document_title: Ready Player One (film)

question_text: who plays the bounty hunter in ready player one

text: Ready Player One (film)

text: Plot[edit]

text: In 2045, due to various geopolitical events, many of Earth's cities have become slums; its inhabitants regularly escape into the virtual reality world of the OASIS. Its co-founder, the late James "Anorak" Halliday, announces a contest in which players must find an Easter egg inside a gate that requires three keys hidden in the worlds; the winner to receive full ownership and control of the OASIS. This attracts a number of Gunters ("egg hunters") as well as the video game conglomerate Innovative Online Industries (IOI), headed by their new CEO Nolan Sorrento, who employs researchers of Halliday, as well as top gamers and indentured servants called "Sixers".[a]

text: In Columbus, Ohio, Wade Watts, an orphaned 17-year-old Gunter, lives with his aunt Alice in the "stacks", makeshift towers of trailer homes, and logs onto the OASIS from a nearby cargo van. His avatar Parzival, and his online friend Aech, a male first-person shooter expert and virtual mechanic, participate in the first quest: a vehicle race across ever-shifting roadways in Manhattan. Parzival befriends a well-known Gunter named Art3mis by saving her from being "zeroed out" by King Kong, which would have wiped her character progression. At Anorak's virtual archives containing video clips reconstructing Halliday's life, Parzival gets an insight from a comment that Halliday made to his former business partner, Ogden Morrow, and on the next race, uncovers an underground shortcut to the finish line to acquire the first key. Aech and Art3mis, as well as players Daito and Sho, soon follow; appearing atop the global scoreboard as the "High Five".

text: At an OASIS dance club, i-R0k, a mercenary helping Sorrento, overhears Parzival tell Art3mis his real name. Sorrento requests Wade to join IOI, but when he refuses out of distrust, Sorrento and his aide F'Nale Zandor bomb Wade's stack, killing Alice and Wade's neighbors. Wade is taken to a Gunter hideout where he meets Art3mis in reality: Samantha Cook. They discover that Halliday regretted a movie date with a woman named Kira, who later married Morrow. After Parzival wins a coin on a small bet with the archive's curator, the High Five enter a re-creation of The Shining where they traverse a series of frightening events to eventually reach Kira to acquire the second key.

text: Zandor tracks Wade to the Gunter hideout, but finds only Samantha, who is arrested and made into a Sixer for defaulting on her family's debt. Wade is extracted by the other High Five players—Aech / Helen Harris, Daito / Toshiro, and Sho / Zhou—who have been secretly running their avatars from Helen's postal truck. i-R0k activates a force field around the location of the third key inside a fortress on Planet Doom. After tricking Sorrento into revealing Samantha's location, Wade helps her escape. She hacks Sorrento's station, allowing Wade to recruit OASIS players to join an all-out assault against Sorrento and the Sixers at the fortress. Hiding among the active Sixers, Samantha shuts down the force field. During the battle, the rebels defeat Sorrento's Mechagodzilla and i-R0k, but Parzival zeroes out Samantha's avatar to let her escape IOI in reality.

text: Parzival and Sho find Sixers lining up to play on an Atari 2600 console, but failing on each game after time expires, even when one of them beats Adventure. Sorrento activates the Cataclyst, which zeroes out everyone on Planet Doom (including himself). However, the curator's coin spares Parzival as an extra life. Parzival deduces that the goal is not to win Adventure but to simply find its own Easter egg, which Parzival completes to reveal the third key. Inside the gate, Anorak presents Parzival a contract; however, Wade declines as it is similar to the one Morrow had signed that dissolved his partnership with Halliday. Anorak transforms into Halliday and affirms Wade's decision to be correct. After showing Parzival a Big Red Button that would shut down the OASIS permanently, Halliday officially awards him the Golden Egg as the winner of the contest.

text: Sorrento and Zandor are arrested after Aech had sent the police a recording of Sorrento's conversation with Wade that resulted in the bombing. IOI's indentured players are freed from their debts, heavily restructuring the company. The High Five share control of the OASIS, with Wade hiring Morrow, who is revealed to be the archive curator, as a consultant. The OASIS resumes operations, but is shut down on Tuesdays and Thursdays to force people to spend more time in the real world, including Wade and Samantha who have formed a relationship and bought an apartment together.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Tye Sheridan as Parzival / Wade Watts, a Gunter and one of the "High Five", who wishes to win the Quest so he can leave the stacks.
Olivia Cooke as Art3mis / Samantha Cook, a famous Gunter and one of the "High Five", who works with various allies to ensure the OASIS is kept free and out of the hands of IOI.
Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento, the recently appointed CEO of Innovative Online Industries, who seeks full control over the OASIS. He leads the Sixers, an army of indentured servants in the OASIS.
Lena Waithe as Aech / Helen Harris, a Gunter and one of the "High Five", who is male in the OASIS and longtime friend of Wade's. Aech runs a virtual garage in her free time to create and fix various vehicles and items.
T.J. Miller as i-R0k, a freelance weapons and magic item dealer and bounty hunter, who is often employed by IOI.
Simon Pegg as Curator / Ogden Morrow, a co-creator of the OASIS, who eventually left the company due to personal reasons. He harbors a concern about how many people have developed an unhealthy dependency on the game.
Mark Rylance as Anorak / James Halliday, the deceased co-creator of the OASIS, who includes an Easter Egg hidden in the OASIS after his passing that grants control over the OASIS to its winner.
Philip Zhao as Sho / Zhou, a Gunter and one of the "High Five", an 11-year-old in reality.[9]
Win Morisaki as Daito / Toshiro, a Gunter and one of the "High Five".
Hannah John-Kamen as F'Nale Zandor, the head of IOI's operations in the physical world, as well as their indentured servitude programs.[9]

