The analysis of Anaconda written by Reynold - PowerPoint Presentation Example

One of the short stories d Anaconda written by Reynold, narrated an observation of a worker working at the Stack. The worker explains his experience to be not very pleasant. The work is tenuous and tiring, requiring a lot of physical energy in extreme hot weathers. The working conditions are explained to be dangerous, which can cause diseases of cancers or facial disfigurements, etc. Men and women both were supposed to be working extraneously to earn average wages and valued their jobs to a great extent because unemployment was too high. Workers were very much scared of the hazardous outcomes of their jobs, and would have quit if they had any other opportunity, but they valued it because something was better than having nothing. The pay or status of the worker did not increase with the riskiness, tenure spent or gender of the worker. Overall, worker’s experienced harsh treatments and conditions at their jobs and were given no importance, nor were their skills at all recognized. No specialized skills for any job were required even, and every person was willing to work anywhere to earn money, because of too few jobs. 2) The dukes actually betted on the competition between nature or nurture. They wanted to find out if it’s the environment of a person or heredity that affects how well he does in his life. It is natural that people yield to the changing conditions and also change themselves, to a certain extent, according to the demands or requirements of the condition, but it does not mean that one has to leave his individuality completely for that. A change or modification in one’s own self becomes necessary with the change in condition, but the basic beliefs and values remain same, even though the manners and behaviors might be changed. We are all individuals and it is our individualism, which differentiates us from other people, but we need to bring some changes in our own self with the changing conditions as well. However, this does not mean we lose our individuality, rather it just means we become adaptable to changing conditions. We should have the tendency and art to maintain our individualism even while performing routine roles set by others. Characters like Coleman, who is a loyal servant of his master Winthorpe, does not leave his master alone even when he becomes poor, because of his individual characteristics of sincerity, loyalty and faithfulness. He maintains his honesty with Winthorpe, though it could have proven to be risky for him as well, but he stood at his side. Also, the prostitute’s character is shown positive as she is a good-hearted person even though being in her profession must have changed her, but she maintains her true inner beauty. The character of Valentine demonstrated the view of individualism in the way that he also did not just sit around and enjoyed the luxuries of his new life full of riches even after learning about the bet put on him, he understood the unfair treatment to Winthorpe and planned to take revenge from Duke Brothers for using him as part of their experiment. These characters show that though conditions might force you to change yourself, but the extent to which that change comes depend on your own self and your individualism. 3) The IRAT model was basically an index of irrational experiences. This index both identified and measured unjustified pessimism, optimism and speculated euphoria and undue depression in societies. It gives a signal about stock prices. When IRAT is below reality, one can buy the stock and when the index anticipates too high euphoria then to sell the stock and make money. It actually estimated errors of human optimism and pessimism and the fool hardiness of the people who worked in stock market irrationally. It predicted the investment behavior by anticipating the level of pessimism or optimism about a stock. The committee members called it un-American and wrong because it was out of the traditional practices and models used. Though the reason the committee gave of calling it un-American was that the index only measured the wrong things in society and make money out of it, but actually what they did not like was anyone else making such a lot of wealth from a model not understood or known to them. They felt that Marvin was trying to defeat them by his money and were angry at him because of that. As mentioned in the book, some committee members even asked if he did not think that exploiting irrationality of people to make money was not in line with the system. Marvin’s IRAT model was based on a realistic picture of the world, which was not accepted by people because it was new and out of the usual systems. The society did not like this change and so committee members were resisting against it. 4) Jerold, who is an inmate at a minimum-security prison, has not much to do, which gives him time to think and reflect back to his former life. He keeps thinking about his experiences and feelings when he was too engrossed in his life and worked with zeal day and night, where everything was unpredictable and new, which was most exciting. He compared his life with those of normal people and kept wondering about the feeling of free life they were living. In the end, he stood at the bridge and stared at the busy life of the city to feel the frenzy of free and unimaginative exciting life which he kept imagining all day long in prison. Jerold’s statement indicates his longing for a free life, where he can do business freely and can breathe in a free, capitalistic world like all other business men. 5) The year of 2008 was marked by the financial and the economic crisis. Posner puts forward certain facts as to why such failure in the economy occurred. The main reasons which he outlined were that the interest rates were decreased by a great amount which discouraged American savings and increased spending on high-priced items like houses and stocks. Loans were increased too, which resulted in the housing bubble as too many house mortgages were given to earn profits. This risky lending led to defaults and collapses of the commercial banks which then the government had to bail out to save the economic problem. In his argument, Posner says that in a free-market system, all firms are aiming at profit maximization of their own particular firm and are not really careful about the consequences that their activities can have on society or economy. So every firm is acting rationally for its own interest, but these consequences in collectivity would seem irrational as they would destroy the economy for everyone, just like the case in the housing bubble. All the banks were looking for their profits and they are not to be blamed, as each of them worked rationally for its motive, but collectively, they were irrational as all of them together hampered the economy. This was the time when active governmental regulation was needed to keep proper check and balance in the economy. This was not the fault of capitalists (the banks), rather it was the fault of capitalism (system). 6) Stiglitz thinking was in line with Posner’s arguments about the failures of governmental regulations that resulted in the economic downturn in 2008. A differentiating point which Stiglitz added was that after seeing the Great Depression in 1970s, the economists and government should have been able to anticipate that such risky lending would end up in transforming the economy from a recession to a depression. He argued that the leaders were unable to see the bubble in the economy because of their blind trust in the free-market system. Complete adherence to the principles of this system resulted in this economic outburst. Prospects of earning money and making more transactions blinded the investment bankers and commercial banks so much that they did not see the bubble rising. He criticized the government for not intervening at the right time to stop this because of their belief in the free-market system and the newly found bounty generating from it. 7) Margin call is a movie which depicts the story of a company trying to save itself from the repercussions of the housing bubble it itself contributed in creating. Even though the risks were known, loans were given to the people for high profits. It’s yet another story about the demerits of a free-market system with no government intervention, in which the firms worked just to serve their own interests without caring for others. By the end of the movie, Sam is shown digging his pet dog, which died of cancer even after a lot of medical expenditure and attention put on to him by his master. By this end, Chandor is trying to show that Rogers feel tragic and in great pain after the death of his pet to which he was related emotionally. It seems like he is relating his problems with his dog and is burying him in the lawn of his former house because he thinks that the dog should stay where he has spent most of his life. A feeling of fear emanates from this scene, because Sam is scared that he might lose his job and would have to stay away from the place he has worked on for such a long time. Furthermore, he fears of maybe living alone, without wife and with the economic crisis and layoffs, may be also without work. Read More