Friday, January 31, 2014

Recap of the week 1/31

During this week of class discussing we talked about a couple of different readings Ricardo, Hunt and mark Lautzenheiser. We also watched a video about to better explain the thoughts and ideals about capitalism.
 Video In the YouTube video that we watched it was a very old documentary about capitalism. In the video in the video it talked about Ricardo, Malthus, and Smith.  All deemed being experts in capitalism. Also in video found interesting that an industrialist by the name of David Dale had an idea that would work out for both parties. He had the idea that he would go to orphanages and have the kids work in his factories in return for them working in his factories they were fed and schooled. In our time today we don’t believe in child labor the thought of major company doing it today could make people not buy their product. But back then no one really cared about that. One of problems with child labor is there was a lot of injuries.  Another big point of the video talked about how Malthus earned himself as a cruel realist. Malthus talked about the food supply and how the population doubles but the food supply doesn’t. And basically said if we just got rid of the poor it would make everything better. Malthus also the only thing to keep population in check is war and famine.
In Hunt and Mark Lautzenheiser readings we were able to define the social origins of the premises of utility theory. The list included
1.       Individuals are egoistic and competitive
a.       People are completive because they want to feed their families. They want to make a name for themselves.
2.       Human motivation maximize pleasure
a.       People always want to be happy and they want other people to be happy around them.
3.       Free markets are fundamental
a.       In all the experts they all talk about how the a free markets makes the economy strive .
4.       Accumulation of capital
a.       Basically means that the company needs maintain profits.
5.       Humans are rational
a.       Humans weigh the benefits of the product when buying stuff such as quality and price.
In the Ricardo reading it talked about the real price of goods which had a good statement “ What every thing really cost to the man who wants to acquire it is the toil  and trouble of acquiring it”. Which basically means since it takes a lot of time and workers to mine gold then gold is more expensive than something that doesn’t take as long. Another good statement taken from the reading is the statement “labor is dear when it is scarce and cheap when it is plentiful”. So it basically means that when jobs are readily available and it is not a specialist job you should expect for it to not pay well.
 In class we talked about Labor theory of value vs. theory utility of value. Basically labor theory is the good should cost more because of how much labor was put into making the good. An example is it takes one year to build something you would be charged a lot because it took up a lot of labor cost. On the opposite side of that if it took an hour to build something it would cost that much.  The theory of utility is the product gets its cost from what it can be utilized for an example if you wanted to buy an item that has multiple jobs it can do, it would be more expensive. 

3 comments:

  1. This is why the government needs to intervene when people are taken advantage of for a few to make money off of them. Children and women were treated terribly, when factories were opened for mass production. Many children were killed in these early factories, and their education did not matter. Even with the factories educating the children, it was basic and the atmosphere was not good for learning. It has come along way since early production but capitalists still do not want to pay good wages.
    I believe wages need to go up, and profits suffer if necessary. How much money does one person need to have more than enough? I believe the laborer is just as important as the capitalist who hires them because without the laborer the capitalist would not be able to produce anything. Too much emphasis has been put on money, because by the philosophers this week the only value money has is a mean for the exchange of goods.
    The philosophers this week were capitalists, and two of them supported landlords who were part of the economic problem. I found it very disheartening that people were starving in Ireland and the rents still had to be paid to England.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is why the government needs to intervene when people are taken advantage of for a few to make money off of them. Children and women were treated terribly, when factories were opened for mass production. Many children were killed in these early factories, and their education did not matter. Even with the factories educating the children, it was basic and the atmosphere was not good for learning. It has come along way since early production but capitalists still do not want to pay good wages.
    I believe wages need to go up, and profits suffer if necessary. How much money does one person need to have more than enough? I believe the laborer is just as important as the capitalist who hires them because without the laborer the capitalist would not be able to produce anything. Too much emphasis has been put on money, because by the philosophers this week the only value money has is a mean for the exchange of goods.
    The philosophers this week were capitalists, and two of them supported landlords who were part of the economic problem. I found it very disheartening that people were starving in Ireland and the rents still had to be paid to England.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is why the government needs to intervene when people are taken advantage of for a few to make money off of them. Children and women were treated terribly, when factories were opened for mass production. Many children were killed in these early factories, and their education did not matter. Even with the factories educating the children, it was basic and the atmosphere was not good for learning. It has come along way since early production but capitalists still do not want to pay good wages.
    I believe wages need to go up, and profits suffer if necessary. How much money does one person need to have more than enough? I believe the laborer is just as important as the capitalist who hires them because without the laborer the capitalist would not be able to produce anything. Too much emphasis has been put on money, because by the philosophers this week the only value money has is a mean for the exchange of goods.
    The philosophers this week were capitalists, and two of them supported landlords who were part of the economic problem. I found it very disheartening that people were starving in Ireland and the rents still had to be paid to England.

    ReplyDelete