> The cultural shift happened largely because investment banking, venture capital, and leveraged buyout raiders didn't really exist before in any meaningful way compared to today.
Besides the circularity in saying that a cultural shift happened because something changed, Investment Banking is a thing since at least 1932 when the Glass-Steagall act was passed to enforce separation of concerns between "commercial banks" and "investment banks".
"The first true venture capital firm was American Research and Development (ARD), established in 1946 by MIT President Karl Compton, General Georges F. Doriot"
As for Leveraged Buyouts, I highly recommend this analysis of 2000 cases done in 1993 which is far from any categorical conclusions on LBOs being a straightforward phenomenon that can be explained away in four sentences.
1. Do LBOs create wealth, or do they merely redistribute wealth?
2. Does the debt taken on in LBOs cause problems in periods of economic distress?
My point being essentially: don't hand wave historical analysis away. Get into it, read the papers, and the primary sources. History is fascinating and full of interesting questions about why things have come to be how they are in society. Whenever I feel intrigued by some historical question, and I decide to question the facile explanations that come to mind, I am endlessly fascinated by how complex and nuanced things are, and by how much analysis has been published starting out with the same questions as I asked myself.
Besides the circularity in saying that a cultural shift happened because something changed, Investment Banking is a thing since at least 1932 when the Glass-Steagall act was passed to enforce separation of concerns between "commercial banks" and "investment banks".
Venture capital dates from at least the 1950s:
The Venture Capital Revolution https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.15.2.145
"The first true venture capital firm was American Research and Development (ARD), established in 1946 by MIT President Karl Compton, General Georges F. Doriot"
As for Leveraged Buyouts, I highly recommend this analysis of 2000 cases done in 1993 which is far from any categorical conclusions on LBOs being a straightforward phenomenon that can be explained away in four sentences.
The Determinants of Leveraged Buyout Activity: Free Cash Flow vs. Financial Distress Costs https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb05138.x
It explicitly asks:
1. Do LBOs create wealth, or do they merely redistribute wealth?
2. Does the debt taken on in LBOs cause problems in periods of economic distress?
My point being essentially: don't hand wave historical analysis away. Get into it, read the papers, and the primary sources. History is fascinating and full of interesting questions about why things have come to be how they are in society. Whenever I feel intrigued by some historical question, and I decide to question the facile explanations that come to mind, I am endlessly fascinated by how complex and nuanced things are, and by how much analysis has been published starting out with the same questions as I asked myself.