To start the analysis of this concept, we need to mention that it has negative connotation. It is an abstract idea and a very general notion. First of all it is a disagreement. And prefix dis shows the negation. We can characterize the term from different sides. Conflict is a continuing disagreement carried on between two or more parties. Conflict is a situation when interests of one party are opposite to the interests of another. Conflict is a unique relationship between people, groups of people or unions that appears because of their controversial views, positions and attitudes towards different things. The meaning of the notion “conflict” completely depends on the type of conflict. That’s why it is necessary to single out different kinds of conflict. First of all, conflicts may be of psychological nature. In this case conflict is an absence of consent between two or more parties. We can only speak about literally conflict. Literally conflict is a main principle for developing of the plot. It is conflict that determines the behaviour of characters, the progress of events. Through the conflict the author expresses his understanding of life, his attitude towards life contradictions. There also exists legal conflict – where parties have disputes on the subject of juridical rights and responsibilities. For settling this type of conflict parties need the third party – for example a court. We can single out matrimonial conflict as a separate type of conflict. Political conflict is a conflict between representatives of different parties, unions are countries. The difference of political conflict is that people do not battle for their own interests, but for the interests of a party, country or union. But conflict as it is nowadays is possible only between underdeveloped countries or between a superpower and an undeveloped country. And between superpowers only contradictions are possible. Confrontation is a conflict situation between opposite sides, but it is milder than conflict. Nowadays the open conflict is impossible between two superpowers, because it can lead only to complete destruction of the Earth. This state of affairs takes place after the invention of nuclear weapons. Of course, divergence of interests between different nations is inevitable. It is in nature of human being. If the country is powerful enough, it wouldn’t stop its development. It wants more and therefore conquers. Now as a human being becomes more humane, such situations are impossible, because the special organizations exist which try to prevent forcible annexations. But conflict isn’t always a destructive notion. Thought thrives on conflict. So it may be constructive.
And now let's start. How will you call this situation? And this? And this? Just let me guess... Have you just mentioned something like “an argumentation”, “a quarrel”, “a war”? Names differ but the essence remains the same – it's a conflict, i.e. the situation where the interests of opposite groups meet. When do conflicts appear? First, there should be some “participants” of the conflict. Then, there should be certain “difference” that reveals itself in people's appearance, manner of speaking, habits, life-vision, position, preferences, level of education, etc. When this difference becomes obvious for the participants and they are not eager to accept it, the very “difference” turns out to become a “controversy”. Then a “question” appears – what should we do? Let me call this situation “a potential conflict”. If the participants are not able to find the answer to solve this problem, they begin to act and that announces the beginning of the “open conflict”. The form of the conflict depends on the way they act. Conflicts can manifest themselves in different forms – from argumentation to confrontation, from quarrel to war. There exists an opinion that all conflicts are destructive. But is it really so? No doubts that such form as “a war” as far as any other aggressive conflict is destructive. But what about other conflict types? I tend to believe that conflict can manifest itself in a rather constructive form – argumentation. Argumentation is close to debate and discussion where two or more points of view are opposed to each other in order to find the answer to any question. This is the mildest kind of conflict that is constructive from the point of view of its nature. Through thrives on conflict, people say.
Conflict is the result of some quarrel or misunderstanding. If we speak about conflict on the world-level, then it usually leads to such things like terrorism, problems concerning ethnic groups, wars, problems concerning religious issues and the consequences of these kinds of conflicts are usually the death of sufferings of human beings. And though using such methods one of the opponents usually wins, I still tend to believe that any form of conflict is usually negative and destructive, at least in the very beginning. It is never possible to avoid a conflict. Our society is a group of people that make small subgroups according to their interests, habits, traditions and many other things. And from time to time there can be situations when opinions are different. And exactly this can provoke a conflict. So in my opinion conflicts differ according to the participants involved. On the one hand, a simple quarrel between friends is a conflict. And this conflict is usually regulated in a short period of time and does not do much harm to people who surround us. On the other hand, a conflict can exist between counties, nations. So it is an absolutely different kind of conflicts that is why it should be regulated in a different way. Here we can speak about confrontation as well. And I should also add that confrontation is like an eternal conflict. It will always exist in our world since if we compare western and eastern countries, we can easily see that economic, political, social and educational levels differ too much. The different development of these issues provokes different kinds of conflicts like terrorism, racial problems and things like that. And to my mind, some countries are so underdeveloped in comparison with Europe or the USA that they will not be able to be at the same level with these countries for a very long time, maybe even never. To sum up all the facts that were mentioned above, I would like to say that in any conflict the hardest thing to do is to find a solution that would be ok for both opponents. But what I would really want to emphasize is that every conflict can be regulated, it should just be desirable.
