> no attention paid to the folks who sold the businesses to them?

Why would the retiring dentist selling their practice be a trust or collusion problem?

What would that attention look like? "Long-time pillar of the community local pediatrician retires and sells their practice"?

How would you know this attention is getting paid or not unless you are consuming local news from the places this is happening?

Run a small business for 20 years, work yourself to the bone, and then contemplate a big check from a buyout offer.

The buyer generally runs the service in a much worse way, so it's their management which comes under attack.

Because the buyer is the one monopolizing industries and stripping them for parts

Because a sale for cash is a basic legal contract that predates modern society by millenia, whereas a LBO that PE uses to purchase companies is a weak spot in American Capitalism created at the intersection of:

1.Shareholder primacy. Under Delaware corporate law (which governs most large U.S. public companies), once a board decides to sell, directors have a fiduciary duty to maximize the price shareholders receive. A premium cash offer from a PE firm is hard to refuse without legal exposure.

2.Interest deductibility. The tax code lets companies deduct interest payments but not dividends, which makes debt-heavy capital structures more tax-efficient. LBOs exploit a feature of tax law that exists for many reasons unrelated to private equity.

3.Freedom of contract and limited liability. Sponsors can put a thin equity check into a holding company, have that company borrow on the target's assets, and walk away if it fails, because limited liability is the foundation of corporate law generally.