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Small Modular Reactors in Poland – first approach to the topic

I am returning to my blog, after months of break. I have been busy with the strictly scientific writing, and I discover every day, over and over again, that I have a finite amount of energy and focus. I keep circling around the topic of business models and business structures in the energy sector. I’ve read a lot of annual reports published by companies from the energy sector, and I have learnt a lot. Something like a year ago, when I essentially stopped blogging regularly, I would say I was all about renewable energy and about the ‘let’s save the planet’ thing. Now, I am much less sectarian. Warren Buffett is right: studying corporate reports is eye-opening. One of my re-discoveries as I have been looking inside businesses is that we can collectively do only the things which we know how to do, and therefore which we have practiced and learnt how to do. The rest is marketing slogans, applied to control crowds of useful idiots, by steering their outrage at their own existence. Therefore, now, when somebody approaches me with the ‘let’s save the planet’ story, I ask politely: “My friend, do you know how to save the planet? As a matter of fact, do you know how to save any planet? How many planets have you saved so far? How can you substantiate your claims?”.

Yet, bullshit put aside, energy transition is interesting. I think we are experiencing a somehow unprecedented multitude of energy sources. We have fossil fuels under many forms. We have wind. We have at least two different forms of solar: the photovoltaic and the concentrated solar power (CSP). We have nuclear coming in three sizes: the L (large scale reactors), the M (Small Modular Reactors), and the S (microreactors).

Another thing which I learnt from the comparative reading of corporate reports, on the one hand, and scientific articles, on the other hand, is that published social science is lagging far behind real-life. Just to give a quick example, many of my fellow scientists are firmly convinced that the development of solar farms is a technological breakthrough, and on the path of that breakthrough, the champions of planet-saving change struggle to keep their head above the water when fighting the villains of status quo. No. The business of solar farms is among the fastest growing businesses in the world, and in my home Europe, and in my even more intimate home Poland. The bulk of that business is based on well-known technologies, tested to the point of being officially certified for use in big power systems. The business is mostly about acquiring the really attractive solar assets, and possibly about trading them subsequently to someone else. Solar assets are land, in the first place. The solar installation is cheap and easy to build. The hard part is to acquire land, which: a) is acceptably close to consumers of energy b) is withing reach of bulk connection points in the power grid c) is abnormally cheap and, at the same time, there are no legal problems coming with it.

There are two technologies in the energy sector which somehow fascinate me with their economics: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and hydrogen. The former has recently started to grow very fast, after years of seemingly sterile discussions. In my home country, Poland, two different projects of SMR have been initiated. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is fascinating because it evolves so slowly, in spite of great hopes.

I am focusing on the SMRs, as my government has significantly changed the national energy policy in that respect. You can consult https://www.gov.pl/web/climate/energy-policy-of-poland-until-2040-epp2040 to know more. Suddenly, the development of SMRs has become a national priority. Two projects are on the table:

  1. Project #1, based on a technology called VOYAGR (https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/products/voygr-smr-plants ). This is a joint-venture between the Polish mining company  KGHM (https://kghm.com/en/investors ) and the U.S.-based company NuScale Power (https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/investors )

In 2022, the Polish government significantly modified the national energy policy, by putting strong emphasis on distributed energy resources, and, among them, an even stronger emphasis on Small Modular Reactors (https://www.gov.pl/web/climate/energy-policy-of-poland-until-2040-epp2040). Two projects are currently on the table:

For the sake of simplicity, these two projects will be further labelled by the names of the respective technologies involved, i.e. VOYAGR and BWRX-300. They display very different degrees of institutional development. The VOYAGR project seems to be stuck at the level of preliminary formalities. In the annual report of KGHM for 2022, we can read that “”On  14  February  2022,  KGHM  signed  the  Early  Works  Agreement  with  NuScale  Power,  LLC  (the  nuclear  technology provider), representing the first step in the implementation of SMR technology within the KGHM Group’s business operations.  On 20 April 2022, KGHM and TAURON Polska Energia S.A.  signed a letter of intent on cooperation in the scope of construction of low-emission energy sources, including using small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). On 8 July 2022, the Company submitted the first application concerning the safety assessment of the small modular reactor technology considered by the Company to the  State Atomic  Agency.  On  6  September  2022,  KGHM  Polska  Miedź  S.A.  and  SN  Nuclearelectrica  SA  signed  a memorandum on cooperation on the development of SMR. A preliminary site assessment report for the SMR reactor is currently being developed“. In a later presentation by KGHM, dating from April 2023 (https://kghm.com/en/investor-presentation-april-2023 ), we can read that ” KGHM plans to build a small modular light water nuclear unit with a capacity of up to 500 MW by 2030. In 2021, KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. established a Nuclear Energy Department and in February 2022 a contract was signed with NuScale Power, LLC (“NuScale”) to commence work on implementing the SMR technology in Poland.“

Additionally, in April 2022, KGHM signed a letter of intent with Tauron Polska Energia S.A. regarding research, development and future investment projects with respect to the construction of energy generation sources utilising SMR nuclear power technology (https://kghm.com/en/signing-letter-intent-regarding-cooperation-generation-sources-utilising-smr-nuclear-power-0 ).

As regards the provider of technology in the VOYAGR project, namely NuScale Power Corp., there is a trace of cooperation with KGHM since September 2021, when both parties signed a first memorandum of understanding (

https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/news/press-releases/2021/nuscale-signs-mou-with-kghm-and-pbe ). On February 14th, 2022, a further going agreement was signed, to initiate the Deployment of the First Small Modular Reactor in Poland (

https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/news/press-releases/2022/nuscale-to-announce-historic-agreement-with-kghm ). Finally, on September 12th, 2022, the parties signed a task order to further this cooperation (

https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/news/press-releases/2022/nuscale-and-kghm-sign-task-order-to-initiate-the-deployment-of-first-smr-in-poland ). Since then, no significant further development has been communicated to the public. NuScale Power owns 87 patents pending in Europe.

As regards the BWRX-300 project, there has been more institutional development. In December 2021, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, BWXT Canada and Synthos Green Energy announced their intention to Support Deployment of Small Modular Reactors in Poland (https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/ge-hitachi-nuclear-energy-bwxt-canada-and-synthos-green-energy-announce-intention-to ).

In June 2022, PKN Orlen SA and Synthos Green Energy SA formed a new entity, Orlen Synthos Green Energy sp z o.o. (KRS 0000975672), with an initial paid-in equity of 20 000 000 PLN, 50% from each of the partners. In November 2022, Synthos Green Energy SA and GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy International LLC formed a new entity, BWRX Europe sp. z o.o. (KRS 0001004329), with an initial paid-in equity of 2 000 000 PLN, 50% from each of the partners. In March 2023, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and Synthos Green Energy (SGE) announced they are forming a consortium to advance the global deployment of the GEH BWRX-300 small modular reactor (https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/tennessee-valley-authority-ontario-power-generation-and-synthos-green-energy-invest ).

On April 21st, 2023, Orlen Synthos Green Energy sp z o.o. formed 19 affiliate entities, each as a limited liability partnership (PL: sp. z o.o.), each with an initial paid-in equity of 500 000 PLN, for the purposes of developing 19 local installations of the BWRX-300 technology:

  1. BWRX-300 Tarnobrzeg (KRS 0001031820)
  2. BWRX-300 Stalowa Wola (KRS 0001032414)
  3. BWRX-300 Nowa Huta (KRS 0001031830)
  4. BWRX-300 Ostrołęka (KRS 0001031827)
  5. BWRX-300 Połaniec (KRS 0001032980)
  6. BWRX-300 Bełchatów (KRS 0001031650)
  7. BWRX-300 Dąbrowa Górnicza (KRS 0001032435)
  8. BWRX-300 Grudziądz (KRS 0001031818)
  9. BWRX-300 Kozienice (KRS 0001032027)
  10. BWRX-300 Kujawy (KRS 0001032386)
  11. BWRX-300 Łaziska (KRS 0001032519)
  12. BWRX-300 Łódź (KRS 0001031895)
  13. BWRX-300 Pomorze (KRS 0001032683)
  14. BWRX-300 Poznań (KRS 0001031631)
  15. BWRX-300 Rybnik (KRS 0001032520)
  16. BWRX-300 Stawy Monowskie (KRS 0001031321)
  17. BWRX-300 Warszawa (KRS 0001032415)
  18. BWRX-300 Warta (KRS 0001032686)
  19. BWRX-300 Włocławek (KRS 0001031647)

GE-Hitachi Nuclear owns 181 patents pending in Europe.

According to recent research (Asuega, Limb & Quinn 2023[1]), the capital cost of constructing a small modular reactor is between $3 985 and $4 844 per 1 kW of electrical power. The BWRX-300 reactor has a nominal power of 300 MW, whence a unitary capital cost between $1,2 bln and $1,45 bln. Therefore, the total capital cost of 19 local deployments in the BWRX-300 technology in Poland can be estimated between $22,72 bln and 27,61 bln. The state-controlled company PKN Orlen, one of the two involved in the project from the Polish side, has currently a total equity of $33,4 bln. As regards the VOYAGR project, and if its Polish partner, KGHM, is to be held to their word of implementing an SMR of 500 MW, their capital needs for the venture will be somewhere between $2 bln and $2,42 bln for the reactor alone, with present equity of $7,15 bln.

The deployment of SMRs in Poland is vital to national security and therefore the Polish government takes a fully understandable care of controlling the flow of information on that topic. Nevertheless, with full respect for the security concerns, the deployment of SMRs in Poland means a huge absorption of capital by the Polish energy sector. It is important to start an informed public discussion about institutional vehicles for that capital flow, which, by its sheer size, will be disruptive for the capital market no matter what exact solutions will emerge. It is to bear in mind that deploying Small Modular Reactors in Poland spells breakthrough technological change. None of the technologies involved, i.e. VOYAGR and BWRX-300, has ever been fully implemented with conclusive results. Generally, SMR projects across the world are at the stage of optimal site selection (Liu et al. 2022[2]).

Such a discussion should be combined with economic research and elucidate, among others and not exclusively, the following questions:

  1. How predictable is the budget of the whole SMR programme in Poland? According to literature, nuclear projects notoriously go over budget and over schedule, even with otherwise much better-tested technologies (Mignacca & Locatelli 2020[3]; Mignacca et al. 2020[4]).
  2. Will those new investments be financed mostly with equity or mostly with corporate debt? What exact “debt to equity” ratio is to expect?
  3. How will be the required equity raised?
  4. How will the necessary borrowing be orchestrated?
  5. How will the SMR programme coexist with offshore wind projects conducted by the Polish partners of both projects? Literature suggests that the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) from SMRs might not necessarily be competitive as compared to offshore wind (Fattahi et al. 2022[5]).
  6. What will be the involvement of the government, both fiscal and monetary?
  7. What will be the impact of SMRs on their local markets of energy? Just to illustrate the importance of the question, we can mention the two BWRX-300 reactors are planned in the Podkarpackie voivodship, namely in Tarnobrzeg and in Stalowa Wola. Once completed, they will add 600 MW of power to the voivodship-wide energy market, which will be a game changer for the local economy.

[1] Asuega, A., Limb, B. J., & Quinn, J. C. (2023). Techno-economic analysis of advanced small modular nuclear reactors. Applied Energy, 334, 120669. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.120669

[2] Liu, Y., Huang, G., Chen, J., Zhang, X., Zheng, X., & Zhai, M. (2022). Development of an optimization-aided small modular reactor siting model–A case study of Saskatchewan, Canada. Applied Energy, 305, 117867. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117867

[3] Mignacca, B., & Locatelli, G. (2020). Economics and finance of Small Modular Reactors: A systematic review and research agenda. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 118, 109519. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2019.109519

[4] Mignacca, B., Locatelli, G., & Sainati, T. (2020). Deeds not words: Barriers and remedies for Small Modular nuclear Reactors. Energy, 206, 118137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2020.118137

[5] Fattahi, A., Sijm, J., Van den Broek, M., Gordón, R. M., Dieguez, M. S., & Faaij, A. (2022). Analyzing the techno-economic role of nuclear power in the Dutch net-zero energy system transition. Advances in Applied Energy, 7, 100103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adapen.2022.100103

Alois in the middle

 

I am returning to my syllabuses for the next academic year. I am focusing more specifically on microeconomics. Next year, I am supposed to give lectures in Microeconomics at both the Undergraduate, and the Master’s level. I feel like asking fundamental questions. My fundamental question, as it comes to teaching any curriculum, is the same: what can my students do with it? What is the function and the purpose of microeconomics? Please, notice that I am not asking that frequently stated, rhetorical question ‘What are microeconomics about?’. Well, buddy, microeconomics are about the things you are going to lecture about. Stands to reason. I want to know, and communicate, what is the practical utility, in one’s life, of those things that microeconomics are about.

