Dusk of the “Oeconomia Imperium”

When I reflect on my understanding of the Humanities Core topic, Empire and its Ruins, from the beginning of the year– I envisioned the game Age of Empires, Roman soldiers, or exotic cities spanning vast territories. Reflecting back on my naive and surface level comprehension of the word “empire”, I realize Edward Said’s “Politics of Knowledge” and “Orientalism” perhaps provide clarity on my initial understanding. In “Politics of Knowledge”, we discussed how despite an universal wanting for the truth, biases and loyalties often cloud the academic realm and affect the way we consume knowledge and participate in education. This explains why I was taught to understand empires as a game, “Age of Empires” or historic pasts like in Rome. I was made unaware of the modern, oppressive empire-like establishments in the United States and across the world because there is a bias in America to distance ourselves from association with empire. Politics in the knowledge realm dictated that I understood empire and its ruins as only a game or ancient history. In “Orientalism”, we learned about the romanticization and otherness associated with non-european ethnic groups. This sheds light on my initial imagination of empire as an “exotic” city in vast, strange territory. My initial understanding made me see empire as a negative connotation and associate it with the “other”.

Pictured: Screenshot of the gameplay of Age of Empires; representing my initial and embarrassingly surface level understanding of empire

I wonder how many other simple, everyday words and concepts I thought I understood, are waiting to be further explored through the humanities approach. Throughout the year in Humanities Core, my definition and understanding of Empires and its Ruins has been vastly expanded, to include examples such as the fictional representation of empire in novels such as “Waiting for the Barbarians”, the royally misunderstood Inca empire, modern ruins of empire found in the lives of Vietnamese and Cambodian Americans. All the content we covered this year was interesting and led to a greater understand of empires and its ruins but given I am not planning to study humanities as a major, I hope to apply my newly acquired knowledge to my life moving forward. In my previous blog posts, I tried extremely hard to relate the humanities understanding of empire and its ruins to business, my indented career choice and path of study. However, I found this greatly unsatisfying and only in this quarter of Humanities Core have I learned to relate the humanities approach of learning about empires and its ruins to other aspects of my life. I think this has to do with the darker, more relatable subject matters of this quarter, as well as the deeper conversations we were able to have in class under the facilitation of Professor Fogli. Additionally, by the introduction of someone special in my life who I consider my first mentee, I had to reflect more intrapersonally on my actions and realized the concepts studied in humanities core such as identity, resistance, culture, etc. all relate to me as a individual.

One example of my understanding of humanities affecting my everyday life is through food. Today, in our final session of class for humanities core in Social Ecology 2, Professor Fogli brought out plates of “Focaccia” bread for her students to enjoy during our finals review. This not only brought a smile to every student, but the significance of the Italian recipe and act of literally breaking bread with each other, simultaneously shared Professor Fogli’s culture with us and also promoted a sense of familiarity and friendliness thorough the universal understanding sharing food connotes across all cultures. This led me to think about my identity and culture. As a Chinese American, I remember my dad telling me that in China, people would greet each other by not saying “hi” but rather asking if they have ate yet, out of concern of their well being. A humanities understanding of something as mundane and everyday as “food”, sparks intrapersonal reflection and ignites passion in me. Through this, I found myself securing a Strategy and Business Development Coordinator job at the FRESH Basic Needs Hub next year. I will be working next year to bring more resources to fight food and housing insecurity on UCI’s campus. I have already attended many meetings and participated in discussion on potential solutions. When I think the Hub’s purpose, my humanities experience kicks in, and I interpret it as a resource for low-income students to overcome their obstacles, resistance to their economic conditions. Understanding it from that perspectives, makes me so much more excited and passionate about my work there.  

Pictured: The FRESH Basic Needs Hub we have at campus which serves UCI students by providing a food pantry and emergency solutions to food/housing insecurity

I am very thankful for my experience in Humanities Core this year and I will be sure to share that message with every tour group I take next year as a campus rep! Proud of our HumCore program at UCI and how it empowers students to think from humanities perspective from time to time!

Zot! Zot! Zot!

