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I know PE can act as vultures and clean up dead companies sometimes, but aside from that what good has PE done? Doesn’t the negative greatly outweigh the positi

I know PE can act as vultures and clean up dead companies sometimes, but aside from that what good has PE done? Doesn’t the negative greatly outweigh the positive. What mechanism exists (in the U.S) to deal with this excess?

dragonwriter 3y ago
The excess (the externalization of harms to the general public and thr concentration of benefits in the capitalist class) is exactly the point of capitalism (as in, the reason the former mercantile class fought the established aristocracy for the system of features that eventually had the name “capitalism” applied to it by its critics, not as in the backward-looking idealized rationalization invented by the system’s defenders to counter critics later.) The US (like most modern mixed economies, as much of the developed world has moved beyond pure capitalism) has a few features (progressive income taxation, some taxation of property and luxuries, schemes of redistribution supported by those) to slightly mitigate that excess, but its still a central feature of the system on which elites rely and which they aggressively defend.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > excess (the externalization of harms to the general public and thr concentration of benefits in the capitalist class) is exactly the point of capitalism That excess production is also called improving living standards.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    The excess being referred to is not the excess of production but the excess of negatige externalities over positive externalities, which is very much not “improving living standards”.
cjbgkagh 3y ago
They capture more consumer surplus so the better they are at their job the worse off you are as a consumer. Where the market price is close to the marginal utility it barely matters if the company survived to continue to provide the product or service. In my view what makes a product like the new Edison Motors EV Semis revolutionary is not the technology but saying no to more money and leaving consumer surplus on the table for the benefit of their customers. It’s hard to say no to more money.

dragonwriter 3y ago

The excess (the externalization of harms to the general public and thr concentration of benefits in the capitalist class) is exactly the point of capitalism (as in, the reason the former mercantile class fought the established aristocracy for the system of features that eventually had the name “capitalism” applied to it by its critics, not as in the backward-looking idealized rationalization invented by the system’s defenders to counter critics later.) The US (like most modern mixed economies, as much of the developed world has moved beyond pure capitalism) has a few features (progressive income taxation, some taxation of property and luxuries, schemes of redistribution supported by those) to slightly mitigate that excess, but its still a central feature of the system on which elites rely and which they aggressively defend.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> excess (the externalization of harms to the general public and thr concentration of benefits in the capitalist class) is exactly the point of capitalism That excess production is also called improving living standards.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  The excess being referred to is not the excess of production but the excess of negatige externalities over positive externalities, which is very much not “improving living standards”.

cjbgkagh 3y ago

They capture more consumer surplus so the better they are at their job the worse off you are as a consumer. Where the market price is close to the marginal utility it barely matters if the company survived to continue to provide the product or service. In my view what makes a product like the new Edison Motors EV Semis revolutionary is not the technology but saying no to more money and leaving consumer surplus on the table for the benefit of their customers. It’s hard to say no to more money.