Four times during the term I’ll post a question for online discussion in Canvas. The questions will attempt to relate current issues to historical ones. You should respond to at least three of these questions within two weeks after each is posted. Here are the ground rules for your responses:
1. Your posting should be somewhere between 150 and 300 words. (Length limits are suggested, not strictly enforced.)
2. Questions will call for opinions and reflection rather than research. I’ll look for thoughtful responses that back up opinions with information and reasoning. Writing can be informal and use the first person, but it should be clear and literate.
3. You can respond to previous postings by your fellow students (and I hope you’ll look them over), but avoid flames–personal attacks, insults and the like.
4. I’ll grade these on a high-pass ***
5. Your posting for Prompt #1 (which you’ll find below) is due by the end of the day on Tuesday, April 19.
First discussion question:
Puritan New Englanders in the seventeenth century generally believed in the doctrine of the “just price” According to the idea of just price, custom and established community beliefs about fairness, rather than supply and demand, should determine the prices of goods.
A leading Puritan minister listed some”false principles” that violated the doctrine of just price:
Some false principles were these: —
1. That a man might sell as dear as he can, and buy as cheap as he can.
2. If a man lose by casualty of sea, etc., in some of his commodities, he may raise the price of the rest.
3. That he may sell as he bought, though he paid too dear, etc., and though the commodity be fallen, etc.
4. That, as a man may take the advantage of his own skill or ability, so he may of another’s ignorance or necessity.
5. Where one gives time for payment, he is to take like recompense of one as of another.
The prompt: In 2016, do we maintain a belief in “just price”? What goods or services should be exempt from the forces of supply and demand? Why? What should determine their price?