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Private equity bought America's essential services
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Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When it was time to renew our support contract had tripled in price. Currently in PE hell myself. Company I work for was bought out few years ago when the owner cashed out. Right out of the gate it was a numbers go up game. New sales person was hired and their first order of business was - drum roll please - triple prices! Customers balked. Some walked. In addition, some employee benefits evaporated, vacation time…
It’s interesting how accurate this is to my experience back in like 2015/2016. Almost verbatim the same playbook. If they all utilize the same playbook, it seems like there’s an opportunity to use AI + skills playbook to trim the fat and streamline these PEs firms. I’m sure it could reduce headcount, lower PE management fees, etc
Replacing parts of PE firms with AI is so far from being a useful suggestion here.
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
When it's an essential service for "everyone", and the economics make healthy competition unworkable, the traditional solutions have been municipal ownership and publicly regulated utilities. Those include Fire Departments, Water & Sewer Dept's, Electric & Gas companies, ...
> Those include Fire Departments I remember watching a discussion about privatizing the local fire department aka the town pays a private company to run the fire department. Opposition folks use the line: "You used to have a shield on your building that denoted you had paid for fire coverage. The old fire departments would drive past the unshielded buildings while fighting the fires." (this is, of course, no longer t…
This is fairly recent. And of course even if you have coverage, there's no real guarantees.
Grants Pass, Oregon, has privatized fire. And there's three companies that service it, one is good, one is alright and the other... well, I was going to tell you to watch a YouTube video but after years its been deleted. Some hints: Title "Worst Fire Department in America". They roll up to a fully involved house fire with two engines that are 50+ years old, are hamstrung by the fact that they are staffed with kids in jeans and wildland coats (bunker gear, let alone SCBA, are nowhere to be seen), actually getting water on the fire is an issue because 1) someone has to sit in the cab to keep their foot on the throttle to give the pump any power (this "notmally" is controlled from the panel) and even then the pump is screaming at 3000+ rpm about to die any minute (this is maybe 2, 2.5 times what the pump runs at), there's no sense of strategy.
They call for mutual aid from Rural/Metro who shows up, helps them get a little ground on the fire, only to be told to leave the scene (so the company doesn't have to pay them) and the fire predictably takes over. It was horrific.
At least, though after too many of these calls, the Oregon Fire Marshal actually de-certified this company.
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, buddy, lemme tell you, every old person you ever knew, if they had the good luck to have bought a house in California in the 80s or older for kopecks, that they pay basically no taxes on, and then will go onto leave in a completely dilapidated state to sell for $1.5m... suddenly they're not talking about the morality of their windfall, right? How do you not see that?
First, I’m not talking about boomers. Second, if I were, those same people paid taxes on that house for decades. Is it not okay for that rate to fall in their latter years? If they sell, they then pay taxes on that sale amount. Intergenerational war is stupid. Why be angry because someone lived in a time they gave them a benefit? In the case of the boomers, they were also the generation beaten by cops, water cannoned…
all i'm saying is that the complete thought they have in their mind is, "the way i got mine is the most moral"
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is local doctor's office going to IPO? An IPO is just selling to the public instead of a private buyer. Not to mention the amount of paperwork and ongoing reporting requirements of actually IPOing. Talking to a single buyer is easier than arranging an IPO and I would imagine the diligence far less onerous.
My point is, if not PE, how do people expect boomers to exit from their businesses?
Don't they have heirs or younger friends interested?
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#566This is an SEO AI-slop article on an AI-slop publication. The bottom of the article advertises the SEO company. Its goal is to be engagement bait to generate plausible backlinks to rank higher in web search.
If it sounds substantial, it’s because it’s paraphrasing actual reporting, or it’s hallucinating. I found one of article it’s plagiarizing [1]. Other “articles” on the same site link to the real sources that the AI is regurgitating.
The topic is interesting and discussion is thoughtful, but I’m saddened to see it under a fake article like this.
[1]: The intro is an AI rewording of this: https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/12/08/burnout-fire-tru...
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
FTA: "Although paying for excess hours can cost less than hiring new cops, overtime contributes to future pension costs.
“If your last few years before you retire, you work 300, 400 hours of overtime and bump up your pay by $40,000, that all goes into the salary that your pension is based on,” said Ana Champeny, director of city studies at New York’s Citizens Budget Commission."
So yeah, it seems like a bad idea to be able to scam the pension system like that.
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is, if not PE, how do people expect boomers to exit from their businesses?
Don't they have heirs or younger friends interested?
My friends, whose parents own wealthy businesses were not well set up to take over those companies.
Some finished college and went back to work for their parents, but the dad told them “no, you can have a job within my company, but I’m not gonna hand it to you because I’m still young and you know only 25 years ahead of you in life.” In china they say, “when the grandfather dies, the children prosper.”
The kids either stayed working for their dad, giving him additional agency over their lives as he controls their career, or the kids left to go start their own business within their means using his funding.
Other kids just have no interest in their parent’s industry. They decided not to be a dentist because they like art more. They don’t wanna run a landscaping company, they would rather work for Google in an air-conditioned office and a 40 hour week job.
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
A measles vaccine is actually effective at containing the spread. People with natural immunity should not have been required to get a vaccine for something they were already inoculated for and had immunity that was greater than what you could get from the vaccines
There was no way to trust someone saying "I have natural immunity, I had COVID" when the crisis was happening, even more given how it was used politically to fan the flames for political gain. Stop thinking about individuals, think about systems, and societies. Given that people were refusing basic instructions (keeping distance, for example); that people dying of COVID in a hospital didn't believe the disease was re…
You could trust them by letting them show you a blood test that showed antigens.
Re: Private equity bought America's essential services
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that slavery is a free lunch that is only banned on moral grounds is wrong. Slavery is bad economics. If you want your economy to grow, paying workers is not bad. Economic growth isn't zero sum.
Capitalists are selfish, and have short planning horizons. For a capitalist, slavery is absolutely rational. The only reason why they don't do it today is because it's illegal.
Which is why it was the pseudoaristocraric south which provided the main source of abolitionists and the first to abolish it. Is what I would say in opposite world.