The basic claim I am focusing on is the following: microeconomics are the accountancy of social structures. They serve exactly the same purpose that any kind of bookkeeping has ever served: to find and exploit patterns in human behaviour, by the means of accurately applied measures. Them ancients, who built those impressive pyramids (who builds a structure without windows and so little free space inside?), very quickly gathered that in order to have one decent pyramid, you need an army of clerks who do the accounting. They used to count stone, people, food, water etc. This is microeconomics, basically.

Thus, you can do with microeconomics if you want to build an ancient pyramid. Now, I am dividing the construction of said ancient pyramid in two stages: Undergraduate, and Master’s. An Undergraduate ancient pyramid requires the understanding of what do you need to keep the accounts of if you don’t want to be thrown to crocodiles. At the Master’s level, you will want to know what are the odds that you find yourself in a social structure, where inaccurate accounting, in connection with a pyramid, will have you thrown to crocodiles.

Good, now some literature, and a little turn by my current scientific work on the EneFin concept (see « Which salesman am I? » and « Sans une once d’utopisme » for sort of a current account of that research). I have just read that sort of transitional form of science, between an article and a book, basically a report, by Bleich and Guimaraes 2016[1]. It regards investment in renewable energies, mostly from the strictly spoken view of investment logic. Return on investment, net present value – that kind of thing. As I was making my notes out of that reading, my mind made a jump, and it landed on the cover of the quite-well-known book by Joseph Schumpeter: ‘Business Cycles’.

Joseph Schumpeter is an intriguing classic, so to say. Born in 1883, he published ‘Business Cycles’ in 1939, being 56 year-old, after the hell of a ride both for him and for the world, and right at the beginning of another ride (for the world). He was studying economics in Austria, in the early 1900, when social sciences in general were sort of different from their today’s version. They were the living account of a world that used to be changing at a breath-taking pace. Young Joseph (well, Alois in the middle) Schumpeter witnessed the rise of Marxism, World War I, the dissolution of his homeland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the rise of the German Reich. He moved from academia to banking, and from European banking to American academia.

I deeply believe that whatever kind of story I am telling, whether I am lecturing about economics, discussing a business concept, or chatting about philosophy, at the bottom line I am telling the story of my own existence. I also deeply believe that the same is true for anyone who goes to any lengths in telling a story. We tell stories in order to rationalize that crazy, exciting, unique and deadly something called ‘life’. To me, those ‘Business Cycles’ by Joseph Schumpeter look very much like a rationalized story of quite turbulent a life.

So, here come a few insights I have out of re-reading ‘Business Cycles’ for the n-th time, in the context of research on my EneFin business concept. Any technological change takes place in a chain of value added. Innovation in one tier of the chain needs to overcome the status quo both upstream and downstream of the chain, but once this happens, the whole chain of technologies and goods changes. I wonder how it can apply specifically to EneFin, which is essentially an institutional scheme. In terms of value added, this scheme is situated somewhere between the classical financial markets, and typical social entrepreneurship. It is social to the extent that it creates that quasi-cooperative connexion between the consumers of energy, and its suppliers. Still, as my idea assumes a financial market for those complex contracts « energy + shares in the supplier’s equity », there is a strong capitalist component.

I guess that the resistance this innovation would have to overcome would consist, on one end, in distrust from the part of those hardcore activists of social entrepreneurship, like ‘Anything that has anything to do with money is bad!’, and, on the other hand, there can be resistance from the classical financial market, namely the willingness to forcibly squeeze the EneFin scheme into some kind of established structure, like the stock market.

The second insight that Joseph has just given me is the following: there is a special type of business model and business action, the entrepreneurial one, centred on innovation rather than on capitalizing on the status quo. This is deep, really. What I could notice, so far, in my research, is that in every industry there are business models which just work, and others which just don’t. However innovative you think you are, most of the times either you follow the field-tested patterns or you simply fail. The real, deep technological change starts when this established order gets a wedge stuffed up its ass, and the wedge is, precisely, that entrepreneurial business model. I wonder how entrepreneurial is the business model of EneFin. Is it really as innovative as I think it is?

In the broad theoretical picture, which comes handy as it comes to science, the incidence of that entrepreneurial business model can be measured and assessed as a probability, and that probability, in turn, is a factor of change. My favourite mathematical approach to structural change is that particular mutation that Paul Krugman[2] made out of the classical production function, as initially formulated by Prof Charles W. Cobb and Prof Paul H. Douglas, in their common work from 1928[3]. We have some output generated by two factors, one of which changes slowly, whilst the other changes quickly. In other words, we have one quite conservative factor, and another one that takes on the crazy ride of creative destruction.

That second factor is innovation, or, if you want, the entrepreneurial business model. If it is to be powerful, then, mathematically, incremental change in that innovative factor should bring much greater a result on the side of output than numerically identical an increment in the conservative factor. The classical notation by Cobb and Douglas fits the bill. We have Y = A*F1a*F21-a and a > 0,5. Any change in F1 automatically brings more Y than the identical change in F2. Now, the big claim by Paul Krugman is that if F1 changes functionally, i.e. if its changes really increase the overall Y, resources will flow from F2 to F1, and a self-reinforcing spiral of change forms: F1 induces faster a change than F2, therefore resources are being transferred to F1, and it induces even more incremental change in F1, which, in turn, makes the Y jump even higher etc.

I can apply this logic to my scientific approach of the EneFin concept. I assume that introducing the institutional scheme of EneFin can improve the access to electricity in remote, rural locations, in the developing countries, and, consequently, it can contribute to creating whole new markets and social structures. Those local power systems organized in the lines of EneFin are the factor of innovation, the one with the a > 0,5 exponent in the Y = A*F1a*F21-a function. The empirical application of this logic requires to approximate the value of ‘a’, somehow. In my research on the fundamental link between population and access to energy, I had those exponents nailed down pretty accurately for many countries in the world. I wonder to what extent I can recycle them intellectually for the purposes of my present research.

As I am thinking on this issue, I will keep talking on something else, and the something else in question is the creation of new markets. I go back to the Venerable Man of microeconomics, the Source of All Wisdom, who used to live with his mother when writing the wisdom which he is so reputed for, today. In other words, I am referring to Adam Smith. Still, just to look original, I will quote his ‘Lectures on Justice’ first, rather than going directly to his staple book, namely ‘The Inquiry Into The Nature And Causes of The Wealth of Nations’.

So, in the ‘Lectures on Justice’, Adam Smith presents his basic considerations about contracts (page 130 and on): « That obligation to performance which arises from contract is founded on the reasonable expectation produced by a promise, which considerably differs from a mere declaration of intention. Though I say I have a mind to do such thing for you, yet on account of some occurrences I do not do it, I am not guilty of breach of promise. A promise is a declaration of your desire that the person for whom you promise should depend on you for the performance of it. Of consequence the promise produces an obligation, and the breach of it is an injury. Breach of contract is naturally the slightest of all injuries, because we naturally depend more on what we possess that what is in the hands of others. A man robbed of five pounds thinks himself much more injured than if he had lost five pounds by a contract ».

People make markets, and markets are made of contracts. A contract implies that two or more people want to do some exchange of value, and they want to perform the exchange without coercion. A contract contains a value that one party engages to transfer on the other party, and, possibly, in the case of mutual contracts, another value will be transferred the other way round. There is one thing about contracts and markets, a paradox as for the role of the state. Private contracts don’t like the government to meddle, but they need the government in order to have any actual force and enforceability. This is one of the central thoughts by another classic, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his ‘Social Contract’: if we want enforceable contracts, which can make the intervention of the government superfluous, we need a strong government to back up the enforceability of contracts.

If I want my EneFin scheme to be a game-changer in developing countries, it can work only in countries with relatively well-functioning legal systems. I am thinking about using the metric published by the World Bank, the CPIA property rights and rule-based governance rating.

Still another insight that I have found in Joseph Schumpeter’s ‘Business Cycles’ is that when the entrepreneur, introducing a new technology, struggles against the first inertia of the market, that struggle in itself is a sequence of adaptation, and the strategy(ies) applied in the phases of growth and maturity in the new technology, later on, are the outcome of patterns developed during that early struggle. There is some sort of paradox in that struggle. When the early entrepreneur is progressively building his or her presence in the market, they operate under high uncertainty, and, almost inevitably, do a lot of trial and error, i.e. a lot of adjustments to the initially inaccurate prediction of the future. The developed, more mature version of the newly introduced technology is the outcome of that somehow unique sequence of trials, errors, and adjustments.

Scientifically, that insight means a fundamental uncertainty: once the actual implementation of an entrepreneurial business model, such as EneFin, gets inside that tunnel of learning and struggle, it can take on so many different mutations, and the response of the social environment to those mutations can be so idiosyncratic that we get into really serious economic modelling here.

I am consistently delivering good, almost new science to my readers, and love doing it, and I am working on crowdfunding this activity of mine. As we talk business plans, I remind you that you can download, from the library of my blog, the business plan I prepared for my semi-scientific project Befund  (and you can access the French version as well). You can also get a free e-copy of my book ‘Capitalism and Political Power’ You can support my research by donating directly, any amount you consider appropriate, to my PayPal account. You can also consider going to my Patreon page and become my patron. If you decide so, I will be grateful for suggesting me two things that Patreon suggests me to suggest you. Firstly, what kind of reward would you expect in exchange of supporting me? Secondly, what kind of phases would you like to see in the development of my research, and of the corresponding educational tools?

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[1] Bleich, K., & Guimaraes, R. D. (2016). Renewable Infrastructure Investment Handbook: A Guide for Institutional Investors. In World Economic Forum, Geneva.

[2] Krugman, P. (1991). Increasing returns and economic geography. Journal of political economy, 99(3), 483-499.

[3] Charles W. Cobb, Paul H. Douglas, 1928, A Theory of Production, The American Economic Review, Volume 18, Issue 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (March 1928), pp. 139 – 165

Les 2326 kWh de civilisation

Mon éditorial sur You Tube

Je reviens à ma recherche sur le marché de l’énergie. Je pense que l’idée théorique a suffisamment mûri. Enfin j’espère.

Dans un marché donné d’énergie il y a N = {i1, i2, …, in} consommateurs finaux, M = {j1, j2, …, jm} distributeurs et Z = {k1, k2, …, kz} fournisseurs primaires (producteurs). Les consommateurs finaux se caractérisent par un coefficient de consommation individuelle directe EC(i). Par analogie, chaque distributeur se caractérise par un coefficient de quantité d’énergie négociée EN(j) et chaque fournisseur primaire se caractérise par un coefficient individuel de production EP(k).

Le marché est à priori ouvert à l’échange avec d’autres marchés, aussi bien au niveau de la fourniture primaire d’énergie qu’à celui du négoce. En d’autres mots, les fournisseurs primaires peuvent exporter l’énergie et les distributeurs peuvent aussi bien exporter leurs surplus qu’importer de l’énergie des fournisseurs étranger pour balancer leur négoce. Logiquement, chaque fournisseur primaire se caractérise par une équation EP(k) = EPd(k) + EPx(k), où EPd signifie fourniture primaire sur le marché local et EPx symbolise l’exportation de l’énergie.

De même, chaque distributeur conduit son négoce d’énergie suivant l’équation EN(j) = ENd(j) + EI(j) + ENx(j) où ENx symbolise l’énergie exportée à l’étranger au niveau des relations entre distributeurs, EI est l’énergie importée et ENd est l’énergie distribuée dans le marché local.

L’offre totale OE d’énergie dans le marché en question suit l’équation OE = Z*[EPd(k) – EPx(k)] = M*[ENd(j) + EI(j) – ENx(j)]. Remarquons qu’une telle équation assume un équilibre local du type marshallien, donc le bilan de l’offre d’énergie et de la demande pour énergie se fait au niveau microéconomique des fournisseurs primaires et des distributeurs.

La consommation totale ET(i) d’énergie au niveau des consommateurs finaux est composée de la consommation individuelle directe EC(i) ainsi que de l’énergie ECT(i) consommée pour le transport et de l’énergie incorporée, comme bien intermédiaire ECB(i), dans les biens et services finaux consommés dans le marché en question. Ainsi donc ET(i) = EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i).

La demande totale et finale DE d’énergie s’exprime donc comme

N*ET(i) = N*[EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i)]

et suivant les assomptions précédentes elle est en équilibre local avec l’offre, donc

Z*[EPd(k) – EPx(k)] = N*[EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i)]

aussi bien que

M*[ENd(j) + EI(j) – ENx(j)] = N*[EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i)].

