Week 9 Discussion — Is the Business Worth It? Counting the Owner's Time — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A phone-repair stand shows a profit on its books, and its owner is still poorer than she would be at her old job. This week you learned to count the costs no one sends a bill for, so you can now argue about what a business owner should do when the books and the economics disagree.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: On the course's illustrative phone-repair stand, the owner brings in 80,000 dollars a year and pays 50,000 dollars in explicit costs, so the books show an accounting profit of 30,000 dollars. She left a job paying 36,000 dollars a year and gave up 1,000 dollars a year of interest on her savings, so she has an economic loss of 7,000 dollars. One view holds that she should go back to her old job: the numbers say her time and money would earn more elsewhere, and a loss that size adds up year after year. Another view holds that economic profit leaves out things that matter to her: being her own boss, setting her own hours, or building something that could grow, and none of those has a price tag. Should she keep the stand open, and why? Keep your positive claims (what the numbers show) apart from your normative ones (what she ought to do).

Option B: Choose a small business you or your community know well, such as a side hustle, a family restaurant, a food truck, a salon, a lawn-care crew, or a stall at a weekend market. Describe in words its explicit costs and its implicit costs, including what the owner gives up in time, pay, or savings to run it. Then argue whether counting implicit costs gives a fairer picture of whether the business is worth it, or a misleading one, for that owner. Label which parts of your answer are positive claims and which are normative judgments, and say what fact would change your mind. Do not invent dollar figures or statistics; describe what you know firsthand.

There is no single right answer. Reasonable people weigh pay against independence, risk, and purpose in different ways. Pick the one you actually care about, and tell us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether the owner should keep the stand open, using its numbers (30,000 dollars of accounting profit, 37,000 dollars of implicit costs, and an economic loss of 7,000 dollars); for Option B, name the business and describe its explicit and implicit costs in words.
• Give the strongest version of the view you disagree with in one or two sentences, and say why you still hold your position or what part of the other view you accept.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (explicit cost, implicit cost, accounting profit, economic profit) correctly.
• Label at least one of your claims as positive (what the numbers show) and at least one as normative (what the owner ought to do).
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: point out where a post calls accounting profit economic profit, check whether an implicit cost was left out, or argue the other side of the question at its strongest. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. The positive part: once her forgone salary and interest are counted, the stand earns 7,000 dollars a year less than her next-best choice, even though the books show 30,000 dollars of accounting profit. The normative part: I think she should stay open for now, because she values setting her own hours more than 7,000 dollars a year. The strongest objection is that the loss repeats every year and the freedom may not feel worth it later. I accept that, so I would set a date to check whether the stand's revenue is growing.

Notice how it keeps accounting profit apart from economic profit, labels the positive and the normative parts, and gives the other side its strongest form. Someone who argued for going back to the old job as carefully would meet the same bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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