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

• thescriptkiddie 4y ago
  Seems to me like unemployment is stuck at 10%.
• MrYellowP 4y ago
  What this game misses is the fact that deflation is fine as long as there's innovation. Making a better apple allows for asking for a higher price. Inflation, on the other hand, forces to make cheaper apples people can still afford. Your game is only half done.
• BenoitEssiambre 4y ago
  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 https://benoitessiambre.com/simcb.html
  • doubleunplussed 4y ago
    Thank you so much! I've similarly been trying to wrap my head around monetary things recently, and as with learning anything in physics (my field), I believe you don't really understand a model unless you can code up a simulator. It's been maddening not being able to find a comprehensive model of how all the bits fit together, and I have many times wondered if the lack of existence of a game like yours meant that no such model actually existed. Happy to be wrong! And of course a game is a brilliant way to build intuition whether you know the equations of the underlying model or not. I haven't played it yet but am greatly looking forward to it, really hoping to answer various gaps in my knowledge. Thanks again!
    • vanjajaja1 4y ago
      I've been looking for something similar too, an explanation of the financial system written out in code so that I can try understand it.
      • DennisP 4y ago
        Something I found recently is Steve Keen's Minsky, and his book The New Economics, which uses Minsky to go through a series of simple models of the modern fiat money system. http://www.profstevekeen.com/minsky/ http://www.profstevekeen.com/minsky/
        • theptip 4y ago
          I was going to suggest this tool too as I’m not aware of others like it. Worth the caveat that Keen is a heterodox economist. So if you pull his off-the-shelf models you are not getting the current accepted “mainstream” theory. I don’t think Economics is a field as mature as Physics where you should have extremely strong deference to the orthodoxy based on an incredibly strong prediction record, but it’s worth keeping in mind.
      • WanderPanda 4y ago
        While we are at it: I need this for climate change as well
        • pes23 4y ago
          There's The Climate Game¹ 1: https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/ https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/ 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31106819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31106819
          • evandale 4y ago
            This game was ok until it asked about energy generation and didn't allow you to increase nuclear production.
  • lamename 4y ago
    Thank you! I've looked around for macroeconomic simulations before and found very little. Looking forward to learning from this.
  • xrisk 4y ago
    Please remove the strip-ey overlay you have, it makes the text actively harder to read.
  • xwolfi 4y ago
    Can we scam little people with crypto using central bank scapegoating as well ?
    • fartcannon 4y ago
      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?
      • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        What financial crises?
        • fartcannon 4y ago
          Denial works too, I guess.
          • lottin 4y ago
            We're not in a financial crisis.
            • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
              To add to this, we’re in a bear market and possibly recession. But not a financial crisis. (We’re also not in a currency crisis. The dollar is gaining against pretty much every currency. It’s also gaining against practically every crypto.)
          • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
            The stock market going down and a decent potential of recession doesn't meet the definition of "financial crisis" that is used by people in finance. I guess you can make up your own definition.
      • vintermann 4y ago
  • haupt 4y ago
    Excellent work, thank you.
  • ACow_Adonis 4y ago
    first of all, awesome job. I'm also a big believer in trying to code such models up to try to understand them. But, and it pains me to say it, as someone with a bit of a background in economics, I dunno if realistic is quite the word i would use for your current model. And I don't mean in a "all models are wrong but some are useful" kinda way. I think some of the limitations and simplifications might take away from the value of the model. I'd urge everyone to read the blog post to understand what's going on. you've touched upon a lot of the apparent findings and paradoxes of macro, which is great. to try to be constructive, I guess I would ask a rhetorical question to focus on a central (pun intended) issue: how are interest rates set by the central bank implemented? is it an independent variable that you kinda change, or is it implemented through changes in monetary + credit supply? I'm concerned that this is another one of those macroeconomic paradoxes built into the model that lessens its applicability: the idea that interest rates are a variable that the central bank issues by decree, as opposed to a rate that they target by adjusting other monetary/ policy settings? anyway, good job. I love it when people actually code up and stimulate models :)
  • kkfx 4y ago
    Allow me to suggest a taste of history https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=carr&book=pawns&story=american https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=car... or if you want to cut corners just scroll to the bottom of the page. To study central banks you need those history before the model :-)
    • eru 4y ago
      You might be better off studying Scottish and Canadian monetary history, instead of the Bank of England. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Money-Birmingham-Beginnings-Coinage/dp/1598130439 https://www.amazon.com/Good-Money-Birmingham-Beginnings-Coin... is also really interesting.
  • wheelerof4te 4y ago
    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.
  • denton-scratch 4y ago
    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.
