[lordleft]

Interesting. I'd like to see more action against the financialization of many other industries / domains, like healthcare and even housing, that I feel are not well served by a purely-market driven perspective. One wonders what the Private Equity firm's intention was here.

[markovbot]

> One wonders what the Private Equity firm's intention was here.

no, i don't think anyone's wondering that. private equity firms have one purpose and one purpose only.

[munk-a]

I guess it might be fairer to then say "I wonder why nobody says out loud that such an acquisition will definitely lead to a decline in service for consumers".

[kilna]

"decline in service for consumers" -> squeezing the maximum quantity of blood nickels from suffering animals and their owners.

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

All the people with the platform to say that are on the take.

[arrosenberg]

They can’t hear over Robert Bork’s echo.

[newsclues]

Generally people with knowledge of shady stuff have a financial incentive not to speak out.

[aosmith]

Make the pile of money bigger no matter the cost?

[markovbot]

no matter the cost to the rest of society. obviously they're trying to reduce costs for their investors

[MrZongle2]

And that is, of course, to put kittens to sleep.

(I joke, your point is well taken)

[bombcar]

There's a number of these where there's a desire to make it appear there is competition, but actually all are owned by the same conglomerate.

I would be 0% surprised if similar things haven't been done or tried in optometry, dentists, etc.

[eclipticplane]

To a lesser extent you can throw funeral homes into that mix. A few companies control many of them and buy more of them every year. They keep their local names. You still work with "Jacobs And Sons Funeral Services, established 1912" but really you're just paying Service Corporation International.

[bombcar]

Yeah, and a big part of this is they used to be generational family businesses, but now the "and Sons" often don't want to carry on, so after they've serviced Jacobs they sell.

[3maj]

For the last 5-10 years one of the most popular strategies for mid-sized PE firms has been the dental clinic roll up.

[monkeybutton]

Funny you should say that: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-private-equ...

[webnrrd2k]

I go to a small optometry practice, and I was told by my optometrist, several years ago, that it was a common thing for practices to be bought up by large corporations. They then sweat-shop the employees in an attempt to extract maximum returns. My optometrist didn't want to work like that so he (and his partners) didn't sell. But, in Southern California, it's a common thing for optometrist to build up a practice and flip it to larger companies.

[bombcar]

You can make a moderately comfortable bonus living this way IF the companies are remote and your clients are local - build business, flip to company, wait a bit, start a new one, wait for the old to implode, get your customers back, and repeat.

Similar to a guy I knew who sold his restaurant four times, each time buying it back for a song from the new owner who couldn't make it work out.

[riahi]

See luxottica and their “brands”.

[mywittyname]

They even own the insurance company, EyeMed...

[bombcar]

I honestly think at some point this gets to the place of "operating under false pretences" to have so many brands that are actually the same company behind it.

Perhaps "brought to you by HOLDING_COMPANY_X" should be required.

[bobthepanda]

Starbucks owns a bunch of “independent” shops

[samstave]

BlackStone

Vangauard

Etc.

There have been COUNTLESS videos about the above and how much they own.

These are the monopolies we should be going after.

[colinmhayes]

Index funds almost never vote with their shares. To say that vanguard having equity ownership without utilizing their voting rights leads to market failures seems incredibly naive.

[bombcar]

Bogle of Vanguard fame actually warned against the problem that Vanguard and Vanguard like things could cause: http://johncbogle.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/n...

[samstave]

Sure, until you actually look at the matrices of controlling board / ceo / congress seats these guys hold, and what has been recorded throughout history in what they do when investing...

Its incredibly naive to think that they arent actively affecting prices.

"What are you talking about, these guys are JOB CREATORS! they only invest in index holds!"

Yeah... good luck deciphering whats really happening when you think such.

---

I don't give a shit what you think about John Oliver, but his "Corp Consolidation" piece shows you just how these units operate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00wQYmvfhn4

By funding of the smaller guys to be bought out by their bigger players... they then control the play of that industry...

Then they ensure that they all buy in-network shit... so all profits stay in the family. Incestuventure Capitalism. (And no its not about "economies at scale on pricing"

"Economies at SCALING of Price Fixing" <-- Truth.

Food. Oil. Housing. Transport. Healthcare. Education. Policing/Politics ("Safety").

OWNING THE MASLOWS HIERARCHY OF NEEDS. That's their business model.

[whimsicalism]

That's... just not true. Vanguard absolutely votes its shares.

