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This is to support a discussion on money flows and growth. Money as a lubricant for the flow of embodied energy in human systems.
See also A Prosperous Way Down website

Odum Money and Energy Flows

Geoff McDonnell

Any activity requires the use of energy. Economic activity is not possible without energy, especially fossil fuels. An increase in economic activity necessarily leads to an increase in the use fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition there will be a commensurate increase in waste products, pollution and heat. This is dictated by the laws of physics and unavoidable. A problem arise when the cost of this degeneration caused by continual economic growth surpasses the benefit society derives from it. The ecological economist Professor Herman Daly (2014) explained that when the impact on the ecosystem is correctly measured, global growth has reached a point where the total private and social costs of economic growth outweigh the private and social benefits. In other words, more economic growth is making global society worse off overall - growth has become uneconomic! The model shows that eventually pressures will build up that counteract the perennial belief that all social ills can be solved with economic growth.

The dynamic of UNECONOMIC growth

Hanns-Jürgen Hodann

I made this model to simulate how a companies revenue will change depending on the lifetime of the appliances it manufactures, in combination with the ratio of repair costs and price. It also shows the accumulation of e-waste.

Appliances lifetime simulation with folder

Henny van Dongen

• This model examines how sustainable consumerism is from social, economic, and environmental aspects. The question in focus is "How will our second-hand clothing donations affect communities in developing countries, specifically Kenya?"

5 Stock Variables:

• U.S. Consumers

• Multinational Corporations

• Overseas Factories

• Kenya

Highlight Findings:

To sum up, there are 4 major problems associated to donations:

• 1. Source of problem is the consumer: Cheap deals attract hundreds of millions in revenue for fast fashion, and contribute to 100,000 tonnes of clothing to Kenya annually.

• 2. Rapid consumerism leads to over-utilization of slowly-renewable resources, such as water.

• 3. Nearly 96% of textiles jobs are eradicated by the massive inflow of clothing donations to Kenya.

• 4. The offshoring of textiles jobs enrages U.S. blue-collar workers, leading to the rise of protectionism.

Environmental, social, and economic sustainability aspects of textiles donations

Christina Cheung

Adam Smith's The Invisible Hand: The Feedback Structure of Markets. From Sterman JD Business Dynamics p170 Fig 5-26. A price-mediated resource allocation system..

Price control mechanism

Geoff McDonnell

6

This model is developed to simulate how Burnie can deal with a new outbreak of COVID-19 considering health and economic outcomes. The time limit of the simulation is 100 days when a stable circumstance is reached.

Stocks

There are four stocks involved in this model. Susceptible represents the number of people that potentially could be infected. Infected refers to the number of people infected at the moment. Recovered means the number of people that has been cured, but it could turn into susceptible given a specific period of time since the immunity does not seem everlasting. Death case refers to the total number of death since the beginning of outbreak. The sum of these four stocks add up to the initial population of the town.

Variables

There are four variables in grey colour that indicate rates or factors of infection, recovery, death or economic outcomes. They usually cannot be accurately identified until it happen, therefore they can be modified by the user to adjust for a better simulation outcome.

Immunity loss rate seems to be less relevant in this case because it is usually unsure and varies for individuals, therefore it is fixed in this model.

The most interesting variable in green represents the government policy, which in this situation should be shifting the financial resources to medical resources to control infection rate, reduce death rate and increase recovery rate. It is limited from 0 to 0.8 since a government cannot shift all of the resources. Bigger scale means more resources are shifted. The change of government policy will be well reflected in the economic outcome, users are encouraged to adjust it to see the change.

The economic outcome is the variable that roughly reflects the daily income of the whole town, which cannot be accurate but it does indicate the trend.

Assumptions:

The recovery of the infected won't happen until 30 days later since it is usually a long process. And the start of death will be delayed for 14 days considering the characteristic of the virus.

Economic outcome will be affected by the number of infected since the infected cannot normally perform financial activities.

Immunity effect is fixed at 30 days after recovery.

Interesting Insights:

In this model it is not hard to find that extreme government policy does not result in the best economic outcome, but the values in-between around 0.5 seems to reach the best financial outcome while the health issues are not compromised. That is why usually the government need to balance health and economic according to the circumstance.

New outbreak of COVID-19 in Burnie

Hank

When people talk about a government deficit, they forget that this is only one side of the ledger. On the other is a corresponding non-government SURPLUS. The money the government spends is not lost but shows up in the private sector as income. When one talks only of the deficit then one can understand that many think it should be reduced or even converted into a surplus, but reducing the government deficit reduces private sector income and a government surplus forces a deficit on the private sector with a potentially devastating effect on private sector wealth and economic activity. Unless the economy is overheating, government deficits are usually healthy. For countries that run traditionally a trade deficit, such as the US they are necessary to maintain economic activity. Consider this fact: for almost all of past 40 years the US and the UK have run deficits without any harmful effects!

