Pablo Torre and Stavros Halkias on the Lakers deal: “I think it’s clear that what’s f–ing us up is private equity”
Mess with his food and Stav will not stay silent.
That’s his overall point. Sports and fast food are a great entry point into class consciousness.
Regular dudes don’t really care/notice all that much when billionaires manipulate the stock market or commit securities fraud but they sure as hell notice when their burger is 50% more expensive or their favorite team turns to shit.
I remember learning back in college that a major public outcry against monopolies in the early 20th century was in response to an ice trust. It was easy to conceptualize the dangers of monopolies for a product that was a part of their everyday lives.
Food is just how expresses his point and can contextualize it.
That doesn’t mean his point is actually about food, he’s clearly just using it as an example he “latched on to”.
I think most people that watched the clip understood that…
Bread and circuses
Got in the ring with Ozempic and Ozempic lost.
That bit is so great lol
Is that Derrick Stroup’s bit?
Nope, it’s Stavi’s from his latest special.
Derrick Stroup is amazing though.
Right that boy was lying when he said it wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things 😭
His point is that his example about the quality of certain fast food menu items isn’t necessarily a big deal, but it represents a bigger problem
i know but it was a big deal to him
Lol fair
yeah its almost disappointing he said that, kind of takes the punch out
In the classic Andre’s steakhouse bit he tries to think of French words and can only come up with food items.
“Thousand island stare” is so fucking funny
Allow me to beret your acquaintance
A 300 pound Greek man realizing private equity messed with concession stand portions is how revolutions start.
Someone spliced in [Dave Goggins with Stavros](https://youtube.com/shorts/fKWW9RvlsLc?si=vtsbvs6lVmBRos5R) and it’s so good I didn’t even know it was an edit the first time I watched lol
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The idea that if a company puts out a bad product then customers can fight back with their wallets is no longer a reality. Companies will reduce quality in exchange for cheaper costs and higher profit margins but are now backed by multibillion dollar private equity firms so there’s no risk whatsoever. They’ll continue to make those terrible products, buy up any competition, and now this subpar product runs that entire market
Correct. It’s mafia capitalism.
Instead of thinking *“our customers are mad at us for this, what can we do to fix that?*” the corporate mentality is now “fuck you, what are you gonna do about it? Now fucking pay me.” because they have already rigged the system to prevent the feedback loop from ever reaching them.
It’s so fucking bleak.
actually way less aggressive and way more bleak
it’s more like “We hear your complaints. We’ve accounted for this.” and then they just go back to typing into a spreadsheet
Mafia capitalism? That’s just capitalism, dude. this is the way the system works - competition until a winner takes all
time to dust off the anti trust laws
100%. The libertarian wet dream of pure capitalism cannot exist because capitalists will consolidate power and eliminate the competition that defines the entire economic model.
Not with strong anti trust. But that hasn’t been a thing for a long time and this is the result. We need a Teddy Roosevelt type to take office and break up big tech, banking monopolies, food monopolies, farming monopolies and news media conglomerates.
There’s alternatives 👀
Capitalism would allow for labor unions though, as an equal and opposite reaction to corporations.
Edit: Y’all the NBA players get 57%(?) through Union representation alone. It works when the government doesn’t listen to big business and pass laws to benefit companies over unions (which isn’t a free market at all).
And capitalism also allows companies to union bust and push out constant propaganda to an undereducated population that unions are bad for them.
Look at what happened to unions under Reagan when they had equal power.
Capitalism will do anything to prioritize profits for the owning class over workers.
Unions in the US have been decimated by capital.
Except, of course, for police unions.
It kind of speaks to the failures of capitalism as a model that the only way to make it even sort of work is to introduce its ideological opposite, democratic control over the means and methods of production
Fans can just stop going to games, watching the games, etc. if they’re not happy.
I mean supposedly GOP boycott lost Nike huge amounts of market cap. Not sure this is the reason, but if it is, stopping buying certainly does something.
because they have already rigged the system to prevent the feedback loop from ever reaching them
Yup. They pass laws to insulate their businesses and kill competition. They don’t want to compete fairly, they want to ensure their victory/profits. They don’t want to leave it to chance, so they buy politicians to pass laws that let them make more money. It’s ridiculous. I bet if the internet reviewed US laws, they would find a ton of laws that make no sense - because they’re there to make wealthy capitalists more money
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You sound like someone who wasn’t really there when the NBA was awesome. People miss something that made their lives more enjoyable and want that back. You’re def part of the problem
Grew up watching the Jordan double three-peats. The John Tesh NBA on NBC was my alarm tone thru college. All im saying is that if I’m not enjoying something anymore, I’ll stop watching it. If people keep consuming the rapidly deteriorating product, there’s zero incentive to go back to the things that made it enjoyable in the first place.
This is such a low effort comment. You’re part of the problem. Did you even watch the video?
Well I’m replying to the comment above and the notion of PE telling fans: “fuck you, what are you gonna do about it?”
Private equity has infected every aspect of our lives. Do you get tired of being this dense?
