9 ms·

Private Equity's New Venture: Youth Sports

94 points by wahnfrieden 11mo ago

captainkrtek 11mo ago
Add "Private Equity's New Venture: ..." to the list of sentences that scare me.
- vannevar 11mo ago
  "Private Equity's next victim..." From the people who brought you America's medical system, and looming debt crisis.
  - terminalshort 11mo ago
    How, exactly, is private equity responsible for our medical system and our massive government budget problems. Please explain to me step by step like I'm stupid.
    - t-writescode 11mo ago
      Here’s a neat article written for the Missouri Medicine Journal that covers it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11482842/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11482842/ And here’s a ChatGPT summary of it for the TLDR crowd: Private equity ownership of hospitals and medical practices is linked to worse patient outcomes, higher prices, and weakened physician autonomy. The paper argues that PE’s standard playbook — heavy debt loading, cost-cutting, consolidation, and short-term profit extraction — is fundamentally misaligned with long-term medical care. Case studies like Hahnemann University Hospital show how sale-leasebacks and aggressive financial engineering can push essential hospitals into collapse. Consolidation of physician groups reduces competition and raises prices for patients and employers, while staff cuts and reduced investment correlate with lower care quality. The author calls for stronger antitrust scrutiny, transparency of ownership, and limits on practices such as asset-stripping to prevent further harm in the healthcare system.
    - RankingMember 11mo ago
      Not the guy you asked, but PE focuses on short-term profits via high-debt acquisitions, cost-cutting, and price increases. In the context of healthcare, for example, this means higher costs for both out-of-pocket and government payers, fewer staff and lower quality of care, and, in some cases, even closure altogether due to the acquisition debt (which was dumped onto the acquired org itself) pushing the org into bankruptcy (of course only after the PE firm has squeezed all the juice possible out).
    - lotsofpulp 11mo ago
      https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/private-equitys-appetite-for-hospitals-may-put-patients-at-risk/ https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/private-equitys-appetite-for-h... >The long and short: In 2010, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management purchased Caritas Christi Health Care, a struggling eastern Massachusetts hospital system, from the Archdiocese of Boston, converting it from non-profit to for-profit and rebranding it as Steward Health Care. In 2016, after years of continued financial instability, Steward signed a sale-leaseback agreement with Medical Properties Trust (MPT), selling the land and buildings occupied by its hospitals to the real estate investment trust then leasing them back. Steward made $1.25 billion from the agreement—enough to steady its financial footing, pay off Cerberus, and fund a growth spree. The next year, the company purchased 26 more hospitals across the country. But with the agreement came what many viewed as inflated rents. Then read below "Consequences of cost-cutting".
    - vannevar 11mo ago
      Others have pointed out how PE has degraded the medical system. The debt crisis I referred to is the private credit crisis, though no doubt private equity has played a key lobbying role in creating our national debt crisis as well. Regarding private debt, Jeffrey Gundlach sums it up: "'This is starting to show up to be the problem that I've been referencing… that private credit and private equity, frankly, is being borrowed from private equity. It's sold on a volatility argument, primarily," Gundlach added. "Maybe there's some excess return for your illiquidity that you can get, but it's largely a volatility argument.' Illiquidity could turn paper losses into real ones, Gundlach cautioned, pointing to the kind of liquidity squeeze that worsened the 2008 financial crisis, when investors were unable to meet capital calls." https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jeffrey-gundlach-says-cracks-forming-americas-multi-trillion-dollar-private-credit-market https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jeffrey-gundlach-says-cr...
      - delfinom 11mo ago
        Not to worry, PE is getting bailed out with our 401ks. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/democratizing-access-to-alternative-assets-for-401k-investors/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/demo...
    - captainkrtek 11mo ago
      There is a new doc on Netflix called "Country Doctor" which follows a doctor who works in a very rural area, it shows what happens when the hospital goes through another round of being sold off to a new firm and the difficult access of the county.
barbazoo 11mo ago
> Instead, parents are forced to subscribe to these companies’ exclusive recording and streaming service, which can cost many times more than the streaming costs for professional sporting events. Meanwhile, the firms’ exclusive contracts have prohibited alternative video services from being made available. > In some instances, parents have been threatened that if they choose to defy the rules and record the game, they may end up on a blacklist that punishes their kids’ teams. Those threats were even reportedly made to a sitting US senator. > Black Bear’s streaming service costs between $25 and $50 a month, depending on the package and additional fees. In addition to its recording rules and associated costs, Black Bear is starting to add a $50 “registration and insurance” fee per player for some leagues. That’s on top of what players already spend on expensive equipment, team registration, and membership to USA Hockey, the sport’s national governing body. Feeling bad for the folks having a hard time pulling the plug on scams like these and going back to a more sensible and sustainable way of life.
