Question 1 

A commodity is any basic good with a role of an input in the economic production of goods or services. It is also any physical good that has the ability to be sold or bought on a commodity market. That is to say that anything used in the manufacturing process to become an everyday good is a commodity. Commodities are basic goods used in commerce. They are interchangeable with other goods. Basic commodities available today include coffee beans, copper, gold, wheat, and crude oil. Technological advances have ushered in a new era that has created new types of commodities in the market, including bandwidth and cell phone minutes. More recently, the definition of a commodity has expanded to include foreign indexes and currency and other financial products. When traded in an exchange, a commodity must meet specific minimum standards, the basis grade.

Karl Marx defined the value of a commodity to include two contradictory elements: exchange value and use value. Use value is used to mean the utility of a commodity in its role of satisfying needs or wants according to its material properties. Therefore, use value is linked to the physical attributes of a commodity, including all material uses that are put on the object and the human needs fulfilled. Exchange value, on the other hand, is the worth of a commodity usually expressed in terms of a price. Exchange value is the amount of services or goods that are obtained in a market in exchange of other particular commodities. It can be equated to the price of a good bought and sold in the market. For example, a given quantity of rice can be exchange for a dozen of eggs, giving the value of that quantity of rice as equal to a dozen of eggs. This creates a definition of exchange value in terms of quantitative relation as a proportion that the value in use is exchanged for that of another. Exchange value is a comparison of use value, where users attach a certain value to a commodity and provide comparative aspects of how it should be exchanged in the market. Usually, money replaces the need to use the use value of a commodity against the other by equating value to quantity and other elements such as time and place. For example, commodities like air and water have high use value but are available on large scale thus creating a low exchange value.

Question 5

Mechanization is the introduction of automated devices such as machines into activities, places, and processes. Mechanization has become a phenomenon of the 21st century as more organization turn to machines and automated devices in an effort to create efficiency through automated routines. The use of robots and other artificial intelligence gadgets has become common practice in the employment scene today. For example, big corporations such as Toyota and IBM or Google are employing mechanization through use of AI and robots to replace human labor and improve on the efficiency of work. As these robots and other forms of mechanization become commonplace, it is expected that the effects on employment levels and employment practices will be largely negative. Some of the already notable effects of mechanization in advanced industrial societies include loss of jobs, high costs of installation and maintenance for organizations, reduced flexibility, higher expectations on human labour to match the efficiency of robots, reduced opportunities, and insecurity and anxiety regarding the future.

While mechanization has had positive effects on employment levels and practices in the advanced industrial societies, it has also led to several effects on the labour market. First, it has largely displaced employees performing certain jobs such as performance tests on cars, safety checks in factories, and packaging in large organizations. The main effect here is that it has directly led to reduced employment opportunities and reduced wages for employees who have historically relied on these positions now mechanized. While other sectors have also expanded to soak up this loss, it is also likely that their respective industries will, in the short term, employ mechanization techniques leading to the same negative effects.

Other negative effects include employment practices that are unfair such as expecting the same level of output from human labor compared to robots. It is also possible that work practices have changed to include reduced flexibility for employees. Robotic workforce occupies a significant portion of the labor market in the industrialized world, meaning that workers are now forced to specialize and work within their main areas of strength. Job specialization often leads to reduced flexibility in terms of what a worker is able to achieve.

Overall, mechanization has had its fair share of benefits. For example, it improves safety, increases the speed of operations, has remarkable consistency, often yields perfection, and improves productivity. However, it also means that very soon people in various mechanized industries will go out of work. It is important that the effects of robots and other mechanized workforces be checked to ensure that the effect on human labour is not as severe as expected.