Shaun T. Dy's Business & Economics Perspective Blog

Bulatlat In 2022, I wrote an article about anti-capitalists having no choice because the capitalists hold the means of production . Recently, I've been raising the issue, "Are you sure your gadgets are all imported?" Instead of falling into silence, they throw the mockery, "Oh no! Not the gadgets question again!" They would go as far as to say, "We have no choice but to use imported equipment because foreigners own the means to produce foreign equipment!" Oh, that's a very brutally honest answer! They might say that buying imported equipment isn't exploitative. Then I say, "If you can have a MacPRO and an iPhone, why don't we let Apple do more than open Apple stores. Why not let Apple have a factory in the Philippines?" They might shout out, "You're letting foreigners do business here, run away with the profit, and leave us poor? Only they will get rich (read rebuttal here )!" They'd throw in as many childish ins

I don't know if I should be laughing or cringing at what I deem to be stupidity. Some will say that methods of production aren't linked to either capitalism or socialism. The video above is from Jacobin's contributor Rob Larson. It's no surprise that Jacobin is also the source material for pages that support protectionist policies for the Philippines. I watched it and I find it hilarious to a certain extent. According to anti-capitalists, they have no choice  but to use capitalist products because the evil capitalists own the methods of production. Larson even goes as far as to say capitalism didn't invent the iPhone. It's true that the Internet was originally a military invention but guess who caused technologies created by the government to go further? It's all about private enterprises regulated by the government. We got all sorts of new technology today because of the collaboration of private enterprises and the government.  What is capitalism? First, le

Another ongoing nonsense by leftists is that the workers, not the entrepreneurs, are the ones who own the means of production. This would be complete nonsense spreading on social media. Having graduated from the College of Commerce (now the School of Business and E conomics ) makes me cringe at the idea. I've had some business marketing classes, accounting classes, and operations management classes which can help refute this idea. I keep hearing, "If only the poor will unite altogether--you rich are no more." Well, let's try and think about how the idea of workers, not entrepreneurs, owning the means of production can't work. Defining what capital really means Image by Sabrina Jiang © Investopedia 2020 The sample income statement by Investopedia tells you the capital. Capital is defined by the Investopedia as: Capital is a broad term that can describe any thing that confers value or benefit to its owner, such as a factory and its machinery, intellectual property l

The Telegraph Venezuela is an oil-rich country yet it's a very poor country. Somebody could go ahead and give every unthinkable reason such as "foreign investments caused it" (a blatant lie) and "It's because America had economic sanctions in Venezuela". Yet, the answer can be found in several causes such as corruption. Yet, China and Vietnam, which can be seen to still have a good amount of corruption, are far more successful. The answer also lies in one policy--economic protectionism . The very idea that a country that first world countries used "protectionism" to succeed is a lie as proven by Venezuela's ongoing crisis. A common-sense examination of one root cause of Venezuela's continuing crisis Forbes magazine mentions this in "What Do Investors Need To Understand About Venezuela's Economic Crisis?" by Nathaniel Parish Flannery on December 21, 2016: Venezuela is far and away the worst-managed economy in the Americas . Ad

Business 2 Community I was thinking about how some people still think traditional communism is a good idea when it isn't. Maybe, one can say (or I did say it once) that communism works because of Vietnam and China. However, both China and Vietnam have adopted some form of capitalism even if they still considered themselves socialists or communists. The late Do Muoi (who died on October 1, 2018) and Deng Xiaoping both understood that, while they lived, private enterprises and foreign direct investment (FDI) would effectively finance their communist states. It was something that traditional communists like Karl Marx and Mao Zedong failed to see. The late, great Lee Kuan Yew mentioned both Do and Deng in his book From Third World to First. I've been noticing Filipino leftist Facebook pages such as the League of Filipino Students, Anakbayan, Bayan Muna, Migrante International, and Philippine Anti-Fascist League want to go against capitalism. Yet, even Deng who felt that the "s

Yup, you can just expect it to backfire badly on your face. This is one funny meme I found on Facebook . The picture above might be very familiar to some people who were born in the 1980s or even older. Tom and Jerry is a very old cartoon already and that's the one I used to watch on either rented Betamax or on Cable TV for some time. I would like to render a translation on the following terms for the sake of readers especially those who don't understand the Tagalog dialect: Meowists is an informal term for Maoists. The term "Sahod itaas, presyo ibaba, ayuda para sa lahat." means "Increase salaries, reduce prices, handouts for everyone." Ayuda means help in Spanish. It's also referred to government handouts. The shotgun loop itself presents the very self-defeating demands and arguments. I only had a total of 12 units of college economics--three units during my Associate in Computer Science (ACS) days, six more units during my Bachelor of Science in Busin