text: Additionally, Susan Lynch portrays Alice, Wade's aunt; Ralph Ineson portrays Rick, Alice's abusive boyfriend; Perdita Weeks portrays Karen "Kira" Underwood, Morrow's wife; Clare Higgins portrays Mrs. Gilmore, Wade's neighbor; and Letitia Wright portrays a rebel who can briefly be seen at the safe house. McKenna Grace and Lulu Wilson appear as elementary school children who use the OASIS.

text: Production[edit]

text: Development[edit]

text: Warner Bros. and De Line Pictures won an auction for the rights to Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One in 2010, before it had been published.[10] Cline was set to write the script for the film, which Donald De Line and Dan Farah would produce.[10] Eric Eason rewrote Cline's script,[11] and Zak Penn was hired to rewrite the previous drafts by Cline and Eason. Village Roadshow Pictures came aboard to co-finance and co-produce the film with Warner Bros.[12] Steven Spielberg signed on to direct and produce the film, which Kristie Macosko Krieger also produced, along with De Line and Farah.[13] Ready Player One is Spielberg's first action-fantasy film since The Adventures of Tintin in late 2011.[14] Cline and Penn made several revisions while adapting the novel to film. Most of these changes were to eliminate scenes that would be uninteresting in a visual format, such as when Wade beats a high score in Pac-Man, or recites all the lines from the film WarGames.[15]

text: Casting[edit]

text: Three actresses were top-runners for the role of Art3mis: Elle Fanning, Olivia Cooke, and Lola Kirke;[16] In September 2015, Cooke was announced as having been cast in the coveted female lead role.[17] In January 2016, Ben Mendelsohn joined the cast.[18] In February 2016, Tye Sheridan was confirmed as playing the lead role of Wade, after a lengthy nationwide casting call failed to produce an unknown for the part.[19] In March 2016, Simon Pegg joined the cast.[20] In April 2016, Mark Rylance joined the cast,[21] and in June 2016, T.J. Miller, Hannah John-Kamen and Win Morisaki also joined.[22][23][24][25] In July 2016, Philip Zhao joined the cast,[26] and Lena Waithe, Ralph Ineson, McKenna Grace, and Letitia Wright were later also announced to have been cast.[27][28][29][30]

text: Filming[edit]

text: Production was set to begin in July 2016.[23] Screenwriter Zak Penn tweeted on July 1, 2016 that the first week of filming had been completed.[31] In August and September 2016, filming took place in Birmingham, England; this included Livery Street in the Jewellery Quarter area of the city, which was extensively used, including the van chase that takes place towards the film's end. The chase was edited to make the street appear longer than it actually is. The backpackers' hostel Hatters, also on Livery Street, was used for internal filming for a basement scene. Also utilized was the Ludgate Hill Car Park lot on Lionel Street, in which caravan homes were partially built; a planned explosion caused some local business and homes to call emergency services, as no prior notification were given by the production. Other locations in the city included the former industrial area of Digbeth, with a rooftop scene that overlooks the Birmingham City Centre skyline, with some of the city's landmark buildings being erased and replaced with CGI buildings in order to create a dystopian Ohio in the year 2045.[32][33] Principal photography ended on September 27, 2016.[34][35]

text: Visual effects and post-production[edit]

text: Spielberg worked with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to oversee the film's visual effects, meeting with ILM for 3 hours three times a week.[35] He has stated that "[t]his is the most difficult movie I've done since Saving Private Ryan."[35]

text: A significant part of the film takes place in a virtual space based on the Overlook Hotel in the film The Shining. This was mostly a digital recreation of the film using high-quality telecine of the original film, giving them some freedom of new camera angles and shots that could be generated from this recreation. The final film includes a combination of the original footage from The Shining and ILM's additional work. Only a few scenes in this sequence which involved real actors, such as the appearance of the Grady twins, required them to construct a faithful reproduction of The Shining's set for the actors to interact with. Finally, the sequence was post-processed to introduce film grain and other aging effects to make the new footage indistinguishable from the original film.[36]