[jjtheblunt]

What? They're not monopolies.

[samstave]

Is the Fed not a monopoly on your FIAT American Note? Just because they have "12 independent 'Member Banks'?

You're understanding of a monopoly is outdated. Plus, you're likely to knee-jerk with a "Thats not the defenition of a monopoly!"

Cool get all semantic on the third grade defenition of an insanely nuanced issue.

Monopoly in the dictionary sense is the same as a fucking sound-bite from the news on a highly complex nuanced global issue that takes one to have decades, and in some cases centuries, of input factors to understand the nuance.

[whimsicalism]

Yes, the Fed is a sanctioned quasi-governmental monopoly, just like the police or the taxman is.

You'll note that "the Fed" was not in your original list. Also, definition is spelled definition.

[pc86]

Good luck arguing with someone who says "FIAT" as if that's the ace up their sleeve.

[samstave]

>>Fed is a sanctioned quasi-governmental monopoly

Im sorry, where do I UNVOTE for 'sanctioned quasi-governmental EVERYTHING' and still live it what is called a 'democracy' OR -- IMAGINE THIS even a "representative republic*!"?

--

I forgot to mention, only a fucking moron replies on a tpyo!

You fail your username:

https://i.imgur.com/BoaqyUw.png

[dionidium]

> even housing, that I feel are not well served by a purely-market driven perspective

I hate to be the YIMBY broken record, but we don't have anything like a purely market-driven approach to housing. An important aspect of a functioning market is that supply is allowed to increase in order to meet demand. This isn't the case in the United States because of zoning laws. The housing market is more like the market for rare coins or something than it is any kind of actual market.

[sdfhdhjdw3]

> One wonders what the Private Equity firm's intention was here.

Gee, quite the conundrum.

[samstave]

Hedge funds should be 10000000% excluded/precluded and effectively illegal from owning anything but stock in a company/industry at a level whereby they cannot set profit and pricing for ANYTHING. (either invest in the company or industry, but what they do is effectively price-fixing after they get control)

Full Stop.

---

If you want to buy stock in a thing, a hedge fund should NEVER be able to have a complete controlling share.

Why? Because history shows us exactly what happens.

Funds, foundations, "private equity" are all money laundering corruption schemes at the cost of others.

THe problem is that this modality has replaced the definition of capitalism.

There are hedge funds that own over 100,000 houses, hedge funds that buy up every trailer home park they can, hedge funds that, in concert with the realty market, are the reason for high real estate prices.

Its a cancer.

Insulin Martin. is a great example of the mindset of these folks.

[pc86]

They're definitely not money laundering by any real definition of the word. If your goal is to launder money you're probably not doing it by buying stocks and vet clinics.

[samstave]

I always wanted to start a mafioso-esque restaurant front....

The French Money Laundry

FML for shot.

[akira2501]

There's nothing "market-driven" about the way the Federal Reserve currently works. The Government takes your money and then makes a market you can't participate in, serving entities that seem to primarily thrive off of rent seeking behavior.

The entire "Too Big To Fail" period should have made this clear. We are clearly in a government regime that would prefer to control the markets through the discount window than let them be truly driven by their own forces.

[subsubzero]

agree, it seems like almost every industry really has like maybe 3 at the most players and they are all gigantic and it is extremely non-competitive.

[legitster]

A bit of apples and oranges here. The goal of the FTC is not to make big companies smaller, it's to protect the market. They are not supposed to be the ones to determine if whales are natural or not to an ecosystem - so they don't generally go hunting them.

[jessaustin]

That's so 1980s. Your appeal to nature has nothing to do with the reality of the last several decades. Mergers among firms in the same market are never good for humans who must use those markets in order to live.

[jacobolus]

> That's so 1980s.

Yep, we’ve had about 50 years now of a Supreme Court shifting further and further to the right, slowly eroding every government check on corporate malfeasance and rent extraction, including antitrust law. The result has been a slow-motion train wreck, and it’s not clear that anything can be done about it for at least a generation.

[legitster]

> Mergers among firms in the same market are never good for humans who must use those markets in order to live.

I don't think this is a universal truth. Clearly there are situations where consumers prefer national brands or dealing with larger companies. If we don't like it, we can pass laws to impose our morality on the public, but the FTC has their mandate and they are sticking with it until told otherwise.

[astrange]

Dealing with large companies is often better than small businesses or family businesses, which in many industries are incompetent or run by tyrants. Landlords being the classic example.