On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 3:59 PM, Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Monday, 30 October 2017 20:50:16 GMT Dale wrote: >> I think we both agree that companies should look long term, it's not >> likely they ever will. Their stock owners would cringe if they did, > > Not really. Pension funds would not cringe at all, but feel relieved they > found a company with clear focus on long term profit sustainability to invest > in. Short term algo-traders skimming the market will of course be displeased.
Unless a pension wants to dump a ton of money in one stock that becomes hard to liquidate I'm not sure why they'd be any more attached to the long-term prospects of a stock than anybody else. If they think a stock will go up short-term they can buy it, and then sell it when it no longer looks like it will go up, the same as anybody else. Lots of institutions have money they will be investing a long time, and yet they still vote for boards that are short-sighted. >> the >> Govt types are going to get in the way if they can, regulate it to death >> if nothing else, and here we sit. > > Regulation is the 'fix' governments have come up with to address market > failures, oligopolistic cartels and lack of true competition, instead of > admitting the obvious: natural monopolies like most public utilities are not > a good fit for privatisation, if the public good and tax payers' interests > count for anything these days. Well, it depends on what your privatize. There is nothing wrong with the government hiring other companies to provide services, just as there isn't anything wrong with one business outsourcing work to others. The problem is when people think of privatization as a panacea and just do it wholesale in a natural monopoly without any kind of structure to ensure that companies have incentives to provide good service/etc. Often there are elements of a traditionally public service that aren't natural monopolies which can be outsourced for a benefit. Electrical generation is often a case of that, but as I suggested you do need to ensure you're paying to have extra capacity online. -- Rich