text: Cultural references[edit]

text: Ready Player One pays homage to the popular culture of the 1970s and 1980s as in the book, but also extends to the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s; several reviewers have identified well over one hundred references to films, television shows, music, toys, video games, anime and comics of these eras.[37][38][39] Cline did not have any issues with these copyrighted elements when he published the book, but was aware that securing all necessary rights would be a major obstacle for a film adaptation, a task made easier by Spielberg's reputation.[15] Spielberg and producer Kristie Macosko Krieger spent several years securing the rights for the copyrighted elements used in the film, starting before filming began, since some scenes would not be possible without certain copyrighted elements.[40][41] Spielberg estimated that they had gotten about 80% of the copyrighted elements they wanted.[15] Spielberg noted that in some cases, the filmmakers were able to secure rights for some but not all the characters they wanted; in negotiating with Warner Bros., they could not secure Close Encounters of the Third Kind from Columbia Pictures, despite the latter being one of Spielberg's first films as director.[42]

text: Blade Runner, which was integral to the plot of the book, was off limits to the film adaptation because Blade Runner 2049 was in production at the same time as Ready Player One. As a replacement, they conceived of players having to play out the events of The Shining, which Spielberg was able to secure the rights to as an homage to his friend Stanley Kubrick.[15] While Cline's original work heavily used the character of Ultraman, the rights over the character were still under legal dispute, requiring them to replace Ultraman with the titular robot from The Iron Giant.[43] Spielberg recognized that his past films were a significant part of the 1980s popular culture cited in the book, and to avoid being accused of "vanity", he opted to remove many of the references to his own work.[44] Cline stated that he believed Spielberg wanted to avoid self-references to films he directed, due to the criticism he received for his film 1941, which lampooned his own previous works Jaws and Duel. Cline said he had to convince Spielberg to include some iconic elements, such as the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine, which Spielberg conceded as the film was one he produced rather than directed.[45] Cline also asked ILM to include a reference to Last Action Hero, one of Penn's first screenplays, without Penn's knowledge.[46]

text: Music[edit]

text: On June 9, 2016, Variety stated that Spielberg's regular collaborator John Williams was planning to compose the film's score.[47] However, in July 2017, it was reported that Williams had left the project to work on Spielberg's The Post instead, with Alan Silvestri hired to take over scoring duties for Ready Player One.[48] The official score was released by WaterTower Music as a two-CD set on March 30, 2018,[49] with vinyl and cassette releases projected for the summer.[50] At Spielberg's request, Silvestri references his own music from Back to the Future within the film's score, as well as quoting the music from The Shining for the film's sequence at the Overlook Hotel.[51]

text: The film also includes licensed music from the 1970s and 1980s, which appears on the digital-only album Ready Player One: Songs From The Motion Picture.

text:
showOriginal Soundtrack

No.
Title
Performed by
Length

1.
"I Wanna Be Your Lover"
Prince
5:48

2.
"Everybody Wants to Rule the World"
Tears for Fears
4:12

3.
"Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)"
The Temptations
3:49

4.
"Stand on It"
Bruce Springsteen
3:06

5.
"One Way or Another"
Blondie
3:27

6.
"Can't Hide Love"
Earth, Wind & Fire
4:09

7.
"Blue Monday"
New Order
7:24

8.
"Stayin' Alive"
Bee Gees
4:45

9.
"We're Not Gonna Take It"
Twisted Sister
3:38

10.
"You Make My Dreams"
Hall & Oates
3:12

11.
"Pure Imagination (feat. Merethe Soltvedt)"
Bryan Nguyen
2:33

text:
showReady Player One (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

No.
Title
Writer(s)
Length

1.
"The Oasis"
Alan Silvestri
1:49

2.
"Hello, I'm James Halliday"
Alan Silvestri
2:01

3.
"Why Can't We Go Backwards?"
Alan Silvestri
4:18

4.
"An Orb Meeting"
Alan Silvestri
4:11

5.
"Real World Consequences"
Alan Silvestri
3:30

6.
"Sorrento Makes an Offer"
Alan Silvestri
3:34

7.
"Welcome to the Rebellion"
Alan Silvestri
3:14

8.
"High 5 Assembles"
Alan Silvestri
4:24

9.
"Orb of Osuvox"
Alan Silvestri
3:45

10.
"Sorrento Punked"
Alan Silvestri
3:57

11.
"Wade's Broadcast"
Alan Silvestri
5:51

12.
"Arty on the Inside"
Alan Silvestri
2:33

13.
"Looking for a Truck"
Alan Silvestri
5:36

14.
"She Never Left"
Alan Silvestri
2:41

15.
"Last Chance"
Alan Silvestri
3:21

16.
"Get Me Out of This"
Alan Silvestri
1:35

17.
"Hold on to Something"
Alan Silvestri
5:14

18.
"This Is Wrong"
Alan Silvestri
3:49

19.
"What Are You?"
Alan Silvestri
3:29

20.
"There's Something I Need to Do"
Alan Silvestri
5:01

21.
"Main Title"
Alan Silvestri
2:27

22.
"End Credits"
Alan Silvestri
8:04

text: Release[edit]

