[hospitalJail]

Lobbying/Bribery seems more egregious than investing.

At least investing has some economic forces that cause people to conserve resources and allocate them better than prior.

Lobbying/Bribery is just pure corruption. The medical industry is so extravagant because they are among the top lobbyists of all time. Only the entirety of real estate or all US businesses(chamber of commerce) can even compete with merely the American Medical Association or AHA. Heck, combining all of medical and the lobbying is worse than every other industry including all US businesses

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders?cy...

[jtode]

Private Equity is the most destructive and bad-faith-operating version of investing, in much the same way that Kim Jong Un is the most destructive and bad-faith-operating version of a politician. The capital that one would define as the "investment" is in fact just a viral delivery mechanism, so the parasite can infest the host, devour its innards, and leave its husk to dry up.

[ambicapter]

> At least investing has some economic forces that cause people to conserve resources and allocate them better than prior.

Not when the money is basically free, e.g. the last decade of money policy. PE has always been around, so why is it hated now? Probably the forces that would normally keep it in check, namely, a cost to capital and a competitive business environment (as opposed to monopolies and natural monopolies all over the place) haven't been present in the last decade.

[khuey]

PE has been hated since at least the 1980s, when capital was very far from free.

[Veliladon]

Yep. When Carl Icahn was doing it they just called it "asset stripping" and "corporate raiding" instead of using the term private equity.

Fucker made squillions off the backs of misery for hundreds of thousands of people.

[LapsangGuzzler]

> At least investing has some economic forces that cause people to conserve resources and allocate them better than prior.

That's a really whitewashed way of saying "layoffs, benefit reductions, and no more pay raises or bonuses". Far too often, "economic inefficiency" translates to "workers are too highly paid", you see this all time now with companies complaining about a labor shortage while there are tons of people ready to work for respectable wages.

[awaythrow483]

Where does the money for all of that lobbying come from?

Bribery has and will occur in every society. Lobbying is so bad in the US because certain groups have basically unlimited money

[ARandomerDude]

Don’t forget teachers unions and the Dept of Ed.

They bleed taxpayers dry because they are “helping the children” and everybody knows a nice teacher who isn’t part of the problem but will be held out as a defense of govt and union corruption.