    • spurgu 4y ago
      > Although an instrument of the US Government, the Federal Reserve System considers itself "an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or by anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms." I.e. the US central bank doesn't answer to anyone. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve
  • espadrine 4y ago
    It is cool to make those simulations. The mechanics explained deviate significantly from any central bank I know. In particular, the negative interest rate of SimCB does something very different from, almost the opposite of, what the ECB does (along with many other central banks). What they have is a negative interest rate on the deposit facility rate, which means that overnight deposits on a class of central bank accounts will incur a loss for the commercial bank of, say 0.5% yearly, which incentivizes instead investing those funds. cf. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/explainers/tell-me/html/what-is-the-deposit-facility-rate.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/explainers/tell-me... In SimCB, a negative interest rate makes everyone incentivized to take on a loan, as they will get free money at the expense of everyone else as long as they reimburse the principal, which is even easier when they don’t invest the money in orchards.
• Komodai 4y ago
  Pretty cool and interesting, good work :)
• ThalesX 4y ago
  I have no idea if this was a bug or a failure model but it seemed I was doing decent until everything started failing all at once. Orchards running out of business etc. LE: I tried another round. Put the interest rate at -0.5 and just left it there. > I fought inflation in SimCB and my economy produced 442486 :apples:
  • omega3 4y ago
    Same thing here.
  • BenoitEssiambre 4y ago
    If you hit too much disinflation/deflation things can go sour pretty quickly. This is a bit exaggerated in this model as there are only 10 businesses and there can be a domino effect as 10% of the economy fails at a time. You can prevent it if you manage to counter deflationary pressures fast enough. It helps to slowly creep up interest rates up when the economy is going well so you have more space to lower them aggressively during shocks.
    • ThalesX 4y ago
      Cool project, congrats on putting it out in the wild. > You can prevent it if you manage to counter deflationary pressures fast enough. Iirc, it was a matter of < 10 months from good to gutter.
  • Eji1700 4y ago
    Interesting. I settled on the same strat after a few ticks of seeing what was possible, and got 442524. I haven't looked at the code, but I guess it's fairly consistent then.
  • BenoitEssiambre 4y ago
    Since this was happening to a lot of people, I added a few paragraphs to the blog post to help explain it: "One common experience for new players is they start the game, prices creep down, one orchard goes bankrupt, then the other ones quickly fall like dominoes and unemployment goes to 100%. This dynamic is exaggerated in SimCB. What happens is that when an orchard goes bankrupt, that's ten percent of the economy going offline. Not only that but if that business had loans, those loans get reversed by a negative dividend imposed on people. In a real economy this would happen through banks or other lenders who would be forced to take the hit (since you can't default on the central bank). In any case this results in an instant shrinking of the money supply. The negative dividend acts like a one time tax, people have less money in their bank accounts, spend less on apples, prices drop quickly which makes the other businesses less profitable and go bankrupt. In a real economy, usually not 10% of businesses would go down in one go and the central bank would have more time to react. Governments might also take on debt, implement bailouts etc. to help smooth out the situation. I could have implemented some kind of automatic government stabilizer. Or I could have made an economy with a hundred businesses instead of ten, so that these effects were more gradual. Some things to maybe try in future versions. "
• SubiculumCode 4y ago
  Cool stuff. It would be interesting to have a simulation with three levers: interest rate, taxes, fiscal spending. But in the end, the problems with most such models is that the outcome ends up being determined by the assumptions built into the model.
  • moomin 4y ago
    Well, indeed, that was a huge problem with Sim City. They believed cities should have low tax rates, so of course low tax rates are the correct strategy. They also discovered exactly how much space building parking takes up so… they made cars take up no space rather than have a game in which public transport and cycling was the go-to approach.
    • notahacker 4y ago
      The weird bit about SimCity wasn't so much the low tax rates, as the system encouraging you to set higher tax rates on the poor than the rich as the main way to ensure a city full of shiny villas rather than crumbly shacks. That's... actually not how wealth is created.
• yyy888sss 4y ago
  In reality of course central plannners 'pulling levers' and setting prices never works. The interest rate is one of the most important prices of them all, which is why having the government meddle with it has proven so destructive.
• mmastrac 4y ago
  This game needs a "gold standard" mode to see what happens to the toy economy with no central bank! EDIT: It would also be nice if the game paused around major events to give you more time to think & adjust. I found that the economy went off the rails if you don't react right away.
  • jcfrei 4y ago
    That would result in an economy with huge deflation: People consuming the bare minimum of apples needed for survival because their gold savings would appreciate each year in value.
    • unboxingelf 4y ago
      People are still gonna want the new iphone and latest suv. Having a hard money as the reserve currency doesn’t undermine the economy, quite the opposite.
      • Aunche 4y ago
        Yes. People will always demand consumer goods. The problem with deflation is that it incentivizes you to hoard money rather than invest in businesses give out loans. During periods of economic growth with a gold-backed currency, we don't actually see much deflation because the money supply expands when banks naturally give out more loans and people invest a greater percentage of their wealth into equity. The problem comes when there is a recession. People and businesses default on their loans, and lenders are less willing to issue new ones, which effectively contracts the money supply. While it sounds good that your money becomes more valuable, most of the reason for this is that people have less of it.
