Question

Issues: Identify and explain the main economic and ethical issues concerning how the US political system resembles a duopoly.

(ii) Analysis: Analyse the issues identified in (i). You must use relevant economic theory and ethical arguments.

(iii) Position: Derive your position on the issues identified in (i). You must provide evidence by interpreting, evaluating, integrating and synthesising your analysis done in (ii).

(iv) Critique: Defend your position derived in (iii) against the best possible argument that may be raised in opposition to yours. You must consider the assumptions and implications of your position.

Answer 1

Economic issues concerning how ventilators should be allocated during the global health pandemic are that because of supply constraints, hospitals are finding it difficult to procure these ventilators at a cheap cost, which is leading to ultimately the government or citizens bearing a severe bill which could lead to severe distress in terms of standard of living as citizens have to spent a lot more than they should, especially during the pandemic.

The more the price of ventilators and supply power, more is the threat of economic distress as bargaining power of suppliers tends to increase, which leads to discrimination and misallocation of resources. States procuring from the same vendors leads to huge markup in terms of ventilator prices and ultimately shortage, with rising cases. As greater the shortage, more is the price, coupled with monopoly power of suppliers. In terms of economic distress, it is getting translated to huge costs for states and the government, increasing the fiscal deficit further.

Now ethical issues concerning this allocation are that the scarce ventilators are only being used for high risk patients and those who could be saved in order to allocate these ventilators efficiently, which is ethically wrong as everyone should be given a chance to survive. Another ethical issue is that suppliers of ventilators are purposely creating a monopoly in order to take advantage of increase in demand, this is leading to high death rates as access is not efficient.

There could be an argument raised against such economic and ethical issues such as manufacturing of ventilators requires certain expertise and the high markup is justified as there is huge demand. But the increase in prices shouldn't be at the cost of human lives being lost, there should be some sort of price ceiling which could help prevent citizens being discriminated upon and some solutions found in order to address supply shortages as this is a public health crisis and human lives cannot be lost because the hospital or the state didn't have the infrastructure in place, all the countries should come together in order to address this issue so that long terms solutions are found, and everyone benefits. It shouldn't be that a few benefit at the cost of another.