Shut up loser
It’s still just capitalism. The buying customer just cares less than the angry redditor. If fans really cared enough about being shit on they would stop going. They don’t.
Also not really true. It sucks to lose a good restaurant but like, stop going there? And if its every restaurant which lve also noticed isnt true then stop going to those places too. Private equity hasnt removed good food theyre reliant on the fact that we’re just too lazy to look at other options or cook for ourselves and pick what branding is comfortable.
I don’t know about every restaurant, but I can’t remember the last time I wasnt disappointed in a restaurant.
Literally just went out and had great food. Pick better restaurants. Chains always suck
Read: any home appliance in the last 20 years. The status quo for durability is carnival prize level. My two most recent replacements were a washer and a dishwasher, and the problems were both on the control board, so full replacement it was.
I found out last week that my dad is also an expert in Maytag washing machines. The admin/store cycles might as well be nightlight music at this point.
Don’t forget they also own the government so any attempt to regulate this shit is shut down immediately
They own the Republicans*. Biden had faults, aggressive/progressive antitrust enforcement was not one of them.
Yeah if you don’t like the Lakers owner just go buy tickets to the competing LA basketball team. I’m sure their owner is a good guy.
Or have half a spine and realize that you don’t need to buy tickets to a basketball game to be happy in life.
That’s an answer to basketball specifically, but we are obviously talking about larger issues that go past the NBA. People can’t just opt out of participating in the entire economy.
There’s enough people in the world that aren’t financially responsible and don’t care about the quality of a product or service and will support bad businesses just because it’s something to do that day, which will keep a lot of bad businesses operating.
The people that actually care are the ones that go out and find alternative businesses to support, if that person sounds like you, then go and do that. If you don’t like the way the new ownership is running the team you support but you still want to watch basketball, go support another team, you got 29 other NBA options and a hell of a lot more college or global ones. That goes for everything in life, not just the NBA.
No amount of collective crying about how a business owner chooses to operate his business will change their minds, the only thing they react to is money in versus money out.
I have no problems not paying a subscription for something shitty like ESPN. I don’t need to waste money on dumb shit like fast food or expensive coffee like Starbucks. It really has nothing to do with capitalism or whatever it’s simply comes down to the individual and the decision they make. Why did the Clippers lower their ticket prices? According to the nerd in the video and everyone else, these big companies force us to accept whatever price they put out. So why did the Clippers lower their ticket prices and not just keep them where they are?
The thing that really formed my political perspective and identity, ironically, was taking a Class with a Libertarian professor who REALLY dickrode Libertarianism.
Even as a completely fucking no political understanding college student I’d hear her raving about how brilliant a philosophy it was and how perfectly the Invisible Hand of the Market worked and think “Doesn’t the accumulation of wealth made possible by modern technology sort of just shit on this entire ideology conceptually?”
If you’ve got enough capital to starve out or buy up your competition you just win that sector of the market.
Literally pressure betting in poker but in real life.
Market fundamentalists love to espouse the virtues of the self-regulating capitalist economy as if we don’t have a pair of eyes we can use to look around and see how fucked up absolutely everything is.
And even if you stop buying it, they’ll just close that business and move onto the next and claim its the customers fault.
This is the most important cost. They know they are going to run the company into the ground, they are just looking for how many years they can continue squeezing juice out before they find another lemon to suck dry.
There needs to be a regulatory state that actually does its job and can’t be immediately dismantled by whichever Republican shit head gets elected next by the idiots of America unfortunately idk if this is even feasible anymore
They’re too big to fail now in the sense that it doesn’t matter if they fail.
This just isn’t the case with Wendy’s. They are in fact changing because customers voted with their wallets. They are a publicly traded company and their stock is down like 75% over the last five years.
it’s what happens when you allow enforcing a global currency using atomic bombs. I just hope to live long life enough to see everything crumble because it will be livestreamed. I want to see their faces once it happens.
multibillion dollar private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds
they’re doing the ManCity model…
Idk man, fast food is really suffering right now. Stupid shit like Crumbl cookie is dying real fast. These things do die.
Is there a gun to your head to buy the product?
ETA: I don’t support PE. Their playbook is nearly always garbage, and they’re horrible managers for those inside the business, but it’s entirely possible to avoid them if you really want to.
What a strange take on this, people care about the quality of “the product”, be that the NBA, good food, or whatever. If any competition aiming to provide a better product is killed through private equite that means there is no alternative anymore
it’s a ridiculous take
if PE bought out the NBA and enshittified it beyond belief, like ads running on half the screen the entire game, would they also just say “don’t watch it”? if so, they are a moron
So you would watch that?
If my choices are that product or nothing do I have much of a choice?
Give me an example of what you are talking about.
And be specific, because logically sure, that’s reasonable. But in the vast vast vast majority of cases there are alternatives.
“Be specific” yeah bud i dont think you understand that private equity has taken most or partial control over entire industries of necessity at this point
Food, power, water, communication, fuel industries are all overrun with corporate conglomerates who are forcing small/medium business alternatives out the market so they can charge whatever costs they want.