Avant que j’aille plus loin, une explication. Pour le moment j’assume que les coefficients individuels mentionnés plus haut sont des moyennes arithmétiques donc des valeurs espérées dans des ensembles structurées suivant des distributions normales (Gaussiennes). C’est une simplification qui me permet de formaliser théoriquement des « grosses » idées. Je pense que par la suite, j’aurai à faire des assomptions plus détaillées en ce qui concerne la distribution probabiliste de ces coefficients, mais ça, c’est pour plus tard.

Ça, c’était simple. Maintenant, le premier défi théorique que je perçois consiste à exprimer cette observation que j’avais faite il y a des mois de ça : les pays les plus pauvres sont aussi le moins pourvus en énergie. Au niveau du bilan énergétique la pauvreté se caractérise soit, carrément, par la quasi-absence de la consommation d’énergie niveau transport et niveau énergie incorporée dans les biens et services, soit par une quantité relativement petite dans ces deux catégories. C’est à mesure qu’on grimpe les échelons de richesse relative par tête d’habitant que les coefficients ECT(i) et ECB(i) prennent de la substance.

La seconde observation empirique à formaliser concerne la structure de la fourniture primaire d’énergie. Dans les pays les plus pauvres, l’énergie primaire est très largement fournie par ce que l’Agence Internationale d’Énergie définit élégamment comme « combustion des bio fuels » et qui veut tout simplement dire qu’une grande partie de la société n’a pas d’accès à l’électricité et ils se procurent leur énergie primaire en brûlant du bois et de la paille. Formellement, ça compte comme utilisation d’énergies renouvelables. Le bois et la paille, ça repousse, surtout cette dernière. Encore faut se souvenir que ce type d’énergétique est renouvelable au niveau de la source d’énergie mais pas au niveau du produit : le processus relâche du carbone dans l’atmosphère sans qu’on ait une idée vraiment claire comment faire retourner ce génie dans la lampe. La morale (partielle) du conte des fées est que lorsque vous voyez des nombres agrégés qui suggèrent la prévalence d’énergies renouvelables en Soudan du Sud, par exemple, alors ces renouvelables c’est du feu de paille très littéralement.

La différence empirique entre ces pays les plus pauvres et ceux légèrement plus opulents réside dans le fait que ces derniers ont un réseau de fourniture primaire d’électricité ainsi que de sa distribution et ce réseau dessert une large partie de la population. Ce phénomène se combine avec une percée originale d’énergies renouvelables dans les pays en voie de développement : des populations entières, surtout des populations rurales, gagnent l’accès à l’électricité vraiment 100% renouvelable, comme du photovoltaïque, directement à partir d’un monde sans électricité. Ils ne passent jamais par la phase d’électricité fournie à travers des grosses infrastructures industrielles que nous connaissons en Europe.

C’est justement la percée d’électricité dans une économie vraiment pauvre qui pousse cette dernière en avant sur la voie de développement. Comme j’étudie la base des données de la Banque Mondiale à propos de la consommation finale d’énergie par tête d’habitant, je pose une hypothèse de travail : lorsque ladite tête d’habitant dépasse le niveau de quelques 2326 kilowatt heures de consommation finale d’énergie par an, soit 200 kg d’équivalent pétrole, une société quasiment dépourvue d’économie régulière d’échange se transforme en une société qui produit et fait circuler des biens et des services.

Une fois ce cap franchi, le prochain semble se situer aux environs d’ET(i) égale à 600 ± 650 kg d’équivalent pétrole, soit 6 978,00 ± 7 559,50 kilowatt heures par an par tête d’habitant. Ça, c’est la différence entre des sociétés pauvres et en même temps instables socialement ainsi que politiquement d’une part, et celles dotées d’institutions bien assises et bien fonctionnelles. Rien qui ressemble à du paradis, au-dessus de ces 6 978,00 ± 7 559,50 kilowatt heures par an par tête d’habitant, néanmoins quelque chose qui au moins permet de construire un purgatoire bien organisé.

L’étape suivante est la transgression d’un autre seuil, que je devine intuitivement quelque part entre 16 240 kWh et 18 350 kWh par an par tête d’habitant. C’est plus ou moins le seuil officiel qui marque la limite inférieure de la catégorie « revenu moyen » dans la terminologie de la Banque Mondiale. C’est alors qu’on commence à observer des marchés bien développés est des structures institutionnelles tout à fait stables. Oui, les hommes politiques peuvent toujours faire des conneries, mais ces conneries sont immédiatement projetées contre un fonds d’ordre institutionnel et de ce fait sont possibles à contrecarrer de façon autre qu’une guerre civile. Une fois dans la catégorie « revenu moyen », une économie semble capable de transition secondaire vers les énergies renouvelables. C’est le passage des réseaux typiquement industriels, basés sur des grosses centrales électriques, coexistantes avec des réseaux de distribution fortement oligopolistes, vers des systèmes de fourniture d’énergie basés sur des installations locales puisant leur jus des sources renouvelables.

Finalement, à partir de quelques 3000 kg d’équivalent pétrole = 34 890 kWh par an par tête d’habitant c’est la catégorie des pays vraiment riches. En ce qui concerne les énergies renouvelables, des investissements vraiment systémiques commencent au-dessus de ce seuil. C’est une transition secondaire à forte vapeur.

Bon, je formalise. Une variable parmi celles que j’ai nommées quelques paragraphes plus tôt vient au premier plan :  la consommation totale d’énergie par tête d’habitant ou ET(i) = EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i). Les observations empiriques que je viens de décrire indiquent que dans le processus de développement économique des sociétés, le côté droit de l’équation ET(i) = EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i) se déploie de gauche à droite. D’abord, il y a du EC(i). Les gens consomment de l’énergie pour leurs besoins le plus individuels et le plus directement possible. On brûle du bois ou de la paille et on a de l’énergie thermique pour faire de la cuisine, pour décontaminer l’eau et pour se chauffer. Si ça marche, des habitats humains permanents s’établissent.

Je sais que ça sonne comme le compte rendu d’évènements qui se passèrent à l’aube de la civilisation, mais après que j’ai étudié la situation des nations les plus pauvres du monde je sais aussi que c’est bien ce qui se passe dans des pays comme Niger ou Soudan. Le premier défi de ces populations consiste à faire marcher la structure sociale de base, donc à arriver au point quand les communautés locales sont capables de se développer et pour se développer lesdites communautés locales ont tout simplement besoin de s’établir sur une base relativement stable de nourriture et d’énergie.

Une fois que ce cap est franchi, donc une fois qu’ET(i) passe un seuil critique ET1(i), il y a un surplus d’énergie qui peut se traduire comme le développement du transport, ainsi que celui des marchés des biens et des services. En d’autres mots :

ET1(i) = 2 326 kWh

[EC(i) ≤ EC1(i)] => [ET(i) = EC(i) et ECT(i) ≈ 0 et ECB(i) ≈ 0]

[EC(i) > EC1(i)] => [ET(i) = EC(i) + ECT(i) + ECB(i) ; ECT(i) > 0 et ECB(i) > 0]

[EC(i) > EC1(i)] <=> [ECT(i) + ECB(i) = ET(i) – 2 326 kWh]

La seconde valeur critique, que je nomme ET2(i), donne lieu à l’émergence d’une structure institutionnelle suffisamment stable pour être appelée « ordre institutionnel ». Je sais que :

6 978,00 kWh ≤ ET2(i) ≤ 7 559,50 kWh

et que

4652 kWh < [ET2(i) – ET1(i)] ≤ 5233,5 kWh

et de même

{4652 kWh < [ECT(i) + ECB(i)] ≤ 5233,5 kWh}

ainsi que

[6 978,00 kWh ≤ ET2(i) ≤ 7 559,50 kWh] => ordre institutionnel

Alors vient ce troisième seuil, 16 240 kWh ≤ ET3(i) ≤ 18 350 kWh où la transition secondaire vers les énergies renouvelables devient possible. Cette transition prend donc lieu lorsque

13 914 kWh ≤ [ECT(i) + ECB(i)] ≤ 16 024 kWh

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The balance between intelligence and the way we look in seasoned black leather

MY EDITORIAL ON YOU TUBE

After having devoted some of my personal energy to reviewing other people’s science (see Second-hand observations), I return to my own science, i.e. to my book on the civilizational role of cities. Reviewing that manuscript in the field of energy management gave me some inspiration. I realized that the core message I wanted to convey in the book was that human societies have collective intelligence, that intelligence manifests itself in typical, recurrent patterns, and cities are one of those patterns, where creating a demographic anomaly allows creating new social roles for a growing population, and assuring functional partition between two types of settlements: agricultural land for producing food, on the one hand, and urban land for producing new social roles and new technologies, on the other hand. Moreover, cities are the base of markets, and of the market-based economy. The whole social system based on the development of skills and technologies, so as to produce tradable surpluses, that whole system is precisely based on the role of cities. Maybe there are other social structures to obtain the same result, but we haven’t figured them out yet. With the creation of cities, we developed a pattern of further development, where apparently fundamental markets interweave with the apparently futile ones, and the whole system facilitates technological change and the creation of new social roles. The social system based on cities is like a social vortex, largely powering its own momentum and sucking new people into it.

That overview of my thinking brings me one more time to the issue of collective intelligence and to the big methodological question: to what extent can neural networks be used to simulate collective intelligence in human societies? I know, I know, this is some n-th time I return to that thing. Still, it is important, both methodologically and fundamentally. There is a whole big stream of research, including my own, where neural networks are used as mathematical tool for validating theoretical model. I can see that neural networks tend to replace the classical methods, such as GARCH, ARIMA or the good old Ordinary Least Squares. All that stuff works with the same basic data, i.e. with residual errors which inevitably appear as we try to apply our grand ideas to the brutal reality of life. Still, the way that neural networks process those errors is fundamentally different from stochastic models. The latter just cut through the entire set of data with one line (or curve, for that matter), which minimizes the sum total of residual errors, all in one go. Neural networks are more patient, and they minimize error by error, case by case. Neural networks learn.

The point is that when I use a neural network to validate a theoretical model in social sciences, I should substantiate the claim that the network represents the way of learning in the given society. The best theory of learning which I have found so far is the Interface Theory of Perception (Hoffman et al. 2015[1]; Fields et al. 2018[2]; see also I followed my suspects home). I rephrase it shortly and I try to put it against (or next to) my own methodology.

When an aggregate socio-economic variable, such as e.g. GDP per capita or energy consumption per capita, changes over time, it allows assuming a society doing something differently as time passes. In other words, those aggregate variables are manifestations of collective decisions and collective action. Question: how are those collective decisions being taken and how are they being turned into action? Some sort of a null assumption is that we have no way to guess anything about that process. Still, I think I can make a slightly stronger assumption, namely that we collectively know what we are doing, we just know it imperfectly. Therefore, when I observe a variable such as GDP per capita, or the average number of hours worked per person per year, change over years, I can assume it manifests a collectively intelligent adaptation: we do something together, we contemplate the outcomes, we say ‘Blast! It is not exactly what we meant. Folks! Get ready! We adapt! That rate of secondary education has to change! We are running a civilisation here, aren’t we?’, and we engage into another set of decisions and actions.

Collective decisions and collective action mean that people argue and diverge in what they say they intend to do, in what they really do, and in what they claim they have just done. We diverge from each other and we lie to each other on the top of it, and we lie to ourselves, and yet that whole business of civilisation seems to be working. We have a set N = {se1, se2, …, sen} of n social entities (people, basically, or various agglomerations thereof), and they all cheat, lie, and egoistically get after it, in the presence of a set R = {r1, r2, …, rm} of m external stressors (viruses, presidents, wars, bad crops etc.). Mind you, as long as n > 1, i.e. as long as there are many social entities, probably at least one of them is doing things sufficiently well to survive in the presence of m stressors.

We have those n social entities trying to get by in the presence of m external stressors, and one could wonder how that lot can learn anything? I subtly change the shade of the question ‘how?’ into ‘how can we know that?’. How can we know that a social entity has learnt anything in the presence of external stressors? Learning can be understood from two perspectives: subjective internal impression of having learnt something, on the one hand, and objective, externally observable fact of having acquired new skills. When I prepare the same sauce 30 times, 20 times it is completely spoilt, 9 times it sort of approaches the ideal, and 1 time, the final one, I have the impression I nailed it. I have the impression I have learnt something, however it does not mean other people think the same.  

I need a gauge to assess learning. One possible method, more specifically the one used in artificial neural networks, consists in checking how close my social entities are to a pre-defined desired outcome. In more elaborate artificial neural networks, the pre-defined component might be just the method of setting the desired outcome. That outcome can be simply survival or something more, such as achieving a certain amount of something valuable.