        • brutusborn 4y ago
          I follow your argument but I would argue that incentives to hoard money aren't necessarily bad. I agree with you that hoarding money leads to a reduced money supply, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. For example: the GFC. Central banks bail out bad actors which perpetuates the incentives that caused these actors to make bad decisions in the first place ("bad" meaning not optimal globally, e.g. selling bonds you know are worthless). If a gold standard was in use, this would simply be impossible. The government would need to increase taxes to bail out the banks, which would be rejected by citizens who are busy hoarding gold and cursing the banks, which means the banks that replaced the bad actors would be incentivized to avoid the mistakes their predecessors made. Alternatively, the GFC may simply not have occurred, because under a gold-standard the banks cannot assume they would be bailed out and this knowledge would cause them to be more risk-averse. "Every Battle Is Won Before It Is Ever Fought" The use of fiat currency provides control over the economy, but we shouldn't assume that that control is always used in the best interests of the many. The reason a gold standard is so popular among libertarians is that no institution can have arbitrary monetary control over individuals via printing money.
• koshergweilo 4y ago
  Cool game, but when shit hits the fan and production falls, everything seems to explode instantly, within a few turns. It would be nice to add some time controls so I can actually think about what to do. Edit: while I'm asking for new features, two buttons with a step of .5 isn't enough to handle these deflationary spirals. Perhaps turn it into a slider with the step buttons. Also some historical charts to show at the end of the game would be cool
• howmayiannoyyou 4y ago
  Global economy. It's not one village. The US Fed has to ensure liquidity for all global USD users, to include USD derivatives, USD denominated loans and USD denominated trade instruments; and it has to do that at the same time trillions can sit nearly idle (not contributing to transactional velocity) on balance sheets worldwide. Impressive, no doubt and good on you though!
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• im3w1l 4y ago
  I didnt like how some trees were barren so I tried first lowering interest rates to zero and that didnt work so then I raised to 10 causing all business to close. It took them like a decade to even start recovering.
• formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Very cool! I work in a banking adjacent industry, and this is mildly entertaining. Do you have any plans to create an accounting firm simulator for more entertaining games?
  • BenoitEssiambre 4y ago
    That made me chuckle. You might like: https://keshikomisimulator.com/ https://keshikomisimulator.com/ from Patrick McKenzie.
    • formerkrogemp 4y ago
      I have a collection of accounting video games that I'm accruing. Thank you for the suggestion lol!
• emehex 4y ago
  Unemployment never budged from 10% for me throughout the entire simulation?
  • whimsicalism 4y ago
    > One of the 10 orchards is always in its preparation phase which means it doesn't employ anyone so the natural unemployment rate is one out of ten or 10%
• hitovst 4y ago
  If you can own the bank in the freest/richest society, you can inflate away enough wealth to bribe it into enabling government schools, criminal legal tender "laws", becoming the world reserve fiat global enslavement system, and then inflate away 99.9999% of all the wealth of humanity in perpetuity... that is if you're willing to play as anti-human.
• the_third_wave 4y ago
  *** GAME END *** Your economy produced: 439918 apples. Deflation is easily combated by raising interest above the next expected deflation level so that saving money becomes more lucrative than spending it. Inflation is combated by lowering interest as soon as it rises above the interest level. I never went below 0.50% interest, never above 5.50%. This is easy, maybe I should apply for the job of central banker.
  • xianwen 4y ago
    I'm not sure, however, it seems that the game does not have the element of borrowing / lending of money. I think the optimal strategy will be quite different than yours, when the economy has the loan component.
  • _njyk 4y ago
    Well I hope that you are going to apply, because in Europe, the ECB didn't understand it at all (hi from a European country with 20%+ inflation)
    • yreg 4y ago
      ECB has additional constraints. Since they don't want to bankrupt Italy, the lever goes only one way.
  • ramayac 4y ago
    I fought inflation in SimCB and my economy produced 440944 . -0.5% interest rate to reduce inflation, 90% of the time.
• jbay808 4y ago
  Very nice. This reminds me of the game Chair the Fed, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-federal-reserve-economy-simulation-game/ https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-fede... Unfortunately, they took it down about a year ago.
  • mmastrac 4y ago
    I managed to get close to launching it, but someone with more time might be able to find a good timestamp that's playable (or host it on archive.org on its own)... https://web.archive.org/web/20180710122012/http://sffed-education.org/chairthefed/default.html?startover=1 https://web.archive.org/web/20180710122012/http://sffed-educ...
    • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      I might be a little closer? I'm in-game but it clearly doesn't work properly. https://web.archive.org/web/20160914125342/http://sffed-education.org/chairthefed/WebGamePlay.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160914125342/http://sffed-educ...
