The Kickstarter project I selected is an application to deliver education and support cancer patients on chemotherapy treatment to manage their condition. The application is designed to be free for all patients and their loved ones and it tracks the side effects of chemotherapy, medication cycles, and overall trends in the progress of treatment. It also tracks appointment and reminders as well as medication home delivery (Kickstarter, 2019). If patients have questions, they can ask their doctors or care providers through the application and in case of side effects, patients can take pictures or physical manifestation of side effects and submit them for analysis so that medics can change medication based on their analysis of the images (Kickstarter, 2019). Finally, the project owners claim that the application will provide educational links regarding drug therapy and to financial assistance programs for those in need of any assistance.
The goal of the project within the market economy is to improve efficiency in the medical market for treating patients with cancer. Currently, patients on treatment for cancer have to make expensive and regular physical trips to meet with their doctors or providers and doctors do not have a reliable way of tracking their patients. The inefficiency is responsible for some patients abandoning cancer treatment or doctors failing to identify problems early. The result is wastage of money and resources, the poor outcome for patients suffering from cancer, and worsening of the cancer burden, which is already significant considering the disease is the leading cause of mortality in the United States.
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The concept of the free market
The free market economy is an economic system based on the supply and demand with little or no control from the government. Individuals and other players in the economy, such as corporations, make economic decisions but based on political and legal rules meant to make the playing ground level or even. The economic decisions that players in the economy make regards consumption, investment, and the allocation of resources (Musacchio & Lazzarini, 2012). A corporation can make an investment decision based on market factors such as demand and not due to coercion from the government. Individuals also make decisions on what to consume freely given their needs, income, wealth, and prevailing prices in the market. They also offer their labor freely without coercion.
Karl Marx believed that free-market economies are exploitative. According to him, in a free market environment, the people with capital such corporations and their owners have more power compared to employees and use their power to underpay workers and earn profits. He called the difference actual cost of labor and the amount paid as the surplus-value, which is, in reality, the source of profits earned by corporations (Mcnally, 2012). He predicted that the exploitation would cause chaos in the society leading to a revolution that would usher socialism and then communism where people own all means of production.
United States’ economic system
The United States has a mixed economy that incorporates the characteristics of capitalism and socialism. In a mixed economy, the government protects private property and the level of economic freedom is high but it reserves the right to intervene to achieve social aims or public good (Hall, 2015). One of the ways the US government intervenes in the economy is controlling the prices of many goods and services such as education, courts, postal delivery, and hospital care. The government subsidizes those services to keep the prices low. It also restricts the purchase of some products such as cocaine and similar drugs, raw milk, and some types of cigarettes. Beer is heavily taxed to discourage people from using them. Businesses have to register and professionals such as engineers, nurses, doctors, and many more, cannot practice without a license from the government.
Role corporations play in the United States economy
Profit is the main motivation for all corporations. They invest in research and development to produce goods and services for their customers. However, in the course of making those investments, they improve labor productivity by their innovations and inventions. The prices go down while quality improves leading to improvement in the overall quality of life. Importantly, they provide job opportunities for millions of Americans, who use the wages and salaries to purchase goods and services (Boyer, 2013). In a demand-driven economy like the United States economy, consumption is an important determinant of economic health; hence, corporations play a critical role in the supply side of the economy. They also pay taxes which the government use to the fund its activities including public goods services such as education and healthcare.
Conclusion (discussing your funding selection)
My funding solution is in the technology category and it is an application that allows physicians to track their cancer patients on medication. The intended audience is the healthcare market. Healthcare providers have been struggling to find a cost-effective solution to track their patients to improve outcomes and this application promises to deliver on that goal. Organizations in the healthcare sector such as hospitals can purchase the app for their clinicians and get access to the backend to track their patients but users can use it free (Kickstarter, 2019). The project is competitive and likely to succeed because the application solves a real problem that leads to massive wastage per year. Doctors want an easy solution to track patients and the latter requires a productivity app that would give them better access to their healthcare provider.
References
Boyer, R. (2013). The Present Crisis. A Trump for a Renewed Political Economy. Review of Political Economy , 25 (1), 1–38. doi: 10.1080/09538259.2013.736262
Hall, P. A. (2015). Varieties of Capitalism. Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences , 1–15. doi: 10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0377
Kickstarter. (2019). Oral Oncology Management Application. Retrieved from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pegasus-health-app/oral-oncology-management-application?ref=discovery_category.
Mcnally, C. A. (2012). Sino-Capitalism: Chinas Reemergence and the International Political Economy. World Politics , 64 (4), 741–776. doi: 10.1017/s0043887112000202
Musacchio, A., & Lazzarini, S. G. (2012). Leviathan in Business: Varieties of State Capitalism and Their Implications for Economic Performance. SSRN Electronic Journal . doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2070942
