Preferences

PE depends on favorable tax loopholes and a lot of acquisitions depend on them being able to do things like buying a company with a ton of loans which they then saddle the acquired company with or stripping assets before going bankrupt. All of that depends on arbitrary legal structures and protections which could be rebalanced to favor more productive business models.

Right. Either you directly regulate activity, or you adjust incentives. If you suggest one, detractors say you can't do that, you have to do the other thing, and then work as hard as possible to block your efforts to do the very thing they suggested you do. That's because they don't want things to change at all. But that's obviously not an option, so I tend to suggest trying both and seeing what sticks.

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