Teaching Economics with Media
This Boston restaurant (Spyce) uses robots to cook food for customers and can cook your meal in 3 minutes or less. Customers order from electronic kiosks at their table and a screen displays which robot station is preparing the diner’s dish. The woks are designed in a way to ensure consistency. The only labor used in the kitchen is the “garden manager” who is responsible for adding toppings and ensuring presentation. The bowls are priced at under $8.
Thanks to Peach for the clip suggestion!
Volvo has recently unveiled self-driving garbage trucks in Sweden that are designed to be operated by only on single garbage collector. The trucks match the pace of the garbage collector to allow for differences in worker characteristics. This is just one of the many ways in which automation improves the efficiency of tasks.
A Business Insider correspondent travels around New York City with 100g of gold and a single Bitcoin to see how easy/difficult it is to conduct transactions using these alternative currencies. Even though gold is universally agreed currency, no one is willing to accept it. Bitcoin is a little more popular, but some local places didn’t accept it as payment.
You can see the original article here. Thanks to Jodi Beggs for the tip.
Business Insider wanted to test just how strong the endowment effect (regret avoidance) is when it comes to Powerball tickets for the large jackpot this past week. Overall, people seemed really inclined to want to keep their numbers, even when offered the twice what they paid for the tickets.