Published 9/10/2023, Edited 11/10/2023
The government should:
Own or manage one wholesaler, retailer and/or product line in;
The energy industry
The car industry
The banking and financial services industry (such as splitting the Reserve Bank of Australia into two, or an acquisition of a credit union, or a cooperative or private bank)
The food production industry (acquisition of one supermarket and food supply chain system)
The freight industry (acquisition of one distribution or logistics system)
The construction industry (acquisition of one building company)
And possibly other core industries
On a non-for-profit basis, and for the purpose of indirectly setting the baseline cost for private goods and services with maximum consideration given to;
Affordability
Reliability
Reparability
Recyclability
That are optimised for long lifecycles
Of a baseline quality that we'd expect from such goods
This would enable the government to set the standard cost and the standard quality for most goods and services and indirectly control inflation with precision in addition to its other levers.
This should also serve as a space for piloting emerging trends such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence, maximum workplace flexibility, robotics, etc
In relation to the car industry, the government's design principles should include:
- maximum 3 kinds of vehicle
- such as a sedan, SUV/ute and a hatchback
- of modular design
- hydrogen-electric powertrain
- which have wholly shareable parts