121–130 of 415 posts
To me it seems like PE has simply discovered a loophole in the system. We want a system where creating value for people is rewarded, but PE has found a way to legally get the rewards without improving society. Normally this is called a scam or a fraud, and there are laws for standard stuff like taking people's money without giving them what you promised. For PE however, they've found a way around it, using the machin…
> To me it seems like PE has simply discovered a loophole in the system. The fundamental loophole is that "the free market" is practically a religion in the United States (the so-called Invisible Hand taking the role of a god doling out rewards and punishments), and a significant portion of the population is vehemently opposed to any regulation of capital. You can even see this attitude in some of the comments here,…
At least in the US we (try) and make donations public. The places where it’s “banned” are black holes.
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The lasik surgeon in your example isn’t profiting by denying care. Their profit does not increase by declining service.
Is a PE hospital profiting when it denies care too? How is that different from a lasik surgeon denying care?
To me it seems like PE has simply discovered a loophole in the system. We want a system where creating value for people is rewarded, but PE has found a way to legally get the rewards without improving society. Normally this is called a scam or a fraud, and there are laws for standard stuff like taking people's money without giving them what you promised. For PE however, they've found a way around it, using the machin…
More like running many kinds of businesses has become more hassle than its worth. Medical malpractice premiums are very high, insurance payouts are stingier, and medicine has become more capital intensive than ever as newer medicines and diagnostics increasingly dominate, along with an aging population that needs more intensive care. Doctors report being more burnt out than ever. It's an attractive proposition to out…
It is involved because there is slack on the system in the form of downtime, and it figured out that if it just buys up all the doctor's offices, makes the doctors rush through the cases, and keeps them busy seeing patients every working minute, the practice and it's owners will make way more money.
Quality of care will decline, but unless the doctor is actively doing surgery, or something else risky, whatever money they lose due to the decline in quality will be more than offset by grinding through patients quicker.
It's almost impossible to sue a doctor for malpractice in Texas, yet the exact same problem with PE is happening there, too.
Vets are another example where this is happening - and again, it's not because of frequent $XYZ,000 malpractice settlements. Anything that's not billable hours seeing patients is considered to be damage by the system, and capitalism tries to route around it.
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Nobody should profit from healthcare at all. I don't care if doctors and nurses and board members and janitors all make fuck you money, or if hospitals reinvest tons of money to perpetually have state of the art facilities. But the profit dynamic is too much.
How would vaccines and new drugs be invented without any profit incentive?
To me it seems like PE has simply discovered a loophole in the system. We want a system where creating value for people is rewarded, but PE has found a way to legally get the rewards without improving society. Normally this is called a scam or a fraud, and there are laws for standard stuff like taking people's money without giving them what you promised. For PE however, they've found a way around it, using the machin…
I think it should be illuminating to balance narratives like this with simple questions along classical economic lines: 1. Why is private equity ending up with all these resources? Who is selling to them and why? Why didn't this happen before? It's not like PE is new. 2. When PE loads up a firm with supposedly unsustainable billions of debt, someone is on the other side of that transaction, lending the billions. Who…
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I'm quite familiar with causal analysis [1]. What are your qualifications in the field? The paper performs half a dozen standard robustness checks [2]. Which exactly do you believe are missing? Be specific, and include reasons why we should reasonably expect the opposite outcome. [1] Senior ML Researcher @ Google, top 3 PhD, etc. [2] Placebo analysis, instrumental variables, MTE analysis, breaking down the effect int…
That's nice of you to list where you work. On HN there are many qualified and intelligent people, so we generally prefer to talk about the issues directly. > half a dozen standard robustness checks My original comment isn't arguing they used tools improperly, it's an epistemology argument. It's about the limitations of what information could even be gathered from this kind of study.
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I think it should be illuminating to balance narratives like this with simple questions along classical economic lines: 1. Why is private equity ending up with all these resources? Who is selling to them and why? Why didn't this happen before? It's not like PE is new. 2. When PE loads up a firm with supposedly unsustainable billions of debt, someone is on the other side of that transaction, lending the billions. Who…
The victims never consent to the sale. They have no say in the transactions that victimize them. You're looking at two parties making a transaction and assume that those are the only two parties that are part of the transaction.
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How would vaccines and new drugs be invented without any profit incentive?
A large majority of people going into scientific research do so for a love of the subject and not to become rich. They just want to make enough money to live a decent life and pursue knowledge.
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Nobody should profit from healthcare at all. I don't care if doctors and nurses and board members and janitors all make fuck you money, or if hospitals reinvest tons of money to perpetually have state of the art facilities. But the profit dynamic is too much.
How are people going to make fuck you money if there's no profit?