The Rest of the West

An Essay on Economy

There was a considerable change in the economics during the 19^th century caused by many different factors such as the industrial revolution. The change in the physical world caused alterations in the mind of those living in it. This allowed them to have new ideas about the economy that might boost the quality of their lives.
          The industrial revolution led to the appearance of new forms of productive capitals, such as factories with machines. This allowed the capitalists to gain much profit. On the other hand, the workers were living by selling their only capital, labor at a cheap price. This was the rise of capitalism, which had many problems. The issues capitalism held included poor working condition and low salary for the workers, unemployment, economic instability, and expanding the market through imperialism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated that these would cause inner tensions, and that would destroy the capitalism. To replace capitalism, he suggested socialism, which in theory would create a society where everyone is happy and equal.

           Their ideas led to the emergence of communist countries in the 20^th century, like the Soviet Union and China. The communism was gaining support until the 1970s, when it became conspicuous that their development of economy was falling behind the capitalist countries. Now, many countries take the form of mixed economy, which developed from capitalism after the Great Depression and the World War II. In a mixed economy, governments have greater influence over the market, and try to stabilize it. You can see some similarities between the mixed economy and communism, such as the redistribution of wealth for the alleviation of gap between rich and the poor.

How would the future economy be different from the one we have right now? The globalization of the economy would continue, and more people would be connected with all the people around the world by the use of the internet. The market would expand not only because of the spreading of the internet, but by the growth of the total human population itself. The human population is expected to increase by another two billion in next four decades. Imagine a world where all those people are connected by one internet – nine billion potential customers for your product.

Of course, the forms that the capital and products take would change. The capital in the 19^th century after the industrial revolution has mainly been the machines owned by few rich capitalists, and physical labor offered by poorer workers for little payment. The main structure of economy has been that way for the past couple centuries. There were the capitalists who were getting richer, and the poor struggling through tough lives. The gap between the two has existed since the first civilizations emerged, but the capitalistic economy has widened the gap, making it more clear and visible. But now, the new ways of presenting information – the internet – has changed the way of the economy, making information the new main product of the market. There is something unique about information; unlike other main products of the past, such as mass-produced goods and the fossil fuels, information is not limited by the scarce capitals. There would be new ideas being constantly produced, as long as there are humans.

           Will the unlimited nature of information provide everyone unlimited amount of wealth? Or would the information, like the capitals before, be possessed by limited number of capitalists? We have to wait and see to know the answer to that. Meanwhile, we must remind ourselves again that life is not all about money.

        French Revolution Cartoon

The Directory and Napoleon Prezi

The Directory and Napoleon on Prezi

Sustainable Economy

Malthus gave the limitations that we have on natural resources one of the reasons the population would not increase forever.  If we use up all the resources, we would not be able to keep our lives and just die, won’t we?  Right now, we seem to be heading straightly in that direction.  The depletion of resources such as oil and natural gas has become a serious global issue.

Yesterday in class, Mr. K shared with us an interesting quote by Richard Sears: “The Stone Age ended not because we ran out of stones.”  What this means is that when the Stone Age ended, people had greater ideas and technology that was more advanced than just stones.  We can use this way of thinking to solve the problems we face today.  For the problems with energy, we can find a way that is far more efficient and sustainable than burning oil; that might be the solar power, or the nuclear fusion.

Right now, it is much cheaper to use oil than to build solar panels or nuclear reactor.  But we must realize that when we say that oil is “cheap,” we are ignoring the externalized costs that it brings.

World where “everyone does what they like to do”... how would this work out?

Pros:

• People would be happy and feel less stress than when they are doing jobs they do not want to do
• The productivity would rise since people are doing what they like to do
• There would be advance in technology, since people would be doing research and experiment out of interest.

Cons:

• Unbalance in the supply of the items: if everyone does whatever they like to do, then the things that everyone likes would be oversupplied, and the things that no one likes to do would lack sufficient supply.

Motivation of the Workers





I have not been feeling motivated lately.  This might explain the reason why.