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[Silas]

Going to reply to the adults in the room.
I would take exception to describing the board members of corporations as "blind invisible" - it is fairly easy to see who sits on the board of directors of companies, especially in the United Kingdom. You can do a free search on the Companies House to find out who sits on what boards, and see if someone sits on more boards than once. I've had lots of fun looking through that website for published accounts for companies - I found the annual accounts for Suede (and discovered than only 4 of their 5 members are actually directors of their holding companies!), plus I discovered the real name of J. Wilgoose Esq. of Public Service Broadcasting, among other great finds. It's a great resource, which I'm surprised is not as highly publicised as I would like it to be, it's a real treasure trove.

As to whether you can hold the directors to account of private companies, you most definitely can, as long as you are a shareholder in the company. As a shareholder, you are entitled to go to the company's annual general meeting (AGM) and make your concerns known, and if you can convince enough people at the meeting of your concerns, you could even force a vote to remove the directors of the company if you do not feel they are acting in the best interests of the board. There have been quite a few cases recently where "activist investors" have bought 1 share in a publicly traded company (probably costing them around a fiver), then attended the AGM to put across their concerns, largely about environmental issues, in some cases leading to changes in how the business operates. You might be at the very far end of the table, but at least you can get a seat at it.

In terms of my own economic leanings, I would say that I lean towards a mixed economy. I don't believe that a socialist government can work, I am yet to see one that has worked successfully, but I do believe that there should be greater redistribution in the economy (especially when the redistribution benefits families with children), and I am in favour of greater nationalisation of industries. However, I take a very different approach to how socialists would like to see things nationalised, in that I would like to see the government being involved in competition with private companies, so that consumers can decide whether they want to go with the nationalised entity or the non-nationalised entity. In industries where deregulation of the markets have hit consumers the hardest, such as in gas & electric, this would have the biggest impact. By having this competition between the two, it brings out the best of each, as it means that the government-run companies will not have the same inefficiencies as state monopolies, and it means that the private companies will not solely be guided by profit and will need to spend more to keep its staff happy and be more competitive on price.

I recently read the book "The Value of Everything" by economist Mariana Mazzucato. She's very much a left-leaning economist, and has been advising John McDonnell on economic policy in the past few years. In all honesty, I didn't understand half of the book and disagreed with a large majority of the rest, but she did make one good point about the role of government in investing. She pointed out that it seems to be the habit of the government either offering grants or interest free loans to start-up companies in order to get them up and running, in the hope of making money further down the line through taxes once the businesses are well established. She states the problem that she has is that if the business fails, then the government loses its investment, but if the company is successful, it only gets back what it has put in to the company (she cites Tesla, which is now a multi-billion company that enjoyed millions of dollars in government grants as an example). Instead, she says that instead of loans or grants, the government should instead take equity stakes in start-up companies, which means that if they do end up investing in the next Tesla, then the state coffers will benefit quite substantially. Indeed, I am aware that the UK government is going to be doing something similar in the future, where it is due to invest a 9-figure sum into a Private Equity Fund which will invest in companies that are involved with electric cars, which will have a positive benefit on the UK economy, as well as government funds, if they pull it off.

Does anyone have anything intelligent to add to this discussion?

Companies House is a wonderful resource. Of course at work we use it for various parts of the risk management process, but I’ve also used it to find the web of companies that make up MKS/Sugababes

You make a very good point about holding equity stakes and I think an example of this is France who have an equity stake in PSA after a bailout during the financial crisis. Different of course to their stakes in companies that were state owned and are now privatised. It’s good to see a government that believes in holding onto a stake and then using that stake to be a bit of an activist investor when appropriate. The French Government voted against the remuneration package for Carlos Ghosn as Chairman/CEO of Renault

The private/public competition would be good to see, especially as you point out for the energy sector. I think that the major problem with the privatisation of British rail is that companies hold a monopoly over their routes and where there is more than one company running a route there’s no difference in price. The market doesn’t lend itself well to being a competitive and open market. So I think here we need a nationalised rail company competing against the private ones or we need a far greater level of franchising within regions. For example in Germany most trains are run by Deutsche Bahn but there are specific services run by others, such as national express in NRW and some of these are rendered on a route by route basis. I do think that some sectors should be government run monopolies and Scottish Water is a prime example of why (If i remember correctly, Water in NI is also nationalised). Scotland is lucky to have this provider because there’s no profit involved, it’s a not for profit organisation and as a result water rates are reasonable. Mostly paid as part of council tax rather than by meter, my parents pay for a four bed room house about 30% more than I was paying for me living alone in a studio apartment. And there’s three living at home, a garden and greenhouse to water, cars to wash. They use a lot more water than I did, as I’m very water efficient, and barely paid more than I did