Conflict is conventionally understood as “controversy; quarrel; discord of action, feeling, or effect; antagonism or opposition, as of interests or principles”. This definition is taken from a dictionary. My understanding of conflict as a concept presupposes, first of all, misunderstanding and absence of intention to reach an agreement. Conflict manifests itself in various forms: war, terrorism, crimes, argumentation, competition, silence, protest. The forms of manifestation can’t be regarded as positive or negative ones, they are neutral, as well as the very notion of conflict. Conflict is just a result provoked by innumerable causes. No form of conflict is constructive; constructivism is intrinsic to the ways of a conflict’s solution – negotiations, discussion, compromise, alienation, isolation. A Peace Pledge Union Project’s site holds a strong position on the essence of conflicts. “The first important thing to grasp is that it is entirely dependent on the people involved. It depends on their having a particular point of view”. Thus we cannot say that conflict possesses a feature of objectivity. Conflict stops to exist when the points of view coincide. The confronting points of view may not have independent and irrefutable facts and evidence to support them. The participants (subjects) of a conflict are individuals, groups of people (nations, countries) and supranational institutions. Conflict can also be ranked among global issues but it is a controversial matter to what group of global issues it can be added. Conflict is rightfully called a metaconcept as it stands above all the classifications. Conflicts can arise in the sphere of social interrelations, environmental issues, human rights, economic well-being, politic tendencies, etc. The metaconcept of conflict as an explanatory principle in a scientific system helps to establish relationships within certain categories of global problems. What is important here is that conflict is both a consequence and a trigger of a certain issue. If we take the sphere of law and its implementation, we are likely to see that conflicts are born in both cases: when there is a conflict and it facilitates the adoption of a law and when the issuing of a law gives rise to conflict. At times it seems conflict is an all-piercing phenomenon we can’t overcome. However, scholars have successfully worked out certain rules helping to minimize the effects of conflict situations and to “put out the fire” quickly. The first step to solving a confrontation or a quarrel is listening. We are taught effective communication and the strategies of keeping up the conversation but we seldom take notice of listening strategies. And I’m convinced this is the key point in solving a conflict. You should listen showing sympathy and care; concentrate on the topic of discussion; treat the speaker respectively; you should not give assessment until you’ve listened to the end; let the speaker know what has been understood and what was unclear; use non-verbal communication to assure the speaker he or she is being understood. The more detailed instructions on how to deal with conflict situations are given, for instance, here.
There are a great number of services nowadays. We always prefer those places where the quality of service is good. But we tend to select between public and private sector all the time.
Private sector means a little manufacture or something like that. It is not a big, individual production of gods and services. Public sector depends on the government. It is always something huge that can serve a big part of people instead of private sector.
To my mind such notion as health care should be in public sector because the government should take care of the health of the country and invest money in it. But nowadays we have a lot of private clinics and people prefer it because of the fast service. People think that private clinics can satisfy you by high-qualified specialists. But it is not always so. There are such cases when specialists form public hospitals were better than those in private. Public sector also includes building roads, running a post service, maintaining the army because public sector is a stable term and it supports and controls by our government.
As for private sector people usually run a shop, a restaurant because private sector means an individual production. Such notions as a museum, a cinema, a park, railroads, television, telecommunications, transportation can belong to both sectors. But the difference will be in one thing – everything that is private costs money. And the entrance in public parks , for example, are usually for free.
Many people think that the computer is one of the most useful inventions of the 20th century. So they prefer online learning. And I try to explain why. As far as I an concerned learning on the Internet has a large number of advantages. To begin with ,the web is a great place to learn new skills. Sitting at home, people may learn how to dance or to make paper airplanes. Such online lessons are free of charge, that is why they are so popular. In addition students can use their Internet connection to get access to lerning materials. So learning on the Internet has a practical value. To say more pepole may use Internet to improve their speaking skills. Students can see and speak to people in a school in Spain or France. But in contrast to this online lerning may cause some problems. For example, our health suffers when we often use Internet: bad eyesight, sleep, mood and so on. People spending hours at the computer see worse, often feel exhausted and sleep less. Secondly, online lessons do not have full information about subject they tought. Moreover we have no personal contact with Internet teachers. To sum it up, I can agree that online learning is very important nowadays. I personally think that computers may help us in the future. But of course we cannot avoid some problems using it.
