For this week in the tutorial class we have taken some topics which are related to ethics. Mr John Britto explained how the terms, capitalism and democracy are have related to ethics.
As far as I know capitalism is defined an economic system based on free market, open competition, profit motive and private ownership of the means of production. Currently majority of countries practise capitalism as long as it concerns free market where there is a pure competition in the market. Though capitalism has such massive advantages it has also its disadvantages. For example, it causes pyramidal classes in the society where some are extremely rich while others are below poverty line due to the unequal distribution of income. Those in high class they just think of their companies and how they can maximise their profit. In a free market businesses must do what they can to beat out the competition, even if it means behaving in an unethical way. In capitalism, ethics cannot exist in somehow because profit is the first priority. Forget people and society, as long as businesses make money, they don’t care about anyone else but themselves. Therefore, as long as the pursuit of profit comes before anything else, capitalism cannot coexist with business ethics.
Not only that, but there are a monopolistic companies in capitalist countries, these companies dominated other small sized companies. This can even make possible to control the market price of goods, eventually these small companies will no longer exist. One more unethical problem which business companies are in common is, they send their workers to other remote areas. For example I work a company in Somaliland and the company sent me to another branch which is located in somewhere in Asia. The will affect me because there is a difference of standard of living in these two countries at the same time expenses will be different .
In conclusion, capitalism is better comparing to the other economic systems but it requires a little bit government intervention to work side by side and complete missing public services in which capitalists do not care like, street lights, roads and health cares. Finally, business ethics is important in the society because it governs the actions and operations of business in the country.
Week 4
Venue: AIU Main Campus, CFS, Room 2-04 (tutorial)
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