Thursday, May 14, 2020

What Is the Invisible Hand in Economics

There are few concepts in the history of economics that have been misunderstood, and misused, more often than the invisible hand. For this, we can mostly thank the person who coined this phrase: the 18th-century Scottish economist Adam Smith, in his influential books The Theory of Moral Sentiments and (much more importantly) The Wealth of Nations. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, Smith describes how wealthy individuals are led by an  invisible hand  to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society. What led Smith to this remarkable conclusion was his recognition that wealthy people dont live in a vacuum: they need to pay (and thus feed) the individuals who grow their food, manufacture their household items, and toil as their servants. Simply put, they cant keep all the money for themselves! By the time he wrote The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Smith had vastly generalized his conception of the invisible hand: a wealthy individual, by directing...industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an  invisible hand  to promote an end which was no part of his intention. To pare down the ornate 18th-century language, what Smith is saying is that people who pursue their own selfish ends in the market (charging top prices for their goods, for example, or paying as little as possible to their workers)  actually and unknowingly contribute to a larger economic pattern in which everybody benefits, poor as well as rich. You can probably see where were going with this. Taken naively, at face value, the invisible hand is an all-purpose argument against the regulation of free markets. Is a factory owner underpaying his employees, making them work long hours, and compelling them to live in substandard housing? The invisible hand will eventually redress this injustice, as the market corrects itself and the employer has no choice but to provide better wages and benefits, or go out of business. And not only will the invisible hand come to the rescue, but it will do so much more rationally, fairly and efficiently than any top-down regulations imposed by government (say, a law mandating time-and-a-half pay for overtime work). Does the Invisible Hand Really Work? At the time Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, England was on the brink of the greatest economic expansion in the history of the world, the industrial revolution that blanketed the country with factories and mills (and resulted in both widespread wealth and widespread poverty). Its extremely difficult to understand a historical phenomenon when youre living smack in the middle of it, and in fact, historians and economists still argue today about the proximate causes (and long-term effects) of the Industrial Revolution. In retrospect, though, we can identify some gaping holes in Smiths invisible hand argument. Its unlikely that the Industrial Revolution was fueled solely by individual self-interest and lack of government intervention; other key factors (at least in England) were an accelerated pace of scientific innovation and an explosion in population, which provided more human grist for those hulking, technologically advanced mills and factories. Its also unclear how well-equipped the invisible hand was  to deal with then-nascent phenomena like high finance (bonds, mortgages, currency manipulation, etc.) and sophisticated marketing and advertising techniques, which are designed to appeal to the irrational side of human nature (whereas the invisible hand presumably operates in strictly rational territory). There is also the indisputable fact that no two nations are alike, and in the 18th and 19th centuries England had some natural advantages not enjoyed by other countries, which also contributed to its economic success. An island nation with a powerful navy, fueled by a Protestant work ethic, with a constitutional monarchy gradually yielding ground to a parliamentary democracy, England existed in a unique set of circumstances, none of which are easily accounted for by invisible hand economics. Taken uncharitably, then, Smiths invisible hand often seems more like a rationalization for the successes (and failures) of capitalism than a genuine explanation. The Invisible Hand in the Modern Era Today, there is only one country in the world that has taken the concept of the invisible hand and run with it, and thats the United States. As Mitt Romney said during his 2012 campaign, the invisible hand of the market always moves faster and better than the heavy hand of government, and that is one of the basic tenets of the Republican party. For the most extreme conservatives (and some libertarians), any form of regulation is unnatural, since any inequalities in the market can be counted on to sort themselves out, sooner or later. (England, meanwhile, even though it has separated from the European Union, still maintains fairly high levels of regulation.) But does the invisible hand really work in a modern economy? For a telling example, you need look no further than the health-care system. There are many healthy young people in the U.S. who, acting out of sheer self-interest, choose not to purchase health insurance—thus saving themselves hundreds, and possibly thousands, of dollars per month. This results in a higher standard of living for them, but also higher premiums for comparably healthy people who choose to protect themselves with health insurance, and extremely high (and often unaffordable) premiums for elderly and unwell people for whom insurance is literally a matter of life and death. Will the invisible hand of the market work this all out? Almost certainly—but it will doubtless take decades to do so, and many thousands of people will suffer and die in the interim, just as many thousands would suffer and die if there was no regulatory oversight of our food supply or if laws prohibiting certain types of pollution were repealed. The fact is that our global economy is too complicated, and there are too many people in the world, for the invisible hand to do its magic except on the longest time scales. A concept that may (or may not) have applied to 18th-century England simply has no applicability, at least in its purest form, to the world we live in today.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

