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Private equity is killing private ownership: first it was housing, now it's PCs

86 pointsposted a day ago

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89 Comments

satvikpendem

a day ago

Aside, why not link the original video instead of a reddit post?

This point about "private equity" being a boogeyman is such a tired take, the vast majority of equity of companies are held privately, and the vulture PE firms do exist but are not as prevalent as people make it seem online. It's a meme that many people seem to have latched on when the vast majority of PE firms and companies work perfectly fine, buying a company, growing it, then selling it for a profit.

teroshan

a day ago

The Reddit video is actually 3 different clips stitched together, the sources are in the Reddit OP.

bbor

a day ago

  Aside, why not link the original video instead of a reddit post?

It's a compilation, but regardless, Reddit seems about as "original" as any other platform. I'd certainly rather see Reddit links here than YouTube links, all else being equal!

  the vast majority of equity of companies are held privately

That's an good intuition, but it turns out to be false globally (TIL!): "There are nearly 25x more PE- and VC-backed companies than public markets [globally], but the total capitalization of private equity and venture capital is just 12% of public equity markets." per https://www.harbourvest.com/insights-news/insights/cpm-how-d...

  vulture PE firms do exist but are not as prevalent as people make it seem online. It's a meme that many people seem to have latched on when the vast majority of PE firms and companies work perfectly fine

...source? It's certainly possible that I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but "company goes through PE acquisition" headlines seem to be followed by "brand dissolved" headlines in way too many cases. Even if it's not a literal majority, the problem seems A) widespread, and B) behind many of the most harmful symptoms of the rot beneath the American(/global?) economy!

satvikpendem

a day ago

My mistake, I should have said vast majority of companies, not equity in companies, are privately held.

If you're seeing it in the media, of course it's confirmation bias. Do you think it makes a good headline to say that a firm bought a company, grew it over 5 years, then sold it? Yet that's what happens in the majority of cases. Those in the media are the exceptions that prove the rule.

bigbadfeline

a day ago

>> "brand dissolved" headlines > If you're seeing it in the media, of course it's confirmation bias.

It's a huge mistake to narrow down the problems of private equity firms (PEFs) to the dissolution of the companies they buy.

> Do you think it makes a good headline to say that a firm bought a company, grew it over 5 years, then sold it?

How is that different from what the video said? They buy all the hardware, grow the price of it by the mere fact of buying it up, hoard it, and then they sell it back to you at even higher prices as cloud services.

They make a profit but you are robbed. It's the strategy of scalping which has been going on in the GPU market for quite some time, but now it's used by corporations on an industrial scale.

The problem is precisely in the normal operation of PEFs, or rather, in the regulations that allow them to operate that way.

satvikpendem

a day ago

> It's a huge mistake to narrow down the problems of private equity firms (PEFs) to the dissolution of the companies they buy.

I'm not sure I ever said this, certainly there are some problems attributable to their companies but not all.

> but now it's used by corporations on an industrial scale.

You mean, buying raw goods? It's not "scalping" if a company is buying what they need to integrate into their finished goods. That is to say, they are not buying them with the express purpose of reselling those same items back to you, as is, which is the case with actual scalpers of concert tickets or GPUs for example (and which is the actual definition of scalping, no economist would call this scalping). That's like saying I'm being "scalped" when a construction company buys timber to build into a house. Oh no, I'm being "robbed" of being able to buy my own wood, and the company is increasing the price of the wood by mere fact of buying it up, and then because the house costs more than what I would've paid for the wood.

Avicebron

a day ago

If it's taking away your ability to buy your own wood and build your own house then it is robbery. If I bribed the government to sell me the water rights under your house and then started charging you for water, would you say that is fair?

satvikpendem

a day ago

It's not taking my ability away, I just have to pay more, same as anyone else, according to the laws of supply and demand. The water rights under my house are my own property so your analogy doesn't work.

bigbadfeline

20 hours ago

> I just have to pay more, same as anyone else,

No, it's not same as anyone, the AI and datacenter companies have long term supply agreements at lower prices, essentially front-running the retail market. These agreements redistrict the volume available for retail and we end up scalped.

