where a lot of energy ends up being wasted on trying to discern the status of formerly clear boundaries. Capitalism works best when everybody is playing by the same rules. Right now we seem to be moving away from that ideal...
#noted
