Ah yes, most of us know nothing about running a business. Not enough do otherwise there wouldn't be more businesses gone broke than there are businesses in business.

Hi again all. If we started small and again indexed wages to match inflation, if we again recognized a recommended retail price( not the all year round fixed price described by rehctub) but maximum ethical retail margins, then living standards could be maintained:

Ethical margins could be understood by all parties as actually representing the best interests of all parties. Business could still compete for greater market share through excellence. As I said before "by making a better widget", providing a better service etc

To examine the ethics of margins, lets take the banks; "even though they produce little" the fee's and charges they enforce are often for the cost of data transfer from one terminal to another as in the case with them dealing with each other for example. I assume that this data transfer costs them practically nothing!.

Adding a extra middle man (for fun and profit) between the consumers/workers and access to their own money adds nothing to the economy or the social structure yet we think this appropriate (even justifiable) business practice?.

Who is beneficiary to such regimes?. Do they really think producing little more than extra terminals or even less, and charging like wounded bull's for it, represents the greater good?. And in a regulatory sense , why do we allow such latitude in banking practices in the first place.

Let's have a holistic conference on where we're headed. Lets include the ethics of business and make it part of the mix, part of the economic/environmental success formula. Let's help business, consumers and working people, understand "what it is that we should be expecting from each other".

Red tape would not be increased by a process like this, not if based on fundamental commitments/understandings by all parties in the first place.

Ludwig, I doubt we can move this conversation forward until you make your position clear.

>>But then you wrote: “…at the highest level of generalization …. at that level, we disagree.” I’m confused. This seems to be totally contradictory.<<

Not if you read what I wrote.

"Not sure that [road safety] is a convincing analogy, except at the highest level of generalization"

That does not contradict my agreement with your position "that we need a good rule of law that everyone understands".

Which is, let's face it, simply a "motherhood statement"

>>Oooow, I’ll have to vehemently disagree with [our laws are on the whole enforced, and enforced consistently]!<<

We might get somewhere if you explained a little more your "vehement disagreement". Which laws are not enforced, or not enforced consistently?

Your concern over "costs" seem to be exclusively in the area of compliance. However, compliance costs will inevitably be skewed against the smaller operators. It is a fact of their lives. The very idea of adding more regulations to the already ludicrous burden sends a collective shiver down their spines.

>>Of course regulation has a cost. But it has just got be balanced up against the potential costs of having no or poor regulation, as I have said in a previous post.<<

What you still haven't explained, is where you believe the extra control is needed, i.e. replacing "no or poor regulation".

And this is not going to get out of the starting gate, I'm afraid, thinker 2.

>>If we started small and again indexed wages to match inflation, if we again recognized a recommended retail price... but [enforced?] maximum ethical retail margins, then living standards could be maintained<<

A purely mathematical formula, that cannot work in the real world without massive government intervention, the only possible result of which would be to jack up retail prices by driving the small operators out of business and leaving the field open to the monopolists/duopolists.

If you then tied wages to the CPI, you'd have the most rapid inflation in the world before you could say "Zimbabwe".

I will agree, thinker 2, that the blatant profiteering of Banks is disappointing, and is a real cost to each and every Australian. Their only saving graces are i) their gouging gave them a greater cushion against the global banking sickness we have just experienced and ii) they are a significant component of most Australians' superannuation funds.

Apart from that, they are acne on the face of business ethics.

However, I think you might be taking a somewhat simplistic view of their role in the economy.

>>Adding a extra middle man (for fun and profit) between the consumers/workers and access to their own money adds nothing to the economy or the social structure yet we think this appropriate (even justifiable) business practice?.<<

If the function of Banks were simply to act as a storeroom for your cash, then the concept of a "middle man" would be restricted to the function of a teller, counting the money in, and counting it back out again.

However, Banks provide a great deal of the oil that metaphorically facilitates the rest of the economy to grow. Some of this comes from your deposits, but a great deal more (ask Arjay!) comes from their ability to lend a multiple of their reserves.

One of the most painful impacts of the GFC on small business (in the UK and Europe, at least) was the sudden, economy-wide retraction of lines of credit, just in time for the 2008 Christmas period. It had a most dramatic effect, with shops closing down one after the other, till the high street of the average provincial town looked like a Louisiana grin.

>>And in a regulatory sense, why do we allow such latitude in banking practices in the first place<<

Where do you believe the latitude should be decreased, thinker 2? And who would benefit, and who would lose, from the increased regulatory oversight?

As I've said, I am not a great fan of the Banks. But it is important to be realistic.

“Ludwig, I doubt we can move this conversation forward until you make your position clear.”

Pericles, that’s just silly. I’ve made my position abundantly clear. That’s turned me right off. If I’m not coming across clearly to you by now, then I give up.

I’ll just reiterate:

Ludwig – “My basic tenet is that we need a good rule of law that everyone understands…”

Pericles - “That, I agree with.”

P - “In order to ‘make costs as even as possible?’, you have to determine which costs you are talking about, within which community they need to be made ‘even’, and also determine a measure of ‘evenness’ ".

L – “Of course!”

P - “Then you need to build it into a regulatory framework.”

L – “Absolutely!”

I just don’t see any real point in going beyond this. We basically agree and that is good enough for me.

We just seem to have different positions on a sliding scale as to the point of balance between strong regulation with its more or less constant and even costs, and weak regulation with lower ongoing costs but with its risks and potentially much bigger negative consequences. I can live with that.

This sort of stuff is terribly difficult to balance and is one of the big frustrations for governments and societies around the world.

As for the road safety stuff; I’ll be starting general threads on that subject. So we’ll discuss it there.

That's a cop-out Ludwig, and you know it.

>>We just seem to have different positions on a sliding scale as to the point of balance between strong regulation with its more or less constant and even costs, and weak regulation with lower ongoing costs but with its risks and potentially much bigger negative consequences. I can live with that.<<

The thing is, we don't actually know whether we have different positions. Nor where each of us sits on that imaginary "sliding scale".

We could be in violent disagreement - or even violent agreement - for all you know.

Because you haven't actually said, anywhere, what it is about the current regulatory environment that is broken, or could be improved.

Simply stating the obvious - "a balance between regulation and costs is a good thing" - tells us absolutely nothing about where you see that things are out of balance.

The reason I have taken it this far is because your approach is mirrored, time and time again, by public servants at every level of government, who want change for change's sake.

They want to be able to say "look, I actually tried to do something about it", when in fact they haven't the faintest clue as to what works, what doesn't work, and - above everything else - they lack the ability to work out the consequences of their actions.

>>This sort of stuff is terribly difficult to balance and is one of the big frustrations for governments and societies around the world<<

I'm willing to bet that you would not even be able to justify that statement, with anything more than the blandest of generalizations.