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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9693495" data-attributes="member: 78087">Yes. It’s not the only part that is actively destructive - arguably having any publicly traded companies controlling any major sector prioritises profit seeking over all other outcomes in their decision making, and also makes it possible to have billionaires who have disproportionate power and influence while being incentivised to have zero empathy for everyone else - but it’s a pretty important one.According to Bad Company, more than half of all pension funds are significantly invested in private equity and about 60% of private equity shareholders by weight are pension funds; and almost half of all privately owned residential property for rent in the US is owned by private equity.A common theme in the “happy endings” in Bad Company is representatives of the various sectors affected (retail employees, patients, doctors, journalists, residential tenants etc) meeting with pension fund boards and persuading them to disinvest from private equity or pressuring those companies to be better owners. However, this usually means the private equity firms just leave those sectors - which is good, but the sectors are still wrecked by their recent ownership and will take a long time to recover if at all - and the pension funds still have massive deficits they can’t make up.</blockquote>