I was reading a brief article today on the Finnish news about how Vattenfall, a large, Swedish, energy provider has been caught manipulating electricity prices in 2022, by demanding less than they need from the market and restricting supply by offering less than they could to the market, driving prices upward. They are saying that it was unintentional, but what are the chances of that actually being the case? Also, what are the chances of them being the only companies doing so?
The maximum possible penalty for price manipulation is 10 percent of a company's turnover in the year in which the violation occurred. Vattenfall's turnover last year was 21.3 billion euros, so this could mean a maximum fine of 2.13 billion euros.
That might hurt a little.
But, if found guilty, shouldn't it go a step further than a fine? Shouldn't there be structural change applied, especially since this is in a sector of national importance and security. And, this is something that should also apply to banks, where if they are caught in any kind of illegal activity that they could have prevented, or if they need to get bailed out - they should be forced into a position of oversight, where all of their transactions are visible to independent auditors.
Governments should be transparent already.
They are not.
Financial transparency is not the friend of government or corporation, because they would then become beholden to the public, where all of their books would need to equal zero and if they didn't the paper trail would be easily followed. Currently, there are a lot of loopholes they are able to use to siphon value from one pool to another, whilst telling unprovable stories on the surface.
It should all be provable, shouldn't it?
Yet, we are spending a huge amount of time and energy on speculating on the way things are, when of we had access to all of the data, we would know the way things are. There is an incredible amount of data collected and this is where AI could be used to make sort and make sense of it at a meta level, indicating where there are opportunities that should be investigated more deeply. Instead, AI is being used to trawl our data and find ways to increase profits.
It is a sophisticated game, where instead of a plague of locusts that eat everything they can, they are continually finding ways to extract the maximum, without disturbing us enough that we notice we are being eaten out of house and home. A funny saying these days, since many people can't afford to buy a house and home has been replaced by a remote office, a tiny satellite office of a larger corporation, under the banner of work from home convenience.
The other day, I was talking with a friend who for a long time has wanted a Tesla, but now, with Musk being a bit of a nut and peaking his mind, he is doubting his desires. The reason is that he doesn't want to be associated with Musk, because he is unpredictable and speaks his mind. He doesn't want to support crazy. Fair enough.
However, one thing that Musk's crazy has done, is increase focus on Tesla cars, processes and related businesses. Essentially, because he is a nut, there is a higher level of attention happening, as everything he says gets dived into. This means that Tesla is actually less likely to be caught up in massive scandals, because there are more eyes on them - decentralized oversight. Every production flaw or dodgy material, gets investigated.
My friend doesn't want to associate with that. Perhaps a boring Volkswagen?
Remember that scandal?
Caught by grad students.
Just imagine if all current potential scandals that were hidden from view in governments and corporations, were suddenly made visible - what would that world look like?
It'd be a fucking mess.
But, in time, it would have to settle and changes would have to be made to ensure these things didn't happen again and like it or not, that happens through transparency. We as individuals are already transparent to a very high degree and have almost no privacy under the surface of society and it is time we started demanding that our governments and corporations were subject to the same level of scrutiny. How is it that a company can hide itself, but an individual human cannot? How come I can be audited by the government, but I have no way to audit the government?
If there was transactional transparency, decentralized audits would take place and this would happen in the most contentious of areas. However, with that transparency comes a higher degree of provability, meaning that a lot of the contention would subside, because people could actually see what was going on.
For instance, after the recent elections in Finland, the new Prime Minister got to see "the books" and acknowledged that the economy was in worse condition than he thought. Uummm, he was elected because he was meant to help improve the economy, right? So, all the things he promised, and all the plans he made to convince the people to vote for him, were based on speculation of conditions, not the reality of the situation. It is like me inviting a hundred people around for a barbecue, without knowing what is in the fridge, or whether I have gas to heat the grill.
And this is part of the reason that party-based politics is always going to fail, because each party is making their decisions and policies on their speculation, not on the reality. It is also going to fail because they are going to favor their policies over the policies of other parties, without giving a crap about the population as a whole. If there was transparency and a governments charter was to always increase wellbeing of the population, there would only be one government with role positions changing, based on the needs of the conditions. Like a non-profit, "wellbeing company", held to quality standards and best practices through transparent mechanisms.
Due to incentive and lack of oversight, I suspect that all companies are on the "up to no good" spectrum, but we don't know who and how deep it goes, until something comes to light. And, because of various digital practices in place and the way records are kept and security is constantly under attack, most will come to light, but it will be too late to do anything about it. Just another footnote in history.
The only visibility most of us have on the economy, is the sense that it isn't working for us and the feeling, it is working against us, yet we don't have the evidence available to prove it.
We should.
If we did, the chances it is Provably Unfair, are very, very high.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
