alt Hacker NewsI think part of the problem with the succession idea is that a lot of people in these positions worked these hard jobs to try and give their kids a better life. They encouraged their kids to go to school for their passions and now those kids are in careers far removed from what their parents did.
Instead of succession, I wonder if there is a way to make it easier for these people to sell their company when its time to retire to someone who is looking to start the next step of their career. A lot of software engineers joke about becoming farmers, but if they could instead make an easy transition into a small business by buying a small business, we could prevent PE from raiding things.
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The vast majority of people can’t just go out and buy a machine shop or laundromat and then start running the business. It’s a risky asset, not like a house where you put down 20% and any bank will loan you the rest. I’d love to own a small franchise restaurant or something in my town but they cost millions that I don’t have.
And that’s before you even make it to the question of “can the person that manages to buy it actually live off of it as a lifestyle business?”
I think the other thing is the older generation are of the opinion that a steady paycheck is somehow safer than owning your own company, mostly because most of them never sat in the other side of the table.
This leads to them pushing their kids to be employees even though that's...really contradictory to their actual lived experience.
We should be encouraging employee stock purchase plans with tax incentives. [0] It’s better for the businesses and better for our communities than PE.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_purchase_plan