Welcome to the next book in the Occasional Learner’s Book Club: ‘Bad Company’ by Megan Greenwell.

If you’re a sports media nerd from the 2010s, Greenwell’s name might be familiar to you. She ran the commentary and news site Deadspin before and (briefly) after their sale to a private equity firm. As she tells it, the purchase made little sense. They didn’t try to improve Deadspin and didn’t seem to care about its decline. Why would they do that? Wouldn’t the firm make more money, she wondered, if the properties they owned did well as a portfolio investment?

Subscribe now

It turns out, no, they would not make more money by tending to Deadspin’s needs. In fact, they’d be just as happy selling it for parts. Her quest to understand what felt like a contradiction in how private equity operates is why she ultimately wrote the book:

The experience inspired Greenwell to investigate what private equity’s growing footprint has done to industries across the country, from retail to healthcare. Her new book, Bad Company, is filled with troubling stats: Eight percent of the American workforce is employed at companies owned by private equity; 20 percent of those companies enter bankruptcy within ten years of being acquired. Meanwhile, the firm makes a profit. The chapters on the media are equally bleak: Between 2004 and 2019, a period when Alden Global Capital bought up dozens of newspapers and GateHouse merged with Gannett to form the largest newspaper owner in the country, half of all newspaper jobs were lost and a quarter of all papers folded. Twenty percent of the surviving papers are ghost papers. But the book doesn’t merely chronicle destruction; it also follows the creative ways that workers are resisting the intrusion of predatory finance into their careers and livelihoods.

Private equity is playing an already outsized and still growing role in vast sectors of the American economy. Yet, that growth isn’t necessarily to the benefit of others. The evidence shows its operations are opaque. The private equity model is also not necessarily designed to care for the assets it purchases and routinely profits from their destruction. This portends disastrous consequences for consumers, employers and the economy, more generally.

In about a month’s time, we’ll hopefully speak to Greenwell, but for paid subscribers/book club members, we’ll also do our own town hall separate from that to explore what we’ve leaned, what stood out and what mattered to us most.

You can purchase the book here. There is also an audio version available as well. For more information about the book club, go here.

The first book in the book club for this Substack is Tim Wu’s ‘The Age of Extraction.” As a feature for paid subscribers, I’ll be interviewing Wu and using many of YOUR QUESTIONS to talk to him tomorrow. So, this is your chance!

Luke Thomas

Welcome to The Occasional Learner's Book Club

Welcome to The Occasional Learner’s Book Club. Most of you in this community have been asking for a feature like this to get going and now it’s official…

Read more

2 months ago · 60 likes · 31 comments · Luke Thomas

While I’m opening the post to all to comment, I’m going to be putting heavy priority on those who are paid subscribers here to get their voices heard when I speak to Wu.

So, if you read the book, what is your question for Tim? POST IT BELOW!

Welcome to The Occasional Learner’s Book Club. Most of you in this community have been asking for a feature like this to get going and now it’s official.

TOLBC will be a low-pressure, high-curiosity reading club for people who want to learn more about the way the world works and how systems of power direct the lives of ordinary people.

This is not a book club where we perform being smart. All we’re interested in is being curious. My goal is to better understand how the government, tech, academia, financial institutions and other power structures affect our everyday lives.

Share

How the club works

Duration of each cycle is a function of the book length and my bandwidth. I don’t want to promise to be a part of something where demands are too overwhelming on an already thinly-stretched schedule.

Therefore, most books will follow a monthly schedule, but at times will move to a six-week interval. I realize it’s not difficult for many to read books at a much quicker pace, but I can’t commit to something I can’t follow.

Also, I do not expect this to be the only place where you get your reading done. This book club functions more as a complement to your existing diet, not a replacement.

Subscribe now

As for who can participate, everyone is entitled to read along, but paid subscribers will be treated to bi-monthly check-ins (sometimes weekly) on what’s being read, feedback you all have, major ideas presented and how we feel about the author’s work.

At the end of the cycle, I’ll make a good-faith effort to get the author of the book on (this naturally will not always be possible for a variety of reasons). That conversation will be made available to paid subscribers first, then everyone else thereafter. I’ll also host a chat exclusive to this platform with paid subscribers where we discuss the book, what we learned and more.

The first book we’ll read

I bought this book a few months ago and had intended to read it before the end of the year. However, I knew this book club was on the horizon and wanted to start this off with something timely, compelling and important.

For our maiden voyage, we’ll start with Tim Wu’s ‘The Age of Extraction’. I’ve read all of Wu’s other books, each of which was engrossing and illuminating. I suspect this will be no different.

Subscribe now

This book covers how tech platforms have turned our lives and the Internet into extraction engines where platforms grossly over charge relative to the value of goods and services being purchased. Wu argues this kind of economic relationship is an anti-liberty power over our lives, a fact that gets downplayed because it is not explicitly the government restricting freedoms.

You can purchase a physical copy here (or at your local bookstore). Amazon carries a Kindle version as well.

Next step

I’ll set up the first live discussion of the book in the coming days and that’s where paid subscribers will be able to discuss what they’ve read to that point and how they feel about it.

Are there other features you’d like to see added to this book club? If so, drop a comment below!

Thanks for your patience on this. Let’s see if we get some learning in this year and better understand the world in which we live.