- ramy_d 11mo ago
  It really doesn't get more sensible and sustainable than kids playing team sports and parents witnessing this part of their lives. The blame here is squarely on PEs like black bear nickel and dimming parents. How do you pull the plug on that? It's so gross.
  - barbazoo 11mo ago
    Sure you're right, if that's their thing, having their kids perform the sport and watching them doing it then this is a good solution. The streaming makes it so they can even stay in the car and watch from there.
  - underlipton 11mo ago
    Don't sign up for it next year? Boycott and maybe spin up your own league.
    - cutemonster 11mo ago
      You can't, the PE companies buy the hockey rinks
timenotwasted 11mo ago
I feel like this article is trying to make this seem like this is becoming a widespread thing despite the entire thing being about hockey. In my experience hockey was always the sport that the wealthier households participated in due to the costs (equipment, rink time, travel, etc..). As a parent with two younger kids I haven't run into this at all so I wonder how much of it is more sport dependent where the company controls the infrastructure. Maybe I'm being naive here but I struggle to imagine this is going to make its way very far into other sports where you simply are out in a field.
- gedy 11mo ago
  Yeah, while I know there's parents who get a little kooky about "MY KID IS GONNA BE THE NEXT ____", anything that gets too expensive or restrictive around what amounts to basically a ball and some grass ain't gonna fly with normal folks. We'll just go to the park.
  - wahnfrieden 11mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006518
- dehrmann 11mo ago
  > I haven't run into this at all so I wonder how much of it is more sport dependent where the company controls the infrastructure My experience is with San Jose where I'd be really surprised to see this happen. There's a massive six-sheet facility owned by the city and managed by the parent company of the Sharks, so being good for the community and good for hockey might be enough without them having to resort to these tactics.
  - jerlam 11mo ago
    Other pro hockey teams are not as magnanimous: ‘They control everything’: How the Dallas Stars monopolized Texas youth hockey: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/08/01/nhl-dallas-stars-texas-youth-hockey-monopoly/84289184007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/08/0...
srameshc 11mo ago
Anywhere there is money, making an everyday man some money, these pests creep in. I generally dislike what has become of recreational sports and how the parents are either forced to spend for things that really don't matter, when learning to play. But learning Private Equity is eyeing this give me creeps. There must be some guy who observed how families are spending and decided it would be the next destination for PE.
- wahnfrieden 11mo ago
  Just the free market at work edit: Would like to understand from downvoters how this does not meet free market principles?
  - psadauskas 11mo ago
    A "free market" is one in which all the participants of the market have perfect information and act completely rationally. This is, of course, an academic ideal, similar to solving a physics problem that tells you to ignore friction. What we have here is a "capitalist market", where those with more power (capital) within the market leverage it to exploit the other participants. Private Equity uses their money to extract as much money as possible from a segment of the market, usually destroying it in the process. But for a beautiful moment in time they created a lot of value for shareholders!
    - surgical_fire 11mo ago
      > A "free market" is one in which all the participants of the market have perfect information and act completely rationally. So, a fairy tale.
  - Libidinalecon 11mo ago
    It is a good example of neoliberalism gone completely insane and your comment is a good example of the religion of neoliberalism. It is this deluded idea that "the market is always right" so naturally to not let market forces at work in children's sports is equivalent to a type of moral wrong. The real insanity of neoliberalism is in convincing people like you that this is some kind of natural law like gravity, so to object is like objecting to the law of gravity to the point you can't even understand why you are being down voted. It is actually a form of scientism and the misapplication of the efficient market hypothesis to unwarranted situations. Convenient cover for ripping people off.
etempleton 11mo ago
A private equity company has purchased every sports league, indoor sports complex, pool, and summer camp in my area. They then drop prices to destroy the local competition and then buy them too. After that they raise prices.
- terminalshort 11mo ago
  Have they raised prices yet?
  - 7thaccount 11mo ago
    They always do....that's partly how private equity works. Example, buy out a well-known software product with a lot of customers. Then offshore development to cut costs. Then raise prices to milk customers that are too slow to migrate. Eventually the software dies off.
