Issue Task Sample 3

I went about 5 minutes over for this one. I still feel a little unprepared. It took me a while to gather my thoughts, probably took longer than I should have.

Prompt: If a society is to thrive, it must put its own overall success before the well-being of its individual citizens.

A thriving society is measured by the well-being of its citizens. A society cannot be considered successful if its citizens are unhappy, unhealthy and unsatisfied with their conditions.

In the business world, the goal is to make a profit. In order to make a profit, we have to ensure that every aspect of the business is maximized. The maximization of efforts is linked with job satisfaction. In this example, the company is the “society” and the employees are the “citizens” When an employee is unhappy or unsatisfied with job conditions, they don't do their jobs to the best of their ability. At the very least, they just do what they can to get by. If the job conditions worsen or management chooses to ignore the problems, productivity might plummet and altogether stop especially if the employees threaten to strike. A strike will not only hurt the company's efforts to turn a profit, it might also tarnish their reputation. In this case, the well-being of the employees are critical to the company's overall success.

One might argue that society's overall success will trickle down to the lives of its citizens. In this case, it really depends on what that society considers successful. We can look at the effects of the Vietnam War on the citizens of both the United States and of Vietnam. The United States wanted to help contain the spread of communism to South Vietnam. In the end, Vietnam was ravaged and millions of lives were lost. Yes, the United States did attain their goal of containing the spread of communism but at what price? Is a ceasefire considered a success? What about the millions of lives that were lost? Were they just collateral damage?

When you look at the bigger picture, sometimes you fail to see the individual contributions that adds to society's overall success. By ignoring the well-being of its citizens, a society might not only fail to reaching success, it might also alienate and divide its citizens.