Car Dump The three circuits of capital are the money circuit, production circuit, and commodity circuit. All these circuits explain the usage of capital, and how it is intertwined with people's everyday lives. These circuits are important to any economic system especially ours, the capitalist system. The money circuit is the actual money being gathered from the product, the production circuit is the actual production of the product and the commodity circuit is selling the product you have manufactured. To further exemplify how the circuits of capital work, I will discuss the production of a Ford Focus car. A car that is expensive to make and buy, but has many low paid employees. It's important to analyze the processes of a car because it …show more content…
is so being so controversial. First, I will start off with discussing the money circuit, then the production and commodity circuit, as I analyze what the Rapper's lives would be centered around the commodity of a car. To show that the circuits of capital depict everyday life, we will use a commodity to explain a fictional world about a fictional family. This family lives in Detroit, Michigan in the present time. The family consists of a father, mother, daughter, and son. The father works as an automotive mechanic for the Ford Motor Company, and the mother works as a teller for the Ford Motor Credit Union Bank. Their son is 6 years old and goes to the nearby public school, as well as their daughter who is sixteen. The couple's name is Chance and Maya Rapper, and the son’s name is Malik Rapper and their daughters are Shayna Rapper. Chance and Maya Rapper met through mutual friends as Maya was working as a receptionist for a local dentist office and Chance was a new mechanic in a shop south of Detroit. Soon they got married and got a modest 2-bedroom household in a neighborhood where most of the mechanical engineers from The Ford Motor Company live. They own one car for both parents to drive to work and the 16-year-old daughter to occasionally practice for her driver's license. The son, yet still in his first years, is aspiring to be a classical musician as their daughter is looking at top ivy league schools to attend right after high school. This fictional family is tight-knit and prides itself on hard work and honesty. Working as the Ford Motor Company, both parent's jobs are low paying, this family live paycheck to paycheck, and rely on the automotive industry in Detroit, Michigan to remain alive and continues to grow in the future. Firstly, to explain how the Rappers circulate the income I will first discuss the money circuit and how it affects their lives.
The money circuit of capital deals with the currency, credit, and debt acquired by the usage of money gathered from the sale of the commodity. The commodity in this situation would be a Ford Focus car that costs 27,000 USD. With the continuous sale of this car, the mechanical engineer Chance will make an hourly wage of 18.00 an hour working on the car, and Maya would make 13.00 an hour handling the incomes of the employees of the Ford Motor Company. Chance and Maya Rapper deposit their income in the Ford Company Credit Union every pay cycle. There, the couple would usually have more benefits than if they were with another bank. In addition to their credit union, they have the home mortgage with their credit union where they give them a payment every month as the house is in debt to the company. Lastly, the couple has a car loan for their singular car, that they also make payments for. In the present, a lot of big companies are now going into the financial sector and starting their own banks and credit unions to make more money along with the products they sell. This boom of financial institutions is called financialization. It is the literal increase and influence of financial institution and markets (Mann, 152). As shown, the Rapper family invests so much money and labor into the Ford Motor Company. They show up to work every day, produce …show more content…
valuable labor time, and get paid only to make more payments to the same company that gave them the money in the first place. The Ford Motor company ends up making a huge profit by keeping most the circulation of money in-house rather than at another financial institution. Secondly, the production circuit of the capital is the actual production and reproduction of the commodity.
It explains the different process and stages a commodity goes through just to be created and then sold off to consumers. To produce a Ford Focus car, it takes many complex steps. As an automotive mechanic, Chance works on cars that have been tested before, and analyze those cars to see that if after driving there are any prominent issues that would arise for the consumer. For a car to be created there needs to be a design made, materials sought after, an assembly line to compile the pieces, and a marketing team to sell the product. As he has worked for many years, he knows he is one part of a process that includes multiple steps to make the car. The one thing that he has always wondered is where the materials for the engines are gathered. For a car, an engine is normally compiled of steel or aluminum alloys. This aluminum normally comes from third world countries where the laws are less strict so that companies can exploit poor government for their financial needs. These third world areas are called export processing zones. This zone is usually where the government welcomes abroad companies in to increase their economy by lowering domestic taxes, having minimum custom control and lacking substantial labor laws (McMichael, 86-87). Places like these are ideal for Ford Motor Company and other businesses, as they want to extract as much absolute surplus value