  - etempleton 11mo ago
    Depends on what it is and if there is any competition left. Some things have gone up in price where they have a local monopoly. I think their real play is the underlying land value. They are often able to buy distressed businesses with a lot of land cheaply.
MengerSponge 11mo ago
Has there been a FPP about cheerleading? There's billions of dollars in a cornered youth sports market.
bearjaws 11mo ago
Friend works for a vet clinic, got bought by PE 2 years ago. Routine layoffs, increased costs, and worse quality of service have crept in over the past 6 months. Average turnover went from 4 years to 1 year, hes one of the last few people who are there from when they were purchased.
- terminalshort 11mo ago
  If this is true, why don't they go out of business? I just don't buy the argument that PE takes over businesses and makes them strictly worse. You don't make money doing that.
  - t-writescode 11mo ago
    How many vet clinics do you know about? How often do you take your pet to the vet? Are there any “first visitors” events you need to do? If someone is going to the vet once a year for blood work and a rabies vaccine; and there’s only like 3 in the whole city, you’re probably not going to rotate between them. What if the next one is even worse? I have left a single vet over “bad behavior” and most of the other times it’s been over moving and things getting too far away. The reality is most of their “getting worse” and “increased prices”, etc, is missed because most people come in once a year, so changes over time aren’t especially visible.
  - lotsofpulp 11mo ago
    You certainly can. It depends what kind of investors you can find. There is often a lag between the time sellers make changes to the business and the collective buyers' reaction to those changes, so if you can line up investors (whether it be equity or fixed income), then you can turn long term good will into short term cash for yourself. For example, the business in the comment above might be selling veterinarian services, but the new owner's business is actually selling cash flow. The veterinarian services are just a means to an end, so it could be possible to take the built up good will and convert that to cash flow by cutting costs/raising prices in the short term, and then selling the new and improved cash flow. You might ask, who would buy from this person again when they know the underlying business is being trashed? The answer is usually dumb money, such as defined benefit pension funds where the investor and the beneficiary are far disconnected. As long as it looks like due diligence happened, everyone can kind of get away richer in the short term with no one to stop them. The hard part is lining up the investors, that requires being in the right networks.
bell-cot 11mo ago
In theory, the parents could just vote their feet. In practice, humans are frogs, and eager to prove their fitness as the pot of water grows hotter and hotter.
- tylergetsay 11mo ago
  The kids want to be part of the team. A parent saying no to a kid because of $50 is cool in theory, but in practice...
triceratops 11mo ago
Private equity being able to buy up everything is a stark example of the level of wealth inequality in our society.
anthem2025 11mo ago
[dead]
underlipton 11mo ago
Considering that these people are the class that use youth sports credentials to sneak their mediocre kids into top schools, the situation is bound to get interesting. Tension at the fundraiser ever since Bob priced Janice out of her son's cheap in to UPenn. She's going to have to actually make a donation now.
yieldcrv 11mo ago
This article is about deterring everyone from being on their phones the whole time during the event Most of the people here would be for varying forms of these deterrents in a VC model or some other potentially non-monetized user experience, if it was independent of the owner of the game
purplezooey 11mo ago
Part of the reason PE succeeds is their choice of things that have a large or lengthy startup cost or other supply restrictions. Most towns will support only 1 hockey arena. Or lately, with veterinarians. New supply is complex and doesn't appear overnight. If PE is to be controlled (so they don't ruin everything), we need to lessen the barriers to create more supply, like in housing. Also, perhaps it would be good to make them actually pay some taxes, if only to mitigate a fraction of the problems they cause. PE is sort of like cigarettes. They exist, and do damage to everyone.
- squigz 11mo ago
  If PE causes so many problems and needs to be controlled, why not... control it? Regulate it heavily, or ban it outright, or make it very difficult for them to own a large portion of businesses in any given area, etc, etc It's just the "remove barriers to do X" arguments tends to be used to justify removing important regulations that protect consumers, or the environment, or institutional integrity - all of which may indeed help the little guys, but it also certainly helps the big guys. I'm also wary of the idea that regulations and the like are the real issue small businesses have a hard time of things - and not just that operating a business has become more expensive/difficult in the modern age (even after taking out regulations), as well as the simple fact that big businesses can, for example, tank losses for a lot longer than a small business in order to win out a market. How would less regulation for the smaller businesses help situations like that?

