Reaction Paper #2
Joe Hermenet
Chapter 2
This chapter is all based around the economic idea of markets and what the reason or
them are: on top of why they have no effect on materialism. Another big focus within this
chapter is the idea of scarcity and how it not only affects businesses but individuals. Also a big
part of this chapter is communism and why it is not effective giving consumers no freedom
within the markets. The part of scarcity is a big influence on people lives with decision making,
and its talks about it’s in the Christian point of view by saying people need to use their heart in
the Christian belief in decision making within markets. As with communism taking away peoples
freedoms within markets, it gives people the chance to have a higher standard of living. To
round off the chapter the author talks about the pros and cons of economic growth saying how
that’s what leads to different amounts of wealth between each person. The ending just
basically said people don’t have control in markets because they are basically ran by
themselves.
There were parts in this chapter that I both agreed with and didn’t agree with. One
thing I agreed with a lot is when the author talked about the world needs to have a more equal
distribution of existing incomes. I have always thought that we should be the ones helping the
third world countries that have nothing compared to us. One part that I didn’t agree with is the
part where all the people lost their jobs in Holland at the lifesavers factory because they didn’t
want them to take away from Americas sugar producers. The factory had move to Canada
which just raised the unemployment rate in America even more.
