Bruce Bisset: Business waves its magic wand

Bruce Bisset

It never fails to amaze me how much of the business of business relies not on actual product and the intrinsic worth of same but on intangibles like "confidence" and the vagaries of "the market", such that the value of anything at any given time seems purely a matter of opinion.

Of course increasingly in these days of fake news and global social media comment, opinions do matter. And every profiteer and their banker wants their opinion to matter most.

So much so that a generous proportion of all the "real" news is merely either blunt self-interest or thinly disguised advertorial, propagated by self-important folk who happen to have risen, light-weighted, into some sort of industry spokesperson's role.

Real estate, finance, and business in general – epitomised by Chambers of Commerce – seem to be the facets of industry most liable to pontificate knowledgeably on the meaning of nothing in order to talk themselves up and justify their existence.

For example this week one economist assures us despite interest rates starting to rise there is no recession on the horizon because the "yield curve" is tracking positively and the sharemarket is strong; while others direly warn the developing US-China trade war could presage a deep depression.

That gulf of difference reminds me of the famous observation by George Bernard Shaw: "If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion."

Meanwhile Westpac bank's chief economist says a capital gains tax would "definitely" reduce prices in our over-cooked housing market and so make it easier for first-home buyers, which most people might think a good thing.

However a spokesman for property investors immediately cried foul on the basis it would stop investors from profiteering and put them off buying rentals – ignoring the point is to move people out of renting and into their own homes.

Speaking of which, local real estate agents remain keen to talk up sales volumes even though the recent rise in prices has flattened out. Of course agents will cherry-pick any positive data to keep their commissions ticking over; no industry (except perhaps hospitality) runs more on confidence than the housing market.

But what's most annoying is when so-called business leaders mouth off about things outside their jurisdiction.

The NZ Chamber of Commerce needed a research paper to tell them to tell local councils to cut spending and sell "non-core" assets – though this has been the neoliberal line for government since the 1980s, so is hardly news.

That they also opposed any form of taxation for specific local purposes – like a "bed tax" for tourism or environmental levies – on the (untested) basis these "would not work", is likewise no surprise.

The Chamber should look to their own knitting, since every time corporate taxes have been cut in the past 50 years on the theory business will then pump more into R&D and infrastructure, profits have soared while investment has plunged.

Bottom line: They're simply too greedy for their own (or anyone else's) good. Just look at the widening rich/poor gap for proof.

A friend of mine wrapped this up nicely in a university paper she wrote recently: "Believing the market alone will fix what the market broke is akin to believing in magic beans."

Yet that, it seems, is exactly what these scions of power do in order to come up with their opinionated nonsense: swap the cow and throw some magic beans around, and see what pops into their heads.

The average worker who carried on that way would be down the road in a flash.
Hmmm. I wonder if they can drug-test for beans?

• Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.

• Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's.