you see this in the UK water companies

PE buys some operation, loads it up with debt and then pays dividends to itself directly from that borrowed money (via a chain of subsidiaries)

it continues doing this until the company debt situation becomes unsustainable, then dumps the company on clueless investors (e.g. state pension funds)

paying dividends from debt is illegal, but apparently not if you launder it through enough subsidiaries in different countries

this is essentially exploiting a design flaw in capitalism

the story goes, we let people run amok in markets because they're "self-correcting". the reality is, we continue to ignore the effect of delayed corrections and what damage might be incurred in the interim.

The is called privatizing profit and socializing risk. Current management philosophies are all about mining assets and when the mine is empty, move on. It used to be about growing assets.

another way to articulate that dichotomy is through the lens of industrial vs financial modes of capitalism.

True. In many cases the self-correcting cycles of markets may take decades or centuries.