without the consequences. As Chance Rapper is working on this engine, little does he know of the horrible and long conditions people across the world must endure to create the product for a 27,00-dollar car. However, even if Chance knows that information, it is a great chance he would not have cared because he knows it is necessary to have this cheap abundant labor for the sake of his paycheck that feeds his family. Lastly, the commodity circuit is where companies market and sell their products to the public. How the companies represent themselves and the product is key to the circulation of the product in the world economy. In this situation, Chance and Maya Rapper are not in the marketing or sales division of the company, so they have little knowledge of where the company's brand is doing in society and where it is going in the future. However, they may be used as marketing tool to further increase sales. Branding a company based on how well they treat their employees and how good their corporate culture is can increase sales of a commodity (Gereffi, 580). For example, Walmart uses the same marketing tactics by enforcing the image of a good corporate culture. Shaping the work culture to a perception that is of a liking to the public bodies well for companies and their pockets. After controversial stories and news footage of the horrible working conditions of people internationally from companies like Nike, consumers are reluctant to buy from a business that treats their employees poorly and produces a hostile work environment. Another way the company can sell their commodity successfully is by choosing their audience by location and tailoring their message to them (Gereffi, 578). A Ford Focus car is engineered for the young and hip crowd that wants to save the environment and save money. By putting car dealerships near big cities or places where young workers reside, their consumer can have better access to their products. In addition, curtailing the message of efficiently green and low-cost gas mileage can further appease the crowd of young professionals who are more willing to buy their products than any other commodity. To conclude, once the car is sold to the consumer the process of making a product starts over again. As the Rapper family continue to be involved with the Ford Motor company to sustain the lives, their children will go to school and socially reproduce the workforce in the future. The money acquired each week by the Rapper family continuously goes back into the company and then into the product, only to be circulated back to the Rapper's family possession. This constant movement of capital keep the economy alive and thriving and the three circuits of capital accurately explain this constant motion.
The great carmaker himself witnessed none of this. He never set foot in the town that bore his name, yet his powerful, contradictory personality influenced every aspect of the project. As disaster after disaster struck, Ford continued to pour money into the project. Not one drop of latex from Fordlandia ever made it into a Ford car. But the more it failed, the more Ford justified the project in idealistic terms. "It increasingly was justified as a work of civilization, or as a sociological experiment," Grandin says. Despite the obstacles faced, Fordlandia did establish some brief success. The area had red fire hydrants on neat streets, running water, a sawmill, a water tower and weekly square dancing. However, the complexity of a jungle, changes in world economy and ongoing war entrenched Fordlandia’s failure as inevitable.
The automobile went from being a toy for society’s elite to being an essential item within the economic reach of nearly every American, all thanks to the hard work and ingenuity of Henry Ford. His dedication to quality and attention to detail earned him not only dozens of racing titles, but also the reputation of a respectable businessman. Ford understood his market so well that he knew what the people wanted before they could even ask for it, always ahead of the curve. Ford was a pioneer of American commercialism, and so his production methods were centred around efficiency and mass production, thus allowing him to increase productivity and decrees cost to meet the demand of the masses. Lastly, consideration of the working class and philosophy of raising the wages instead of raising the price point and focusing only on profit. There are a great many lessons to be learned from distinguished businessmen in history, and Henry Ford is no
Flink’s Three stages of American automobile consciousness fully express the progress of the whole automobile industry. From the first model T to the automatic production, it gives me an intuitive feeling of the automobile history from a big picture. On the other hand, Kline and Pinch focus more on a certain group of people--farmers or people who live in the rural area, they use it as an entry point to talk about automobile, alone with the role and duty transition between male and
Henry Ford wanted to build a high-quality automobile that would be affordable to everyday people. He believed the way to do this was to manufacture one model in huge quantities. Henry Ford searched the world for the best materials he could find at the cheapest cost. During a car race in Florida , Ford examined the wreckage of a French car and noticed that many of its parts were made of a metal that was lighter but stronger than what was being used in American cars. No one in the U.S. knew how to make this French steel a vanadium alloy. As part of the preproduction process for the Model T, Ford imported an expert who helped him build a steel mill. As a result, the only cars in the world to utilize vanadium steel in the next five years would be French luxury cars and the Model T. Ford realizes he needs another efficient way to produce the cars in lower prices. Ford saw what he was missing was 4 principles that would help with the Model T which was interchangeable parts, continuous flow, division of labor, and reducing wasted
The Ford Motor Company (usually known as Ford) is an American multinational automaker located in Dearborn, Michigan. The company was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated in 1903. The company sells automobiles and commercial vehicles under the Ford brand, and most luxury cars under the Lincoln brand. Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars and large-scale management of an industrial workforce using elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by moving assembly lines; by 1914 these methods were known around the world as Fordism.
Until recently, the Ford Motor Company has been one of the most dynastic of American enterprises, a factor which has both benefited the company and has brought it to the brink of disaster. Today Ford is the second largest manufacturer of automobiles and trucks in the world, and it’s operations are well diversified, both operationally and geographically. The company operates the worlds second largest finance company in the world, and is a major producer of tractors, glass and steel. It is most prominent in the US, but also has plants in Canada, Britain and Germany, and facilities in over 100 countries.
