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Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

benoitessiambre.com

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Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#211

Post by imtringued »

swfsql wrote: post #93

I recommend reading "Human Action" by von Mises. It explains a lot of economic concept including central banks and money. Eg. on why any amount of money is always sufficient for any society (assuming it has at least enough precision for the basic needs of the agents). This ofc is the opposite of what the game was based on. Another great article into central bank-caused recession is Rothbard's "Economic Depressions: T…

>Eg. on why any amount of money is always sufficient for any society (assuming it has at least enough precision for the basic needs of the agents).

Until the interest rate on capital falls negative and people start wars. Austrian economists start world wars for sport.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#212

Post by fiatjaf »

imtringued wrote: post #209
fiatjaf wrote: post #200

Why can't we just quit, leave the quantity of money static and and let the market decide the rates?

You can, but the market will reach negative interest rates and then everyone starts hoarding cash because the returns in the real economy are lower than the returns in the financial economy. When people abandon the real economy there will be unemployment and eventually countries go to war or alternatively think of peaceful ways to pointlessly employ their people. Pointless savings lead to pointless investments which…

You can't in this game, that was my point. In the real world of course none of these absurdities you mention would happen.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#213

Post by capableweb »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #87

One minor suggestion: Make the Up and Down div "buttons" return false when clicked, so that their text is not highlighted when they're clicked. Also, if you make them elements instead of , your page will be more accessible to users who depend on their user-agent to know what type of controls they are.

Considering that the values constantly change (and the graphs being canvas elements), how would someone go about to play this game without being able to see/hear the values clearly (and therefore being able to see that the buttons are buttons, even if they are `div`s) as they change?

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#214

Post by vintermann »

fartcannon wrote: post #108
xwolfi wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we scam little people with crypto using central bank scapegoating as well ?

As in, scam people and then scapegoat 'crypto bros' for the current financial crisis that has more to do with printing money than anything else?

Nobody is printing money.

Either you have this naive understanding that government is secretly printing money and hiding it from the auditors, in which case you are simply wrong.

Or you could have the more sophisticated opinion that, "yeah, I know that the so-called freshly printed money is actually already circulating money that government convinced people to give them in return for a promise in the form of a bond. But that's practically the same as printing money!"

But if you take that perspective, then crypto bros are ALSO printing money at a furious pace.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#215

Post by kortilla »

reilly3000 wrote: post #137

After a rather dismal first couple of runs I read the blog post for some hints. The best I found was to try to raise rates during the good times so there is wiggle room during downturns. I was able to get 443,904 by raising to over 10% during the initial prosperity period and was able to cut rates in half as soon as there was a crash. Ultimately I stabilized at around 3.5%. As of the time of this post I think that is…

It’s strange to present an analogy without something linking it to the thing at hand. Why do you think interest rates and economy are like racing a car at all and not like launching a rocket?

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#216

Post by adam_arthur »

nwah1 wrote: post #136
adam_arthur wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppressing rates via QE multiplies the spending power of a dollar, which has a very similar effect as creating more currency

We should consider a lot of this to be zero-sum. Creditworthy demand for loans doesn't magically increase when rates change or the Fed buys bonds. In QE, like with accounting, you debit one side and credit the other. Netting to zero. The effects it all has probably are real in terms of steering where people park their money. And that matters in the long run. But that would mainly amplify whatever underlying incentive…

You're ignoring refinancing. Cash out refis on homes, businesses and government debt.

Somebody doing a cash out refi for 100k to add an extension to their house can certainly be inflationary

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#217

Post by mrtksn »

reilly3000 wrote: post #137

After a rather dismal first couple of runs I read the blog post for some hints. The best I found was to try to raise rates during the good times so there is wiggle room during downturns. I was able to get 443,904 by raising to over 10% during the initial prosperity period and was able to cut rates in half as soon as there was a crash. Ultimately I stabilized at around 3.5%. As of the time of this post I think that is…

Maybe one can argue that this funded the internet revolution? Maybe thanks to the obscene amounts of cash flooding the society, people got to experiment much more freely without expectations of profits from products but give these products away at a loss and use their securities as gambling assets?

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#218

Post by wheelerof4te »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #2

I made this game in order to try to wrap my head around central banks, inflation and macroeconomics, in order to get a better understanding of the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the current period of high inflation. Here is a blog post that goes into further details: https://benoitessiambre.com/simcb.html

You are approaching this from the flawed neo-liberal assumption that, to have good economic model, only inflation has to be controlled.

The rate of inflation is hardly more important than, for example, tax rate. From the Central Bank viewpoint, how much money is annually generated could be anywhere between 15-350%. The key to a good economy lies in proficiency in other sectors, like industry.

The bulk of money is generated through private bank loans, anyway.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#219

Post by denton-scratch »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #2

I made this game in order to try to wrap my head around central banks, inflation and macroeconomics, in order to get a better understanding of the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the current period of high inflation. Here is a blog post that goes into further details: https://benoitessiambre.com/simcb.html

Thank you.

Many, many years ago I typed a BASIC program listing for a macro-economics simulation from a computer magazine into a computer. As with your game, the only lever was the bank interest rate. The outcome (for me) was always economic catastrophe.

I'd love to play an economic sim that also has a taxrate input; I realise that's normally not set by the central bank; but then again, it's often not the central bank that really sets central bank interest rates; it's the government.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#220

Post by brutusborn »

neilwilson wrote: post #199
brutusborn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any examples of countries that had a well functioning job guarantee policy?

The Job Guarantee is an optimal buffer stock stabilisation policy that eliminates the dead-loss zone between the wage on the buffer stock and the bottom wage in the private sector. Sub-optimal buffer stocks do the same thing, but you need more people on them which leads to an opportunity loss of output at the peak of a private sector boom. The most destructive form of buffer stock being straight unemployment with no…

Thanks for the explanation. I've always wondered if the government could keep a "To do" list of tedious tasks that they can get under/unemployed people to do for some reward. Kind of like Mechanical Turk but with a base amount if the person refuses to compete any tasks. Or for more educated people, doing research for the Government.

E.g. a Department of Health could have a ToDo list that includes: "Collate information on Tropical diseases for use by Doctors." A qualified person, such as a biologist, would be given an existing list of diseases and a list of recent research papers. They could simply flag papers that have info not in the Government list. In this way, when the actual Department worker goes to update the Tropical disease file, the references are all ready to go if the worker wants them.

Spending 35 hours a week looking for jobs that may not exist seems incredibly foolish.

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