I go out of my (sometimes significantly) to go to non-PE owned companies and services, and the experience is so much better it's like experiencing an entirely different quality of life. My 2¢ is that a decent chunk of the "dissolution of the social contract" in the US is due to the way that people are treated when they interact with these soulless entities.
I’d happily pay for a tool that lets me opt out of being slowly nickel-and-dimed by entities optimized for short-term yield. This feels like infrastructure: a small amount of collective effort that gives individuals leverage again. Visibility is the lever. And it could be done, it's just more organizing and involvement in local politics. The information already exists, it’s just effectively invisible, and a small translation layer could collapse it into a one-second answer, letting people avoid operators with a predictable extractive playbook, with the only real challenge being the constant, boring maintenance in an environment designed for churn and opacity. Eventually this should revolve around organizing and politics to make a difference.
Storage unit rental went from $90 in 2014 to $110 about 2017, but then was acquired by CubeSmart which is publicly traded: now $241 per month. I know the local taxes and they have stayed about the same all those years.
>I had a storage unit for a while until I realized that the monthly bill was more than the value of the contents.
For every one of you there's a few people using it as business storage and dozens of people who are dealing with living situation stuff (college housing vs apartment, house closing timing, job relocation, house renovation, etc, etc, etc) that trade in and out of units on like a 1-2mo timeline.
My behavioral economics pricing idea for storage unit is to charge $1 for the first month but then double every month (or something like that). You shouldn't put stuff in storage long term and you're getting ripped off.
Though less critical to our lives, PE has ruined loads of retail and restaurant options as well - Sears, Toy ‘R’ Us, Red Lobster, and Shari’s come to mind.
sears had a ceo who was obsessed with competition and pitted his units against each other. they could have created an online portal and then crushed amazon in the crib -- but didn't.
toys r us had a cto who pushed for internet stuff... and said no.
Coutry wide only 16% of dental practices are DSO, and it's not that functionally different from junior dentists getting loans to set up their practices with practices themselves as a collateral.