William Shakespeares Hamlet Relationship Between...

In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare the relationship between passion and reason plays an important role in the fate of the young Prince Hamlet’s life. Throughout the play Hamlet finds out a numerous amount of unsettling news that pushes him towards rash decisions. The ghost of Hamlet’s recently deceased father, the King, sets the play into motion when he bestows Hamlet with the order to kill his murderer, Hamlet’s uncle (1.5.24-25). Relying only on his trusted friends, Hamlet sets out to find the truth as he encounters betrayal and deceit. Although Hamlet’s motivation to act upon emotions continues to provoke him, he uses reason to prevent himself from committing irrational actions, but that internal war ultimately drives him insane. Although Hamlet seems to think through most of his actions in the play, like any human he often falls short of reason and leans on his emotions to give him security and comfort. In the beginning of the play Hamlet makes his curiosity and disgust of his uncle quite obvious. Therefore when the ghost in the form of Hamlet’s father confronts him revealing the deceitful actions his uncle has committed, Hamlet quickly decides to get revenge (1.5.24-28). The close relationship Hamlet had with the victim led Hamlet to truly believe and want to get revenge based on his emotional involvement. Although Hamlets heart seems to provoke these actions, he later comes back to question the validity of the ghost and rethink ways of getting revenge to bestShow MoreRelatedClaudius Character Analysis858 Words   |  4 PagesWilliam Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, one of the most popular plays ever written. Claudius causes a war between passion and responsibility when he murders the father of Hamlet, the main character, and then marries Hamlets mother Gertrude. Claudius killed Hamlets father and then married Gertrude only so he could take the crown and become King. 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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Relation Between Coltan and Ivory for Republic -myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theRelation Between Coltan and Ivory for Democratic Republic. Answer: GUIDE TO CONGO is a documentary on the people of Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest countries in the world, having been subject to abuse and neglect resulting from rebellion. Congo houses several political and economic conflict and these hover around the black rock Coltan- which is an essential element for cellphone manufacturing. Coltan has divided Congo into rival groups who are fighting to commercialize Coltan and rule over the natives. Congo has rebel groups like the Rwanda rebels, FRADC, FDLR who inflict torture on women and rape them (400,000 rape cases have been reported) (Guevara et al.). Coltan is referred to as the conflict rock because it helps the rebel groups to fund their activities. The producers of the documentary travelled through the forest to meet the Mai Mai camp-which is the most feared militia in the world, where their General was interviewed who said his aim was to drive out all foreigners with the cooperation of FDLR The documentary has a reference to Heart of Darkness written by Conrad who talks about Krutz, an Ivory dealer in Africa was also a subject of imperialism and colonialism (Chinua). The documentary and novel have a parallel plot of materialism and rebellion because the company brutally abuses the natives of Africa and Krutz is leading a rebellion against the company. Marlow, the protagonist of the novel meets Krutz who hands over papers of the company and dies saying horror horror which depicts the condition of the natives and how powerful companies or camps devastate people. In the novel, the author calls Africa a place of darkness, which has been reiterated in the documentary calling the situation of Congo darkness as the condition of these poor people go unreported. Reference Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness."The Massachusetts Review57.1 (2016): 14-27. Guevara, Estefana Lpez, Eduardo Salcedo-Albarn, and Luis Jorge Garay Salamanca. "Coltan Trafficking Network in the Democratic Republic of Congo." (2016).