Chains of Collusion

There is an industrial strike possible for Thursday, which will last about a week and will mean that there will be no meals available at the schools. They have made arrangements to feed the kids, but they will not cater at all for special diets, which means that we are going to have to pack meals for Smallsteps, since she is sans lactose and gluten still.

Strikes and unions are interesting really, because it goes to show the conflict in the economy that doesn't take into consideration wellbeing of the community. The fundamental rule of business is to "increase shareholder wealth" and it doesn't matter what impacts it makes on the environment, the people, or the community it affects. Even the legislation is a game to be played, where laws are bent and in some cases broken, as the cost of getting caught tends to be lower than the gain of getting away with it.

And, I think a lot of it comes down to transparency, because if we had hypothetical perfect information, we wouldn't just be able to police the practices, we would also be able to better evaluate the worth of what is delivered through the supply chains. For instance, in Australia the cost of dairy products have increased significantly in stores, but the dairy farmers themselves are struggling to make ends meet. Their costs are increasing, but the retailers aren't paying them adequately, even though they are charging more for the final product.

Would transparency of supply chain cost information make a difference?

Maybe, maybe not, but transparency at least would bring in some potential for us to make more informed decisions on the value of what we are purchasing. And, it would also mean that we would better be able to negotiate an adequate salary for the work we do. Of course, this goes against the tenets of maximizing profits, because it will lead to lower profit margins for investors, as they will not be able to justify some of the raises in costs, without raising salaries.

However, "profit" itself is a problem when it comes to society, especially since it is the driver of the economy without tying it to a need to improve society. If we went back to a little tribe thousands of years ago, profit wasn't a thing at all, there was just demand and supply. Sometimes there was a surplus, sometimes there was a deficit, and depending on the conditions, the society of the tribe would be affected. There was an immediacy to the economy, because nothing could be stored for very long, everything needed was perishable.

In the past, our investments were into the training of children, the development of tools and techniques, and the building of relationships in order to meet needs - it was all very practical for the requirements of the tribe. But, in the economy in which we have built, there is the ability to store value and convert it to meet future demands. And it is because of this that we are able to have an investment class that doesn't actually do anything much for society and in many cases, harms it.

It harms because the mechanism to building wealth at any cost for storage, means that the potential of that wealth needn't be spent on making things better and instead, tends to be used to build and store more wealth. None of it has to improve society, none of it has to be spent on training, innovation or relationships at all. It can just sit there, a kin to a freezer full of food, whilst people are starving.

But, distribution of wealth isn't the answer, because it doesn't solve for what that wealth is being spent on. In a tribe, "market forces" of needs means that there is a maximization for the group, but this doesn't hold true when there is no group. Society is very, very disjointed with a whole range of needs (and wants) that complicate the market forces by creating large gaps in expectations. These gaps can be leveraged for profit and can be used to influence the market to make choices as individuals, that go against what is best for the "tribe", all with justifications as to why it is okay.

If we could imagine a world of full financial transparency, what would we discover? Would we change our behaviors once we saw the supply chain that leads to cigarette sales, cancer drug recommendations, and innovation of cures? Would we change our behaviors if we could see all the costs and markups that go into the price of milk and bread at the grocery store? Would we evaluate products differently if we could see all of the wealth that is being created at different points along the supply chain? Would we remain silent, if we saw all the wealth that changes hands through lobbying and kickbacks for the military industry?