social ethics questions

5/9/22, 1:30 AM Week 6 Overview - Capitalism: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-6-overview-capitalism?module_item_id=17540444 1/2

Week 6 Overview - Capitalism This week we finally move on to directly discuss the economic system of our modern world: capitalism. No other economic system in history has expanded over the entire globe, connecting and altering every society. Here in the West, and especially in the USA, we have been taught the positives of capitalist development, and the reading in Shaw this week will provide a balanced summary of capitalism as an economic system. But what is the underside to this economic system, its hidden costs, that are not always brought to light? The launchpad and lecture notes therefore will supplement the dominant positive views by highlighting some of the unexamined negatives within the history of this globalizing system. How should we better understand its historical emergence in a more comprehensive way that allows us also to better assess its future? Before we begin applying our ethical reasoning more directly to business issues we will want to get a handle on what capitalism is, its history, its essence, and the ways it influences our ethical reasoning: in other words, we want to

5/9/22, 1:30 AM Week 6 Overview - Capitalism: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/week-6-overview-capitalism?module_item_id=17540444 2/2

know something about the rules of the dominant socioeconomic game, how and why it is structured the way it is, and how it might be better regulated, reformed, or possibly transformed in a humane way.

To read or watch: Review the materials on the Launchpad page What is Capitalism? (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/pages/launchpad-what-is-capitalism) , which includes my video and lecture notes (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034401?wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034401/download?download_frd=1) . Read William H. Shaw's chapter 4 on "The Nature of Capitalism" Read Nick Hanauer, "The Pitchforks are Coming" (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats- 108014/) Read Matthew Desmond, "The Brutality of Capitalism and the Plantation" (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034392/download?wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034392/download?download_frd=1) Read Angela Hanks and Danyelle Solomon, "Systematic Inequality: How America's Structural Racism Helped Create the Black-White Wealth Gap" (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/)

To complete or submit: Complete the Reading Assignment Questions (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/assignments/7016122) assignment, which is due by Saturday at midnight Answer the Case Discussion Questions (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/discussion_topics/7964154) . Your initial post is due by Wednesday and subsequent posts by Sunday.