  • wolpoli 4y ago
    That was an insightful game. There was a negative demand shock scenario and to play it properly, it requires first dropping interest rate to 0%, then followed by high interest rate to bring inflation back down over time, which is exactly what's happening in the real world. It's likely that's the reason why they took the game down.
    • SkyMarshal 4y ago
      Any idea how it would expect you to handle negative demand shock first, then inflation driven by a subsequent supply shock (instead of or in addition to increased money supply)?
      • jxf 4y ago
• whimsicalism 4y ago
  I found it impossible to lower unemployment from 10%? e: I see > One of the 10 orchards is always in its preparation phase which means it doesn't employ anyone so the natural unemployment rate is one out of ten or 10%
  • denton-scratch 4y ago
    Yeah, I don't get that. There seems to be an assumption that the size of the workforce exactly matches the labour needs of the (maximum) number of orchards - 1. I can't see what that is modelling. It seems to mean you can't have a labour crunch. The fixed (maximum) number of orchards also doesn't seem to be modelling anything realistic; if apple prices go up and labour prices go down, I'd expect new businesses to enter the market. Of course, labour crunches and new market entrants would make the game less stable, and economic collapse would be harder to avoid.
• sushiburps 4y ago
  No idea what a good score is, got 431160 on my first go. My only rule was attempting to keep inflation at 1%, if it went over I raised, if it went under I lowered.
• roomey 4y ago
  What is a good score tho, to get some idea of if you did OK or not? A few people mentioned 400-450k, is that average? Where's the dam leader board ;)
  • jsjohnst 4y ago
    I haven’t seen higher than 443,385 on here or Reddit, which is my highest so far.
• mc32 4y ago
  Kind of tangential but what we came of Yanis Varoufakis’s study of game world economics? There was a lot of excitement about it being real and not just a model and real and not being statistical.
• yreg 4y ago
  I tried to keep inflation between 1.5-2% for the first 50 months and then decided to find out what happens if I YOLO permanently fix the interest rate to -0.5%. After the 240 months I somehow ended with GDP 442999 and 1.53% inflation. How come? Shouldn't I have a runaway inflation?
  • FastMonkey 4y ago
    Ha, I did the exact same thing. I guess the fed has it all wrong! Edit: I guess it's not as fair to the player, but maybe there should be more randomness in there, or perhaps some kind of forcing function that makes things a bit less stable.
    • MonkeyClub 4y ago
      Macroeconomics aside, I surely am glad to see other primates in here, have been going bananas for a while on my own.
  • nwah1 4y ago
    Under certain Keynesian views, Fed policy is mostly irrelevant, and only fiscal policy matters. Or actual printing... which low rates and QE are very different from. Another view from the neoclassical school has a similar conclusion dubbed the Policy Ineffectiveness Proposition. But others say Fed policy does matter because in the real world contracts and prices are sticky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy-ineffectiveness_proposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy-ineffectiveness_proposi...
    • Proven 4y ago
    • zeusk 4y ago
      How is QE or low rates not money printing? Low rates causes higher private lending, borrowing creates money (fractional reserve banking). QE also creates money by Federal Reserve buying Treasury's bonds with printed dollars. Both of these are temporary, but we have had QE and low rates for over a decade now. QE was supposed to be unwound in 2018, but covid pushed it to new peaks.
• fallingfrog 4y ago
  Hmm, it would be interesting to add capital investment and rate of profit on capital.
• andytratt 4y ago
  is there a leaderboard? 441684
• Aeolun 4y ago
  I feel like any interest rate higher than -0.5% will automatically lose you all your farms at some point in time.
• 01100011 4y ago
  Where's the button that lets me buy stocks with insider information before I adjust the rate?
• jyu 4y ago
  FYI the Fed used to have an educational game called "Chair the Fed". They took it down in 2021. I'll leave the meaning of that action as an exercise for the reader. https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-federal-reserve-economy-simulation-game/ https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-fede...
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Androider 4y ago
  In my first game, I carefully managed the interest rate to keep inflation around 2%: Your economy produced 431540 apples. Next game, I set the interest rate to -0.50% right away and left it there: Your economy produced 442411 apples. Inflation was 1.5% in the end. Doesn't seem to matter too much what you do. Maybe in real life too.
  • dwighttk 4y ago
    I lowered interest rates to 0 slowly and then to -.5 when I realized it could go down. Ended up in the same neighborhood 400somethingK Honestly expected inflation to go up at some point
  • emmelaich 4y ago
    I went for extreme volatility which basically killed everything in a 100 months. 100% unemployment, nothing produced. Might be a lesson there.