text: Ready Player One was initially scheduled to be released on December 15, 2017,[52] but was pushed back to March 30, 2018, to avoid competition with Star Wars: The Last Jedi.[53] In January 2018, it was announced the film's release date had been moved up one day to March 29, 2018.[54] The film had its world premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2018 (as part of the South by Southwest Film Festival).[4]

text: Warner Bros. distributes the film worldwide, with Village Roadshow Pictures distributing in several overseas territories.[55]

text: Ready Player One is scheduled to be released on digital retailers on July 3, 2018, followed by a home media release date of July 24.[56]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: As of June 17, 2018, Ready Player One has grossed $136.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $444.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $581.5 million.[6] Made on a production budget of $175 million, with about $150 million more spent on global marketing costs, the film needed to gross at least $440 million in order to break-even.[57]

text: North America[edit]

text: In the United States and Canada, Ready Player One was released alongside God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness and Acrimony, and was projected to gross $40–50 million from 4,100 theaters over its first four days.[58] It made $12.1 million on its first day, including $3.75 million from Wednesday night previews. It ended up grossing $41.8 million in its opening weekend (for a four-day total of $53.7 million), marking Spielberg's biggest debut since 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.[59] In its second weekend it grossed $25.1 million (a drop of 40%), finishing second behind newcomer A Quiet Place ($50 million).[60] In its third weekend the film made $11.2 million, coming in fourth behind Rampage, A Quiet Place and Truth or Dare.[61] In its fourth weekend the film made $7.4 million, finishing sixth at the box office [62] In its fifth weekend it grossed $2.4 million, a drop of 67% from previous weekend and finishing ninth.[63]

text: Other territories[edit]

text: Worldwide, the film was released day-in-date in 62 countries, including China, where it was expected to make $100–120 million in its opening weekend.[58] It grossed $2.9 million on its first day from 11 countries, including $980,000 from Korea.[64] In China the film made $14.75 million on its first day and earned a score of 9.2 from audiences on Douban (compared to the average 6–7 earned by Hollywood films).[57] It grossed $61.7 million in China in its opening weekend which is the highest opening ever for Warner Bros in said territory. The film's other major opening weekend territories were South Korea ($8.1 million), United Kingdom ($7.3 million), Russia ($6.1 million) and France ($6 million).[65] In its second weekend in China it grossed $42 million, and in third weekend grossed $13.9 million.[66][67] The film grossed $81.7 million in its second weekend overseas, dropping only 35% and is ahead of other newcomers A Quiet Place and Blockers.[66] In its third weekend it grossed $33.8 million overseas dropping 58.6%.[67] On April 21, 2018, the film topped $200 million in China, becoming the tenth-biggest U.S. release ever in the country.[68] In its fourth weekend in China, it grossed $8.24 million finishing third at the box office and has a total gross of $207 million.[69] It grossed $23 million overseas from 67 territories in its fourth weekend.[70] It opened in Japan, its final major market and grossed $4.4 million.[70] In its fifth weekend overseas, it grossed $8.6 million from 63 territories.[71] In China, the weekend was $2.4M to push it past Avatar as the no. 9 Hollywood title ever in the market with $213.8M (RMB 1.34B).[71] Japan's third frame held well during Golden Week with just a 6% drop from the last session. The total there is currently at $17.5M.[72] In its sixth weekend in China, it bumped up 10% from last session to lift the local cume to $220.2M.[72] As of April 29, the film's largest markets after China are United Kingdom ($22.6 million), France ($20.3 million), Korea ($18.6 million), Japan ($17.5 million), and Russia-CIS ($12.7 million).[72]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 73% based on 331 reviews, and an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ready Player One is a sweetly nostalgic thrill ride that neatly encapsulates Spielberg's strengths while adding another solidly engrossing adventure to his filmography."[73] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[74] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 82% overall positive score and a 65% "definite recommend".[57]

text: In a review for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico wrote that the film's "overwhelming" nature and non-stop action will likely thrill fans of pop culture; while he observed narrative weaknesses, such as a lack of depth among the supporting characters, he felt that they ultimately do not hinder the film from working "on the level of technical, blockbuster mastery that Spielberg helped define."[75] Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman called the film a "coruscating explosion of pop-culture eye candy," and found The Shining sequence to be "irresistible". However, he also criticized Spielberg's dichotomization of fantasy and reality, as well as the film having "more activity than it does layers."[76] IndieWire's Eric Kohn characterized the film as "an astonishing sci-fi spectacle and a relentless nostalgia trip at once" and praised both The Shining sequence as well as Penn's screenplay, particularly with respect to Mendelsohn's character. Nevertheless, he remarked that the film "drags a bunch in its final third".[77]

