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Building an economy simulator from scratch

thomassimon.dev

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Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#81

Post by gus_massa »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #57
marcosdumay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at this point the quality of life index abruptly rockets up That's because on this simulation the government isn't doing any useful work. The ration tickets work because the people were programed to actually follow the law. It fails every time on the real world because real people aren't. And the simulation #20 works because the simplistic model actually works. At a first approximation, inflation isn't a problem at…

The "useful work" was implied. That is, the assumption was the government was perfectly valuable to society with relation to the cost it incurred. It might've been interesting to see the government throw money at the farmers every year or so, though.

I think it'd be interesting to a more in-game useful work of the government. For example that the homes of the producer may catch fire randomly. If there is at least a firefighter there is no problem, but once all firefighter die, then there is a 1% chance per day that each producer may burn and die.

At the beginning of #13 eve thing is fine, until all firefighter die and the quality of life index abruptly rockets for a while. Then for example the apple producer dies, and after a few days everyone starves and dies.

It may be a more complicated criteria, like each firefighter can protect only 2 or 3 producers, so the ratio of producers to government workers must be always not too high.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#82

Post by js8 »

First, I really appreciate author trying to understand economy better in this way, even though this simulation is quite naive. I think everybody should do that.

But as others have noted, it has no concept of capital, private property, and labor market. Therefore, it's not capitalism. It's not anarchism or communism either - it lacks flexibility of workers to do something else, or state planning telling workers to do something else. At best, it could be a model of a feudal society (where the "state servants" are the landed nobility).

Furthermore, it has no concept of natural resources, energy, labor and goods. That has to be there before we even get to things like money.

Also, the money definition is problematic. Money is essentially a contract, and can be created even between three private parties as resoldable bonds. This isn't there.

I would also suggest, if the author (or anybody else) is interested, look at Steve Keen's work in economic simulation and his Minsky program. This guy is far ahead of everybody else in actually trying to understand how real economies work.

To people who wonder why don't we have good economy simulators that would reflect a real world. Well, I think the answer is pretty simple - rich people don't want that. They don't want plebes to understand what it means to be rich, most rich people know they wealth is undeserved, and don't want other people to see it flaunted openly. So they prefer hegemony (in Gramsci terms) of neoliberal economics, which is misleading about what is happening in reality.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#83

Post by OkayPhysicist »

mapmap wrote: post #22
vanrysss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See LA lifeguards making $300k/yr https://lamag.com/news/the-highest-paid-lifeguard-in-l-a-mak...

How does this happen?

These waterfront lifeguards have a lot more in common with EMTs and firefighters than have with the teenager who watches septagenarians do laps at your local pool, and they're compensated as such.

No CEO or programmer dies in the line of duty, yet you can't throw a rock on this site without hitting thkse kinds of compensation.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#84

Post by mathiasgredal »

econperplexed wrote: post #70
sdfghswe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Are you high or what? The problem is so complex that people don't even agree how to take a measurement , let alone how to simulate the system. If nowadays people disagree when looking at the same numbers, imagine if each one could point to the numbers in his own simulator.

Lets take a very particular variable. Every month or so, central/state banks in every country have a meeting to decide the policy rate. They look at some data and the output of some models, then wave some political magic wand over it and make a decision about which direction to move the rate. Then they make a statement like, "our decision will decrease inflation over the next three quarters by this much." The data th…

The Danish Ministry of Finance has a public model they use to forecast the economic impact of certain policy decisions called MAKRO: https://github.com/DREAM-DK/MAKRO/tree/main

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#85

Post by Ruddle »

logicallee wrote: post #77

Great set of simulations! Can someone explain why in Simulation 16, 4 producing workers can support 3 non-producing workers consuming just as much as them with just 10% taxation and yet they have similar QOL? It doesn't make sense to me intuitively. If we ignore money and just look at goods this implies 3 people can do "nothing" (the government workers don't buy from anyone in this simulation) and yet consume as much…

Author here, simulation 16 shows that money printing, and tax have common effects. The state can replace one with another. Here the 65% tax is replaced with 10% tax plus inflation, i.e., giving new money to public servants. The new money creation decreases the value of money owned by producing workers.

We could even remove the tax entirely, and still support the 3 public servants. To be convinced you can look at each unit transaction and see that all resource are accounted for.

Another way to look at it, is that the QoL of producing workers is lower than if there was no public servants. Every resource a public servant has, is bought from a worker at some point, whether the money for the purchase comes from taxation or inflation.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#86

Post by theptip »

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…

Another part of the challenge is overtime -- it ends up costing a lot to pay out time-and-a-half on an already fat paycheck. I think we should figure out some binding pre-commitment to forbid or at least minimize regular overtime. Something like "if > 50% of one employee's worth of overtime is required a new role must be opened instead of paying overtime".

I understand that unions like OT for their members (of course they would!) but as an employer it's insane to be handing it out as regularly as government employees get it.

Re: Building an economy simulator from scratch

#89

Post by kamel3d »

js8 wrote: post #82

First, I really appreciate author trying to understand economy better in this way, even though this simulation is quite naive. I think everybody should do that. But as others have noted, it has no concept of capital, private property, and labor market. Therefore, it's not capitalism. It's not anarchism or communism either - it lacks flexibility of workers to do something else, or state planning telling workers to do…

Would rich people be able to stop you from creating a good economy simulator? At the end of the day, it's programming. Someone who has studied economics could make that without rich people coming after him. I argue that no one would come after you if you were to do so.
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