Good, so I have those n social entities, and the stressor they act under is the pressure to achieve a desired outcome, i.e. to obtain a certain payoff. The social entity sei which gets the closest to that outcome, or which, in other words, collects the greatest payoff, can be considered as the most successful. Life is reproduction. People die, and new people are born. Governments change. On the long run our set N = {se1, se2, …, sen} of n social entities is interesting to the extent that it reproduces into another set Nk of n(k) social entities. Social change can be viewed as an (almost) ever-lasting chain of sets, each with social entities inside: N1 transforms into N2, which turns into N3 etc.

I think I have just nailed an important point (involuntarily, to be clear). When I study any kind of social change, I can make one of the two alternative assumptions: continuity of social entities versus their generational reproduction. Social structures can be seen such as I have just described it: as changing sets of social entities. Under that angle, the 38 million people in my native Poland today are a different set of people from the roughly 36 million who were around when I was 10, i.e. in 1978. It does not necessarily mean that each person present in 1978 died and has been replaced by someone else; I am pretty sure I didn’t die. However, some people died, some new people have come to the fore, some people changed significantly etc. On the whole, the set N2020 is different from the set N1978. There is a different angle for looking at the same reality: people in Poland, 2020, are the same big social entity as the one in Poland, 1978, and it is just the internal structure of that entity that has changed. 

What is the practical (well, theoretical) difference between those two angles of approach to the same theatre of social change, i.e. consecutive sets of small entities as opposed to consecutive states of one big entity? When I simulate social change as a sequence of sets, where individual components can change their properties, a long sequence of that type is like a journey of discovery. Each consecutive set Nk comes out of learning that occurred in its predecessor Nk-1. The transformation of one set into another certainly follows some constraints, yet a long sequence of such transformations is like a long hike up a hill: we have to take turns around boulders and ravines, we have to choose between paths of different difficulty, and usually an easier path is a less steep one, thus a longer and slower one. This type of change, social or biological, is known as adaptive walk in rugged landscape in Kaufman & Levin 1987[3]. Mathematically, it is a Markov chain, i.e. a chain of states, where the properties of each consecutive state are determined just by the properties of the previous state as well as by the algebra of transformation from one state to another (the so-called σ-αλγεβρα, oops! Excuse me, I wanted to say σ-algebra).

When I take the other approach to a social structure, i.e. when I study it as one big, perennial social entity which undergoes structural change inside, that change is something like different shapes of the same thing. I noticed strong marks of such an approach in that scientific paper entitled ‘Evolutionary Analysis of a Four-dimensional Energy- Economy- Environment Dynamic System’, which I was reviewing recently on the request of  the International Journal of Energy Sector Management (ISSN1750-6220). In that paper, a complex system of relations between economy, energy and society is represented as four gradients of change in, respectively, volume of pollution x, real economic output y, environmental quality z and energy reduction constraints w. I know it is a bit abstract, at this point, yet I want to make an effort and explain it. Imagine an irregular quadrilateral, i.e. a rectangle with broad intellectual horizons. Four angles, four edges, yet the angles do not have to be right and the edges do not have to be parallel in pairs. Just four of each lot. The length of each edge corresponds to the gradient of change in one of those 4 variables: x, y, z, and w. Any substantial change in that system is a change in lengths of those 4 edges, and, as it is a closed polygon, it entails a change in angles between edges.

As I am trying to grasp fundamental differences between those two views upon social change, namely sequence of sets as opposed to an internally changing perennial entity, I think the difference is mostly epistemological. As a matter of fact, I don’t know s**t about reality as it is, and, let’s be honest, neither do you, my dear readers. We just make many possible Matrixes out of the real stuff and settle for the one that offers the greatest rewards. This is the stance adopted in the Interface Theory of Perception (Hoffman et al. 2015[4]; Fields et al. 2018[5]), as well as in classical Western empiricism (see William James’s ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’, 1912). This holds for social reality as well as for anything else. When I see social change, I see most of all change in itself, and only secondarily, in my spare moments, I can try to figure out what exactly is that thing that changes. This is science, or philosophy, depends on the exact method I adopt, and this is hard, and time-consuming. Most of the times, I just use a ready-made explanation, conveyed in my culture, that what is changing is, for example, the market or the constitutional order, or the set of cultural stereotypes. Still, at the bottom line, those labels are just labels. What I am really experiencing, is change in itself.

When I assume that social change is a Markov chain of sets made of small social entities, I study social change as change in itself, i.e. as the say σ-algebra of that chain. I do not pretend to know exactly what is happening, I just observe and give the account of the passage from one state to another. Conversely, when I assume that social change is structural recombination inside a big, perennial social structure, I pretend to know the limits and the shape of that big structure. This is a strong assumption, probably an overstated one.    

Now, I connect the dots. I am linking my thinking about cities with my thinking about collective intelligence, and all that I serve in a sauce peppered with the possibility to use artificial neural networks for studying the whole business. I can study the civilizational role of cities under those two angles, i.e. as a Markov chain of states which I barely understand, yet which I can observe, on the one hand, or as internal reshuffling inside a finite, big social entity called ‘civilisation’, with nicely outlined contours. I am honest: I am not even going to pretend I can outline the precise contours of the civilisation we live in. With all the s**t going out there, i.e. leftist extremists in Germany erecting an illegal statue of Lenine, in response to #BlackLivesMatter in United States, and neo-Nazi extremists from The Base organization receiving orders from a leader who is an American with an Italian name, currently living in Russia: man, I do not feel up to trace the external contours of that thing.  

I know that I can and want study the phenomenon of cities as change in itself, and I assume that the change I see is an aggregation of local changes in small social entities sei. As those small sei’s change locally, their local transformations translate and manifest as the passage from the aggregate set Nk = {se1, se2, …, sen} into another set Nk+1 = {se1, se2, …, sen}. The next hurdle to jump over is the connection between sets of the type Nk = {se1, se2, …, sen} and aggregate socio-economic variables commonly used as so-called statistics. Those ‘statistics’ tend to have one of the 4 possible, mathematical forms: averages, totals, frequencies, or rates of change. When they are averages, e.g. GDP per capita, they are expected values of something. When the come as aggregate totals, e.g. aggregate headcount of population, they stand for the size of something. As they take the form of frequencies, e.g. the percentage of people with secondary education, they are simple probabilities. Finally, as rates of change, they are local first derivatives over time in some functions, e.g. the function of economic growth.

Each of those mathematical forms can be deemed representative for a heterogenous set of small phenomena, like small social entities sei. I assume that each set Nk = {se1, se2, …, sen} of n social entities manifests its current state in the form of a complex vector of variables: expected mean values, total sizes, simple probabilities of specific phenomena, and first derivatives over time in the underlying functions of change. Any set of socio-economic variables is an imperfect, epistemic representation of current local states in the individual social entities sei included in the set Nk = {se1, se2, …, sen}.  

As I go through my notes and blog updates from the last 2 months, something emerges. The social entities I focus on, thus my sei‘s, are individual people endorsing individual social roles. set Nk = {se1, se2, …, sen} is essentially a set of people, i.e. a population. Each of those people has at least two coordinates: their place of residency (mostly defined as city vs countryside), and their social role. I messed around with a set like that in a neural network (see The perfectly dumb, smart social structure). The current state of the whole set Nk manifests itself as a vector Vse of socio-economic variables.

So far and by far, the most important variable I have identified is the density of population in cities, denominated over (i.e. divided by) the general density of population. I named this variable [DU/DG] and I assume it shows the relative social difference between cities and the countryside (see Demographic anomalies – the puzzle of urban density). The coefficient [DU/DG] enters into interesting correlations with such variables as: consumption of energy per capita, income per capita, surface of agricultural land, cereal yield in kg per hectare of arable land, number of patent applications per 1 million people, and finally the supply of money as % of the GDP. On the other hand, by studying the way that urban land is distinguished from the rural one and from wildlife, I know there is a correlation between density of urban population and the density of man-made structures, as well as the density of night-time lights.

Good. I have a set Nk = {se1, se2, …, sen} of n social entities, which changes all the time, and a vector Vse = {DU/DG; energy per capita; income per capita; surface of agricultural land; cereal yield; patent applications; supply of money} of variables pertinent regarding cities and their role. Between the two I insert my mild obsession, i.e. the set SR = {sr1, sr2, …, srm} of ‘m’ social roles.

Now, I go pictographic. I use pictures to make myself spit out the words I have in mind. I mean, I know I have words in mind, only I don’t know what exact words are these. Pictures help. In Figure 1 I am trying to convey the idea of proportion between the headcount of population and the range of social roles available to endorse. My basic assumption is that we, humans, are fully socialized when we endorse social roles that suit our basic personal traits, such as intelligence, extroversion vs introversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, the way we look in seasoned black leather etc. The state of society can be explained as a balance between the incremental headcount of humans, on the one hand, and the incremental range of social roles to take. If the headcount of humans is n, and the number of social roles available is m, we are talking about ∆n/∆m.  

When both sets, i.e. Nk and SR change at the same pace, i.e. ∆n/∆m (t0) = ∆n/∆m (t1), the society is in some sort of dynamic equilibrium, like a constant number of humans per one social role available. When the set SR of social roles burgeons faster than the pace of demographic growth, I mean when ∆n/∆m (t0) > ∆n/∆m (t1), logically there is less and less humans per one social role. This is social change by differentiation. New, idiosyncratic skillsets and behavioural patterns emerge. This is like an absorptive state, which can suck new humans in like easy.

On the other hand, when demographic growth in the set Nk races far ahead, and the set SR of social roles lags behind, i.e. ∆n/∆m (t0) < ∆n/∆m (t1), there is consistently more and more humans per one social role. That favours standardization and institutional definition of those roles, in the form of professions, public offices, ritualized social statuses etc. Society settles down into a nice order. Still, each such institutionalized social role grows barriers to entry around itself. You need to pass some exams, you need to be appointed or elected, you need to invest some capital… New humans coming to the world encounter those barriers, and some of them end up by saying: ‘F**k it! I stay outside of everything’.  This is the tipping point, when social change is needed, so as to make social room for new humans.   

Figure 1

Now, I transition into the role of cities in that social pattern. I am trying to picture the idea in Figure 2. If the state of social differentiation, we need some pattern for generating diversity. We need social interaction. Cities can be seen as a social contrivance which facilitates such interaction. Still, it comes to my mind sort of right now, we don’t really know (yet), to what extent digital interaction between humans can replace the real one in that specific respect, i.e. as a mechanism of creating new social roles. My gut feeling is that digital technologies can be at least imperfect substitutes of real social interaction. You Tube or Instagram may replace cities in their civilizational role of creating new social room for new homo sapiens. We might just be evolving from a civilization of city slickers living next to rednecks, into a civilisation of city slickers, rednecks and homo onlinus.  

Figure 2

In the next step, I am wrapping my mind around the math side of the problem, which I try to picture in Figure 3.  I guess that what I have in terms of empirical data to put in a neural network is mostly the vector Vse of social outcomes, which I can enrich with the headcount of population, and that would be the real-life material that a neural network could learn from. What that network could try and optimize could be the gradient ∆n/∆m or some variation thereof, as the exact number of social roles is technically unobservable with the current state of technology. When I think about the practical way of doing it, I can imagine a network pegged on optimizing some sort of hard-nailed output variable, such as the average number of hours worked per person per year (solid stuff, as it comes out of my so-far research). I drop the gradient ∆n/∆m among the input variables, and I try to discover what value thereof the network would yield after a few thousands laborious trials to produce artificial history.

Another angle of approach that comes to my mind is to take all the known empirical variables as input, and the gradient ∆n/∆m as the output. Then I make different clones of the network, with ∆n/∆m going various ways, like gently up, steep up, down a bit etc. I can check which of the clones displays the closest Euclidean distance to the source empirical dataset.    

Figure 3

Now, the final step: I connect the concept of social role with that of conscious agent, as represented in the Interface Theory of Perception (Hoffman et al. 2015[1]; Fields et al. 2018[2]). Figure 4 represents my pictographic thinking about it. Social roles are temporary outcomes of learning and social interaction between Conscious Agents (CA). In other words, social roles form as humans exchange information about their conscious experience, which serves to translate objectively existing states of the world into material possible to process by our brain, so as to decide whether to run away from the tiger or maybe rather kill the tiger and take the antelope. We take action consequently, we contemplate its consequences, and we talk about it, and we show to each other how we can learn new stuff.

Figure 4

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In the bottom on the sidebar of the main page, you can access the archives of that blog, all the way back to August 2017. You can make yourself an idea how I work, what do I work on and how has my writing evolved. If you like social sciences served in this specific sauce, I will be grateful for your support to my research and writing.