The ethical alternatives that do still exist are more expensive than a lot of people are able to afford. Which means, functionally those alternatives don’t exist….hence, monopoly (or oligopoly).
“Be specific” is an ignorant request. Educate yourself and ask better questions. Like “what specific legislative measures are needed to better regulate the market the way we regulated the robber barons 100 years ago, or the way we broke up Bell’s monopoly just 50 years ago?”
For most products, absolutely yes, lol. Your choice is to not buy it
That’s fine if it’s a bag of chips or Wendy’s but you’re literally seeing the lack of choice in real time with the Taylor farms recalls. You’re being naive if you think you can just individualize your way out of a monopoly
Yes, you can choose nothing.
The idea that you have to buy their product is the reason PE exists
lol people are so brainwashed by capitalism. You guys will have everything taken from you (aka “you’ll never own anything again and like it”), sent to a camp and you’ll still scold people for “not voting with their wallets”.
When everything’s monopolized and wringed dry for profit your “individual choice” will mean fuck all.
Pathetic bootlickers all over this thread
Wear with pride being disliked by the people reacting negatively to this. Itd be an insult otherwise. They’re a lost cause and will seek out any avenue to be victim.
It ain’t groceries. Not even the internet to access free avenues to watch the game. But fuck working towards a resolution to what deem selves victim to. Gotta actively maintain to have an avenue to bitch about it.
100% it’s just defeatist to pretend there’s nothing that can be done, and they have to continue consuming the product no matter what.
I always try to remember most of the people on here are college kids or younger.
I have a couple My SO works for a company bought out by PE. It’s going how it always goes. Customers are moving away from them and employees are leaving. On the flip side, I have a couple friends in PE. They’re not evil people, but they’re incentivized to squeeze profits from these companies then flip them regardless of the collateral damage to people.
You don’t have to eat that Wendy burger. There are hundreds of other restaurants that make a chicken sandwich.
Hundreds of other restaurants about to get snapped up by private equity and enshitified…see the bigger picture brother
Lol. See the bigger picture. There are thousands of more restaurants that are independent and privately owned. Hundreds of new restaurants open up each year. Eating at a restaurant owned by private equity is a choice.
Now go see a show that’s not owned by live nation
Ehhhhhh no not really. The vast majority of restaurants are getting ingredients and products from suppliers like Sysco who have choked the market so badly that almost all restaurants from big to small are forced to use the same enshitified garbage.
Whether you are eating at Wendy’s or at the small mom and pop shop down the street you are eating Sysco. It’s all one big clusterfuck of private equity and monopolies destroying the food industry.
We’re clearly not just talking about the Lakers or Wendy’s or Jersey Mike’s
Which product that is own by a private equity that you are force to buy?
And a lot of them are being bought out and worsened by the same Private Equity puppeteers that worsened Wendy’s. It’s not a singular phenomenon with Wendy’s, they are just being used as an example of the food industry worsening its products and raising its prices from a constantly expanding capture of industry, and the phenomenon is not just relegated to food. These companies that formerly competed are being consumed into the same PE machine.
Dominos and Burger King were bought and owned by PE. They are doing better than ever.
A lot of companies bought by PE are more profitable than ever, but to say they’ve become better for the consumer is misguided.
Stavvy was just talking about this on Are You Garbage a week or two ago also. He really doesn’t like private equity
They are the masters of enshitification, so i don’t really blame him
It’s so much worse than just the shredded lettuce example, but it’s something everyone understands and can latch onto. But it’s everything.
This sub skews young. But there used to be arcades, bowling alleys, markets, toy stores, etc all owned by small business owners. Just a husband and wife running a shop and making enough money to make ends meet.
Was it inefficient? Yes. Could the arcade charged a bit more? Sure. But that inefficiency was everywhere. The vendor they bought their hotd dogs and popcorn from also wasn’t priced efficiently. Same with the arcade machines. The coffee makers. Etc. And so you lived in a world that was not built around ruthless profit and squeezing everything out of the end consumer.
It was about the long-term. Building a loyal customer base. Private equity does not care about 5-10 years from now. They don’t care about loyalty. They are about margins. And this has flowed down the entire supply chain. Now everyone charges the max they can get away with. Now business don’t just need to sustain the mom and pop owners. It needs to sustain 15-20 investors that demand endless growth.
We lost the plot. All this profit and for what? For everyone’s lives to be shittier? For every interaction with a business to be a soulless extraction of whatever you have? It sucks.
This is just the conclusion of capitalism. It was never going to go any other way. Profit motive will always eventually squeeze the heart out of everything.
All this profit and for what?
so 100ish different families could gather wealth beyond any of our comprehensions of course.