94 points by wahnfrieden 11mo ago

captainkrtek 11mo ago

Add "Private Equity's New Venture: ..." to the list of sentences that scare me.

vannevar 11mo ago
"Private Equity's next victim..." From the people who brought you America's medical system, and looming debt crisis.
- terminalshort 11mo ago
  How, exactly, is private equity responsible for our medical system and our massive government budget problems. Please explain to me step by step like I'm stupid.
  - t-writescode 11mo ago
    Here’s a neat article written for the Missouri Medicine Journal that covers it: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11482842/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11482842/ And here’s a ChatGPT summary of it for the TLDR crowd: Private equity ownership of hospitals and medical practices is linked to worse patient outcomes, higher prices, and weakened physician autonomy. The paper argues that PE’s standard playbook — heavy debt loading, cost-cutting, consolidation, and short-term profit extraction — is fundamentally misaligned with long-term medical care. Case studies like Hahnemann University Hospital show how sale-leasebacks and aggressive financial engineering can push essential hospitals into collapse. Consolidation of physician groups reduces competition and raises prices for patients and employers, while staff cuts and reduced investment correlate with lower care quality. The author calls for stronger antitrust scrutiny, transparency of ownership, and limits on practices such as asset-stripping to prevent further harm in the healthcare system.
  - RankingMember 11mo ago
    Not the guy you asked, but PE focuses on short-term profits via high-debt acquisitions, cost-cutting, and price increases. In the context of healthcare, for example, this means higher costs for both out-of-pocket and government payers, fewer staff and lower quality of care, and, in some cases, even closure altogether due to the acquisition debt (which was dumped onto the acquired org itself) pushing the org into bankruptcy (of course only after the PE firm has squeezed all the juice possible out).
  - lotsofpulp 11mo ago
    https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/private-equitys-appetite-for-hospitals-may-put-patients-at-risk/ https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/private-equitys-appetite-for-h... >The long and short: In 2010, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management purchased Caritas Christi Health Care, a struggling eastern Massachusetts hospital system, from the Archdiocese of Boston, converting it from non-profit to for-profit and rebranding it as Steward Health Care. In 2016, after years of continued financial instability, Steward signed a sale-leaseback agreement with Medical Properties Trust (MPT), selling the land and buildings occupied by its hospitals to the real estate investment trust then leasing them back. Steward made $1.25 billion from the agreement—enough to steady its financial footing, pay off Cerberus, and fund a growth spree. The next year, the company purchased 26 more hospitals across the country. But with the agreement came what many viewed as inflated rents. Then read below "Consequences of cost-cutting".
  - vannevar 11mo ago
    Others have pointed out how PE has degraded the medical system. The debt crisis I referred to is the private credit crisis, though no doubt private equity has played a key lobbying role in creating our national debt crisis as well. Regarding private debt, Jeffrey Gundlach sums it up: "'This is starting to show up to be the problem that I've been referencing… that private credit and private equity, frankly, is being borrowed from private equity. It's sold on a volatility argument, primarily," Gundlach added. "Maybe there's some excess return for your illiquidity that you can get, but it's largely a volatility argument.' Illiquidity could turn paper losses into real ones, Gundlach cautioned, pointing to the kind of liquidity squeeze that worsened the 2008 financial crisis, when investors were unable to meet capital calls." https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jeffrey-gundlach-says-cracks-forming-americas-multi-trillion-dollar-private-credit-market https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/jeffrey-gundlach-says-cr...
    - delfinom 11mo ago
      Not to worry, PE is getting bailed out with our 401ks. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/democratizing-access-to-alternative-assets-for-401k-investors/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/demo...
  - captainkrtek 11mo ago
    There is a new doc on Netflix called "Country Doctor" which follows a doctor who works in a very rural area, it shows what happens when the hospital goes through another round of being sold off to a new firm and the difficult access of the county.

barbazoo 11mo ago

> Instead, parents are forced to subscribe to these companies’ exclusive recording and streaming service, which can cost many times more than the streaming costs for professional sporting events. Meanwhile, the firms’ exclusive contracts have prohibited alternative video services from being made available. > In some instances, parents have been threatened that if they choose to defy the rules and record the game, they may end up on a blacklist that punishes their kids’ teams. Those threats were even reportedly made to a sitting US senator. > Black Bear’s streaming service costs between $25 and $50 a month, depending on the package and additional fees. In addition to its recording rules and associated costs, Black Bear is starting to add a $50 “registration and insurance” fee per player for some leagues. That’s on top of what players already spend on expensive equipment, team registration, and membership to USA Hockey, the sport’s national governing body. Feeling bad for the folks having a hard time pulling the plug on scams like these and going back to a more sensible and sustainable way of life.

