Tuesday, September 20, 2016

How much of our economy is driven by production?

Business 1050: Midterm #1 Study Guide

Fundamentals of Business  

Key Concepts Important People Key Terms  

Week 1  

What is a business?

• Service  

• Consumer  

• Needs vs. Wants: producing stuff that we buy  

• Entertainment  

• Promotion  

• Channel/place  

• Team  

• Money  

70% of our economy is driven by production.

THE 4 P’S OF MARKETING  

• Product  

• Place  

• Promotion  

Why is ethics relevant in marketing?

• Price  

Corporation: shareholders (people who own stock in that company)  • Elect a board of directors  

• The chief executive officer (CEO) is the head of the board  

• Staff reports to the CEO  

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

ETHICS

• Trustworthy & hardworking  

• Values:  

- what’s right & wrong  

- laws

- punished  

Commerce: an exchange of something of value between two entities  Capitalism: an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are  privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation  and reinvestments of profits gained in a free market.  

What do you call the people who own stock in a company?

If you want to learn more check out How does directional derivative look like in graphic representation?

… is a social system based on the principle of individual rights

… free market forces determine the prices of goods and services

… is based on the premise of separating the state and business activities Capitalists believe that markets are efficient and should thus function without  interference, and the role of the state is to regulate and protect.  

Market: the process of buying and selling  If you want to learn more check out Does polaris ever move?
We also discuss several other topics like Why do molecules diffuse in the first place?

Free Market: where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply &  demand rather than set by artificial means  

capitalism = markets

markets = government  

capitalism = government  

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

- Reading makes a full man; reading allows understanding of history; reading leads to  wisdom.  Don't forget about the age old question of In what way are the parts of the ecosystem connected to one another?

- Read to question and stimulate thinking

- Why study? It teaches us, improves judgment, makes us think (weigh and consider),  and makes us learned and wise

- Studying too much can make one lazy (sloth), can be not genuine but to show-off  (affectation), and simply be silly (humor)

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

- Worked at his Father’s pencil workshop, Lived in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin on  Walden Pond.

- Objective in the woods at Walden to learn the simple life and get closer to spirituality.  - Students. Raise the veil (truth). Must work laboriously to seek meaning of writings  (history/wisdom). Serious reading – classics. Scale heaven (spiritual and intellectual  enlightenment). Read well (for meaning). Read to learn. Creation of the written  language allowed capture of history, culture, wisdom to be shared with subsequent  generations

- Books enlighten, influence, provide access to intellectual culture Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

- Ferdinand and Isabella are shareholders and investors – looking for ROI - Columbus is CEO, entrepreneur and archetypical businessman looking for expanded/ new business – a risk taker but for rewards Don't forget about the age old question of What are the components of astrocytes?

- Motivations: serve his investors, gold/wealth, religious, fame/prestige - Treat people fairly, create a joint venture (each get something of value) - Who takes advantage of whom? Columbus vs natives?

- Recognition/respect of different cultural norms when in creating new markets - Check out options (Caribes) to assure good deal

Week 2  

• Commerce: Immoral  

What is the motive?  

- Altruism  

- Better solution  

- Freedom  

- Innovation  

- Community Need  

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

- Creative  

• Just (Compassionate, Empathetic)  

- Good intentions go awry  We also discuss several other topics like How does conduction lead to adaptation to environment?

- Balance

- End justifies the mean  

• Materialism: Why Do We Do What We Do?

- Food  

- Shelter

- Clothing  

• Foundations of a Commercial Society

- Community (state, city): “polis”  

- Specialization of Labor

A. each of us have a unique skill  

B. rely on each other’s fields for different variations

- How can exchange happen? Productivity

• As it goes up, cost goes down

• As cost goes down, more people can afford

• As more people can afford, more things need to be produced: platonic  • As more are produced, it improves productivity

- Marketplace: “agora”

• variety of goods

• needs —> wants  

• Product Motive  

- HH Management - Natural  

- Making money - experience in art

• unnatural

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Von Goethe (1749-1832)

- His deal with the Mephisto (devil) – parallels biblical story of Job - Hegelian dialectic … thesis/anti-thesis … circular … apogee

- Faust is an entrepreneur – has a vision – drives his workers – land/labor/capital - Lust (not sexual), materialism – language of commerce; creates new demands - Tyranny of Man over Nature – reclaiming land from the sea … a business - opportunity

- Desired Baucis and Philemons’ private property; eminent domain. Flawed? - Baucis and Philemon symbolism? Faust’s response – symbolism? - Four ghosts - significance

• Want

• Need

• Guilt  

• Worry

- Faust is blinded – significance

- ‘End justifies the means’ thinking

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)

- Knowledge is derived from experience and experiment

- Observation; evidence; inductive reasoning

- Thomas Aquinas was a beneficiary of Aristotle’s thinking and writing - Two activities: 1) Art of household management; 2) Art of making money - Producer/manufacturer vs. retail (exchange - 3 types); relative value of each - Two greeds: 1) alive, 2) rich; Two worlds: 1) natural, 2) unnatural - Natural finance and unnatural finance

