Research and Ethics of Research

Many people from academic background and non academic background are arguing about the story of the world's first gene-edited babies, and it is normal to see that people disagree with each other and have different views over this issue. Even some scholars in the field have contradicted opinions about this 'experiment' (it is an experiment for He Jiankui and his colleagues, but I can‘t see it purely as an experiment since it will affect two lively human beings).

Scientists and scholars from other fields are conducting experiments which involve human participants to find out the answers to their valuable questions; however, when conducting experiments, scholars are supposed to follow ethic codes. I am not a researcher in natural science; however, I still need to follow certain ethic codes if I want to conduct experiments in my field. I am currently researching about networking, which seems a very harmless topic; however, according to the codes, I need to let participants know the experiments (including potential risks and harm, even some very minor risk), and I also need to appreciate the time they spend on my study (in some cases, I should pay for their participation). The most difficult part is to let participants know the experiment. It involves two main issues. The issue is the impact of providing information on experiment results, the other issue is unknown information asymmetry and unknown knowledge.

If I conduct an experiment to study humans' behaviour (irrationality), and I tell my experiment's purpose to my participants, because people tend to be rational, they will try to guess how they should react to the experiment in order to make themselves look rational; under such circumstance, the outcome of the experiment will not reflect people's true behaviour. Secondly, of course, we need to inform our participants about all the potential risk and harm; however, we do not necessarily know all information, and the impacts on different people can be different, but we may not know that.

Despite the existing difficulties, researches should always follow the ethic codes.

Technology makes things possible

If one day we could travel back to the past, unless we brought all modern technologies with us, otherwise we would gain many advantages comparing with the people living in the past. Some things are not possible without the support of modern technologies. For example, delivery was not possible in the past, because it was too risky for anyone to run a delivery business like UPS. Delivery men could just run away with goods because information transformation was very slow in the past, the risk for delivery men to run away with parcels was very low. Moreover, many jobs just could be done in the past. People were well educated not because of their lack of incentive, it was caused by the lack of technology. The invention of printers lowers the cost of publishing significantly and makes education cheaper in general, so technology makes more people be able to read.

The key in technological development is information. Almost all technological development relates to information. Trains, ships and planes make people easier to travel, so people are easier to exchange information or see information (sight viewing can be a way of seeing information). The inventions of radar, stealth jets aim to create information asymmetry to benefit oneself. Furthermore, people like sharing information with each other, especially with those who are close to them, that is why Facebook has such an enormous number of active users. The information that users upload online also helps companies like Facebook to earn significant amounts of profits. Therefore, it seems that to determine whether an invention is a significant and meaningful one or not is to see its impact on information, if it can improve information symmetry or create information asymmetry, it is a very good invention.

Trump's influence

Trump is definitely not a popular president that he did not win the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election and his party lost the midterm election this year; however, his influence over the entire country is enormous. Furthermore, though the US Federal Reserve should operate independently, Trump can still influence the Fed. Trump has criticised the rate hike decision made by the Fed chairman who was picked by himself several times, and today Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman declared US interest rates are closing in on "neutral" level, implying the rate hike will be less likely in the future, at least, it is highly unlikely to see a significant increase in rates. Trump definitely played an important role in his Powell's annoucement.

Over the recent two years, Trump has House and Senate, so he can almost get anything done. During these two years, Trump has cut taxes for individuals, especially wealthy individuals, and businesses significantly. In addition, Trump has launched a trade war with China and the relationship between the US and its allies has been damaged by Trump's outrageous claims and behaviour. Therefore, Trump does not influence America domestically but also internationally. Of course, this is the case as all American presidents have such influence. However, Trump is trying to extend his influence to a greater extend. He is trying to influence the judge system and the Fed, those independent government branches.

Some commenters argue that Trump is using his presidency to benefit his family and himself, all he cares is how much he can benefit. However, the wealth is not actually his first priority, his priority is to make him look correct. He never commits any mistake he ever makes and he always looks for someone else to be blamed. However, Trump’s comfortable era will come to an end that Republican lost the control of the House and Democratic Party will control the House starting from 2019. This will make Trump much more uncomfortable as he will be questioned much more frequently and more harshly. Trump is not very good at handling pressure and oppositions; therefore, his behaviour under a Democratic House will become more unpredictable, unstable and outrageous.

Trump's intervention

The US economy has been performing relatively well over the last decades; however, General Motors recently announced it would shut two of its Michigan plants, along with others elsewhere. Trump has always been promising American people that he is the man to bring more jobs for American people and these closures will definitely affect his promise. And what is his action? He sends people to talk to the executive of GM and openly expresses his disappointment and wishes. It is clear that Trump wants to use his power and influence to overturn GM's decision; however, does it work?