ramy_d 11mo ago
It really doesn't get more sensible and sustainable than kids playing team sports and parents witnessing this part of their lives. The blame here is squarely on PEs like black bear nickel and dimming parents. How do you pull the plug on that? It's so gross.
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  Sure you're right, if that's their thing, having their kids perform the sport and watching them doing it then this is a good solution. The streaming makes it so they can even stay in the car and watch from there.
- underlipton 11mo ago
  Don't sign up for it next year? Boycott and maybe spin up your own league.
  - cutemonster 11mo ago
    You can't, the PE companies buy the hockey rinks

timenotwasted 11mo ago

I feel like this article is trying to make this seem like this is becoming a widespread thing despite the entire thing being about hockey. In my experience hockey was always the sport that the wealthier households participated in due to the costs (equipment, rink time, travel, etc..). As a parent with two younger kids I haven't run into this at all so I wonder how much of it is more sport dependent where the company controls the infrastructure. Maybe I'm being naive here but I struggle to imagine this is going to make its way very far into other sports where you simply are out in a field.

gedy 11mo ago
Yeah, while I know there's parents who get a little kooky about "MY KID IS GONNA BE THE NEXT ____", anything that gets too expensive or restrictive around what amounts to basically a ball and some grass ain't gonna fly with normal folks. We'll just go to the park.
- wahnfrieden 11mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46006518
dehrmann 11mo ago
> I haven't run into this at all so I wonder how much of it is more sport dependent where the company controls the infrastructure My experience is with San Jose where I'd be really surprised to see this happen. There's a massive six-sheet facility owned by the city and managed by the parent company of the Sharks, so being good for the community and good for hockey might be enough without them having to resort to these tactics.
- jerlam 11mo ago
  Other pro hockey teams are not as magnanimous: ‘They control everything’: How the Dallas Stars monopolized Texas youth hockey: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/08/01/nhl-dallas-stars-texas-youth-hockey-monopoly/84289184007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/08/0...

srameshc 11mo ago

Anywhere there is money, making an everyday man some money, these pests creep in. I generally dislike what has become of recreational sports and how the parents are either forced to spend for things that really don't matter, when learning to play. But learning Private Equity is eyeing this give me creeps. There must be some guy who observed how families are spending and decided it would be the next destination for PE.

wahnfrieden 11mo ago
Just the free market at work edit: Would like to understand from downvoters how this does not meet free market principles?
- psadauskas 11mo ago
  A "free market" is one in which all the participants of the market have perfect information and act completely rationally. This is, of course, an academic ideal, similar to solving a physics problem that tells you to ignore friction. What we have here is a "capitalist market", where those with more power (capital) within the market leverage it to exploit the other participants. Private Equity uses their money to extract as much money as possible from a segment of the market, usually destroying it in the process. But for a beautiful moment in time they created a lot of value for shareholders!
  - surgical_fire 11mo ago
    > A "free market" is one in which all the participants of the market have perfect information and act completely rationally. So, a fairy tale.
- Libidinalecon 11mo ago
  It is a good example of neoliberalism gone completely insane and your comment is a good example of the religion of neoliberalism. It is this deluded idea that "the market is always right" so naturally to not let market forces at work in children's sports is equivalent to a type of moral wrong. The real insanity of neoliberalism is in convincing people like you that this is some kind of natural law like gravity, so to object is like objecting to the law of gravity to the point you can't even understand why you are being down voted. It is actually a form of scientism and the misapplication of the efficient market hypothesis to unwarranted situations. Convenient cover for ripping people off.

etempleton 11mo ago

A private equity company has purchased every sports league, indoor sports complex, pool, and summer camp in my area. They then drop prices to destroy the local competition and then buy them too. After that they raise prices.

terminalshort 11mo ago
Have they raised prices yet?
- 7thaccount 11mo ago
  They always do....that's partly how private equity works. Example, buy out a well-known software product with a lot of customers. Then offshore development to cut costs. Then raise prices to milk customers that are too slow to migrate. Eventually the software dies off.
- etempleton 11mo ago
  Depends on what it is and if there is any competition left. Some things have gone up in price where they have a local monopoly. I think their real play is the underlying land value. They are often able to buy distressed businesses with a lot of land cheaply.

