The Business System

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Hukum & Etika Bisnis

Sesi 19 dan 20
Chapter Three

The Business System: Government,


Markets, and International Trade

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Chapter Content

 Introduction

 Free Markets and Rights: John Locke

 Free Markets and Utility: Adam Smith

 Free Trade and Utility: David Ricardo

 Marx and Justice: Criticizing Markets and Free Trade

 Conclusion: The Mixed Economy, The New Property, and the End of Marxism
OPENING CASE

Swingline Stapler

 In 1925, Jack Linsky built a stapler factory in New York where he hired immigrants from everywhere.
 Linsky’s workers liked him and with their hard work the company prospered until 1987 when he sold it for
$210 million.
 But globalization and WTO agreements in 1995 began allowing foreign companies to freely import and sell
their copycat staplers in the US.
 By 1997, the company was struggling to compete against these companies whose labor costs were much
lower than its own.
 In 2000, the company fired all of its workers at its New York plant, closed the factory and moved its
operations to Nogales, Mexico (cheap labor, import into US without paying import tariffs).
 In 2010, the Swingline factory again fired all its workers, closed its Nogales factory, and contracted to have
a Chinese factory make it staplers.
Economic Systems
– Command Economy: economic system based
primarily on a government authority makingthe
economic decisions.

– Market Economy: economic system based


primarily on private individuals making the main
economic decisions.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


“Free” Markets and Trade
• Free Markets = each individual is able to
voluntarily exchange goods with others andto
decide what will be done with what he or she
owns without interference from government.

• Free Trade = citizens may freely trade goods with


the citizens of other nations without the
interference of tariffs, quotas, or other
government limits on the goods citizens maybuy
from or sell toforeign citizens.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Locke’s State of Nature
• All persons are free andequal.
• Each person owns his body and labor, and
whatever he mixes his own labor into.
• People’s enjoyment of life, liberty,and
property are unsafe and insecure.
• People agree to form a government toprotect
and preserve their right to life, liberty, and
property.

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Criticisms of Locke’s View on
Rights
• Locke does not demonstrate that individualshave
“natural” rights to life, liberty, and property.
• Locke’s natural rights are negative rights and he
does not show these override conflictingpositive
rights.
• Locke’s rights imply that markets should befree,
but free markets can be unjust and can lead to
inequalities.
• Locke wrongly assumes human beings are
atomistic individuals.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Free Markets and Utility
• Adam Smith
– Market competition ensures the pursuit of self-
interest in markets and advances the public’swelfare.
– Government interference in markets lowers the
public’s welfare by creating shortages or surpluses.
– Private ownership leads to bettercare and use of
resources than common ownership.
• Hayek and von Mises
– Governments should notinterfere in markets because
they cannot have enough information to allocate
resources as efficiently as free markets.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Criticisms of Free Markets and Utility
• Rests on unrealistic assumption that there are
no monopoly companies.
• Falsely assumes that all costs of
manufacturing are paid by manufacturer,
which ignores the costs of pollution.
• Falsely assumes human beings are motivated
only by a self-interested desire for profit.
• Some government planning and regulation of
markets is possible and desirable.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Keynes’ Criticism of Smith
• Smith wrongly assumes demand is always
enough to absorb the supply ofgoods.
– If households forego spending, demand can be less
than supply, leading to cutbacks, unemployment, and
economic depression.
– Government spending can make up for suchshortfalls
in household spending, so government should
intervene in markets.
• Keynes’ views were challenged when
government spending did not curehigh
unemployment but created inflation.

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Social Darwinism
• Belief that economic competition produces
human progress.
• Views of Herbert Spencer
– Evolution operates in society when economic
competition ensures the fittest survive and the unfit
do not, which improves thehuman race.
– If government intervenes in the economy to shield
people from competition, the unfit survive and the
human race declines, so government should not do
so.
– Assumes those who survive in business are “better”
people than those who donot.

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Free Trade and Utility
• Advocated by Adam Smith.
– everyone prospers if nations specialize in making
and exporting goods whose production costs for
them are lower than forother nations.
• Advocated by David Ricardo.
– everyone prospers if nations specialize in making
and exporting goods whose opportunity costs to
them are lower than the opportunity costs other
nations incur to make the samegoods.

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Criticisms of Free Trade and Utility
• Ignores the easy movement of capital by
companies.

• Falsely assumes that a country’s production


costs are constant.

• Ignores the influence of internationalrule


setters.
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Karl Marx: Criticizing Markets and Free
Trade
• Capitalist systems offer only two sourcesof
income.
– Sale of one’s own labor.
– Ownership of the means of production (i.e.
buildings, machinery, land, and raw materials).
• Capitalism and its private property system
creates alienation among workers.

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Marx on Alienation
• In capitalism, workers become alienated when
they lose control of their own life activities and
the ability to fulfill their true human needs.
• Capitalism alienates workers from their own
productive work, the products of their work, their
relationships with each other, and from
themselves.
• Alienation also occurs when the value of
everything is seen in terms ofits market price.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Marx and Private Property

• Private ownership of the means ofproduction


is the source of the worker’s loss of control
over work, products, relationships, andself.

• Productive property should serve the needsof


all and should not be privately owned, but
owned by everyone.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Marx’s Historical Materialism
• The methods a society uses to produce its
goods determines how that societyorganizes
its workers.
• The way a society organizes its workers
determines its social classes.
• A society’s ruling social class controls society’s
government and ideologies and uses these to
advance its own interests and control the
working classes.

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Immiseration of Workers
• Combined effects of increased concentration, cyclic
crises, rising unemployment, and declining relative
compensation.
– Industrial power is concentrated in the hands ofa few who
organize workers for massproduction.
– Mass production in the hands of a few leads to surplus
which causes economic depression.
– Factory owners replace workers with machines which
creates unemployment; they keep wages low to increase
profits.
• The only solution is a revolution that establishes a
classless society where everyone owns the meansof
production.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Criticism of Marx
• Marx’s claims that capitalism is unjustare
unprovable.
• Justice requires free markets.
• The benefits of private property and freemarkets
are more important than equality.
• Free markets can encourage community instead
of causingalienation.
• Immiseration of workers has not occurred;
instead their condition hasimproved.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Mixed Economy
• Mixed Economy = an economy that retains a
market and private property system but relies
heavily on government policies to remedy
their deficiencies.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.


Kuliah Tamu
Hukum & Etika Bisnis

Narasumber:
Bapak Genades Panjaitan, S.H., LL.M.
PT. Pertamina Persero

Topik: Kontrak

Waktu: Kamis, 16 Juli 2020 (sesi 21 – 2 SKS)


Pukul: 16.30 – 17.30 (pemaparan) & 18.15 – 18.45 (QnA)

Materi Pendukung:
Jurnal - Kontrak Standar dan Beberapa Klausal Penting dalam Kontrak di Pertamina
(di baca sebelum kuliah tamu berlangsung)

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