text: Alissa Wilkinson, writing for Vox, praised both the quality and quantity of the world building. She also commented on just how dystopian the future portrayed is, where the main characters fight to save the OASIS and the escape from reality it represents, with arguably less concern for the problems of the real world.[78]

text: Monica Castillo was more critical of the film in her review for The Guardian and drew attention to the absence of character arcs, the lack of resolution for plot holes in the novel, and the bloating of scenes in the film by trivia.[79] Matt Bobkin scored the film a 6 out of 10 for Exclaim! saying the film "is not so much a groundbreaking recontextualizing, more doe-eyed affection with no critical commentary."[80]

text: Possible sequel[edit]

text: Cline is working on a sequel to the novel.[81] For a sequel to the film, he stated, "[...] I think there's a good chance that, if this one does well, Warner Bros. will want to make a sequel. I don't know if Steven [Spielberg] would want to dive back in, because he would know what he is getting into. He's said that it's the third-hardest film he's made, out of dozens and dozens of movies."[82][83]

text: Notes[edit]

text: Jump up ^ IOI employees are called Sixers because their employee IDs are six digits long and begin with the number 6


document_title: Mid-Atlantic Ridge

question_text: where do some rift valleys form along the oceanic ridge system

root

text: Mid-Atlantic Ridge

text: Discovery[edit]

text: A ridge under the Atlantic Ocean was first inferred by Matthew Fontaine Maury in 1850. The existence of the ridge was discovered during the expedition of HMS Challenger in 1872.[2] A team of scientists on board, led by Charles Wyville Thomson, discovered a large rise in the middle of the Atlantic while investigating the future location for a transatlantic telegraph cable.[3] The existence of such a ridge was confirmed by sonar in 1925[4] and was found to extend around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean by the German Meteor expedition.[5]

tag: p

text: In the 1950s, mapping of the Earth's ocean floors by Bruce Heezen, Maurice Ewing, Marie Tharp and others revealed that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge had a strange bathymetry of valleys and ridges,[6] with its central valley being seismologically active and the epicenter of many earthquakes.[7][8] Ewing, Heezen and Tharp discovered that the ridge is part of a 40,000-km-long essentially continuous system of mid-ocean ridges on the floors of all the Earth’s oceans.[9] The discovery of this worldwide ridge system led to the theory of seafloor spreading and general acceptance of Wegener's theory of continental drift and expansion in the modified form of plate tectonics. The ridge is central to the breakup of the hypothetical supercontinent of Pangaea that began some 180 million years ago.

text: Notable features[edit]

text: The Mid-Atlantic Ridge includes a deep rift valley that runs along the axis of the ridge along nearly its entire length. This rift marks the actual boundary between adjacent tectonic plates, where magma from the mantle reaches the seafloor, erupting as lava and producing new crustal material for the plates.

text: Near the equator, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is divided into the North Atlantic Ridge and the South Atlantic Ridge by the Romanche Trench, a narrow submarine trench with a maximum depth of 7,758 m (25,453 ft), one of the deepest locations of the Atlantic Ocean. This trench, however, is not regarded as the boundary between the North and South American Plates, nor the Eurasian and African Plates.

text: Islands[edit]

text: The islands on or near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, from north to south, with their respective highest peaks and location, are:

text: Northern Hemisphere (North Atlantic Ridge):

text:
Jan Mayen (Beerenberg, 2277 m (at 71°06′N 08°12′W / 71.100°N 8.200°W / 71.100; -8.200), in the Arctic Ocean
Iceland (Hvannadalshnúkur in the Vatnajökull, 2109.6 m (at 64°01′N 16°41′W / 64.017°N 16.683°W / 64.017; -16.683), through which the ridge runs
Azores (Ponta do Pico or Pico Alto, on Pico Island, 2351 m, (at 38°28′0″N 28°24′0″W / 38.46667°N 28.40000°W / 38.46667; -28.40000)
Saint Peter and Paul Rocks (Southwest Rock, 22.5 m, at 00°55′08″N 29°20′35″W / 0.91889°N 29.34306°W / 0.91889; -29.34306)

tag: ol

text: Southern Hemisphere (South Atlantic Ridge):

text:
Ascension Island (The Peak, Green Mountain, 859 m, at 07°59′S 14°25′W / 7.983°S 14.417°W / -7.983; -14.417)
Saint Helena (Diana's Peak, 818 m at 15°57′S 5°41′W / 15.950°S 5.683°W / -15.950; -5.683)
Tristan da Cunha (Queen Mary's Peak, 2062 m, at 37°05′S 12°17′W / 37.083°S 12.283°W / -37.083; -12.283)
Gough Island (Edinburgh Peak, 909 m, at 40°20′S 10°00′W / 40.333°S 10.000°W / -40.333; -10.000)
Bouvet Island (Olavtoppen, 780 m, at 54°24′S 03°21′E / 54.400°S 3.350°E / -54.400; 3.350)