Signing off,

Edward Li

A shift from business to real business

Dear readers:

As made very evident by the title of this site and previous blog posts, I am very interested in the field of business and the affects of empire within the business world. However this quarter in the Humanities Core program at the University of California, Irvine, we dove into some pretty heavy subject matters that I feel like are extremely relevant to today’s society and myself as a college student. Thus, I wanted to take a shift in my blog’s original purpose, and instead use it as a platform for personal thought and analysis as we move forward with different units, the oral history project, and research paper.

In the future, I would like to return to writing and analyzing the business world but for now I would like to focus on the challenges of my oral history project and reflect on the subject, women’s rights.

With that being said, I would like to introduce you all to Joyce.

For my Oral History Project, I got to interview Joyce Nguy, a third year Political Science and Education Science double major at UCI, and write about her experience awakening her political identity. I met Joyce through the Campus Reps program, where she served as a mentor for me to learn more about our school and positively exemplify our school through giving tours of UCI. One thing I greatly admired about her, was her political activism and knowledge. Through this oral history project, I was able to learn that she wasn’t always like that and actually underwent a huge realization in her life, where political activism, especially in areas relating to other parts of her identity such as women or Asian American politics, became part of her overall identity. This really inspired me because it demonstrates the individual growth that happens in all of us and the ability for identity to positively change over time.

Joyce described her story of political awakening taking place when pursuing a internship in Washington DC and participating in a powerful Planned Parenthood rally in the summer of 2017. From my research, I was able to learn more about this particular issue of Planned Parenthood and how women are still oppressed in modern society through their own physical bodies and stigma surrounding abortion and birth control.

However, behind learning more about this particular issue, I gained something greater from Joyce and the oral history project. I think through this process, I learned about the impact and legacy a mentor can play in one’s life. Joyce was definitely a positive role model in my first year of college and challenge to be most politically educated and take tangible actions such as voting in the California Statewide Direct Primary Elections on June 5, 2018. Role models play such a huge part in everyone’s lives and the small things that they do often mean the world to people like me who look up to them. I view it like a ripple effect. When they do something small, it means so much to me and inspires me to do bigs things. And in that process, hopefully I do small things that will inspire others and continue a positive cycle of mentorship and positivity.

Pictured: My first time voting with my voter information guide!

 

Ethics in Empire

In Humanities Core, we have studied many different empires– from the nameless Empire in Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians” to the prevalent British empire that held India under colonial rule. When studying these empires, the elephant in the room and most common area of discussion revolves the question of ethics. Is it morally correct for the empire to do this? How about that?

 

In the business world, the same question applies to the economic empires that dominate the market. Is it morally correct for the same company providing audit services to a client to also get paid for consulting services? How about a company with a sexist culture? Business ethics is an important component of conducting business, essential for empires to follow in order to mitigate risk and succeed financially.

 

A research report from the Ethics Research Center (ERC), America’s oldest nonprofit organization dedicated to independent research on ethical business practices, reveal that large companies especially have reason to benefit from ethical behavior. By investing resources in ethics and compliance, companies can reduce the incidents and consequences of misconduct. Saving the company a lot of money from wasted time, employee turnover and training, and lawsuits.

 

Bad ethical conduct from large corporate empires commonly dominates the modern media and has huge negative implications for that business. In 2001, Enron and Arthur Andersen made global headlines for ethical misconduct. Recently, in 2017 Uber’s sexual harassment allegations and sexist put the global rideshare company in turmoil. Uber luckily recovered from that scandal and continues its growth as the number one rideshare empire. However Enron and Arthur Andersen weren’t so lucky. The case of Enron and Arthur Anderson is so interesting and provides insight on the importance of ethics for business empires. This incident is the reason laws were made to prevent the same company from providing audit services to a company and also get paid for consulting services. Basically, both companies were business empires and powerhouses in their own right. Enron was a majorly successful energy company and Arthur Andersen was a professional services company that provided audit and consulting services to businesses. Audit is the reporting and checking of a company’s financial records for government compliance and accurate, non-fraudulent reporting. Consulting services is being paid to help a company solve business problems. Publicly traded companies, such as Enron, are required to be audited by companies like Arthur Andersen to prevent fraud. However, Enron was facing declining profitability but did not want to disappoint stockholders and devalue their company. They participated in illegal financial accounting techniques to hide their lack of profitability and because Arthur Andersen made so much money from Enron from their consulting services, they illegally overlooked Enron’s fraud during their audit. In a series of drama that escalated to the Supreme Court, Enron and Arthur Andersen both filed for bankruptcy.