At every step the corporate purchases happen at lower price points, like this:

Price at 10 ->

corporate, high volume, buys at 10, hoarding of hardware ->

price up, retail buys at 20 due to a starved retail space ->

corporate, high volume, buys at 20, more hoarding ->

price up, retail buys at 30 due to a starved retail space ->

... etc.

satvikpendem

2 hours ago

It's not really any different from wholesale vs retail, of course a seller would prefer higher volume higher margin customers over lower ones. That is in no way scalping as defined. Just because you're not a high volume customer does not mean you are getting scalped. It's like saying because Sysco doesn't sell directly to you and only to restaurants that the restaurant is "scalping" you when you buy their food. Your explanations really are not very convincing because the behavior you're describing is how wholesale works in any field.

user

an hour ago

[deleted]

financetechbro

11 hours ago

Did you know that there are more PE firms in the US than there are McDonalds?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/now-more-pe-funds-mcdonald-12...

So while PE firms are not inherently “vulture” like, I would argue that the increasing number of firms fighting over the same number of assets to squeeze out returns (hopefully) above market returns leads to behavior that can be considered “vulture” like. For context, part of my work is to sell assets to PE firms

Ekaros

11 hours ago

Is this some sort of shell game? Is there some benefit from artificially creating these firms to hold the assets? As I can't think there is enough demand to fully staff that amount of firms with all the full-time workers it would need.

y0eswddl

7 hours ago

Almost certainly some kind of shell game - it seems many major PE companies own each other and smaller ones.

I'd actually be very interested to see if anyone ever managed to break down who actually owns what

Havoc

a day ago

It’s like everyone on social media learned about PE in the last ~3 years and now sees it lurking in every shadow

Also not particularly enjoying this new ragey vibe Steve has going but I guess it must be getting clicks because each video seems to have it turned up another notch

hombre_fatal

15 hours ago

Reminds me of Nestle. When someone brings up Nestle and a vague issue with water, you know they are Reddit-educated due to their repeated nonsensical laser focus on one thing much like Kony 2012.

satvikpendem

a day ago

One of the former Linus Tech Tips hosts mentioned that Steve was one of the driving forces behind them leaving as Steve's content against LTT drove reduced views.

https://youtu.be/m0GPnA9pW8k

user

a day ago

[deleted]

fkafldkj

a day ago

[flagged]

Havoc

15 hours ago

>What a silly criticism.

>hiding itself in your "shadows"

I've spent the last decade in PE & adjacent circles so pretty sure I've got a better read on it than tech youtubers (or the average hn reader)

astral_drama

a day ago

The current admin wants even cheaper money, which is likely to embolden well connected borrowers to pump up whatever they think will hold a bit of value. It was housing, which hit an equilibrium (can't milk it much more), then stocks, then gold and now silver and memory chips of all things.

I wouldn't limit this to PE, although they are feeding on cheap dollars too, but the general trend of big capital out competing mom and pop for future resources. We're all short on real goods (need to buy food, shelter, ram, etc... in the future) and big capital is putting the squeeze on our short position by bidding up real resources with cheap dollars. Regular folks cover at a loss, or we go bust, and that's the gamble we're being put in.

bigbadfeline

a day ago

The cheap money is used for scalping the market on an industrial scale, in this process, inflation feeds on itself and people get robbed. I explained how it works here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46416934

anukin

a day ago

The problem with this argument is that there are players who are incentivized to play on the opposite side of the PE memory hoarders or cloud everything people. One of the most valuable company namely Apple have been playing around with local everything for a while now. Housing is a regulation(mostly) problem and govt has 0 incentives against the lobbyists and nimby crowd who support reelection bid vs largely marginalized or non voter crowd of immigrants. It’s false equivalence in its full glory.

appreciatorBus

a day ago

But but but how am I gonna justify my critical theory phd if I can’t blame all the things I don’t like on the existence of markets???

bigbadfeline

a day ago

That's a rather uninformed attempt at sarcasm.

A "market" is just a set of regulations, there can be infinitely many such sets and thus infinitely many different "markets".

Do you think each of these "markets" is perfect and cannot be criticized because the "existence of markets" is beyond criticism?

appreciatorBus

a day ago

Of course not. But one well-known characteristic of markets is that imbalances tend to, over-time, self correct. No it’s not perfect, and no, it doesn’t happen instantly. But the idea that GPU prices rising is the end of the world is just silly. If it’s a long-standing trend, people will build more GPU factories and people who own gpus will go broke. Or maybe it’s not a long-standing trend, and the AI companies go broke first. Either way GPUs get cheap again. But not tomorrow, not next week, so lots of time for click bait articles about how it’s a sign of end times.

bigbadfeline

21 hours ago

> one well-known characteristic of markets is that imbalances tend to, over-time, self correct.

