Economics

Hey Chewxy, what do you think will happen if one day everyone decides to move their money onto a blockchain and no longer need banks?

That was a question that a friend asked me last week. I thought about the situation, gave some answers based on my what I understood of the world and the economy, while sketching out in broad strokes, what would happen. Essentially the conclusion was “civil unrest and war breaks out"* There were other conclusions too, I give the alternatives at the end of the blog post .

Then came time to organize Sydney Python. Due to clashing meetup dates with Data Science Sydney, Girl Geek Sydney and other groups, there was a dearth of speakers. So I stepped up and gave a talk based on the hypothetical question. Here are the slides:

The code can be found in this the economics simulation github repository.

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Over the years I have come up with some fun ideas of binary classifying people. They say “those who can’t do, teach”. That’s a binary classification – teachers and doers. I once did something like that, with a longer elaboration: Hackers and Engineers Abstract Thinking Capabilities Some people have better abstract thinking capabilities than others. I’ll use an example that makes this a particularly dangerous thought. Consider two young girls, A and B, who are playing with Barbie dolls. [Read More]

Preamble: I have not blogged in a while. I have quite a few things to say, and have started at least 7 blog posts but never found the steam to complete them. Last Friday, I was having a rather interesting conversation with my colleagues, and that was cut short by a prior dinner arrangement. Having left the conversation topic unended, I decided that it’s a good point to jump off and continue blogging.

I lean slightly left towards Marxism, and I made it clear what it is that appeals to me. What appeals to me about Marxism is that it is most sci-fi in nature. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is probably one of the most Star Trek-esque thing you can say. Indeed, I dream about a future where society functions like this, and I am actively working towards making such a change in society.

Of course there are other bits of Marxism that are I think outdated - the concept of class warfare, and proleteriats needing to seize control of Das Kapital* by that I mean, means of production. I think this is a very good pun is in my opinion, a very 19th century view. I do however, note a similarity between today’s society and the society that Marx lived in, one on the verge of a technological revolution* Das Kapital was published just as the dust of the Industrial Revolution was settling. Its observations of course, were made by Marx DURING what we call now the Industrial Revolution . Just as I note that the philosophy of Marx’s time was that people find meaning of life through work, we are similarly in a period where the same has happened. Think of how you would introduce yourself to other people - it’s your name, followed by what you do.

And there we were, seated at the table. Me, J and P were discussing my Marxist leanings. J posited a very interesting question, which I have paraphrased to omit the amount of obscenities that are wont to come about around groups of male humans speaking:

Imagine if there were two students, A and B. A is super hardworking, and does all the work during the semester. A even does extra work to understand the subject deeply. B on the other hand is a party animal, preferring to skip classes and not study, and would rather spend his time partying.

Then comes exam time. Obviously A does better than B. But here’s the twist. The lecturer for whatever reason, approaches A and proposes that A averages out his grade with B.

If you were A would you do that?

This is obviously a variant of the legendary socialism classroom experiment story that has been floating around the Internet for some time now.

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The smell of cheese and sweaty shoes wafted in the air as I disembarked from the car. Ahead of me, a large sign that says COCA-COLA AMATIL. Walking past the three safety signs that lead to the office, the tour was about to begin. As part of a hackathon sponsored by Coca-Cola Amatil, I recently got the opportunity to learn more about logistics and operations. A tour of the CCA distribution centre was included in the hackathon and did I have a fun time!

A fridge full of Coca-Cola Amatil products greeted us as we entered the office. We were issued high visibility vests and were required to sit through 10 minutes of safety briefing, coupled with some safety tests. I sipped on a juice box as we took the safety briefing test. After that, our tour began. Our tour guide was Mark Hopkins, One Logistics Project Manager of CCA. He started off by rattling off interesting facts about the distribution centre while I furiously typed away my notes on Google Keep.

He explained that the distribution centre is entirely covered in 500kW solar panels. It was an investment that only recently paid off with the building of the new preform plant. Prior to the preform plant’s construction, the solar panels were generating excess electricity during down times, but now that the preform plant – capable of making 750 bottles per minute; and runs 24/7 – has been built and is running constantly, they now use their energies efficiently enough. Then time came for us to actually enter the warehouse.

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TL;DR: The fastest method of loading passengers onto a plane is to group passengers based on the oddness/evenness of their seat row numbers. Board passengers with odd numbered rows through one door, and passengers with even numbered rows through another door.

I went to Melbourne last weekend for GP Melbourne (don’t ask – I lost badly). But I very nearly didn’t get there. My flight was originally at 5pm, so at 2pm, I decided to do a web check-in. To my surprise, I found that Jetstar had changed my flight from 5pm to 11pm without actually telling me. I checked all my email archives, and I had not received any communiques aside from their stupid weekly sales email. I had a dinner meeting in Melbourne at 8, it was unacceptable that I leave Sydney at 11pm. So I called Jetstar, and after a frantic 40 minutes, I managed to get my flight changed to 7pm. I had still missed the meeting though.

