ipl-logo

First Response Paper

794 Words4 Pages

Perri Greenbaum SOCY203 First Response Paper Tuesday February 9, 2016 During the Scottish enlightenment era, the well-known philosopher Adam Smith sought to explore human nature while depicting the current political economy. While he contrasts John Jacques Rousseau, he believes that humans are instructed to be moral citizens that require aid from those around them. He studies the origin of human morality through the exploration of labor markets. Smith starts this explanation through the definition of the division of labor. He defines this term (division of labor) as the orchestrated splitting of work within a job joined by the goal of creating more products in a shorter time period. This formal separation of jobs and services among people for this higher …show more content…

One of the largest highlights of the first few chapters of Smith’s book was that he credited the enhancement of modern industry to the division of labor. Individualized and specialized tasks have been notorious for showing higher productivity levels for many reasons. One reason is that when workers focus on individualized tasks and are assigned to one small part of a larger project they tend to eventually become experts at this task. A second reason for why specialization of individualized tasks is prolific is due to the fact that there is no delay or stall in work time and no work time is wasted on task switching or learning new tasks. The third pro for this approach to individualized tasks was that if a worker is working on one task for such a long time, they pick up on ways to make that task even more lucrative. In Smith’s second chapter, he touches on how the division of labor sprouted due to trading that started way before the enlightenment age. He observes that humans are dependent on the services they trade with each other. Between vain comforts and personalized abilities, humans need one another’s specialized services for survival. Smith provides the example

Show More
Related
455 Words | 2 Pages

In his essay, “I Pin,” Horace Say critiques Adam Smith’s story of a pin factory and puts the work in the perspective of a modern day economist. Adam Smith wrote heavily about how industries, especially manufacturing, can benefit from a division of work within the system. I saw this way of labor as the most effective as it lessened the intensity of one man’s work and, in the end, it greatly affected the rate of production. He believed that the workers should be divided to do specialized tasks based on their certain skills or strengths. He used the example of a pin manufacturer to support his claim.

Read More
636 Words | 3 Pages

Economy served a small part in both movements. According to the article “Enlightenment And Economics” there were three basic principles that Adam Smith believed to be true in economics. “The first principle was the condemning of mercantilist use of

Read More
1640 Words | 7 Pages

Being thought to be no-brain work, the author argued that trades turn out to require efforts, “metacognition”, and syllogism in order to “eliminate

Read More
786 Words | 4 Pages

Adam Smith, an enlightenment thinker at the time, shared his thoughts on the economic situation in document C, The Wealth of Nations, 1776. According to the provided source, “Every individual necessarily [contributes to] the annual revenue of the society as great as he can.. He … neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it”. Smith offers his viewpoint in order to make the intended audience (rich, educated people) realize that self-interest and greed essentially help the economy progress whether or not individuals realize it; individuals should be free to pursue whatever they wish. As debates about the economic system in Europe developed, out came new social concepts that were flawed in Europe’s

Read More
714 Words | 3 Pages

If any part of a machine [were] broken the man in charge of it [needed to] pay at least a part of the cost of its repair” (Taylor, 1967, pg. 51). However, even though workers were more heavily involved in the factory setting, the specificity and pace at which they worked proved to be overwhelming and tiresome. Just as Sinclair described how “Jurgis, too, had a little of this sense of pride” at the sight of such productivity, he went on to ask, “Had he not just gotten a job, and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvellous machine?” (Sinclair, 1985, pg. 41).

Read More
1093 Words | 5 Pages

The economic views of Adam Smith and Karl Marx Microeconomics Eduardo De Oliveira Superti   Table of Contents: Abstract 3 Introduction 4 The economic views of Adam Smith 5 The economic views of Karl Marx 6 Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx 7 Examples in the world of today 9 Conclusion 10 Recommendations 11 Bibliography 12 Introduction Adam Smith and Karl Marx were completely contrasting economists throughout their time and had an enormous effect on the world and the way we view economics. They represent the ideas of capitalism and socialism.

Read More
1199 Words | 5 Pages

Adam Smith, an advocate of capitalism, in his book, The Wealth of Nations wrote that all individuals are selfish and by performing to the best of their capabilities towards their own selfish interests they contribute towards the nation’s collective growth. Karl Marx, on the other hand criticized capitalism and believed that socialism and communism are society’s best chance of maximizing individual happiness, about which he wrote in his book Das Kapital. In this paper, we will compare and contrast the economics theories of Adam Smith and Karl Marx on the lines of labor theory of value, division of labor, alienation of workers from labor and human happiness and surplus profit and its social implications. This paper will also discuss how… Adam Smith believes that there are two types of ‘values’ of a commodity – ‘utility value’ and ‘exchange value’. The utility value of a commodity is based on how useful a commodity is and the exchange value of a commodity refers to how much we can get in exchange for a commodity if we were to sell it.

