For this extra credit assignment, we were assigned an article by Bill Gates about “creative” capitalism. Bill Gates is one of the most well-known and wealthy men on Earth, earning his fortune from software like Microsoft Office and Windows. At the time this article was written, neither was sold at prices below $100. But this article is not about the capitalism that Bill Gates’ company has used and which he gained his fortune from. No, today Bill Gates is telling us about his idea of creative capitalism.
The thesis of the article is that we need to change our economy to become a more creative capitalistic system. (As an aside, what makes this idea creative? Welfare capitalism would be much more descriptive. A company’s creativity has little to do with it.) Creative capitalism is a way of pushing products to those who currently do not have the means of getting those products. One way of achieving this goal is companies by themselves finding ways to profit from getting their products to those in need. The other way is from the government and philanthropic groups giving their money to get those products to people. According to Gates, this will bring in increased revenue to companies, and make poor people more successful.
I think that Gates’ system of creative capitalism is severely flawed. Firstly, Bill Gates did not invent the idea of companies searching for new markets to sell and produce their goods in. The Walmart ad on the top of this paper is proof of that fact. Walmart (which operates in our “standard” capitalism system) could no longer maintain its profit margins with the domestically produced goods it was buying. Instead it found a new source of labor in China, and was able to produce its goods much more cheaply. This mea...
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... need to be made by the government, which Gates’ says is happening, but too slowly.
Bill Gates’ ideas about creative capitalism are just that, ideas. He has become successful by stepping on his competition, and selling his products at a high price. And then he writes an article that basically says, “I wish big companies would sell at a loss to help poor people.” But his ideas about how this change will be made are nonexistent, and not even supported by his own company. He doesn’t even mention Walmart, which has acted in perfect fit to creative capitalism, probably because his readers would balk at his support of it. This makes it very clear this article was mainly written to enhance Bill Gates’ image as a philanthropist, so that more people will buy from his company. I firmly believe this article (and the idea behind it) is clever PR, not an actual economic idea.
His career in journalism began after he was rejected from every advertising agency he applied for. He finally ... ... middle of paper ... ... ssed with such skills to be successful, there is always time to improve both business and designing skills to become a successful fashion designer. Other than how this book personally encouraged me and discouraged me, it was eye opening to see such a coincidence of birthdates among all-star hockey players and how Bill Gates just happened to be born in the wake of computer technology.
In his writing called Unleashing the power of creativity. He talks about how he has always been an innovator and has always thought about building a better future. He said “ when my friend Paul Allen and I started Microsoft 30 years ago, we had vision of a computer on every desk and in every home which probably sounded a little too optimistic at the time when most computers were the size of refrigerators.” Bill Gates always had big dreams every since 7th grade when what he wanted was so far out of the norm. This shows grit because he never gave up 30 years when he had this big idea and now look today computers are everywhere because of
Capitalism, is among one of the most important concepts and mainframe of this application paper. According to the 2009 film “Capitalism a Love Story,” capitalism is considered as taking and giving, but mostly taking. Capitalism can also be defined as a mode of production that produces profit for the owners (Dillon, 72). It is based on, and ultimately measured by the inequality and competition between the capitalist owners and the wage workers. A major facet of capitalism is constantly making and designing new things then selling afterwards (Dillon, 34).Capitalism has emerged as far back as the middle ages but had fully flowered around the time o...
“The Jungle” novel was written by an American journalist/ novelist name Upton Sinclair in 1906. “The Jungle” made a big hit and became his best-selling novel because it revealed so well about the economical and social reality during that time. The book mainly described about how unsanitary the meat packing industry was operated in Chicago and the miserable life of the immigrants going along with the industry. Through the story around the life and family of Jurgis Rudjus, a Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with the belief to change their life and live in a better condition, Sinclair expresses that “The Jungle” is a symbol of capitalism. Sinclair’s contempt for capitalist society is present throughout the novel, demonstrated in the eagerness of Jurgis to work, the constant struggle for survival of the workers in Packing town and the corruption of the man at all levels of the society. Also, the author promotes socialism as a standard political society to replace capitalism.
In the “Gospel of wealth”, Andrew Carnegie argues that it is the duty of the wealthy entrepreneur who has amassed a great fortune during their lifetime, to give back to those less fortunate. Greed and selfishness may force some readers to see these arguments as preposterous; however, greed is a key ingredient in successful competition. It forces competitors to perform at a higher level than their peers in hopes of obtaining more money and individual wealth. A capitalist society that allows this wealth to accumulate in the hands of the few might be beneficial to the human race because it could promote competition between companies; it might ensure health care for everyone no matter their social standing, and parks and recreation could be built for the enjoyment of society.
