A Ponzi scheme is something where the payout for early investors comes from the pay-in of later investors. There's a lot of stuff with that property, from Uber to Bored Ape Yacht Club.
A ponzi scheme involves a company who has no underlying revenue model and just shuffles money from late investors to early investors. So uber isn't a ponzi scheme because it generates revenue with an actual line of business. The fact that investors buy into at different times makes it a business like every other public business in our economy, not a ponzi scheme.
Which is exactly what Uber has done for 10 years. Revenue has nothing to do with it.
How else do you explain people becoming filthy rich owning companies losing 10s of billions of dollars?
Uber might be a bad investment but it’s not a Ponzi scheme.
> $5.78 billion
>Uber wrapped 2021 with strong revenue growth and greater adjusted profitability. Today
I guess $5.78 billion dollars is pretty close to 0 dollars right ?
Revenue from operations: $17,455,000,000
Loss from operations: $3,834,000,000
[1] https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/entityName=UBER&filter_fo...
Social Security is more like a Ponzi scheme in that it pays out retirees based on current income. There are some savings, but it was always a more or less direct payment of the old from the working age. The only thing that keeps it from being a Ponzi scheme is that they aren't pretending that it's some magical money making scheme that is generating "returns" to pay out to the early investors. The accounting is all front and center.
IMHO for something to qualify as a Ponzi scheme there must be a form of deception involved. Investors must think that they are realizing outsized returns and not because they are in on the scam. Obviously the guys at the top know it is a scam, but the vast bulk of the participants must be kept in the dark to keep it running.
It should not been seen as an investment but rather as a service you pay for. So the question becomes 'worth it or not' instead