The price of Everything Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The price of Everything - Term Paper Example The conclusion of research is that there is an economic order, which exists, run the world markets, and controls it through variation in prices of everything. There is a lesser possibility that one force may control this activity however existence of loose understanding between a group of firms or pressure groups cannot be denied. Keywords : Price, economics, crisis, people, manufacturing, markets, order. The Price of Everything-A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity. Introduction. The Price of Everything-A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity, is a tale of spontaneous, natural, automatic, emergent order and the role prices and markets play in organizing economic activity irrespective of geographical boundaries. The author, Russell Roberts who himself is an economist tells the story of a boy, Ramon Fernandez, a Cuban immigrant tennis player raised in capitalism. The novel is set in the San Francisco Bay area after an earthquake. Ramon, who has since grown into a young man and has b ecome a star tennis player at Stanford, and his girlfriend Amy, a Stanford volleyball player, are trying to buy a flashlight. They visit two large retailers: Home Depot and the fictional Big Box in Hayward. Home Depot is out of flashlights. Big Box, on the other hand, has plenty of flashlights. However, unlike Home Depot, Big Box has announced that they have raised the prices on all of their items because of the earthquake. Is this price gouging? How dare a retailer profit from an emergency and squeeze their customers when they most need the supplies?. This, understandably, has upset many people who think it is unfair that Big Box acted opportunistically by raising its prices, taking advantage of the disaster for personal profit. The other main character in the book is a woman, Professor Ruth Lieber, the provost of Stanford University and Amy's economics teacher. Lieber takes on the role of teacher outside the classroom in order to help Ramon understand the role that markets and pri ces play in people's lives. In the course of the book, she teaches Ramon to see that prices help coordinate economic activity and they help steer resources to their most-valued use. She also teaches Ramon that much of the economic order we see is of the unplanned variety. At the beginning of the appendix to his new novel, Russell Roberts writes: â€Å"This book is my attempt to give the beginner and the expert a better understanding of the role prices play in our lives — how they create harmony between the competing desires of consumers and entrepreneurs, and how they steer resources and knowledge to transform and sustain our standard of living.† The economic lessons that Ruth Lieber tried to pass on to Ramon and Amy The novel discusses at length the role prices play in the life of people. Three most important lessons given in the novel are :- 1. Why raising prices during a crisis (Price gouging) is not a damaging and objectionable matter. 2. How prosperity is created and sustained. 3. Existence of unseen economic order and harmony that shape our daily lives. Price gouging refers to artificially inflated prices on necessities after a disaster, natural or otherwise. Missouri has seen price gouging after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and other severe storms in the state. In Missouri-USA, it is against law to take advantage of a desperate situation by drastically increasing prices on merchandise, whether it's gasoline,

The Potential for Alternative Fuels in Transport Essay

The Potential for Alternative Fuels in Transport - Essay Example The various regions of the globe and transportation applications may present different challenges requiring different alternative fuels, but the need to preserve the environment and its resources is universal. (Pelkmans, p.1-3) The Associate Director of the Energy Program at Rice University, Amy Myers Jaffe, argues that the situation is more dangerous now than in 1973 or 1979, as the United States is more dependent on the oil from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries of uncertain geopolitical stability. "Of the Saudi oil, two-thirds goes through one processing plant and two terminals. " (qtd. in EBS, pars. 3-4) The electric vehicles touted after the oil crisis have not yet made it past the significant hurdles of economic and technical factors. Battery technology has not progressed as predicted, and remains the major weakness in electric vehicles. In the last few years, hybrid vehicles have become available, compromising the fuel-efficiency and environmental benefits of electric vehicles without their long-charging times or short range. Last year, over 86,000 hybrid vehicles were sold in the United States. (Barnitt and Eudy, p. 15) "It turns out that if, in 2025, every car and light truck were as efficient as today's hybrid cars and sports utility vehicles, that would displace two Gulf's worth of oil or a sixth of all the oil in the country," says Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute. (qtd. in EBS, pars. 3-4) The use of alternative fuels, operating within assumptions of current fuel use and oil supplies, are inevitable. (Sperling, DeLuchi and Wang, p. 1) The United States owns only three percent of the world's oil reserves, but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil. There is a concensus that drilling our way to energy independence is not a feasible solution. (EBS, par. 4) The transportation fuel market represents about 53% of the world refinery product demand. If upstream (the fuel used in producing the fuel itself) consumption, asphalt and lubricant use are included, the transportation sector is responsible for about 60%. This share of the oil market is projected to increase in the next decades. The remainder of the oil products are used for heating, the production of plastics and other synthetics, and for the production of electricity. No large-scale substitute displays identical characteristics as oil-based fuels (gasoline and diesel,) and higher quality transport fuel requires highe r energy use in the refining process. The demand for transporation fuel will determine the demand the for crude oil on the whole. There are sufficient oil resources in place for the period up to 2030, provided that sufficient investments and developments are made in oil recovery. (Gielen and Unander, p. 7) The World Energy Outlook 2004 predicts a growth from 77 million barrels per day to 121.3 million barrels per day in 2030, and the OPEC Middle East share in world oil production is predicted to grow from 24.7% to 42.7% by this time. (Gielen and Unander, p. 8) "Until we find a substitute for the internal combustion engine to reduce our dependence on gasoline, we're stuck with imported oil," says Robert Ebel, the Chairman of the Energy Program at the Center for Strategic and