• doubleunplussed 4y ago
  > When the central bank lends money at positive interest rates, the interest profits or “seigniorage” are distributed to everyone like dividends (they would in the real world go to the government which would spend or distribute them). If seigniorage was not distributed, at the end of each loan, the money supply would shrink a little bit as the central bank would be gradually absorbing money from the economy as interest. Seigniorage serves to neutralize this. Could you elaborate on this? Is this really what happens in the real world - interest on central bank loans going to the government? I was very much under the impression that this interest goes to the central bank (and is thus destroyed), and the fact that this would appear to contract the money supply seemed like it just increased the need for the central bank to increase the money supply in other ways. To be honest, I am still not clear on how the money supply is increased permanently by a central bank - all textbook examples of money supply changes appear to only do so temporarily.
• MrYellowP 4y ago
  I do literally nothing and the amount of produced apples increases all by itself. There is no need to do anything at all.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• lotrjohn 4y ago
  That site has an awesome text/font. Reminds me of a CRT screen with scan lines! Mind sharing?
  • zerocrates 4y ago
    It's Roboto Mono with a mostly-transparent layer drawing the "scanlines" on top of the whole page using CSS linear-gradient.
• joshxyz 4y ago
  May I ask how this differs from Chair The Fed?
• forgotmypw17 4y ago
  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 <button> elements instead of <div>, your page will be more accessible to users who depend on their user-agent to know what type of controls they are.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    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?
    • forgotmypw17 4y ago
      In my particular case, it is not a case of not being able to see the values, but being able to press the buttons without using a pointing device. In accessibility, the scenarios you can think of are only the tip of the iceberg which represents all the possible scenarios.
      • capableweb 4y ago
        That makes sense. Thanks for sharing deeper details about the issue.
• jsjohnst 4y ago
  442,329 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?
  • user3939382 4y ago
    Didn't Japan have negative interest rates?
    • tapland 4y ago
      A lot of places did in recent years
      • jnordwick 4y ago
        Nobody has had negative interest rates without policy prescriptions that may show up as a negative rate, but on balance sheets do have costs. 1. There have been negative yields for short periods of time, but a yield isn't the same thing. Yields can go negative for technical reasons related to trading, but the if you look at rates on fresh bond offerings, they'll still be slightly positive. 2. There can be government laws that require lending, penalties and reserve requirments, etc that all change the cost to carry. So while the interest rates shows up as negative, after adding in these other items the adjusted rate is still positive. For example, German mortgages went negative a few years back, but it a requirements for some banks to original home loans to increase ownerhsip and the penalties would have larger the the rate charge, so they loaned out at -0.5% instead of taking a 1% hit (can't remember the exact numbers). I don't know anywhere that there has actually been negative interest rates without some other sort of interventions pushing towards them.
    • sschueller 4y ago
      Switzerland had -0.75 until last week when they went to -0.25.
• swfsql 4y ago
  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: Their Cause and Cure". It had explanation for phenomenas such as why the food sector is not as impacted, during the bust, as some other highly technological, heavy industry sector. For a more visual concepts, I find Mike Maloney's Hidden Secrets of Money pretty good, although it's not as rigorous as the previous sources.
  • polymathemagics 4y ago
    I would recommend against Human Action. It's "Austrian" school economics, which is considered heterodox, and it's something that's understandable by a layman but generally not be considered good economics. I fell into the trap when I was in high school of reading Mises and Rothbard et al, I wish I had not.
    • swfsql 4y ago
      ^ For the theory, absolutely zero arguments were given whatsoever.
      • polymathemagics 4y ago
        Fair - I did not give any arguments, just my personal experience as someone that was really deep into that subculture. I'm also not an economist, so I would defer to the professional consensus, which I think we'd both agree is that modern Austrian economics is not considered a serious thing. I think we should be wary of debating a highly technical topic as a layman - it's very easy to be wrong, and it's hard to get feedback from people more versed in these topics. For context - I wanted to be an Austrian economist when I started college, I was majoring in math (real analysis, etc) and econ with the intention of starting an econ phd. I fell in love with computer science instead. I look back on my libertarian / austrian phase as just me having too much time on my hands as a high schooler, being a pretty smart student, and there being a wealth of info online about it. It feels even better as a smart person to think that you know something others don't, including professional economists. I just want people online to be aware of the Austrian rabbit hole, because the von Mises institute is just a think tank in Alabama that's very good at creating an online presence that feels legitimate and scholarly, but it's not really. That's not to say there's not interesting arguments, I'll always be attracted to some libertarian ideas, e.g. some of Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable. But I think most people can relate to having strong convictions about something, growing older, losing the conviction, and then being wary of taking extreme positions in topics that they know little about.
