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Private Equity is the effect not the cause. We need them to create efficiency because of the shenanigans that the AMA guild did in limiting doctor supply. Just allow people to take an exam to get credentialed, we'd have foreign doctors flown in by the hundreds of thousands and care would be as cheap as it is in India.

private equity doesn't create efficiencies. The real world is not some MicroEcon 101 class.

> “As our investigation revealed, these financial entities are putting their own profits over patients, leading to health and safety violations, chronic understaffing, and hospital closures. Take private equity firm Leonard Green and hospital operator Prospect Medical Holdings: documents we obtained show they spent board meetings discussing profit maximization tactics—cost cutting, increasing patient volume, and managing labor expenses—with little to no discussion of patient outcomes or quality of care at their hospitals. And while Prospect Medical Holdings paid out $645 million in dividends and preferred stock redemption to its investors—$424 million of which went to Leonard Green shareholders—it took out hundreds of millions in loans that it eventually defaulted on. Private equity investors have pocketed millions while driving hospitals into the ground and then selling them off, leaving towns and communities to pick up the pieces.”

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/private-e...


That doesn’t make sense - private equity has done the same thing in completely orthogonal industries, like manufacturing.

Private Equity does not create efficiency and we do not need them. What they do is to take debt to buy healthy companies, transfer debt onto them and then kill them.

None of that is efficiency in any reasonable sense.


The notion of "stem cells" are somewhat of a misnomer as modern biotechnology is showing us. There are an orchestration of probably 1000s of different cell types which can vary in their cell states. We don't have enough knowledge of how to use these various cell types to influence complex self-organization processes like development. But in some cases there are clever fixes without understanding the underlying process.

China is going to be way ahead of us in biological treatments because they are willing to actually remove the red tape and in fact encourage scientists to try these sorts of experimental treatments. Meanwhile, we have a dinosaur FDA, a bureaucratic academia second to only Europeans.

The good news is that the rest of the world will benefit from China’s treatment philosophy.

What does any of this have to do with China? This study was done in California.

What's the plan in China for when one of these expedited treatments has a terrible side effect?

The FDA's slowness is about maintaining a low level of risk because the reputation cost of a really bad incident is huge.


Well, I'm no ethicist, but I don't think they really care. They'll catalog the results and try again.

We don't accept that? Our civil liberties have been infringed upon by neoliberals and oligarchs for the last 100+ years, starting with Lincoln with income tax and FDR with social security into the mess we have today.

Because we in america tend to value individual liberties in a way that others don't. And yes of course LPR is mass surveillance. Cars should not even have to be registered.

They shouldn't even have license plates?? That leads to 0 accountibility.

Would you like the government driving around in government vehicles doing hit and runs and having zero accountability?

Or criminals for that matter?


We don't need it. You could say the same about any criminal act, doesn't mean we need to tag everyone with a face id.

Car culture in general is an abomination to civil rights. You are tracked by the government, forced to shell out money to predatory insurance companies, and can basically be illegally searched and seized at any point on the roadway. I hope that chinese e-bikes/e-motos will get good enough to where I can use them as my primary form of transport.

I just get the same videos recommended over and over. I liked it when the YT feed would recommend stuff new and different i might find interesting. Now its just hyperoptimized to get me to click on ads.

Who would buy OpenAI's spy device? I think a lot of public discourse and backlash about the greedy, anticompetitive, and exploitative practices of the silicon valley elite have gone mainstream and will hopefully course correct the industry in time.

Loads of people? The Ari Alexa was tremendously successful as a consumer product no? It's the same premise but "better"

i'm continually surprised by how many people will buy and wear meta's AI spy sunglasses.

if there's a market for a face camera that sends everything you see to meta, there's probably a market for whatever device openAI launches.


> ...exploitative practices of the silicon valley elite have gone mainstream and will hopefully course correct the industry in time.

I have little hope that is true. Don't expect privacy laws and boycott campaigns. That very same elite control the law via bribes to US politicians (and indirectly the laws of other counties via those politicians threats, see the ongoing watering down of EU laws). They also directly control public discourse via ownership of the media and mainstream communication platforms. What backlash can they really suffer?


Boomers in government would be clueless on how to properly regulate and create correct incentives. Hell, that is still a bold ask for tech and economist geniuses with the best of intentions.

Would that be the same cohort of boomers jamming LLMs up our collective asses? So they don’t understand how to regulate a technology they don’t understand, but fucking by golly you’re going to be left behind if you don’t use it?

This is like a shitty Disney movie.


It's mostly SV grifters who shoved LLMs up our asses. They then get in cahoots with boomers in the government to create policies and "investment schemes" that inflate their stock in a ponzi-like fashion and regulate competition. Why do you think Trump has some no-name crypto firm, or why Thiel has Vance as his whipping boy, and Elon spend a fortune trying to get Trump to win? This is a multiparty thing, as most politicians are heavily bought and paid for.

Because its an event contract with a defined upside/downside and time horizon. You know exactly what you stand to lose and gain and when. Makes it a valuable part of some intricate financial strategies.

Plus casinos exist. Why do people play blackjack.

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