There was some news today here on how the government is urging companies like Walmart and Loblaws to adopt an industry grocery code of sort in regards to how the price food and negotiate with suppliers it seems. The companies didn’t seem too keen to adopt anything at the moment which resulted in the government giving an ultimatum of sort where if they don’t then recommendations would be proposed to regulate the industry.
It makes you think where if you are a big player in in a particular industry should you immediately setup an industry code of conduct standard with your peers in order to keep the government away from your business? I remember this happening with video games when there wasn’t a rating system to determine which games are family friendly versus ones with mature content similar to movies. Like there, apparently the government told the industry to do something about it or they will. As you see nowadays, it is self regulated.
I don’t know many businesses that are in favor of having government intervention such as dictating what prices they must charge. Sometimes it is necessary such as if a company has a monopoly and does everything in their power to gouge people with their position. But a lot of times I could see how it could be a huge disaster for businesses having to abide by rules that don’t really help the situation versus increasing cost.
Supermarkets and price gouging has been a topic recently here though. So who knows how this will end up.