Enron Scandal cartoon (Birmingham News) http://famous-trials.com/legacyftrials/enron/enronimages.html

In less than a year, two of the most powerful business empires of their time, Enron and Arthur Andersen, fell to their destruction due to failure to act ethically. I have a lot of faith for the future of business, as ethical practices are being stressed more and more. Consumers are looking to businesses to act ethically and will only support those that follow through with that goal in mind.

 

Sources:

https://www.ibe.org.uk/userassets/surveys/2015%20nbes%20-%20the%20state%20of%20ethics%20in%20large%20companies.pdf

 

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/enron-scandal-summary/

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2017/03/14/the-worlds-most-ethical-companies-2017/#2864f0207bc3

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2017/09/12/how-much-do-a-companys-ethics-matter-in-the-modern-professional-climate/#4d3335dd1c79

 

Language is a partner to Business Empires

In our Humanities Core lectures about Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, Professor Lewis argued that language is a partner to empire. Today I want to further explore this concept of language as a partner to empire, but more specifically as it pertains to business empires.

 

Sharing a common language allows two parties to communicate and honestly business is all about communication. Businesses depend on internal communication when working in teams and supervising employees. Businesses also use language to externally communicate value of their products and services to consumers.

 

Unsurprisingly, English has become the global language of business and foreign companies such as Lufthansa, Nokia, Samsung, SAP, and more are mandating their companies adopt English as the official corporate tongue. But hasn’t always been like that. As you might have guessed, one of the biggests reasons English is the international business language is due to the United States’ establishment as a global economic superpower. In terms of nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the United States is the largest economy in the world at $19.73 trillion a year according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce (US Depart of Commerce 1).

Photo credits: http://englishbookgeorgia.com/blogebg/5603-2/

But what about before the United States? Any half asleep HumCore student can tell you that the US was founded in 1776, making it a very young country. Well before the US became the vast economic empire it is today, two other countries dominated the global market. According to an article titled “The triumph of English: A world empire by other means” from The Economist magazine, Britain and France were the two recent countries to dominate the global economy.

 

The language used by a country for business has implications on the entire country’s culture and identity. This is why I feel kind of bad for Britain, because while their language is also English, the English that is sweeping the world has distinctly American culture and attributes associated with it. But it’s even worse for the French, whose language was on the runway to become universal. In the 18th century, France was a powerful colonial empire and French was the official language of the European Union. As English began eclipsing over the global economy, France frantically tried to slow its takeover. They tried to ban too much English on store signs, contracts, and airwaves. Despite their best efforts, the ever growing American economic empire made the use of English unrefusable, simultaneously using it as a tool of empire to allow the US economy to grow further.

 

I can totally understand why the prominence of the English language can be concerning and even threatening to other nations. We know for sure that the famous non-violence Indian nationalist, Mahatma Gandhi, would be opposed to the spread of English today in Indian business and society. When he was alive, Gandhi he advocated for Swadeshi, Indian self rule, and would criticize Indian men and women studying English and assimilation to western civilization. Despite sharing his sentiment for the protection of one’s culture and language, I believe English has a place as the global language of business. Tying it back to the idea that language is the tool of business empires, there has to be an universal language for business so people can effectively communicate value, proposals, and transactions. English is not the ideal dialect for the universal language of business, but due to the laws of the jungle, the strongest economic power gets to enforce their preferred language to conduct business in. In my opinion, that makes a lot of sense and the cultural sacrifice of abandoning a nation’s native tongue in the business realm is worth the potential economic benefits. International business is constantly growing and thus the use of English is as well. Countries should hop on the English bandwagon and take advantage of the global markets to bring more prosperity to their nations.

