Water Pollution Must Be Stopped :: Environmental Pollution Essays

Water defilement must be stopped. Pollution of lakes rivers, streams, and oceans has been cleanup spot land and water animals for years. Polluting water is a horrible act and will be stopped. Water pollution kills all kinds of animals every year. Just the EXXON VALDEZ oil chuck near anchorage Alaska ca practiced over 3,000 otters to die 36,000 different kinds of seabirds were killed and over 100 eagles. Oil spills are one of--if not the worst types of pollution. They happen most often in the ocean and then get spread around by tides and currents where they enter streams and rivers and cover everything. They kill life and pollute more in a short amount of time than pesticides and human waste combined in about 1 year. (See graph on page 2 for more inf.)radioactive Waste is a very serious problem polluting the lakes and oceans. Submarines release some radioactivity into the water. If a submarine ever crashed enough radioactivity would be released to abolish a region of about 300 sq . miles (this happens because of the nuclear engines) Human waste is when people diddlysquat their.... deification in the water and have sewer lines starring(p) to water which also pollutes a lot (little streams lead to big lakes). Human waste is also when we dump garbage in the ocean because we cannot find places on land to dump it. Some more types of pollution are.. Infectious Gases, Plant nutrients that can simulate growth of aquatic plants which then interfere with water uses and, when decaying, drop the dissolved oxygen and produce nasty odors. Exotic organic chemicals including pesticides, various industrial products, detergents. petroleum, inorganic materials, nuclear power plants, industrial sites, medical and scientific use of radioactive materials.Water pollution was originally caused by need of space (to dump trash). I can say that the major sources (in general) that cause water pollution are Municipal, Agricultural, and Industrial. The dumping of garbage was caused by the lack of space in landfills. Instead of recycling some people started dumping the trash in the water, that slowed in 1956 when the Federal Water Pollution Control Act was created. It slowed almost to a halt in 1977 when the Clean Water Act was created. But, it still happens. Companys still dump waste in the ocean, streams, and rivers even though it is against the law.Eventually water pollution will cause there to be no life in the ocean, lakes, and rivers.

Will The Global Economy Help Or Hurt The Next Generation Of Americans?

Will the Global Economy Help or Hurt The Next Generation of Americans?     Will the global economy help or hurt the next generation of Americans?This is the question I am red ink to investigate in this paper. The global economyis the system pertaining to the production, distribution and consumption of solids and run around the globe. It is important that we understand theglobal economy beca mapping it is and will be affecting the way we learn, work andlive. How all of these factors be affected will be discussed in the followingpaper.     I take the bearing that the global economy will hurt the nextgeneration of Americans.     One argument for this position is that our schools are not adequatelypreparing out learners for the types of new work that will be required in thenext generation. American schools are using teaching techniques that taughtexisted in the 1950s. Textbooks date back to the early 1970s. Requirements m ayhave changed but our reaching techniques have not. Every year, students take thesame courses with the same prerequisite A correct memory. True, they are teachingclasses that are essential to get into a good college but are they teaching theskills that our future generation will need? argon students going to be able toproblem solve? Are todays students going to be able to access tomorrowsinformation? Our schools teach American students to be good at memorization. Tobe able to spit out recorded information. "You do have the knowledge but you arebasically robots with skin machines, tape recorders that teachers use to recordtheir information. At the end of a chapter, they rewind you and press the playbutton to see if you can repeat everything they said."1 Also, our schools arenot stressing the importance of math and science. Because of this fact, impertinentborn workers such as engineers are taking over the jobs American workers couldhave. Our students need to be truly smart because memorized skills can only goso far. Grades cannot always determine the real skills of the students. Anybodycan receive a diploma but what do these grades really mean? Not much unless astudent can apply their memorized skills for the new way of work. "Just possiblywe have a surplus of graduates and a scarcity of real skills."2 The improvementof o... ...tas earnings plunge. Mothers are going to have to work longer hours if the familyis going to have its old standard of living."25 This means that people aregoing to have to work twice as hard for the same quality of living. This alsomeans a constant upgrading of skills necessary for peak job performance." classical efforts should be better education and a committed and constantupgrading of skills. Our future is a more educated one rather than a cheaper one.Technological revolutions in the past have consistently led to gains inproduction, commerce, employment and living standards."26 Yet if workers dontimpro ve their skills and constantly upgrade them, shrinking the gap amidst manand machine, this revolution will be detrimental to the welfare of our workers,their families and most importantly the global economy.     Despite all the information on how the global economy will hurt the nextgeneration of Americans, there are also ways in which it will help the nextgeneration. My objection to my original position that is the global economywill hurt the next generation of Americans is that it will instead help them dueto the new ag

Societys Restraint To Social Reform :: essays research papers

Societys Restraint to Social Reform     Of the many chatted words in the social reform vocabulary of Canadianstoday, the boundary workf ar seems to stimulate much debate and emotion. Alongwith the notions of self-sufficiency, employability enhancement, and workdisincentives, it is the concept of workfare that causes the most tensionbetween its government and business supporters and its anti-poverty andsocial justice critics. In actuality, workfare is a contraction of the conceptof "working for welfare" which basically refers to the requirement thatrecipients perform unpaid work as a condition of receiving social assistance.     Recent debates on the subject of welfare are far from unique. They areall simply contemporary attempts to decide if we live in a just society or not.This debate has been a major concern throughout history. Similarly, theprovision of financial assistance to the able-bodied working-age poor hasalways been controv ersial.     On one side are those who articulate the feelings and views of the poor,namely, the Permissive Position, who see them as victims of our society anddeserving of community support. The problems of the poor range from personal(abandonment or death of the family income earner) to the social (racialprejudice in the job market) and economic (collapse in the market demand fortheir often limited skills due to an economic recession or shift in technology).The Permissive opinion reveals that all participants in society are deserving ofthe unconditional legal right to social security without any relation to theindividuals behaviour. It is believed that any society which toilette afford tosupply the basic needs of life to every individual of that society but does not,can be accused of imposing life-long deprivation or death to those needyindividuals. The reason for the needy individual being in that situation,whether they are willing to work, or their actions w hile receiving support havealmost no weight in their ability to acquire this welfare support. This viewis presently not withheld in society, for if it was, the stereotype of theTypical Welfare Recipient would be unheard of.     On the some other side, the Individualists believe that generous aid to thepoor is a poisoned chalice that encourages the poor to pursue a life of povertyopposing their own long-term interests as well of those of society in general.Here, high values are placed on personal choice. Each participant in societyis a prudent individual who is able to substantiate his own decisions in order tomanipulate the progression of his own life. In conjunction with this opinion,if you are given the freedom to make these decisions, then surely you must

Hollow Men Explication :: English Literature

Hollow Men ExplicationWe are the take menWe are the stuffed men Empty and full. Considering the speaker ofthis fraternity of contradictions is a rummy being (it can be ahuman, or evening a rock) representing the many of its kind, it resemblesthe likes of a scarecrow or perhaps a mannequin along the lines ofthose seen on CNN representing a Bush with a monstrously big nose puton flames. A scare crow with straw. Stuffed to the brims. A substance scatty substantiality. The straw is the substance, but eachindividual straw is hollow, light, one nuance of color yet togetherthey make a purpose one of each being a mockery of what the U.N.puts in its record books of the only super power in the beginning ofthe 21st century or scaring crows away. There is a purpose amongsthollow grounds, a purpose for the straw to be compacted together. Andalas, that purpose is accomplished when a we is achieved not an I.Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. alasThis reconfirms my suspicions of flit ting together to achieve astatute of social approval, of a status that determines the purpose tobe one of those flirting with the positive. And all they have to do is argument their heads, even the heads that are full of straw, in avirtually neuron encapsulated skull. Lean over, and take a toast totheir drinks a mere tink of the tumblers even scotch couldnt have amore satisfying alas signaling a finality of finite relief.Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre letup and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats feet over broken glassIn our dry cellar Hollow voices, negative the dew of moisture. Yet thisphrase is a complete antithesis of my hastily drawn theory within thetime frame of how long my eye lids can venture murder as those determinedjackasses to avoid flitting down (yes Mr. Little, my very owntestament of 2 o clock wanderings into Hallow Men turn over somehollow stones themselves, but Im not complaining, enjoy). Quiteliterally, as Im taking this metaphor minus the allu sions I stronglysuspect this poem to have (perhaps even borrowed???), convening amongthemselves produces no rate of success, for the meeting bears no vitalresult. But whom is to claim that it is a vital result which implies asuccess, is what out scarecrow is trying to vouch later on? Elliotbrushes out a downcast mood on canvas, seemingly a sketch of shadowsas a precursor to more feet sliding across shards of glass. As for theresult of a conference, it can also point to the non-existence of

Abercrombie & Fitch Essay -- History Background Essays

Abercrombie & Fitch In America today, there atomic number 18 many different clothing stores. There are stores setting images for either ages, and styles. The majority of the upper-class stores are setting the American image for the young adult population. Many of the advertisements for these stores are somewhat similar. I go through spent the last year and a half working in a clothing store called, Abercrombie and Fitch. Seeing this store change and leaven with its image of vintage American clothing, I have found many rhetorical issues. Within this essay I will be discussing the many rhetorical issues of the clothing company Abercrombie and Fitch. Abercrombie and Fitch, a clothing company, that advertises, to the American young adult population, was founded in 1892 by two men David T. Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch. David T. Abercrombie was born in Baltimore and was a former inventor and taper. Ezra Fitch was a successful lawyer. David convinced Ezra to become his partn er in 1892, when the company was founded. By 1904 Abercrombie was the largest outdoor equipment and clothing store in the US. Today A&F is one of the biggest clothing companies, selling the all-American vintage go to. When Abercrombie advertises a new eon, the company goes all out. Whether it is fall, winter, spring or summer, the advertisements are all promoting the same things. These advertisements are full of either slim or buff young adults, modeling the A&F clothing line. Posters of models are hung all about the store. Abercrombie catalogs are made available to purchase in the store, and there is also the option to receive the catalog in the mail. The shopping bags even have these distinction models on them. Not only do these magazines, pos... ...son. I realize that when advertising clothes for a company that a company want the image to look good and appealing. I think that A&F has so many problems with their company, because of the people they use as their models . Not just anyone can model for A&F. The standards are very high, which makes becoming an Abercrombie model challenging. I really dont have a problem with the way A&F advertises their company, scarce I can see where some people might think that it is wrong. Abercrombie is setting this image of what the look should be for the men and women wearing the clothing. A&F is mainly trying to sell to the young adult era, not the teeny bobber era. Using beautiful people, to set the all American vintage image, season after season is something that is part of the A&F Company. It sets a fun and comfortable look for the young men and women of America today.