MengerSponge 11mo ago

Has there been a FPP about cheerleading? There's billions of dollars in a cornered youth sports market.

bearjaws 11mo ago

Friend works for a vet clinic, got bought by PE 2 years ago. Routine layoffs, increased costs, and worse quality of service have crept in over the past 6 months. Average turnover went from 4 years to 1 year, hes one of the last few people who are there from when they were purchased.

terminalshort 11mo ago
If this is true, why don't they go out of business? I just don't buy the argument that PE takes over businesses and makes them strictly worse. You don't make money doing that.
- t-writescode 11mo ago
  How many vet clinics do you know about? How often do you take your pet to the vet? Are there any “first visitors” events you need to do? If someone is going to the vet once a year for blood work and a rabies vaccine; and there’s only like 3 in the whole city, you’re probably not going to rotate between them. What if the next one is even worse? I have left a single vet over “bad behavior” and most of the other times it’s been over moving and things getting too far away. The reality is most of their “getting worse” and “increased prices”, etc, is missed because most people come in once a year, so changes over time aren’t especially visible.
- lotsofpulp 11mo ago
  You certainly can. It depends what kind of investors you can find. There is often a lag between the time sellers make changes to the business and the collective buyers' reaction to those changes, so if you can line up investors (whether it be equity or fixed income), then you can turn long term good will into short term cash for yourself. For example, the business in the comment above might be selling veterinarian services, but the new owner's business is actually selling cash flow. The veterinarian services are just a means to an end, so it could be possible to take the built up good will and convert that to cash flow by cutting costs/raising prices in the short term, and then selling the new and improved cash flow. You might ask, who would buy from this person again when they know the underlying business is being trashed? The answer is usually dumb money, such as defined benefit pension funds where the investor and the beneficiary are far disconnected. As long as it looks like due diligence happened, everyone can kind of get away richer in the short term with no one to stop them. The hard part is lining up the investors, that requires being in the right networks.

bell-cot 11mo ago

In theory, the parents could just vote their feet. In practice, humans are frogs, and eager to prove their fitness as the pot of water grows hotter and hotter.

tylergetsay 11mo ago
The kids want to be part of the team. A parent saying no to a kid because of $50 is cool in theory, but in practice...

triceratops 11mo ago

Private equity being able to buy up everything is a stark example of the level of wealth inequality in our society.

anthem2025 11mo ago

[dead]

underlipton 11mo ago

Considering that these people are the class that use youth sports credentials to sneak their mediocre kids into top schools, the situation is bound to get interesting. Tension at the fundraiser ever since Bob priced Janice out of her son's cheap in to UPenn. She's going to have to actually make a donation now.

yieldcrv 11mo ago

This article is about deterring everyone from being on their phones the whole time during the event Most of the people here would be for varying forms of these deterrents in a VC model or some other potentially non-monetized user experience, if it was independent of the owner of the game

purplezooey 11mo ago

Part of the reason PE succeeds is their choice of things that have a large or lengthy startup cost or other supply restrictions. Most towns will support only 1 hockey arena. Or lately, with veterinarians. New supply is complex and doesn't appear overnight. If PE is to be controlled (so they don't ruin everything), we need to lessen the barriers to create more supply, like in housing. Also, perhaps it would be good to make them actually pay some taxes, if only to mitigate a fraction of the problems they cause. PE is sort of like cigarettes. They exist, and do damage to everyone.

squigz 11mo ago
If PE causes so many problems and needs to be controlled, why not... control it? Regulate it heavily, or ban it outright, or make it very difficult for them to own a large portion of businesses in any given area, etc, etc It's just the "remove barriers to do X" arguments tends to be used to justify removing important regulations that protect consumers, or the environment, or institutional integrity - all of which may indeed help the little guys, but it also certainly helps the big guys. I'm also wary of the idea that regulations and the like are the real issue small businesses have a hard time of things - and not just that operating a business has become more expensive/difficult in the modern age (even after taking out regulations), as well as the simple fact that big businesses can, for example, tank losses for a lot longer than a small business in order to win out a market. How would less regulation for the smaller businesses help situations like that?