• kvathupo 4y ago
  On the financial end of the spectrum, there's "american dream" [1] by Stephen Lavelle [2], an enigmatic fellow who releases almost all his games as open-source. Putting you in the shoes of a trader, the game is a strong contender in the argument for treating video games as art with its subtle cultural commentary (even if I don't agree with some of it ;p). [1] - https://www.increpare.com/game/american-dream.html https://www.increpare.com/game/american-dream.html [2] - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/02/increpare-the-genius-developer-who-gives-his-games-away-for-free https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/02/increpare...
• gs17 4y ago
  I pretty much tracked my rate to "Menu costs" (within a certain range) halfway through and got 443279. Didn't know what they were, but it seemed to go well.
• mhh__ 4y ago
  > A lot of real economic models involve advanced math and differential equations. The goal here was to keep this type of mumbo jumbo to a minimum to make it more easily understandable for those who like to right click view source (and more importantly to make it less work for me to build). > mumbo jumbo It's very efficient mumbo-jumbo, though. I've spent years learning maths, but not economics, so just show me the equations! In fact I'm going to have a heated Lamport Moment and say that Math >>>>>> Code in matters such as this. I have a very short attention span and this page just looks like a blur to me. Evidence: It took me 2 skim-throughs to even spot the phrase I quote. Maybe I'm dyslexic.
  • BenoitEssiambre 4y ago
    This was a bit tongue in cheek. I love math too. I wish I had the time to learn the more "grown up" models like the DSGEs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_stochastic_general_equilibrium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_stochastic_general_equ... )
    • mhh__ 4y ago
      I gathered that was your opinion given that you actually implemented the model but one of my mantra's is basically "Calculus good actually" when it comes to programming so I thought I'd take the opportunity to propitiate.
• Zenst 4y ago
  I managed to make everybody unemployed in 120 weeks, which may explain why most goverments globally are elected for 5 year terms at a go.
• enviclash 4y ago
  This is a very nice toy model, perhaps the only surprise came while reading "profits are distributed equally as dividends to everyone". I was wondering if this turns the simulation into a combination of capitalism and communism? Not sure how to find a simple alternative, any ideas anyone? Thanks!
  • imtringued 4y ago
    In capitalism profits are given to the capitalist i.e. owners of capital... This model is not simulating capitalism.
• pwillia7 4y ago
  443018 Tried to stay around 3.5% inflation but furiously fought deflation and used the sliders a lot to pendulum around especially in crises
• dzink 4y ago
  The model is missing the external factors if currency price and foreign import prices of goods and demand for your own currency. CB decisions have been greatly cushioned by the fact that the US currency is reserve currency of the world at this time and instability elsewhere makes it remain such. If apple prices go up, demand can go abroad and that changes the dynamic for when you change interest rates (can farms support themselves when the price of applies is pushed down by imports and your inflation escapes). Thus recovery would look different in an open border world vs closed economy. Then it also compounds for countries such as the EU members where you have some with high exports and others with high debt that share the same currency and pushing one direction always hurts someone.
• del_operator 4y ago
  441877 Mostly left it at 0% except for two inflation events where it went over 7%.
• 6510 4y ago
  It needs a top 100 and fancy charts so that one can review how players did it.
• reilly3000 4y ago
  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 the highest or close to highest score, only slightly higher than those that did a constant -0.5%. I’ve always been apprehensive of how low interest rates dropped around 9/11 and nobody had the political courage to raise them after that, leaving little room for leverage. What I have learned from racing games is that in order to win, it’s not all about holding down the gas pedal the hardest. Its about keeping on the track first, which requires lower speeds to navigate complexity, and only using max speed in straightaways. Or to quote the eminent Charlie Sheen, right after his infamous ’banging 7 gram rocks’ he said, “I only have one speed, I only have one gear: GO.” History tells how well that worked out. That may work on a straightaway, but in this world, there’s people and there’s pandemics and wars and politics. Had rates been at a higher level they could have been slashed at the start of the pandemic, but there was no room to drop at that point.
  • tjr225 4y ago
    Nice useless car analogy. Signal to noise.
  • myoffe 4y ago
    I barely made any changes and resulted in 430K
    • sunshinerag 4y ago
      Thank you for your hard work. Here is your salary and hard earned pension.
  • fartcannon 4y ago
    I set it to 0 for the entire run and got the same as you.
• no_mushrooms 4y ago
  And to think that the central bank of central banks is a private company... makes us think right? https://www.bis.org https://www.bis.org
  • bidirectional 4y ago
    ...jointly owned by the central banks who make use of it. Seems fairly innocuous and the obvious way to structure such an organisation.