‘Discover Social Sciences’ is a continuous endeavour and is mostly made of my personal energy and work. There are minor expenses, to cover the current costs of maintaining the website, or to collect data, yet I want to be honest: by supporting ‘Discover Social Sciences’, you will be mostly supporting my continuous stream of writing and online publishing. As you read through the stream of my updates on https://discoversocialsciences.com , you can see that I usually write 1 – 3 updates a week, and this is the pace of writing that you can expect from me.

Besides the continuous stream of writing which I provide to my readers, there are some more durable takeaways. One of them is an e-book which I published in 2017, ‘Capitalism And Political Power’. Normally, it is available with the publisher, the Scholar publishing house (https://scholar.com.pl/en/economics/1703-capitalism-and-political-power.html?search_query=Wasniewski&results=2 ). Via https://discoversocialsciences.com , you can download that e-book for free.

Another takeaway you can be interested in is ‘The Business Planning Calculator’, an Excel-based, simple tool for financial calculations needed when building a business plan.

Both the e-book and the calculator are available via links in the top right corner of the main page on https://discoversocialsciences.com .

You might be interested Virtual Summer Camps, as well. These are free, half-day summer camps will be a week-long, with enrichment-based classes in subjects like foreign languages, chess, theater, coding, Minecraft, how to be a detective, photography and more. These live, interactive classes will be taught by expert instructors vetted through Varsity Tutors’ platform. We already have 200 camps scheduled for the summer.   https://www.varsitytutors.com/virtual-summer-camps

[1] Hoffman, D. D., Singh, M., & Prakash, C. (2015). The interface theory of perception. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 22(6), 1480-1506.

[2] Fields, C., Hoffman, D. D., Prakash, C., & Singh, M. (2018). Conscious agent networks: Formal analysis and application to cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 47, 186-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.10.003

[1] Hoffman, D. D., Singh, M., & Prakash, C. (2015). The interface theory of perception. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 22(6), 1480-1506.

[2] Fields, C., Hoffman, D. D., Prakash, C., & Singh, M. (2018). Conscious agent networks: Formal analysis and application to cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 47, 186-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.10.003

[3] Kauffman, S., & Levin, S. (1987). Towards a general theory of adaptive walks on rugged landscapes. Journal of theoretical Biology, 128(1), 11-45

[4] Hoffman, D. D., Singh, M., & Prakash, C. (2015). The interface theory of perception. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 22(6), 1480-1506.

[5] Fields, C., Hoffman, D. D., Prakash, C., & Singh, M. (2018). Conscious agent networks: Formal analysis and application to cognition. Cognitive Systems Research, 47, 186-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.10.003

What is my take on these four: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Steem, and Golem?

My editorial on You Tube

I am (re)learning investment in the stock market, and I am connecting the two analytical dots I developed on in my recent updates: the method of mean-reversion, and the method of extrapolated return on investment. I know, connecting two dots is not really something I necessarily need my PhD in economics for. Still, practice makes the master. Besides, I want to produce some educational content for my students as regards cryptocurrencies. I have collected some data as regards that topic, and I think it would be interesting to pitch cryptocurrencies against corporate stock, as financial assets, just to show similarities and differences.

As I return to the topic of cryptocurrencies, I am returning to a concept which I have been sniffing around for a long time, essentially since I started blogging via Discover Social Sciences: the concept of complex financial instruments, possibly combining future contracts on a virtual currency, possibly a cryptocurrency, which could boost investment in new technologies.

Finally, I keep returning to the big theoretical question I have been working on for many months now: to what extent and how can artificial intelligence be used to represent the working of collective intelligence in human societies? I have that intuition that financial markets are very largely a tool for tacit coordination in human societies, and I feel that studying financial markets allows understanding how that tacit coordination occurs.

All in all, I am focusing on current developments in the market of cryptocurrencies. I take on four of them: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Steem, and Golem. Here, one educational digression, and I am mostly addressing students: tap into diversity. When you do empirical research, use diversity as a tool, don’t run away from it. You can have the illusion that yielding to the momentary temptation of reducing the scope of observation will make that observation easier. Well, not quite. We, humans, we observe gradients (i.e. cross-categorial differences and change over time) rather than absolute stationary states. No wonder, we descend from hunters-gatherers. Our ancestors had that acute intuition that when you are not really good at spotting and hitting targets which move fast, you have to eat targets that move slowly. Anyway, take my word on it: it will be always easier for you to draw conclusions from comparative observation of a few distinct cases than from observing just one. This is simply how our mind works.

The four cryptocurrencies I chose to observe – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Steem, and Golem – represent different applications of the same root philosophy descending from Satoshi Nakamoto, and they stay in different weight classes, so to say. As for that latter distinction, you can make yourself an idea by glancing at the table below:

Table 1

CryptocurrencyMarket capitalization in USD, as of April 26th, 2019Market capitalization in USD, as of April 26th, 2020Exchange rate against USD, as of April 26th, 2020
Bitcoin (https://bitcoin.org/en/ )93 086 156 556140 903 867 573$7 679,87 
Ethereum (https://ethereum.org/ )16 768 575 99821 839 976 557$197,32 
Steem (https://steem.com/ )111 497 45268 582 369$0,184049
Golem (https://golem.network/)72 130 69441 302 784$0,042144

Before we go further, a resource for you, my readers: all the calculations and source data I used for this update, accessible in an Excel file, UNDER THIS LINK.

As for the distinctive applications, Bitcoin and Ethereum are essentially pure money, i.e. pure financial instruments. Holding Bitcoins or Ethers allows financial liquidity, and the build-up of speculative financial positions. Steem is the cryptocurrency of the creative platform bearing the same name: it serves to pay creators of content, who publish with that platform, to collect exchangeable tokens, the steems. Golem is still different a take on encrypting currency: it serves to trade computational power. You connect your computer (usually server-sized, although you can go lightweight) to the Golem network, and you make a certain amount of your local computational power available to other users of the network. In exchange of that allowance, you receive Golems, which you can use to pay for other users’ computational power when you need some. Golems are a financial instrument serving to balance deficits and surpluses in a complex network of nested, local capacities. Mind you, the same contractual patterns can be applied to balancing any type of capacities, not just computational. You can use it for electric power, hospital beds etc. – anything that is provided by locally nested fixed assets in the presence of varying demand.

Thus, below we go further, a reminder: Bitcoins and Ethers pure money, Steem Payment for Work, Golems Payment for Access to Fixed Assets. A financial market made of those four cryptocurrencies represents something like an economy in miniature: we have the labour market, the market of productive assets, and we have a monetary system. In terms of size (see the table above), this economy is largely and increasingly dominated by money, with labour and productive assets manifesting themselves in small and decreasing quantities. Compared to a living organism, it would be a monstrous shot of hormones spreading inside a tiny physical body, i.e. something like a weasel.

In the following part of this update, I will be referring to the method of mean-reversion, and to that of extrapolated rate of return. I am giving, below, simplified summaries of both, and I invite those among my readers who want to have more details to my earlier updates. More specifically, as regards the method of mean-reversion, you can read: Acceptably dumb proof. The method of mean-reversion , as well as Fast + slower = compound rhythm, the rhythm of life. As for the method of extrapolated rate of return, you can refer to: Partial outcomes from individual tables .

Now, the short version. Mean-reversion, such as I use it now for financial analysis, means that I measure each daily closing price, in the financial market, and each daily volume of trade, as the difference between the actual price (volume), and the moving cumulative average thereof, and then I divide the residual difference by the cumulative moving standard deviation. I take a window in time, which, in what follows, is 1 year, from April 26th, 2019, through April 26th, 2020. For each consecutive day of that timeframe, I calculate the average price, and the average volume, starting from day 1, i.e. from April 26th, 2019. I do the same for standard deviation, i.e. with each consecutive day, I count standard deviation in price and standard deviation in volume, since April 26th, 2019.

Long story short, it goes like…

May 10th, 2019 Average (April 26th, 2019 –> May 10th, 2019), same for standard deviation

May 20th, 2019 Average (April 26th, 2019 –> May 20th, 2019), same for standard deviation

… etc.

Mean-reversion allows comparing trends in pricing and volumes for financial instruments operating at very different magnitudes thereof. As you could see from the introductory table, those 4 cryptocurrencies really operate at different levels of pricing and volumes traded. Direct comparison is possible, because I standardize each variable (price or volume) with its own average value and its own standard deviation.

The method of extrapolated return is a strongly reductionist prediction of future return on investment, where I assume that financial markets are essentially cyclical, and my future return is most likely to be an extrapolation of the past returns. I take the same window in time, i.e. from April 26th, 2019, through April 26th, 2020. I assume that I bought the given coin (i.e. one of the four studied here) on the last day, i.e. on April 26th, 2020. For each daily closing price, I go: [Price(Day t) – Price(April 26th. 2020)] / Price(April 26th. 2020). In other words, each daily closing price is considered as if it was bound to happen again in the year to come, i.e. from April 26th, 2020 to April 26th, 2021. Over the period, April 26th, 2019 – April 26th, 2020, I count the days when the closing price was higher than that of April 26th, 2020. The number of those ‘positive’ days, divided by the total of 366 trading days (they don’t stop trading on weekends, in the cryptocurrencies business), gives me the probability that I can get positive return on investment in the year to come. In other words, I calculate a very simple, past experience-based probability that buying the given coin on April 26th, 2020 will give me any profit at all over the next 366 trading days.

I start presenting the results of that analysis with the Bitcoin, the big, fat, patient-zero beast in the world of cryptocurrencies. In the graph below, you can see the basic logic of extrapolated return on investment, which, in the case of Bitcoin, yields a 69,7% probability of positive return in the year to come.

In the next graph, you can see the representation of mean-reverted prices and quantities traded, in the Bitcoin market. What is particularly interesting here is the shape of the curve informative about mean-reverted volume. What we can see here is consistent activity. That curve looks a bit like the inside of an alligator’s mouth: a regular dentition made of relatively evenly spaced spikes. This is a behavioural piece of data. It says that the price of Bitcoin is shaped by regular, consistent trade, all year long. This is like a busy market place, and busy market places usually yield a consistent equilibrium price. 

The next in line is Ethereum. As you can see in the next graph, below, the method of extrapolated return yields a probability of any positive return whatsoever, for the year to come, around 36,9%. Not only is that probability lower than the one calculated for the Bitcoin, but also the story told by the graph is different. Partial moral of the fairy tale: cryptocurrencies differ in their ways. Talking about ‘investing in cryptocurrencies’ in general is like talking about investing in the stock market: these are very broad categories. Still, of you pitch those probabilities for the Bitcoin and for the Ethereum against what can be expected in the stock market (see to: Partial outcomes from individual tables), cryptocurrencies look really interesting.

The next graph, further below, representing mean-reversion in price and volume of Ethereum, tells a story similar to that of the Bitcoin, yet just similar. As strange as it seems, the COVID crisis, since January 2020, seems to have brought a new breeze into that house. There had been a sudden spike in activity (volumes traded) in the beginning of 2020, and that spike in activity led to a slump in price. It is a bit as if a lot of investors suddenly went: ‘What? Those old Ethers in my portfolio? Still there? Unbelievable? I need to get rid of them. Jeeves! Please, be as kind and give those old Ethers to poor investors from the village.’. Another provisional lesson: spikes in activity, in any financial market, can lead both to appreciation of a financial instrument, and to its depreciation. This is why big corporations, and stockbrokers working for them, employ the services of market moderators, i.e. various financial underwriters who keep trading in the given stock, sort of back and forth, just to keep the thing liquid enough to make the price predictable. 

Now, we go into the world of niche cryptocurrencies: the Steem and the Golem. I present their four graphs (Extrapolated return *2, Mean-reversion *2) further below, and now a few general observations about those two. Their mean-reverted volumes are like nothing even remotely similar to the dentition of an alligator. An alligator like that couldn’t survive. Both present something like a series of earthquakes, of growing magnitudes, with the greatest spike in activity in the beginning of 2020. Interesting: it looks as if the COVID crisis had suddenly changed something for these two. When combined with the graphs of extrapolated return, mean-reverted prices and quantities tell us a story of two cryptocurrencies which, back in the day, attracted a lot of attention, and started to have sort of a career, but then it all went flat, and even negative. This is the difference between something that aspires to be money (Steem, Golem), and something that really is money (Bitcoin, Ethereum). The difference is in the predictably speculative patterns of behaviour in market participants. John Maynard Keynes used to stress the fact that real money has always two functions: it serves as a means of payment, and it is being used as a speculative asset to save for later. Without the latter part, i.e. without the propensity to save substantial balances for later, a wannabe money has no chance to become real money.   

Now, I am trying to sharpen my thinking in terms of practical investment. Supposing that I invest in cryptocurrencies (which I do not do yet, although I am thinking about it), what is my take on these four: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Steem, and Golem? Which one should I choose, or how should I mix them in my investment portfolio?

