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What you would expect from private equity sadly. Destroyers of value.
by tonetheman 2y ago
What you would expect from private equity sadly. Destroyers of value.
- Rinzler89 2y agoBut, but...muh free market capitalism always leads to the best products supply for the demand...or so we've been told.
- ElevenLathe 2y agoTurns out late hegemonic capitalism has a similar failure mode to late Soviet central planning.
- vundercind 2y agoRelaxing various rules on investment and m&a, and allowing unprecedented levels of market power concentration (it’s a lot worse in many major industries than what promoted our first big wave of “trust busting”) turns out to be less than awesome.
- readyman 2y agoCapitalism works perfectly if you just ignore all the inevitable disasterous consequences and outright failures.
- ars 2y agoAnd your better alternative is........... ?
- margalabargala 2y agoCapitalism with much stronger consumer-protection regulations?
- kelipso 2y agoChina is doing pretty well. In before a wall of text about how China is doomed or whatever.
- realusername 2y agoChina is doing well is a funny take post covid. The argument worked much better 10 years ago when they still had large growth. "Doomed" I don't know but they seem quite stuck now between a lot of internal problems.
- ausbah 2y agoonly once they switched to free market principles under deng. iirc as their growth has been slowing it has been due to increasing state clampdown on the economy
- giovannibonetti 2y agoI assume you aren't aware of China's housing market bubble [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_sector_crisis_(2020%E2%80%93present) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_property_sector_cris...
- mistermann 2y agoCapitalism moderated by various systems emerging from a genuine, sophisticated democratic system would be my advice. We have a lot of work to get from here to there though, and much of it is the undoing of mass psychological condition.
- readyman 2y agoCapital will simply undermine the democracy again. It's literally that simple. Capitalism and democracy are fundamentally at odds.
- mistermann 2y agoThis part is important: > from a genuine, sophisticated democratic system Do you think something more powerful than capitalism is impossible?
- truckerbill 2y agoSocial democracy
- atq2119 2y agoMarket socialism. Or some in-between that recognizes that wealth and corporate power has a genuine responsibility to society as a whole. Myopic focus on profit as the only metric is the biggest problem, after all.
- mistermann 2y agoIt is the job of government to regulate and reign in capitalism. We are also told that democracy is the best form of government, and we are also told that our democracy is genuine, and that it must be protected. For some reason, people are unable to wonder if these various stories are true...perhaps because that skill is not innate, and is not taught in school?
- tomoyoirl 2y agoNo. It’s only efficient when property rights are enforced, barriers to entry are low, and transaction costs are minimal. Wheelchairs are regulated (barriers to entry), pollution is the nonexistence of property rights, and your take-it-or-leave-it noncompete agreement is a consequence of high transaction costs (job search, legal negotiations).
- Terr_ 2y ago> ... or so we've been told. To expand on this inconsistency, it comes from different people cheer-leading "the free market" with different and conflicting sets of assumptions about what the phrase means. For example, one economist makes an assumption of "perfect information on prices and transactions", and declares that it's the most efficient thing ever. But another one assumes actors are free to make secret deals and private transactions, and concludes that the free-market doesn't have a cartel problem, because individual members will secretly defect and undercut so that it falls apart. Those two assumptions are in direct contradiction, yet somehow the overlap phrase "the free market" still gets touted as having both of the incompatible features.
- 7thaccount 2y agoPrivate Equity really is a pox on society. One reason they may not be able to hire is that they paid a ton to buy out all the competition and now have a bunch of investors wanting to see high rates of return. That requires cutting staff and raising prices. I'm all for a free society that allows private parties to make agreements, but PE is by definition all about breaking markets by creating a monopoly where they have large amounts of market power and where no competition can realistically occur. The end result is consumers getting screwed all over.
- ars 2y ago> Private Equity really is a pox on society. Every single non-public business is "Private Equity". How is every single small business in the entire world "a pox on society"? Perhaps you mean "short term thinking" is a pox on society? Or in, like in this case, a duopoly is the issue? If there were 10 such companies a reputation for slow repair would drive people to other suppliers and things would rapidly get better.
- eesmith 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity "In the field of finance, private equity (PE) is capital stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public. Private equity is offered instead to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the companies. In casual usage, "private equity" can refer to these investment firms rather than the companies that they invest in."
- hx8 2y agoPE is specifically referring to companies not listed on stock exchanges that take money from investors. I agree that we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here, but there is probably merit to limiting the activity of PE funds with lots of investors or lots of money. PE often used as a scheme of raising money and conducting business in a way to avoid the scrutiny of a publicly traded company.
- 7thaccount 2y ago
- IncreasePosts 2y agoWell, a private equity firm owned the wheelchair company for a decade. It was only when a different PE firm came in that the service allegedly declined.