text: Geology[edit]

text: The ridge sits atop a geologic feature known as the Mid-Atlantic Rise, which is a progressive bulge that runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean, with the ridge resting on the highest point of this linear bulge. This bulge is thought to be caused by upward convective forces in the asthenosphere pushing the oceanic crust and lithosphere. This divergent boundary first formed in the Triassic period, when a series of three-armed grabens coalesced on the supercontinent Pangaea to form the ridge. Usually, only two arms of any given three-armed graben become part of a divergent plate boundary. The failed arms are called aulacogens, and the aulacogens of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge eventually became many of the large river valleys seen along the Americas and Africa (including the Mississippi River, Amazon River and Niger River). The Fundy Basin on the Atlantic coast of North America between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada is evidence of the ancestral Mid-Atlantic Ridge.[10][11]


document_title: Market economy

question_text: who makes the important economic decisions in a free market economy

text: Market economy

text: Characteristics[edit]

text: Supply and demand[edit]

text: Market economies rely upon a price system to signal market actors to adjust production and investment. Price formation relies on the interaction of supply and demand to reach or approximate an equilibrium where unit price for a particular good or service is at a point where the quantity demanded equals the quantity supplied.

text: Governments can intervene by establishing price ceilings or price floors in specific markets (such as minimum wage laws in the labor market), or use fiscal policy to discourage certain consumer behavior or to address market externalities generated by certain transactions (Pigovian taxes). Different perspectives exist on the role of government in both regulating and guiding market economies and in addressing social inequalities produced by markets. Fundamentally a market economy requires that a price system affected by supply and demand exists as the primary mechanism for allocating resources irrespective of the level of regulation.

text: Property rights[edit]

text: For market economies to function efficiently, governments must establish clearly defined and enforceable property rights for assets and capital goods. However, property rights does not specifically mean private property rights, and market economies do not logically presuppose the existence of private ownership of the means of production. Market economies can and often do include various types of cooperatives or autonomous state-owned enterprises that acquire capital goods and raw materials in capital markets. These enterprises utilize a market-determined free price system to allocate capital goods and labor.[7] In addition, there are many variations of market socialism where the majority of capital assets are socially-owned with markets allocating resources between socially-owned firms. These models range from systems based on employee-owned enterprises based on self-management to a combination of public ownership of the means of production with factor markets.[8]

text: Capitalism[edit]

text:
Part of a series on

Capitalism

Concepts[show]

Business
Business cycle
Businessperson
Capital
Capital accumulation
Capital markets
Capitalist mode of production
Company
Corporation
Competitive markets
Economic interventionism
Economic surplus
Entrepreneurship
Fictitious capital
Financial market
Free price system
Free market
Goods and services
Investor
Invisible hand
Liberalization
Marginalism
Money
Private property
Privatization
Profit
Rent seeking
Supply and demand
Surplus value
Value
Wage labour

Economic systems[show]

Anglo-Saxon
Free market
Laissez-faire
Mercantile
Mixed
Nordic
Regulated market
Regulatory
Rhine
Social market
State
Welfare
East Asian

Economic theories[show]

American
Austrian
Chicago
Classical
Institutional
Keynesian
Marxian
Modern Monetary
Monetarist
Neoclassical
New institutional
New Keynesian
Supply-side

Origins[show]

Age of Enlightenment
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text: Capitalism generally refers to an economic system where the means of production are largely or entirely privately owned and operated for a profit, structured on the process of capital accumulation. In general, in capitalist systems investment, distribution, income, and prices are determined by markets, whether regulated or unregulated.

text: There are different variations of capitalism with different relationships to markets. In Laissez-faire and free market variations of capitalism, markets are utilized most extensively with minimal or no state intervention and regulation over prices and the supply of goods and services. In interventionist, welfare capitalism and mixed economies, markets continue to play a dominant role but are regulated to some extent by government in order to correct market failures or to promote social welfare. In state capitalist systems, markets are relied upon the least, with the state relying heavily on either indirect economic planning and/or state-owned enterprises to accumulate capital.

text: Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism, but most feel[who?] that the term "mixed economies" more precisely describes most contemporary economies, due to their containing both private-owned and state-owned enterprises. In capitalism, prices determine the demand-supply scale. For example, higher demand for certain goods and services lead to higher prices and lower demand for certain goods lead to lower prices.

