As I mentioned yesterday, I spent six hours with Steve Keen yesterday. He cam down to see me in Ely, and we talked economics, MMT, annoying aspects of ageing and about his software programs, Minsky and Ravel.
Minsky is an economic modelling tool built on the principles of double entry. It is open source and free. There is a manual of a couple of hundred pages. Anyone is free to have a go, but as we rapidly found, it's best not to try it on a Mac, where it only ‘sort of' works.
The process begins by defining the key players in the model that is being built. We looked at the function of central banks and so looked at the central bank, private banks, the Treasury and the private sector economy (which was a bit of a catch all that could clearly be expanded).
Then you define the flows each might make e.g. government spending, taxes, bond issues, bond redemptions and repurchases, interest paid and so on, plus similar flows in the private sector e.g. loans and interest, etc.
The model has to balance: critically, you are not allowed to make single entries (or rather, you are, but the model will make clear that it does not work, so you have to put them right). Given that most government accounting is single entry and most macro does not really recognise the role of money in the economy, this is in itself quite revolutionary stuff.
Then Steve worked forward, explaining how relationships between variables can be defined within parameters so that behaviour can be predicted. You begin to end up with screens looking like this:
Charting results is one of the easier things to do.
I make no pretence that I have learned the programme as yet. There is syntax that I have been introduced to, but I suspect have not mastered as yet. And there were methods used that I am bound to forget until I try it for myself and have to rediscover them - although at least I know they are there, somewhere, now. That seems a little daunting, but so too did computer aided design (CAD) when I first tried to use it, and now I am pretty good with it and have little difficulty thinking of ways to sort out issues. I suspect Minsky will be like that.
I actually think the comparison between CAD and Minsky might be quite appropriate. Both provide toolboxes and a workspace. What you do thereafter is up to you. If you have nothing you want to design using CAD there is no point learning it. If you have nothing in the economy that you want to model the effort spent learning Minsky would also be a waste of time.
What might I model? I was sufficiently excited by this model to lose sleep over it last night, something I am not inclined to do very often. Thoughts on what to model included:
- The problem of accounting for government interest costs in a period of inflation - which involves no known double entry in the way that the ONS does it.
- Accounting for government debt itself, which again is based on rather dubious single entry accounting in the way that the ONS do it.
- Modelling tax revenues and multiplier effects within them. Linking this to GDP would also be good. Linking it to wheat makes up GDP might be even better.
- Modelling central bank digitise currencies and what that would demand that the government get its head around.
I am certain there is a great deal more.
Ravel is a digital data display program that lays over Minsky. It is not open source or free. It looks to be very powerful. For those familiar with it, Tableu looks to be what it approximates to. For me I can see massive uses for it. Steve is giving me a copy.
However, all this requires an investment in a decent PC, because this requires i7 processing power and decent graphic cards I think, plus good storage to read and write what look like they could become pretty big files. That's my question for the day. Do I fork out now and break more than 12 years working solely on the Mac?
I will let you know. But the temptation is very a strong. These programs will let me look at issues in new ways. And that is always exciting. And it is for precisely this type of investment that I accept donations on the blog.
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Thank you Richard, really appreciate what you do – yes, do invest in better gear. I’m really sorry that I can no longer afford to contribute regularly, so will make a one off now for this purpose.
You’re doing good woks Richard, thank you (and your non troll contributors too)
Thanks Marc
That’s fairly persuasive in its own way
And appreciated
You could keep your Mac, and use VMWare Fusion or Parallels to run a virtual PC on your Mac. This is what I do on those occasions that I need a Windows or Linux computer. Depending on your Mac, you might also be able to set it up to dual boot, so you can run Windows on it then reboot back to being a Mac (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh11850/mac).
