Locke in the news

On January 26 Toyota announced they will stop selling, as well as producing eight of their current models, due to a recall on these cars. The recall was for a sticking accelerator pedal, and Toyota believes its essential to take them off the market until the problem is solved. This has become such a dramatic action due to the fact that two of the cars recalled were best sellers in the country. These two cars were the Camry and Corolla. Along with the Camry and Corolla, the other cars that were recalled were the RAV4, Matrix, Avalon, Highlander, Tundra, and Sequoia. Although not much attention from the media has been brought upon this situation, it has indeed affected Toyotas company.

Although Toyota has put in tremendous amounts of their labor in order to produce these cars, Locke would agree that they have gone against the natural law. It isn’t just about utilizing a product and adding your labor to it, but rather putting it to good use and not wasting it. Instead of the company taking their time to make the product and check it thoroughly, they must have rushed through the process and in the end the cars had a fault on them. Instead of Toyota having quality set in their minds while making the cars, they were thinking profit instead. The more cars they produced in a shorter amount of time they would sell and profit more off of since two of the cars were the top selling cars in the country. If Toyota had taken the extra time to do extra tests or examine the cars a few more times they could have prevented this recall all along.

Link: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/01/toyota-halts-sales-of-eight-models-including-camry-and-corolla-over-acceleration-issues/1

Aristotle in the news

An article posted on January 12, 2010 in USA Today states that patients are willing to pay for “boutique” doctors. Primary care physicians are taking their practices from a traditional doctors office, to a more first class premiere service. The doctors are cutting their offices down from thousands of patients, to a couple hundred. Although the amount of patients the doctor sees is being cut down, the price to see these doctors sure is not. The cost to see one of these “boutique doctors” ranges anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 a year, sometimes even more. Some might question what these people are getting out of a doctor for that kind of money, and the answer to that is quality care. During a regular physical the doctor will usually spend no more then ten minutes in the room with you, as with this service you would receive up to an hour of the doctors time all to yourself. The time spent with the doctor is more attentive and also you receive access to the doctors during their after hours.

Some patients believe spending the extra money every year is well worth it because they leave their doctor visit with all their questions answered without being rushed through out their visit. Through out the country there are only 146 of these physicians, and therefore the need for them is rapidly growing. Although this may seem like a great way to receive the attention you want from your doctor, some are disagreeing with this process and saying it’s the wrong way to go about, and that it truly shows how out of order our healthcare system really is.

Aristotle would not agree with this new approach doctors are taking. One of the characteristics of the natural art of acquisition is limits, and this new way of healthcare succeeds the limits we essentially need. Sure we may all want a doctors attention for an hour or more, but we do not need that hour for them to treat our needs. Aristotle might also argue that since the art of acquisition is secondary to the art of management that the doctors are switching to this way of healthcare to make more of a profit off people.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-01-12-boutique-doctors_N.htm