Ugh. Improper aggregation abounds here. There are three main interested parties in a commercial endeavor: the shareholders, the employees, and the customers.
Measured profit, discounted and extended far in to the future (the AU$5B mentioned) covers only the shareholders. This seems like the much smaller set of stakeholders. The economic value to employees is likely much larger, and the imputed value to smokers, as measured by the amount they're willing to pay, greater still.
There are three main interested parties in a commercial endeavor: the shareholders, the employees, and the customers.
The employees and customers have no property rights, and the latter are a shrinking minority of the population with little political power to fight any nationalization (as evidenced by their failure to beat the many onerous regulations successfully put in place already). The former employees have somewhat better a chance to organize, but the best estimate I can find of the total number of employees is ~2100, who likewise have failed to st...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.