> In the process, they'll generally fuck over a whole lot of workers
The only way they can do that, since the workers' pensions were an obligation of the company that got broken up, is to declare that company bankrupt and void the obligation. But bankruptcy is not supposed to be a way to make money by voiding a company's obligations and then selling off its capital. The net value of the company is its assets minus its obligations; the process of cashing out the company should involve paying the obligations, not voiding them.
> there is real economic value (not necessarily social good) in this process of capital redistribution
Now who is using a straw man? Again, the "economic value" in a company is its assets minus its obligations. Cashing in on the assets while voiding the obligations is not creating "real economic value". It's stealing it from the people to whom the obligations were owed.
No, it's absolutely not a straw man. The destroyed pensions are theft, which must appear on the balance sheet when you claim that vulture capitalism creates value. The loss of pension has direct impact on those owed: they are being deprived of money that they earned by providing value.
I repeat: nobody was arguing that people losing their pensions was a good thing. Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Literally no-one.
I don't even know what you're referencing, or how it's even possible for Private Equity to pilfer workers' pension funds. If anything, it's the funds themselves that own/invest in Private Equity.
Yet still, you and the other poster have brought it up as if stealing pension funds (how?) is somehow "what Private Equity does".
You might as well be arguing that Private Equity destroys value because it's immoral to fuck a dog. I'm sure Carl Icahn-esque character has tried it before.
No, it isn't. See below.
> In the process, they'll generally fuck over a whole lot of workers
The only way they can do that, since the workers' pensions were an obligation of the company that got broken up, is to declare that company bankrupt and void the obligation. But bankruptcy is not supposed to be a way to make money by voiding a company's obligations and then selling off its capital. The net value of the company is its assets minus its obligations; the process of cashing out the company should involve paying the obligations, not voiding them.
> there is real economic value (not necessarily social good) in this process of capital redistribution
Now who is using a straw man? Again, the "economic value" in a company is its assets minus its obligations. Cashing in on the assets while voiding the obligations is not creating "real economic value". It's stealing it from the people to whom the obligations were owed.