An editorial in the Boston Globe this morning notes that both Chelsea and Cambridge, two cities adjacent to Boston, are experimenting with UBI to reduce food insecurity:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/17/opinion/solution-hunger-takes-shape-chelsea-cambridge/ Analysis of the Chelsea program shows 75% of the money turns up spent on groceries. The editorial approves. I think the government should provide a tax credit to businesses which employ people at a living wage, to move the employees out of poverty, to keep the businesses from being undercut by low ball competitors, and to move the economy toward more sustainable wealth distributions. -- rec -- On Sat, May 15, 2021 at 12:40 AM Pieter Steenekamp < [email protected]> wrote: > Glen, > Re *Wow. That reads like good, hard science fiction. In my skim, the only > thing I missed was an adversarial effort, positioning of white, black, and > grey hatted *attacks*. There was plenty of waterfall-like structure for > assessing vulnerability. But I missed the adversarial effort. Is it in > there? If so, take pity on me and toss some clues my way.* > > Methinks I understand stuff on a very shallow level and you're the deep > thinkin guy. I see the approach of the Finance 4.0 as focussing very much > on participatory as opposed to adversarial effort, so on a shallow level I > can't toss any clues to you. Instead of answering your specific question > (because I really can't), let me ramble a bit on the proposed Finance 4.0 > system. > > Finance 4.0 is a spinoff of the European FuturICT 2.0 project and I quote > from https://futurict2.eu/the-project-2/ : > > "To manage scarce resources and support endangered people and communities, > powerful global information systems need to be built, based on big data and > artificial intelligence." > > The FuturICT 2.0 project is a relatively big effort, the European Union > takes it seriously. > > *Now to focus on Finance 4.0* > > Two (there are more, but in my view these two represents the very basic > concepts) of the legs of Finance 4.0 are: > > * to use agent based modeling (ABM) as a primary tool to understand the > economy and to design tools to manage it, because the the economy is > considered to be a complex system where top-down analytical tools do not > work well > > * to consider the human participants not as Homo Economicus as per > conventional economic analyses but as Homo Socialis. > > I'll talk very briefly about each of these. > > *Using ABM to understand and design tools for a complex system* > Dirk Helbing has done very successful projects on traffic systems using > the ABM to understand the dynamics of the complex system and then to use > these insights to design efficient control systems for it.. From this he > genaralises on complex systems (with good explanations) as follows: > Two approaches to control a system are top down, central control system, > like the government's control of money ánd bottom up control like in a > swarm of ants. > In traffic systems he found the following: > A selfish bottom up control system outperforms the top down central but > only up to a point. If the system becomes very busy and moves closer to its > saturation point, the selfish bottom up approach breaks down and the top > down system functions better. > > But, if you have a local bottom up approach with local decentralized > optimization considering local neighbors, it does not break down and > outperforms the top down central control system over the whole spectrum. > > He argues that there are universal complexity forces at play and the > complex economy will behave in a similar way. He gives good explanations > (including the results of some ABM models) for this argument. > > *Second leg is to consider the human participant in the economy as Homo > Socialis* > Conventional economic theory is based on considering the human > participants as selfish agents Homo Economicus where each wishes to > maximise his own benefits. Helbing argues that humans act more as Homo > Socialis, each not only acting to maximise his own interest, but also > considering others. Again he explains this approach in the document. > > A top down approach will work better as a financial control system over > the whole spectrum (like we have now) if humans act like Homo Economicus. > > But a bottom up approach could be engineered that outperforms the top down > control system, provided humans act like Homo Socialis. He goes into some > details defending this assumption and of this design of the bottom up > control system with local optimization considering local neighbors. (It's a > complicated system, sort of like an expanded Bitcoin incorporating other > factors that humans value like planting trees or caring for children. ) > > Just a side-note, he considers Bitcoin to be a bottom up financial control > system designed for where the participants are Homo Economicus. Although he > does not say it explicitly he implies Bitcoin will not outperform the > current central government's financial control system. (Note that I'm > giving his views and it does not necessarily represents my own) > > In the words of the father of capitalism Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral > Sentiments (1759) > "How ever selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles > in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and renders > their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it" > > > > > On Fri, 14 May 2021 at 16:51, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Wow. That reads like good, hard science fiction. In my skim, the only >> thing I missed was an adversarial effort, positioning of white, black, and >> grey hatted *attacks*. There was plenty of waterfall-like structure for >> assessing vulnerability. But I missed the adversarial effort. Is it in >> there? If so, take pity on me and toss some clues my way. >> >> >> On 5/13/21 11:59 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: >> > Finance 4.0—Towards a Socio-Ecological Finance System >> > >> > A Participatory Framework to Promote Sustainability >> > >> > Download link: >> https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-030-71400-0.pdf < >> https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-030-71400-0.pdf> >> > >> >> >> -- >> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ >> >> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam >> un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >> > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >
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