- Thales – teased for poverty; parable of olive-press capacity; monopoly/scarcity - Making a lot of money is immoral; money making money is immoral

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Week 4  

• Community

- Specialization of Skills —> make money

• Products/service

• Commerce - Consumption (buying)  

• Merchant —> Retail  

• Household & Art of Money  

- Natural/Moral  

- Immoral  

- Part of our ‘ethos’  

• Production/Consumption  

- Golden Mean  

Laissez-fair ===== Government (variety of goods)

- Large Production  

- More supply

- More availability  

• Cycle of Self Interest  

1. Comparative Interest  

2. Free Trade

3. Division of Labor  

4. Invisible Hand  

Self interest —> Production —> Consumption —> Wealth  

Russell H. Conwell (1843-1925)

- Speech that Conwell would give near the turn of the 20th century  - Motivation for speech was a camel caravan  

- Aristotle had warned against having a lot of money

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

- Conwell says that it is not money but the love of money that is the problem - Converted to Baptist faith, Founded Temple College

- Should not feel guilty about seeking money; it is your duty to get rich - Men who get rich are honest men. Largest salary = most power if the spirit is right - Money is power… quickly or dishonestly, will fall into snares

Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

- Okay to be rich

- Philosophy of business/greed: money is not the root of all evil, money is a tool/ mechanism of trade

- Money’s value = the idea of production behind it; money is not intrinsically evil - Money represents the principle of trade and “value for value” - (coaches salaries) - Business must be done with a mutual benefit; survival of the fittest - Money will not purchase happiness; this is capitalism

- Money comes with a price tag – virtue; is a barometer

- Money does not give you code of values, essence of human morality - Money does not create anything.

Confucius (551-479 BC)

- A. Never wrote anything down; students wrote teachings

- 20th Century of Confucian thinking, Lassez-Faire but with a little (good) regulation - Universal equality-Universal opportunity- Economic freedom = Bedrock of American  economic and political thinking; legislation and laissez faire needed, ideal when  government gives few regulations

- Doctrine of the mean

- Confucian economics: “Great Learning’ – two things: production and consumption - Production should exceed consumptions and combined with distribution = equal  access

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

- Strive for universal equality- universal opportunity- universal freedom H. All men are  pretty much alike. It is learning and practice that set them apart

- Five excellent things: Bounteousness, Lead, Teach, Regulate (some), Don’t fight - Economics- production and consumption; Equal in rank but production should exceed  consumption. Need broad distribution. Free competition is worthwhile

- If production up- must hire people → increase in cash in the market (due to salaries  which increases demand

- Self interest: Do what we are good at: specialization. When we help ourselves, we  help others at the same time. Out of self interest, we increase production which  benefits all and aloows accumulation of wealth

- All within the four seas will become brothers” – recognized all humans are brothers,  regardless of culture or point-of-view

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

- Published in 1776, born in Scotland, absent minded

- Protectionism, isolationism, merchantilism, dumping

- Smith likes lassez-faire D. People are naturally selfish, interested in improving their  wealth

- Manufacturing or trade = want to gain wealth or power

- More goods made = the more people will have, the more they will want - More goods attract more manufacturers = increased competition - Competition leads to lower prices; all this creates jobs.

- Self and society (community) expands to country and then internationally - Need open markets; free trade allows us to buy goods more cheaply - Free trade; country specialization; comparative advantage. Individual, company, or  country

- Self Interest leads to profits; market force will push commerce in best interest of  society; ultimately benefit society; self interest assumed in free market

- Invisible Hand: law of unintended purposes

- Empathy is essential for business

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

- Economic principles: Self-interest, free trade, division of labor, invisible hand - Labor was the only thing that could change wealth

- Smith and Plato parallel on division [specialization] of labor

- Government should only exist passively to provide 3 basic needs – protection (army),  provide justice and peace, maintenance of infrastructure

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)  

- Do not go where the path may lead – make your own

- Truth is summit of being

- he “craft” of a merchant is to move goods from where abundant to scarce - Everything begins with needs; Pre-emptory pursuit of needs

- Wants become needs; Wealth will spoil you; Power is goal of wealth - Clear sighted man is the realist. See things as they are, not as you wish them to be.  - Commerce is a game of skill; Man’s faculties = ideas, energy, ambition, vision - Property is an intellectual production; it is human ideas that lead to products - Wealth brings its own checks and balances (invisible hand). Do not legislate. Meddle,  and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws

- Emerson’s 5 measures  

• Value – integrity and character  

• Genius – ideas, creativity, and intellect (rational thinking)

• Impera Parendo (know when to stop)

• Reciprocity (you reap what you sow)

• All things ascend/elevate (aim high; brute to civilized; production to profits) 9

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Week 5  

- Emerson’s Themes  

• Honest Labor/Work Ethic  

• Comparative Adv - Nature  

• Wants v.s. Needs

• Business Success

• 5 Measures  

• Production Synthesis  

- Optimism Bias  

• “Breathing your own gas”  

• Impera Parendo: don’t push it!

