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Private equity bought America's essential services

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Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#431

Post by red-iron-pine »

yareally wrote: post #410
Balgair wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae For the curious, above is how Crassus died. TLDR: Got over his skis and mad with power and money. Decides to invade Parthia. Gets wrecked by horse archers. That ends up being typical for Romans, but this was the first-ish time that happened. Some of those captured legionaries may have ended up in China, though it is unlikely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian#Lost_Ro…

> Gets wrecked by horse archers. That ends up being typical for Romans I don't think the Western Romans ever really learned from it did they? The Huns ended up wreaking them pretty hard. I know the Eastern Romans did learn at some point out of necessity by creating their own professional units and hiring mercs.

massed horse archers wrecked pretty much everyone constantly until the 1600s

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#432

Post by red-iron-pine »

no_wizard wrote: post #264
muddi900 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pre 1980s standards were ridiculous though. However, even if the US moves to some 3 quarters of the way towards now would be a huge improvement. The "consumer harm" standard is idiotic.

I don’t see how they were ridiculous on the face it. The economy during that regulatory period grew into a huge juggernaut. Most of the R&D that laid the future of the world happened during that period. The middle class grew to its largest portion during that period. I don’t think the economy was hamstrung in the least

> I don’t think the economy was hamstrung in the least

post WW2 the world basically outside of the US blew up and the US pumped a ton of money into europe+asia to bolster it.

it's easy to be #1 when everything else burnt down

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#433

Post by joha4270 »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #363
Balgair wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae For the curious, above is how Crassus died. TLDR: Got over his skis and mad with power and money. Decides to invade Parthia. Gets wrecked by horse archers. That ends up being typical for Romans, but this was the first-ish time that happened. Some of those captured legionaries may have ended up in China, though it is unlikely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian#Lost_Ro…

so instead of simply financing military operation and staying home, he went in himself? in some sense I even respect that decision

Not going probably never even crossed his mind. Social status in Roman society was very strongly influenced by military success. He was a previously successful general.

Historically (with all the accuracy you get when you summarize all of history) raising an army and not leading it was effectively telling everyone that you should be replaced by whoever did lead it.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#435

Post by kridsdale1 »

cameldrv wrote: post #265
spyckie2 wrote: post #118

The irony is that PEs exist largely because of pension funds. So to sum it up (not so nicely) we are transferring value from our current standard of living to pay for retirement checks for our old folks. Pensions fund a significant part of PE and they do so because they need around a 7% return in order to look solvent. If they do not have the higher PE returns, they basically go out if cash in 10 years and everyone w…

You often see them “monetizing the brand.” That’s a nice way of saying “betraying customer trust.” They buy a company that’s known for high quality and then cut the quality. They can keep charging the high prices for a while until people realize that it’s not what it once was. After a while, higher end customers realize what’s happened and stop buying. Then the brand typically becomes a mid market brand and they star…

It sounds like you’re on the cusp of an entropy model of commerce.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#436

Post by kridsdale1 »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #431
yareally wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gets wrecked by horse archers. That ends up being typical for Romans I don't think the Western Romans ever really learned from it did they? The Huns ended up wreaking them pretty hard. I know the Eastern Romans did learn at some point out of necessity by creating their own professional units and hiring mercs.

massed horse archers wrecked pretty much everyone constantly until the 1600s

Fighter Jets with missiles are the modern version of the same concept.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#437

Post by emj »

protonbob wrote: post #345
piva00 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lowered the chances, and in case of getting sick it also massively lowered the chances of getting the worst side-effects, exactly like any other vaccine does. It's a shame that even highly educated populations do not understand a basic fact of immunology.

Yeah what a shame. I never claimed that it didn't lower the chances of side effects. This is what was claimed. "You become a dead end to the virus." — Fauci, 2021 This was the reality "[Vaccines against respiratory viruses produce] decidedly suboptimal protection." — Fauci, Cell Host & Microbe journal article, 2023 "The durability of protection against infection and hence transmission was relatively limited." — Fauci…

There are so many things that went wrong during the pandemic. You were not lied to, that means someone has intent.

The lesson was not that vaccines are bad imho. I do not live in the US, so I just find it tiresome to listen to you guys blaming everything on people. There was no right way.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#438

Post by braincat31415 »

jordanb wrote: post #402
braincat31415 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. I own a property in the gold coast area, and my property values have barely changed in the last 20 years. I only see an insane increase in real estate taxes and assessments. These are the things that price renters out, plus the Chicago housing regulations that leave the landlords without any leverage under pretty much any circumstances and force the risk to be reflected in the rent. Currently net profit from ren…

So sell and buy 10 year bonds. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The Gold Cost isn't suffering a shortage of landlords.

Well, I personally prefer having physical assets a lot more than cash. Just mentioning that to show that math does not favor ownership, provided that the rates stay high.

Note though that there is never a shortage of demand in that area for rentals either, so I'll keep increasing the rent following increases in property taxes and assessments, and people will pay. If anyone has a problem with that, let them bring this up with the City of Chicago and the Cook County.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#439

Post by Karrot_Kream »

gosub100 wrote: post #414
jmyeet wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about that comment and I don't think it makes sense. When it comes down to it, PE is really just doing two things: 1. Taking advantage of a pricing inefficiency; and/or 2. Using local monopolies, inelastic demand and regulation to jack up prices. But what powers PE is the LBO (leveraged buyout). That is, you buy csome company with borrowed money and then you borrow against the assets of that compan…

Sort of off topic but I like HN and comments like yours for educating me about subjects I would otherwise know nothing about. Thank you

Please read a book about these things. HN commentary on any form of trending issue (of which PE acquisition is right now in various other social media) tends to be more about the commenter's own value judgement than any form of disciplined analysis. There are many case studies on LBOs and other forms of corporate turnarounds and you won't have social media pageantry affecting your thoughts.

Private Equity/Capital IMO is a pretty fascinating topic and I have some nuanced thoughts on it but this isn't the forum to have that conversation. There are great books out there on it though and I highly suggest reading them.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#440

Post by Twistyfiasco »

throwforfeds wrote: post #388
iboisvert wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bloated pensions I find this characterization offensive. Who is to judge if the defined benefit pension if a primary school teacher or fireman, for example, is bloated? It's part of the negotiated pay package, nothing more or less.

At least here in NYC, a large part of a NYPD officer's pension is calculated based on a 3-year look back from their retirement date, so there is a huge incentive to work as much overtime as possible in order to bump that number in your last few years of service. There are lots of stories of NYPD handing out easy overtime in massive numbers for each other, particularly when they are about to retire. Teachers are the e…

At least in my union defined benefit pension it specifically excludes overtime since that obviously is ripe for abuse. It's just your basic calculation: average of your best 5 years of salary at 2% per year of service.

Is that not the case for police unions in the states?

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