Abercrombie & Fitch Essay -- History Background Essays

Abercrombie & Fitch In America today, there argon many different costume interposes. There are stores setting images for all ages, and styles. The majority of the upper-class stores are setting the Ameri understructure image for the young adult population. Many of the advertisements for these stores are somewhat similar. I have spent the last year and a half working in a garb store called, Abercrombie and Fitch. Seeing this store change and grow with its image of vintage American clothing, I have found many rhetorical issues. Within this essay I will be discussing the many rhetorical issues of the clothing company Abercrombie and Fitch. Abercrombie and Fitch, a clothing company, that advertises, to the American young adult population, was founded in 1892 by two men David T. Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch. David T. Abercrombie was innate(p) in Baltimore and was a former inventor and taper. Ezra Fitch was a successful lawyer. David convinced Ezra to become his partner in 1892, when the company was founded. By 1904 Abercrombie was the largest outdoor equipment and clothing store in the US. Today A&F is one of the biggest clothing companies, selling the all-American vintage look. When Abercrombie advertises a new season, the company goes all out. Whether it is fall, winter, spring or summer, the advertisements are all promoting the same things. These advertisements are full of either slim or buff young adults, modeling the A&F clothing line. Posters of models are hung all around the store. Abercrombie catalogs are made available to purchase in the store, and there is also the option to receive the catalog in the mail. The shopping bags nonetheless have these characteristic models on them. Not only do these magazines, pos... ...son. I realize that when advertising clothes for a company that a company loss the image to look good and appealing. I think that A&F has so many problems with their company, because of the people they use as their m odels. Not just anyone can model for A&F. The standards are very high, which makes becoming an Abercrombie model challenging. I really dont have a problem with the way A&F advertises their company, but I can see where some people might think that it is wrong. Abercrombie is setting this image of what the look should be for the men and women wear the clothing. A&F is mainly trying to sell to the young adult era, not the teeny bobber era. Using beautiful people, to set the all American vintage image, season after season is something that is part of the A&F Company. It sets a fun and comfortable look for the young men and women of America today.

Environmental Factors of Human Growth Essay

You often hear the word environment, but do you stop to think what it in truth means, what it contains, and how it disturbs you? The actual definition of environment is the circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded (Merriam-Webster dictionary). Your environment greatly impacts the way you are as a human being. each(prenominal) and every one of your life experiences are workd by your environment. Your environment determines if or how your potential to develop is reached. Family, friends, home, school, etc. re all components of your environment. By reading further, you will witness these factors that affect your personal growth and development being explored and discussed. FAMILY When barbarianren are very young, and spend more(prenominal) or less of their time with their parents and/or other family members family is unremarkably the study human influence in their life. This is also true ab turn out most sisterren when they get older and grow into adul thood. Families provide a nurturing environment in which security, protection, satisfaction, and fill out are given. Physical needs for food and clothing are met.In this environment family members grow to maturity. In a proper family environment a child has positive surroundings, including positive people. when a child is cared for and loved he/she gets ample nutrition, clothing, shelter, rest, interaction/attention, etc. these things help the child grow physically and mentally. the child is surrounded by positivity, therefore the chances of the child maturing into a positive individual are very high. however if a child is raised in an improper family environment, most equally, the opposite will result. e/she will be deprived of the opportunity to fully develop, and has a higher risk of harboring negativity as they age. In the beforehand(predicate) years families need to meet a babys physical, emotional, and social needs because they are helpless on their own. Eventually, babies discover they are independent and substructure do things on their own. Family members bottomland provide an environment that promotes the growth of independence and set tasks for children to do by themselves. Families ignore also help children learn how to fail into their surroundings.An environment with good defined limits helps young children learn to control their own behavior. A household with reasonable rules and regulations set by parents/guardians gives children a sense of how to be well behaved. The teen years are years of self discovery for teens as they start to depend less on their families. One way your family can encourage your growth as a teen is to allow opportunities to recognise personal decisions. Taking more responsibilities helps you develop the capability to make your own choices. An load-bearing(a) and supportive family environment can help you develop healthy relationships with others.This is because you get k this instantledge about the way relationsh ips work from your family. It is very hard to develop relationships with some(prenominal) other person if a strong family relationship isnt established. Family Structure The way a family is structured affects the way a child is raised. For example, a child may only live with one parent, a step parent, their grandparents there are many combinations of a family structure. Changes in family structure can often affect the familys ability to provide a stimulating environment and can either be negative or positive.There may be more or less money, time/family members to listen, share, encourage, and guide each child. Siblings Brothers and sisters can be a source of fun, conflict, or competition. They can also learn from each other. Siblings usually continue to interact with each other into adulthood, which can be beneficial to the both of them. Siblings learn to share and coope aim when they interact which, when learned young, instills these habits so that children can share and cooperate with others throughout life. CULTURAL HERITAGE Your familys guidelines and beliefs are part of your heritage.The holidays, food, and religion your are accustomed to are part of your culture. Families pass on their customs and traditions to their children. Your culture and heritage usually help determine many decisions you make in your future. For example, most of the friends you make and keep will probably be of the same heritage and culture you come from. The places you go, like church, celebrations, festivities, etc. are determined by your cultural background. Multicultural influences can altar your relationships with family members as well as impact your values and expectations for your future family.Odds are, if or when you have children you will transfer those same beliefs and traditions that you are used to to them. SCHOOL A shade school environment provides a setting that encourages students to learn and grow. After school activities can provide chances for students to inte ract with others in clubs or sports. Class curriculum offers courses that set out students intellectual growth. Teachers in a tonus school environment encourage students by helping them find areas in which they succeed. Teachers also help students find areas in which they need to improve.By doing so, they help students know what decisions to make regarding how to get the most efficient education for them and how they learn best, especially when they get to college. PEERS By interacting with your peers you can make judgements about how you look because you begin to compare your appearance to theirs how important you are because you compare how much attention they get with how much you get, and how successful you are. The friends you choose now are likely the kind of friends you will make later in life. Your peers can also influence the plans you make for your future.Good friends usually like to pay back together so youll often make similar choices about things like school, clothin g, activities, mutual friends, etc. Sometimes your peers make choices that you feel are not near for you. This gives you a sense of things youre comfortable with and things youre uncomfortable with. COMMUNITY There are many different types of communities. Each one has its own influence on the people that live there. The community of interests environment is influenced by resources available. Industries or business provide job opportunities for community members.A low crime rate and pleasant surroundings make residents feel secure and protected. And shopping facilities offer convenience. Also, factors like air quality and cleanliness in general affect the health of community members. Growing up in a community with many resources tends to make a good impression on those that reside there. When that is done, people stay in that community. This prevents constant moving and drifting, so the chance to remain established and comfortable is given. TECHNOLOGY Technology is used in our lives everyday.New technologies influence the items you buy, clothes you wear, and things like that. The biggest way new technology has impacted our society is the fact that it has resulted in a higher standard of living. For example, more goods are cheaper, labor-intense jobs are less popular, and health care has improved. Technology can be a negative thing too. Dependence on technology can cause people to judge their quality of life by material things and money, which can lead to the neglect of the growth of personal relationships. Technology can also cause people to take their give-and-take for granted.Technological thinking patterns can cause people to think of quick fixes to real life issues that take thorough thinking. This doesnt usually work out well. MEDIA Television, radio, movies, videos, newspapers, magazines, etc. are sources of entertainment and information that affect peoples lives. Media can influence peoples thoughts, viewpoints and decisions without them even being com pletely sure of the affect it has on them. For some members of society, the people on television are models for them to imitate. They also provide an image for developing friendships and relationships.These images are often false and unrealistic, which causes people to have seeming(prenominal) personalities and appearances. The effects of advertising include how yous spend your money, and choices you make about the items you purchase. Ads stimulate sales and goods of services from different companies so that they can make a pull in and establish a good company name. Advertisers are well aware of what appeals to certain people because they do extensive research on these things. Being aware of how advertisements influence you in your daily life can help you make wiser choices.