That's not true for all markets, least of all for "free" markets which not only "tend" to become monopolized, they do end up as Robber Baron lands on steroids.

If you were right, there would be no need for anti-monopoly regulation or even for any market regulation, and I wouldn't have to repeat twice that a market is just a set of regulations.

> But the idea that GPU prices rising is the end of the world is just silly.

Nobody claimed that but it can't be disproved either :) On the other hand, you seem to think we should be concerned only with problems that provably lead to the end of the world. I'm not sure how wise that is.

> Or maybe it’s not a long-standing trend

Or maybe it is? Should we close our eyes and rely on chance or just use the opportunity to fix what clearly is a systemic problem in the fundamentals of the US market and economy - it's quite clear that the problem isn't limited to just RAM and GPUs.

appreciatorBus

14 hours ago

> you seem to think we should be concerned only with problems that provably lead to the end of the world

I am deeply sceptical of trying to use large public institutions and government to solve the “problem” of a price rising and falling from time to time as supply and demand change.

If you don’t believe in supply and demand or markets or you think that economics is some big scam, then we could save some time if you just say that, and then we don’t have to go back-and-forth pretending the issue is about AI or GPUs.

If there is a monopoly case to be made in GPU manufacturing or whatever, then make the case and let’s regulate that monopoly or break it up.

If there’s financial fraud going on, great make the case and let’s deal with it.

If all that’s happening is that some people are making speculative bets on prices a few years out, and they’ll either be right or wrong and either way it will be over, then I just have trouble getting worked up about it. If it means the gaming PC you have planned to build this year will either be a bit more expensive or you’ll have to put it off till the next year, I have trouble getting worked up about it.

weregiraffe

21 hours ago

>But but but

Go back to 4chan

redleggedfrog

a day ago

Dead rich people don't own own anything, their heirs do. Keep that in mind.

osiris970

a day ago

a day ago

The national average obscures that institutional investors own 1 in 9 rental homes in Charlotte, 1 in 10 in Tampa, and one-fifth of all houses in some Atlanta neighborhoods. It’s likely to get worse too.

Have you tried buying a home recently? It’s very tough to compete against the all-cash offers from investors.

happyopossum

20 hours ago

In the past few years I’ve been involved in 7 real estate transactions in California, and haven’t seen a single “all cash offer from investors” on any of them.

I hear this rhetoric a lot, but it’s almost always from people who have never actually been involved in selling a home, or are shopping for a home way out of their price range and were going to get outbid anyway.

postpawl

19 hours ago

That's surprising given the data. Were these transactions recent? Investors focus on entry-level properties, so if you're buying above that tier you'd see less competition. But California overall has high investor activity:

2) Watched basically every video by larry haun and read his book (the entire theory to build structure of a house is explained in ~3 hours, but I think I watched it 5 or 8 times)

3) Looked at simple cabin / small home plans

There are a couple civil engineering 'saints' that visit some of the cabin and small home forums online. I won't reveal who they are. They pop up randomly and intermittently and tend to not respond unless people are actually in the middle of a home build because there are always a gazillion people that are 'going to do it' but then never do and waste everyone's time with questions. I ran through a lot of my roof structure through them because the IRC is quite sparse on roof design and wind load capacities. I also have a friend that is a civil engineer and ran things through them a lot, although in the end following the examples by larry haun and the IRC he did not recommend much different.

I basically just followed IRC design to frame a simple rectangular house with gable roof. This is about the easiest house to frame, other than one with a shed roof. I would recommend 16' max width because the lumber is much easier to get and then you can use a perimeter foundation as your only foundational load bearing points. But you can get away with 20' wide if you have the means to find and haul it, otherwise you're dealing with a more complex foundation or engineered joists.

I've also seen success with friends finishing out shipping containers. In that case you may be able to just build piers with sonotubes, drop a shipping container, frame the inside (all non-structural, so if you fuck it up not a huge deal), then use the inside framing to build like a conventional wooden home (except you will need an insulation that does not need to breath). The caveat here is that if you want any windows or doors other than the one already part of it, you will need to know how to weld and cut steel.

senordevnyc

21 hours ago

OK, well are the economics in those markets worse than similar markets with lower levels of PE ownership of homes? Is there a correlation there that we can see in the data? Because otherwise stats from a couple moderate sized cities doesn’t seem that relevant to the nation as a whole.

postpawl

20 hours ago

The St Louis fed did a study about this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlouisfed.org/wp/2020/2020-04...

