Who Knew An Economy Could Taste So Sweet

During class, my teacher set up an activity for my class to do. She distributed Hershey kisses to everyone in the class; however she did not distribute the Hershey kisses fairly. She gave everyone, except three kids, in the class two pieces of Hershey kisses, and the other three got eight pieces. She then made us stand up and play each other in rock, paper, scissor, chute and whoever won took a Hershey kiss away from their competitor. If a person ran out of Hershey kisses they must sit down and no longer can participate in the activity. It was nerve racking in the beginning because we only had two Hershey kisses and if we lost we could no longer play. Once I started to gain more Hershey kisses I felt more confident and at ease. The people that lost their Hershey kisses right away, and had to sit down probably felt frustrated and angry that they can not play the game anymore. Once the activity was over my teacher explained what the purpose of the activity was. The Hershey kisses were suppose to represent wealth. The more Hershey kisses you ended with the wealthier you were. My teacher recollected all of the Hershey kisses, like the “government,” and redistributed them evenly amongst everyone in the class. I was a little upset by this because it took me a long time to gain Hershey kisses and she took them away and gave them to everyone in the class. The purpose of the whole activity was to introduce us to the topic about communism, socialism, and capitalism.

Karl Marx and Adam Smith had the same intentions. They both wanted to help the poor; however they both had completely different approaches.  Marx theory included capitalism, socialism, and communism. Capitalism is when most people are poor and a few are rich. Marx predicted that the poor were eventually going to revolt against the government, and the rich people. The poor are going to demand the government collects the money and property and distribute it evenly. This is called socialism. The goal of socialism is to bring economic equality and aim for a classless society. After a while people started to realize they no longer needed the government and the goal of a classless society was achieved. This was called communism. Communism did not require a government, everyone agreed to share instead of having the government redistribute. Smiths idea was very different from Marx's idea but they both had the same concept. Smiths theory was called the invisible hand. Smiths thought the government should not interfere, and should let the people buy and sell freely among themselves. Smith suggested that if businesses were to compete against each other, markets are guided positive outcomes. Competitors will lower the price of products and increase the quality of the product, intriguing more customers.  

In my opinion, I believe a combination of both theories would be the best. Marx's idea is good about having a fair and equal government; however you also need competition. Smiths theory talks more about competition between businesses. I believe that is important because if businesses are competing against each other it helps build the society.