I had a strange dream about economics. This was an idea dream rather than a story dream. I don't have many of these. 
Whether it has any meaning or not I do not know, but the idea that formed was this:
1. That an economy is naturally inclined to self stabilize, by which I mean that every thing gradually finds it's true value, as is reflected in human factors such as need, demand, rarity, human effort, use of resources, environmental damage, etc.
2. As an economy stabilizes, it becomes a balanced "game", in the sense that all "players" can compete fairly.
3. As the economy becomes fairer, it drives the Nash equilibrium down to less and less successful outcomes.
4. If people then interact with an economy non-cooperatively, they will be drawn to that Nash equilibrium, which will cause a decreasing overall prosperity in correlation with that increasing stability.
5. If that prosperity drops too low, the economy is deemed to be failing, when in fact it may simply be an indication of its balance. The low prosperity is really a direct symptom of the non-cooperative elements.
Then the dream switched to me feeling that someone famous had died, and I woke up... so it's 7am on a saturday, and I'm wide awake.
*
edit: After falling back asleep I had another dream this morning...
The bbs introduced a new feature that gave us good or bad points for different things we did. I remember there were (bad) narcissism points for viewing our own profile page, (bad) paranoia points for viewing who's online, (good) board user points for making posts, and (good) revenue points if adverts were displayed correctly; bad points if they weren't.
Now, most people loved this feature, and enjoyed comparing with others how they scored in each category, what their own overall score was, and where they were on the points ladder...
... except for Holdfast. He wrote pages and pages of angry sounding posts in QSF of how he didn't like the idea. Each a good screen filling wall of text.
One of us then pointed out the irony that he was one of the few board member with a positive score, and was at the top of the ladder. (his score was something like 1394+ 12-, whereas most others scores were -12000 or something). He replied with one short post "Now I like this feature.
"

Whether it has any meaning or not I do not know, but the idea that formed was this:
1. That an economy is naturally inclined to self stabilize, by which I mean that every thing gradually finds it's true value, as is reflected in human factors such as need, demand, rarity, human effort, use of resources, environmental damage, etc.
2. As an economy stabilizes, it becomes a balanced "game", in the sense that all "players" can compete fairly.
3. As the economy becomes fairer, it drives the Nash equilibrium down to less and less successful outcomes.
4. If people then interact with an economy non-cooperatively, they will be drawn to that Nash equilibrium, which will cause a decreasing overall prosperity in correlation with that increasing stability.
5. If that prosperity drops too low, the economy is deemed to be failing, when in fact it may simply be an indication of its balance. The low prosperity is really a direct symptom of the non-cooperative elements.
Then the dream switched to me feeling that someone famous had died, and I woke up... so it's 7am on a saturday, and I'm wide awake.

*
edit: After falling back asleep I had another dream this morning...
The bbs introduced a new feature that gave us good or bad points for different things we did. I remember there were (bad) narcissism points for viewing our own profile page, (bad) paranoia points for viewing who's online, (good) board user points for making posts, and (good) revenue points if adverts were displayed correctly; bad points if they weren't.
Now, most people loved this feature, and enjoyed comparing with others how they scored in each category, what their own overall score was, and where they were on the points ladder...
... except for Holdfast. He wrote pages and pages of angry sounding posts in QSF of how he didn't like the idea. Each a good screen filling wall of text.
One of us then pointed out the irony that he was one of the few board member with a positive score, and was at the top of the ladder. (his score was something like 1394+ 12-, whereas most others scores were -12000 or something). He replied with one short post "Now I like this feature.

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