Basically, the company had to pay for its own buyout when private equity firms KKL, Vornado, and Bain bought the company for $6.6 billion, mostly with loans.
Because the company then had to pay off those extreme loans, they were forced to sell off their assets and property, which they leased back from the very private equity firms that now owned them.
The same thing happened more recently with Red Lobster and JoAnn Fabrics.
It is insane. You’re not crazy, or at least if you are we can be crazy together because I also think the whole thing is rotten to the core.
It’s pretty disgusting what the borgeousie get up to and away with. The whole world is broken. How we have decided society is going to work and run is all one big collective illusion anyways; we might as well make the mirage nicer for the majority of us humans instead of scrabbling like crabs climbing over one another to get to the top.
Anyways, I think part of the problem is once you see the illusion there isn’t much of anything to do about it as an individual because there’s so much going on out of your control.
I think that’s a big part of why we’re seeing more anxiety and depression than ever - because we know how we live (particularly in the west but really almost everywhere) is not sustainable, destroys the environment and causes suffering on a global scale but we keep dutifully existing quietly in the system as the cogs we are.
I like all the stuff I have, I like my car and house and standard of living but I don’t know if it would be feasible for the whole world to live like me and I’m not even rich or that well off. That’s the real crazy part. I have some privilege, I know I’m at least better off than half of my fellow Americans … But still I am just a proletariat like every other person working for wages.