Sure, and increasingly those people are being played for suckers. The article makes that point.

Less so than those buying it for spot? They need oil one way or another, whether from a future contract or the spot market (or downstream thereof).

It's not self-inflicted at all. Users didn't enshittify the sites we used to enjoy.

Great point. This happens on forums too. For example if Kate opposes knitting bullshit, a common strategy is to characterize Kate as 'hostile', 'overheated', 'overreacting', etc. Kate's actual argument doesn't need to be addressed. We just rule that Kate isn't posting content, she's causing conflict or experiencing an unfortunate emotional state.

This strategy also indirectly helps overworked moderators by penalizing disagreement, which in turn discourages flame wars.

Kate's critics can even say they support Kate. They just want to help her deal with her emotional overload.

Of course lenders will lend more against more collateral. That doesn't mean it always ends happily.

For the most part, the lenders are not the people receiving management fees.

If it was just you personally, sure. But a bank failure affects lots more people than just the bank.

It's still an LBO, in effect borrowing against the target to get control of it.

Is that bad? No one is forcing the lenders to make that bet, and the lenders can lose money if the acquired company can't pay back the loan.

It may not be bad for the buyers, lenders, or the previous owners who all profit. But even then it could still be bad for regular people/society at large if it incentivizes anti-consumer practices by financial necessity when an otherwise healthy business suddenly has billions of dollars of debt it has to pay off ASAP. In which case it sort of looks like a simple transfer of wealth from existing customers to the organizers of the leveraged buyout with no broader societal value provided like new jobs created, R&D, etc.

You have a company "funded" with its own equity and now you turned it into a company exclusively made out of outside capital and an obligation to realize the terms of said outside capital.

Before, you could have had bad years in-between the good years, now you're only permitted to have good years and by good years I mean years that honor the financing terms.

When you understand this, you realize that functionally speaking, nothing has changed really, other than that the cost of financing has gone up significantly, since the company can't rely on its own equity anymore. Now the company can no longer earn what it currently earns, it needs to earn that plus some. Hence the deal was nothing but a burden to the acquired company.

The previous owners realized the value of their shares and don't have anything to complain about. The new owner acquired control over the company they wanted. So who is left to carry the burden? The employees and the customers.

Why did the previous owners sell?

In theory, the high share price driven by the LBO offer.

Seems reasonable for two consenting parties to mutually agree to a deal.

It can be, sure. But a two-way deal might also affect third parties.

Example: what if Adleman hires Rivest to put laxative in Shamir's soup? Two consenting parties have made a deal. Shamir freely chooses to eat his soup, despite knowing that he has only imperfect information.

So that scenario works out as desired.

But intrusive government regulation might come into play. Maybe the state prohibits poisoning soup. That harms the free market, and it's wrong. But, perversely, Shamir might benefit (at Adleman and Rivest's expense).

Keynes was aware of the inflation problem.

And deflation (he published his General Theory in 1936).

The US had a balanced budget in 2001, after decades of most people claiming that was impossible. The problem with a balanced budget is we all have to live in the real world. The actual real world that you can measure, not each individual's theoretical world of choice.

But stories are much more fun than data, and we put everything on the credit card, and here we are.

Agreed. And driving 95mph is not a problem as long as there aren't any tricky situations hidden a few miles down the road.

There's seldom any problem when you're still driving at 95mph - it's slowing down (the sudden slowdowns are the worst) that's problematic

Great point. Almost by definition, as long as we're going 95mph in a straight line, we're still ok. But some alarmist passenger might get emotional anyway. (Sigh. People are people.)