• neilwilson 4y ago
  Nicely done. I'm looking forward to going through your code and design. It's a great addition to the set of games that help us get our head around these things. Simple models have existed for a while that show the horizontal circuit can be stable. Here's my correction of Steve Keen's initial horizontal circuit from 2010[0] What you'll find is that the unemployment buffer stock that is disciplining inflation, not the interest rate. You can see this by setting the interest rate to zero permanently. You don't need wonks in central banks - just very effective automatic stabilisers based around the labour buffer stock. To that end if you hire the unemployed at a fixed wage paid by the central bank at an orchard that is slightly less productive at producing apples and sells its output at a fixed markup price you'll find that you get more overall output because the less productive buffer stock ends up being smaller than a completely unproductive buffer stock for the same price anchoring effect. I explored that in my baseline economy model, a derivative of a mainstream model, which is still online.[1]. Code on Github [2]. What I also found is that when you introduce 'shops' rather than the mythical central auctioneer market, and people just go to the current cheapest shop near them things broke big time. [3] Tap me up on Discord or Github if any of this is of interest. [0]: https://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/01/11/guest-post-a-double-entry-view-on-the-keen-circuit-model/comment-page-4/ https://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2012/01/11/guest-post-a-... [1]: https://new-wayland.com/blog/how-the-job-guarantee-fixes-mainstream-macro/ https://new-wayland.com/blog/how-the-job-guarantee-fixes-mai... [2]: https://github.com/newwayland/baseline-economy https://github.com/newwayland/baseline-economy [3]: https://new-wayland.com/blog/revealed-the-simple-change-that-breaks-mainstream-macro/ https://new-wayland.com/blog/revealed-the-simple-change-that...
  • brutusborn 4y ago
    Do you know of any examples of countries that had a well functioning job guarantee policy?
    • hgomersall 4y ago
      Here's a bit of a discussion: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/randy-wray-the-job-guarantee-and-real-world-experience.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/randy-wray-the-job-g...
• TedShiller 4y ago
  How can I print infinite money to fund pointless social programs with this app?
• zhte415 4y ago
  Does it have a Taylor Rule? And a Reverse Taylor Rule?
  • tyho 4y ago
    Need a userscript to do this. Would be interesting to see how well it does compared to the strategies discussed here.
• roansh 4y ago
  Benoit, thank you for this! "What has government done to our money" is a nice read to understand money, inflation, central banks, exchange rates between currencies, etc. https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money It opens with describing what money is from the first principles.
• sfblah 4y ago
  It would be funny if, in the simulation, you could cause a guy to start sending people to Mars by putting rates at close to 0% for 10 years.
• leononame 4y ago
  I think, as of writing, I have a new high score: 444823. I achieved this by trying to keep interest rates as high as possible. I started out with 5% which gradually increased to 7%. During the prosperity, I was mostly fixed at 13% and then lowered to 6% just before the drought. I kept the interest rate wiggling between 6% and 8% for the rest of the game (though I probably could've gone much higher until the people spend 10% less). Keeping the interest high is key, since it's (afaik) the only way to generate new money. Additionally, income from interest will be spread out between the population, so going for high wages is not absolutely necessary, since the investment income from the orchard will also reflect in the population's income. edit: Just going to piggy-back on this comment. Are there any interesting, recent economic simulation games out there? Especially macroeconomics are fascinating and would make for a challenging game.
  • imtringued 4y ago
    Play prosperous universe. It will make your head hurt.
    • leononame 4y ago
      Just had a look, I'm really intrigued. Definitely going to try this one out!
• retube 4y ago
  This is really interesting. but the roles of commercial banks and central banks are very different (intermediating credit and can go bust vs controlling money supply and can't go bust[1]), and to exclude the former from your model means you are missing a key component of any economy. [1] Caveats apply!
• awsrocks 4y ago
• Claude_Shannon 4y ago
  I had interest rates at 3%, and then suddenly orchards bankrupted and I had deflation of ~90%.
• fiatjaf 4y ago
  Why can't we just quit, leave the quantity of money static and and let the market decide the rates?
  • imtringued 4y ago
    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 lead to pointless jobs. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j5l_Oeg6kMo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j5l_Oeg6kMo
    • fiatjaf 4y ago
      You can't in this game, that was my point. In the real world of course none of these absurdities you mention would happen.
• Bost 4y ago
  Must be written in COBOL otherwise it's not realistic :)
• praestigiare 4y ago
  The problem with this is that economic models are (to be kind) incomplete, so playing a game like this is essentially "how to make an economy work if economies worked how we think they work."
  • mdnahas 4y ago
    Too true. I’d prefer a game where you see every action by the agents, not differential equations.
• political12345 4y ago
  I fought inflation in SimCB and my economy produced 258789
• temptemptemp111 4y ago
• ginko 4y ago
  Would be interesting to see what would happen if you set the interest rate below -0.5%.
• 3np 4y ago
  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.
• mrcomplicated 4y ago
  So I've put interest rate to 0.0% all the way until the end and GDP was 442599
• tmhrtly 4y ago
  I 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?
  • leohonexus 4y ago
    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-interest-rate-relationship.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/12/inflation-intere...
