Popular Modern Political Philosophies, Political Ideologies & Economic Ideologies ---> It is a good idea to know something about everything, eh?

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_philosophy

Political philosophy is the study of such topics as politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why (or even if) they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown—if ever. In a vernacular sense, the term "political philosophy" often refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, about politics that does not necessarily belong to the technical discipline of philosophy.

Political philosophy can also be understood by analysing it through the perspectives of metaphysics, epistemology and axiology. It provides insight into, among other things, the various aspects of the origin of the state, its institutions and laws.

It is a good idea to know some terms below in some detail (political philosophies of):

• Ancient China
• Ancient Greece
• Ancient India
• Medieval Christianity
• Medieval Islam
• Medieval Europe
• European Renaissance
• European Age of Enlightenment
• Industrial Revolution & the Modern Era
• Contemporary political philosophy
• Influential political philosophers

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_ideology
(P.S: An Economic Ideology is different from Economic theory and Economic Ecosystem).

Economic ideology expresses a perspective on the way an economy should be run and to what end (without accurate explanatory models to back the ideologies). An Economic Ideology is being normative (passing value judgements) rather than explanatory in its approach. Examples of Economic Ideologies:

• Capitalism
• Socialism
• Communism

Capitalism
Capitalism is a broad economic system where competition in a free market determines the price, production and consumption of goods through the invisible hand of supply and demand reaching efficient market equilibrium. Capital, property and enterprise are privately owned and managed for a profit. New enterprises may freely gain market entry without State restriction. Employment and wages are determined by a labour market that will result in some unemployment. Government and Judicial intervention are employed at times to change the economic incentives for people for various reasons. The capitalist economy will likely follow a business cycle of economic growth along with a steady cycle of small booms and busts.  There are several implementations of capitalism that are loosely based around how much government involvement there is. The main ones that exist today are mixed economies, where the state intervenes in market activity and provides some services, Laissez faire, where the state only supplies a court, a military, and a police, and anarcho-capitalism where the state does not exist and thus cannot interfere.

Socialism

Socialism refers to the various theories of economic organization which advocate either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Communism

As Friedrich Engels described it (in Anti-Dühring), communism is the evolution of socialism so that the central role of the State has 'withered away' and is no longer necessary for the functioning of a planned economy. All property and capital are collectively owned and managed in a communal, classless and egalitarian society. Currency is no longer needed, and all economic activity, enterprise, labour, production and consumption is freely exchanged "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". It must be noted that communism is also a political system as much an economic one - with various models in how it is implemented - the well known being the Marxist Leninist model, which argues for the use of a vanguard party to bring about a workers state to be used as a transitional tool to bring about stateless communism, the economic arrangement described above. Other models to bring about communism include democratic socialism, which argues for slow social transformation and evolution, or anarcho-communism, which argues similarly to Marxist schools for a revolutionary transformation to the above economic arrangement, but does not use a transitional period or vanguard party.

Economic Theories - relates to the study of  Economics itself - Classical Political Economics, Marxism, Neoclassical, Keynesian & so on. Will try to make a list of various sub-types and variations / hybrids soon :) 


List of Political Ideologies - can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ideology.

Ideologies of Individual leaders :
What got me interested in posting this blog post in the first place was the various types of hybrids / evolutions of Socio-Politico-Economic Ideologies of various leaders (and I am trying to make a short list of them), some of them being:

• Reagonomics
• Thatcherism
• Blairism
• Powellism
• Glasnost
• Perestroika
• Putinism

Other terms I need to study & write a follow up blog on:

• Libertarianism
• Toryism
• Monetarism
• Neo-Liberalism etc

Why do we need to study these (or at least know about these)?
Answer:
(1) So that you do not feel dumb, as an MBA, if there is a situation when you need to address them (2) So that you can use the knowledge to create something new - perhaps a new business ideology that can benefit humanity! Or can benefit business and make business more efficient. In one sentence - you need to know so that you can create & innovate! Some of the ideologies have had very distinct features. It is good to know things like these. Here is an example: Raeganomics. It meant something VERY specific, as below.
Reaganomics (A combination word formed by - Reagan + Economics) attributed to Paul Harvey) refers to the economic policies promoted by the U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s, also known as Supply-side Economics (or pejoratively as voodoo economics) or Trickle-Down Economics. The four pillars of Reagan's economic policy were to:

• Reduce the growth of government spending
• Reduce income tax and capital gains tax
• Reduce government regulation of economy
• Control money supply to reduce inflation

If you are in the field of Business management, I wish you luck in innovating / building new businesses ideologies that can benefit the fielf of business and humanity. I, for one, shall keep trying to see what was there in the past, what is new out there and what else can we come up with!

