I think large publically listed companies are particularly problematic as they often shift focus from being reasonably rewarded for providing valuable products and services, to a focus on maximising profit and return to shareholders. This makes most of us who hold shares in our super funds a part of the problem as our fund managers will punish companies that are not as "efficient" as others.
One of the things we can rely upon with certainty is the power of greed to drive sub-optimal behaviour.
Personally, I think we need to do the following:
- Do not allow salespeople and accountants to be the primary decision-makers in companies.
- Eliminate high reward short term incentive schemes.
- Broaden our definition of the value of an entity to consider the good and bad they do
- Incent people on the broadened definition of value.
e.g. is selling spares for TVs at a price point that encourages people to buy more product by making it more viable to buy a new TV than to repair an old TV a good behaviour? Is providing free healthcare services to the communities they work in better behaviour? Does an online gambling company provide as much value as an organisation providing home care for the elderly?
- Move away from simple income tax towards a sliding scale system of GST where the most discretionary items attract much more GST than essential items.
- Move away from the for-profit model for essential services e.g. health, power, basic telecommunications, transport infrastructure, sanitisation, education .. IMO the whole medicare + private health model in this country is fundamentally broken.
- Stick and carrot approach to creating sustainable products .. make it financially unviable for companies to build poor quality non-maintainable products in the interest of selling more product.
- Make it financially advantageous to reduce packaging, weight, and size of products in order to reduce transport costs and waste .. Selling a product in larger packaging to make a punter think they are getting more for their money is an example of profit/sales taking priority over value and sustainability.
- Better welfare for those who truly need it.
- Punish profit shifting.
I actually think implementing a UBI is just waving a white flag and resigning ourselves to a belief that the future world will be run by a handful of large companies and the current workforce will serve no useful purpose, so rather than do something about it we will just stick our hands out and rely on their benevolence.
I'm not buying it.
Rant over![]()
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