text: Laissez-faire[edit]

text: Laissez-faire is synonymous with what was referred to as strict capitalist free market economy during the early and mid-19th century[citation needed] as a classical liberal (right-libertarian) ideal to achieve. It is generally understood that the necessary components for the functioning of an idealized free market include the complete absence of government regulation, subsidies, artificial price pressures, and government-granted monopolies (usually classified as coercive monopoly by free market advocates) and no taxes or tariffs other than what is necessary for the government to provide protection from coercion and theft, maintaining peace and property rights, and providing for basic public goods. Right-libertarian advocates of anarcho-capitalism see the state as morally illegitimate and economically unnecessary and destructive.

text: Free-market economy[edit]

text: Free-market economy refers to an economic system where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy. It typically entails support for highly competitive markets, private ownership of productive enterprises. Laissez-faire is a more extensive form of free-market economy where the role of the state is limited to protecting property rights.

text: Welfare capitalism[edit]

text: Welfare capitalism refers to a capitalist economy that includes public policies favoring extensive provisions for social welfare services. The economic mechanism involves a free market and the predominance of privately owned enterprises in the economy, but public provision of universal welfare services aimed at enhancing individual autonomy and maximizing equality. Examples of contemporary welfare capitalism include the Nordic model of capitalism predominant in Northern Europe.[9]

text: Regional models[edit]

text: Anglo-Saxon model[edit]

text: Anglo-Saxon capitalism refers to the form of capitalism predominant in Anglophone countries and typified by the economy of the United States. It is contrasted with European models of capitalism such as the continental Social market model and the Nordic model. Anglo-Saxon capitalism refers to a macroeconomic policy regime and capital market structure common to the Anglophone economies. Among these characteristics are low rates of taxation, more open financial markets, lower labor market protections, and a less generous welfare state eschewing collective bargaining schemes found in the continental and northern European models of capitalism.[10]

text: East Asian model[edit]

text: The East Asian model of capitalism involves a strong role for state investment, and in some instances involves state-owned enterprises. The state takes an active role in promoting economic development through subsidies, the facilitation of "national champions", and an export-based model of growth. The actual practice of this model varies by country. This designation has been applied to the economies of Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the People's Republic of China.

text: A related concept in political science is the developmental state.

text: Social market economy[edit]

text: This model was implemented by Alfred Müller-Armack and Ludwig Erhard after World War II in West Germany. The social market economic model (sometimes called "Rhine capitalism") is based upon the idea of realizing the benefits of a free market economy, especially economic performance and high supply of goods, while avoiding disadvantages such as market failure, destructive competition, concentration of economic power and the socially harmful effects of market processes. The aim of the social market economy is to realize greatest prosperity combined with best possible social security. One difference from the free market economy is that the state is not passive, but takes active regulatory measures.[11] The social policy objectives include employment, housing and education policies, as well as a socio-politically motivated balancing of the distribution of income growth. Characteristics of social market economies are a strong competition policy and a contractionary monetary policy. The philosophical background is Neoliberalism or Ordoliberalism.[12]

text: Market socialism[edit]

text:
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text: Market socialism is a form of market economy where the means of production are socially-owned. In a market socialist economy, firms operate according to the rules of supply and demand and operate to maximize profit; the principal difference between market socialism and capitalism being that the profits accrue to society as a whole as opposed to private owners.[13]

text: The distinguishing feature between non-market socialism and market socialism is the existence of a market for factors of production and the criteria of profitability for enterprises. Profits derived from publicly owned enterprises can variously be used to reinvest in further production, to directly finance government and social services, or be distributed to the public at large through a social dividend or basic income system.[14]

text: Models of market socialism[edit]

text: Market socialism traces its roots to classical economics and the works of Adam Smith, the Ricardian socialists, and Mutualist philosophers.[15]

text: In the 1930s the economists Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner developed a model of socialism that posited that a public body (dubbed the "Central Planning Board") could set prices through a trial-and-error approach until they equaled the marginal cost of production in order to achieve perfect competition and pareto optimality. In this model of socialism, firms would be state-owned and managed by their employees, and the profits would be disbursed among the population in a social dividend. This model came to be referred to as "market socialism" because it involved the use of money, a price system, and simulated capital markets; all of which were absent from traditional of non-market socialism.

text: A more contemporary model of market socialism is that put forth by the American economist John Roemer, referred to as Economic democracy. In this model, social ownership is achieved through public ownership of equity in a market economy. A Bureau of Public Ownership (BPO) would own controlling shares in publicly listed firms, so that the profits generated would be used for public finance and the provision of a basic income.

text: Libertarian socialists and left-anarchists often promote a form of market socialism in which enterprises are owned and managed cooperatively by their workforce so that the profits directly remunerate the employee-owners. These cooperative enterprises would compete with each other in the same way private companies compete with each other in a capitalist market. The first major elaboration of this type of market socialism was made by Pierre Joseph Proudhon and was called "mutualism".

text: Self-managed market socialism was promoted in Yugoslavia by economists Branko Horvat and Jaroslav Vanek. In the self-managed model of socialism, firms would be directly owned by their employees and the management board would be elected by employees. These cooperative firms would compete with each other in a market for both capital goods and for selling consumer goods.

