Private equity bought America's essential services • Hacker News Board

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#581

Post by billbrown » Sat, May 30, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

Sebguer wrote: post #274

xrd wrote: post #233

See also Matt Stoller on fire truck private equity: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private-equity-fire...

this article is literally just an LLM regurgitation of Stoller / Musharbash's reporting and research on the topic.

And it blames the sidelining of more than half of LA's fire trucks at production delays for new fire trucks? Well, I say "blames" generously—what it really does is "insinuates" since it never connects the consolidation back to the original charge.

Moreover, one company having control of 44% of the market would suggest that there might still be other options available.

What trash.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#582

Post by lizardking » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 12:21 AM UTC

itake wrote: post #367

lizardking wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going the IPO route is not an option for most of the companies being acquired (vets, plumbers, electricians, construction companies, etc.)

If not PE / LBO, what is the alternative?

I didn't say there was an alternative

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#583

Post by regularization » Mon, Jun 01, 2026, 6:22 PM UTC

subtlejellyfish wrote: post #502

regularization wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pensions fund a significant part of PE and they do so because they need around a 7% return in order to look solvent. Pensions fund PE because PE can do a short term cooking of the books in order to smooth out the growth curve. So the return is usually positive each year, not raising problems. Also what does significant mean? Pensions are the main mechanism non-wealthy people are investing in PE. Being that millions…

Significant meaning many PE funds are overwhelmingly (like 75+%) funded by pensions and sovereign wealth funds. Its been awhile since I worked there, but CalPERS and CalSTRS were the two biggest LPs Blackstone had while I was there.

Right, but the CalPERS is sliced into over 2 million pieces, whereas a family office or gulf sovereign wealth fund has much less divvying up. It looks big until you see it has to be divided 2 million ways, as opposed to maybe 20 ways with a family office. The distribution is unequal. But most asset classes are like that, although less so for a single family house.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#584

Post by hdndjsbbs » Tue, Jun 02, 2026, 3:35 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #571

hdndjsbbs wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government guaranteed basic human needs are met for every person (food, shelter, healthcare) there would be less of a need for giant pools of public money (pensions, insurance) sloshing around. Mass index fund investment is basically socialism but stupid. My retirement money is going to get invested in the SpaceX IPO against my will. The market is not efficiently allocating capital, it's structured to allow el…

Where the do you think the government gets their tax money from if not the market? That is like saying we shouldn't kill animals from meat, we should just buy it from the store.

The government needs money to buy products from the market. If the government controlled the means of production, they wouldn't need money because they would just make things themselves.

In a hybrid scenario where there is still a market, we would ... collect more taxes to pay for this stuff? It seems like you came up with a pithy response and tried to back up into a critique that doesn't make sense.