Hospice Care Essay

Hospice deal is a special type of care that is in the main concerned in comforting forbearings and issuance of quality life instead of providing curative services to a sick person. Hospice care is in most cases discriminate for some iodin with a close illness and the life of persons is expected to run for six months or less. There are in-patient hospices units are often set up for offering the hospice services. However, when need arises, the hospice administration can offer extensive services to the patients at their homes (Forman, 2003, p. 53).Hospice care units also offer medical exam social services. Every patient referred to hospice care is assigned a social worker who assists him or her with the social and emotional needs. Counseling services are also offered where spiritual and pastoral choke is given to encourage the patients emotionally (Forman, 2003, p. 58). Bereavement counseling is also offered to the family and caregivers for a whole one year after the patient has passed away. The hospice units finance all the medical services and medications of the patients diagnosis and other related symptoms that are alleviated.Laboratory and other diagnostic studies are offered in relation to any terminal illness to help determine the terminal illness of the patient. Difference between Hospice Care and other Long-term Care Unlike other care-providing facilities such as the nursing home facilities and assisted living facilities, hospice care does not offer a 24 hour care to the patients (Forman, 2003, p. 53). Instead, hospice care only operates for 12 hours and thereof there is need for the family members to take care of their patient or employ caregivers or other nursing home staff (Forman, 2003, p. 4). For a patient to modify for hospice care, a medical practitioner must give a directive that the patient is having six months or less to live and that medication is helping no more. One main objective of the hospice care is to improve the quality of life. Hospice care today offers the same services just like the Palliative Care (Forman, 2003, p. 55). Hospice care services can be similar to those of other long-term care facilities and also there are distinct differences between the two. Nursing services is one of the services offered in a hospice care unit.A patient is assigned a nurse who visits him or her 3 days a week. This helps a get by to restore the wellness of the patient as the patients prepare for a good death with people around them having good communication (Forman, 2003, p. 67). There is also a physician who works hand in hand with the nurse to help restore the health of the individual. The physician checks on the patient regularly to ensure whether the health of the patient is improving or not (Forman, 2003, p. 53). In conclusion, the hospice care units improve the quality of life of many individuals.It should be well understood that the mission of hospice is to nominate life and make people see death as any other nat ural process. Many have often believed that hospice care is to hasten life, simply that is not the case. It is clear that the hospice care is so different from other types of care such as the nursing facilities and assisted living facilities. The difference comes in name of the services offered. Most of the services in the hospice care are all about medical improvement as a person is nearing death. Also, hospice care does not provide services unless one has been asked by the medical practitioner to seek the hospice services.

What Was the Best Gift That You Have Given or Received?

Heather Nguyen Writing V Date Sep- 19-12 Topic What was the best invest that you have given or received? What make this gift fussy? The only way that you can ever know if something is of value to you is by the way it feels as you are receiving it. We all would like to have a gift, even if the gift is invaluable or inexpensive it also brings for all of us happiness and respectability. To me, the day I gave birth to my son is the gift I have received which changed my life continuously.No word can describe how special my gift means to me. As someone quotes Somebody said that a babe is carried in its mothers womb for 9 months. Somebody does not know that a child is carried in its mothers heart forever. When he entered this world with the first sound of his crying, I knew that we blended for life. God brought my son to me as a non material gift. It was amazing while I was pregnant, the move inside the womb, the kicks when he heard a noiseMy pregnancy was difficulty but I really enjoy ed it.This gift made me stop and realize how odd and special life truly is. My house is filled full with his smiles, kisses, hugs, laughs, and loveI cannot imagine what my life would be like without him. He is truly a gift. He means the world to me. I am very proud to have him in my life. Sometimes I get too much falloff because of real life I look at him, and forget what I have been though. He makes me laugh and reminds me to slow down and enjoy life. He is a miracle that makes my life happier.On the other hand, I do not have time for myself I work harder to raise him. For example I always wake up in the middle of the night because he is crying. Over all, even if I knew how difficult it was being, I will do anything I can do for him to engender a good person. Gifts are something that are unforgettable and love the person who gives it to you. Gifts can bring people closer together. I thank God frequent for giving me this wonderful gift. No gift that I ever received in my life ca n compare to this . My son is truly a special gift to me.

A State Lottery is the Best Way to Raise Money for Education

Lottery is often perceived as a dishonest and seedy project that can create serious social problems including economic trouble and shimmer addiction (Clotfelter and Cook, 1989, 37).It is thus natural for drafting to be hotly debated, sensational, and controversial. It actually makes the society divided on its acceptance whether legally or morally. notwithstanding these facts, let it be showd that a state lottery is the best way to kindle money for education.To begin with, it is ideal to state that those who advocate that state lottery is not the best way to raise money rely upon two assumptions. They say that by doing so shall be impractical and immoral to the eyeball of society. First of all, they believe that state lotteries are not designed or created for the purposes of supporting education. And second, receiving money to educate children from much(prenominal) a means like gambling or lottery does not seem ethical and proper.To refute these assumptions, let it be stated t hat state lottery is actually a practical and executable way to fund education. The truth is that even as early as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, state and municipalities held legally sanctioned lotteries to finance public projects such as roads, bridges, canals, courthouses, hospitals and schools (Blanche, 1950, 71 Kaplan 1984, 92). They believe that it is a very expeditious to fund such projects the government is not capable of fully doing so.It is actually admitted that state lottery has a dark and immoral reputation having graft and corruption inherent parts of it. People have been saying that state lottery is a good-for-nothing image for funding education. However, people do not realize the fact that funding education is a good image for lottery. People have a perception that lottery is all about winning the jackpot.However, lottery as a legal means to an end is socially acceptable. Records show that in 1992 that the all reason sales in lottery increased is becaus e of the Common School Fund Law which grants a large percentage of state lottery boodle for education (Illinois subject Lottery 1992, X). This is not using education to increase sales but rather, it is the means for education to flourish.In conclusion, state lottery is the most efficient and productive way to raise money. This is because the government has already been doing this legally for a long time. The government has been doing this not only for education but in some other aspects as well. And also, despite its negative image, state lottery has already been socially accepted in society.WORKS CITED1) Blanche, Ernest E. Lotteries, Yesterday and Tomorrow. Annals of the American Academy of governmental and Social Science 269 (1950) 7176.2) Clotfelter, Charles T., and Philip J. Cook. Selling Hope State Lotteries in America. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998.3) Illinois State Lottery. 1992 Annual Report. Springfield Illinois State Lottery, 1992.4) Kaplan, H. Roy. The Social and Economic Impact of State Lotteries. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 474 (1984) 91106.OUTLINEI. Introduction Thesis A state lottery is the best way to raise money for education.II. BodyA) State lottery is impractical and immoral in the eyes of society.B) State lottery has been used in the past to fund schools and other projects.C) backup education is a good image for state lottery.III. Conclusion State lottery is the most efficient and productive way to raise money and is socially acceptable.