Jones gives us nothing that is revolutionary here. Instead, he lays the groundwork for this piece with the gloomy initial images of "(d)ull unwashed windows of eyes"(1). These eyes are no doubt those of the speaker, and they have been dulled and dirtied by his existence as a black man in the post-segregation 1960s. The "industry" he mentions in lines 2 and 3 is both the industry of the American machine that exploits the underprivileged, and the industry he "practice(s). " The speaker is a self-professed "slick / colored boy, 12 miles from his / home" who practices "no industry" (35).
During his absence, with John Sculley in power, the focus shifted to maximization of profit, and product design suffered. Steve Jobs theorized that is was one of the reasons companies decline. “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people… make great products… the products, not the profits, were the motivation. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything”.
In their article, “The Creativity Crisis”, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explore the urgency of the downfall in the public’s “creativity quotient.” Bronson and Merryman emphasize the necessity for young children to be imaginative. Through an IBM poll, they verify that with the decrease of creativity in our society comes an array of consequences seen in the work field. The authors remind readers of another reason for the importance of creativity; they argue that creative ideas can solve national matters. Hence, Branson and Merryman believe that original ideas are key for a better world. Though I concede that creativity is a vital key to the solution of many national problems, I still insist that teaching creativity,
Karl Marx does not agree with capitalism and views it as a system that incapacitates workers and places them in a category that will almost never attain the wealth that their owners/employers have. Capitalism oppresses its citizens and makes them believe that a capitalist society is best. Society has been able to benefit greatly from capitalism but a major fault in capitalism is the dependency that exists between capitalism and us. The disproportion of wealth amongst the rich and poor in America creates and maintains a group of Americans that will either have too much money and another group that struggles to ascertain a piece of that wealth but will almost never reach the same level of wealth.
Firstly, Wood starts off her argument by rejecting the Commercialization model of Capitalism, which is that markets had always existed—the transition to the capitalist market is a change in quantity rather than quality. She disputes the idea that Capitalism is a kind of natural human progress. The distinctive characteristic of the c...
Every business can operate because of five essential parts; Product creation, Marketing, Sales, Finance, and Delivery of your Product. Throughout this essay we will be juxtaposing the different aspects of the parts above and showing how each of them relate to capitalism and communism and how each of the essential parts can be shown differently through both capitalism and communism. Business varies extremely when in different environments and these two environments are drastically different and the most different environments that are possible. This essay will help understand how drastic the differences really are between the two markets.
There has always been a debate nowadays over the topic of capitalism. Those who favor capitalism argue that it is doing more goods than bads for us. But people who criticize capitalism, on the other hand, hold...
Capitalism does not work as a system without the existence of oppressing and oppressed groups. Since its nascence in the United States, the oppressed group has consisted of Blacks — then with slavery and now with the mask of a democratic and egalitarian government that keeps the oppressed in a stagnated position. The penal system in the United States is an example of the way in which capitalism represses a specific group in order to make a profit. The deep-seated feeling of inferiority blacks have felt since the 19th century with slavery is still present in the minds of Blacks in the modern day not because they are enslaved in the traditional sense, but because they still walk around with the threat of being under constant surveillance. The idea of constantly being watched is a product of capitalism and the prison system; capitalism creates the oppressed and prison serves as a constant reminder of what could happen if the vigilant eyes were to catch them doing anything they should not be doing. Capitalism creates the oppressed by way of institutions everyone finds themselves in from birth, but that happen to work to the disadvantage of Black progress. By repressing Blacks in such a way, the minority group that profits the most from capitalism and holds most of the power over American citizens can continue to make a profit uninterruptedly while Blacks are left struggling to find a way to make a living without facing any severe repercussions.
What effect would it have on the environment and long-term sustainable development if businesses were to provide services, such as illumination, instead of selling products, such as light bulbs? This concept, referred to as the economy of service and flow, constitutes one of the basic principles of natural capitalism as expressed by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins in their book "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution". The idea is to take advantage of cost efficiencies, align the interests of businesses and their customers, and remove waste from the system.
In a free society, for the most part, people with high incomes have demonstrated extraordinary ability to produce valuable services for, and therefore please their fellow man. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and singer Michael Jackson provided services deemed highly valuable by their fellow men who voluntarily took money out of their pockets to purchase those services. Their high incomes stand as unambiguous proof of that service. Their high incomes also reflect the democracy of the market place. For example, millions upon millions of independent decision makers decided to fork over $200 or $300 for Microsoft founder Bill Gates' "Windows 98" operating system. Those who think Bill Gates is too rich, and want to redistribute his income, are really registering disagreement with the democracy of the market place and want to cancel or offset the market "vote.