Cool concept!
Feedback:
The log should have scrollback and/or be expandable. When a lot of things happen in succession it's impossible to keep up.
Pausing, and maybe stepping months, would be nice as well.
Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
251–260 of 323 posts
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hoarding money isn't a bad thing if that's your normal state, but it's a bad thing to go stop lending and investing during a recession when that is what is needed the most. Mortgage backed securities caused the GFC, but only a small part of the bank dealt with mortgage backed securities. It doesn't make sense to let that drag the rest of the bank and the economy down along with it, which is why the bailouts were nece…
Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting that a Central Bank (using fiat currency) should punish bad actors; I was suggesting that if the Central Bank used Gold, the bad actors may not have existed, or if they did exist, would have been decimated to the point they are essentially replaced by better actors. I'm not saying that the GFC and huge Government debt are the fault of the Central Banks, but they are much more like…
Sure a gold standard is more punishing, and eventually that may force people into better behavior, but by then it may be too late, and you'd be losing out to any country that does bail out their banks. There are always going to be instances in which individual actors don't care about the institutions they're a part of, and the institution isn't guaranteed to catch this bad behavior. For example, plenty of analysts knew that they were screwing over the banks that employed them by buying unsustainable CDOs, but they didn't care because they were making crazy bonuses. Meanwhile, all the C-suite sees is that their underlings making money by buying AAA rated bonds. There's no reason to believe that would have been prevented with a gold standard, just as the Great Depression wasn't.
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the blog post ( https://benoitessiambre.com/simcb.html ) I explain why it's difficult to get inflation to rise very much under normal circumstances. I think it's mostly because I don't have a government doing deficit spending. You can reach higher scores (through lower menu costs) if you try to maintain lower inflation (like 1% or lower), however keeping it too low can make it harder to keep stable and you will be…
> penalized through menu costs if it destabilizes Yeah, some of my more aggressive tries had this happen and got lower scores. What’s the highest you’ve seen? And thank you for building this!!!
My current high score is 446834. This was not trying too hard, just playing a handful of times. I do have the unfair advantage of being intimately familiar with the economic model.
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#254So I've put interest rate to 0.0% all the way until the end and GDP was 442599
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#255442,329 by controlling interest to keep inflation as close to 1.5% as I could (which isn’t always easy). 442,306 by just immediately setting interest at -0.5% and leaving it there entire time. Inflation varied widely, but seemed to correct itself around 12% and -4% and spent a lot of time near 0%. Can anyone explain an economic theory why that happened, or is the game not reflective of reality?
Didn't Japan have negative interest rates?
Switzerland had -0.75 until last week when they went to -0.25.
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#256After 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…
At first, it looked to me like you could barely influence the economy. But a couple of runs later, I found wildly different results (e.g. having hyperinflation and huge economic crisis) depending on what I'd do. Since the income from the central bank's interest is paid out to the people (and vice versa, negative interest will be passed as debt), the challenge seems like finding the correct ratio to increase GDP: infl…
I tried setting interest rates to 20% for the whole game, with... interesting results.
Inflation rised steadily as people ate all the apples in the market.
At the beginning it looked like inflation would never stop, but at some point an orchard managed to become profitable, becoming crazy rich ($22000) because apple prices were at $100. This made apple prices crash, going down to $0.02. This pattern repeated itself a few times.
GDP stayed very low, obviously.
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it’s not really true for Europe, at least regarding the most wealthy families [0]. ——— [0]: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/how-to-stay-rich-in-europe--inhe...
I don't see how that article suggests it's different in Europe.
It is an interesting Chinese proverb!
>> Maintaining inherited wealth has worked for generations of Frescobaldis over 700 years
The article gives a counter example (wealth passed 700 years is way over 3 generations), and tries to argue that this example is more than just an outlier?
>> heirs and heiresses make up about half of Western Europe’s billionaires.
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#258I have approx. 0 understanding of how interest rates, inflation rates, etc. all intersect. My economics knowledge is 0. Is there a good fun accessible book to get started?
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that I used a rather different strategy (typically 0, 4% in good times, slowly cutting back and running at -0.5 later in the game) and got 443419 maybe the lesson of the this is that central bank policy doesn't make as big a difference as we think?
Has anyone gotten less than 400K? Heck, less than 440K?
Looks like if interest rates get high enough everything will shut down.
Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model
#260I have approx. 0 understanding of how interest rates, inflation rates, etc. all intersect. My economics knowledge is 0. Is there a good fun accessible book to get started?
Instead of a book, I would suggest reading Investopedia’s guides. I find them easy to read for a layperson. Example:
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/12/inflation-intere...