Cheers!
Gerry Som.
Blogger @ www.gerry.in

Wikipedia! Have you ever editied or created a Wikipedia article? Try it. It's fun!

Just editied my first Wikipedia article. It was a lot of fun - to know that I am contributing to the knowledge of the world.

I think more of us should do that. We should be active creators of information and not just users and analyzers of information.

We MBAs do care about sustainability - leaving a part of the natural resources that we inherited for the future generations. But we should also indulge in creativity - leaving this world a richer place as compared to what we inherited!

- Gerry Som.

#Crowd-Funding: You have heard of Crowd Sourcing. But what is Crowd-Funding? + Story of a Bollywood movie ("I am") made at 8 Million USD. by 400 small individual Indian investors investing USD. 20,000 each !

From the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_funding

Crowd funding (sometimes called crowd financing, crowd sourced capital, or street performer protocol) describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowd funding occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen journalism to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns, to funding a startup company, movie or small business or creating free software.

Here is an example of how Crowd-Funding was used to produce a MOVIE in India (Bollywood):
http://www.indiatimes.com/bollywood/crowd-funding-an-emerging-trend-in-bollywood-15652.html

Crowd funding: An emerging trend in Bollywood
(Courtesy: Times of India)

Crowd-funding is an emerging trend in the world of finances, where a film maker sources the funds reaching out to the masses through social media. 

Small is Big: It is believed that this notion of funding will be of huge help to independent film makers and those who don't find funding for innovative concept of movies which don't follow regular Bollywood tastes. "The important part of crowd-funding is that film makers get finances from people who believe in their projects. It is a huge boost to those who find it difficult to generate finances through other means. We got funding for our out of the box subject. "I Am" is one of smallest budget films of 2011 in Bollywood which is one of largest film industries in the world. Getting a National Award for a film that has been funded this way is not a small deal," shares the director, Onir.

"Movie projects with a big starcast easily finds big production houses financing them. But when people don't have big names and 'masala' for movies, they end up running from pillar to post to seek finances. Crowd-funding does justice to those people. It encourages the creativity of film makers without any interference from production houses."

Risk Reduction: When hundreds of movies in Bollywood releasing every year don't find a good distribution and exhibition channel, crowd-funding is the safest option that reduces the risk of investment dividing the loss between many who are involved in the funding. This concept reduces the share of losses incurred. Thus it does not burden a single production house or an individual. This also lends transparency in financial dealings. The big name production houses can actually interfere with the work of the movie makers.

Money Matters: The people investing in movies not only get profit sharing in box-office collections but are also credited as co-producers in the movies. Says Onir, "All 400 investors in "I Am" got acknowledged as co-producers in the movie as well as being part of the profit sharing process. The amount pooled in for the movie was `3 crore." "I feel, it is extremely empowering to crowd-fund a film attaching more and more people. Our profit model is simple. Everyone invests `10 lakh and they are all out in the first recovery after investors get the principle amount back. Everyone gets a percentage from the profit. All investors are co-producers in my movie and everyone is happy."

The Bigger Picture: However, this funding process only works for small budget films. For lavish movies made on a budget of `100 crore - `150 crore, this financing process has no relevance. Says Onir, "Crowd sourcing is more for independent film makers. It is not meant for big budget movies with a huge star cast. The biggest disadvantage of crowd-funding is you can't raise a lot of money through it. That could be because it is an entirely new concept for the Indian market.

European connection: Another drawback of crowd- funding is that though the concept is doing good in the European market, Indian film makers find hard to attract investors from European countries. Guneet comes up with the solution for this problem. "One needs to structure the film well to access the European funds. One has to have a good script with an universal appeal that people from all over will like to be part of." Adds Puneet, "Typical Bollywood movies really can't find investors from the European market.

HBO Movie "Too Big To Fail" - (A discussion) ---> A Must Watch for MBA students. (Rent the movie!)