• mrighele 4y ago
  I tried a number of different approaches, like * Target 2% inflation * Target 4% inflation * Target positive but little real interest rates * Keep interests at -0.5% the whole time. The result didn't change much (more or less between 430k and 440k) with the best being the latter one: it seems that QE is not as bad as they paint it :-P
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    Have you tried kill all the poor? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
• nazka 4y ago
  For people looking for an in depth simulation game you should try Capitalism Lab [1]. Just to warn you the graphics looks super old (and personally I like it) but like all games like that the best is not in the graphics but what’s behind the scene. And oh boy what a simulation! You have everything you can imagine a real economic simulation needs. From interest rates to wages to import and export to limited natural ressources and their implications to limited money supply and interest rates depending how your companies performs, to banking with the DLC and the list goes on… The goal is to create a company and go as big as you can if it’s what you want. Almost all major industries are there. You can be selling beds to being the next Apple. There is even a DLC for software company (that is also a must have because it brings the talents feature). You can do vertical market dominance if you wish or go horizontal. And learn their own challenges and their ins and outs. And you can even do trading and do some M&A! If you ever buy it get all the DLC they are all worth it. They add even more realism and tools to the game. And if you really don’t like it I think they have a money back guarantee. As a tip to truly learn stuff play it in “hard mode”. Even if you fail at first it’s fine because you will learn from a realistic perspective and gain a lot of insight and knowledge each time. In the game options turn everything to realistic, with average in import, good quality for import, max out the total number of cities and companies. You should end up at 340-380% in difficulty. And then build whatever you want! You don’t have to know it all or learn it all. But since it’s that realistic you can go with your gut instinct and it will probably be right. From the impact of inflation on your business, to how marketing or real estate work. Just dive in and have fun! I’m a huge fan of this game. I learned so many things with it. From real estate to supply chain that I was not that familiar with. It’s so good. Oh did I mention it’s still in active development? :) [1] https://www.capitalismlab.com https://www.capitalismlab.com
• Scotrix 4y ago
  441k and trying to keep interest rate at the same level amount as inflation seemed to do the trick for me. Did run it 3 times and basically got the same results.
• FredPret 4y ago
  Current economics is a primitive form of the future psychohistory. Can't wait!
• known 4y ago
• tikiman163 4y ago
  This game has some rather obvious flaws in terms of an economics simulator. Because the is only one product that means any changes to the price of apples is the inflation rate. Additionally, the demand for apples is basically fixed and 0% unemployment will guarantee a supply surplus causing the price to drop (immediately causing deflation). When deflation happens the only way they don't shut down orchards is if the interest rate is below 0%. If inflation hits more than about 5% all of the orchards shut down causing 100% unemployment. This model clearly assumes that if an orchard won't hit a predetermined ROI that it shuts down and won't re-open until it will get that profitability rate, but wages are largely unaffected by deflation, so the price of apples has to constantly out strip the operating costs of the orchard which are entirely variable. The econimc model here couldn't be more supply side if it tried. It's a perfect analogy for how Republicans think economics work. Either you subsidize businesses to guarantee high profits, or the rich people will instantly take their ball and go home, and everyone will starve. Businesses don't instantly shut down if they think they won't post a profit for a quarter. Seriously, Amazon literally posted a loss every quarter for its first 10 years and they stayed open through investment so people would receive dividends after they finished establishing the scale they needed. Whoever made this didn't put enough effort into thinking about the difference between a single product economy and real life. One market having a hicup doesn't cause 100% unemployment and a complete shutdown of all production in that market. This game fails to simulate a real economy for many of the same reasons the stock market rarely remains stable.
• Giorgi 4y ago
  Played with 0.00% some orchids went bankrupt (why is that a bad thing?) still collected 400000+ Central Bank is pretty much useless.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• akudha 4y ago
  I wonder if it is possible to teach the average Joe about the functions of the government, world economy etc through games. With real data. This might also be a good way to learn the policy positions of various politicians, think tanks etc. For example - let’s say the player is the chief of UNICEF. Or World Bank. Or U.N. Would be fun to play such a game, with real policies and real data. I know I am not alone in finding economic topics dry and boring. But I might play games, than read a book on dry topics.
  • spiralx 4y ago
    For all of your policy tweaking needs: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1410710/Democracy_4/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1410710/Democracy_4/ https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1410710/ss_94fdabef4bceb25aef5ca8288bfd59d320f7fde4.1920x1080.jpg?t=1652704202 https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1410710/ss_94f...
• chimney 4y ago
  I fought inflation in SimCB and my economy produced 446243 The best way I can conceptualize it is running counter-cyclical monetary policy, essentially tweaking supply via cost of capital for orchards. Rates fluctuated between 4-7%. I tried to keep inflation and menu prices between 1-2% consistently.
• hndamien 4y ago
  This completely neglects the supply side of money and only views the demand side. There are two levers in a central bank, in reality there should be 0.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]