1.    Jonathan Adler makes the following assertion: "The fundamental problem with existing environmental laws is that they embody a command-and-control, government-knows-best mentality. Conventional policy approaches proceed from the assumption that markets “fail” to address environmental concerns. Government intervention is called for wherever market activities impact environmental quality. Yet there is no end to the range of private activities which generate environmental effects, and centralized regulatory agencies are ill-equipped to handle myriad ecological interactions triggered or impacted by private activity. As environmental analyst Richard Stewart noted, “the system has grown to the point where it amounts to nothing less than a massive effort at Soviet-style planning of the economy to achieve environmental goals.”  What does the term "command and control" mean, how did the former Soviet Union apply this concept?

2.    Adler also asserts that: “The conventional paradigm of environmental policy justifies the regulation of economic activity because it assumes all activities—from purchasing clothing to driving a car to turning on a light bulb—have an impact on the environment that is not factored into the cost of the product or service. Economic central planning may be intellectually and historically discredited, but the “market failure” thesis justifies environmental central planning, an endeavor just as prone to ruin. In the words of Competitive Enterprise Institute president Fred L. Smith, Jr., “The disastrous road to serfdom can just as easily be paved with green bricks as with red ones.” Embracing the “market failure” rationale leads to policy failure.” Find out what the term "market failure" implies and tell me how free market environmentalism goes about rationalizing its "rejection" of this approach.

3.    Briefly describe the theory of free market environmentalism.

4.    Describe the debt free market environmentalism owes to Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons. 

5.    Describe Adam Smith's Laws of the Market.  

6.    Adam Smith writes "No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable." He sees free markets as the solution to this problem. In what way?  

7.    How did Smith envision that the supply of labor could be influenced by demand?  

8.    In Wealth of Nations, Smith observes "As it is this disposition ["the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange] which forms that difference of talents, so remarkable among men of different professions, so it is this same disposition which renders that difference useful." Explain what Adam Smith means with this statement.  

9.    What forces serve to create division in labour.  

10. How did Adam Smith apply the term "value" to money and goods?  

11. What is the real measure of this exchangeable value [wherein consists the real price of all commodities].  

12. What are the different parts of which this real price is composed or made up. 

13. What are the different circumstances which sometimes raise some or all of these different parts of price above, and sometimes sink them below, their natural or ordinary rate .

Video Discussion Questions

Pick six questions between questions 1-18. Students participating in this class session will prepare their homework assignments and post their responses in Drop box 3 on the course lesson board by 5:00 p.m. on the Sunday evening immediately following each on-campus class meeting. However, all class readings must be completed prior to class convening to insure students can participate in class discussion. Remember you are required to know the answers to each and every one of these questions for the Comprehensive Exam!

1.    Why was Marx likened unto an “Old Testament Prophet?”

2.    What influence did Hegel have upon Marx?

3.    What influence did Darwin have upon Marx?

4.    What made Marx an evolutionary thinker?

5.    Describe Marx’s “secular vision” in terms of the questions he posed?

6.    Explain the dialectical method. Begin by identifying its three components.

7.    Explain why the outcome of the dialectical method is never static.

8.    How does the material world determine our ideas according to Marx?

9.    History to Marx had a teleological purpose for Marx. What does this mean?

10. In what way was Marx a “structural” thinker?

11. Go to the schemata in Jonathan Friedman’s article “Marxism, Structuralism, and Vulgar Materialism.” This is Friedman’s explanation of Marx’s dialectical method in which he asserts that the material world determines the shape of the world’s social formation or superstructure (rather than vice a versa as Hegel asserted). Looking at that schematic, tell me what in Marx’s opinion shaped the “social formation?”

12. Marx’s dialectic comes directly from Hegel where the thesis interacts with the anti thesis to create synthesis. In this way the infrastructure of society creates its superstructure.  With this in mind tell me where the dialectal tension occurs in Friedman’s schematic.

13. How do property relationships relate to Marx’s theory?

14. Marx believes that as society evolves as shifts occur in property ownership, wealth and influence. What does he describe as occurring as these shifts occur? Clearly Explain.

15. What is it about Asiatic culture that Marx believed prevented it from becoming capitalist?

16. Why, according to Marx, is capitalism doomed?  

17. In what way could Marx’s conception of humanity be characterized as “environmentalist?”

18. Describe Marx’s labor theory of value as compared to what Smith thought. (3 fold)