It will not work. GM's move aims to catch up with other car makers. GM is already behind the new competition in the new era of vehicles. Although Tesla does not produce as many vehicles as GM does, its market value is much higher than GM's value showing investors seeing electric vehicles are the future of vehicles This can be shown that, in many countries, there are more and more electric vehicle chargers and subsidieis for buying electric vehicles. It is sensible for GM to switch to electric vehicles from its previous plan of betting on low oil prices. Currently, low prices are low , but the demand for traditional petrol vehicles is still weak. Under such circumstance, all vehicle companies should invest in electric vehicles and even driverless vehicles.

Trump wants to stop GM from closing those plants and continue to provide jobs; however, this will stop GM from swtiching its current strategic change. Trump can cut taxes or provide subsidies for GM in order to keep GM opening those plants; if GM chooses to go this path, then it is sacrificing long term gains for short term benefits, which is not wise. Of course, Trump may be able topunish GM to force it to keep the plants open; but this is not benefiical for the American economy.

Overall, Trump's intended intervention in GM's plant closure is not a wise move as here is an example that a government tries to intervene when there is no market failure; under such circumstance, the best move is to leave it to the free market.

Cyber currency

Cyber currrency was a very hot topic but now the heat has cooled down. Cyber currency's prices are positively correlated with cyber currency's public attention, when the cyber currency draws more public attention, the prices increase; and vice versa. From such phenomenon, cyber currency seems not like a proper asset that delivers reasonable returns,its innovative and hard-to-understand foundation becomes its selling point that attracts lots of people to buy cyber coins and pushes up the price. Now when people realize that cyber currency is not like the traditional fiat money and find they have some difficulty to use the cyber currency as proper money, the price landslides and the price now is below $4000..

I am never a fan of cyber currency. However, we cannot deny the impacts of cyber currency. The technology behind cyber currency, blockchain, has raisen many people's interests because of its security; many banks and financial institutions have invested in developing blockchain technology. In addition, the appearance of cyber currency has replace some functions of gold. Gold has been seen an alternative to fiat money, so when there is some political or economic uncertainty appearing in the world, the gold price increases as people see gold as the money that will not be affected by politics or economics; however, when cyber currency appeared, people see cyber currency can become an alternative to gold to be another type of safe reserve. Furthermore, many other types of cyber currency have been invented and even the most popular cyber currency, Bitcoin, has been split into two, Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. These changes are brought by the heat of cyber currency.

Overall, because of the political stability in the world, there is no need for having many options of safe reserves as alternatives to fiat money, and people are not used to using cyber currency; however, the impacts of cyber currency are unerasable.

Shopping events

Today is Black Friday, and next Monday is Cyber Monday; both are shopping events which customers can enjoy some attractive discount rates when shopping. In China, the biggest shopping is on November 11th, almost every year broke its previous revenue record. Why do companies collaborate with each other and create these large scaled shopping events? (Not only companies within the same sector collaborate with each other, but companies across countries and sectors also collaborate with each other)

A massive shopping event can affect customers’ decision making. During a massive shopping event, customers are suddenly offered a lot more options; customers have constrained abilities to make perfect judgment when receiving too much information. In addition, companies can sell off their outdated products and start to sell new products after shopping events, this can boost companies’ sales and reduce the costs of holding old products. Furthermore, because people are paying too much attention to shopping events, they do not pay attention to the pre-event prices carefully, so they may not actually enjoy the discounts they deserve (since some retailers may increase prices before events and then put discounts on the increased prices). Furthermore, when others are buying, an individual is likely to follow others and also buy things that he or she may not actually need. This could be explained by the herding effect.

Overall, because of the incapacity of individuals, when a shopping event is becoming larger and creates more information and draw more attention, then it is actually easier for retailers to make more profits.

Merchants and consumers both need labels

People’s tastes have been changing over time. Some of the changes were made by merchants’ efforts of selling their products. Merchants tend to give labels to their products, they advertise that their products are made for some particular groups of consumers, who are often considered to be the model of the society or at least admired by many other people. For example, having an iPhone signals this owner is a youth who is living comfortably or a tech enthusiasm. Moreover, when talking about afternoon tea, it sounds posh and makes people think about upper class ladies gathering and enjoying their afternoon. These are all labels. Once a company can successfully create its products’ label, then it can gain some monopoly-like power in this specific market that contains the consumer group with this label. Moreover, if this label is very desirable within the culture, then it can attract potentially more consumers who do not belong to this category yet but have very strong incentives to join the category. Under such circumstance, merchants can earn enormous profits from the labels they create.

Not only merchants need labels, customers also need labels. Customers do not want to differentiate themselves from others and give themselves some desirable and specific labels. When we live in a community, we do not know everyone around us, having labels is an efficient way to reduce the cost of forming new networks and ease the issue of information asymmetry. Having labels help people to notice or attract others with similar or desirable types.