Simulations

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

At 10:05 PM 8/28/96 -0800, jim bell wrote:

>To me, the most obvious one is GIGO:  Simulations, especially 
>political/social ones, might depend heavily on assumptions that are 
>programmed into them.   A trivial, yet interesting example is the computer 
>game "Sim City" which allowed you to adjust the "tax rate" but problems 
>always cropped up the further away you were from 7%.   The libertarians were 
>frustrated that we were unable to drop the tax rate and still get a 
>well-functioning, happy society.  

I was taking economics back in the Armonk Iron days and we played around with
an economic simulation program written in Fortran.  One was supposed to
adjust government spending and taxes to find an optimum level.  I set both
taxes and spending to zero.  We got a lot of economic growth and a lot of
inflation (this was not a monetarist simulation).  But we were happier.

DCF