College of
Business
Administration
College of
Business
Administration
1) Why would an organization target just housing issues for the poor, and for large families in particular?
2) What would you say to someone that argues that you are only reinforcing the situation that exists for low-income families, and that creating "affordable housing" allows employers to continue to pay unfair wages?
3) What selection criteria are used for choosing families to aid? Must they be employed? Is the goal “to get a family back on it’s feet?
4) How do you decide which neighborhoods to build in and is their ever fallout from those decisions?
Open forum for questions
Questions (Adam Smith)
5) Adam Smith describes self interest and competition as acting against one another to achieve a balance. In Adams Smith’s free market economy purely motivated by supply and demand factors, is there a role for government? Is the consumer king and price is the only influencing factor? Why regulate? (reference p57)
6) Is there any way to meet consumer price requirements without abusing the environment and the people of those countries?
7) “Don’t interfere with the market…it will only lower social welfare.” Does this only apply to “developed” nations, what about the point above? (reference p70)
Questions (Ricardo)
8) Smith saw society moving ‘together up the escalator of progress.’ Ricardo disagreed and saw the ‘escalator worked with different effects on different classes, that some rode triumphantly to the top while others were carried up a few steps and then were kicked back down…’…In Ricardo’s words, “only the landlord stands to gain”.
9) What is business’ role to provide opportunities (equal or not) to the masses? What role does education play?
10) Is our society structured so that only the “rich get richer”. The gap between rich and poor has been getting increasingly large. In a “wealthy” country, is this acceptable?
11) How does this view compare to the prodigious coach metaphor in Bellamy’s work Looking Backward?
Questions (Malthus)
12) Adam Smith shows no concern for overpopulation, rather believed that population increase provided an increase of laborers which would provide the overall benefit of production increases.
13) How does this compare to Malthus’s views that “the human reproductive urge will inevitably shove humanity to the very brink of the precipice of existence”. Should we be encouraged to control population levels to target an equilibrium with resource levels?
14) Describe Malthus’s controversial views on overpopulation and the poor? How did you respond to this in the reading?
15) Malthus believed that keeping people alive solely at the service of charity was a disservice and “cruelty in disguise” and that poverty breeds poverty.
Questions (Owen)
(Reference p.116--Owen to his wife, anecdotally)
"When the child screams from temper, my dear Caroline, …set him in the middle of the nursery floor and be sure you don't take him up until he stops crying.“ "But my dear, he'll go on crying by the hour." "Then let him cry.” "It may hurt his little lungs, and perhaps throw him into spasms." "I think not. At all events, it will hurt him more if he grows into an ungovernable boy. Man is the creature of circumstances.“
16) Do you think this is the best way to deal with children or treat a society? What are the potential problems with this thinking? What is the upside?
Questions (Saint-Simon)
"We suppose that France suddenly loses her fifty leading physicists; her fifty leading chemists; her fifty leading physiologists …mathematicians …mechanics …until three thousand savants, artists, and artisans have been accounted for. What would be the result? It would be a catastrophe that would rob France of her very soul.“ "But now suppose that instead of losing these few individuals, France were to be deprived at one blow of its social upper crust. The result? Most regrettable, because these are all good people, but the loss would purely be a sentimental one; the state would hardly suffer. Any number of people could discharge the functions of these lovely ornaments.“ (reference p120)
17) Should the idea of "society as a factory" be carried out this far? Would a re-alignment in this suggested way contribute or detract from the good society?
Questions (Fourier)
18) What do you think of Fourier’s Utopian society? At one time there were over 40 Fourier-like communities in the U.S. alone.
19) Do you see any similarities between the details of Fourier’s good society and Bellamy’s?
20) We discussed the tie-in between cults and Utopian cultural organizations. Where is the line drawn?
Questions (Marx)
21) With all of the consolidation in industry (AOL-Time Warner, Exxon-Mobile, Daimler-Chrysler, Lockheed-Martin) are we moving towards a different type of Communism even today?
22) Would Marx and Engels have considered Russia and likely candidate for communism?
23) Did the economy that developed in the Former Soviet Union meet Marx’s view of communism?
“The problem with capitalism are the tendency to economic instability and to the concentration of wealth and power” (reference p167)
24) Discuss how different nations respond to these problems. Many capitalist European countries may perhaps have higher unemployment than the U.S., but have chosen to prioritize free education, pension, and healthcare.
25) Could this “balance” between a capitalist economy and a more socialistic culture/conscience ever be achieved in a country like the U.S. that is so highly individualistic?
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