Outdoor Sporting Products Inc. Essay

Executive Summary go forth-of-door fast harvest-tides Inc. has a number of issues regarding its product management, market channels, marketing campaigns, pricing, gross gross sales force, engineering science, and its guest assistance lately. moolah ar down and sales confirm declined over the last year. Mr. Hudson McDonald is the owner and Chief Financial Officer of the exterior crossroads and sees the learn for change.Mr. McDonald is in control of the sales force and believes that sales are a weakness for the follow. Mr. McDonald is curious to know how he apprize emergence sales and profits for the familiarity without completely changing the organization. in that location are m whatever changes that tush occur to rectify the position of the follow.Rectifying many of the departments weaknesses are key ways to answer turn things around for Mr. McDonald and open-air(prenominal) Sporting Products Inc. Some changes are minor and others forget take more than time to incorporate. The business has a great sales base already and motives to explore new markets and find ways to penetrate those markets. Outdoor give strike to shift resources around in production and marketing to get up things possible. Finally node service and technology will help improve the standing among the nodes that are already loyal and help with madely satisfying customer take.I. Product focusMr. Hudson McDonald cosmos the President and chief operating officer of Outdoor Sporting Products Inc. has a a couple of(prenominal) issues that may need to be intercommunicate when dealing with Product Management. While a product motorcoach should actually be in charge of this area. Mr. McDonald would undoubtedly be informed of some of these issues and decisions involved. Product management should never lose sight of 4 distinct areas the target market, the intricacies of the product, what the business needs in order to succeed, and how to measure that success (van der Merwe). Mr. McDonald claimed that with a a few(prenominal) exceptions, Outdoors customers had little or no brand preference. This is a terrible assumption to make when dealing with someones products. Mr. McDonald and the product manager should be looking into ways that can make the brand and products have more loyal customers. Apparently customers dont view the products as orbit themselves apart from the others to start exclusively buying from Outdoor Sporting Products Inc.This would also deal with marketing. However, the products themselves need to actually be a quality product that the customers will appreciate and want to re-buy. The manufacturing of products looked like an area that could use a little work. While thither is no numbers in the grounds indicating the costs of manufacturing the percentages of where the products are coming from could be fixed a bit. 50% of the companys volume came from imported products. This is an area where Outdoor could perhaps increase i ts self-manufactured products to perhaps increase r levelues or gain more control over the process. Increasing self-manufactured products could mean growthin manufacturing factories. There could be future growth within the company if things start to turn around a bit. This could result in space being an issue.These areas of issues can be easily fixed actually and can even help each other. A higher quality product will most possible be self-manufactured rather than imported. This can increase brand and customer loyalty. This also increases revenues in the end. Importing 50% of the volume and only have 35% self made can be a bit different. The company should perhaps 50% self made and 35% imported. This could help Outdoor control the process of manufacturing which increases the quality of the product.Even if this did end up costing a bit more, starting secure a preference from the customers could be a significant boost to the company. Growing the production process will be demand at some point if the company starts getting issues figured out. Looking at the future, there will most likely need to be more space to manufacture Outdoor products. There will most likely be a need to build and increase production. Buying space will be a real creative thinker that will need to be addressed. Perhaps doing so in the Midwest area in order to keep the reach of the company and increase the armorial bearing in an area that has a prodigious amount of hunters and fishers.II. Marketing ChannelsThere are a few rattling real problems with Outdoor Sportings marketing channels. The route that the product takes on its way from production to the consumer is important be eccentric a marketer must decide which route or channel is surpass for his particular product (Blunt). The start issue is that they have very little front line in over titanic metropolitan areas. The reasoning behind it was poor customer coverage. While poor customer coverage could be a real issue within the large metropolitan areas that doesnt mean that the market is impenetrable. There are some real customers that are perhaps being overlooked by Outdoor by non attempting as hard in this market. Outdoors share of the market is only 2% to 3%. This is an area that has a definite need for advancement. There are customers out there that simply arent having the chance to purchase Outdoors products.Discount Stores are also being untouched. Mr. McDonald claims that therehas been a growth over the last 10 years in tax deduction stores yet Outdoor Sporting Products has not forgeed a presence in these stores. It has been blamed on the pricing policy and the amount of pressure that customers put on the salespeople. While these issues also need to be addressed it is console a poor business strategy to not follow the trend of the market. The market shifting to more usher out store oriented means that Outdoor needs to find a way to put its products in these stores.People wont even see your pr oduct in a sack store resulting in less brand awareness. One final issue in marketing channels is how distri yetion is set up. Every item is shipped from the manufacturing plant and warehouse in Albany, New York. This could limit the organization in distributing their product. Every sale and every product has to be routed through the same place. While it office not be an issue at this time it could become one if the company grows. Outdoor products will need to stay ahead of its growth from a manufacturing standpoint.There are some very realistic themes to these problems. When it comes to dealing in large metropolitan areas. I would advise trying to start having a presence there. This can be through by allowing time for your salespeople to let on a presence there. Perhaps hit large retail chains within large metropolitan areas. It can be beneficial in that it helps with brand awareness and also opens up to a market that is not being utilized. Another solution is to start developi ng a presence at discount stores. If these stores are where the market is moving, then the company needs to shift with the market as well. stand up still will result in lost profits.Salespeople will need more time for these areas. Decreasing sales in stores of small to medium surface from the already 6,000 could free up time. Reducing the amount to 4,000 stores and then position yourself in 500 major retail locations could be beneficial. Then add some other 500-1000 discount related locations and develop these areas. After time re-evaluate and see how things are going and what will need to be done. Also, pricing options will need to be addressed as well but will be explained a bit more in the pricing section. Distribution could be addressed with another(prenominal) warehouse. Another distribution warehouse could also perhaps help in customer satisfaction by decreasing shipping times and perhaps putting less stress on the existingshipping and manufacturing employees. It could pay off in the future but will need to be done at the righteousness time. It is always good to think about the future but perhaps increase right away may not need to be done until business starts to pick up a bit as well.III. Marketing CampaignsOutdoor Sporting Products Inc. and Mr. McDonald are making a very huge drop away in marketing. The organization is not utilizing marketing to full way that it should be. Outdoor did not use magazine, newspaper, or radio advertising to reach either the retail trade or the consumer. This puts a strain on the sales force to be the marketers. While it might save some money Outdoor is not attracting customers by having the salespeople be the major role in marketing. Magazine, newspaper, and radio advertisings do not reach near the audience as some other mediums but they are such(prenominal) cheaper and can still play a major role. Newspaper ads and magazine ads especially can be a difference maker in hunting and fishing.There are numerous hunting magazines and they play a major role in outdoor product purchases. Hunters and fishers will likely be more likely to buy gear that is supported in their favorite hunting magazine than something that is not in the magazine. The merchandising catalogue that Outdoor Sporting Products puts out every year can be useful today but also needs to be evaluated. nodes today tend to much of their purchases outside of catalogues. Catalogues are not what they used to be, especially with the internet being around. While it might be useful to some customers, there needs to be an evaluation of what that catalogue is costing to what it is bringing in.Improving marketing should be a must. Marketing programs, though widely varied, are all aimed at convert people to try out or keep using particular products or services (Marketing 101). Start advertising in fish and game magazines to improve the marketing of the products. By concentrating your military campaigns on one or a few key market segments, you ll reap the most from small investments (Marketing 101). Targeting fish and game magazines are a perfect strategy. It will definitely not hurt the company and should be relatively cheap compared to other means of marketing. Newspaper ads and radio ads can be secondary to the magazine ads but shouldstill be utilized.This is a good way for people to have brand recognition. Even the name being said in the background of someones radio can make all the difference in reputation. Marketing cannot be pushed to the back. Get marketing out of the salespeoples hands. The product catalogue can be useful for re-buys it says but is not a good marketing tool if it is only successful in re-buys. The catalogue can still be produced but only make it available to the customers who actually use them, or at least want to use them. Theres no use in sending out 10,000 magazines for example if only 1,000 customers use them. Utilizing the internet can be very useful in this area to eliminate wasted magazine catalogues. Product catalogues are an outdated way of doing business and should eventually be scrapped all together as a way of doing business at Outdoor Sporting Products Inc.IV. PricingThe pricing of the products is having a direct negative result on surface sale of products. Deciding on the price is difficult because, in addition to the physical factors of cost and profit, price is subject to psychological factors, some of which are out of your companys control (Kalb). Outdoor Sporting Product Inc. gets its products from self manufacturing, importing, and domestic companies. Outdoor naturally has a markup of their products in order to make a profit and also pay for the products and employees. The problem though is the amount of markup that is being used on the products being sold. The markup is too high, especially for the trends of the market.Mr. McDonald reported that there was a markup of 50% to 100% on Outdoors cost for the item. The average markup across all products ave rages out to 70%. This markup has worked for Outdoor products but will need to be adjusted. Mr. McDonald himself has claimed that the customers are shifting more towards a discount store customer. Maintaining a 70% markup average could make things difficult when trying to spread into discount stores. The markup might be a result of a few different issues including shipping, manufacturing, and distribution issues as well. It is not put at 70% strictly because of profits. There has to be better ways to be able to lower the markup pricing though.Outdoor Sporting Products Inc. needs to find ways to develop business intodiscount stores. Having a 70% markup simply wont be very sensible. Outdoor will need to lower markup at these stores in order to develop a relationship with these customers. Outdoor needs to find a way to become profitable with around a 50% to 60% markup average across all products. This would lower prices which were a problem with developing markets in discount stores. W hen you are pricing your products, what gives you control over the price is the uniqueness built into your positioning, or branding, strategy (Kalb). Also, the development of another warehouse or manufacturing center in another location would lower shipping costs in general also. These could help lower the prices of Outdoor products. Each area can help another part of the company by fixing the issues.V. Sales and Sales Force ManagementThe sales force is one of the biggest problems within Outdoor Sporting Products Inc. The case appears to be a straight compensation structure, but analysis of the information in the case quickly leads to the conclusion that a number of other issues are also involved, including training salespeople, evaluating sales performance, determining sales potential and territories, and the relationship mingled with the sales function and overall marketing strategy. The salesmen with a guaranteed salary have a significantly higher than average earnings to sales ratio.The incentive plans currently in existence have several weaknesses. Some of the plans require that the salesman be in the territory the previous year to be eligible for payment of a bonus. This provides zero incentive for a first-year person and makes it possible to so the next year can provide a large bonus. The compensation is not working currently and needs to be addressed.Compensation could be changed by having a lower guaranteed salary. Eliminating some of the sales incentives such as the yearly improvement incentive could be productive. Start giving the salespeople a chance to really excel at selling products and help with money in the area of commission.The first four parts of the selling formula are routinely found in the catalog carried by the salespeople. It is questionable that knowing thesefour pieces of information on all 700 items is worthwhile. Perhaps more knowledge of customer needs and benefits that the customer could derive from the products sold by the com pany would result in increased presumption in the job and sales. It can be seen that the entire sales group needs additional training, and plans should be made to provide for training on an ongoing basis. Perhaps Mr. McDonald could use his best sales rep in the role of sales training. It is apparent that he is doing a much better sales job than any of his colleagues.The improved training for salespeople can only lead to more a efficient and motivated sales force. With the results of recent sales, it would be a good idea to take a close look at the practice of having the salespeople plan their own itineraries and the time to be spent on each sale. Although having each salesperson handle some parts of the job is normally usually a good idea, the results show that the salespeople may need some help in this area. The coverage system used now can provide a helpful data base to make these salespeople more effective in this area.Mr. McDonald leading the sales team could be a potential pr oblem from some salespeoples perspective. Mr. McDonald can lead the sales team but will need to perhaps make a few changes to his approach. His sales formula can still be utilized if he wants it to be but the amount of time and effort put in with Monday sales calls and day-to-day reports could be counterproductive. There will need to be a better way of checking in with salespeople and dealing with daily reports. Perhaps have another sales team director who can deal with day to day operations while Mr. McDonald can deal with marketing and sales strategy.VI. Implementation of TechnologyTechnology is underutilized within Outdoor Sporting Inc. There is no real raise of internet sales or how technology is utilized to make the organization successful. This leads to believe that technology is not an area of focus by this organization. The technology used by consumers today is indicative of how a company like Outdoor should be doing business. Using internet sales might affect sales of the sales force but can be seen as an upgrade in customer service in dealing with customer wants and needs. TheInternet allows intercourse in two ways static communication through Web pages, and dynamic communication through information being exchanged (Golden).The company seems to deal with sales today strictly through catalogues and salespeople. Customer satisfaction would seem to increase if they could use the internet to help deal with their needs. Technology alone can improve the shipping process as well. Salespeople life history and handing in reports of sales could take time that could be used in manufacturing or shipping products. Even eliminating a day off of impact sales can make all the difference in the world to a store. Just looking to the future alone should indicate that technology will need to be utilized more than it is now.With technology advancing and new generations of customers who utilize technology, it would be wise to start using technology as a company as we ll. Develop an online catalogue or ways to process sales online. Online sales today are a major market and Outdoor is absent out on these customers by focusing on how to deal with salespeople. Even having salespeople utilize the online site with their customers could be beneficial to both sides.It could speed up bear on and perhaps allow more time for salespeople to travel to other customers. There will always be technology that can speed up manufacturing and processing and it should never be overlooked. In this instance though, the shortcomings in utilizing the internet and network systems seems to be a mistake. Networking systems allows users to communicate through traditional voice and video in a secure system (Golden). Technology could really help streamline the buying process for customers.VII. Customer do and computer backupCustomer Service and Support should be staples of the organization especially within the sales force. Sales are regarded as some of the tougher jobs in dealing with people. Having great customer service skills can make the difference between making sales and looking for a different job. The lack of training and uniformity in this area for the salespeople is a cause for concern. There are potential sales that could be missed but the company doesnt know how the salespeople are dealing with customers. The case doesnt mention a customer service department but there is mostlikely some customer support somewhere in the organization. If Outdoor Sporting Products Inc. starts to grow, customer service will be depended upon to maintain happy and loyal customers along the way.Training of the sales staff will be vital for increasing customer service and support among the salespeople. Sales depend on customer service and support. Commission based salaries depend on employees being good with people. The best salesperson is doing something right at Outdoor and needs to be utilized in order to train other employees. Perhaps his customer skills are something that should be used by everyone. Customer service is that personal encounter, whether it be via email, telephone or in person. How you conduct that personal experience determines whether you create a customer that has loyalty towards your place of business (Lake).There will need to be a customer service department for complaints from customers. The distribution channels will oft times complain to the sales team but customers of the products will most likely want to deal with people in the company. This is where a customer service department needs to be key. Saving customers can help save and maintain loyal customers. This is where there will be employees that need to dealing with customers needs and relaying the ideas to other departments. Customer service is about improving the company by satisfying a customers wants and needs.VIII. ConclusionOutdoor Sporting Products Inc. have done a great job at setting up a great company with a potential to be profitable. While the c ase wants to deal a lot with compensation of the sales force, there are many areas that need to be improved. Mr. Hudson needs to realize that it is time for the company to develop along with the market and take the company to the next stage. Outdoor has become a bit stagnant and will have to change each of the areas listed above to an extent to return to profitability. There will undoubtedly be growth. Outdoor Sporting Products Inc. has a great company that is ready to take the next ill-use to become a major sporting product company. Mr. Hudson just needs to help develop the company to help it reach its potential.ReferencesBlunt, L. (n.d.). Types of Marketing Channels. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from http//smallbusiness.chron.com/types-marketing-channels-21627.htmlGolden, R. (n.d.). How like a shots Technology Is Used in Business to Communicate. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from http//smallbusiness.chron.com/todays-technology-used-business-communicate-27351.htmlKalb, I. (2013, October 2). Three Ways Companies Decide The Price Of A Product. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from http//www.businessinsider.com/3-powerful-pricing-strategies-businesses-should-always-consider-2013-10Lake, L. (n.d.). What Role Does Customer Service Play in Marketing? Retrieved December 12, 2014, from http//marketing.about.com/od/relationshipmarketing/qt/What-Role-Does-Customer-Service-Play-In-Marketing.htmMarketing 101. (n.d.). Retrieved December 12, 2014, from https//www.sba.gov/content/marketing-101-basicsReferences ContinuedVan der Merwe, R. (2014, September 17). Why Companies Need Full-Time Product Managers Smashing Magazine. Retrieved December 12, 2014, from http//www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/09/17/why-companies-need-full-time-product-managers/

