Ok! Here, the notebook. I have not found time to review it, but imo the main points are:
- Some people say that economical growth must be slowed down to save the Planet. Others strongly disagree. We do not want to shed light on this debate because we are not experts (me at least).
- We are interested in imaging what a zero growth capitalistic society looks like. We assume that, in a near future, governments are forced to implement zero growth policies because scientists and economists have discovered that economical growth is intrinsically unsustainable and a sudden worsening of the climate crisis is demanding severe countermeasures (otherwise human race could face extinction). We do not know if the unsustainability hypothesis is true in the real world, we assume that it is true (or believed to be true) in our fictional world. This setting reminds me of some Asimov’s novels.
- We use the Goodwin model, which is “starkly schematised and hence quite unrealistic model of cycles in growth rates” (from here). However, it is interesting because it describes the economical machinery. Probably, it is not a formal description of mainstream economics, because it seems to be written by the specter of Karl Marx.
- We do not use the model for accurate predictions, but to generate stories. I am thinking of The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino. Basically, he imagines to create interleaving stories from “random” combinations of playing cards. Less poetically, we use model parameters instead of cards.
What does the model say imo?
- Zero growth is bad. Unemployment is one of its consequences. Nothing new here, I suppose.
- In order to keep zero growth, Governments need to use their iron fist. First, they need to fight discontent (from unemployment), then they have to control the job market size and technology.
- Capitalists do not like zero growth, as well. In normal conditions, the model seems to suggest that the ROI for companies goes down in time (probably, Goodwin here encoded the Marx’s falling rate of profit argument in his equations). But ROI peaks are smaller near zero growth. This means, if I am not wrong with my calculations, that business owners can hope in big future profits in both positive and negative markets, but, near (not exactly at) zero growth, they have to give up their hopes (better a crisis than zero growth). In this context they need to find profits elsewhere, e.g. commodification of everyday life, worsening working conditions and quality of products/services, the usual stuff. At the same time, they could lobby the government in order to relax the zero growth policies.
The scenario is basically the classical cyberpunk story with different possible flavors, depending if government is stronger than big companies or vice versa.
Next step is the validation of existing sci-fi novels using extensions of the model. E.g the Jackpot seems a good fit.