At present, I’m speaking with Megan Greenwell, a former high editor at Wired and Deadspin, about her new ebook Unhealthy Firm: Non-public Fairness and the Demise of the American Dream. It comes out on June tenth, and it’s a searing account of how personal fairness goes far past impacting failing companies and deeply impacts and transforms the lives of on a regular basis People.
Decoder may be very a lot a present in regards to the programs and frameworks that specify tech, coverage, and enterprise, and which means we’ve talked about personal fairness a variety of occasions on the present. Non-public fairness is all over the place throughout the enterprise panorama, despite the fact that its huge affect on how so many corporations function is fairly hidden from view.
However when you see it, you begin to discover it all over the place, and it’s extremely validating to listen to that so many individuals have had comparable experiences with corporations managed by personal fairness. I do know this, as a result of it’s in our numbers and the suggestions we get right here on Decoder — our 2023 episode with lawyer and writer Brendan Ballou about his ebook on personal fairness, Plunder, is one in all our hottest episodes.
Megan’s curiosity in personal fairness got here from her expertise as editor-in-chief of Deadspin, the well-known and now-defunct sports activities and tradition web site. Deadspin was a part of Gawker, and Gawker was taken over by a personal fairness agency known as Nice Hill Companions, which started to right away micromanage Deadspin’s content material. That was when Megan first realized that the targets and monetary outcomes of a personal fairness agency have been very disconnected from the targets and monetary outcomes of the businesses it had taken over.
Megan’s ebook is a deep dive into the personal fairness business, as expressed in 4 components of the financial system: retail, media, housing, and — possibly essentially the most maddening of all of them — healthcare. My household has quite a lot of medical doctors in it, and I’ve heard a lot about how personal fairness has modified healthcare within the US. You’ll hear Megan join the dots between the financialization of healthcare and the poor experiences many individuals have with healthcare at this time.
We additionally spent a while speaking in regards to the historical past of personal fairness, and the throughline from the New York Metropolis actual property world that gave start to Donald Trump all the way in which to the personal fairness business of at this time. I feel you’ll discover there’s a shocking quantity of historical past right here that basically does assist clarify not simply how the incentives of finance have come to dominate the American lifestyle, but additionally the way it’s seeped into the very best ranges of the federal government. Maybe most surprisingly, you’ll hear Megan take nice pains to distinguish personal fairness from enterprise capital, which may be very completely different — and with very completely different issues.
I at all times actually take pleasure in speaking to different editors, particularly about one thing they’re so inquisitive about. Let me know what you consider this one. I believe you’ll have so much to say.
When you’d prefer to learn extra on what we talked about on this episode, try the hyperlinks beneath:
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