The Bitcoin seems to be the most attractive as investment, on the whole. Still, it is so expensive that I would essentially have to sell out all the stock I have now, just in order to buy even a small number of Bitcoins. The remaining three – Ethereum, Steem and Golem – fall into different categories. Ethereum is regular crypto-money, whilst Steem and Golem are niche currencies. In finance, it is a bit like in exploratory travel: if I want to go down a side road, I’d better be prepared for the unexpected. In the case of Steem and Golem, the unexpected consists in me not knowing how they play out as pure investment. To the extent of my knowledge, these two are working horses, i.e. they give liquidity to real markets of something: Steem in the sector of online creation, Golem in the market of networked computational power. Between those two, I know a bit about online creation (I am a blogger), and I can honestly admit I don’t know s**t about the market of networked computation. The sensible strategy for me would be to engage into the Steem platform as a creator, take my time to gain experience, see how those Steems play out in real life as a currency, and then try to build an investment position in them.

Thus, as regards investment strictly I would leave Steem and Golem aside and go for Ethereum. In terms of extrapolated rate of return, Ethereum offers me chances of positive outcomes comparable to what I can expect from the stock of PBKM, which I already hold, higher chances of positive return than other stock I hold now, and lower chances than, for example, the stock of First Solar or Medtronic (as for these considerations, you can consult Partial outcomes from individual tables ).   

OK, so let’s suppose I stay with the portfolio I already hold –11Bit, Airway Medix , Asseco Business Solutions, Bioton, Mercator Medical, PBKM – and I consider diversifying into Ethereum, First Solar , and Medtronic. What can I expect? As I look at the graphs (once again, I invite you to have a look at Partial outcomes from individual tables ), Ethereum, Medtronic and First Solar offer pretty solid prospects in the sense that I don’t have to watch them every day. All the rest looks pretty wobbly: depending on how the whole market plays out, they can become good investments or bad ones. In order to become good investments, those remaining stocks would need to break their individual patterns expressed in the graphs of extrapolated return and engage into new types of market games.

I can see that with the investment portfolio I currently hold, I am exposed to a lot of risk resulting from price volatility, which, in turn, seems to be based on very uneven market activity (i.e. volumes traded) in those stocks. Their respective histories of mean-reverted volumes look very uneven. What I think I need now are investment positions with less risk and more solidity. Ethereum, First Solar , and Medtronic seem to be offering that, and yet I am still a bit wary about coming back (with my money) to the U.S. stock market. I wrapped up my investments there, like one month ago, because I had the impression that I cannot exactly understand the rules of the game. Still, the US dollar seems to be a good investment in itself. If I take my next portion of investment, scheduled for the next week, i.e. the rent I will collect, transferring it partly to the U.S. market and partly to the Ethereum platform will expose just some 15% of my overall portfolio to the kind of risks I don’t necessarily understand yet. In exchange, I would have additional gains from investing into the US dollar, and additional fun with investing into the Ethereum.

Good. When I started my investment games by the end of January, 2020 (see Back in the game), I had great plans and a lot of doubts. Since then, I received a few nasty punches into my financial face, and yet I think I am getting the hang of it. One month ago, I managed to surf nicely the crest of the speculative bubble on biotech companies in the Polish stock market (see A day of trade. Learning short positions), and, in the same time, I had to admit a short-term defeat in the U.S. stock market. I yielded to some panic, and it made me make some mistakes. Now, I know that panic manifests in me both as an urge to act immediately, and as an irrational passivity. Investment is the art of controlling my emotions, as I see.

All I all, I have built an investment portfolio which seems to be taking care of itself quite nicely, at least in short perspective (it has earnt $238 over the last two days, Monday and Tuesday), and I have coined up my first analytical tools, i.e. mean-reversion and extrapolation of returns. I have also learnt that analytical tools, in finance, serve precisely the purpose I just mentioned: self-control.

Partial outcomes from individual tables

My editorial on You Tube

It is time to return to my investment strategy, and to the gradual shaping thereof, which I undertook in the beginning of February, this year (see Back in the game). Every month, as I collect the rent from the apartment I own and rent out, downtown, I invest that rent in the stock market. The date of collecting the next one approaches (it is in 10 days from now), and it is time for me to sharpen myself again for the next step in investment.

By the same occasion, I want to go scientific, and I want to connect the dots between my own strategy, and my research on collective intelligence. The expression ‘shaping my own investment strategy’ comes in two shades. I can understand it as the process of defining what I want, for one, or, on the other hand, as describing, with a maximum of objectivity, what I actually do. That second approach to strategy, a behavioural one, is sort of a phantom I have been pursuing for more than 10 years now. The central idea is that before having goals, I have values, i.e. I pursue a certain category of valuable outcomes and I optimize my actions regarding those outcomes. This is an approach in the lines of ethics: I value certain things more than others. Once I learn how to orient my actions value-wise, I can set more precise goals on the scale of those values.

I have been using a simple neural network to represent that mechanism at the level of collective intelligence, and I now, I am trying to apply the same logic at the level of my own existence, and inside that existence I can phenomenologically delineate the portion called ‘investment strategy in the stock market’. I feel like one of those early inventors, in the 18th or 19th century, testing a new idea on myself. Fortunately, testing ideas on oneself is much safer than testing drugs or machines. That thing, at least, is not going to kill me, whatever the outcome of experimentation. Depends on the exact kind of idea, though.

What meaningful can I say about my behaviour? I feel like saying something meaningful, like a big fat bottom line under my experience. My current experience is similar to very nearly everybody else’s experience: the pandemic, the lockdown, and everything that goes with it. I noticed something interesting about myself in this situation. As I spend week after week at home, more and more frequently I tend to ask myself those existential questions, in the lines of: “What is my purpose in life?”.  The frame of mind that I experience in the background of those questions is precisely that of the needle in my personal compass swinging undecidedly. Of course, asking myself this type of questions is a good thing, from time to time, when I need to retriangulate my personal map in the surrounding territory of reality. Still, if I ask those questions more and more frequently, there is probably something changing in my interaction with reality, as if with the time passing under lockdown I were drifting further and further away from some kind of firm pegs delineating my personal path.

Here they are, then, two of my behavioural variables, apparently staying in mutually negative correlation: the lower the intensity of social stimulation (variable #1), the greater the propensity to cognitive social repositioning (variable #2). This is what monks and hermits do, essentially: they cut themselves from social stimulation, so as to get really serious about cognitive social repositioning. With any luck, if I go far enough down this path, I reposition myself socially quite deeply, i.e. I become convinced that other people have to pay my bills so as I can experience the state of unity with the Divine, but I can even become convinced that I really am in a state of unity with the Divine. Of course, the state of unity lasts only until I need to pay my bills by myself again.

Good. I need to reinstate some social stimulation in my life. I stimulate myself with numbers, which is typical for economists. I take my investment portfolio such as it is now, plus some interesting outliers, and I do what I have already done once, i.e. I am being mean in reverse, pardon, mean-reverting the prices, and I develop on this general idea. This time, I apply the general line of logic to a metric which is absolutely central to any investment: THE RATE OF RETURN ON INVESTMENT. The general formula thereof is: RR = [profit] / [investment]. I am going to use this general equation, together with very basic calculation of probability, in order to build a PREDICTION BASED ENTIRELY ON AN EXTRAPOLATION OF PAST EVENTS. This is a technique of making forecasts, where we make forecasts composed of two layers. The baseline layer is precisely made of extrapolated past, and it is modified with hypotheses as for what new can happen in the future.

The general formula for calculating any rate of return on investment is: RR = [profit] / [investment]. In the stock market, with a given number of shares held in portfolio, and assumed constant, both profit and investment can be reduced to prices only. Therefore, we modify the equation of return into: RR = [closing price – opening price] / [opening price]. We can consider any price observed in the market, for the given stock, as an instance of closing price bringing some kind of return on a constant opening price. In other words, the closing price of any given trading day can be considered as a case of positive or negative return on my opening price. This is a case of Ockham’s razor, thus quite reductionist an approach. I ask myself what the probability is – given the known facts from the past – that my investment position brings me any kind of positive return vs. the probability of having a negative one. I don’t even care how much positive gain could I have or how deep is a local loss. I am interested in just the probability, i.e. in the sheer frequency of occurrence as regards those two states of nature: gain or loss.

In the graph below, I am illustrating this method with the case of Bioton, one of the companies whose stock I currently hold in my portfolio. I chose a complex, line-bar graph, so as to show graphically the distinction between the incidence of loss (i.e. negative return) vs that of gain. My opening price is the one I paid for 600 shares of Bioton on April 6th, 2020, i.e. PLN 5,01 per share. I cover one year of trading history, thus 247 sessions. In that temporal framework, Bioton had 12 days when it went above my opening price, and, sadly enough, 235 sessions closed with a price below my opening. That gives me probabilities that play out as follows: P(positive return) = 12/247 = 4,9% and P(negative return) = 235/247 = 95,1%. Brutal and sobering, as I see it. The partial moral of the fairy tale is that should the past project itself perfectly in the future, this if all the stuff that happens is truly cyclical, I should wait patiently, yet vigilantly, to spot that narrow window in the reality of stock trade, when I can sell my Bioton with a positive return on investment.      

Now, I am going to tell a different story, the story of First Solar, a company which I used to have an investment position in. As I said, I used to, and I do not have any position anymore in that stock. I sold it in the beginning of April, when I was a bit scared of uncertainty in the U.S. stock market, and I saw a window of opportunity in the swelling speculative bubble on biotech companies in Poland. As I do not have any stock of First Solar, I do not have any real opening price. Still, I can play a game with myself, the game of ‘as if…’. I calculate my return as if I had bought First Solar last Friday, April 24th. I take the closing price from Friday, April 24th, 2020, and I put it in the same calculation as my opening price. The resulting story is being told in the graph below. This is mostly positive a story. In strictly mathematical terms, over the last year, there had been 222 sessions, out of a total of 247, when the price of First Solar went over the closing price of Friday, April 24th, 2020. That gives P(positive return) = 222/247 = 89,9%, whilst P(negative return) = 10,1%.

The provisional moral of this specific fairy tale is that with First Solar, I can sort of sleep in all tranquillity. Should the past project itself in the future, most of trading days is likely to close with a positive return on investment, had I opened on First Solar on Friday, April 24th, 2020.  

Now, I generalize this way of thinking over my entire current portfolio of investment positions, and I pitch what I have against what I could possibly have. I split the latter category in two subsets: the outliers I already have some experience with, i.e. the stock I used to hold in the past and sold it, accompanied by two companies I am just having an eye on: Medtronic (see Chitchatting about kings, wars and medical ventilators: project tutorial in Finance), and Tesla. Yes, that Tesla. I present the results in the table below. Linked names of companies in the first column of the table send to their respective ‘investor relations’ sites, whilst I placed other graphs of return, similar to the two already presented, under the links provided in the last column.      

Company (investment position)Probability of negative returnProbability of positive returnLink to the graph of return  
  My current portfolio
11BitP(negative) = 209/247 = 84,6%P(positive) = 15,4%11Bit: Graph of return  
Airway Medix (243 sessions)P(negative) = 173/243 = 71,2%P(positive) = 70/243 = 28,8%Airway Medix: Graph of return  
Asseco Business SolutionsP(negative) = 221/247 = 89,5%P(positive) = 10,5%Asseco Business Solutions: Graph of return  
BiotonP(negative) = 235/247 = 95,1%P(positive) = 12/247 = 4,9%Bioton: Graph of return  
Mercator MedicalP(negative) = 235/247 = 95,1%P(positive) = 12/247 = 4,9%Mercator: graph of return  
PBKMP(negative) = 138/243 = 56,8%P(positive) = 105/243 = 43,2%  PBKM: Graph of return
  Interesting outliers from the past
Biomaxima (218 sessions)P(negative) = 215/218 = 98,6%P(positive) = 3/218 = 1,4%Biomaxima: Graph of return  
Biomed LublinP(negative) = 239/246 = 97,2%P(positive) = 7/246 = 2,8%Biomed Lublin: graph of return  
OAT (Onco Arendi Therapeutics)P(negative) = 205/245 = 83,7%P(positive) = 40/245 = 16,3%OAT: Graph of return  
Incyte CorporationP(negative) = 251/251 = 100%P(positive) = 0/251 = 0%Incyte: Graph of return  
First SolarP(negative) = 10,1%P(positive) = 222/247 = 89,9%First Solar: Graph of return  
  Completely new interesting outliers
TeslaP(negative) = 226/251 = 90%P(positive) = 25/251 = 10%Tesla: Graph of return  
MedtronicP(negative) = 50/250 = 20%P(positive) = 200/250 = 80%  Medtronic: Graph of return

As I browse through that table, I can see that extrapolating the past return on investment, i.e. simulating the recurrence of some cycle in the stock market, sheds a completely new light on both the investment positions I have open now, and those I think about opening soon. Graphs of return, which you can see under those links in the last column on the right, in the table, tell very disparate stories. My current portfolio seems to be made mostly of companies, which the whole COVID-19 crisis has shaken from a really deep sleep. The virus played the role of that charming prince, who kisses the sleeping beauty and then the REAL story begins. This is something I sort of feel, in my fingertips, but I have hard times to phrase it out: the coronavirus story seems to have awoken some kind of deep undertow in business. Businesses which seemed half mummified suddenly come to life, whilst others suddenly plunge. This is Schumpeterian technological change, if anybody asked me.