 

As a first year student studying Business Administration and aspiring to work in the corporate environment of a large, multinational company, I am thankful to have been raised and studying the native tongue of international business. One of my biggest regrets however, is not taking advantage of my heritage and mastering the native tongue of my parents, who immigrated to the United States from China. My mandarin is pretty garbage, and while I can still understand and roughly speak it, I regret not being fluent enough to read, write, and verbally mesmerize others as required in business. Given language’s importance to culture and China’s growing economic empire, you best believe mastering Chinese is on my to-do list.

A snapshot Shanghai, China– China’s business hotspot. Photo Credits: (Photo by Lucas Schifres/Getty Images) http://fortune.com/2017/01/25/china-tpp-donald-trump/

Sources:

 

US Department of Commerce, et al. “Bureau of Economic Analysis.” U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), 28 Feb. 2018, 8:30 A.M. EST, http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/gdpnewsrelease.htm.

https://hbr.org/2012/05/global-business-speaks-english

 

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21596538-growing-number-firms-worldwide-are-adopting-english-their-official-language-english

 

 

Cryptocurrency – The Emergence of a new Financial Culture

In the financial world, Warren Buffett is arguably the most respected investor and the legendary wealth management authority. At 87 years of age, this billionaire is definitely considered old school and has strong opinions about the new and hip interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. In a recent 2018 interview, Buffett advised investors on Bitcoin, “Stay away from it… The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke, in my view”.

Warren Buffett, billionaire investor

Buffett’s mindset is not unique, as many traditional investors are playing it safe and avoiding the volatile currency. However, this reluctance to accept cryptocurrency stems from a clash of differing cultures of old school and modern investors and will hurt the general public, as block-chain technology and digital currency are the way of the future.

Back in Bitcoins’ creation in 2010, very few places accepted the digital currency and was often used for underground and illegal transactions. Now, many places around the world accept it, you can buy a coffee in New York or donate to a church in Gospel Oak, London. Bitcoin is also going to be traded on the Chicago futures exchange, making the coin more liquid and help investors value their assets.

Old school investors are skeptical about Bitcoin because of a lack of substance. They claim digital currency is a mirage, a simple allusion. There is no business, government, or physical backing to Bitcoin. They feel more comfortable investing in traditional investments such as stocks, mortgages, and bonds. Yet what is this traditional investment strategy? It is simply a culture and set of preferences that developed over the last couple hundred of years. The traditional investments are imperfect as well and ultimately let to the 2008 financial crash. Prestigious firms recognized by traditional investors such as Warren Buffett, stockpiled and repackaged risky mortgage-backed securities and sold them to other financial institutions, with people assuming they had monetary value.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, is built on block-chain technology, a series of math equations and algorithms is actually extremely secure and can be transferred and transported without regulation. Once the interest and demand for cryptocurrency dies down and stabilizes, so will the monetary value of the currency.

Sources:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heed-warren-buffetts-warning-bitcoin-is-pure-fomo-2017-12-26

 

Dawn of the Oeconomia Imperium

Hello Oeconomia Imperium readers!

Thank you for joining me on this journey of blog posts as I explored the concept of empire through the eyes of a first year business administration student at the University of California, Irvine. I hope you enjoyed my analysis of various empires in the world of business. I really enjoyed this assignment because it allowed me to research into different businesses and explore my passion for commerce. Businesses are so important in today’s society and are the It was so fascinating learning about business strategies implemented by the large conglomerates that have so much influence on us as consumers. In the future I hope to get a job in management consulting and a lot of what they do relates with analyzing the tactics and strategies implemented by successful businesses. This quarter I pledged for Delta Sigma Pi – a professional, co-ed business fraternity at UCI and I met a lot of influential students that inspire me to pursue a career in consulting. If I end up following this career path, I will no doubt spend a lot of time thinking about the influence and practices of the business empires.

