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Building an economy simulator from scratch

thomassimon.dev

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Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#41

Post by sunday_serif »

0xADADA wrote: post #5

dont' mistake a beautiful map for the territory, you'll find yourself lost amongst lines that aren't a real place.

On Exactitude in Science By Jorge Luis Borges

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

source: https://kwarc.info/teaching/TDM/Borges.pdf

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#43

Post by jll29 »

Ruddle wrote: post #19
Nezteb wrote: post #6

Is the source code for this simulator available anywhere? The post's code itself is minimized/obfuscated: https://thomassimon.dev/assets/cashloss.1fca21f6.js I couldn't find anything on the author's GitHub. I'm mostly just curious how it's built.

Author here, if there is enough interest I can clean the code up and put it on GitHub. It is basically a state machine.

Would be nice to see a post written about the high-level design and then about the implementation.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#44

Post by jl6 »

econperplexed wrote: post #9

OT: I see economists of various ideological tilts constantly arguing about how macroeconomic variables will respond to specific government policies. You know: "this new tax will increase inflation; no it will not, it will increase unemployment". What I don't get is why there are no readily available online macroeconomic simulators with real world data that make these sort of predictions. For a lot of countries, up-to…

An “economy” is composed of people, so maybe we can do this once we’ve cracked simulating people.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#45

Post by amelius »

econperplexed wrote: post #9

OT: I see economists of various ideological tilts constantly arguing about how macroeconomic variables will respond to specific government policies. You know: "this new tax will increase inflation; no it will not, it will increase unemployment". What I don't get is why there are no readily available online macroeconomic simulators with real world data that make these sort of predictions. For a lot of countries, up-to…

Because a good model would be like a self-defeating prophecy.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#47

Post by andrewmutz »

ilyt wrote: post #29
Workaccount2 wrote: post #25

I've long had the fantasy of an economics simulator given dwarf fortress levels of dedication and attention to detail. This might not be it, but it does warm my soul a bit.

I had hopes for Victoria 3 but it didn't exactly stick the landing

It's not perfect, but they are investing a lot of time on improvements. Paradox games tend to get better over time. 1.5 introduces province-level prices, which make supply chains more interesting.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#48

Post by willsmith72 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #40
mapmap wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this happen?

Every single government employee and their family/friends vote in local elections, and other people do not. You will not win an election without their votes, and you can use opaque compensation like DB pensions and whatnot to hide and punt forward the costs of the compensation. You will never find a non taxpayer funded entity promise something like this: >After 30 years of service, LA lifeguards can retire as young a…

so you mean the solution to that would be mandatory voting?

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#49

Post by dclowd9901 »

0xADADA wrote: post #5

dont' mistake a beautiful map for the territory, you'll find yourself lost amongst lines that aren't a real place.

It sounds like you take issue with this simulation? It applies heavily academic and simplistic rules around behavior. I like build up of it all to illustrate _simulating things_, but I think almost any traditional economics theory outside behavioral economics ought to be shelved for good.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#50

Post by Terr_ »

zwieback wrote: post #38

This is so cute, love the animation and idea behind it. Just yesterday I listened to Planet Money talk about how Bill Phillips got a position at the London School of Economics on the strength of his hydraulic computer simulating the economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC

MONIAC was also featured/satirized in the Terry Pratchett book "Making Money":

__________________

> "Mr. Hubert believes that this... device is a sort of crystal ball for showing the future," said Bent, and rolled his eyes.

> "Possible futures. Would Mr Lipstick like to see it in operation?" said Hubert, vibrating with enthusiasm and eagerness. Only a man with a heart of stone would have said no, so Moist made a wonderful attempt at indicating that all his dreams were coming true.

> "I'd love to," he said, "but what does it actually do?"

> Too late, he saw the signs. Hubert grasped the lapels of his jacket, as if addressing a meeting, and swelled with the urge to communicate, or at least talk at length in the belief that it was the same thing.

> "The Glooper, as it is affectionately known, is what I call a quote analogy machine unquote. It solves problems not by considering them as a numerical exercise but by actually duplicating them in a form we can manipulate: in this case, the flow of money and its effects within our society become water flowing through a glass matrix--the Glooper. The geometrical shape of certain vessels, the operation of valves and, although I say so myself, ingenious tipping buckets and flow-rate propellers enable the Glooper to simulate quite complex transactions. We can change the starting conditions, too, to learn the rules inherent in the system. For example, we can find out what happens if you halve the labour force in the city by the adjustment of a few valves, rather than by going out into the streets and killing people."

> "A big improvement! Bravo!" said Moist desperately, and started to clap.

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