In mathematical terms, what I have just done and presented reflects the very classical theory of probability, coming from Abraham de Moivre’s ‘The doctrine of chances: or, A method of calculating the probabilities of events in play’, published in 1756. This is probability used for playing games, when I assume that I know the rules thereof. Indeed, when I extrapolate the past and use that extrapolation as my basic piece of knowledge, I assume that past events have taught me everything I need to understand the present. I used exactly the same approach as Abraham De Moivre did. I assumed that each investment position I open is a distinct gambling table, where a singular game is being played. My overall outcome from investment is the sum total of partial outcomes from individual tables (see Which table do I want to play my game on?).   

Important announcement for my students with the Frycz university

Dear Students,

We are supposed to keep working by distance learning. I have made a provisional schedule of our work up until May 22nd, 2020. This time, the backbone of our common work will be a schedule of ZOOM meetings, as provided in the table below. If you are not familiar with ZOOM, get acquainted with it. Essentially, you go to https://zoom.us and there you click ‘Join a meeting’ (top right of the page). When asked, you authenticate yourself (Name), and you provide the proper meeting ID, and the password, as specified in the table below. Read the text after the table as well: it is important.

Schedule of ZOOM classes until May 22nd, 2020

DateHours of ZOOM classDedicated SubjectDedicated groupMeeting IDPassword
16/04/2020ZOOM 11:00 – 12:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 884-6631-3234afmclass
16/04/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:00Macroeconomics SM/IB/19/1/SS 861-7687-7064890398
17/04/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:00Macroeconomics SM/IT/19/1/SS 832-3205-9764063629
22/04/2020ZOOM 10:30 – 11:30International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 857-0624-2561218335
22/04/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:30International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 892-0410-3913327541
23/04/2020ZOOM 10:00 – 11:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 859-6907-6622afmclass
23/04/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:30International Trade SM/IB/18/SS , SM/IT/18/SS , SM/IR&CD/18/SS 856-3907-1671601531
30/04/2020ZOOM 11:00 – 12:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 810-9958-0322816031
30/04/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:30International Trade SM/IB/18/SS , SM/IT/18/SS , SM/IR&CD/18/SS 871-1234-4440200795
06/05/2020ZOOM 10:00 – 11:30International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 864-8741-3349736263
06/05/2020ZOOM 12:00 – 13:00International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 810-0220-6075450869
07/05/2020ZOOM 11:00 – 12:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 825-5416-3530389190
07/05/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:30International Trade SM/IB/18/SS , SM/IT/18/SS , SM/IR&CD/18/SS 848-7174-8214073419
13/05/2020ZOOM 10:30 – 11:30International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 890-0156-8782138985
13/05/2020ZOOM 12:00 – 13:00International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 822-3899-2134862134
14/05/2020ZOOM 10:00 – 11:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 854-8943-3613079806
14/05/2020ZOOM 12:00 – 13:00Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 893-8431-4288416195
14/05/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:30International Trade SM/IB/18/SS , SM/IT/18/SS , SM/IR&CD/18/SS 870-5811-0884234869
20/05/2020ZOOM 10:00 – 11:30International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 848-8416-7085788524
20/05/2020ZOOM 12:00 – 13:00International management  Z/M-ang/18/SS 881-9216-6055162890
21/05/2020ZOOM 11:00 – 12:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 843-1135-2446850647
21/05/2020ZOOM 13:00 – 14:30Foundations of finance Z/M-ang/19/SS 840-0479-6888779164

In our ZOOM classes, we will be talking about a lot of things, yet the discussion will be structured around topics, which I briefly present further, in the order of their importance Priority #1 will be to discuss your progress in the preparation of your graduation projects for the semester. It applies to the students of 3 courses: International Management, Foundations of Finance, and International Trade.  

Priority #2 is to talk about the tasks that you still have to perform on the basis of materials I placed on the e-learning platform before Easter. Priority #3, to animate our common work, will be loose, creative discussion around topics to find on my blog, or around questions brought up by you.  

Just as a reminder, below I am providing the full list of links to the copies of materials placed at the e-learning platform before Easter:

Foundations of Finance

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Fundamentals-of-Finance-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-1.pptx

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Fundamentals-of-Finance-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-2.pptx

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Fundamentals-of-Finance-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-3-Crisis-Finance.pptx

International Management

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/International-Management-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-1.pptx

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/International-Management-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-2.pptx

Macroeconomics

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Macroeconomics-Spring-Summer-2020-workshop-1.pptx

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Macroeconomics-Summer-Spring-2020-workshop-2-crisis-economics.pptx

International Trade

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/International-Trade-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-1.pptx

https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/International-Trade-Spring-Summer-2020-lecture-2-trade-in-crisis.pptx

Which table do I want to play my game on?

My editorial on You Tube

There is so much going on, I mean, sort of in the world, that I have hard times focusing on a tangible thread of research, writing and blogging. The plan, for 2020, was to focus on three things: my personal strategy of investment in the stock market, business plan for my technological concept of Energy Ponds, and scientific research on the application of artificial intelligence to represent and study collective intelligence in human societies. There is like a fourth path, temporarily of secondary importance, namely the creation of new, 100% educational material for distance learning.

I like reviewing things from the end, and so I take a stance, in the first place, on that educational thing. Education should teach people something useful. I think that with all the COVID-19 crisis happening around, teaching social sciences should help my students to understand the events, and when I say ‘understand’, I follow its most fundamental aspect: that of creating some personal and collective order amongst the surrounding chaos. With that assumption in mind, I decided to prepare teaching material as much connected to the current events as possible. When financial markets go amok, teaching my students the fundamental principles of finance is a bit useless, as long as I don’t demonstrate how, and whether at all, those principles apply here and now. In some countries, e.g. Poland, investors in the stock market (including myself, to be clear) suddenly rush on the stock of biotech and medical companies, this is a financial change and a managerial change, as the managers of those life-science businesses will need to do something about that sudden interest. What they will do is going to impact the job which my son, age 24, is going to have, as IT engineer, in the near future.

Still, as much as I value the lore preached in the Church of What’s Going On Right Now, I value historical perspective. Akin to a squid, in my life, whenever I face chaos, I intuitively dive into a cloud of ink, namely into classical writings of philosophers, social thinkers, and historians. Uncertainty is the name of the game right now, and so I decide to dive into some foundational writings of Western statistics. There are two of them. The first is Abraham de Moivre’s ‘The doctrine of chances: or, A method of calculating the probabilities of events in play’, published in 1756, printed, as its cover page announces, for A.Millar, in the Strand. The second is the posthumous publication of ‘An Essay towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances’, by the Late Reverend Mr. Thomas Bayes, published in 1763 as an article in the Royal Society’s journal ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (1683-1775, Vol. 53 1763).  As I read the chronologically earlier treaty by de Moivre, I realise there is something even older, and not European at all: I Ching, or the Book of Changes, written and rewritten many times in China, during the entire millennium before Christ.

There is a common denominator to all those three classical writings. They all start from the assumption that reality is made of parts, and that we truly like just some of those parts. There are favourable events, and there is all the rest. The most fundamental message stemming from all those three seminal intellectual stances is that reality is essentially chaotic to us. We partition chaos into successes and failures, whilst being aware how gross a partition is that. The three books I am studying present three different approaches to structuring reality into what we like, and what we don’t really. I Ching proposes to define typical patterns – states of reality – defined at different levels of complexity, as individual happenings, combinations of three events in a row, then trigrams made of said sequences of three, and finally hexagrams made of two trigrams each. The central thought behind that classification is that some states of reality are more prone to change than others, and, in the same time, some sequences of change are much more likely to occur than others.

Abraham de Moivre’s ‘doctrine of chances’ focuses on the rationale behind playing and betting on some states of reality rather than others. Yes, of course, in his letter to Lord Carpenter, placed at the very beginning of the book, as some sort of pre-introduction, de Moivre stresses firmly that he is not writing about gambling: he just illustrates his method with examples from the world of gambling. Still, when I read what’s further, it just jumps to the eye: Abraham de Moivre was a savvy of gambling, like really. His method starts with the assumption that uncertain future is like a gambling house, with many tables. A different game is played at each table, with different rules and different payoffs. The central question that de Moivre tries to answer is how to use our knowledge of rules in the game so as to establish the well-founded of playing the game. From there on it is more or less what most of us studied at high school as basics of probability. There is a total number of events possible, everything put together in the same basket, and this number is n. In the world made of n, there are situations which we would like to take place, and the total number of such situations is k. The fraction k/n is informative about the general likelihood that in the cruel world of n, we find ourselves in the cosy k place.

Thomas Bayes’s, in his own ‘doctrine of chances’, claims that reality is a finite space of happenings and presents a method of slicing that space so as to narrow down our chances of getting what we want. Bayes, by an otherwise very explicit opposition to de Moivre, stressed strongly the point that we never completely now the rules of the game which we play with reality (reality plays with us?). His method is very much a way of making informed hypothesis about those rules. He distinguishes, for example, mutually consistent events from the mutually inconsistent ones, thus turning the reader’s attention towards the fact that opportunities rarely happen twice, whilst s**t usually comes in bundles. He construes that intriguingly empiricist example of throwing two   

Page 17 of the published article: ‘1. I suppose the square table or plane ABCD to be so made and levelled that if either of the balls o r W be thrown upon it, there shall be the same probability that it rests upon any one equal part of the plane as another, and that it must necessarily rest somewhere upon it. 2. I suppose that the ball W shall be first thrown and through the point where it rests a line os shall be drawn parallel to AD, and meeting CD and AB in s and o; and that afterwards the ball O shall be thrown p + q or n times, and that it resting between AD and os after a single throw be called the happening of the event M in a single trial […]’.

Good. It is time to use the wisdom of sages from the past so as to solves some riddles of the present times. Here is the situation with my personal strategy of investment in the stock market. Until recently, i.e. until I made the decision which I am describing further below, I had two portfolios: one in Poland, with a local brokerage house, and another one international, run through the DEGIRO investment platform. When the coronavirus panic broke in financial markets, much blood trickled out of both of those portfolios of mine. Yet, for like 2 last weeks, events have been unfolding differently in those two worlds. In the Polish stock market, a crazy ride upwards has developed on anything even vaguely medical: biotech, medical equipment, even on trade in wood (wood ó cellulose ó toilet paper). On Friday, March 27th, 2020, I bought stock of Biomed Lublin. Nothing big. They have been dabbling for years in vaccines and bio-serums but used to be the mostly known for having completely failed on developing synthetic human blood serum. Last Friday, April 3rd, after less than one full week of trade, I had 331% of profit on that stock. Madness.

Against that Polish background, my international positions had a grim look. As for yesterday, only one – Incyte Corporation – was bringing me a slight profit, around 9%. All the rest – First Solar, Macrogenics, Norsk Hydro, Virgin Galactic, Vivint Solar, tracker Amundi Epra, tracker Invesco A QQQ – each of those guys was more or less sucked dead by the vampire of market reality. The decision I made yesterday, and which I expect to consume on Monday 6th, was to sell out everything from the international portfolio at DEGIRO, transfer the money as quickly as possible to my Polish account (as quickly as possible is bloody slow with DEGIRO; I don’t know why, but it takes them like 3 days to pay me my money back), and invest in the Polish biotech sector.

It was a normal decision in the world of investment: wrap up whatever you have left after a lost battle and move it to a field where you can win. Cut your losses short etc. Still, I experienced really strong emotions about that decision. I know, by science and by personal experience, that when I get emotional about something, there is a lot of information my brain tries to process in as short a time as possible. I want to learn investment, and to use writing and blogging so as to enhance my learning. Therefore, I take those classical views, from ancient China and much less ancient Europe, and I apply them to my own investment strategy.