Which is always the example given as to what Socialism will result in.
when i started working in hotels valets would get \(10 kick backs from cabs and town cars when they booked someone a ride to the airport, now that money goes to Uber or Lyft and the rides began being \)5 cheaper but now the price is the same as it was now that cabs don’t exist like they used to here. That money which used to be kept circulating in the local economy now just goes to Uber/Lyft, now multiply that by every industry tech has ‘disrupted’
one of the few podcast bros who isnt dumb as bricks
All the cumtown boys are hella smmarrttt
One is a smart bug
we use words like “private equity” and “passive income” to put a positive spin on the final stages of capatlism, and to hide the public from what’s actually going on
better terms would be “profiting off of other people’s labor while (maybe) paying them minimum wage”
That’s been a thing before private equity and is only a piece of the issues wrought by PE buyouts. The problem is the anti-competitive capture of as many industries as possible by as few entities as possible with the sole purpose of maximizing profit by any means. This leads us to a slew of anti-competitive, anti-labor, anti-union, and anti-consumer market practices, one of which is universal minimization of wages, but that is only one piece of the problem with these private equity buyouts happening more and more rapidly in every possible industry. Even big YouTubers are being bought out by private equity, like Veritasium. Sources of information and previously independent News agencies are being swallowed up and that has really bad implications for the industry of investigative Journalism.
Also they fucked with my Daves Hot Chicken. All locations near me went to dog shit quality after their buyout and I am forever scorned because of it. You don’t fuck with the hot chicken man you just don’t do that. 😭
sure totally, I mean stock markets and banks inherently ruin capitalism. private equity is like the final boss of those building blocks, where massive amounts of capital are being held for the sole purpose of making significantly more money for the same people
He would probably agree with you, considering he’s also leftist, but you have to put these things in terms that won’t make someone on the other side roll their eyes and tune you out.
this isn’t really leftist or rightist. in fact, those don’t really exist anymore.
what we have now is three groups:
the first is a group of capitalistic elites. these people now control our politics, through and through.
the second is what might be considered “leftists” by people that want to engage in US political bullshit. a better name for this group is “not wealthy people that want to get rid of the first group”
the third is what would be considered “rightist”, and this is a not wealthy person that has been tricked into thinking there are only two sides and thus they must be on the same side as the first group.
we just don’t have a bi-partisan political landscape anymore. we have a bunch of people trying to get rich people to pay for their campaigns.
I agreed with your first comment but this 3 groups thing is just complete nonsense. There’s plenty of pro capitalist libs. In fact I’d say this group is much bigger than leftists. Although it seems to be balancing more.
“Private equity” is literally the term they crafted after leveraged buyouts / corporate raiders used junk bonds to almost crash our economy.
NBA players are not getting minimum wage
PE is literally just the hot new target when most have no clue why they are angry at it lol
do you think NBA players are the only people that work for an NBA team?
and sports teams are not even a perfect example of private equity in action. look at tech startups and acquisitions, or real estate as the real problems (and sure, tech companies are paying 100k a year, but that is the tech equivalent of minimum wage, and everything around them gets more expensive)
and sure like I said in another comment, it’s just a conglomerated issue of stock markets and banking principals. capital is meant to circulate in a healthy economy, not be invested in more capital gains
Why would anyone like private equity? He is dead on with this analysis.
No one should. A company has never been bought by PE and come out the other side as more consumer friendly.
I mean yea private equity buys shitty businesses. There’s a reason they’re being sold
Not even close.
Businesses get sold to PE because PE comes to the owners with too-good-to-be-true offers, setting them up to retire early.
The owners accept because regardless of how well a business is doing, it’s A LOT OF FUCKING WORK AND STRESS to be an independent business owner. They take the money and put on a good face and hand things over to PE.
Who promptly bleeds the assets from the business (such as selling the land/building then making the business pay rent to whoever bought the land who totally isn’t their golf buddy), forces longer hours with no raises, uses a shoestring budget to squeeze out profit for the 12-24 months it takes for the loyal customers to figure out that the quality has gone to shit, distributes that profit to itself rather than reinvest in the business, then declare bankruptcy and/or sell to another PE thereby incurring pennies on the dollar costs at the end when compared to the cash value they were able to extract off the backs of the pre-acquisition business’s reputation in the community.
THAT is how PE works. Some of the businesses they buy are shitty, im sure. But every single business they buy becomes MORE shitty.
Wrong.
Elizabeth Warren has been vocal against them for a lot of the past decade
https://youtu.be/B_7SQDuUKQs?is=OYEPeikD6IZxcVwm
No one fucking should. They don’t make things better theyre one notch above goodfellas where they buy the bar to sell the pieces then burn it down for insurance money. They’re for profit but it’s actually hard as fuck to increase revenue especially when you don’t know the industry so what do they do? They just cut costs cuz that’s mindless and brainless and easy.
All but like 2 veterinarians in my area are owned by private equity now. It’s fucking awful
Stav has been the people’s champ for years. I remember when he bought a cheapo house in Baltimore, where he’s from. And he was always generous with supporting laughter.
I think the only one that got better after PE took over was Popeye’s. It led to the great chicken sandwich war.
