System dynamics

The main thing is; pay attention. Pay close attention to everything you see. Notice what no-one else notices, and you’ll know what no-one else knows.

What you get is what you get. What you do with what you get, that’s more to the point. Wouldn’t you say?

—City of Ember

Quantities

Eargain is a demonstration of the Turberfield framework. It constructs a narrative which sets up a simple economic scenario. The simulation of that scenario provides a dynamic environment for a player to interact with.

Except that there’s no such thing as a simple economic scenario. In the story, the flows of wealth are the result of both socio-political goods exchange and modern bank-intermediated trade. That is, both credit and debt.

A common expectation is that both credit and debt can be normalised within a system of money. But that’s difficult to write code for. We know that money passes from hand to hand, but what actually is it?

It has been said that money flows are like data. But as with data, when you trap the flow of money and start piling it up, you begin to ask the troubling question what is it worth?

What people really hope money will give them is wealth. In the same way that they hope that what data will give them is information.

This is the principle Turberfield declares with regard to money. Just as data can become information in the context of a question, money is wealth only in the context of a transaction.

Flows

The money flows in Turberfield can be visualised as a kind of mixed-mode money circuit.

Transactions

The flows described in the previous section are achieved by formalising the transactional relationships between individuals in the system.

	A	B	C	D	W
A		Trade		Exchange	Exchange
				Trade
B	Trade		Exchange	Borrowing	Industry
				Trade
C		Exchange			Exchange
D	Exchange	Borrowing
	Trade	Trade
W	Exchange	Industry	Exchange

Notes

• Bryn takes a loan in silver to buy Scrip.
• Trade is intermediated by the Mithraeum. Silver pays the balance.
• Exchange occurs between individuals
• Workers gamble when Cadi permits it.
• Unluckiest among richest workers pay off by going to Ant.
• Every year or so, the unluckiest Lodge blows down and all living there pay off.
• Industry has ‘maintenance’ and ‘production’. Does a Lodge have luck?