This video by professor Stephanie Kelton contains evidence that supports the modle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6rlprwQB5E

The Dynamic that shows that Government Deficits benefit the Private Sector

Hanns-Jürgen Hodann

Based on the Market and Price simulation model in System Zoo 3.

I wrote an explanation of the model which you can find here: https://kdrive.infomaniak.com/app/share/1524656/f05f288f-6b27-4b32-87aa-46114dccc956

Z504 Market and Price - System Zoo 3

Henny van Dongen

8 6 months ago

WIP of Rammelt's 2019 System Dynamics Review Article which has STELLA and Minsky software versions as supplements. Compare with the older IM-2011 version

Simplified Keen Goodwin Minsky Financial Instability model

Geoff McDonnell

3

The model is built to demonstrates how Burnie Tasmania can deal with a new COVID-19 outbreaks, taking government policies and economic effects into account.

The susceptible people are the local Burnie residents. If residents were infected, they would either recovered or dead. However, even they do recover, there is a chance that they will get infected again if immunity loss occurs.

From the simulation result we can see that with the implementation of local government policies including travel ban and social distancing, the number of infected people will decrease. The number of recovered people will increase in the first 5 weeks but then experience a decrease.

In addition, with the implementation of local government policy, the economic environment in Burnie will be relatively stable when the number of COVID-19 cases is stable.

How Burnie, Tasmania can deal with a new outbreak of COVID-19

Jie Sun

3

A stock-flow diagram of an annuity mortgage. Initial loan, duration of the loan and the interest rate can be adapted. Simulation shows the development of the debt, interest and redemption, and cost of credit in three separate graphs and an annuity schedule in a table. Annuity is per year.

Annuity mortgage

Henny van Dongen

Introduction

This model simulates the COVID-19 outbreaks in Burnie, the government reactions, as well as the economic impact. The government's strategy is based on the number of COVID-19 cases reported and testing rates and recovered.

Assumptions

In the same trend that government policy decreases infection, it also reduces economic growth.

When there are ten or fewer COVID-19 cases reported, government policy is triggered.

The economy suffers as a result of an increase in COVID-19 cases.

Interesting insights

The higher testing rates appear to result in a more quick government response, resulting in fewer infectious cases. However, it has a negative influence on the economy.

Model of COVID-19 outbreak in Burnie Tasmania - Xiaoqing Ren 525418

Xiaoqing Ren

HANDY Model of Societal Collapse from Ecological Economics Paper

see also D Cunha's model at IM-15085

Clone of Human and Nature Dynamics of Societal Inequality

Aalia Kara

Ocean/atmosphere/biosphere model tuned for interactive economics-based simulations from Y2k on.

Lab 13 (Scenario 1)

Dustin Gaines

This is a toy model of an investment market.

Households follow a simple ratio to invest in bonds or equities. In part, the investment decision is stochastic, such that stock market returns are volatile, with equities more volatile than bonds and with a higher yield. As such, the system shows increasing volatility as the investment bubble grows.

Investment Markets

Neil Lancastle

economic capital has a reinforcing loop (investment of output) governing growth and a balancing loop (depreciation) governing decline.

Kehkashan

2 weeks ago

Environmental, social, and economic strategy integration for better business ideas

Lindsey Ohlin

• This model examines how sustainable consumerism is from social, economic, and environmental aspects. The question in focus is "How will our second-hand clothing donations affect communities in developing countries, specifically Kenya?"

5 Stock Variables:

• U.S. Consumers

• Multinational Corporations

• Overseas Factories

• Kenya

Highlight Findings:

To sum up, there are 4 major problems associated to donations:

• 1. Source of problem is the consumer: Cheap deals attract hundreds of millions in revenue for fast fashion, and contribute to 100,000 tonnes of clothing to Kenya annually.

• 2. Rapid consumerism leads to over-utilization of slowly-renewable resources, such as water.

• 3. Nearly 96% of textiles jobs are eradicated by the massive inflow of clothing donations to Kenya.

• 4. The offshoring of textiles jobs enrages U.S. blue-collar workers, leading to the rise of protectionism.

The environmental, social, and economic sustainability aspects of textiles donations

Christina Cheung

An initial study of the economics of single use coffee pods.

Coffee Pods ISD Humanities - Anouk D 10.4

Anouk de Jong

Investigations into the relationships responsible for the success and failure of nations. This investigation was prompted after reading numerous references on the subject and perceiving that *Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty* by Acemoglu and Robinson seem to make a great deal of sense.

Original model done for The Perspectives Project though recast into Kumu.

Why Nations Fail