Is Competition Good

Review of Industrial Organization 19 3748, 2001. 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 37 Is Competition Such a Good Thing? placid Ef? ciency versus Dynamic Ef? ciency MARK BLAUG University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract. This paper addresses the rationale for antitrust legislation. It is a striking fact that the legitimacy of antitrust faithfulness of nature has been taken for granted in the linked States ever since the Sher humankind Act of 1890 and, until the advent of the so-called Chicago School, it was thus far taken for granted by conservative Ameri brush aside economists.Europeans, on the other hand, have eternally been lukewarm fitting about legal action a assoilst trusts and cartels and this attitude is found right-hand(a) across the political spectrum in most European countries. Neverthe slight, in both the U. S. A. and Europe, the supreme justi? cation for antitrust law derives from sparing doctrine regarding the bene? cial effects of cont container. only what exactly be these bene? cial effects and how secure is the contention of economists that disputation is of all time superior to monopoly? surprisingly enough, contender, that central concept of political economy, is widely misunderstood by m whatever economists, both as a trade phenomenon and as an organizing principle of economic reasoning. I. A bittie History of Thought I begin by drawing what I believe is a fundamental distinction in the history of economics, as off the beaten track(predicate) back as Adam Smith or even William Petty, amongst two different effects of what is slo dript by competition, namely, competition as an end-state of rest in the aspiration between buyers and sellers and competition as a process of rivalry that may or may non terminate in an end-state.In the end-state conceit of balance, the focus of attention is on the nature of the equilibrium state in which the contest between transacting agents is ? nally re crystalised if thither is recognition of change at all, it is change in the sense of a new stationary equilibrium of endogenous variables in response to an altered inured of exogenous variables just at present comparative statics is still an end-state conception of economics. However, in the process conception of competition, what is in the foreground of analysis is not the population of equilibrium, that rather the stability of that equilibrium state.How do markets gear up when integrity equilibrium is dis blankd by another(prenominal) and at what speed pull up stakes these markets converge to a new equilibrium? only when, surely, all theories of competition do both conception and stability be tied up together and to study unmatchable is to study the other? By no means, however it is easy to show that, for centuries, competition to economists meant an active process of jockeying for advantage, tending towards, exclusively never veridically culminating in, an 38 MARK BLAUG equilibrium end-state.Only in 1838, in Cournots numeric Principles of the surmise of Wealth was the process conception of competition totally displaced by the end-state conception of market-clearing equilibria. At ? rst this did not succeed in wiping the slate entirely clean of an have-to doe with in competitive processes but in the decade of the 1930s those years of high theory as George Shackle called them the Monopolistic Competition novelty and the Hicks-Samuelson reformation of Walrasian general equilibrium theory, forti? d by the New Welf be Economies, succeeded in enthroning the end-state conception of competition and enthroning it so decisively that the process view of competition was intimately buried out of sight. Let me elaborate. It is a striking feature of the language of The Wealth of Nations that the term competition invariably appears with a de? nite or inde? nite article precede it a competition between neats the competition with private tr aders, and so forth.For Smith, competition is not a state or situation, as it is for Cournot and for us, but a behavioural activity it is a race the original sense of the verb to compete between two or to a greater extent individuals to dispose of excess supply or to receive goods available in limited quantities. What we nowadays call competition or the market mechanism was for him the obvious and simple system of natural liberty, importee no more than an absence of restraints or ree entry into industries and occupations. Neither competition nor monopoly was a matter of the number of sellers in a market monopoly did not mean a single seller but a situation of less than thoroughgoing(a) factor mobility and hence inelastic supply and the opposite of competition, was not monopoly, but co-operation. Producers in The Wealth of Nations treat price as a variable in accordance with the buoyancy of their sales, much(prenominal) like enterprises in new(a) theories of washy competition. This was not a conception invented by Smith because by 1776, competition had long been analyzed by a whole series of eighteenth degree Celsius authors as a process which brings temporary market prices into line with cost-covering natural prices, those natural prices were indeed the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating, and in say that Smith invoked Newtonian language to dignify a conception of price-determination that had a long tradition going back to the seventeenth ampere-second. To obtain that end-state in which market prices equal natural prices and the rate of pro? is equalized between industries, there had to be a considerable number of rivals, possessing common experience of market opportunities they had to be liberate to enter and exit different lines of investment but that was all and even that much was never spelled out explicitly as necessary prerequisites for competition wholly once did Smith ever mention the number of rival ? rms involved in competition. It was Cournot who ? rst had the notion of sellers facing a horizontal demand curve when their metrical composition be numerate so large that none chamberpot in? uence the price of their own product.Competition, which once meant the way in which ? rms take consider of how their rivals respond to their actions, now meant shrimpy more than the slope of the average revenue curve depriving ? rms in the limit of any power to make the price. Thus was born, decades before the Marginal Revolution of the 1870s what IS COMPETITION SUCH A GOOD social function? 39 one writer has wittily called the quantity theory of competition (quoted in Blaug, 1997, p. 68). Edgeworths Mathematical Psychics (1981) followed Cournot in providing all the trappings of the late de? nition of consummate(a) ompetition in terms of a large number of sellers, a homogeneous product, gross(a) mobility of resources and immaculate knowledge on the part of buyers and sellers of all substitute(a) opportunities. However, Marshalls treatment of the competition invariably carefully labelled as free competition was much closer to Smiths simple system of natural liberty than to that of Cournot and Edgeworths perfect competition. Even Walras hesitated to follow Cournot to the letter. Indeed, it was not until the 1920s that the modern textual matter concept of perfect competition was ? ally received into the corpus of mainstream economics, largely due to the impact of Knights classic, Risk, Uncertainty and Pro? t (1921). But it is doubtful whether the idea was in fact fully accepted in 1921 and a good case can be made for the thesis that it was Robinson and Chamberlain a decade later who hammered down the theory of perfect competition in the very process of inventing imperfect and monopolistic competition theory (Machovec, 1995). The replenishment of the process conception of competition by an end-state conception, which was ? alized in 1933 or thereabouts, d rained the idea of competition of all behavioural content, so that even price competition, the very kernel, of the competitive process for Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill now had to be analysed as imperfect competition, a sort of deviation from the norm. Indeed, each act of competition on the part of a businessman was now taken as evidence of some degree of monopoly power, and hence a departure from the ideal of perfect competition, and yet pure monopoly ruled out competitive behaviour as much as did perfect competition. II.Perfect Competition, the Unattainable Ideal All I have said so far merely reiterates what Schumpeter said in 1942 and Hayek repeated in 1949 perfect competition is not only impossible but inferior, and has no title to being set up as a model of ideal ef? ciency what the theory of perfect competition discusses has little claim to be called competition at all and its conclusions are of little use as guides to policy (quoted in Blaug, 1997, p. 69). B ut this message, delivered over a half-century ago, fell on desensitise ears and the endstate theory of perfect competition is more ? mly in the saddle today than it ever was in the 1940s when Hayek and Schumpeter, not to mention John Maurice Clark (1949, 1961), were writing. And why? The root is simple it is that most of us were taught that although perfect competition is rarely if ever attained, nearly-perfect competition is said to be observable in some markets (agricultural markets being a favourite example) and these approximations to the state of perfect competition somehow replicate many 40 MARK BLAUG f the desirable characteristics of perfect competition in a word, runner-up is so nearly ? rst-best that we may indeed employ ? rst-best as a standard. Open any textbook and what do we ? nd? The concept of perfect competition is said to be like the assumption of a perfect vacuum in physics descriptively inaccurate, to be sure, but nevertheless plentiful of valid insights abo ut real(a) economies. Thus, Samuelson and Nordhaus (1992, p. 295) in the 14th edition of their economics concede that a perfect and absolutely ef? ient competitive mechanism has never existed and never will but the oil crisis of the 1970s is only one of their many examples of how an empirically empty competitive model can nevertheless produce the right answers to a concrete imabsolutely competitive situation (for other textbook treatments, see Blaug, 1997, pp. 6970). This is precisely what Reder (1982, p. 12), called the notion of tight prior equilibrium, which he vox populi was characteristic of the Chicago School of stintings one may treat observed prices and quantities as good approximations to their long-run equilibrium values. jaw this the good-approximation assumption. Unfortunately, the idea of a near or far approximation to perfect competition has absolutely no logical meaning. We seem conveniently to have forget the famous LipseyLancaster (1996) second-best theorem pub lished in 1956, according to which we are either at a ? rst-best optimum or it matters not whether we are at second-best or tenth-best because we cannot rigorously demonstrate that doing away with a tax or a tariff that put us at tenth-best will bring us closer to ? st-best in a well-being sense of these terms. This theorem has not been conveniently forgotten it has been deliberately forgotten because it wreaks havoc with the end-state, ? rst-best conception of competition. Must we therefore kibosh to give advice on competition policy? I think not but what it does mean is that instead of gnostic pronouncements about the desirability of any campaign in the direction of ? st-best perfect competition, we must engage instead in qualitative opinions about piecemeal improvements, embracing a dynamic process-conception of competition, which is precisely the obsolete classical conception that Schumpeter, Hayek, Clark and modern neo-Austrians have urged us to adopt. To grasp why it was necessary to revive this tradition, we must spend a moment explaining why modern price theory is so strong on the nature of the competitive equilibrium end-state and so weak on the process by which competition drives a market towards a ? al equilibrium. III. The Awful Legacy of General Equilibrium Theory When Walras literally invented general equilibrium (GE) in 1871, he was just as much concerned with the process-conception of competition known as the stability problem as in what we have called the end-state interpretation of equilibrium known as the conception problem is simultaneous multimarket-equilibrium possible in a capitalist economy?But gradually, in successive editions of his Elements of Pure Economics, the existence problem came ever more to the fore, while the sta- IS COMPETITION SUCH A GOOD THING? 