 

I would definitely recommend humanities core to any incoming first year students coming to UCI. I loved the rotating lecture speakers because each professor added a new fresh perspective about empire, such as viewing empires from a poet’s, artist’s, or historian’s perspective.  Our seminar discussions were personal, unique, and meaningful. We had the opportunity to learn in various different ways, including lectures on Roman military strategies and watching the movie, “The Revenant”, to boost our understanding about empire. This diverse learning experience was extremely valuable. I think one tip for success in this class is to be disciplined and keep up with reading. A lot of the text that we read in this class is extremely dense and difficult to understand. For example, Edward Said’s Politics of Knowledge, was a really powerful read but uses a lot of complex language. If you keep up with your reading, you will be well prepared to participate in class and get more about of the experience. We do a lot of writing too in humanities core and it definitely will make you a better writer.

Sincerely,

Executivus

Dawn in New York City

Ben & Jerry’s vs. Achaemenian Persian Empire

Businesses are the new empires of our modern society. I find it so interesting because of the many parallels you can draw between ancient empires and modern business giants. One of the similarities between the rise of empires and the rise of businesses is that the most successful ones often come out of nowhere. Many of the most prominent empires and businesses are in the right place and time to position themselves for success and often quickly rise into power.

 

For example, when looking at ancient empires, the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids is a great example of rapid growth. Under the rule of Cyrus the Great, the empire grew a lot in a short span of only 30 years. This empire was huge, over 8 million km squared, and had a range stretching into three separate continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. In its peak, this empire was definitely a force to be reckoned with and had a lot of influence. It created the founding elements for the politics, heritage, and history of modern Persia (now called Iran). In 480 BCE, it is estimated that nearly 44% of the world’s population lived within the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

“Achaemenid Persian Empire”

http://www.crystalinks.com/Achaemenid_Empire.html

 

Basically the Achaemenid Persian Empire was unbelievably successful. Yet, this empire that lasted hundreds of years, was mainly built under the rule of Cyrus the Great which lasted only 30 short years.  

 

Many notable businesses in America has risen as a powerful empire in the economic world. For example, Ben & Jerry’s, a household name known for their frozen dairy and ice cream products had very humble beginnings. Personally, whenever I pass by the ice cream aisle at my local grocery store, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cartons always catch my eye. Their design, through the colors and text choice, always brings a smile to my face. I think it is best described as quirky and genuine. This strong branding of a large ice cream manufacturer was only possible through a specific type of leadership and quick expansion, similar to the specific leadership of Cyrus the Great and the Achaemenid Persian Empire’s quick expansion into Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Ben & Jerry Ice Cream Cartons at a Grocery Store

http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-ben-jerrys-ice-cream-on-display-at-a-walgreens-flagship-store-54802959.html

 

Do you see what I mean when I saw eye-catching, quirky, and genuine design?

Back to the subject of Ben & Jerry’s, this business was founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in 1978 and was definitely a very lowkey, Mom-and-Pop type of business. In fact, the business they started together was initially a restaurant, that just made ice cream in-house on the side. However, they soon got bulk orders from other restaurants and businesses just for their ice cream and became expanding to make larger and larger batches of ice cream until ice cream became their primary focus. Their ice cream sold so well that the global conglomerate Unilever bought their company for $326 million to eliminate competition with the conglomerate’s ice cream brands, Breyer’s and Good Humor. If you do the math, in just 22 years, the small business of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream was able to grow and expand to be worth $326 million. This rapid growth and rise of a business empire demonstrates the similarity between business and ancient, traditional empires like the Persian Empire.

 

One factor that helped propel Ben & Jerry’s to success is their social responsibility. Ben & Jerry’s is known to brand themselves as a very genuine and community orientated business. Ben & Jerry’s used to be privately owned and would only sell stock to people living in Vermont, the home state of the business. Ever since their creation, even to now, a small portion of their sales goes back to farmers and other members in the Vermont communities. It was only through the leadership and values of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, was it possible for the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company to evolve and expand into the success story it is today.

 

The Diamond Dynasty – De Beers Co.

When you think of the action of proposing to someone, what often comes to mind? A diamond ring of course. But where did this tradition start and why is it almost an universal standard at this time? The answer can be found by analyzing the diamond dynasty created by the De Beer Group of Companies.

