Do pure monopolies exist Essay Example for Free

Do pure monopolies exist Essay â€Å"No firm is completely sheltered from rivals; all firms compete for consumer dollars. If that is so, then pure monopoly does not exist. Do you agree? † (Brue, McConnell, Flynn, 2010). I would have to agree with this statement. I do not believe that there is such a thing as a pure monopoly. There are always alternatives or substitutes available when choosing to purchase products or services from firms. Pure monopoly exists when â€Å"a single firm is the sole producer of a product for which there are no close substitutes† (Brue, McConnell, Flynn, 2010). There are less pure forms of monopoly and near-monopolies, but not totally pure monopolies. There are several main characteristics that must be present in order for a pure monopoly to exist. These are: single seller, no close substitutes, price maker, and blocked entry. A pure monopoly is an industry in which a single firm is the sole producer of a specific good or the sole supplier of a service. Their product is unique in that there are no close substitutes, therefore, consumers who decide not to purchase the monopolized product must do without it. Many people will argue that electric companies are pure monopolies. I disagree because there are alternatives available: oil, propane, natural gas, solar, and wood are substitutes that can be used as sources of light and heat. The pure monopolist controls the total quantity supplied and as a result has considerable control over price; it is a price maker. The pure monopolist confronts the usual downward-sloping product demand curve and can change its product price by changing the quantity of the product it produces. A pure monopolist faces no immediate competition because certain barriers keep potential competitors from entering the industry. Those barriers may be economic (economic of scale), technological, legal (patents and licenses), or of some other type. In a pure monopoly entry is totally blocked. All firms compete with rivals for product sales, whether they control the entire market for a product or not. The control over a market and product does not necessarily mean there is not competition. Even if one single firm were to control an entire market and their product, there is always another firm that can produce a product that holds the same qualities and is closely related to the other. The post office is usually our first choice when we want to send a letter or package, but it also has competition from FedEx, UPS, and DHL. If there were a situation where there was a market that did not have to compete with another market over product sales, there would always be competition when it comes to the amount of money they need to bring in. Many characteristics must be present to classify firms as pure monopolies. There may be less pure forms such as: the water company, the cable TV company, and the local telephone company, and near-monopolies such as: Intel, First Data Corporation, and De Beers, however, I do not believe that pure monopoly exists. All firms compete with rivals for product sales, whether they control the entire market for a product or not. When choosing to purchase products or services from firms there are always alternatives or substitutes available even though they may not be our first choice. References Brue, S. L. , McConnell, C. R. , Flynn, S. (2010). Essentials of Economics (Ashford Custom 2nd ed. ). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Jose P. Rizal :: essays research papers

In full, JOSÉ PROTACIO RIZAL MERCADO Y ALONSO REALONDA (born 19 June 1861, Calamba, Philippines- died 30 December 1896, Manila, Philippines), patriot, physician and man of letters whose life and literary works were an inspiration to the Philippine nationalist movement. Rizal was the son of a prosperous landowner and sugar planter of Chinese-Filipino descent on the island of Luzon. His mother, Teodora Alonso, one of the most highly educated women in the Philippines at that time, exerted a powerful influence on his intellectual development. He was educated at the Ateneo de Manila and the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. In 1882, he went to study medicine and liberal arts at the University of Madrid. A brilliant student, he soon became the leader of the small community of Filipino students in Spain and committed himself to the reform of Spanish rule in his home country, though he never advocated Philippine independence. The chief enemy of reform, in his eyes, was not Spain, which was going through a profound revolution, but the Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican friars who held the country in political and economic paralysis. Rizal continued his medical studies in Paris and Heidelberg. In 1886, he published his first novel in Spanish, Noli Me Tangere, a passionate exposure of the evils of the friars rule, comparable in its effect to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. A sequel, El Filibusterismo, 1891, established his reputation as the leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement. He annotated an edition in 1890 on Antonio Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, which showed that the native people of the Philippines had a long history before the coming of the Spaniards. He became the leader of the Propaganda Movement, contributing numerous articles to its newspaper, La Solidaridad, published in Barcelona. Rizal's political program, as expressed in the newspaper, included integration of the Philippines as a province of Spain, representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), the replacement of the Spanish friars by the Filipino priests, freedom of assembly and expression, and equality of Filipinos and Spaniards before the law. Against the advice of his parents and friends, Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892. He found a nonviolent reform society, La Liga Filipina, in Manila, and was deported to Dapitan, in northwest Mindanao, an island south of the Philippines. He remained in exile for four years, doing scientific research and founding a school and hospital.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Essay