But that is Windows 10 and Steve seemed pretty clear that 11 is very useful
Bootcamp can do Windows 11 according to https://machow2.com/windows-11-mac-boot-camp/
Certainly using a virtual machine hosting software like VMWare Fusion or Parallels, you can definitely do Windows 11. The nice feature about this is that you can still access your Mac applications at the same time – for instance running Windows inside a OSX window alongside Numbers. Better if you have multiple screens – then 1 screen be Windows, and the other OSX.
Unfortunately not for M1 Macs, and that is I have
For M1 Macs, use UTM rather than Fusion/Parallels.
Loads of tutorials on Youtube. Search Windows 11 on M1 Mac UTM…
Good luck.
But, given my wife needed a machine that did not solve the issue
But thanks
I have a Mac, and am thus doomed to miss out. Mr Kirby’s ideas to fix it I suspect is beyond my software skills compass. I love the idea, however; economic modelling through double entry programming. That knocks out 85% of the economics profession; and 100% of the neoliberal economists. Sounds good to me.
🙂
Mr Warren sums it up well.
The ability to model the real dynamism of economics is sorely ignored in a world where we rely instead on the lazy, reductionist, static, received wisdom provided by Neo-liberalism.
Keen’s contribution is nothing but consistent with his book ‘Debunking Economics’. Have fun is all I can say to those who will be having a go.
If I can build something dynamic it would be amazing
It looks to be possible
As a contributor I say go for it. Sounds like a good investment and the right time.
Thanks
Don’t buy a machine to run a Windows app unless you need to use it offline. Save your money and see if you can use an Azure virtual desktop. Possibly environmentally better too.
(I have never used it and this is not an endorsement, I switched to Linux years ago and would never go back.)
It looks like that requires intel chips – and I do not have them
Nope. You run it in the cloud (Microsoft Azure) and connect to it with a Remote Desktop client. There’s one available for MacOS.
I looked and decided that was incredibly complicated and the cost was totally unclear.
Hi, Richard
Firstly, thanks very much for the work you do. I have been a reader ever since I came across an article of yours comparing spending by Labour and Tories. I have had much mileage from that article over the years when debating with Tory-supporting family and friends.
You are correct that M-processor Macs don’t support Boot Camp for Windows. Windows 11 introduced hardware requirements (especially that for TPM 2.0 modules) that make virtualisation trickier. According to this article (https://machow2.com/windows-11-mac/), Parallels is your best option. It can virtualise the TPM and is authorised by Windows.
Parallels is not free, though (https://www.parallels.com/uk/products/desktop/buy/?full).
You may also have to factor in upgrading your Mac (extra RAM, etc.) depending on the hardware requirements. I couldn’t find any mention on Minsky’s support pages about hardware recommendations. If your Mac has the requisite graphics onboard, then this might be your best option, as it doesn’t expand your hardware environment – it merely upgrades it.
Parallels also means I can’t do anything else….
I am not convinced (yet)
And, if I am honest, now my wife does much more here between the scenes a PC might make sense for her as she has never used Macs and is struggling to do everything on an iPad.
Your wife sounds great: sensible, very PC (sic), – AND she puts up with you!
Keep the Mac, if you must; ask your son, and – esp. as he’s a gamer(!) – others too, to spec a PC. I believe GPUs (graphics cards) although critical for gaming can now take on heavy processing tasks – but these on their own are far from cheap: max-out RAM (which might thus influence your choice of motherboard); you could always add GPU processing at a later date.
– Oh, and Linux is the way to go! I run Gecko; Mint is good too, but recommendations are like economists’ opinions. Have you considered having the application run on a server?
Your work is much appreciated.
Decision has been made – an Acer (as I hear good things on reliability) and spec much as you suggest.
Definitely not a gaming machine.
I have no desire to shift from Mac overall.
To be honest the whole Mac vs PC debate is intensley tiresome. Macs are very good at what they do – graphic design and publishing. PCs are very good at what they do – crunching data and running high end games. At the end of the day both are tools designed for quite different uses.
