Private Equity firms should be banned, or at least much more highly regulated. They’re parasites that suck the life out of everything they buy to get the most money they can for selling it off in pieces. Any company they buy is almost guaranteed to atrophy into non-existence under their ownership. They’re disgusting leeches that contribute absolutely nothing to society.
Every HVAC and plumber in town has been bought up by private equity. They collude on service prices and prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Absolutely horrid for the consumer but line go up so who cares amirite…
With a functioning government, price fixing and collusion would be investigated by the FTC or FBI, if I recall.
IMO mergers should be illegal. They don’t provide anything positive.
I’m fine with mergers in a highly competitive field with plenty of players. Once competition starts drying up, so should the legality of mergers.
Privately owned hospitals are an excellent example of why essential public services shouldn’t be privatised.
Imagine privatising the health service into a for-profit system that answers to its owners, shareholders, and/or “market desires”?! That’s an obvious recipe for disaster.
Same with privatising prisons, or schools, or roads, or the fire brigade, or water suppliers.
I have a little litmus test for whether something should be in public ownership paid for by taxes because having it be effective and in line with the needs of the nation are worth the cost (e.g. if we stopped maintaining our roads we’d save money up until the roads crumbled and the nation fell apart);
Would it be a disaster on a national scale impacting the whole country if this service went away? If so, it should be Nationalised.
Water service shut down? Everybody dies.
Road management shut down? Roads crumble, vehicles can no longer get around, and the backbone of everything collapses. Country collapses.
Internet connectivity shut down? Huge economic and social collapse across the nation, Country may collapse.
Schools shut down? Education suffers immensely, country is deeply hurt by a sort of self inflicted brain drain on a scale never before seen. Country suffers greatly.
Power grid shut down? Chaos, death, country collapses.
Telephone/mobile phone grid shut down? Communication severely hampered, people die, economic disaster…
Etc etc …
If a service is essential, truly essential to the health of the nation (as opposed to a “nice to have but not a disaster if it goes away” service), it should be Nationalised so that it is maintained properly and at a reasonable cost, rather than price gouged while cutting features and functionality to further profits.
There’s no point arguing that private equity firms (a particularly evil lot btw) shouldn’t own hospitals. That’s thinking way, way, WAY too small.
Hospitals shouldn’t be privately owned AT ALL.
Fully agree but where does that stops? Logistics for food & waste? Whiteout either country stops and people die qui soon. Agriculture ? Siderugy? Raw resources ? It’s a system so sooner or later most things impacts others. I’m saying this while I’m moving « to the left » as I grow old and I sometimes ponder how bad or good all that would be.
They also perform extremely predatory billing. They will send the bill, clock 30 days, then send a collection letter. You can be in small claims court 60-90 days after a doctor’s visit, all so they can collect legal fees.
For some reason, I was reading “stuffing cats” in the headline and was a bit confused. I’m happy I was wrong and the cats are alright, but it’s still bad news.
Cats, being liquid, stuff themselves.
