Directions (Q. 1-13) Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
In capitalist dominated economic markets, the theory is that entrepreneurs, desiring their own profit and competing with each other, will inspire higher quality work so that superior goods and services will flourish. This system originated as an advance in the functioning of medieval village economies. In a village, let us say, there is one cobbler; and then another cobbler comes to the village and opens a shop. Now there are two cobblers, and they are in competition. When there was only one cobbler, there was no competition. He could do the poor work, and the people would not have quality craftsmanship for their shoes. The second cobbler comes in and the two cobblers compete with each other. Then the people go to the one who does the better quality work, and the quality of this work. So, through competition, this type of capitalism was very effective and made for higher standards and better quality of work.
From these origins, the capitalist system has grown and grown and grown, until now there are international corporations of immense size owning many subsidiary corporations. They have become so vast in their scope that they begin to resemble the single cobbler in the village economy of old. Their goal is to eliminate the competition, to eliminate anything that would stand in the way of their profits. They are directed to this approach by the same system that inspired the village cobblers into competition and that promoted superior quality work. But now, there is no village; there is the reach of the international corporation across the globe. They own many subsidiary companies, and they have become very powerful entities. These entities have one purpose still: to increase their profits and their wealth by any means possible. But the have become so powerful that their capacity to increase profit and wealth lies primarily in their ability to suppress competition – and even to control governments and world economics – to get the most they can.
Greed now dominates to the point where the original system of healthy competition has been corrupted, and the powerful corporations’ intention of gain is now so extreme that they control great amounts of wealth. And they have now become the main controllers of power in the world. It is mainly the multinational corporations and their greed that have brought the world to the brink of the catastrophe. They want only to increase their profits. The goal of improved quality driven by healthy competition that was seen in the village economy is gone. The motivation is no longer to improve quality as means to increase profit. It is to control the market, control the buyers, and control the workers. So the capitalist economy now gives expression to an extreme of greed.