When it comes to PC it is all about the bottlenecks. No point getting an i7 with only 4mb of RAM for example. You will also need a decent motherboard. A huge amount of the cost of a high end PC is sunk into the graphics card which unless you plan to start gaming you won’t need (though i can highly recommend sinking a few hours in to the RPG Witcher 3 – you even get to slay some trolls with your trusty silver sword 🙂 )
Best advice is not to go off the shelf from a commercial retailer. Speak to a specialist about what you need the PC to do – I can highly reccomend Novatech in Portsmouth (other specialists are available) or speak to the IT dept up at Sheffield about the spec and then get something custom built. It will cost less than an off the shelf machine and be more suited to your specific needs.
I also ech others when I say I look forward to seeing the results
Thanks
I am looking at people who let you spec the machine
I have a son who is a gamer who is advising. He pretty much builds machines
Sorry, Stewart, that’s just not correct.
We’ve never used Macs (although many, many years ago, we used a NeXTStation, the core software of which ultimately became MacOS), and publish dozens of books a year. Anything you can do on a PC, you can do on a Mac and vice versa and this has been the case for many decades. Quite a lot of people run a ‘Hackintosh’, basically a MacOS system on their PC (legality dubious), for example.
If Richard really needs Windows 11, then a PC is the way to go, but I wouldn’t necessarily go bleeding-edge and spend too much. Unless the software is coded to perform data processing on the GPU, you’ll just be wasting your money on an expensive graphics card. You could probably get away with the integrated graphics in the CPUs which are reasonably potent these days. Look at slightly older Intel i7s or i5s (or AMD Ryzens) and you can get huge amounts of processing power reasonably cheaply. Get plenty of memory as well, of course, as that is mind-bogglingly cheap these days. I can say that as I remember when we upgraded our NeXTStation from 8 megabytes of ram to 32 megabytes at the cost of £1200! That was back when £1200 was a lot of money, as well.
If Richard’s son is a PC Gamer, he’ll know all about the CPU/GPU situation so should be able to provide helpful advice. The thing to remember is that we’ve had good incremental improvements in performance over the past year, but they are only incremental. A PC a few years old can do everything that a brand new PC can achieve at only slightly lower performance levels. Which is why the newest computer in our offices (a laptop aside) is about 8 years old!
Thanks
Tried experiments with Anylogic system dynamics software – for a little experimental model of health and personal care system – using a discrete event model.
It would be great if you could use Minsky to show Reeves how she might get around her silly fiscal rule – and rebuild services etc.
Let’s not get too ambitious as yet
But…..
As the population grows and immigration increases the country badly needs new hospitals and schools but why bother building them when you’re not going to provide the money to staff them! Labour are pathetic in their inability to join up the dots!!
When you described your school-student curriculum yet dismissed the idea of teaching double-entry I scratched my head. It is the one thing I wish I had been taught. I can now (after 10 years of struggling, a long time ago) just about read basic prepared accounts for a local playgroup or a constituency party, but most of the voters accepting those accounts haven’t got the foggiest what they are voting on.
Now you have found a program that uses the skills you learnt for accountancy… I still scratch my head as to why you think students shouldn’t learn double-entry accounting.
However, I do look forward to the results from your new learning. Isn’t it grand to keep stretching the grey matter?
Minsky looks absolutely great – I haven’t looked at it in detail yet but that is one of my projects for the second half of this year.
I met Steve Keen at a Prospect magazine event in Westminster on “what’s wrong with economics” in 2018. I shook his hand twice: once to say pleased to meet you, and again to say thankyou for writing “Debunking Economics”, the best takedown of neoclassical economics ever written. Steve is a great guy and a colossus of alternative economic thinking.
Howard
I see big advantages to use working together on this
I will mail you
Richard
Thanks Richard – that would be excellent
best
Howard
Very interesting! I will certainly be looking at this software as modelling is something of interest to me.
One thing I noticed over the years working with double entry is that the majority of transactions flow from right to left (cr -> dr) eg you make a sale and then get the cash, not the other way round.
I wonder if Minsky/Ravel captures this concept at all?
Really?