The economy of each country is built in such a way, that in general consists of two main sectors. Ono of them is the Private Sector. The Private Sector is the sphere to which all the private companies and corporations belong. It consists of a large number of businesses run by private entrepreneurs. The private sector clusters are aimed at making profit and building-up private assets. The majority of shops, malls, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, boutiques etc. belongs to the Private sector. The second sector of the economy is even as big as the first one and also includes lots of elements – it is the Public Sector. The Public Sector is the sphere mainly controlled by the government because it is often unprofitable and requires great amounts of money to function. Post, Health and Housing services are good examples of the public sector elements. The government also invests money into public places such as parks, maintains the army, builds roads and railroads. But there are also businesses which can be run both by the government and by private entrepreneurs as well. For example the Russian Railways company belongs to a private sector and is a bright example of private company serving approximately everyone in the country, who travels by train. I am sure that it might be a very good idea, if private entrepreneurs took part in the spheres canonically controlled by the government. I mean that the government doesn’t have to compete with anybody, and business struggle is the engine for progress. So the involvement of private companies in social services sector may have a favorable effect on the quality of goods and services provided.
Economy is subdivided into two sectors, public and private. Private sector is the sector of economy which is run by individuals with the minimum interference from the government. This sector is aimed at getting profit. Public sector is the sector of economy which is run by the government (local, federal or state) for the public good. That is why we may conclude that the private sector differs from the public sector of economy in the respect that it is aimed at getting profit. Private economic producers are all kinds of businesses, like the ones that produce food and drinks (the “Coca-Cola” company) or clothes (for example, “Nike” or “Reebok”). The public sector maintains the army, provides running water and electricity, postal services and medical care. But actually it has always been a debatable question to which sector of economy this or that service should belong. Let’s consider medical care, for example. In any case health care for individuals should be in the public sector. But, of course, it can be in the private one as well. I mean that businesses can be allowed to provide medical services but each member of the society, no matter how much the person earns, must have an opportunity to be cured in case of some illness. As for parks, they demand great investments and are unprofitable. But they should be run for the public good. That’s why they belong to the public sector as well. Of course, the spheres of influence of these sectors are different. But nevertheless both are indispensable.
Talking about the market basket we should at first mention things which are included, for example, here in Russia. There are many things but we enumerate only some of them – milk, bread, oil, meat, fish, milk, clothes, household services, and transportation. It consists of 160 goods, and the biggest basket is in the USA – about 300 items. The thing here is to speculate about which goods are to be included into the market basket, and what is unreasonable in the present basket.
So, I should say that our government who is a compiler and executor of the market basket in the country believes that we need only 100 g of meat and 43 g of fish daily. At the same time the market defines the cost of living directly. So, the minimal needs of Russian people turn into the cost of living which is non-equal across the country. At the same time nowadays we have many other services that can be added to the market basket. For example there is hardly a person who doesn’t use mobile communication. So, it would be quite sensible to include this kind of service. Also, the Internet is a great candidate for inclusion, but so far not everyone uses it, not like bread, for example. But in a decade I think it should be there. The problem is that this is all will lead to the increase in the cost of living, consequently to the increase in minimal wages. It’s not very profitable for the state, so I don’t think that it will happen. Nevertheless it all depends on the economy development.
So, such things as the market basket, cost of living, minimal wages are all interconnected, and their fate depends only on the overall growth of the economy performance and on our state’s effective economic performance.
Standard of living isa minimum of necessities, comforts, or luxuries held essential for maintaining a person or group in customary or proper status or circumstances. Another notion that can be mentioned is a cost of living. This is the cost of purchasing those goods and services which are included in an accepted standard level of consumption.
In our country the standard of living is not very high. Our government supposes that 4,500 roubles per month are enough for an ordinary person. On the other hand the cost of living is becoming higher. Even now the standard of living is lower than the cost of living.
Besides this there is one more problem. The cost of living is calculated and represented by the arithmetic average. And this calculation doesn’t show that there are extremely rich people and those who are very poor. So for the most part of people the cost of living is rather high.
The increase of the cost of living is a sign of inflation. Government tries not to let people pay attention to this and many other facts of the kind. Bureaucrats take care only about their profit, but not about the standard of living and all the other economic problems. Inflation as a result of the increase of cost of living can be controlled and stopped. But in this case government must change the economic system and start to develop private business in connection with the public sector. That leads to the reformation in the sphere of Russian economy. As we can see now there are too many laws preventing private business from its development.
To conclude I should say that it’s possible to control and develop the economy in Russia, but this can be done only by our government.