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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25117 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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If everyone does that, and they do, power concentrates into finance and you slowly stop doing anything productive as a society.

Actual rent seeking has negative externalities. Even if it's the correct choice.

I actually think PE provides value. It provides an exit for entrepreneurs especially when they can’t go public. Let’s say you build a 100m business but are getting close to retirement and your kids aren’t all that interested in building it or you have business you want to start? PE provides an exit to those kind of business starters likely increasing business formation.

There were always exits available (selling to competitors or larger players who could access financing publicly or privately) and in countries like Germany the traditional solution was simply to have the family hire a professional manager but to keep the business in family hands. The US, UK and other prime PE markets saw their skilled manufacturing sectors suffer while Germany is a net exporter that sells China the machines they use to make goods for American and British consumers.

I do a lot of PE work and most targets aren’t manufacturing.

Of course, but it’s an example of how higher liquidity for SMEs that a large PE sector offers isn’t necessarily healthy for the wider economy. In the UK PE culture (which I’d argue is stronger even than in the US) is responsible for a rotten business culture in which even attempting to build a large new business is anathema to most entrepreneurs. This is often described as a result of growth capital being much harder to access in the UK than in the US, but this only explains a small part of it. The primary reason is that PE offers founders a lottery win that is often so tempting that they abandon their ambitions. In the US, billionaire hustle culture is ironically a partial protection against this, but European founders will cash out and retire to Cannes as soon as the first PE check is dangled before then, which I consider genuinely damaging because my impression of people in operating roles in PE is very poor.

Yeah it may be cultural different. In the US, there is still hustle culture.

Also PE now often offers 5-10% mgmt equity so still incentivizes mgmt.

Going solo is not the only way; it's the worst way, becase all the financial burden is planed on the entrepreneur. A better way is with VC, such as ycombinator program or something like a16z. The VC shoulders the financial risk by effectively investing in human capital, which is the key ingredient for a start-up anyway.

They are also sharks who will manage to get all the money if you aren't really careful. The golden days of when VCs would voluntarily share success with founders are over.

Thanks for noticing the society we live in.

I know it's stating the obvious.

But if society is to look like anything else than it does now people need to remind themselves of the pricetag on the path of least resistance.

You might be better off setting your money on fire starting a risky business than giving it to bankers to fuck everyone over. It's easy to forget you're part of everyone.

To put it another way, you aren't "stuck in traffic" you ARE the traffic.

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