Folks need to ask themselves, why is private equity into everything today? It is because the middle class, and the money they used to earn, has been scraped away and redistributed to those who already have money. With so much money to play with, they need to do something with it. Thus “private equity.”
this is a good point.
in a finance class, the professor taught that leveraged buyout firms are looking to basically double their investment in target companies by year 5 at latest (use ‘rule of 72’: years to 2x investment ~= 72 / annual rate of return).
that implies over 14% returns each year compounded to double a initial investment by year 5.
but where, one might ask, does a 14% rate of return come from when LBOs traditionally bought mature, low growth, cash flow heavy companies? in the ‘barbarians at the gate’ RJR - Nabisco KKR era in the 1980s that meant viciously cutting ‘redundant’ staff, and selling off anything not nailed down.
now, it means buying assets with inelastic demand (like housing), and raising the prices because people have no choice.
to the original question, private equity is there because we are in a massive tulip-mania-esque asset bubble and financialization is driving it. to a certain extent, one could argue that the US economy is kind of a phantom driven by this multi-decade fiat bubble.
but the bottom line is that the things we need to live will increasingly be targeted by PE companies because they know we have no other choice.
Hvac and plumbing, auto repair, vet clinics, Urgent Cares and nursing homes are already being gobbled up. I can choose not to eat at a PE owned restaurant, but when your AC goes out or your pet gets sick you’re stuck with no choice. It’s crazy how fast it’s happening and the bullshit they will pull.
i think that these are good examples, especially their investments in veterinarians.
PE buying vet chains is clear evidence that they are targeting inelastic demand- people cannot ‘substitute’ vet care if the family pet is desperately sick. from personal experience i’d spend any amount to take care of my animals, and PE knows this. it’s also why the candy company Mars bought the VCA vet chain. they know that if there is no competition (because they bought all the vets in the area), they can charge rapacious amounts.
as a counter example, i once lived in an area that had a low cost vet who was near retirement age. he had no x-ray, no ultrasound, nothing that represented a large fixed cost. he was in an old storefront and was just paying staff. his rates were super low and he offered only basic care and referred out any diagnostic work. i think it’s reasonable to wonder whether that’s an adequate level of care, but he was also a lifeline for people who just wanted to have a vet look at their animal.
he is exactly what PE and Mars want to destroy. they want no competition so they can take that inelastic demand and charge massive amounts. an oh, can’t afford that $2,000 in xrays and tests, here’s a brochure for care credit that is basically a debt bomb that charges massive interest rates if not paid off by a specific date.
I dont really have anything to add to your great writeup, but im realizing i was sort of having this same thought the other day. Ive lived in the same little ohio town my whole life and was reminiscing about the old layout of the town. 25 years ago we had tons of small family owned buisness’s everywhere. Restraunts, auto shops, pizza joints, laundromats, law offices, ect ect. Now its strictly chains. And if i hadnt of spent my whole life here slowly watching it happen id probably not have thought anything of it. Shits sick
private equity is there bc there is a demand for it
but the demand cannot be met with traditional financing aka banks
why?
banks are highly regulated post global financial crisis
street fentanyl is there because there is a demand for it.
CSAM is there because there is a demand for it.
i think that your reasoning is facile. private equity isn’t there to provide a valuable service to society- it’s there to enrich the PE firm, investors, and the banks selling debt for LBOs.
It is clear to me that whatever benefit (if any) PE provides is outweighed by the social harms. to me, in many ways finance is harming society by pulling graduates from elite institutions and allocating them to garbage like high frequency trading instead of civil engineering, scientific research, or medical research.
also, we’ve been through several bubble bursts, each of which was bigger than the last, but the fed just printed more fiat to power through it. at some point, that party is going to end and it’s not going to be pretty.
Also the reason many stock prices bear no relation to reality.
US tax law is also a huge driver. Carryover of losses to reduce taxable income for infinity and lower tax rate on capital gains, which is the kind of profit PE makes. Changes in tax law would help us all.
Actually it’s because it’s a meaningless buzzword. If something is bad and not private equity it’s just bad but if it’s bad and private equity it’s a conspiracy.
See flair for evidence.
or … the government started telling banks how to bank
it turned out bad … so the government told banks exactly how to bank again
now the banks can only do exactly what the government lets them to do
this creates a vacuum
what enters the vacuum are pseudo banks … aka private equity
these entities perform tasks that banks use to perform but without various forms of oversight
more regulation will reset the entire process bc nothing has been learned
Me personally, I’m more than a little tired of people who are already rich making every little thing as shitty And expensive as possible solely for the sake of them getting even richer
I work in finance. I don’t do trades or money management, but I’ve met all kinds of finance people. I won’t give PE people the time of day. After a certain point, greed is a major character flaw to me, and I see it in that degree in damn near every PE person I’ve ever met.
They make greed their personality. Insufferable bunch of cunts.
Great observation. Its usually the doorway to a lot of other personality disorders
I’d recognize that Thousand Island Stare from anywhere
The story of our time. Extreme wealth inequality.
Private Equity IS Public Enemy.
Private equity steals the soul and the culture of anything it buys and turns it into a vacuous empty shell of anything….
Its goal is to put out the shittiest, “passable” product
That debt they took on to buy the company ain’t gonna pay itself
There are 20 NBA teams associated with Private Equity Frims.
As some users from this thread would say “it’s fine just don’t eat there anymore”
OK buddy.