text: Socialist market economy[edit]

text: Following the 1978 reforms, the People's Republic of China developed what it calls a "socialist market economy", in which most of the economy is under state ownership, with the state enterprises organized as joint-stock companies with various government agencies owning controlling shares through a shareholder system. Prices are set by a largely free-price system and the state-owned enterprises are not subjected to micromanagement by a government planning agency. A similar system called "socialist-oriented market economy" has emerged in Vietnam following the Đổi Mới reforms in 1986. This system is frequently characterized as "state capitalism" instead of market socialism because there is no meaningful degree of employee self-management in firms, because the state enterprises retain their profits instead of distributing them to the workforce or government, and because many function as de facto private enterprises. The profits neither finance a social dividend to benefit the population at large, nor do they accrue to their employees.

text: In the People's Republic of China, this economic model is presented as a "preliminary stage of socialism" to explain the dominance of capitalistic management practices and forms of enterprise organization in both the state and non-state sectors.

text: In Religion[edit]

text: A wide range of philosophers and theologians have linked market economies to monotheistic values. Michael Novak described capitalism as being closely related to Catholicism. But, Max Weber drew a connection between capitalism and Protestantism. The Economist Jeffrey Sachs has stated that his work was inspired by the healing characteristics of Judaism. Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks of the United Synagogue draws a correlation between modern capitalism and the Jewish image of the Golden Calf.[16]

text: Christianity[edit]

text: In the Christian faith, the Liberation theology movement advocated involving the church in labor market capitalism. Many priests and nuns integrated themselves into labor organizations. Others moved into the slums to live among the poor. The holy trinity was interpreted as a call for social equality and the elimination of poverty. The Pope was highly active in his criticism of Liberation Theology. He was particularly concerned about the increased fusion between Christianity and Marxism. He closed Catholic institutions that taught Liberation Theology. He also dismissed some of its activists from the church.[17]

text: Buddhism[edit]

text: The Buddhist approach to the market economy was dealt with in E.F. Schumacher’s 1966 essay, “Buddhist Economics,”. Schumacher asserted that a market economy guided by Buddhist principles would more successfully meet the needs of its people. He emphasized the importance or pursuing occupations that adhered to Buddhist teachings. The essay would later become required reading for a course that Clair Brown offered at University of California, Berkeley.[18]

text: Criticisms[edit]

text: The economist Joseph Stiglitz argues that markets suffer from informational inefficiency and the presumed efficiency of markets stems from the faulty assumptions of neoclassical welfare economics, particularly the assumption of perfect and costless information, and related incentive problems. Neoclassical economics assumes static equilibrium, and efficient markets require that there be no non-convexities, even though nonconvexities are pervasive in modern economies. Stiglitz's critique applies to both existing models of capitalism and to hypothetical models of market socialism. However, Stiglitz does not advocate replacing markets, but states that there is a significant role for government intervention to boost the efficiency of markets and to address the pervasive market failures that exist in contemporary economies.[19] A fair Market Economy is in fact a Martingale or a Brownian motion model and for a participant competitor in such a model there is no more than 50% of success chances at any given moment. Due to the fractal nature of any fair market and being market participants subject to the law of competition, which impose reinvesting an increasing part of profits, the mean statistical chance of bankruptcy within the half life of any participant is also 50% [20] and 100% whether an infinite sample of time is considered.

text: Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert claim that "markets inherently produce class division."[21] Albert states that even if everyone started out with a balanced job complex (doing a mix of roles of varying creativity, responsibility and empowerment) in a market economy, class divisions would arise.

text: Without taking the argument that far, it is evident that in a market system with uneven distribution of empowering work, such as Economic Democracy, some workers will be more able than others to capture the benefits of economic gain. For example, if one worker designs cars and another builds them, the designer will use his cognitive skills more frequently than the builder. In the long term, the designer will become more adept at conceptual work than the builder, giving the former greater bargaining power in a firm over the distribution of income. A conceptual worker who is not satisfied with his income can threaten to work for a company that will pay him more. The effect is a class division between conceptual and manual laborers, and ultimately managers and workers, and a de facto labor market for conceptual workers.[21]

text: David McNally argues that the logic of the market inherently produces inequitable outcomes and leads to unequal exchanges, arguing that Adam Smith's moral intent and moral philosophy espousing equal exchange was undermined by the practice of the free markets he championed. The development of the market economy involved coercion, exploitation and violence that Adam Smith's moral philosophy could not countenance. McNally also criticizes market socialists for believing in the possibility of "fair" markets based on equal exchanges to be achieved by purging "parasitical" elements from the market economy, such as private ownership of the means of production. McNally argues that market socialism is an oxymoron when socialism is defined as an end to wage-based labor.[22]