In which of the three worlds was I when I was making that particular decision: “Sell out international, move to domestic, national biotech and medical”? Was I in the world of I Ching, in that sketched by Abraham de Moivre, or maybe was I in Thomas Bayes’s rectangle with two balls? Intuitively, I would say that I was mostly Bayesian. I mean, yes, I was perceiving the situation slightly de Moivrian: as if I had two gambling tables in front of me, each with different rules and payoffs. Still, I felt that I don’t really understand the rules of at least one of the two games, the international one. I had most of my stock in the US market, and in the German market. Those governments released huge packages of economic support for their locked-down economies, so why isn’t that stuff growing? In Poland, what our government proudly announced as Anti-Crisis Shield looks more like a bath robe, if you want my opinion. The real shield, pretty much unavoidable, will consist in amending the budget and passing from the planned zero deficit to something akin the budget of 2018, with like €10 bln of deficit, and that money should be pumped into the economy. Why is biotech and medical growing like hell in Poland, and not really growing elsewhere (at least not even remotely as fast)?

I had that feeling of playing two different games at two distinct tables. At the national Polish table, I understand the rules: we run short of medical supplies and short of ideas for cures and vaccines against COVID, and so the market turns towards anything related. Stands to reason. At the international table, I felt lost. I felt that I didn’t understand the game, which looks like a random hiccup more than like anything organized. I had one game in de Moivre’s lines (Polish market), and another one more Bayes (international). I quit the Bayesian one and prefer staying in Abraham de Moivre’s world of gambling when knowing the rules.

Aha! I see. I am obsessed (mildly) with perceiving mathematics as a reflection of how we experience and digest the stuff called reality. With that situation, and those dead guys (anonymous in the case of I Ching) lurking over my shoulder, I can distinguish two different types of statistics and probability: the data science of the known as opposed to the data science of the unknown. The former sums up and structures the acquired knowledge, whilst the latter attempts to put some order in the untidy happening of things.

Right. I made a move: sell out international, move to Polish life sciences business. What’s my next step? Which of the three worlds of probability am I unfolding in the backyard of my thinking, right now, as I write these words? As I focus on the Polish market, I notice that, in my thoughts, I am partitioning reality, once again, into the cosy world of known rules de Moivre style, and into the exploratory excitement, which accompanies me as I trace that Bayesian rectangle over reality. What are my border lines, which I cannot trespass? What is my elementary way of exploration, i.e. how do I throw the ball W, so as to cut my acceptable reality into distinct fields?

I know there is technical growth in the stock market – when some buyers outbid other buyers – and there is fundamental growth, driven by something happening to the real, productive assets, which financial securities give a claim on. I gladly jump of technical waves in the market, yet in the long run, I want to invest in business rather than in financial deeds. What fundamental direction is the market going to take. Will there really be a massive development in Polish biotech businesses. We live, we see, as our saying says.

I return to my take on collective intelligence. In two updates on my blog, one rather written ( The collective archetype of striking good deals in exports ), and another one more sort of You-Tube-spoken (A civilisation of droplets), I developed on what I think are the differences between individual intelligence, and the collective one. The role played by individual representation of reality seems to be amongst the most important distinctions. Question: how does my representation of the social environment play out in my individual intelligence regarding investment decisions?

That would be all for now. If you want to contact me directly, you can mail at: goodscience@discoversocialsciences.com .

A test pitch of my ‘Energy Ponds’ business concept

I am returning to a business concept I have been working on for many months, and which I have provisionally labelled ‘Energy Ponds’. All that thinking about new economic solutions for a world haunted by insidious pathogens – no, not selfie sticks, I am talking about the other one, COVID-19 – pushed me to revisit fundamentally the concept of Energy Ponds, and you, my readers, you are my rubber duck.

The rubber duck (Latin: anas flexilis), also known as bath duck (anas balneum) is a special semi-aquatic avian species, whose valour I know from my son, IT engineer by profession. Every now and then, he says, on the phone: ‘Dad, focus, you are going to be my rubber duck’. The rubber duck is an imaginary animal. It feeds on discursive waters. You talk to it in order to get your own thoughts straight. When I am my son’s rubber duck, he explains me some programming problems and solutions, he checks if I understand what he says, and when I test positive, it means that he can get the message across to any moderately educated hominid.

I am going to proceed along the path of discursive equilibrium, in a cycle made of three steps. First, I will try to describe my idea in 1 – 2 sentences, in a simple and intelligible way. Then, I develop on that short description, with technical details. In the third step, I look for gaps and holes in the so-presented concept, and then I go again: short description, development, critical look etc. I think I will repeat the cycle until I reach the Subjective Feeling of Having Exhausted the Matter. Nelson Goodman and John Rawls proposed something slightly similar (Goodman 1955[1]; Rawls 1999[2]): when I talk long enough to myself, and to an imaginary audience, my concepts sharpen.   

Here I go. First attempt. I synthesize. The concept of ‘Energy Ponds’ consists in ram-pumping water from rivers into retentive, semi-natural wetlands, so as to maximize the retention of water, and, in the same time, in using the elevation created through ram-pumping so as to generate hydroelectricity. At the present stage of conceptual development, ‘Energy Ponds’ require optimization at two levels, namely that of adequately choosing and using the exact geographical location, and that of making the technology of ram-pumping economically viable.  

I develop. We are increasingly exposed to hydrological effects of climate change, namely to recurrent floods and droughts, and it starts being a real pain in the ass. We need to figure out new ways of water management, so as to retain a maximum of rainwater, whilst possibly alleviating occasional flood-flows. Thus, we need to figure out good ways of capturing rainwater, and of retaining it. Rivers are the drainpipes of surrounding lands, whence the concept of draining basin: this is the expanse of land, adjacent to a river, where said river collects (drains) water from. That water comes from atmospheric precipitations. When we collect water from rivers, we collect rainwater, which fell on the ground, trickled underground, and then, under the irresistible force of grandpa Newton, flew towards the lowest point in the whereabouts, that lowest point being the river.

Thus, when we collect water from the river, we collect rainwater, just drained through land. We can collect it in big artificial reservoirs, which has been done for decades. An alternative solution is to retain water in wetlands. This is something that nature has been doing for millions of years. We have sort of a ready-made recipe from. Wetlands are like sponges covered with towels. A layer of spongy ground, allowing substantial accumulation of water, is covered with a dense, yet not very thick layer of shallowly rooted vegetation. That cover layer prevents the evaporation of water.  

Now, I go into somehow novel a form of expression, i.e. novel for me. The age I am, 52, I have that slightly old school attachment to writing, and for the last 4 years, I have been mostly writing on my blog. Still, as a university professor, I work with young people – students – and those young people end up, every now and then, by teaching me something. I go more visual in my expression, which this whole written passage can be considered as an introduction to. Under the two links below, you will find:

  1. The Power Point Presentation with a regular pitch of my idea

That would be all in this update. Just as with my other ideas, in the times we have, i.e. with the necessity to figure out new s**t in the presence of pathogens, you are welcome to contact me with any intellectual contribution you feel like supplying.  

If you want to contact me directly, you can mail at: goodscience@discoversocialsciences.com .

[1] Goodman, N. (1955) Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, pp. 65–68

[2] Rawls J. (1999) A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition, President and Fellows of Harvard College, ISBN 0-674-00078-1, p. 18

We’d better make that change liveable

My editorial on You Tube

I continue developing my ideas. Most people do, all the time, actually: they keep developing their own ideas, and other people’s ideas, and, on the whole, we just develop our ideas.

Good. Linguistic warm up done, I go to work. I continue what I started in my last update ( Steady inflow of assets and predictable rules ): a workable business concept for restarting local economies after COVID-19 lockdowns, and during the ongoing pandemic. Last time, I studied the early days of the Bitcoin, in the hope of understanding how a completely new economic scheme emerges. As hope crystalizes into something more structured, ideas emerge. I am going to make a quick sketch of what I have come up with, and then I will try give it some shine by using my observations as regards the early infancy of the Bitcoin.  

As I observe the present situation, I can see that local communities both need and accumulate some typical goods and assets. The most immediately needed, and semi-instinctively accumulated goods are those serving personal protection and hygiene: gloves, facial protections (masks, covers, googles etc.), scrubs and aprons, bonnets, soap, ethanol-based sanitizers. I wonder, and, honestly, I would gladly do with the consultation of an epidemiologist, to what extent an abundant use of those hygienic goods can be substitute to social distancing. I mean, to what extent can we restart social interactions with adequate protection?

Anyway, I am quite confident that local communities will be accumulating what I provisionally call ‘epidemic assets’. The challenge consists in using that phenomenon, and those assets, so as to give some spin to economies brought down by lockdowns.

Now, I am using basic laws of economics. Whenever and wherever some stock of medical supplies will be accumulated, it will be inventories, i.e. circulating assets subject to storage and endowed with direct economic utility, but not to amortization. Sooner or later, substantial inventories of anything attract the company of some fixed assets, such as buildings, equipment, and intellectual property, on the one hand, as well as the company of other circulating assets (e.g. receivable claims on third parties), and, finally, the company of JOBS, which are the key point here.   

Now, let’s imagine the following scenario. A local community, e.g. local hospital plus local city council, need to have a given amount of ‘epidemic assets’ stored and ready to use, just to keep the local epidemic situation under control. They need those epidemic assets, yet, as the local economy is stricken by epidemic lockdown, they don’t have enough money (or no money at all) to pay for those assets. Here starts the gamble. The local community offers the suppliers of epidemic assets to be paid in tokens of a virtual currency, where each token corresponds to a futures contract with claims on a future stock of epidemic assets.

The central idea is that with the virus around, everybody will have a keen interest in having enforceable claims on epidemic assets. That keen interest will be driven by two motives. In the first place, many people will need to use those epidemic assets like directly and personally. Secondly, those assets will be valuable, and futures contracts on them will have monetizable, financial value. It should be possible to create a circulation of those tokens (futures), where the direct supplier of epidemic assets can use those tokens to pay their own suppliers of intermediate goods, as well as to pay a part of the payroll. Those whom he pays will either consume those futures to grab some epidemic assets, or make those futures circulate further.

As those tokenized futures contracts on epidemic assets get developed and put in circulation, we can use the relatively recent invention called ‘smart contract’. A complex contract can be split into separate component parts, like LEGO blocks, each endowed with a different function. Users can experiment with each part separately, and the actual contracts they sign and trade are compound legal schemes. For now, I can see 3 principal LEGO blocks. The first one is the exact substance of the claim incorporated in the tokenized contracts. Futures contracts have this nuance in them: they can embody claims on a certain quantity of specified goods or assets, e.g. 100 kg of something, or on a nominal financial value of those goods or assets, like $100 worth of something.     Maturity of the claim is another thing. Futures contracts have a time horizon in them: 1 month, 6 months, 12 months etc. In this specific case, maturity of claims is the same as the lifecycle of one tokenized contract, and, honestly, if this scheme is applied in real life, we will be sailing uncharted waters. Those tokens are supposed to keep local economies going, and therefore they’d better have a long lifecycle. Hardly anyone would trust quasi – monetary tokens with a lifespan of 3 months. On the other hand, the longest futures I have seen, like those on coffee or wheat, stretch over 6 months, rarely longer. Here comes the third building block, namely convertibility of the claim. If we want the system to work smoothly, i.e. inspire trust in exchange, and be realistic in the same time, we can make those tokens convertible into something else. They could convert into similar tokens, just valid over the next window of trade, or into something else, e.g. shares in the equity of newly built local hospitals. Yes, we are certainly going to build more of them, trust me.  

Building blocks in hand, we start experimenting. Looking at the phases I distinguished in the early infancy of the Bitcoin (once again, you can look up Steady inflow of assets and predictable rules ), I see three essential steps in the development of this scheme. The first step would consist in creating a first, small batch of those tokenized contracts and test them in deals with whoever would like to try. The experience of the Bitcoin shows that once the thing catches on (and IF the thing catches on), i.e. once and if there are any businesspeople interested, it should spread pretty quickly. Then comes the second phase, that of building large portfolios of those tokenized contracts in a relatively small and select community, sort of Illuminati of medical supplies. In that phase, which is likely to be pretty long, like 1,5 year, said Illuminati will be experimenting with the exact smart structure those contracts, so as to come up with workable, massively reproducible patterns for the third phase, that of democratization. This is when the already hammered and hardened contractual patterns in those tokens will spread to a larger population. Individual balances of those tokens are likely to shrink in that third phase and become sort of standardized. This could be the moment, when our tokenized contracts can start being used as a vehicle for saving economic value over time, and it looks like a necessary condition for driving it out of its so-far autonomous, closed market into exchangeability against money.

That would be all for today. If you want to contact me directly, you can mail at: goodscience@discoversocialsciences.com . If anyone wants to bounce this ball off their bat, you are welcome. I am deeply convinced that we need to figure out some new s**t. Our world is changing, and we’d better make that change liveable.