Economy / Week 4 / JaeSeong Lee

The graph above is a demand-supply graph of capitalism.

Source : https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/Economy#/media/File:Supply-and-demand.svg

1.Summary

Economy is the way people use the environment to meet their material needs. Capitalism and socialism are the main economic systems. Capitalism is an economic system dominated by capital for profit-seeking purposes. The operating principles of capitalism include goods, money, labor, production means, and production. Such capitalism is also criticized for its unfair distribution of wealth and power. Socialism is an economic system that values the interests of society as a whole. Socialism is criticized for not being compatible with civil liberties.

2.What was interesting / What did you learn

I am very interested in socialism. (However, I am not a socialist.) Among them, the most interesting was the example of the United States. In a 2009 Rasmussen poll, 53 percent of American adults thought socialism was better than capitalism. It was quite interesting to note that such opinion polls have come out in countries where liberalism is most likely to prevail.

3. Discussion Point

In my opinion, socialism is theoretically a more perfect system than capitalism. However, today's pure socialist system is either hard to see or mostly destroyed. So why couldn't socialism succeed?

Economy / week4 / Soongki Kim

10 Ducats (1621), minted as circulating currency by the Fugger Family.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy

 

1. Summary

Economy is the way people use the environment to meet their material needs.

In society, the economy is divided into two systems.
Capitalism and socialism.
Capitalism is a society in which the process of producing and reproducing the material basis of human life is in its own form, capital-based production. Thus, this capitalism is an unusual economic structure of modern industrial societies established through the Industrial Revolution.
Capitalism developed gradually from Europe in the 16th century and spread throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Socialism is an ideology that values the interests of society as a whole, rather than guaranteeing as much as possible the will and freedom of individual human beings.

 

2. What was interesting/What did we learn

 Reading this article, I learned that there is a statistical distribution measure called 'Gini coefficient' to measure inequality between the values of frequency distribution and to represent income distribution among a national resident.
And I thought only China or North Korea was a socialism country in Asia, but I could see that Vietnam and Laos were also socialism countries.

 

3. Discussion point

Socialism is the most ideal idea for all people in a country to live without economic inequality. But actually, people in socialim countries are living relatively poor lives. So, why are the governments of that country still maintaining a socialim country?

economy/ week4/ JongSeo Lee/ 이종서

1.Summary

The economy is all about producing, distributing and consuming goods or services necessary for human life. or social relationships through it
The economy is both the purpose of people's lives and the standard for the country to be judged for, for this reason, a lot of economists have studied this field and made a lot of progress.
According to Smith, one of the leading economists, the passion and action for self-interest moves toward harmonizing the interests of society as a whole, and in the so-called 'unseen hand' in all Smith.
The 'unseen hand' allows you to produce the most appropriate amount and type of material. If this is explained from a market process perspective, price is created as a result of the efforts of many consumers and many producers to maximize self-interest, and the price that is shaped not only to satisfy market participants but also to maximise the benefits of society as a whole.

2.What did you learn

In the 21st century, the economy is becoming more important than any other part because the world is dominated by the economy.
Based on this argument, a nation's system is swayed by the economy. For example, the Republic of Korea can see that all its policies and people's consciousness were focused only on the economy after an IMF occurred in 1997. 
There are cases in which a country can be swayed by the economy, which in turn tells us that the world can be swayed anytime.

3.Discussion Point

As I said earlier, I think the economy is more important than any other field. Do you have any other opinions?

Economy / Week 4 / 한예림 Hanyerim

1. Summary

Economy is the way people use the environment to meet their material needs. It includes the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of goods and services in the region. Ancient economies were self-sufficient, and Scandinavians were the first to use gold and silver coins. There are two typical economic systems. One is capitalism, which is an economic and social system that privately controls capital and non-labor production elements or means of production. Profits are taken by the owner or invested in technology and industry and wages are paid to the worker.
Another is socialism, which refers to the various theories and social characteristics of an economic organization that advocates the production and distribution of public or direct workers and resources. Use an equal approach to all individual resources using compensation methods based on the amount of labor consumed.

2. What was interesting / What did you learn

I lived in a capitalist country and thought capitalism was more familiar and better. But this time, capitalism has problems such as the unfair distribution of wealth and power. We found that there was a tendency to a unique primitive state structure when we combined laissez faire with capitalist private property. I thought only of North Korea and China as a socialist country, but I realized that there are various countries like Vietnam and Laos.

