We’ve all heard it before — “there’s nothing wrong with making a profit.” And I agree. Without profit, no business can survive, let alone grow. Employees need to be paid. Investments need to be made. Risks need to be worth taking. In fact, profit is one of the strongest incentives in human enterprise.

But here’s the thing: while profit itself isn’t wrong, hiding the scale of it — especially in sectors that are essential to human life — is.

When a luxury goods brand makes an enormous markup on a designer handbag, nobody dies. Nobody goes hungry. Nobody is evicted. Nobody freezes through winter. But when food companies, energy suppliers, and property landlords rake in massive, disproportionate profits — in sectors people literally cannot live without — and do so behind a wall of secrecy, it’s not just business anymore. It’s something closer to ransom.

And if, as business leaders say, there’s “nothing wrong with making a profit,” then surely they should have nothing to fear from showing us what those profits actually are.

A Modest Proposal: Transparent Profits for Essential Goods

What I’m suggesting is simple: a transparent, visible way for consumers to understand how much profit companies are making on the essentials of life.

Much like the colour-coded food labelling we’ve all become familiar with (you know the one — green for low sugar or fat, amber for moderate, red for high), we could introduce a similar system for profit margins.

When you pick up a loaf of bread or pay your utility bill, you’d see a label showing whether the company’s margin is low and consumer-friendly (green), moderate but reasonable (amber), or extreme and extractive (red).

That doesn’t stop anyone from making a 200% markup if they can. Nobody is banning profit. But it gives you, the consumer, the information you need to make a more ethical choice — and it pressures companies to stay within the bounds of decency when people’s lives depend on their products.

The Case for Transparency: Why This Matters

Let’s be clear: this isn’t some wild utopian idea. Transparency is already one of the pillars of good governance, effective crisis response, and public trust.

We already force transparency in areas where lives are at stake — nutritional information, pharmaceutical ingredients, car safety, environmental impact. Why should we accept a complete black box when it comes to the single biggest determinant of our well-being: the cost of living?

Right now, consumers have no way to tell whether a company is operating on a razor-thin margin and barely keeping the lights on, or whether they’re paying dividends to shareholders while hiking prices well above what costs justify.

Some numbers bear this out. In 2022 and 2023, many major food and energy companies reported record profits while millions of households in Europe and the US were struggling with cost-of-living crises. According to Oxfam, global food billionaires increased their collective wealth by $382 billion between 2020 and 2022, even as an estimated 828 million people went hungry. In the UK, Shell posted a record $40 billion in annual profit in 2022 — while energy bills for households soared to historic highs, forcing some families to choose between heating and eating.

These aren’t isolated anecdotes — this is systemic.

Not About Luxury — Just About Life

To be clear: I have no interest in slapping “red” labels on Rolexes or Porsche’s. Luxury is luxury. If you want to pay €10,000 for a handbag, knock yourself out. Nobody needs a Rolex to survive.

What I’m talking about are the three pillars of basic survival:

• Food
• Energy
• Housing

No one should have their ability to eat, stay warm, or keep a roof over their head held hostage to unaccountable profiteering.

And if companies in these sectors truly believe they’re making reasonable profits — as they say they are — then what harm in showing us? If anything, it might even boost trust in some cases.

How It Could Work

Here’s a pragmatic approach:

• Year 1: companies in food, energy, and housing sectors are required to report profit margins privately to regulators. This gives them time to adjust and explain.
• Year 2: colour-coded labels (or equivalents on bills and contracts) become mandatory for consumers to see.

This allows everyone to plan. Nobody is blind sided. And if their behaviour doesn’t change — and the labels go public — then the market can decide.

And there’s a side benefit: local businesses that already operate on slim margins could find themselves more competitive when customers see their fairer practices compared to corporate giants’ greed. Transparency levels the playing field.

Why Communication, Openness, and Transparency Matter

We know from countless crises — whether it’s a pandemic, a financial meltdown, or a natural disaster — that nothing is harder to fix than what you can’t see. You can’t address what you can’t measure. Black-box operations make meaningful solutions impossible.

We already see governments scrambling with half-baked interventions because the true profit structures of these sectors are hidden. With openness, we could have better policy responses, more informed consumers, and more accountability.

A Question of Ethics

At the heart of it, this is about ethics, not economics. Profit is good when it fuels innovation, sustains livelihoods, and allows growth. Profit becomes toxic when it extracts so much from society that it destabilises the very customers it depends on.

When a company catches someone shoplifting a sandwich, they’ll have them marched out by security, maybe even prosecuted — all very public, of course, to make an example of them. Funny, isn’t it, how the same companies treat their own profit-taking, even when it borders on exploitation, as a private matter not to be discussed? If we demand accountability for a hungry thief, shouldn’t we demand the same — and more — from those who profit off hunger itself?

Transparency doesn’t ban profit. It simply holds it up to the light, so we can all see whether it’s acceptable — or indefensible.

The business world loves to say, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Let’s see them live by it.

If nothing’s wrong with making a profit, then nothing’s wrong with letting us see how much you’re making on our right to live.

As always, be excellent to each other.