Censoring Pleas for Help Essay Example for Free

Censoring Pleas for Help Essay In Dwight Lee’s essay, â€Å"Censoring Pleas for Help,† the Georgia-based economics professor notes the strange contradiction between popular opposition to censorship and widespread support of price controls. Lee’s primary contention with this political dissonance is that it is not only ethically inconsistent, but reflects an oversight of how markets help communicate economic needs, particularly with regards to the sudden needs which emerge in the wake of natural disasters. Much of the support for price controls stems from fear of â€Å"price gouging,† which is essentially occurs when suppliers attempt to take advantage of sudden demand by raising prices to maximize profit during the period of demand. Lee notes that in his home state, there exists a price gouging law which is designed to prevent such a situation from happening by forbidding suppliers from charging more for their goods than they did the day before a disaster strikes. Lee notes that: â€Å"[†¦] building contractors and construction supplies from several states had poured into Atlanta immediately after it suffered massive tornado damage. Can anyone seriously believe that this help would have poured in from far away if the â€Å"price gouging† law had been perfectly enforced, or that the help was not reduced by the enforcement that had occurred?† (Lee 1999) The crux of Lee’s argument is that price controls are essentially a form of economic censorship which restricts the ability of prices to communicate market demands. To that end, he argues that prices are better understood as the most efficient means by which markets, such as disaster victims, communicate their need for help in the form of resources and supplies. This is not to devalue the contributions and assistance that some have provided for free, but the economic distinction made above between humanitarian aid and supply-demand response is not a trivial one. While those who provide supplies for free are to be commended, it is important to recognize the potential mistake in relying on altruism and humanitarian sensitivity as the primary forces driving resource redistribution. Such a view presumes that humanitarian aid is an objective force that responds to the needs of disaster victims efficiently. In effect, Lee’s argument is that while high prices should not be raised to wildly disproportionate levels,   allowing them to fluctuate free of price controls ensures that they can communicate needs more efficiently, for â€Å"high prices [†¦] insure that pleas for help will be met with a quick and effective response.† Complementary to his point, Lee observes that price controls censor this economic communication and effectively disrupt the ability of customers to express their needs. He notes that in Charleston, price controls prevented a local hardware store from legally being able to sell generators at a higher price nor could the locals communicate their demand to outside suppliers of generators. The result was that one hardware store owner sold one of only two generators in his possession to a friend, at the expense of groceries with a greater demand in the form of thousands of dollars worth of food that needed refrigeration. Simply put, humanitarian aid relies on the initiative of those with the resources and the sense of philanthropy to contribute to disaster relief, which is all well and good, but does not compare to the efficacy of free moving prices in expressing the demands that emerge in the wake of a natural disaster. As far as economics are concerned, price controls merely censor the ability of these sudden emergent markets to communicate those demands. Lee, Dwight R. â€Å"Censoring Pleas for Help.† The Freeman, January 1999. Retrieved online on February 25, 2009 from: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/censoring-pleas-for-help/ Censoring Pleas for Help. (2017, Jan 13).

Naguib Mahfouz Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Naguib Mahfouz - Essay Example Considerable recognition will also be given to his contribution to the world of literature through his many successful works which will certainly never fade away even though he has passed. The story of Naguib Mahfouz is similar to the story of modern Egypt itself (Lalami 2006, p.1). Born in 1911 in the Gamaliya district of Cairo, Mahfouz observed the very last days of British colonial rule and Ottoman influence, the nationalist struggle of Saad Zaghloul, the supremacy of King Fuad and King Farouq, the military revolution of 1952, the establishment of the republic, Gamal Abdel Nasser's takeover in 1954, the Suez Canal disaster, the rule of Anwar al-Sadat, the Camp David accords of 1978 and finally the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak together with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism (Lalami 2006, p.1). A devoted reader, Mahfouz had a lifelong infatuation for the history of ancient Egypt, predominantly its pharaohs: Akhenaten, who rejected pantheism in favor of monotheism; Menenre II, who ruled briefly at the end of the sixth dynasty; Khufu, who built the great pyramid at Giza and Nefertiti, Akhenaten's wife and mother-in-law to Tutankhamen (Breasted 1912, p.56). Mahfouz published his earliest novel in 1939 (The Games of Fate), and since then has written thirty-two novels and thirteen collections of short stories (Allen 1982, p.17). In his old age he had preserved his prolific output, producing a novel every year. The novel genre, which can be traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, has no significant prototypes in classical Arabic writing (Allen 1982, p.26). Although this thrived in all kinds of narrative, none of them could be described as we recognize the term novel today (Hashmi 1986, p.19). Naguib, who was born to a middle-class family in one of the oldest quarters in Cairo, was to give a face to influential metaphors, in excess of a period of half a century, to the expectations and frustrations of his homeland. Readers have so often identified themselves with his work, a great deal of which has been adapted for the cinema, theater and television, that many of his characters become household names in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab region (Allen 1982, p.26). Alternatively, his work, though deeply steeped in local reality, appeals to that which is universal and permanent in human nature, as shown by the relatively good reception his fiction has met in other backgrounds (Allen 1982, p.17). Views on Life Even though Mahfouz's novelistic methods have passed, as we have seen, through recognizable stages, one cannot say the same about his world view, the main features of which can be traced back to his earliest works (Allen 1982, p.17). Mahfouz appears to have sorted out the main questions about life at an early juncture of his youth and to have held on the answers he arrived at right up until his death. A sociopolitical vision of man's existence is at the very root of almost everything that Mahfouz has written. Even in a novel with a strong metaphysical claim such as "Al-Tariq" (The Way), the social message is appropriately woven into the texture of the work: man is not meant to spend his life on Earth in a futile search and his only true

Victim Interview Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Victim Interview - Essay Example interviewee provided information that matches with the nature of his work during the accident, date, time, the magnitude of the injury and the aftermath. In September 2010, an employee whose name will remain withheld was going about his normal duties at his usual work place. As a mansion at a construction site, the interviewee’s responsibilities included pushing, lifting, carrying, pulling and throwing variety of objects at work. A track had offloaded several building blocks some few meters from the construction site on the day of accident. At this stage of construction, the major building works were happening in the second floor of the same building. This implied that some of the workers had to carry the bricks physically to the second floor. This task involved bending or squatting to reach for the brick, lifting, the block and then transferring it to an appropriate position of the body, preferably on the shoulders. The interviewee would then carry the load on his shoulders as he climbs up the stairs up to the second floor. Upon reaching the destination, he would transfer the load from the shoulder into his hands before caref ully lowering it to the ground. The interviewee started on well and was registering encouraging progress as manifested by the diminishing number of bricks at the site of the offload. However, as time went elapsed and the number of trips increased, most of the employees started showing signs of exhaustion. My interviewee began to feel pain in his back, shoulders, waist and knees but the pressure from his supervisors to get the job finished was overwhelming. Although the job was later completed, my interviewee was taken to the hospital after he collapsed due to the immense pain he encountered from the slave like task. He complained of general body pains but especially on the shoulders, back, waist and the knees. The incident that happened on 2 September 2010 led to the sustenance of immense injuries on the body. The interviewee’s body had