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The upside is to the folks who sold the businesses they owned. Should they be outlawed from selling to certain classes of investor? Which?
by twoodfin 14d ago
The upside is to the folks who sold the businesses they owned.
Should they be outlawed from selling to certain classes of investor? Which?
- Grombobulous 14d agoIt should be more about making certain levels of consolidation and deep erosion of local ownership illegal. We have run this country on an assumption that we must give businesses a high amount of freedom. An argument can be made that businesses have been given too much freedom in our system. We’ve allowed Amazon and Ticketmaster and Walmart to exist and they shouldn’t exist in their present form. Healthcare practices that provide necessary care shouldn’t even really be allowed to be for-profit entities if you ask me. The incentives become too perverse as a result.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- lotsofpulp 14d agoCan you define profit? Would a doctor be allowed to earn more than $200 per hour? $300 per hour? $400 per hour? Is a doctor allowed to be paid per procedure or time? How much would you want to sacrifice your 20s and early 30s? How much would you need to work in the middle of nowhere where your kids won’t have the best opportunities?
- Grombobulous 14d agoI updated my comment, I mean a for-profit entity versus non-profit, which the IRS already defines. Not-for-profit entities can still pay market rate wages to employees and owners.
- tekla 14d agoShould Doctors have a legally enforced max pay? Same with the web devs, max $150K, anything else is just profit driven bullshit right?
- Grombobulous 14d agoNo, not-for-profit entities pay market rate salaries. This is already a well-established system.
- gruez 14d ago>Healthcare practices that provide necessary care shouldn’t even really be allowed to be for-profit entities if you ask me. The incentives become too perverse as a result. Why stop at healthcare? Why not other essentials of life, like food or toilet paper?
- wyre 14d agoHippocratic oath?
- Grombobulous 14d agoYou’re absolutely right. For example, we’ve seen the negative impacts from excessive agricultural consolidation. Many of them already lack profitability without subsidy. Many agricultural products all pass through the same mega-sized processors and entities. Driscoll’s, Tyson, etc. We’ve already made things like water and sanitation non-profit/government owned so the idea of doing more of that for food and essentials isn’t that crazy.
- gruez 14d ago>You’re absolutely right. For example, we’ve seen the negative impacts from excessive agricultural consolidation. Like what? >Many of them already lack profitability without subsidy. That doesn't mean anything without context. How are the non-PE farms doing? >We’ve already made things like water and sanitation non-profit/government owned so the idea of doing more of that for food and essentials isn’t that crazy. sanitation: please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Management,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Management,_Inc. water, but not power, or natural gas?
- Grombobulous 14d agoGoogle “taylor farms cyclospora” or “tyson beef prices shortage” for an example of the problems of highly consolidated processing. I wasn’t talking about private equity farms versus not, I’m generally talking about industry consolidation. Sanitation includes sewers which are typically municipal. Power and natural gas are legal monopolies with strict rules on pricing. There are also public electric utilities such as Cleveland Public Power.
- furytrader 14d ago"We’ve allowed Amazon and Ticketmaster and Walmart to exist and they shouldn’t exist in their present form." Do you realize that when Walmart moves into a community, prices charged for everyday things overall drop significantly, both at Walmart and their competition, which means that poor families are able to buy more with every dollar. What do you have against poor people?
- ButlerianJihad 14d ago> ["poor"] families are able to buy more with every dollar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
- Grombobulous 14d agoAnd the employer with the largest amount of employees using SNAP benefits is… Walmart is subsidized by the government to the tune of $2,000 per employee due to their low wages: https://rmfu.org/taxpayer-dollars-subsidize-wal-mart/ https://rmfu.org/taxpayer-dollars-subsidize-wal-mart/ [1] They then get to skim the other side of those subsidies, too, since they sell so many items that qualify for SNAP and WIC, as well as being one of the largest if not the largest prescription supplier in the country. (25% of Walmart employees qualify for Medicaid https://mafainsurance.com/how-many-walmart-employees-are-on-medicaid.html https://mafainsurance.com/how-many-walmart-employees-are-on-...) So their employees on SNAP and Medicaid turn right around and spend that money inside Walmart. > both at Walmart and their competition What competition? When Walmart comes to town, the competition closes. [1] Probably a lot higher since this article is about 20 years old
- gruez 14d ago>And the employer with the largest amount of employees using SNAP benefits is… >Walmart is subsidized by the government to the tune of $2,000 per employee due to their low wages: https://rmfu.org/taxpayer-dollars-subsidize-wal-mart/ https://rmfu.org/taxpayer-dollars-subsidize-wal-mart/ [1] And what happens if walmart closed up shop? Do those employees magically evaporate and not need benefits? Why are we putting the blame on the employee's best employment option? >What competition? When Walmart comes to town, the competition closes. Why? Because they're sending goon squads to trash all the existing businesses? If walmart replacing "the competition" because they're offering lower prices and consumers are switching, why is this bad?
