Actually I've recently been playing SimCity 4 with my son and been
discovering I'd make a rubbish mayor (you only settle in Holmesburg if you
like high taxes and pollution). It got me thinking: what are the implied
politics of SimCity? Seems that someone has already written about this:
http://www.daquellamanera.org/files/Lobo_CityToy05LSE.pdf
Robert

On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Saul Caganoff <[email protected]> wrote:

> Sorry for the (only partly) flippant answer: Simcity!
>
>
> On 12/04/2009, Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Does anyone know of good examples of generic agent-based market
> economies?
> > I'm thinking of something as simple as this.
> >
> > A population consists of agents each of which has certain continuing
> needs
> > (such as food, clothing, shelter, Internet access, etc.) to survive. As a
> > starting point, let's assume that each agent needs one unit of each of N
> > resources every time period.  Let's also assume that each agent is
> > specialized and is capable of creating enough of one of the needed
> resources
> > to satisfy the needs of N agents. (The fact that I used the same N in
> both
> > places was intentional.) To keep it simple let's assume that these acts
> of
> > creation occur from scratch, i.e., that the creator doesn't need raw
> > materials, that all that's necessary for an agent to create a needed
> > resource is that the agent be alive. The agents presumably develop a
> barter
> > economy, trading the resources they create for the resources they need to
> > stay alive. Perhaps markets develop, and perhaps money develops. At this
> > point the economy should be fairly stable. Each agent creates enough
> stuff
> > so that s/he can trade it for what s/he needs to stay live.
> >
> > Perhaps some of the agents learn how to be more efficient in creating
> their
> > resource and begin to accumulate "wealth" in some form.  Perhaps the
> agents
> > have discretionary desires, which they fill if they have enough resources
> > left over after meeting their basic needs. Perhaps there are communal
> > services that are paid for by taxes or memberships.  This could become
> > increasingly elaborate.
> >
> > It seems to me that models of this sort must have been developed --
> perhaps
> > many times. Does anyone know of any references to this sort of work?
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > -- Russ Abbott
> > _____________________________________________
> > Professor, Computer Science
> > California State University, Los Angeles
> > o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
> >
>
>
> --
> Saul Caganoff
> Enterprise IT Architect
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/scaganoff
>
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