When you have that small number of people controlling this big a portion of the economy,

there's always a risk that they will do things that are in their own interest or, at a minimum,

just not in the interest of the public at large. That is a real democratic deficit for capitalism.

I'm Bethany McLean.

Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea?

And I'm Luigi Zengalis.

We have socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.

And this is Capital Isn't, a podcast about what is working in capitalism.

First of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?

And most importantly, what isn't?

We ought to do better by the people that get left behind.

I don't think we shouldn't kill the capital system in the process.

I wonder if listeners could guess the one topic where Bethany and I disagree the most.

Okay, that's pretty obvious.

It's private equity.

This might be an overstatement, but Bethany thinks that private equity is evil and he's representing everything that is bad in the world.

And I have more mixed views.

I think that there is some that is evil, some that might actually be good.

Well, it might be an overstatement to say that I think private equity is evil, but modern big private equity, maybe so.

When Joe and I reported our book, The Big Fail, I was really struck by a study showing basically that private companies bought by private equity firms are 10 times more likely to go bankrupt as those that aren't. As I think our listeners know, I'm a believer in

capitalism, but I'm a believer in an old school kind of capitalism where people make money,

even fortunes, yes, because they build a business that provides jobs for other people and services

...