“We find that investors' purchases increase the price-to-income ratio, especially in the bottom price-tier”

pembrook

a day ago

Owning 1 in 9 "rental" homes means they own less than 1% of all homes.

You could make an offer on 40+ houses and will likely never be in a 'bidding war' with a big PE firm or a company backed by one.

PE is a boogeyman used by politicians to obscure the uncomfortable fact that the problem is the policies they themselves have implemented in pretty much every community in the western world (making building new stuff defacto illegal).

taurath

a day ago

Wonder what the % of houses are sold that aren't for the owners primary residence. Also what % in cash.

biophysboy

a day ago

The internet is so awful right now man. The illiterate, incurious populist rhetoric is getting so tedious. We are beating a dead scapegoat.

ultrablack

a day ago

Buying memery is surely a future proof investment. It certainly was for my Amiga 500.

lr1970

9 hours ago

saagarjha

14 hours ago

No, I'm actually quite pleased. It has historically been very difficult to get the average person to care about monopoly law and international relations, or even politics in general. I think our society has done a lot to try to insulate citizens from the consequences of policies, because groceries continue to show up in their supermarket, they need to keep going to work, and they can still visit their family on an individual basis even if statistically and in aggregate many of these may change based on what is going on.

Every so often, there are events that really get people upset about the state of things. I think the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster thing would be one of them. In this case a guy who mostly wants his games to run fast is now caught in the middle of supply chains for the AI race and is finding out that when a trillion dollars are involved, his hobbies literally do not matter in comparison. So when someone ends up realizing this, I am hopeful that more people will as well and do something about it.

lilwobbly

a day ago

I feel like everyone online is becoming some anti-capitalist socialist and losing all critical thinking and it's making me crazy.

Firstly, institutional investors own ~3% of single-family homes in the US , even in hot markets, they rarely exceed 10%. The lack of supply is outweighs the private equity problem.

GPUs are manufactured goods where production scales with demand. When AI investment inevitably contracts, that fab capacity will redirect to consumer products. I don't know where this idea comes from that NVIDIA is conspiring with these companies to never sell consumers GPUs. It only takes so many GPUs to build out a streaming service, would they just stop making GPUs entirely? It doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than 2 seconds.

osiris970

a day ago

What's immensely frustrating is so much of this conspiracy shit, comes from the U.S. as well. A population where the median is living better every year, and better than 90% of the world. It's mind boggling, people don't understand how good they have it.

I'm not against progress, obviously make things better, but the perspective is important.

zahlman

a day ago

Becoming? I've been hearing these takes for over a decade.

octoberfranklin

a day ago

a day ago

This is just patently absurd:

  "AI" is just the vehicle (the excuse) - it's not the root of the problem nor is it the ultimate goal.

People are investing in AI because they believe the scientists' warnings that the Frame Problem[1] has been solved (or, in other words, "AGI is suddenly within reach").

You can say they're fools if you want - you might even be right! But pretending like hundreds (thousands?) of board members across the world are conspiring to build a buyer's cartel (monopsony?) in order to starve out the PC Gaming market of all things is just myopic.

I hope I'm not too vitriolic, especially if the guy in the video is here -- I certainly share a lot of politics with him, and absolutely share his priors regarding PE. I just think it's extremely clear that this particular subreddit has "lost the plot" as the ~~kids~~ mid-30s nerds say. If anyone's not familiar, I highly recommend a perusal through the top posts of the past week/month...

zahlman

a day ago

You seem to have dropped the intended [1] link?

bbor

5 hours ago

Ah, indeed I did! It's a searchable term in general, but I'm particularly fond of this write-up: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame-problem/

yet again I am begging, weeping, pleading for markdown support on HN, my lord

ryandv

a day ago

[flagged]

DetectDefect

a day ago

The belligerent name-calling only further degenerates quality of discourse. Consider detonating your emotions in a more responsible blast-radius.

pembrook

a day ago

In this case I believe it is warranted. I fully support OP's emotional take.

HN has been hit with lots of runoff from these reddit-dwelling mouthbreathers lately and it's turned this place into a downvote machine for any comment not towing the populist anti-intellectual party line.

a day ago

We clearly are not if this is happening.