The De Beer Company certain fits the stereotype of wealth associated with an empire, bringing in over 6.5 billion dollars of revenue last year for gemstones. This empire also had a long reign, being founded in 1888. To this day, the mining and distribution of diamond gemstones is first and foremost associated with the De Beers Company. The history of the De Beers Company is extremely interesting and brings a lot to the understanding of empires. The De Beers Company, through buying out all diamond mines, strategic marketing, and even bribing foreign governments, held a total monopoly on diamonds before being forced apart.

Prior to the 1800s, diamonds were extremely rare and typically came from India and Brazil. Their rarity and beautiful made them only accessible to royalty. However, diamonds were discovered in South Africa and that started a diamond that flooded the supply of diamonds in the late 19th century, lowering the price of diamonds significantly.

Premier Diamond Mine, South Africa (Wikimedia)

In this situation, English born Cecil Rhodes founded the De Beer Company, named after a early diamond field he purchased from two brothers named “de Beer”. Because mining diamonds is hard work and needs a lot of capital and equipment, the industry had high barriers to entry and many companies merged together. After a few years the De Beers company owned most of the South African diamond mines. Having virtually total control on the supply of the diamonds, the De Beers company artificially raised the price of diamonds by limiting the supply and had various distribution companies around the world. While other luxury goods and commodities have fluctuating prices, diamond prices have always risen since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The real rise of the empire began with Ernest Oppenheimer after the death of Rhodes in 1902. As chairman of the board, Oppenheimer lead the company to sign exclusive contracts with suppliers and buyers in the distribution channel so it was basically impossible to buy diamonds from someone other than the De Beers Company. Faced with the worldwide decline of demand for diamonds due to the economic crisis in the 1930s, the De Beers Company had an ingenious response only a strategic empire is capable of. Ernest Oppenheimer’s son, Henry, partnered with the N.W. Ayer advertising company to create a marketing campaign for the next big market for diamonds, the United States. The world famous marketing campaign forever changed American culture through the slogan “A diamond is forever”. This marketing campaign was so successful that they were able to convince consumers that diamonds equated love and that men needed to show how much they loved their fiancee through the size and quality of a diamond ring.

The Amazonian Empire (owned by Jeff Bezos)

Forget the bronze shield and armor, the people that rule modern empires wear neatly pressed suits and expensive shoes. One of the most prominent empires today have to do with business empires. Certain companies control most of their respective industries and have incredible influence and power, just like ancient empires such as Rome.

 

One modern example of empire is the business empire of Amazon. Amazon is an incredible company and has almost as interesting as a backstory of its founding as The Aeneid. Amazon was started off by Jeff Bezos in his garage located in Bellevue, Washington in 1994, having left an executive position at a Wall Street firm. This company originally started by selling books and has recently surpassed Wal-Mart as the most valuable retailer in the US and is the largest e-commerce company by revenue in the world. Amazon also dabbles in other business functions, such as being the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure services and has a separate brand themselves, called AmazonBasics. Amazon also produces consumer electronics, using proprietary technology, such as the Kindle e-readers series, Fire TV, and Echo family. Amazon has established itself as an international brand and has reach far into its empire of retail. Amazon has separate retail websites for many countries such as UK, Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, and Mexico. There is no denying that Amazon is one large and successful company.

Cover to the March 2017 issue of “The Economist” magazine

However there is more to the picture as to why Amazon is a prime example of a business empire. Amazon is a business empire because of its ambition and continued conquest of the retail industry. A fundamental aspect of empire is the desire to expand and spread its influence and control. Recently in 2017, Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market for a whooping $13.4 billion. This purchase of the chain of healthy grocery brick and mortar stores really increased Amazon’s revenue from physical retail stores. I find this particular purchase interesting because many people view it as an attempt to directly challenge Walmart as a physical store. It is like the equivalent of the great Greek and Trojan war, two massive empires going against each other. Walmart is still the biggest physical retailer in the United States and has an online website it uses to bring in e-commerce revenue. However, Amazon is the largest online retailer and now has physical stores through Whole Foods to bring in revenue. Being these two empires of companies will face off, will brick and mortar stores with a little bit of ecommerce win against a primary e-commerce company that is expanding into a few physical locations. My contention is that Amazon will come out on top. I might be biased because I personally love shopping on Amazon and do not frequent Walmart often. The reason for my belief in Amazon’s success in Empire is that Amazon is more innovative. They are developing new proprietary technology and is successfully integrating them in consumer’s lives. For example, the Amazon lockers are extremely easy to use and can increase sales greatly in areas that previously do not order online because of the hassle and risk of receiving packages in certain areas like low income neighborhoods. Amazon is also working on drones to deliver packages. Amazon introduced the Amazon Key and other new technologies. I believe Amazon is the retailer of the future and we are about to usher in a new era in the business world of retail.