• Reciprocity: “what goes around comes around”  

- Religion  

• Tawney - Catholic Church  

• Weber - Protestantism —> Calvinism  

Political Economy - beneficial to individual and community  

• Rewards hard work and creativity  

• Generates wealth for individuals AND benefits the wider community  • This economic system advances the common good  

Mercantile Economy - the opposite of Political Economy  

• The so-called “science of getting rich”…

• The generation of wealth by exploiting others  

• Generates poverty by exploiting worker victims  

• Individuals become wealthy but the state/community does not benefit  10

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

John Ruskin (1819-1900)  

- Rich is only comprehensible in terms of its opposite – poor; like hot and cold, north  and south; results in zero sum gain (a winner and a loser); if one gains wealth it must  be at another’s cost

- Two economies:

• Political – hard work rewarded; wealth beneficial to individual and community  a.example – Google

• Mercantile – wealth at the expense of others; no benefit to the community - Business practice can be legal but unjust - example: Delta Airlines  - Wealth relating to power:

• Chief value of money is power over human beings

• Nominal wealth isn’t wealth if it doesn’t create power

• The greater the number wealth creates power over, the greater the wealth  - There is a moral dimensions of wealth – how wealth generated; how wealth used - Ruskin’s response to Emerson’s ‘Craft of the merchant’

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

- Communist Manifesto – believes in the worker/labor

- Marx is utopian = abundance. To get abundance, must ↓ cost to sell more units which  leads to lower wages for the worker (paradox)

- Human nature wants more → capitalist pressures. Need revolution to change  economic behavior

- Use value, exchange value, price, Value (labor component)

- Use value and exchange value are independent

- Productivity and Value (labor) of a commodity move inversely

- Costs are real. Mark-up or profit is “thing of air”

- Believe capitalists keep workers at subsistence wages to exploit them 11

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

- Fetish Value: mysterious, unbased, ficticious, ‘thingification’

R.H. Tawney (1880-1962)

- Rationality inherent in capitalism and Protestantism but in opposition to Catholic  traditions

- Church can take 4 positions on changing economy and making money (gain/profits) • Deny it’s a problem; hope man escapes from the clutches of profits • Take it for granted and ignore – as religion has not business in such matters • Become agitated and try and force reform

• Accept it, tolerate it and try to amend it

- Church creates social structure to create social classes/strata to control wealth - appetites divitiarum infinitus – Man has an infinite appetite for everything  - To seek more wealth than needed for livelihood is avarice; avarice is a deadly sin Max Weber (1864-1920)

- Protestant view – don’t have to go through man/church to get to God. Can have direct  relationship. Therefore, church can’t threaten individuals with respect to eternity

- Profits are secondary to salvation. Life is just a stop-gap. One is born to go to heaven  or hell.

- Calvinistic roots: Hard work is glory and will give you a clue to heaven. Money  becomes the metric – indicator of heaven and gauge of hard work

- Moral objection to making too much, getting too much stuff, and relaxing - Money made without a purpose is sinful

- One should make [just] money when they have the chance and opportunity - Sumptuary Laws

- Limitations on spending led to savings. This earned interest when put in banks and  created investment capital that fueled America’s industrial growth (e.g. steel, oil, RR)  that led to it might in the world

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

- Gospel of Wealth  

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

• Process of getting rich  

• Responsibilities if rich  

- Mass production allows poor to have more. The rising tide theory… - Law of Competition allows for more and cheaper goods. Carries a price… • Inequities – not all get treated equal…

• Industry in the hand of a few…  

• Law of competition is essential…

- Very Darwinian. And the Invisible Hand is at play

Week 6  

Kyosei  

Japanese concept meaning a spirit of cooperation in which people and organizations  work together of the common good  

Kyosei’s two core principles are  

1. respect for the environment  

2. for the quality of people’s lives  

Five points of kyosei…

1. Trade must be beneficial for both parties  

2. Cheating cannot be justified - trust is essential - respect each other  

3. All people share the same heart - “we are all in the same boat”. We should rescue  those in trouble.  

4. Storms are to be feared less than human greed

5. Keep a journal and write about affairs daily  

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)

- 4th element of business…Land + labor + Capital + Community

- Community too often ignored by corporation - provides labor and buys the products  - Ten point industrial creed (don’t memorize) – understand the context

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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

- Managers to make as much money as possible for SH’s; company to make profits - Social responsibility – done privately and individually; not company responsibility - Executives not qualified on social claims and problems; left to political system - Companies fulfill social responsibility through:

• Production of goods and services

• Creation of jobs

- Using profits for social causes = a tax on shareholders; this is political process –  Separation of profit objective from social objective – checks and balances

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