"It is doubtful if any mechanical invention in the history of the world has influenced in the same length of time the lives of so many people in an important way as the motor car." So writes an American historian, thinking of the automobile alone. But it does not stand-alone. It was the automobile factory that introduced mass production, a process that has changed the lineaments of our economic and social life more profoundly than any other single element in the recent history of civilization. Nearly everyone has heard of this process, yet few have any detailed or exact knowledge of its inception and development. Enter Henry Ford. The true answers of what inspired this Michigan farmer to develop a production process that was so simple, effective and efficient it changed the entire course of history.
... the world. From humble origins in the late nineteenth century, the auto industry grew explosively in the early and mid-twentieth century’s, scattered and decentralized, and reconstituted its work force. The impact on everyday life, from where people live to what kind of work they did cannot be underestimated. The hard work people put in to making the assembly line helped almost all companies succeed in making more cars. Just imagine if the assembly line was not created. It would take years to make a car and the cost of a car would be very expensive. Those changes were especially visible in Detroit which was the capitol of the auto industry automobile nation. The automobile industry would not be where it was today if it wasn’t for all the hard work people put in it in the 1900’s. Ford, Chrysler and general motors’ help create what we call today as the automobile.
Ford Motor Company has been and till the date is known as the king of innovations in the automobile industry. Their research & development department and innovation of interchangeable parts in moving assembly lines resulted in extraordinary global extension for them. They are an old heritage who ruled and still doing impressive jobs in the global automobile market. Some prestigious motor brands are also owned by Ford.
4) Viral-Quotient per Content (Any Media) - Most popular YouTube video was viewed 200,000 times. On an average, a video was viewed 1600 times. This builds upon the idea of Customer engagement, and Content distribution in the social space, that relates heavily to the very purpose of such a campaign. Also, this entire communication was user-generated, so the message didn’t look, at least to say, to be coming out in the form of ‘Company Promotion’.
While waiting for the bus on a cold and snowy January morning, I decided to engage with the first part of the assignment. Waiting for the bus has been a daily occurrence that has occupied much my time for many years now. It has been a monotonous task that is typically paired with impatience for the arrival of the bus, and anxious anticipation for what is in store for the day. This assignment made my morning more interesting, as I glanced around the bus stop, questioning where and how particular goods went from raw materials, to intermediate goods and eventually to final consumer goods. In order to stay consistent on my analysis, the first part of this assignment will focus on one particular good.
A SWOT analysis is used to assess a company’s strengths and weaknesses found within the company, as well as opportunities and threats that emerge from the external environment. In this analysis, the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing the Ford Motor Company will be discussed to provide a powerful analysis tool that supports the planning process for marketers.
Ford’s production plants rely on very high-tech computers and automated assembly. It takes a significant financial investment and time to reconfigure a production plant after a vehicle model is setup for assembly. Ford has made this mistake in the past and surprisingly hasn’t learned the valuable lesson as evidence from the hybrid revolution their missing out on today. Between 1927 and 1928, Ford set in motion their “1928 Plan” of establishing worldwide operations. Unfortunately, the strategic plan didn’t account for economic factors in Europe driving the demand for smaller vehicles. Henry Ford established plants in Europe for the larger North American model A. Their market share in 1929 was 5.7% in England and 7.2% in France (Dassbach, 1988). Economic changes can wreak havoc on a corporation’s bottom line and profitability as well as their brand.
· Capital: When labor is applied to land to grow wheat, for instance, something else is used. Generally it is a plow or a tractor. That is to say, land and labor are shared with manufactured resources in order to produce the things that we need. These manufactured resources are called capital, which consists of machines, buildings, and tools. Additionally, capital consists of enhancement to natural resources, such as irrigation ditches. Money is used to buy factors of production – it is not a factor itself. The return for investing in capital is called interest.
Capital markets are markets "where people, companies, and governments with more funds than they need (because they save some of their income) transfer those funds to people, companies, or governments who have a shortage of funds (because they spend more than their income)" (Woepking, ¶3). The two major capital markets are stock and bond markets. Capital markets promote economic efficiency by moving funds from those who do not have an immediate need for it to those who do. Individuals or companies will put money at risk if the return on the intended investment is greater than the return of holding risk-free assets. An example of this would be those that invest in real estate or purchase stocks and bonds. Those that invest want the stock, bond, or real estate to grow in value or appreciate. An example of this concept would be if an individual or company invested an amount saved over the course of a year. While investing may be riskier, these individuals hope that the investment will yield a greater return than leaving the money in a savings account drawing nominal interest. In this example the companies that issue the stocks or bonds have spending needs that exceed their income so the company will finance their spending needs by issuing securities in the capital markets. This is a method of direct finance because the "companies borrowed directly by issuing securities to investors in the capital markets" (Woepking, ¶5).