Read More
313 Words | 2 Pages

There are many causes that led Young Goodman Brown to attend the ceremony. First he was tempted when the Devil offered his staff so that Brown could reach his destination faster. Brown Thwarted this temptation using his love of God and the love of his wife to strengthen his convictions. Later on Goodman Brown heard the minister and several other leaders of Salem at the ceremony. This led Brown to abandon his love of God as a means to overcome temptation.

Read More
2000 Words | 8 Pages

Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality and Social Contract each attempt to explain the rise of and prescribe the proper management of human society. At the foundation of both philosophies is the principle that humans are asocial by nature, a precept each philosopher interprets and approaches in a different way. Hobbes states that nature made humans relatively “equal,” and that “every man is enemy to every man.” Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he says, and “every man has right to everything.” Rousseau outlines primitive asocial man having “everything necessary for him to live in the state of nature” from “instinct alone,” and being “neither good nor evil.”

Read More
930 Words | 4 Pages

Ayse Meryem Gürpınar Akbulut October 11, 2016 SPL 501 / On Adam Smith and Karl Polanyi Adam Smith and Karl Polanyi are philosophers of two different eras, 18th and 20th centuries respectively. While the former witnessed early periods of the capitalist system with the emergence of the industrial revolution, the latter had opportunity to analyze the consequences of a mature capitalist system. Since both of them believe in social being of humans, they differ in methodological terms while analyzing the human beings. Smith, as employing the methodological individualism, focused on the human nature and human behavior. According to his perspective, a socio-economic system emerges through individual tendencies, intentions, and behaviors without

Read More
783 Words | 4 Pages

Response Paper: The Process of a Course Design for a Self- Regulated Learning Based English Course for University Students It is well known that the way in which a particular course is designed will surely impact on both the learning process and learners themselves whether in a good or bad way. That is the reason why, when developing an English course, it is crucial that the course designers are aware of the type of learners the course is designed for (who they are), the needs and personal goals the students desire to achieve, and the specific aim of the course itself. The following paper will discuss the importance of knowing the type of learners a curriculum based on the explicit presentation of self- regulated learning is directed to when

Read More
1169 Words | 5 Pages

Smith mentioned that “The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labour.” (Smith, p. 110). Such a phenomenon would no doubt result in an increase in productivity due to the specialisation of jobs with increased efficiency in doing work. However, due to the specialisation of jobs, the people in society would then be subjected to job positions with varying levels in wages, which could result in income inequality in the society. Furthermore, Smith added “This separation, too, is generally carried furthest in those countries which enjoy the highest degree of industry and improvement” (Smith, p. 111).

Read More
1104 Words | 5 Pages

I chose to review the fifth chapter of “New Ideas From Dead Economists” titled The Stormy Mind of John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 in London to two strict parents who began to educate their son at a very young age. Mill’s father was James Mill, a famous historian and economist, who began to teach his son Greek at the age of three. The book reports that “by eight, the boy had read Plato, Xenophon, and Diogenes” and by twelve “Mill exhausted well-stocked libraries, reading Aristotle and Aristophanes and mastering calculus and geometry” (Buchholz 93). The vast amount of knowledge that Mill gained at a young age no doubt assisted him in becoming such a well-recognized philosopher and economist.

Read More
1355 Words | 6 Pages

Adam Smith is an 18th-century philosopher and free-market economist. He is known as the father of economics and is famous for his ideas about the efficiency of the division of labor and the societal benefits of individuals ' pursuit of their own self-interest. Smith is best known for two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The latter, usually known as The Wealth of Nations, is the first modern work of economics and the book which is considered in this research. This research will discuss chapter four of The Wealth of Nations (WN), specifically Smith’s paragraph of water diamond paradox.

Read More
720 Words | 3 Pages

The division of labor is monumental to the growth of the capitalist economy because of its profound effects on efficiency, work ethics, and worker solidarity. However, certain deficiencies such as alienation of the worker can cause challenges in the work place. Theorist Adam Smith believed that an efficiency work ethic was the key to a prosperous capitalist economy. Smith stated that his theory of labor division focuses on specialization (as cited in

Read More

More about First Response Paper

Related Topics

Open Document