25/04/2018

Microsociety week 1- Scarcity

This week in microsociety we were looking at scarcity, and how the world has a limited amount of resources. An example of limited resources is coal. There used to be lots and lots of coal, so it was quite cheap, but now that there isn't that much, the price has gone up.

To explain scarcity, we read a story about the people of Justenuf. It goes like this.

Once upon a time, there was the planet of Justenuf. It was called this because it had just enough resources to keep everyone happy. There were food packs growing on the trees with

more of the food that everyone liked, like ice

cream, and less of the foods people didn't like,

like Brussels sprouts.Everyone was happy and

satisfied, until one day the planet fell ill. Because it had always looked after them they had forgotten to look after it. "What should we do?" groaned the captain, as it was the festival of plentifulness. As she went outside she heard the people arguing over the food packs.

How would you have shared out the food without bias?

After reading the story, we played the

shape game, were we each were given

a pack of resources. For instance, my group

got a pencil, a pair of scissors five sheets of

paper, two tokens and a 15cm ruler. We had

to make a 10cm square or a circle with a

10cm diameter which we could exchange

to the 'bank' for five points- you could

exchange a token for five points.