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What is public policy?

Public policy is a purposive and reliable course of accomplishments produced as a reaction to an alleged problem of a community, formulated by a specific political process, and adopted, instigated, and enforced by a public agency. In short, public policy is a purposive and consistent course of action proposes goals and the absence of logical inconsistencies.

Torjman (2005:1) states that public policy determines the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. It affects the food we eat – how it is harvested, where it is distributed and sold, and how much we pay. It controls the way in which we clean and monitor the safety of the water supply. Public policy sets limits on air emissions, though governments seem to be issuing warnings of poor air quality more than doing anything significant to clean it up (Torjman, 2005:1).

 

Industry 4.0

Marr (2016) identifies that steam came first and they were the first machines that mechanized some of the work our ancestors did. Next was electricity, the assembly line and the birth of mass production.  The third era of industry came about with the advent of computers and the beginnings of automation, when robots and machines began to replace human workers on those assembly lines (Marr, 2016).

And now we enter Industry 4.0, Marr (2016) states that this is the industry in which computers and automation will come together in an entirely new way, with robotics connected remotely to computer systems equipped with machine learning algorithms that can learn and control the robotics with very little input from human operators (Marr, 2016).

According to Marr (2016) industry 4.0 introduces what has been called the “smart factory,” in which cyber-physical systems monitor the physical processes of the factory and make decentralized decisions. The physical systems become Internet of Things, communicating and cooperating both with each other and with humans in real time via the wireless web.

Marr (2016) states that additionally, there is a systemic lack of experience and manpower to create and implement these systems, not to mention a general reluctance from stakeholders and investors to invest heavily in new technologies.

Even though there are a lack of experience and manpower to create these system there are according to Marr (2016) some benefits of an Industry 4.0 model that could outweigh the concerns for many production facilities, for example in very dangerous working environments, the health and safety of human workers could be improved dramatically; also supply chains could be more readily controlled when there is data at every level of the manufacturing and delivery process; computer control could produce much more reliable and consistent productivity and output; and lastly the results for many businesses could be increased revenues, market share, and profits (Marr, 2016).

The question, then, is not if Industry 4.0 is coming, but how quickly. As with big data and other business trends, I suspect that the early adopters will be rewarded for their courage jumping into this new technology, and those who avoid change risk becoming irrelevant and left behind.

Poverty as societal divide.

Issues like hunger, illness, and thirst are all causes and effects of poverty. That is to say, that not having food means being poor, but being poor also means being unable to afford food or clean water. Anon (2016) states that bad sanitation makes one vulnerable to diseases, and hunger and the lack of clean water makes one even more exposed to diseases. Poor countries and communities often suffer from discrimination and end up caught in a cycle of poverty.

According to Anon (2016) the vicious cycle of poverty means that lifelong barriers and troubles are passed on from one generation to the next. Unemployment and low incomes create an environment where children are unable to attend school. Children must often work to provide an income for their family. As for children who are able to go to school, many fail to see how hard work can improve their lives as they see their parents struggle at everyday tasks (Anon, 2016).

Ultimately, poverty is the major cause of social tensions and threatens to divide a nation because of income inequality. This occurs when the wealth of a country is poorly distributed among its citizens, thus when a tiny minority has the majority of the money.

 

References

Anon.  2016. Effects of Poverty on Society. https://borgenproject.org/how-poverty-effects-society-children-and-violence/. Date of access: 4 April 2017.

Marr, B.  2016. What Everyone Must Know About Industry 4.0. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/06/20/what-everyone-must-know-about-industry-4-0/#125bc4ca795f. Date of access: 4 April 2017.

Torjman, S.  2005. What is Policy? http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/PDF/544ENG.pdf. Date of access: 28 March 2017.

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