3. Discussion Point

What if we combined only the advantages of capitalism and socialism? Do you think such a country exists?

Politics / Week 5 / Cindy Paskalina Kweesar

Summary

According to Joice Mitchel, politics is collective decision-making or public policy-making in its entirety. When talking about politics, people usually associate it with state affairs, but over time, politics can also be linked to various aspects of human life that relate to the power of decision making, general policy, and distribution of prosperity.

In politics, there are 3 important elements, namely, Power, Authority, and Violence. Power often interpreted as the ability to influence the other, to achieve what is desired by the power holder. Meanwhile, authority is the right to do something or order someone else to do or not do something to achieve certain goals. Power does not need legitimacy while authority requires legitimacy and requires power. Authority is the right to manipulate or change others. Authority is divided into 3 types, rational-legal authority, traditional authority, charismatic authority. In today's countries, governments also have various types of government, for example, monarchy, Democracy, Totalitarianism, Oligarchy, and others. These different types of government have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Government is usually contested by political parties. The way they work depends on the type of government they use. For example in a USA country that has 2 main parties, Democratic Party and Republican Party, they have a system called Electoral College votes for presidential elections.

What was interesting/what did you learn

Politics that can be a tool for the prosperity of many people, apparently still has the values of injustice in the reality of its practice. Gender, age, race and class still seems to be an obstacle for some people to be able to voice their political opinions. For example, even though women were found to be more likely to vote, women were still in underrepresented positions. At the 109th Congress (2005-2007) there were only 14 female Senate members out of a total of 100 members and 70 members of Congress from a total of 435 members.

Discussion Point

One of the oldest type of government is Monarchy. It is stated that there are still 44 countries that have a monarch as their head of state. What are the real tasks of monarchs in a country when they actually have a head of government to deal with government problems?

Economy / Week 4 / 김성희 Kim Seonghui

1. Summary

The economy is how people use the environment to meet their material needs. The Scandinavians first began using gold and silver coins. Most people exchanged goods through their social relationships. From the Middle Ages something like what we now call the economy has happened. Adam Smith argued that the fundamental reason for the free trade was due to human self-interest. Capitalism has existed since ancient times. But it began to develop gradually in Europe from the 16th century. It has become a means of industrialization in many parts of the world. The Gini coefficient is a statistical figure to represent the distribution of people's income.

2. What was interesting / What did you learn

I think the Economy is more modern things, but It has been from the Middle Ages is impressed to me. Adam Smith argued that the fundamental reason for the free trade was due to human self-interest. Most socialists share the same view on the disadvantages of capitalism. They developed in response to this. But Marxists and non-Marxists disagree on the essence.

3. Discussion Point

Can it be said now that most countries have adopted a capitalist economy means that the socialist economy is completely wrong and defeated?

Economy/ Week4/ ji eun Bang

1.Summary
 The economy uses the environment to meet its material needs. It develops technology, organizes society, and provides resources. And it includes production, exchange, distribution and consumption.
The economy in capitalism provide means for industrialization. People use money and labor to participate in the economy in many areas such as consumers, workers, and investors. capitalism has its downsides: it leads to wealth and power inequality.
The economy in socialism distributes social dividends to ensure reasonable income equality.It features equal access to resources for all individuals with compensation methods based on the amount of labor we consume. But it is inefficient in generating profits.

2.What did you learn? / What is interesting?
 I learned the government plays a relatively important role in capitalism. For example, It can determine how much money a company will pay or what price it will charge to a product. Capitalism enhances our standard of living by growing the economy, but it leads to concentration of capital, employment and power, and to concentration of power by creating inequality of income and wealth.
Karl Marx argued that the infrastructure in a capitalist society would create class conflict, inequality and workouts. So he called for the proletarian revolution to be eliminated.

3.Discussion
 Capitalism has caused per capita GDP growth, improvement in living standards, and the growth of the country. But it leads to the injustice of wealth and power. There are various problems such as monopolizing the market, forming imperialism, economic and cultural exploitation in various forms, social isolation, economic inequality, unemployment and economic instability. So, What do you think is the new economic system or  alternative economic system to solve these problems?