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey, 1962) is narrated from the point of view of a character called â€Å"The Chief† who is an inmate of the mental asylum in which the story takes place. The book opens with a scene where the Chief is sweeping the floor and ends with the Chief escaping from the asylum, and so the changing perceptions of the Chief are a key to the main messages of the book. The character who occupies most of the action in the book is a rebellious newcomer called McMurphy. It is McMurphy who is the catalyst for the change in the Chief, showing him a both a different way to see the asylum and a number of strategies of resistance which ultimately allow the Chief to break free. This paper will analyse how the Chief perceives the asylum in the early stages of the book, focusing especially on the concept of â€Å"the Combine†. After that Murphy’s view of the world will be presented, along with his various resistance strategies. In conclusion the Chief’s revised view of â€Å"the Combine† will be analysed, showing what has changed in his understanding of the world of the asylum, and of the world in general. At the start of the book it is not immediately evident that the Chief is mentally ill. He explains that he is half Indian and chooses to be deaf and dumb: â€Å"I’m cagey enough to fool them that much† (Kesey, p. 9) His separation from the world of sound is presented as a deliberate defence against oppression, but the reader may suspect that it is a symptom of a mental illness like paranoia or schizophrenia. It is a feature of the book that medical descriptions are avoided, and the reader is left to figure out for him or herself whether or not, or to what extent the characters are ill or mad. The Chief imagines the Big Nurse having powers that extend via wires which only he can see: â€Å"I see her sit in the centre of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Kesey, p. 27). He imagines that she is working to control the world outside the institution also, suggesting that there is a huge conspiracy against him and the other inmates called â€Å"the Combine† which he defines as â€Å"a huge organization that aims to adjust the Outside as well as the Inside† (Kesey, p. 27). This analogy works both as a description of a delusion, with no basis in reality, and as an artistic representation of an institution (the asylum) and a wider authoritarian society (conservative American society in the early 1960s) which operates on a rigid and inhuman basis. At the start of the book the Chief, and through him the reader, feel this cold, hard, oppressive force and see the inmates as victims of its power. One way of making this chilling force constantly present in the narrative is the Chief’s use of vocabulary relating to machinery to describe all of the asylum personnel. The three â€Å"black boys† who are orderlies working for the Big Nurse speak with the â€Å"hum of black machinery† (Kesey, p. 9) and the most frightening of all is Nurse Ratched herself: â€Å"She works the hinges of her elbows and fingers †¦ She starts moving,†¦when she rumbles past she’s already as big as a truck, trailing that wicker bag behind her in her exhaust like a semi behind a Jimmy Diesel†¦ and her smile’s going out before her like a radiator grill. † (Kesey, p 79). These are inhuman images used to describe the leaders of an inhuman regime. The arrival of McMurphy into the story makes a huge impression on the Chief who, despite his huge size, is cowering and fearful of the cold and all-controlling power of the Combine. The first impression is of McMurphy’s â€Å"loud brassy voice† (Kesey, p. 14) Chief significantly makes a connection between this voice and the voice of his Indian father: â€Å"He talks a little the way Papa used to, voice loud and full of hell†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Shortly after this the ward is stunned by the sound of McMurphy’s laughter, which is strange to them because no one ever laughs in this oppressive place. So much of McMurphy’s verbal behaviour is a surprise to the ward: his laughing, singing and ironic banter are all examples of a language the inmates have forgotten the meaning of. This is one of the most important aspects of McMurphy’s influence. He reminds the inmates of a different kind of communication with authority and with each other that is free and spontaneous, unconcerned about the hierarchies of the asylum context, and taking everything less seriously than the authorities intend things to be taken. McMurphy mocks people, including his friends, in order to show that there is more than just one way of seeing things, and that the asylum’s regime is ridiculous when viewed from outside perspectives. He argues with the Big Nurse, and he laughs at her rants and rages. This is a subversive attitude, and it sparks new thoughts in all the inmates, setting off a chain reaction of awareness that cannot be stopped. The first meeting of McMurphy and the Chief is also an important moment in the book, and this time the Chief is struck by the touch of McMurphy’s hand: â€Å"It rang with blood and power† (Kesey, p. 25). Later, when sweeping out the sleeping area, the Chief notices a smell that he has never encountered before in all this time on the ward; â€Å"the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work. † (Kesey, p. 83). It is as if the Chief is rediscovering through the presence of McMurphy, all the natural human senses which had been dulled or switched out of commission by the Combine. Just by being himself McMurphy reawakens the warm, human qualities of the inmates and shows them how to use these qualities against the hard, cold machinery of power. The world that McMurphy represents is offered as a contrast to the regimented, controlled environment of the ward. There is nothing particularly radical about what he represents, for example setting up a voting process to determine the television viewing schedule for the inmates, but in the upside-down regime of the Combine this appears to be a shocking suggestion. Drinking, smoking marijuana and sex with prostitutes are, in the world outside the asylum, quite ordinary and natural expressions of normal masculine behaviour in large sections of the community. It is the abuse of power by the Big Nurse in talking to Billy Bibbit’s mother that turns the antics of the inmates from a prank into a tragedy. In every society it is common for young males to push boundaries and experiment with things that are forbidden by teachers, parents and authority figures. It is part of normal growing up. The irony of the asylum is, that it takes an oppressed youngster like Billy and then just when he catches a glimpse of sexual and other kinds of freedom via McMurphy, crushes his spirit so completely that he takes his own life. The book depicts a struggle for power over the inmates: â€Å"As the many symbols and images indicate, the central theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the restoration of the inmates’ individual and collective potency. (Lupack, 1995, p. 94). Whether as group, or as separate individuals, McMurphy encourages the inmates to take back the power that has been unjustly stolen from them by the institution. Some critics have seen McMurphy in religious terms, as a character who sacrifices himself in order to save his brothers: â€Å"The fishing scene is an extended figure of Christ and his disciples, and instance of McMurphy as fisher of men. † (Hicks, 1981, p. 174). Hicks points out that there are images of the cross and the crown of thorns in descriptions of the electric shock table, and that McMurphy’s men are â€Å"physically cannibalizing him† (1981, p. 5) by wearing him out more and more as he transfers his power and energy over to them. It is true that as McMurphy’s influence grows, more and more of the inmates rebel or discharge themselves, or in the case of the Chief, make a spectacular escape but this is a book that does not come with a happy ending and salvation in a heavenly future. McMurph y is turned into a lobotomized shell of his old self which the Chief kills out of mercy, as an Indian would kill an injured animal. The future of the other characters is not known. The freedom that the Chief gains is a freedom from the real and imagined â€Å"wires and connections† (Kesey, p. 254) that he rips up when he throws the control box out of the window. In conclusion, then, it appears that the Chief has changed his view of the Combine. He leaves the delusions and the asylum behind but he still must navigate his way in the outside world. It remains to be seen how he will tackle the Combine-like injustices and oppressive forces in the wider world. He does not have his mentor McMurphy with him, and must only go back to where he started and try to reintegrate into a community that has been oppressed and exploited by the building of a great dam. The great difference at the end of the book is that that he wants to go back to his old haunts â€Å"just to bring some of it clear in my mind again† (Kesey, p. 254) and thanks to the example shown by McMurphy, he can now do this with courage and clarity, seeing possibilities of collective resistance rather than just being isolated and crushed by overwhelming institutional power.

