In England right now good old ' Southern Rail' is failing apart, at least 20% of service are delayed, many don't show up at all. As an Aussie over here i really can't believe how bad the rail system is. Sure the tubes go everywhere, but as an example. It costs more than Forty pound to go a similar distance from Ballarat to Melbourne, when back home it would cost around 9 bucks. Both are private companies, one just gives a good service.
When i was growing up, my dad worked for the SEC, the state electric company, he used to say every year prices went up with inflation. Now it's more like 10% a year. It makes me think there are certain industries that people just shouldn't profit from. If you want to make money, run a bar, a restaurant, make a game or movie. Don't run an essential service. It's getting out of hand, private prisons? private trains and things we need for our daily lives. I know people say a company can run more efficiently than a government department and that is true is most cases, but i feel things like the train, power, water, police, garbage, health, education aren't things people should be aiming to make money from.
I used to run my own ethical businesses. No sweatshop and that kind of thing. I thought this would help make the world a better place. Now i see that not only do we need businesses with good practices, We need some that decided that 10% profit is enough and focus more on the service, staff and expansion.
We live in a very different world than we once did. The rise in crowd funding has given us a chance. What i would like to see is consumer run businesses. Can you imagine if all of England commuters crowd funded and bought Southern Rail. They could run it on a low profit model. They could increase wages, lower ticket prices, make the service better and focus on making it more environmentally friendly. Shareholders would be system users, they would gain a small reward of money, share dividends, but the min reward would be good service and much cheaper travel, share holders could get free travel as part of investment.
Governments of the world will not stop selling their assets or privatizing. They seem to think this is the best idea they have ever had, Indeed most of these assets have already been sold. What is needed now is a new generation of capitalist and business owners, who want to run big companies and deliver big services, but will gain more satisfaction from having a great service and expanding and buying out competitors than by having a billion to give to people who don't use the companies service and care not for what it does or who it does it.
The modern company needs to have different goals, that simply making the most profit. Delivering a great service, but also employing a lot of people in good conditions at a good price. What would the world look like if the majority of companies judged their success, by the good they had done for the world and their staff and not their profit reports? Business is the most powerful force in the world, more than even getting elected and changing laws, changing the business culture is key. I would encourage you all, to find a problem and solve it. These business can be small to start, they can pay you a good wage and make money, but at a certain point the money comes back to growth and hiring people. Look to crowd funding for support, lets try and find a new way of doing business and start cleaning up this mess.
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