The 8th Slice

This term I took a class Econ: Risking Value. In this class, we talked about the market and how it works, how price is influenced and how the market can be affected by different factors. We also read part of Doughnut Economics which is what this project is partly based on. I really enjoyed this class because I have always wanted to get a better understanding of the stock market and this class helped with that. In this class, we took multiple Field Experiences to a few really cool places. My favorite was the trip to Rheaply which is a small company that aims to re-purpose items that would normally be thrown away by large corporations. I found this interesting because they have found a small part of the market that is nearly untouched which I thought was really cool. For this project, we needed to come up with another economic theory to add to the 7 already talked about by Doughnut Economics. For my project, I decided to talk about Industry 4.0, a term created by The World Economic Forum.






How Robots Have Stolen and Created

Jobs being filled by non-human counterparts has always been prevalent in society but never as much as now. It is predicted that by 2030 robots will replace up to 20 million factory jobs. We are on the brink of a new revolution that utilizes low-cost high-power computers that will be more efficient and faster than humans. This is both a problem and a solution. Solution because now we will be able to produce higher quantities for cheaper. Problem because robots and AI are kicking people out of factories, trucks, and stores.

 

Resources

Dormehl, Luke. “The Best Examples of Robots Replacing Jobs Around the World.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 12 May 2019, https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/examples-of-robots-replacing-jobs/.

“Robots 'to Replace up to 20 Million Factory Jobs' by 2030.” BBC News, BBC, 26 June 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48760799.

Jeff Morgan- Manufacturing- Trinity College - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/robots-have-been-taking-our-jobs-for-50-years-so-why-are-we-worried-now


Reflection

I found this project to be interesting because I really enjoyed the idea of talking about the economy in a modern-day perspective. What was really interesting to me was how modern-day technologies have changed the platform which we base trade-off of. I have always thought of the economy as something that should have a basic plan that we build around but this project showed me that there are different ways to go about creating an economy and that was really eye-opening. At the beginning of the project, I would have said that the only good option would be capitalism but after this project, I became more open to different ideas.