Name: Steven P Sanderson IIDate: 6/13/06Class: Intro to Business BA11 5040Professor: McNamara

In this paper which has been earmarked for extra credit I would like to talk about a couple of things such as free trade and franchising. I am also going to touch briefly on Entrepreneurship. Again since it is something I find interesting and something I have been able to enjoy. First off free trade is defined as an idealized market model wherein trade of goods and services between countries, flows unhindered by governments imposed artificial costs. The term is given to economic policies, as well as political parties that support increase in such trade. Free trade is a concept in economics and government, encompassing: International trade of goods without tariffs or other trade barriers like quotas, international trade of services, the movement of capital and labor between countries.

The term free trade has become such a debated subject that it has not been uncommon for so-called free trade agreements to impose additional restrictions. All developed countries use some restrictions usually labeled as protectionism which is a form of restraining trade between nations by use of things like the before mentioned tariffs and quotas. The most notable critic of protectionism economist Dani Rodrick claims “the only systematic relationship (between tariffs and economic growth) is that countries dismantle trade restrictions as they get richer.”

Now today free trade is ever a hot topic not only because it allows free transfer of goods but also services and jobs. This in my opinion has played a key role in outsourcing jobs to more cost effective countries since movement of labor is encompassed by free trade. Now with all of this happening meaning free trade I think we have entered almost a trend that may come to a complete halt and I say this because you can only become so efficient and cost effective before you start becoming inefficient again. The whole model may even implode I don’t know but am interested in debating and finding out. I say that it may come to a halt because there are only so many people in the world and they all need to eat and sleep. Also with costs going up around the world by continually experiencing inflation wages can only go one way and that is up. Maybe outsourcing will never stop since one country is always going to be at the bottom of wages and the cheapest place to do business.

I think free trade as it has come to be today has given way to a new wave of entrepreneurialism. They have come to embrace franchises in a fast growing manner which has allowed them to control their own business to a certain degree and has given them access to global markets as the grow – they can purchase franchises in foreign markets. I would not consider franchises going global a bad thing but in fact something very good for everyone. For example if you owned a Jackson Hewitt franchise and it was located on 25A in Setauket you would have to hire someone from the local market place to run it not someone 5,000 miles away.

Franchise comes from the French for Free, whereas franchising is a method where a franchisor license trademarks and tried and proven methods of doing business to a franchisee in exchange for recurrent payment, and usually a piece of gross revenues or profits as well as annual fees, in exchange. For the fees and other monies paid services such as advertising and consulting are usually provided to the franchisee. Now like I said earlier I believe this is a good form of free trade where jobs are kept and created in their respective countries while still being able to do business in foreign countries and using free trade. Now I now we will never be able to get away from outsourcing work as it has proven to profitable for companies to utilize and actually helps the world economy by lifting third world nations up to a higher economic form than they have previously experienced but as I have stated in the class discussions I feel we need to worry about us first.

One way of still using free trade comes to my mind and is specifically why I decided to go back to school whether I ever get to see it come to fruition or not. I have decided that I would like to start another business by way of using distributed computing as a method of the business and charge a commission on every trade made. I would like to set up a form of downloadable client that people can run on their computers that is an automatic trading platform that would run based on parameters that my company would set up and I would pay them a commission for running the program based on how much profit they generate for the company. This would in effect allow me to utilize the entire world or rather anyone with a computer and high speed connection, which there are quite a few of them and growing every year. Now I say this would be a global company due to the fact that we could trade currencies and in foreign markets at any time since all I would have to do is get one person to use their computer for automatic trading. Distributed computing is basically using someone else’s computing resources while they are not using their pc. Now like I said in my reaction report on chapter 6 I hold entrepreneurship dear to my heart not only because of the opportunities it holds but for the simple fact that I enjoy it and would not want to live any other way.