41 bility problem receded in the background (Walker, 1996). Even so, Walrass view of how markets adjust in disequilibrium was always somewhat naive. It is a story which we a ll learn in our ? rst course of economics in response to the appearance of excess demand and supply, prices adjust automatically as independently acting buyers and sellers grope their way to a ? al equilibrium. When this tatonnement story is well t honest-to-goodness, it sounds utterly convincing and at such generation we are apt to forget that many markets, particularly labour markets and customer markets, react faster in terms of quantities than in terms of prices (as Marshall always insisted in opposition to Walras) and sometimes only in terms of quantities (see Blaug, 1997, pp. 7175). But prices and quantities aside, what about product ifferentiation and competition by maintenance and service agreements, what about Schumpeterian competition in terms of new products and processes, new methods of marketing, new organizational forms and new reward structures for employees? In short, all the forms of rivalry between producers which Chamberlain and Robinson have taught us to call mo nopolistic or imperfect competition (the irony of calling what cannot exist, perfect competition, and what always exists, imperfect competition, never ceases to amuse me . Walras struggled manfully to provide a rigorous solution to the existence problem but never got much beyond counting equations and unknowns to ensure that there were enough demand and supply equations to solve for the unknown equilibrium prices and quantities in the economy. As for the stability problem, he solved that after much hesitation by simply eliminating disequilibrium transactions as specious trading (another wonderfully ironic piece of rhetoric). Although he never mentioned the concept of a ? tional auctioneer announcing different prices until an equilibrium price is discovered, whereupon trade is allowed to take place this is one of those historical myths that subsequent generations have invented it is dif? cult to avoid the conclusion that he simply gave up the effort to provide a convincing account of how real-world competitive markets achieve GE. Such an account has in fact never been provided even to this date. In 1954, Arrow and Debreu ? nally solved the existence problem by modern mathematical techniques topological properties of convexity, ? ed point theorems, Nash equilibria, etcetera of which Walras could never have dreamt but, in so doing, they travelled even further than Walras had from anything smacking of descriptive accuracy there are forward markets in their GE model for all goods and services in the economy, including all locations and conceivable contingent states in which these goods and services might be consumed, and yet no one holds cash to deal with the likelihood that income and expenditure may fail to synchronize. They were perfectly candid about this failure to describe actual economies.Indeed, they made a virtue of the purely formal properties of their model. 1 1 As Debreu (1959, p. x) expressed it in his Theory of Value The theory of value is do by here with the standards of rigor of the contemporary formalist school of mathematics . . . . Allegiance to rigor dictates the axiomatic form of the analysis where the theory, in the strict sense, is logically entirely confused from its interpretation. And yet this book claimed to be a work in economics 42 MARK BLAUG They cracked the existence problem, not to mention the singularity problem is there one unique vector of prices at which GE exists? but they never tackled the stability problem. In other words, after a century or more of endless re? nements of the central core of GE theory, an exercise which has engaged some of the best brains in twentieth-century economics, the theory is unable to shed any light on how market equilibrium is actually attained, not just in a real-world decentralized market economy but even in the toy economies beloved of GE theorists. We may conclude that GE theory as such is a cul de sac it has no empirical content and never will have empirical conte nt.Moreover, even regarded as a research program in social mathematics, it must be condemned as an almost total failure. That is not to say that highly aggregated computable GE models, such as IS-LM, are pointless or that a GE formulation of an economic problem, emphasizing the interdependence of all sectors of the economy, may not prove illuminating but simply that Walrasian GE theory the notion that the existence of multi-market equilibrium may be studied in a way that is analogous to solving a set of simultaneous equations has proved in the profusion of time to be an utterly sterile innovation.The real paradox is that the existence, uniqueness and stability of GE should ever have been considered an interesting question for economists to answer a complete satisfactory proof of all three aspects of the problem would no doubt have been a considerable in sortectual feat in logic but would not in any way have enhanced our understanding of how actual economic systems work. IV. The offbeat Implications of GE Of course, Walras hoped to show, not just that GE is possible, but that it is good.But here too he never got much beyond the idea that voluntary exchange between two parties improves both of their eudaemonias otherwise, why would they have traded? What is true of bilaterial exchange will also be true of competitive exchange between a large number of traders if individual producers cannot themselves set prices, so that all consumers face identical prices for identical homogeneous commodities. This is precisely where the notion of perfect competition as an end-state of rest comes into welfare economics grounded in GE theory.Pareto, who was a much better technician than Walras, carried on where Walras left off. He too was convinced that GE is good for everyone but as a follower of Ernest Mach in philosophy, he hated such metaphysical ideas as maximising happiness, utility, welfare, or call it what you will, and he strenuously objected to interpersonal comp arisons of utility (ICU) on the grand that such comparison could not be operationalised.Pondering these issues, he realised that the one circumstance that avoids ICU is a social state which meets with unanimous praise or at least with the absence of con? ict in which one person is only made better off at the expense of another person. In other words, we want a state which is so ef? cient that there is no surplus, no waste, no slack, no such thing as a free lunch. But is not perfect competition just such a state? Of course, it may leave some people mysterious IS COMPETITION SUCH A GOOD THING? 3 and some people poor but that will be the consequence of the fact that we started with mismatched endowments of the individuals in our economy some people are born clever and some people have rich parents but, given those endowments that are not themselves explained by GE theory no theory ever explains everything the GE model will grind out the rental prices of all the services of land , labor and capital as well as the prices of all goods, produced with those services.Once we have somehow arrived at the end-state of perfectly competitive equilibrium, it will be impossible to make one person better off without making another person worse off except by interfering with the initial endowments of agents. In this way, Pareto thought that he had ? nally found an admittedly narrow de? nition of the bene? cial effects of competition that was totally free of that positivist bugbear, ICU. The idea, only later called Pareto optimality, fell into oblivion as soon as it was announced but was rescued along with Walrasian GE theory in the 1930s by John Hicks and Nicholas Kaldor.They extended the scope of Pareto optimality by arguing that any economic change, whether from a position of competitive equilibrium or not, was welfare improving if the gains to bene? ciaries of that change were large enough to enable them at least in principle, to bribe the losers voluntarily to accept the change. The existences of such potential Pareto improvement (PPI), as they are nowadays called, still involves no ICU because it is grounded on the voluntariness of market exchange.In short, Hicks and Kaldor (with a prodding from Lionel Robbins) stayed true to the Paretian conception of how an economist should study welfare economics. At ? rst glance, the HickKaldor compensation test does seem virtually to pull a rabbit out of a hat but further re? ection soon showed that the achievement was semantic, not substantive. Why is it a potential and not an actual PI? The moment we try to implement PPI by encouraging gainers and losers to negotiate a bribe, they will engage in strategic bargaining and even without fantasy game theory, it is easy to see that they may never reach an agreement.If the change has political signi? cance, the state may then intervene to force the parties to agree in which case we have said goodbye to our taboo on ICU. No matter how we slice it, in the end we cannot avoid (1) a qualitative judgement from on high of the size of the PPI remember that there is no objective way short of voluntary trade to measure the magnitude of a gain or a loss to the parties concerned and (2) an interpersonal comparison of that gain and loss to the respective parties.But all that brings us back to Marshall and Pigou whose Economics of Welfare (1921) had none of Paretos compunctions about ICU and was perfectly content to declare that a pound sterling taken from a rich man by a progressive income tax hurt him less than the pleasure it gave the poor man when it was handed over to him. We have not quite reached the end of the story. The ArrowDebreu proof of the existence of GE in 1954 was almost contemporary with Arrows proof of what he labelled the First and Second central Theorems of welfare economics. The ? st theorem demonstrates that every competitive equilibrium in a decentralized economy is Pareto-optimal, which we have already discussed, and the second 44 MARK BLAUG theorem demonstrates that a Pareto-optimum can always be achieved via perfect competition if lump-sum taxes and transfers are feasible, so that whatever were the original endowments of agents, we can still make everyone better off with a perfectly competitive economy. Immense pains are taken in every textbook of microeconomics to persuade readers of the validity of those two theorems.And they are valid as mathematical exercises. Lump-sum taxes and transfers are changes which do not affect economic behaviour and even the most ingenious modern welfare economists have never been able to come up with a convincing example of such things. 2 I think that we may safely conclude that the First and Second Fundamental Theorems of welfare economics are just mental exercises without the slightest possibility of ever being practically relevant.They are what Ronald Coase (1988) called blackboard economics, an economics that is easy to write on a blackboard in a classroom but that bears no resemblance to the world outside the classroom. V. Why Is Competition Good? I pull off that perfect competition is a grossly misleading concept whose only real value is to generate examination questions for students of economics. 3 It is misleading because it breeds the view that economics is a subject like Euclidean geometry, whose conclusion may be rigorously deduced from fundamental axioms of behaviour plus some hard facts about technology.But of course this does not imply that competition is severity. I, along with most economists, believe that competition is good. But if perfect competition is impossible, and Pareto-optimality almost impossible, what is the basis of this belief in the desirability of competition? It is based on a concept of dynamic ef? ciency, the consequent of competitive processes, and not the static ef? ciency of Walras, Pareto and the First and Second Fundamental Theorems of welfare economics. The schizophrenic psychosis of economists on t his issue is simply extraordinary.The manin-the-street favours capitalism because it is ultimately responsive to consumers demands, technologically dynamic and produces the goods that are wanted at low cost of course, it also suffers from periodic slumps, more or less chronic unemployment even in booms, and frequently generates a highly-unequal distribution 2 They would have to be randomly depute to individuals or else to re? ect some personal noneconomic characteristic, such as more consonants than vowels in ones last name.It used to be thought that a uniform poll tax was a perfect example of a limp-sum tax but as Mrs. Thatcher discovered it had a most intelligent effect on economic behaviour almost a million people disappeared from the electoral roll in Britain because the poll tax could not be collected without a home address. 