Bank & Finance Watch

What's OPTIMAES?

OPTIMAES is an Open Project To Investigate Money And Economic Systems.

It consists of two things :

• agent based computer simulations to experiment with different economic systems
• this wiki which documents the experiments and the discussions around them

Why?

We wanted to help build a better world, and this seemed something we could do about it.

Building a better world is a political and contentious project. And it started to look to us as if economics (in the broadest sense), was the first key (of several) to unlock it. What you believe the economic facts to be will influence your political position. (Though for some people it maybe vice versa.) And understanding how economic systems work is a good way to start making some that work better. In particular, we were intrigued by Ideas That Were Being Advocated; by some feminists, ecologists and critics of globalization; for alternative economic systems such as InterestFreeMoney and GiftEconomies.

Although these sounded plausible (or at least interesting) we felt they could be tested. It's hard to get a pet country or community to experiment with, but as one of us was a programmer with some free time, we decided the next best thing was to do it in computer simulation. At least this would help us personally to get a handle on the issues. (We have enough hacker genes to conjecture that the best way to understand something is to build it; we also have holistic genes that doubt the conjecture; but genes don't fight, they collaborate.) Furthermore, other people might find it informative. And if these experiments did show some advantage in the alternative systems, that would be a good way to get them taken more seriously.

How does it work?

We're not claiming any kind of expertise here. This is a project that's born of our own ignorance of mainstream economics. But what we'd like, and think is possible, is to do some research openly, and to try to apply the collective intelligence of the internet to investigating this stuff. A smart-mob may just have the edge over current expertise. That's why this project is open for anyone to get involved with.

If you want to help out, an easy and valuable thing is to criticise. (See WeNeedYourCriticism) We know so little, that almost any intelligent comment you can make is going to be useful. And hopefully you can find an appropriate place to put the criticism on this wiki.

Another thing you can do is come up with new questions. Probably there are things you've always wondered about. Or deeply held economic / political beliefs you'd like to see demonstrated properly. After looking at the way this model works, you may be able to see how it can be adapted to answer your own questions. The code is freely available for you (under the GnuGeneralPublicLicense) to take and work from. Unlike some open source projects, we don't have a problem with forking into custom versions. If you develop your own project out of this, we can link to each other to get a conversation going.

You can also take existing experiments people have created and run them on your machine with a new parameter set. This isn't a SETI@Home type project which is about borrowing your processor time. Unless you want it to be. In which case it's easy. There's a tutorial called How To Do Real Useful Science In Just Five Minutes which shows you how to do that. It's also a good intro to the project in general.

Finally, if you know stuff that we don't, once again add it to this wiki. Links to other thinkers in this area are always welcomed.

Who are you again?

See PeopleBehindThis

And Remember

The results from these simulations are always provisional. If you think that they confirm your political position, remember that tomorrow, someone may come along with a refinement that shows things to be different. (See the DialogueOfModels)

Quoted from website:

[Regenerosity] "is a system for recognition of voluntary service, philanthropy & gift, civic engagement, trade, commerce, work, and any other contributions to the social capital and local economy of our communities. If you are a member of any community, whether as a person, as a non-profit organization, or as a for-profit business, there is something in it for you. As a person, you receive recognition for voluntarism, philanthropy, civic service, and many other types of community-building participation. As a non-profit organization, you receive tools for volunteer & donor recognition and access to untapped sources of support. As a for-profit business, you receive tools for customer loyalty & econometrics and access to untapped sources of working capital. As a school, you receive interactive tools for teaching economics & civics and for promoting community service. Everyone receives tools for measurement and analysis of social capital (their own and that of their communities) and practical tools to build community self-reliance and sustainable local economy, including community-based mutual credit systems.

quoted from website

"Meta-Markets has many markets each composed of different values generated in various domains. Markets are open to all members for trading and for offering their own products to public (IPO). In the sale (allocation and pricing) of shares in an IPO, the value of a share comes from its domain. For example, if you issue your Delicious bookmark, your Delicious bookmark's counts is the value. If you issue your Facebook profile, the number of Facebook friends is the value. When you sign up, you get an initial amount money to start your investments. The currency is "buraks", which is the foundation currency of the MIT's Openstudio online creative economy. Meta-Markets is a peer-to-peer market, so you always buy from a person and sell directly to a person. Of course to make profit you buy low and sell high. You set up the price of your stocks and wait for others to buy. If you put the price low people most likely buy it, if you set it high you sell when its worth that much. Watch the changes in the last price, and change your prices accordingly. To IPO your own creative products, you must be the owner of that product in its domain. When you IPO your product, the majority of your product still belongs to you, you open less than 50% shares to public. After the IPO, people buy your shares, and you raise capital.