There’s no Good Kushner. Priceless…
A good example also is the YouTube channels that have been bought out by private equity. You can clearly see the decline. Just look at donut media for God sake is a great example.
I’m so glad some of the Donut Media guys who made the channel great got up and left to make their own stuff after the channel buyout sloppified their content.
Just listened to someone explaining how it happened at a comedy club he managed. The place had a couple of AMAZING items on their menu. Everyone loved it.
New management came in and took it off the item; too many people were ordering it and it only gave small profits as opposed to things like chicken tenders which they could maximize profits. More money, shittier experienced
Stavvy baby
Hey we should make leveraged buyouts illegal. Maybe buying things and imposing billion dollars of debt on the company that’s being purchased is good for nobody but private equity.
Its wild to me that’s even legal in the first place.
Right? If I buy a house with debt I don’t get to offload the debt onto the house. Private Equity is a scourge
I guess invest in Blackstone
Why are curse words being bleeped out? What are we 12 years old???
Pablo wants to make money. All of the profanity is censored in all of his episodes.
Them legal fees ain’t gonna pay themselves lol
Blame show sponsors, also it makes pablos clips playable on TV and in schools if you wanted to do that
Ad potential. Many brands don’t want you to use curse words.
10 year olds are hearing worse language in Call of Duty lobbies from other 10 year olds….
The TikTok language censoring bleeding into all the other platforms and demonetizing videos discussing serious topics that frequent the news. The language shift it has caused for these is frustrating.
This has nothing to do with Tiktok language censoring.
George Carlin was talking about censored words in the seventies
Absolutely on the money about Jersey Mikes. I noticed the quality dipping into like Subway territory recently
damn that’s bad. haven’t been in many years, guess i never will again
jersey mikes was a hell of a sandwich
The ones in Manhattan are abysmal
i mean who goes there if you live in manhattan lol
my 2 favorite local orlando shops mama B’s and pom poms are gone. also 2 of my other favorite stand alone restaurants just shut. shit sucks
No they don’t lol. I got one last night. An Italian hot sandwich. I’m from the northeast where Italian food is all over. Jersey Mike’s would be absolutely bottom tier there, the bread is trash. The meats fucking suck compared to the real thing. Pathetic display.
For a chain sandwich anywhere in the country, they were better than any other mass option before
everyone is saying it sucks now
I didn’t eat it in the before times so I can’t comment on whether or not it got worse. But an Italian place near me makes an actually amazing sub with Boars Head meat for $1 more.
I haven’t noticed it at all. What is worse about it?
Damn that’s sad.
as far as fast food goes everywhere seems to be getting shittier. in n out seems ok still, other than their ridiculously stupid fries, but almost everywhere else the food quality and management seem to be cratering
It was already overpriced as hell why are you even going there in the first place. This is why people stay poor. Spending 20 bucks on a sandwich instead of doing something at home.
Private equity usually buys businesses when they’re already going downhill. Jersey Mike’s probably would have started to suck regardless.
There are some local shops that keep the “mom and pop” thing going but those seem to be in the suburbs
Private equity is blight across the globe - same thing with PIFs for some countries trying to wash away their horrible image by purchasing controlling stakes in brands people actually like.
What’s PIF?
Public Investment Funds. It’s how countries like Saudi Arabia fund sports purchases and projects (along with other things like buying shares in companies) like New Castle FC, LIV golf etc.
It’s how they bought EA sports too for example
Other middle eastern countries do this, along with other countries not in the Middle East, but the middle eastern countries tend to catch more flack given their human rights violations over their history
They basically use government money to invest both domestically and abroad
we used to just call them sovereign wealth funds and that feels a lot more accurate than “public investment”, even if the word “public” here is used to denote a government
Yeah PIF is just what Saudi Arabia calls their sovereign wealth fund. I don’t think it’s a broader term.
PIF is specifically the Saudi program. The general term is sovereign wealth fund.
Ah, I see. Thanks you
The irony is the PIFs have a much greater incentive to produce better products. Because their goal isn’t necessarily profit, it’s public relations and that means you want your fans to support a winning team. Stuff like LIV was arguably a little to ambitious but those PIF owned teams have won a lot of games
Exactly, not really as evil as private equity one could argue where their only goal is profit. At least with PIF they want to keep a high quality product so they can use it as soft power and improve their global image.
More so my point lumping them together is that both bring an unnecessary amount of capital to spaces which can lead to worse products as a whole. Like UAE with Mancity cheating in the Premier League the last decade+
100%
Best sit down comic
Private equity is the worst
It’s a shame about Wendy’s because for a long time they were better than McDonalds and BK imo, but they’ve been on the downslide for a long time now. Private Equity is just their end boss.
I think the next major franchise to sell to PE will be either the Knicks or Yankees. Likely the Knicks first since Dolan has been angling to sell for a while.
Hal Steinbrenner will never sell, he makes so much more money than pretty much any owner in North American sports.
