Aquatic Invasive Species

I was very impressed with Tran-Phu’s article not only for subject matter and topic, but his ability to articulate and provide a strong argument using his sources. He also did more than merely cite his sources, but was fluently weaved them into this prose to form a very interesting and strong argument that intelligence, an abstract concept, can and has been commodified by the  market activities just as other tangible goods such as dairy have been. What I enjoyed about the article was the use of examples to help explain and introduce the reader to the concept of the abstract concepts being marketable, such as the commercialization of organ transplants and surrogate motherhood

Bran-Phu argues that intelligence can be commodified within a market just as any tangible good. One of his strongest points was that knowledge has a discrete exchange value and can have a quantitative economic value expressible in monetary units.  He presented an argument which included economic concepts such as supply demand, opportunity cost and incentive as he discussed how intelligence in our modern world has been commercialized. One of the major components of Tran-Phu’s article was a relationship between intelligence, educational level, certification, and career opportunity. The article goes on to further analyze the correlation between wage and intelligence in which he argued that wage disparity remains because access to knowledge and enterprise is protected to prevent devaluation.  He provided an example of a farmer and electrical engineer to show this disparity. One of Phu’s strong po9nt was using Marxian theory to solidify his argument an I found this very entertaining as he showed that products and services such as Adderall, Ritalin and tutoring all aid in the commodification (commercializing) our intelligence and these false incentives we use actual detract from the pure essence and value of intelligence.

In addition he believes that the commodification of intelligence can lead to a loss of freedom.

While Tran-Phu’s writing seems to fit under the category of social science, but in regards to my MWP1 assignments has a lot of similar context. For instance the opening the introduction was, while short was written in a professional, non-fictional tone which was similar many science related-jargon. In addition, he provided much quantitative evidence for his argument, quite suitable for the context of his paper, and natural science papers.  

While the tones in our paper s are similar to an extent, there is also a difference. Tran-Phu’s tone is more targeted to a general audience, while my writing tone for MWP1 was more focused on both the scientific and general community.