If the advantage of the gift economy is partly due to division of labour, (See GiftAndSelfishForaging) can a division of labour, through exchange work as well?
So far we've added three kinds of agents that work with exchange :
* BarterAgent,
* ProfitSeekingBarterAgent
* the first, primitive MoneyAgent
For Question3? we ignore profit-seeking barter (which is a minor variant of barter) and compare barter and money with gift and
selfish foraging.
Results
The results are here :
Selfish Foraging Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type Agent.Agent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 45.440000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 2246.040000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 4079.040000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 22.483158 from a mean of 24.753666
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
Gift Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type GiftAgent.GiftAgent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 85.280000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 1206.580000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 6024.580000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 8.927779 from a mean of 7.050172
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
Barter Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type BarterAgent.BarterAgent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 46.540000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 2231.260000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 4095.460000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 21.876617 from a mean of 23.996450
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
Money Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type MoneyAgent.MoneyAgent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 46.960000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 2113.180000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 3973.780000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 19.926870 from a mean of 22.422749
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
In this experiment, neither form of exchange is much improvement over selfish foraging. That's funny, because during development, it seemed as if there was some improvement. Question4? adds a new resource : "love" (who says you can't buy it). This makes some difference.
Selfish Foraging Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type Agent.Agent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 28.940000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 2126.360000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 3835.160000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 22.527271 from a mean of 24.503851
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
Gift Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type GiftAgent.GiftAgent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 78.240000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 1810.780000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 8519.380000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 9.611330 from a mean of 7.651773
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
Barter Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type BarterAgent.BarterAgent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 31.980000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 2275.160000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 4270.160000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 22.215280 from a mean of 23.740025
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
Money Experiment
Parameters
Economy of 100 agents of type MoneyAgent.MoneyAgent
In a Random network (av. 22 arcs per node)
This economy was run 50 times, each time for 30 steps
Summaries
Mean no. agents alive : 34.520000
Average of surplus generated by the economy : 2175.140000
Average of total production of the economy during it's run : 4295.540000
Mean of standard deviation of wealth : 19.019840 from a mean of 20.954850
(Smaller sDev the more equal the society)
As noted in GiftAndSelfishForaging, adding more types of resources makes it easier for agents to die (there are more shortages that can kill them) and increases the value of interacting with neighbours. Lets have a look at a summary ...
| Type | Agents Alive | Production | sDev
| Selfish | 28.9 | 3835 | 22.5
| Gift | 78.2 | 8519 | 9.6
| Barter | 31.9 | 4270 | 22.21
| Money | 34.5 | 4295 | 19
Barter is some improvement over selfishness, Money is better than barter, but Gift is still better by a long margin.
Discussion
A few points to note :
* there could be a lot of devil in the details. Look at the algorithms for MoneyAgents and BarterAgents to see if there are any obvious flaws or biases here. And a lot of ways money could be implemented. The simple auctions currently used may not be plausible or efficient.
* also, the importance of money may be that it enables trade across larger social distances. Because the agents don't buy stuff other than to fulfil their own needs maybe the virtue of trade is being lost. Suggestions please for a plausible TradeAgent? algorithm.
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