"...Even those with more resources do better by cooperating with those who have less. This insight needs further development, but suggests that the scope for beneficial cooperation is much greater than previously believed..."

Economic theory is great, but often needs adjustments for human unpredictability... like our altruistic or emotional reasons for doing things.

Ergodicity is a way of rethinking economic theory. Instead of plotting many possible futures from today, and picking the best one, Ergodicity looks at making decisions in a serial fashion, over time, to better model human economic behavior and influences.

This article is clearly written for someone with my less-than-informed economic skills and knowledge. But it links to the source materials that I expect several people here on Hubski have have distinct FEELINGS about.

I look forward to reading those analyses...

(NOTE: Please excuse the author for their subterfuge in the first paragraph. They are trying to make economics interesting to the layman, and it's a cheap stunt, but it worked on me. I read the whole thing.)

veen:

    By pooling resources, those who do can be aided by others who don’t. Mathematically, it turns out that such pooling increases the grow rate of resources or wealth for all parties.

One only needs to look into history to find examples of this happening. It reminded me a lot of the creation of the Dutch water boards, which were originally created by groups of farmers in the 13th century realizing that if they built a large dike together instead of individual dikes, they could build stronger dikes for much less money per farmer. People band together if there's a clear long-term benefit - is that such a revolutionary insight?


posted 1704 days ago