Edocs.Inc - 3865 Words

Duisenberg School of Finance Amsterdam 2 March 2010 | | |edocs, Inc. | | | |Entrepreneurial Finance Assignment | |Ellie Abdali |[ovu15189] | |Natalie Shriber |[0433926] | |Nikola Tadic |[ovu68532] | 1. Why does†¦show more content†¦If no other investor is convinced of the potential of the edocs business model, CRV will suffer financial damage. First of all, CRV would need to come up with an additional $2M and the news about this failed collaboration will also damage the edocs investment. Therefore, CRV will argue that it needs some measure of compensation for such damages. In addition, CRV could argue that the idea behind the syndication is to give the investment company (edocs) access to a diverse network and to provide a stronger financial syndicate. So in fact, CRV has the best interest of the portfolio company in mind. Edocs, on the other hand, will argue that CRV, based on the firm valuation, has proposed an investment amount and that CRV should also be responsible for raising the funds. There is no justifiable business reason for penalizing the founders if CRV is not successful in finding a syndicate partner. The founders would not want to bear the risk and the costs of CRV not finding a co-investor. It is not likely that edocs will accept this warrant arrangement, especially since the VC market is booming. The founders even have an offer for their company readily waiting for them back home. Guerster on the other hand will be conservative in his negotiations on behalf of CRV. First of all, Guerster is taking a huge reputational risk with this investment. Secondly, Guerster is a new