The 2018 Blockbuster

When I was a kid it was a good day when I went to Toys “R” Us, the aisles and aisles of games, dolls, and blocks were a seven year old’s dream. Going to a store just for kids where you didn’t have to wait on your parents to buy the groceries and lightbulbs was, in my mind, what shopping was all about. As I grew up I took more to online shopping and less to going to the store and eventually Toys “R” Us became completely irrelevant to me, and many others.

A rise of online shopping and huge department stores have taken the world by storm people don’t need to even leave their homes to get groceries, all they have to do is push a button and go to their front doors. Over time these companies that have everything under the sun completely wash out stores that only cater to a certain type of people. And like how services like Netflix and Hulu have done to Blockbuster. Amazon and Target have put Toys “R” Us into bankruptcy.

When companies that were once top of the game are driven into bankruptcy it is usually because of new competitors who have figured out how to make products faster and cheaper than the original. But there is an underlying effect that the public has on these companies and that is that the store still has the same amount of product coming into the store and not enough going out, so they might try to lower their prices or advertise more. The real problem is that their supply is more than the demand for their products, there are not enough buyers for each product and so a downward spiral occurs with lowering prices, buying less products, but still having stalked shelves. So we eventually remember Toys “R” Us in the same manner that we remember Blockbuster, a company that was great for it’s time but just couldn’t keep up with new times.

The juggling Act

The people of the United States have this idea of the President that he holds these almost God like powers and that he has no restrictions. These ideas frighten the American public. Professor Neustadt proposed that there are more informal powers of the President than formal/ constitution powers. Here I would like to dig deeper into the President’s informal powers, what they mean for our country and what the President really does for our country.One of the jobs of the President is to be able to effectively juggle multiple roles that include Chief Executive, Chief Legislator, Chief Diplomat, Chief Administrator, commander-in-chief, head of state, party leader, and Chief Citizen. The President needs to be able to know when he has to be in what role and what is appropriate for certain situations. For example after the tragedy on September 11th President Bush played the informal role of Chief Citizen with his bullhorn speech but after that he had to work as Chief Diplomat to negotiate with other countries to fight the war on terrorism. The President has to balance his roles, he cannot act like a diplomat with his own citizens and can’t act like a Chief citizen towards leaders of other countries. Part of the President’s role of being a diplomat is his job of persuasion and bargaining with other countries.This brings me to another one of Neustadt’s descriptions of the President’s job which is the President’s persuasiveness or skills at bargaining. Going back to diplomacy I see that it is the President’s job to make our nation whole, yes he does come from one of two parties and usually many people aren’t happy when a new President comes into office but after that it shouldn’t matter because our nation needs to be a whole working unit, and the President is at the head of that unit. The nation needs to stand strong together so that when the President goes and does his diplomatic job other nations think of the United Stated as actually united. The President’s persuasiveness can depend on what the U.S. as a nation thinks about him and we should want to use the best of our abilities to do what is best for our nation. But the President also needs to persuade his citizens to believe in him. That is what he does during election season when he campaigns but once he is in office he needs to get all the people with him, which will most likely not happen but he must attempt to bargain with the people of the other side to get their support. In total Neustadt describes the role of the President and how to juggle the roles that he plays. And that the role of president is a lot less powerful than people think it’s just a job of management for a very large company called the United States.

New Times New Election

The presidential election is the United States biggest and most important elections. Every four years we put a new leader into office by everyone going to their local voting booth and checking off a box for their preferred candidate, but what most Americans don’t realise is that they are not actually voting for one of the candidates, for example in The U.S’s previous election Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump they are voting for a side in the Electoral College a group of electors who have pledged to a certain side and then they vote for a candidate and the side with the most electoral votes from each state wins all the votes from that state and if a candidate gets 270 votes they win the election. This middle man in the election has caused a lot of trouble in the 2000 election and in the 2016 election and now the public is asking the question has the Electoral College outlasted its stay or is it relevant in our changing times.In the 2016 election the candidate that won the election did not win the popular vote, something that has only happened one other time in The United States’s history. So people are finally noticing the middle man in the election process. Newsmax has listed pros and cons of this process and they mention that the process “dissuades people from voting” and makes the public feel as if “their vote does not matter” but this is not true, the election process is just so complicated that people don’t understand it and feel like their say is worthless. 

On the other hand a positive of the Electoral College is that it gives more power to the states. And allows the smaller states to have a greater say in the election. But really the public wants the election to be on their level, from people to president, not people to state to president. And maybe the Electoral College was made in an attempt to protect the American people from mob mentality, but would that not take away from our freedom of speech? The whole issue is complicated and I believe that it would be best if we abolished the Electoral College to simplify the election process.

The reason I say this is because would it not be rationally better to make sure that all American citizens have the chance to really know how much their vote is worth rather than the government attempting to protect them from a mob mentality. Our society should teardown what we know about voting and start again with something that will work well in our modern age.

Burning the Bubble

Over the past few months two hurricanes have hit our country. Hurricane Harvey pouring it’s wrath onto Houston and the surrounding areas, and then Hurricane Irma hitting florida leaving millions of people without power and stranded because of flooded homes. The storms had devastating effects on our country and it seemed that they were the only topics that the news media would cover. People all across the country knew about the devastation in the south but knew very little about what was happening in the northern parts of our country. While the south was flooding the north was, and still is, burning. Although many lives may be in danger due to poor air quality, low visibility, and homes may be in the way of the fires there has been very little news coverage over the fires and I believe that the reason for the low coverage can be brought back to the filter bubble. The filter bubble sorts out information and products that it believes is not useful or does not apply to it’s user, it essentially puts its user into there own little box in which they only hear information that they agree with. And in relation to the fires the general public is not interested in parts of the U.S. that have low population and that doesn’t affect themselves. This way of thinking could be the downfall of the U.S. because the population only hears what they want to hear and not necessarily what they need to hear. Large corporations will buy the consumer’s information so that they can make products and sponsor ads that are tailor made for the people who fit in their own boxes and unfortunately for Montana, a state being greatly affected by the fires, it is difficult for the general public to be informed and know if they need help it can be difficult for people to find help without public support. Montana even declared a state of emergency to get help from the government to control the fires. I stress the point of the fires to exemplify how a poorly informed public can have consequences. Now that we now know the problem we must ask ourselves how can we fix it? This starts with popping the filter bubble that controls what we see on the internet. Corporations that feed consumers more of what they want and what they have already seen could change their format and supply consumers with important happenings in the world local, abroad, and what they would likely click on. We could give control back to the consumer and make greater connections to the world wide web, people could be informed and know about happenings all the way round the world. All it takes is knowledge and awareness of what is keeping society Ill informed in order to make a big difference in how the public views the internet.