Frances M.

Gonzales BSEcon 2A

1. Bottled Water: this industry didn’t exist ten years ago…now it is worth $100 Billion US per
year…so, who should have control over safe drinking water? The industry (private businesses) or
the government?
I think the government should control the industry because government has a great
impact on economic decision balancing how an industry works with response to a problem
should. If the private business fully control their business there might abuses happened,
anomalies such as over pricing, control in production of their product or controlled quality of
product. With the help of government this could be avoided through setting quotas, price ceiling
and price floor.

2. Transnationals: the sales of large transnational corporations exceed the GDP (Gross Domestic
Product) of some countries. What does this say about the power of TNC’s in the global
economy?
Due to the fact that GDP of TNC’s can exceed the GDP of a country, this means that this
company is more influential to the economic activity happening than those country with lower
GDP. It can instantly dump the effect of a country that has a small GDP, forcing this country to
just accept the effect of this TNC’s. Whatever impact the TNC’s gave to the economy it can
indirectly affect the economy of other country without giving them a chance to fight back.

3. The agribusiness industry is able to produce food with altered DNA codes. This means that
products like tomatoes have a longer shelf-life. But what are the implications of genetically
altered food?
First effect that might happened is that farmer that produce organic product will have
lower surplus than before. This is because people will get attracted to buying GMO’s which is
much better than organic produce because it last longer. Another effect is marketing of this
product will be more efficient than organic vegetables this is because the life of this vegetable is
longer, supermarkets and other store will tend to buys this, the effect will be great on organic
vegetable producer because their demand will get lower until some industry will leave
contributing to the loss of economy.

4. Advances in transportation technology allow people and goods to be quickly transported almost
anywhere in the world. On the other hand, what does the resulting increased fuel consumption
mean for the environment?
Advances on Transportation will be great for the economy but the result to the
environment will be the opposite. Fuel is turn into pollution, air pollution specifically. This could
increase global warming and climate change which can lead to natural catastrophe such as
typhoon. Other than people in a certain country experiencing too much pollution will likely to
get lung disease, due to too much smoke or air pollution which could lead to health crisis.