Yijia Wu(Miller)
English 1110.01, MWF 10:20–—11:15
Professor: Cathy Ryan
Assignment: Common Sense
January 13, 2017
Yijia Wu–Common sense Revised
The Fundamental Idea of a Business
Why do people do business in the world? For money? For reputation? Or for a better life? Those results of doing business are already rooted deeply in people’s mind. Some ordinary people want to be rich by opening a small retail shop to keep their lives, and some rich people inherited their family fortune with priority even before their birth. However, what my understanding of doing business is strongly different with those people.
Ordinary people try so hard, work so diligently to run their business only for themselves, or for their family’s wellbeing. But what they do is joining the competitive market, and grabbing the resources that were originally separated by a group of businessman who are doing the same business. In economics, it is said that in a perfect competitive market, people have the demand that equals to the amount of supply, getting a equilibrium quantity and price. People would never have long-term profit in this kind of market, and the sort of people that I explained are the same as the ordinary people. Although this kind of market will never show up in the real world, those ordinary businessman who earning a zero profit will not have big influences or social development in the process.
At this point, I need to introduce a new term that raised by Cixin, Liu in his book: The Three Bodies Problem. There is a concept of Technology Blooming Era in a civilization in different period of time. Take Earth for example, we had a technology blooming era in the 19th and 20th century when Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Newton and other inventors rebuilt the world that our predecessors would never imagine. This is called Technology Blooming Era.
Back to what we discussed in the previous paragraph, it is obvious to say that the competitive market cannot influence the world so much to make such a great change that our ancestors would never thought about. Introducing more about the people who are rich, but inherited from the family. This sort of people are difficult to make the world different only if they understand deeply of their family corporation, and post their novel views on the old traditional business of their family industry. Therefore, putting the corporation to the future and stimulate huge impacts on our society is possible.
Next, using a economics concept of monopoly market, it has the biggest influence to the whole market, and this type of corporation can make great changes such as improving the infrastructures on the streets. For instance, Thomas Edison was hired by J.P. Morgan in the last few centuries, and therefore built light bulbs all around America, making remarkable successes. Furthermore, using examples of recent companies such as PayPal and Facebook, they are not illegal monopolies, but they do have the power to make contributions like those old trusts and monopolies. What makes them stands out from the crowd? The company’s culture and idea that lead them to huge successes. Because of these ideas they have been following these years, the companies start from zero to one, not from one to n.
In the book Zero to One written by Peter Thiel, he construct this idea of from 0 to 1 and from 1 to n. In this world, most companies are duplications of one success company, and having no meaning for the future except the money they can get. However, companies such as Google and Tesla originated with a basic and correct idea, and the founders who put efforts in building these masterpiece also learned that they are capable of doing meaningful things for the future, instead of earning the money for themselves. As I concern, this type of business is the one that are worth living and keep developing. For example, Google was focusing on making a massive searching engine website for people to use in the past decades, but it is now doing researches on the universe. By working with NASA and other organizations, Google has the ability to become a real tech company in every field.
In conclusion, I want to clarify that as an undergraduate student studying the most innovative ideas in university, we need to improvise more and extend our margin of knowledge that limited in our mind. Thinking out of the box, making unusual hypothesis, being more creative, and becoming a better person who have the capacity to change the world by using our hands.
Reference Page
1. Cixin, Liu. The Three Body Problem. Science Fiction World. 2006.
2. Thiel, Peter. Zero to One-Notes On Startups, Or How to Build The Future.
The Gernert Company, Inc. 2015.