Public interest in private actions

In the complexity of modern commerce it should be recognised that there is no such thing as a "self-regarding" or a private action. ... Every industrial action, however detailed in character, however secretly conducted, has a public import, and necessarily affects the actions and interests of innumerable persons. Indeed it is often precisely in the knowledge of those matters regarded as most private, and most carefully secreted, that the public interest chiefly lies. Yet so firmly rooted in the business mind is the individualistic conception of industry, that any idea of a public development of those important private facts upon which the credit of a particular firm is based, would appear to destroy the very foundation of the commercial fabric.

But, although in the game of commerce a single firm which played its hand openly while others kept theirs well concealed might suffer failure, it is quite evident that the whole community interested in the game would gain immensely if all the hands were on the table. Many, if not most, of the great disasters of modern commercial societies are attributable precisely to the fact that the credit of great business firms, which is pre-eminently an affair of public interest, is regarded as purely private before the crash.

The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production by John A Hobson, published 1906