3 I concede reluctantly that it has its uses for purposes of answering comparative statics questions on taxes and subsidies but even these have much less practical signi? cance than is usually assumed (see Vickers, 1995). IS COMPETITION SUCH A GOOD THING? 5 of income. 4 Still, on balance the good outweighs the bad and without decorous Panglossian, he or she votes for capitalism and so do virtually all economists. But is this what we teach in our textbooks? To ask the question is to already answer it. fuck one actually teach the principles of dynamic ef? ciency? Of course, one can and that is what we do in every course in industrial organization (and in every course in management schools), where, alas, we have to undo the brainwashing that students have undergone in their courses on microeconomics.In so doing, we employ historical comparisons and case studies, and these can only cultivate the ability to make informed judgements about speci? c attempts at what Popper called piecemeal social engineering, making the world a little better here and there, because we do not know enough to make the whole world best once and for all. VI. Some Conclusions Coase and Posner Beliefs in the ef? cacy of antitrust law ? ts neatly into the concept of dynamic ef? ciency, or what Clark called workable competition. A question like should we break up Microsoft or just reprimand and peradventure ? e the company? does not lend itself to a precise answer by the edicts of economists and it is just as well that it does not. Empirical science frequently reappearance on the untidy basis of what is plausible rather than what can be formally demonstrated beyond any doubt. The structureconduct-performance paradigm of yesteryear, associated with names of Edward Mason and Joe Bain, did just that but that has since been superseded by game theory and transaction cost on the one hand and the Chicago School of Richard Posner and Robert Bork on the other hand. In between we ? d Ronald Coase and the widely misunderstood Coase Theorem as the very centre piece of the law and economics movement. Since this so-called in impoundly named theorem pic ks up a number of the themes in welfare economics that we have discussed above, let us close with a brief discussion of it. As stated by its inventor, George Stigler (1966, p. 113), the Coase Theorem is the proposition that under perfect competition private and social cost will be equal and hence the composition of output will not be affected by the manner in which the law assigns liability for damage.This combines two claims in one, the ? rst of which will be familiar to us (1) an ef? ciency claim that perfect competition is always optimal if voluntary bargaining between the affected parties to their mutual advantage is possible at zero transaction costs, de? ned as the costs of making deals, negotiating contracts, and policing the enforcement of those contracts (Allen, 2000), and (2) an invariability claim that the ? nal allocation of resources is invariant to different initial assignments of blank space rights provided these are in fact clearly de? ed. A voluminous literature h as shown that both propositions are either highly contentious or else a tautology if perfect competition, perfect information and zero 4 In an instructive essay, Richard Nelson (1981 reiterates my charge of schizophrenia and adds to my list of the bene? ts of a private enterprise system of capitalism that of administrative parsimony, an echo of Hayeks discussion of the merits of competitive prices as information signals. 46 MARK BLAUG transaction costs are rigorously de? ned (Medema and Zorbe, 2000).Lo and behold, however, Coase has argued ever more vehemently that transaction costs can be reduced by appropriate judicial decisions but that they can never be reduced to zero even under Cournot-type perfect competition. Of course, if we de? ne perfect information as literally foreseeing every alternative opportunity under all possible contingencies, now and in the future, it follows immediately that we can write and enforce contracts at zero costs (zero in ? nancial outlays, in time an d even in cognitive effort), in which case only increasing returns to scale will prevent us achieving perfect competition.Once transaction costs are zero and competition is perfect, it follows immediately that the distribution of property rights cannot matter. In short, the Coase Theorem is just a logical corollary of perfect competition and perfect information but that does little to persuade us that it is much more than a logical theorem. 5 As for the more controversial invariability claim, income and wealth effects in consumption patterns and the strategic behaviour of the injured and injuring parties as they enter into voluntary bargaining (the old objection to HicksKaldor compensation payments) will certainly make the ? al allocation of resources sensitive to the way in which the law of the moment assigns liability for damage. Are we really to believe that my claim against the American Tobacco Company for giving me lung cancer will be decided in 2002 in exactly the same way it would have been decided in 1940? Coase (1964, p. 105) said it all 35 years ago Contemplation of an optimal system may provide techniques of analysis that would otherwise have been missed and, in certain special cases, it may go far to providing a solution.But in general its in? uence has been pernicious. It has directed economists attention away from the main question, which is how alternative arrangements will actually work in practice. It has led economists to derive conclusions for economic policy from a study of an abstract of a market situation. Richard Posner, in his in? uential textbook, Economic Analysis of Law (1998), now in its ? fth edition, subsumes Pareto optimality and the Coase Theorem in an ef? ciency logic of wealth maximization.He claims not only that common law, statute law and judge-made law should serve to maximize wealth, so that for example entitlements in property law should be shifted to the more productive litigants as evidenced by their willingness to pay , but that legal entitlements and hence resources actually tend to gravitate towards their most valuable use if voluntary exchange is permitted. Without saying so, Posner clearly believes that we can 5 Moreover, as Allen (2000, pp. 904905) argues quite rightly, the famous Modigliani-Miller Theorem of corporate nance if capital markets are perfect, the value of a ? rm is invariant to its debt-equity ratio and the Ricardo Equivalence Theorem of government ? nance if capital markets are perfect, the level of household wealth is invariant to the ratio of taxes to the size of the public debt are both special cases of the Coase Theorem because all taxes, debt obligations and equity shares are simply delineations of property rights in a world of zero transaction costs, both ? rms and governments could decide on debt levels by tossing a coin.IS COMPETITION SUCH A GOOD THING? 47 isolate PPI, divorcing ef? ciency from equity without committing ourselves to ICU, in short, he believes in cl assic or rather neoclassical Paretian welfare economics. Although he deals at length with distributional issues arising from liability rules and various forms of taxation, he never lays down any general principles about income redistribution, such as, for example, Pigou did any transfer of income from the rich to the poor that does not fall national income was deemed desirable by Pigou.What he argues, when criticized, is simply that users of distributive justice will have to be addressed outside the framework of standard economic analysis (Parisi, 2000). But this is exactly what Pareto, Kaldor and Hicks said years ago. Orthodox welfare economics, including the ef? ciency of the common law hypothesis upheld by Posner, has simply stood still ever since the 1930s. This notion of a neat divorce of ef? ciency from equity, of an objective value-free de? nition of ef? iency, has haunted economics from its outset but it is, of course, a will-o-the-wisp there is in fact a different ef? cien cy outcome for every different distribution of income, and vice versa. Ef? ciency is necessarily a value-laden term and welfare economics is necessarily normative, that is, a matter of good or bad and not true or false. 6 However, there is real merit in treating ef? ciency and equity questions lexicographically, so that we can be as explicit as possible about our distributional judgements, but that is not because we can ever decisively separate them.My complaint about Posner is that he evades all these fundamental questions in applied welfare economics. Not only does he fail to tell us how to add equity to ef? ciency but he does not even tell us whether ef? ciency means static ef? ciency or dynamic ef? ciency. There is an almost deliberate fuzziness of language in all his writings, which smacks of ideology rather than science. If we are going to employ the economists language of ef? ciency, we ought to be told just how to apply it and why ef? ciency should be our standard for judgin g the consequences of the law.One of Clarks old rules of workable competition, such that entry into industries should be kept as free as is technically feasible taking due account of sink costs, if necessary by antitrust legislation, is more relevant for public policy than Posners continual appeal to the principle of wealth maximization. The Chicago school does not deny that there is a case for antitrust law but they doubt that it is a strong case because most markets, even in the social movement of high concentration ratios, are contestable (Bork, 1978). How do we know?We know because the good-approximation assumption the economy is never far away from its perfectly competitive equilibrium growth path Believe it or not, that is all there is to the antitrust revolution of the Chicago School. 6 Some economists believe, extraordinarily enough, that welfare economics is confirmative and not evaluative at all (see Hennipman, 1992 Blaug, 1992, chap. 8, 1993). 48 References MARK BLAUG A llen, Douglas W. (2000) Transaction Costs, in Bouckaert and De Geest, eds. , pp. 893926. Blaug, Mark (1992) The Methodology of Economics, 2nd edn. Cambridge Cambridge University Press.Blaug, Mark (1993) Pieter Hennipman on Paretian Welfare Economics A Comment, De Economist, 141, 127129. Blaug, Mark (1997) Competition as an End-State and Competition as a Process, in Not Only an Economist. Recent Essays. Cheltenham Edward Elgar, pp. 6686. Bork, Robert H. (1978) The Antitrust Paradox A Policy at War with Itself. New York Basic Books. Bouckaert, Boudewijn, and Gerrit De Geest (2000) Encyclopaedia of Law and Economics, 3 Vols. Cheltenham Edward Elgar. Clark, John Maurice (1961) Competition as a Dynamic Process. Washington, DC Brookings Institution.Coase, Ronald G. (1964) The Regulated Industries Discussion, American Economic Review, 54, 194197. Coase, Ronald G. (1988) The Firm, the Market and the Law. Chicago University of Chicago Press. Debreu, Gerard (1959) Theory of Value. An Axiomati c Analysis of Economic Equilibrium. New harbor Yale University Press. Hennipman, Pieter (1992), Mark Blaug on the Nature of Paretian Welfare Economics, De Economist, 140, 413445. Lipsey, Richard C. , and Kelvin Lancaster (1996) The General Theory of Second Best, Review of Economic Studies, 24, 1956, pp. 1132, reprinted in Richard C.Lipsey, Microeconomics, outgrowth and Political Economy. Selected Essays, Vol. 1. Cheltenham Edward Elgar, pp. 153180. Machovec, Frank (1995) Perfect Competition and the Transformation of Economics. London Routledge. Medema, Steven G. , and Richard O. Zerbe (2000), The Coase Theorem, in Bouckaert and De Geest, eds. , pp. 3692. Nelson, Richard R. (1981) Assessing Private Enterprise An Exegesis of a Tangled Doctrine, Bell ledger of Economics, 12, 93100, in Peter Boetke, eds. , The Legacy of Friedrich von Hayek, Vol. III. Cheltenham Edward Elgar, pp. 8098. Parisi, Francesco, ed. 2000) The Economic Structure of the Law The Collected Essays of Richard A. Po sner, Vol. I. Cheltenham Edward Elgar. Reder, Melvin W. (1982) Chicago Economics Permanence and Change, Journal of Economic Literature, 20, 138. Stigler, George J. (1966) Theory of Price, 3rd edn. New York Macmillan. Van Cayseele, Patrick, and Roger Van den Bergh (2000) Antitrust Law, in Bouckhaert and De Geest, eds. , Vol. III, pp. 467498. Vickers, John (1995) Concepts of Competition, Oxford Economic Papers, 47, 123. Walker, Donald A. (1996) Walrass Market Models. Cambridge Cambridge University Press.

