Writing for an Academic Discussion A plan to build a new factory in your community - revised -

If a company announced plans to build a large factory in your community, would you support this addition?

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1         What are the advantages and disadvantages of building a factory in general?

2         Are there any conditions of your community to welcome or reject a new factory?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

◍ Advantages and disadvantages of building a factory in general

Advantages

1         Jobs will be created.

2         It will stimulate the local economy.

3         The municipal government will benefit from the tax revenue increase.

Disadvantages

1         Air/water/noise pollution

2         Transportation will be crowded.

3         There might be conflicts between old and new residents.

 

◍ Conditions of your community

1         old residential area → The health of children and senior citizens might be adversely affected.

2         already full of factories  → more disadvantages than advantages

 

 

☆An Essay for Ideas and Expressions

I would welcome the factory if it were run by a new type of company that contributes to sustainability but strongly reject it if it were owned by the conventional corporation. Although it would seemingly benefit my town mainly because of job creation, a factory owned by a typical corporation would eventually bring unhappiness to the community.

 

In the long run, a corporate-owned factory would harm my community and the environment. As we have seen, factories have polluted the air, water, and soil, causing diseases and premature deaths among the residents. By law, however, a corporation is only responsible to its shareholders, neither to the community nor to the environment. If a calculation shows that it can still make profits even if it has to pay compensation for the damage caused by the production or the products, the corporation just makes the product. Discrimination is also related to pollution. In the US, white communities are compensated for a pollution, while the residents are ignored if they are minorities.

 

Outsourcing is another practice to worry about. If the factory is successful, the company will try to expand and close the factory to build some in overseas countries where cheap labor forces are available. If this happens, my town will suffer because of the rise of the unemployment while the people in countries the factories will move to will be exploited. This has happened in America over the last 30 years. The result is a lot of ghost towns and the crushed middle class. The Japanese government has followed this neoliberal economic policy imported from America over the past 30 years, and therefore it can be concluded that the same will happen in my town.

 

Moreover, the corporation could close even a most productive factory for profits. For example, if the product the factory turns out is abundant in the market, the company often stops manufacturing it to prevent its price from falling down, just as extra crops such as oranges are discarded to manipulate the market prices, when many people are starving, as depicted in “The Grapes of Wrath” half a century ago. It is a common practice of modern businesses.

 

A new type of company that I would be pleased to invite to my town is the one of employee ownership. I myself have no desire to own a company, but, in theory, I think this system will make our lives better. Employee ownership allows all employees to literally participate in policymaking. This would drive the factory to the right direction. For instance, considering most citizens are concerned about environmental issues while many large companies are still refusing to take measures against climate crisis for profits, a company where decisions are made by workers’ majority vote is likely to emit minimum amount of CO2 and to be friendly to the environment in general. Needless to say, the pay gap between the officials and the rank-and-files would be smaller because everyone is the owner of the company. This kind of company is established by people who have values far from money-and-power orientation, and therefore, my town would be livelier with people respecting and supporting each other so that everyone can have a good life.

 

A company as a tool for extra-income of a few super-rich people is not welcome, while a company of the ordinary people, by the ordinary people, for the ordinary people is a great welcome. Increase of factories operated by this type of companies would drastically change society.

Write your draft on this topic. Show it to each other. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s draft.

 

 

                                                 DRAFT