In class our teacher did an activity to teach us about the new types of economy. being introduced after the industrial revolution. She gave out hershey kisses, most of the students got three hershey kisses (representing the majority poor people living back then), but two or three students got ten (the minority wealthy owners). Then, we were told to play rock paper scissor and if you lost you had to give one hershey kiss to the person who beat you. If you ran out of hershey kisses you couldn't get any back and you had to sit down. I thought the game was fun because I won a lot and ended with more hershey kisses than I started with. However, for the people who lost all their candy especially if they are one of the people who started with ten I could see that being very frustrating. At the end our teacher took everyone's hershey kisses and distributed them evenly. This gave us an idea of what happened during tat time of transition and it was led by two mens' theories.
Karl Marx and Adam Smith both had theories that were revolutionary in the creation of new economies. Marx had a theory that since the number of poor vastly outnumbered the population of the wealthy, the poor would revolt against the wealthy because of unfair prices and and struggles of social classes. Resulting in stealing and other things along those lines. That would result in a economy where the money was disrupted evenly among everyone and they all started out with the same money (Socialism). That would change into communism where violence was very common and they were no social classes. On the other hand, Adam Smith was a strong believer in a true capitalist economy. His theory was called "The Invisible Hand", which gave companies the freedom to compete against each other. This mean companies would lower prices so customers would go to their companies instead of their rivals. This did not allow companies to cheat customers because if they had extreme prices their rivals would just have lower ones and no one would go to that company. The invisible hand also allowed the poor to trade and sell items freely making it possible to get out of poverty. Both theories were good, but still a lot of people need up poor in their ideas.
For me I think the best theory was Smith's. I think there was a better chance of no certain company becoming too wealthy. Also I think it gives the poor a better chance of getting out of poverty compared to Marx's theory. However, i don't believe this is the best possible type of economy. I think the best economy would be one with the invisible hand incorporated with a way that the government could help with the poor. Maybe the poor could get a loan from the government; that way both the poor and the government could profit. But it could also not work because the loan could be wasted by the person and would then ask for another loan. A way to fix this was if people were limited to a certain number of loans, that way if someone was still poor it would be hard to blame others because he would have been given multiple chances to get out of poverty. Today we are still looking for the right economy and it may take us awhile to find it.
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