Hearle 1

Fern Hearle

BUS 1050

12/4/19

Professor Leduc

Personal Renaissance

Throughout this course, we read many different articles but there were two articles that

particularly stood out to me. One being “​Critical Thinking,” by Edward E. Engh​ and the other

being ​"The American Economic System," by David Potter. ​After reading these two philosopher’s

pieces, I began thinking to myself that I, and many others, had questions that were not being

answered. As I read ​The American Economic System​ by Potter, he essentially summed up how

the American Economy advanced throughout the 1930’s. He started out with a metaphor that

read “In England a railway passenger who carries a pet bird or animal on the train is required to

pay a small fee, scaled according to the freight classification into which the pet may fall. An

English lady who was carrying a turtle inquired whether she would owe a fee, but the agent told

her, “No mam, cats is dogs, and squirrels is parrots, but this here turtle is a insect, and you don’t

have to pay for insects."” He then stated in the following sentence that according to this example

story, it can be very misleading to be told one thing is relevant to the government and the

economic system, but another is not. I looked at that sentence over and over, trying to

comprehend the fact that in America, if you have something irrelevant to the government it will

be disregarded, in the case of the turtle. But have too much of something that is relevant to the

government, it is no longer acceptable and will likely be taxed or have a fee in order to regulate

behavior, which is the basis of capitalism. But when I think back to ​Critical Thinking​ by Engh,
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he states over and over in his piece that one should question everything. So who is to say what is

relevant and what is not?

Backtracking to Potter, he went on to inform that during the 1930’s the government

became heavily involved with large businesses. Large businesses now became relevant to the

government because they were making so much money, it now affected the economic system by

increasing or decreasing certain pricing of certain goods. This launched The New Deal Program

to bring the interests of agricultural and organized labor into balance with the interests of

business and industry in 1933. This fundamentally means that because they started taxing things;

agriculture and labor, business and industry balanced out because one could not become richer

than the other because they were all being taxed. That could answer my question, but if I bring in

the Laissez faire policy, it still leaves the question of whether it is justifiable for the government

to interfere with one’s business, regardless of whether it is now affecting the economy system.

Supporting this with Engh’s reasoning of reality and perception. Perception differs from

every point of view. But regardless of one’s perception, reality will inevitably be in existence.

But who determines reality? Since everyone’s perception of reality is different, how is reality

defined? Engh says that the only way of determining what he calls truth (reality), you need to do

it with critical thinking and reason and put ego, emotion and passion aside. This leads into type 1

and type 2 errors. Type 1 is something that is real but you do not believe it is. Type 2 is

something that is not real but you believe it is.

This applies to my example of the government and the business owners. If one has a

business that is affecting the economy, but still believes that the government should be held to

the Laissez faire policy to avoid taxation, it would be classified as a type 1 error. While taxes
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exist, they do not want to believe they do, or think they are immoral, so they do everything in

their power to avoid paying them. However, while the government says that taxes are there for

regulation, that could very well be classified as a type 2 error. Of believing is it right to tax

people who have the incentive where they were propelled to create things and make money to get

ahead in life, but in fact, is it immoral and should not be happening. Throughout this debate of

how much power the government should be allowed over us, on each side, citizen and

government, we tend to stray from critical thinking and rely on rhetoric to convince the other

side that they are right. This quickly spirals into pointing out other people’s mistakes, but in the

midst of it all, the arguer is so caught up in the rhetoric it becomes hard to detect their own

mistakes. This is a pure example of ego and becomes a distraction which hinders critical

thinking.

There has always been many questions about morals and ethics, politically and

economically, but they have remained unanswered solely because there is no answer. If one tried

to use an argument to explain their answer is correct, another person can easily come along and

contradict it with an equally fitting argument. Knowledge is certainly important but knowledge is

never certain. Take for example science, everything in science is used with the base of the

scientific method. The last step says to report the hypothesis. Which means at the end of the day,

every argument could be remarked that it is all a hypothesis, a theory, a belief, and can never

actually be proven. Exclusively because reality is but perception, it is merely a concept of each

and every individual's own mind.

Understanding this, who can say we should give all power to one individual and let them

tell us we have to pay a fee for our cats to get on a train, but not our turtle. This and every other
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rule was entirely made up by the government's own perception and who is to say his perception

is correct? If his is correct, it is only fair that mine is too.