Anyway, so I was at the airport, having had 2 hours sleep the previous night, waiting, half asleep for my flight. Then came an announcement – that there was going to be a delay in the flights. I felt slightly frustrated, but I was short of sleep and felt tired, so I didn’t bother. When it came to boarding however, I was surprised, as Jetstar had changed their boarding method. I thought about it for a while and then I tweeted about what I thought to be Jetstar’s inefficient boarding method:

This method of boarding the flight is inefficient. Off the top of my head I can think oof at least 1 better way. #jetstar

— Chewxy (@chewxy) March 30, 2012

If I werent so sleepy I'd work out the math to show that this method of boarding can be improved. #jetstar #fail

— Chewxy (@chewxy) March 30, 2012

Despite that, I did work on a simulation while on the flight. I fell asleep after the first few lines of code of course, but on my trip back from Melbourne, I completed the code but never actually ran it… until today. You see, I didn’t think about it for a while until yesterday and today, when I received a number of Twitter mentions. I hadn’t checked my twitter mentions earlier, and hadn’t noticed Jetstar actually replied to my tweet:

@chewxy Sorry to hear boarding is a bit slow. Please send details of your method to our Customer Care Team: http://t.co/yNEdKbmS We'd (cont)

— Jetstar Airways (@JetstarAirways) March 30, 2012

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I watched In Time a couple of days ago and while I’ve been a huge fan of all four of Andrew Niccol’s big name movies (In ranking order: Gattaca, S1m0n3, Lord of War, Truman Show), I must admit that In Time let me down quite a bit, but also strangely I loved the rather nicely realized version of an economic model. The movie was fine – Cillian Murphy’s acting was top notch, but the same cannot be said about Justin Timberlake. I loved the premise of the story, I loved the setting of the story, and I am fine with the story being all over the place. They kept hinting at more (I personally was hoping for a Logan’s Run-esque payoff – i.e. something larger than themselves), but there was no satisfying payoff in the end, and I was fine with that. I give In Time a 6.5/10. The following will be an exploration of the economics in In Time. Needless to say, here is a spoiler alert

What really bugged me though, was the mechanics of the currency. The premise of the movie is as such: time is now a currency, and intrinsically linked to their lives, and the lower class of society has to fight for their lives. They live from day to day, working just enough to earn them one more day of living. Another premise is that at least nominal price inflation happens. At the beginning of the movie, we the audience are told, and shown with rather emotional consequences that the prices of things are rising. A third premise that I think is fairly important in considering the economics of In Time is that the currency is spent every living second of a person’s life. Let us not consider to whom first, and assume that the currency evaporates. It is on these premises the plot of the movie was built upon. Essentially what bugged me the most was this: Given the premises of the movie, why was there even inflation to begin with? I try to give reasons in this article.

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So, my girlfriend and I were watching the 7pm Project just before MasterChef started today, and there was a segment about organ donation. Naturally, my ears perked up. I’ve always had been interested in organ donation. Call it a perverse interest, but I like to think about how to match up organ donors to recipients – an obsession undoubtedly sparked by Al Roth. Amongst the thoughts of organ donation, I too often think about stuff like the liquidity of the organ market – that is to say, how many willing/able organs are there which at any given moment are able to be donated – and how to increase such liquidity. Of course, when such questions posed in a less-than-delicate manner, had led some colleagues of mine to wonder if I am actually sane * I’m not crazy, my mother had me tested . Today I’ll talk about some of my views on organ donation.

Here’s the 7pm Project video in question (starts about 5 minutes in):

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It was the longest long weekend in Australia last week – a total of 5 days holiday – it’s a combination of Good Friday, the weekend, Anzac Day and Easter Monday. There won’t be another 5 day long weekend in Australia until 2038. I had spent the long weekend in the Central Coast of New South Wales with my partner and made some very interesting observations.

We had left the house at about 8 a.m on Friday, to try to beat the traffic jam to the Central Coast. Feeling a little peckish, we decided to have some yum cha for brekkie. Alas, there were no shops within a 7 km radius that was open for yum cha. I live in a suburb with a fairly high concentration of Chinese food places, and none of the shops were open. That perhaps, would have been indicator of what was to come next.

We arrived at our destination at about 11 a.m, and feeling extremely hungry, decided to look for brunch. The whole town had only one eating place open. Like the yum cha places, most shops had decided to close for the long weekend. As I munched on my $40 lunch (yes, it was a case of supply and demand – but that’s not the point of this article), I began to ponder upon the shops being closed.

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