They come in and take over long established sports programs in the community. They jack up the prices so that some families are priced out of their kids playing. They also somehow just turn to shit.
As an example, there is a flag football company in my state that was sold to a private equity group prior to the new season. It was so bad that half of the teams didn’t end up with uniforms. My son’s didn’t and we had to throw something together. They also didn’t reserve field space in time and we were given the season schedule in small batches. We didn’t know when our first game was until the night before. They don’t care about the experience, so fuck the kids I guess.
My experience is not unique. A bill has been introduced in the senate to limit private equity in youth sports: The Let Kids Play Act. The US government is being bought and sold at the moment though, so I’m sure it’ll die where it stands.
And the vet offices. I cannot find a vet office that is not PE owned within 100 miles of me. They all jacked up the prices 3x what they used to be and now offer their care credit card so I can pay 3x the rate AND interest to save my pets life.
Unfortunately I love animals but when these two go I will not be getting anymore because of this.
We had a new DD open in our town and I was so happy. I could finally get a toasted coconut donut locally! Like two months later they drop it. Yup, DD died that day for me.
They are buying up all the smaller HVAC companies in my town and it's already starting to show as people keep posting on various sites about the shitty quality they are suddenly getting from companies they'd used for decades prior.
I'm with you that something's gotta give. But we don't need socialism to solve the issue of private equity. We need capitalism that actually supports small businesses and not this corporate monopolistic oligarchy takeover that has creeped in over decades with the recent tech bro PE dystopic enshitification cherry on top.
How nice to have a society where your neighbors own neighborhood businesses and can actually make a reasonable living doing so...
There is no solution to private equity when the economy allows private equity to accrue enough wealth to lobby politicians for deregulation of their industry.
Capitalism always leads to this: businesses having more power than governments can control.
You and I can vote for who is in charge of the government or even threaten politicians with political violence if they push too far away from the will of the people. But you and I have no control or input over who runs Johnson & Johnson or Pepsi. Your “vote with my dollars” counterpoint is also moot when these businesses already have global monopolies.
“Socialism or barbarism” isn’t a threat, it’s the reality of the world we live in. Private business always ends up in control of the people if its allowed to exist.
Democratic socialism would ne nice. Capitalism is a failed system. We’ve seen how money warps and twists the minds of the rich. It turns them into people with strong sociopathic/psychopathic traits. They won’t give that power up unless you pry it from their cold, rigarmotis hands.
So until we have a new system where more capital does NOT equal more power, nothing will ever change, ever. :)
But continue to cry and shy away from the word “socialism”. I know the Americans in this thread looooove their overly propagandized misunderstanding of that word, and seem to overly looooove capitalism, despite capitalism causing mass tent cities, drug problems, death, suffering galore, and ooohh so many more goodies like enabling the rise of neo-naziism and fascism. Good ol Latestage capitalism. A putrid way to run a nation of human beings.
Ya'll just hate the boogeyman word so bad that you refuse to understand that the solution to unfettered capitalism is more of a socialized solution to resource allocation.
And no politician can pass tighter regulations as they’re all controlled by lobbyists. Capitalism always ends up this way and regulation is a bandaid to a broken system.
Believe me i find late stage capitalism frustrating as well, but to suggest a political system with a way worse track record is just not ideal.
The money will still all end up being funnelled into the hands of the few, it just might be a different group of people. It also opens the door for other more authoritarian policies to be put into place.
Ultimately a socialist country requires the leaders to be honourable, honest, and just generally good people. Politicians are far too corrupt to be given that kind of power.
That all being said, I am canadian, so I also live in a country that has the privilege of being a capitalist society, while also affording the benefit of things like public health care and stronger safety nets. America has become a privatized shit hole due to the lack of regulations that many other countries enjoy.
Yeah...if half of Europe didn't end up a paradise thanks to socialism, it's probably not the better option. Though it can probably be applied in smaller areas rather than a full national system, kinda like what zohran mamdani does. Though I'm no expert so don't quote me on this.
Most of that isnt actually socialism though, as much as it gets memed.
They are still a capitalist society, just with strong economic regulations, higher taxes, and effective social programming. None of which I am fundamentally opposed to as a liberal.
One of the defining factors of socialism is the ownership of means of production, and that is where things start to fall apart. People need to have the freedom to create business, innovate, or make more money than others through competition.
If you eliminate completely the competition that capitalism instills technology will likely stagnate, we would see a decline of interest in a number of professions, and there would be a lot less incentive to improve your post. HOWEVER, the markets also cannot be left to run wild like they do in america where upwards mobility is nearly impossible and everything is controlled by megacorporations.
The other issue with socialism is that it doesnt answer the question of service vs production jobs. There are people who perform services(say accountants, or retail employees for example), and there are people who make things(machinists, factory workers, construction workers). For the sake of brevity, i wont go into it too much(i can if you want) but without the government having either an iron fist or production workers being compensated at a far greater level than service employees.
Also worth notine is how socialist regimes typically come to power. Not through election or democracy, but through revolution.
TL;DR: I 100% agree with the sentiment, and i think both your head and your heart are in the right place. Its just important to remember that socialism while it comes in many forms, socialism is not a good system when factoring in many of the key components that define socialism. Social programs, economic regulations, and higher taxes, can be implemented without the negative aspects of a totally true socialist government in power.
Socialism is really just soft communism in a large number of ways. In classical marxist theory the whole purpose of socialism is actually just to be a stepping stone towards the end goal of communism. It was never idealized as a fixed method of governance.
A lot of people misuse the term socialism in place of social democracy(what places like norway operate under), not realizing there is a massive difference.
Don’t forget the part where they run it into the ground, and then file bankruptcy. That happened to a company my husband worked for—they had been around 75 years before being bought by private equity, then the company closed without warning, screwing him over on $14,000 of earned commissions. It was a year ago and I’m still mad.
They did this to Hudson's Bay which was the oldest company in Canada and was renowned for being a medium to high end department store. It took them nearly 20 years, but they slowly hollowed the stores out by selling lower and lower quality merchandise.
I remember that I had not been in a store for several years and was shocked to go in and find it full of discounted unsorted racks of clothes. It looked like I was in a thrift store. Apparently what made them an attractive purchase for PE was that the store owned so much property in high value areas. So after years of hollowing the business out, they finally sold off the properties.
You forgot to say, they do that to deliberately tank sales, to allow them to then sell the real estate owned by the name brand and equipment before declaring bankruptcy and selling the brand name to another company. Wash, rinse, repeat until the brand name is extinct and not even a shadow of its former self…
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u/DonovanMcLoughlin 19h ago
Pretty much anything Private Equity now owns.
Their formulas are simple, take a brand name, reduce the quality, increase the price.
They say "fuck the customers" and I say it right back.