Scarcity

Microsociety week 1

In Microsociety week 1, we listened to a story called 'Just Enough'. The story is about a planet called Just Enough. Everyone on that planet had just enough to survive. But then, there was not enough food packages, and people got into a huge argument. Then the head of the police force saw what was happening and said they must change the name to 'Not Enough'.

To understand this further, our teacher put us into 6 groups of 5 people. Each group was given a resource package. A circle 10 cm in diameter was worth 10 points, a counter was 10 points, and a 10cm wide square was 5 points. The aim of the game was to make as may of these shapes in 20 minutes, and whoever had the most at the end of the time had won.

In some packages there were compasses, rulers, pencils, but no paper - but they used the paper packages even though they weren't meant to (which was unknown to them at the time). What was meant to happen was that they were meant to trade with people who had very few things - for example our group which only had paper. We were meant to trade, but we did not get that!

We learnt that some countries are rich in resources that others are poor in, but other countries might have things they want. The way to fix this is to trade. Usually they trade by money, as this is an easy way to trade for something they want as it can be transported easily and split up into pounds and pence.

Trees

Trees can be a very limited resource in some places, and of course they are needed in many ways. Trees produce the very oxygen that we are breathing in right now, they give homes to millions of animals and provide spectacular views and walks. Thousands of trees are being cut down in the Amazon rainforest every day which means thousands of animals such as birds and monkeys, not forgetting all the insects. People do this just so they can make money, destroying large amounts of trees to make room for their farms.

In England and many other places, we need to improve on using less paper by recycling it.But also in England we are good at after chopping down a tree we replant so it will eventually grow into the thing it once was.