Economy and Empire

For my first blog post, I want to discuss my initial understanding of “Empire” and how it shifted after beginning my Humanities Core class. Later, I will tie back the concept of empire to your everyday life and the theme of my blog, through exploring empires in economy.

 

As a teenage boy, my initial understanding of empire came from video games, movies, and chicken scratch notes from my history class. But the concept has always filled me with awe. Empires were powerful, large, and majestic. I naively thought to rule an empire would have been a paradise, almost fun in a way. I associated the word mainly with military power, envisioning the ancient Romans with their golden armor and red galea helmets.

Image of Roman Army Invading New Lands from Pinterest.

 

Through discussion with my class in the Humanities Core program at University of California, Irvine, I began analyzing the other, darker aspects of what an empire embodies. We discussed concepts of oppression, exclusion, use of scapegoats, domination, assimilation, competition, tyranny, and control. This altered my new definition of empire to be something that ought to be overthrown and restructured.

 

As a business student, I was almost ashamed to make the immediate connect of this new definition of empire to the economic and business world. In my first business lecture, I listened to current events such as monopolies, the 2008 market crash, illegal immigrant workers, product branding, sexual harassment scandals, and huge corporate mergers. What is better representation of domination, than the monopoly of the diamond market by the De Beers Company? Or how about how similar the big banks that had to be bailed out by taxpayers in the 2008 market crash are to empirical tyrants that hold immense power and take advantage of the hard work of commoners? Or how cultural groups are used as scapegoats for problems in ancient empires, just like how illegal immigrant workers are accused for the high unemployment rate. Product branding is a type of psychological controlling of consumers. Sexual harassment scandals demonstrate the oppression of women in the workforce and cost economies millions of dollars. Huge corporate mergers are similar to the initial competition and then unification of great empires.

 

In many ways, empires are evident within the current economy but economies are also evident in ancient empires. The Roman Empire I was once so interested in for other reasons was actually one of the world’s largest economy as well. At the time, the economy was slave and agricultural based, meaning whichever country had the most land and population, they would usually be the one producing the most products and overall contribute the most to the economy. But the Roman Empire took it one step farther. Not only were they in control of an extremely large span of land and farmers, they also lead an agriculture revolution with the invention of aqueducts and new ways to farm. At around 100AD, historians estimate that the Roman Empire composed 25-30% of the world economy. This was also made possible by the practice of new financial practices such as banknotes and extending credit.

 

In future posts I will be discussing how characteristics of your traditional empire are found in economics and the business world. I aim to provide specific examples from novels that we read in Humanities Core, real life companies/current events, and historical facts from ancient empires. The concept I will be exploring next time will most likely be domination. I will explore which real life empires dominated the ancient world, how the empire in “Waiting for The Barbarians” by J. M. Coetzee displays its domination, and which companies dominate the American and Global economy. This concept really interests me because it is always interesting and surprising how big companies are these days. Often huge conglomerates own multiple name brand companies and a few executives control these large companies that have an effect on the global economy and the daily lives of consumers. One example of this is how Jansport Backpacks and The North Face are owned by the same company. This is ironic because together they own over 50% of the backpack market and those are the ones that my friend were choosing between. No matter which one she picked, the profits would eventually benefit the same, powerful individuals that owned that conglomerate company. The way that the concept of empire ties in to read life intrigues me and prompted me to create this blog.

Thank you for reading and I hope you will visit my blog again soon!

Sincerely,

Executivus