- jolmg 14d ago> Healthcare practices that provide necessary care shouldn’t even really be allowed to be for-profit entities if you ask me. The incentives become too perverse as a result. You don't need to disallow them for necessary care to be provided. You can just have public healthcare programs. That can look like publicly-owned hospitals or regulation that private hospitals must provide certain services under certain conditions if they want to keep operating. Private healthcare then works to provide more than that basic service that fulfills necessary care, to the benefit of the public that can afford more.
- runako 14d ago> We’ve allowed Amazon and Ticketmaster and Walmart to exist and they shouldn’t exist in their present form. Unpopular knowledge is that these businesses are generally illegal in their current forms under existing US law. The relevant laws are still in effect, they are just rarely enforced. The scale of the lawbreaking runs to the trillions of dollars annually, and it directly harms every US consumer. The illegal conduct is so pervasive that even explaining the existing federal law makes one sound ridiculous, because companies have been explicitly advertising illegal behavior for decades. Because there is no sanction. One of my faves is the notion that $BIG_RETAILER can buy in bulk and get better pricing, which they pass on to the consumer. You may have seen a company advertise something like this. It sounds like smart business! There is an active federal law[1] that explicitly prohibits this arrangement. Lack of enforcement of that law is a factor in the disappearance of the American "high street" and the demise of many small retailers. My #1 call for reform in the US is to simply start enforcing laws, even if doing so makes rich people/companies uncomfortable. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson–Patman_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson–Patman_Act
- gruez 14d ago>1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson–Patman_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson–Patman_Act I'm not a lawyer, but a cursory search shows there's a bunch of carveouts. It's not a straightforward ban on all favorable pricing for big players. For instance, if there's an actual cost justification (eg. bigger buyer = more efficient shipping) that's allowed. Same with offering volume discounts that are available to all buyers. That's not to say everything's above board, but it's not as simple as "wow big box stores get better pricing than mom and pop shops, so there must be federal laws being violated".
- runako 13d agoI hesitated before linking that specific statute because I suspected someone would parse it as you have. Not a bad thing, just distracts from the larger point that the US government currently has tools (of which Robinson-Patman is only one) to prevent & reverse the extreme consolidation that harms every American. In the context of this article -- we may not need a new ban specific to preventing private equity from owning medical practices. We could simply enforce existing laws around e.g. market consolidation, consumer harm, etc. Adding a new law to also be ignored seems silly.
- mondomondo 14d ago[dead]
- EA-3167 14d agoIf the business is a hospital? Yes.
- georgemcbay 14d ago> If the business is a hospital? I'd expand that to any type of business that has effectively inelastic demand through the ability to hold people emotionally hostage. So, for example, in addition to hospitals also include veterinarians, funeral services, family planning, etc. Soulless PE vultures should be barred from all of this.
- EA-3167 14d agoThat’s a good expansion of the premise, I’d support your idea wholeheartedly. Let PE raid chain restaurants and toy stores, not essential services where they add no value and only extract wealth.
- shermantanktop 14d agoFuneral services in the US got aggressively consolidated already, decades ago. Look up SCI - owns over 1,500 funeral homes and 400 cemeteries.
- PyWoody 14d agoShould they be outlawed from selling to certain classes of investor? Which? Yes. This is already the case for law firms as they have to be owned and managed by lawyers, in most jurisdictions.