I mean just last month the yankees sold a share of the team to a PE firm. I don’t get why people think the yankees are invincible to this. If the steinbrenners still own a majority of the team in 10 years I’ll be shocked
Also the story was for the longest time Hank wanted to run the team more than Hal ever did. Hal was only ever interested in the business side. When Hank died, Hal was forced to be in full control.
Wendy’s has never been better than either lol
Buddy just got on here and straight lied on that Wendy’s take bc they like it 😂😂😂😂
IMO = lie
- resident /r/nba genius
No it’s IMO doesn’t equal better
100%. They’re all hot garbage, but Wendy’s has always been a 3rd to those
How old are you?
PE will ruin America to a point of no return.
The passion with which Stavy said “these people don’t give a fuck about sandwiches”
Til why my local Jersey mikes fucking sucks now after years of excellent quality. FPE
I like Stavros for sure
But my god is the dude fucking everywhere. He’s playing a dangerous game
But ultimately probably very wise to capitalize when the goings good
He’s everywhere you are. I don’t see him a ton.
Buddy is just now just finding out that his algo is curated for him and things he’s interested in lol
Too much screen time for OP
Pretty normal to go on a big media run when a comedian drops a special though
Sure, if you can talk about it without embarrassing yourself, and Stav does a pretty solid job here
yes because they run in similar circles. stav used to have nba podcast as well
For the people who know him he’s famously a pretty avid sports guy. He’s also pretty known for having some pretty liberal leanings. So… yeah kinda normal for him
Saying Stavvy has “liberal” leanings in a thread where he is shitting all over capitalism and PE it’s god damn hilarious. Made my day
If they book you, then yeah
For Stav yeah it definitely is
This is the only time I’ve seen him in years. I guess depends on our algorithm
Can’t stop the real Greek freak
I barely see him at all. I literally only see him on Hassan’s stream
I think you just interact with a lot of media
He does a lot of stuff with Shane Gillis
who?
edit: a lot of Shane Gillis fans that cannot accept that not everyone watches the same shit they do lol idk who Stavros is either but whatever
edit 2: yep, turns out people into stand up comedy get big mad over “who?” lol
There’s no reason to come into a conversation for the first time just to say “who?” lol.
If you actually cared about who X person is, you would just google them. The only reason people comment like you did is to make a snide point.
Don’t play dumb lol
between bugonia, the special, and the new bourdain movie, he’s definitely poppin up. it’s not just cmmtown anymore (please tell me good cmmtown bits to watch, the eric clapton one is amazing)
Steve Harvey Nuremberg. Derek chauvin lawyer. Gay tucker Carlson. There’s a youtube channel that animated a lot of their old bits called saulfr
The twilight zone one, Nick living in the garage as a step dad, gay Jeff goldblum, Ben Shapiro reads wap.
Oh and the animated one where Adam shits himself
Saul is the FUCKING MAN
Pepper Ann Sopranos.
nicks pandemic flash cards
n-less shrimp is one of the funniest things i’ve ever heard
he’s the feature of an ESPN commercial that’s on NFL games
he’s def on his Druski arc and I hope he both capitalizes on it and manages it well to dodge overexposure. I think he has the range to stay fresh though
Can’t tell if acting, podding, being on a reality show and doing stand-up is four things or one.
Regardless, he’s likeable, unique and talented enough and has found an audience beyond cumtown. I think this is peak Staav but I don’t expect a DRose type dropoff.
Lmao
I have never heard of him until this post. Who is he?
Stand up comic who got famous for his old podcast called cum town with Nick Mullen and Adam Friedland. On top of his stand up, his second podcast, Stavvy’s World, has gotten pretty big and he has been making his way into many acting roles as well.
I love him but I personally found the new special to be incredibly weak. But his usual stuff (imo) is pretty good, As for his acting, idk if he’s good since I don’t watch many movies.
I’m gonna echo other people here, he’s in your algo. I actually love tires and watched his specials and I don’t see him that often lol
Totally agree. Definitely tiptoeing into Jason Kelce territory of overexposure
Pretty much nobody is pro-private equity. The nature of these entities is that public approval doesn’t matter one bit when you dominate an entire industry. They don’t have to keep it secret and they don’t care about complaints. That’s what allows them to move like this.
People have been saying this for decades, private equity has ruined so many companies. It’s great Stavvy recognizes it, but it’s not some revelation
For those who don’t know, the term “slime him” means to get jizzed on.
The end of the offseason is always fun
lol, please
Knowing that private equity is simply a way of organizing investors and that the managers are motivated to turn a profit like any other investor? They lose money when they fail and make money when they succeed?
Uh oh, now people know.
That’s the worst description of private equity ever written.
Well that would certainly be ironic.
Please, enlighten me.
EDIT: Yep, didn’t think so.
They are interested in short term profit so they can make a quick ROI
That’s just capitalism.
“wow, so it’s illegal bad to make plans investments with friends now”.