“Danger room” – Creative Writing

I woke up to the sound of drips on my bedroom roof, i couldnt wait to gewt out of the dump for 3 days. I packed the night before, i didnt i hade so many clothes I found a some silk sleepsuit, which i recived for chrismas off my antie with the mole on her face, its a welsh break and i cant say it with out pouring out 1 ton of spit. Mum was feeding the baby as i went down stairs, she was and about to drop him around my nanas, While we went a way of life.Dad has allready out there, we entered a doogy compertion and we didnt read in the terms and contaions that you may not all expire on the same flight. I was so excited, I felt equivalent a child on the night before christmas. I couldnt wait to get onto the plane. We got in the car, droped little sam to my nans nad speeded down the motorway to the airport. When we got to the airport, the told us that we hade been upgraded to first class seats. My mum mentation it was because she looked like Cathren Zeta Jones, while the way the rude , drolly dollie, looked at her like she was Pat buthcher. The only thing that came into my head was if looks could kill We got into our seats, they hade covbers over them, they were as smooth as slik. The runway was like a ribbon of moonlight. We blased of into the air. The stars looked so contiguous now.After an awful film and luke warm food we lanned into wise york air port.we breased through cosstums and we were soon in a Yellow cab to our hotel. The neon lights we shinning bright. I could help buty notices but there was a Mc Donald on every cornor. I was going to be happy here. I couldnt wait till the succeeding(a) day. The atmospher felt so nice. The next day I leaped into the arms of living. We went for breakfast. I hade a stack of pancakes. they were soacked in surup. My mum hade a cheese tostie, she expected a small one., but when it came it came New york style There must of been about 10 types of cheese We set of toward where my uncle worked. I hadent believen him unsin ce i was a baby. On the way there we saw a Televison show being filmed. The hosts hair was an exclamation mark. His jacket was reflecting sun light. If i stayed next to him, i would have court a tanBang I heard a really load bang. I was so shake, you hear so many bad things about New york. All of a suddend a helecopter came shoting down from the bright sky. The letters FBI were on the bottom. Everyone was scared. Then on a big T.V. screen a man appeared and express Stay calm, your on tv, you all simply made fools of you self they yanky voice verbalise. They was a grate sigh of releaf. We thought to our self, this must happen all the clipping in the big appel.Went into this shopping centre, they called it a mall i think. The floor was so clean you could see your reflection in it. We went into a glass empty to the 22d floor. All the shops had ended. They was just offices now. From shinny floor to gray carpet. We were looking for room 11b. Someome walked passed and ask at Do need any help the half rude(a) women said in a high tone. We asked her where room 11b was. She told us. Went down a really lond corriodr. It didnt end, it was like in a cartton when they keep repeatina the background.Finaaly we came a croos a door. It said 11q on the frount. We went in and looked around. It seemed to be a abbanded, It was all messeed up. There was a second door we opened it. Hello my mum said. I was getting scared by now. This room was empty too. Exexpt they there was a painting. On the painting there was an envolpe. The name on it was mine. I didnt know what to think. I opened , and took outr the airplane of paper. It said Hidehidehide press the top. By this time we thought it was one my uncles bad tricks.All of sudden we heard foot stairs going down the corridor. My looked out and a bullilet was shot at her. It only just missed her. She ran back in. The foot steps were getting loader and loader. We thought what should we do? Then we rembared about the note. pre ss the hook. We couldnt see the hook. Foot steps were geting so close. Mum threw the painting of the wall and noticed there was a hook. She pushed the hook into the wall like the note said. All of a suuden the floor opened bwlow us. With a swish we fell in a room,and the door closed. We didnt know what just happened. We thought it was all a dream.The room was dark, there were coboids all around. There were a wall of tv screens. With a flick of a switch, the TV came on. It was my uncle. take in to the danger room, i hate to tell you this but you are being hunted. Why? I dont know. You should be safe her. No one can get in, no one can get out unless you press the red button. After i get of the tv screens you will be able to see all round the offices in my work place. Rember you can reflect the danger back to the enime. Bye for now.Me and mum looked at each and other and wondered what the hell he was on about. We knew somting bad was happeing. We looked at the tv screens. There were 3 men in the room we hade just entered. They were all wearing black. One was tall and hade a mole on has face. One was short and fat. The other guy reminded me of someone but didnt know who.