Who employs your doctor? Increasingly, a private equity firm
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&#x27;s money without giving them what you promised.<p>For PE however, they&#x27;ve found a way around it, using the machinery available in the economy. For instance, once you are able to pay out a dividend that covers your cost of purchase, whatever comes next doesn&#x27;t matter a whole lot from an investment point of view. You may have saddled the target with a huge debt, but that&#x27;s a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose situation. If the firm does ok, PE actually win more. If it goes bankrupt, oh well. PE firm is still doing fine.<p>The risk is entirely on all the other interested parties: employees and customers.<p>But because we only have one side of the &quot;created value&quot; balance, all we can really see is some PE guys get paid. We don&#x27;t see the other side, which is pretty hard to untangle. You can make an argument that everyone is better off with society organized this way, but you can&#x27;t really ignore that many people seem to think they&#x27;re worse off in this world.