Might just be your Algo man. I know who he is but the only place I’ve seen him recently is that ESPN commercial…. But now he’s probably gonna be all over my TL
What’s fucking us up is financial gravity and the primacy of the shareholder. Even Pablo has said in the episode about comedians in Saudi Arabia that everyone has a price and so does he. (Though I wonder since he does seem to care about his journalism at personal risk.) But it’s well established science that past a pretty low threshold money doesn’t bring any happiness. Until we reorganize our institutions to no longer bow to the shareholder (there are companies that have mission greater than shareholder, famous examples are Patagonia and Costco) - and get rid of the idea of money is speech, things are not going to change. Private Equity is one of many executors of shareholder primacy destroying things. But it’s the means, NOT the cause. Still should be reviled, but we need to point at the real problems or we can’t change anything.
PE is sort of the cause. The issue is PE funds purchases with massive debt loads, leveraged against future profits. It necessitates a decline in product quality.
Primacy of the shareholders is an issue, but a different issue with different downstream causes. Primacy of the shareholder isn’t making companies out out shittier products — shareholder primacy can be interpreted in any which way.
Preach stav
PE ruins everything it touches. Shame we have to watch its cancerous growth in the NBA, too
his latest netflix comedy show was nearly as bad as rogan’s
Private equity is ruining everything in the world.
Let’s talk about it! The Celtics also recently got new ownership from a private equity goon. His first major move? Trading Jaylen Brown for Paul George. The logic behind it seems to be that we’ll be able to start saving money in 2030.
Preach
What a goat
Don’t mess with Stavvy’s food
Also fuck Wendy’s dude
SF giants fans feel this so much.
Shredded lettuce is better than those annoying leaves of lettuce.
Pabbbbbbbblllloooooooooo
It’s an oversimplification to blame everything on “PE” at this point. A single owner can run an NBA team or business into the ground (or corruptly). Many people were already saying the Jersey Mike’s quality declined because of rapid expansion, well before the PE buyout even happened. Chipotle became worse and more expensive as a publicly traded company. The enshittifcation is VERY real but the “it’s all PE” is a bad explanation because the policy solution wouldn’t solve the real problems.
We operate in a system where PE has a lot of power. So they’re gonna shoulder most of the blame
When redditors say PE they really mean capitalism.
“Enshittification” is happening because interest rates are high and there’s more short term pressure to generate profits.
It’s both. Capitalism with insufficient market regulation on anti-competitive practices leads to the centralization of industry and Private Equity is the most accelerated form of that in our current system. Anti-competitive practices can happen in many ways under poorly regulated capitalism but we see it happen more plainly when all the stores and shops in a city are being bought, replaced, or dissolved by Private equity in a short span of time while the businesses that remain are under the control of a few firms with the guise of competing against each other but are able to all take the same actions of cheapening a product, shrinking the product, and raising the prices, without a competitive response from the other surrounding companies due to being all under the same profit over everything shell companies puppeteering the decisions. When people say private equity is a problem they do mean private equity, but it is true that it is only a symptom of a broken capitalist system in desperate need of a strong regulatory body.
When people say private equity is a problem they do mean private equity
I’d believe this more if I saw Redditors display a stronger grasp of what “private equity” actually means.
Considering redditors a monolithic entity with an equal level of knowledge and nuance in a topic to disregard all critiques on said topic in the platform is not a great jumping point for real discussion on a topic. All it does is stroke your ego while providing nothing.
True that. Public equity is basically the same thing. The actual problem is greed. The funds are just the vehicle.
you mean a fundamental human attribute that through time we’ve been unable to remove?
obviously. but we certainly make it easier with how we’ve made up society, but its moot.
A bad owner can be replaced. The issue with private equity is that the goal changes. Instead of a hyper competitive owner now it’s a group of investors that don’t care about the end result just the revenue.
Right. I think the worry here is these teams are becoming way too valuable to the point where they can only be purchased for private equity. And the more teams that are driven by profit over performance will ultimately cause more and more teams to do the bare minimum.
A bad owner usually means the company tanks.
A bad owner being replaced usually means private equity.
Case in point: the Dodgers were sold by a bad owner to private equity in 2012 and now they’re so well run that it’s breaking the economics of the sport.
Yeah the Knicks are owned by James Dolan and he’s also a slimy piece of shit who spies on his own fans and customers. No ethical consumption under capitalism.
Thank you OP for sharing
Private Equity = Rich People
Jaylen Brown trade private equity ownership
Business changed in the 1990s from the marketing perspective of “keep your customers satisfied and you will make money”, to the finance perspective of “make a (short term) profit” for the investors, customers are fools and will remain loyal. In sports, private equity means getting its share of the TV revenues, and profits from the $20 hotdogs, even if you don’t spend to your salary cap and your team sucks. The only success measure is the money coming in, not team performance, which is how private equity ruins sport.
Loved Stavros in the Bear
Personally prefer current jersey mikes over pre 2025.
100% Pablo. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work for a PE-backed (well purchased) startup and it was bonkers how reporting felt like the end of the world. As if the performance of assets will change by receiving the report a day late. Sheesh
I remember when I found out Jersey Mike’s was bought out I instant knew it would turn to shit
I love Stavvy and I understand the point he’s trying to make but he needs to do his research. Neither Wendy’s or Jersey Mike’s are currently private equity they are both publicly traded companies.