Even if the United Nations was fully funded, I believe that we cannot leave the enormous responsibility for one single organization to take care of.  The UN is incapable of handling all the social issues that arise globally.  Moreover, even if the UN had the power to handle every social issue that arises in different countries around the world, they would not be able to handle issues properly because people have different values and priorities depending on where they live due to cultural and social differences.

Let’s pretend that the UN can somehow manage the issues around the world just fine.  What happens when UN becomes underfunded in the future, retreats from certain countries, or shift their focus to somewhere else they see are in greater need?  The places that the UN leave behind would be devastates and the whole system would collapse.  In my opinion, this is worst than the UN not being fully funded and wiping out all the Arc and social enterprises.

Even if the UN was fully funded, we still need the Arc and social enterprises because they can target area that the UN cannot: the local aspect of things.  On the other hand, the UN can focus on the bigger picture, which Arc and social enterprises cannot.

Minimum wage is something that always intrigued me – its effect completely goes against its intent and yet it’s still in place.  When I came across Taha Bhopalwala‘s article about minimum wage, I was thrilled!

Taha talks about the increasingly common act of labor unions abusing their power to target specific single firms, forcing them to pay their employees more.  I personally think that an unreasonably high minimum wage always does more harm than good.  Instead of accepting the loss of profit caused by the increasing minimum wage for their employees, companies are now replacing human labor with machines where possible.  I think that this the the only way that companies can remain their competitive edge in the long-run.

The push from labor unions to drive up the minimum wage is only pressuring companies to replace employees with capital at a higher pace.  If minimum wage was $8/hr, a bank might hire 10 tellers.  If minimum wage was $15/hr, the bank is being forced to purchase more ATM’s in order to remain profitable in the long-run.

I believe that it is inevitable that many employees doing low-skilled jobs are going to be replaced with advancing technology.  How would the global economy remain stable and keep unemployment rates low in order to adapt the the new way of business?  This is a question currently without a perfect answer.  I think it would be wise to keep the minimum wages down in order to buy us time to come up with an ideal solution.

When new drugs are created, it has to be evaluated by the advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration before it can be launched into the market.  The administration often have external experts, usually consisting of academic physicians, to help render unbiased and scientific judgements.  However, many of those physicians have financial interest in the drug companies that they are evaluating the drugs for.  In “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” Friedman states that, “unanimity is not always feasible,” – an unfortunate yet true statement.  In “Doctor’s Magical Thinking About Conflict of Interest,” doctors who are evaluating a drug that is released by a company that he or she is financially interested in, the approval rate of that drug increases from 52% to 84%.

I think that the conflict of interest in business has always and will always been a problem.  Where is the right balance between self interest and social interest?  Suppose there’s a new drug that can bring the company, and therefore, the doctors who have invested in the company, tons of money.  Some of the doctors evaluating the drug would be more inclined to approve the drug, regardless of the quality of the drug itself.  Monetary incentive can be a scary thing.  I think this not only impacts those in the company, but all the people that will purchase the underqualified drugs that got approved by biased doctors.  Even the doctors themselves and possibly their own family might get affected.  Sure, they may be able to avoid using whatever drug that they themselves evaluated, but there are other physicians that have done the same.  This creates a vicious cycle of unreliable drugs and possible deaths.  I think that doctors who have monetary ties with the company should be banned from evaluating those companies’ drugs.