The Slides from SCIVE 2010

Are now online at:

http://cfpm.org/scive/#Slides

Roger Ballard's Final Title: The Operation of Transjurisdictional Value Transfer Systems in the Contemporary Global Order: a comparative perspective

I have seen the slides and it looks good to me.

Bruce

Comment on RWER blog: 5 suggested common themes for an Economics that takes its subject matter seriously

This somewhat connects with the subject matter of SCIVE, in particular setting the context for a wider and better economics.

Read it at: http://wp.me/pGd5z-ti

What is the value of food?

Have a look at this blog item discussing food prices.

The meaning of SCIVE

What does SCIVE mean? If you google for it, you will find that a quite obscure reference to the Urban dictionary - my reading, that should be supported by some native reader, is that it's considered a misspelling or an assonance with "shirk". It is associated with words as "lazy", "sloath", "relax", and "beer" - all of which are fine with me (although I guess that in the urban dictionary, nothing is far removed from "beer.")

On the science side, we have SCIVE, a simulation core for intelligent Virtual Environments (IVEs); the CiteSeerX paper is yearless but other works on the same can be found (ex. Christian Fröhlich & Marc Erich Latoschik (2008). Incorporating the Actor Model into SCIVE on a Semantic Level. In: SEARIS Workshop at the IEEE VR2008, Reno, USA, march, Pages 61-64; Marc Erich Latoschik, Christian Fröhlich, Alexander Wendler: Scene Synchronization in Close Coupled World Representations Using SCIVE. IJVR 5(3): 47-52 (2006))

New Invited Speakers: Rosaria Conte (ISTC/CNR) and Mats Eriksson, (Ripple)

We are very please that we have two more invited speakers for SCIVE 2010:

• Rosaria Conte (ISTC/CNR) will talk on Social Dynamics and ICT
• Mats Eriksson, (Ripple) will talk on Towards P2P money - Ripple and beyond

SCIVE 2010 Programme

9:00 - 10:00

Roger Ballard, Informal Hawala/Hundi Systems of Value Transfer (Invited speaker)

10:00 - 10:30 Coffee-break

10:30 - 12:30

Anamaria Berea, Network Externalities in Hawala Exchanges
Bruce Edmonds, Obligation, trust and information in an Agent-Based Model of the Hawala System of International Value Exchange
Sarah Wolf, Antoine Mandel, Steffen Furst, and Carlo Jaeger, Prices as conventions in an agent based model of growing economies

12:30 - 14:00 lunch, posters and demos

14:00 - 16:00

Rosaria Conte, Social Dynamics and ICT (Invited Speaker)
Victorien Barbet, Renaud Bourles, and Juliette Rouchier, Evolving informal cooperatives for a risky activity when networks matter
Mario Paolucci, Emergence of Money on a Network Topology
David Hales, Towards a Financial Commons?

16:00 - 16:30 coffee-break

16:30 - 18:30 Discussion - future projects and directions

The Venus Project

Hello everybody,

I was planning to contribute to the SCIVE blog with a series of reviews about what already exists on the Internet. I'll distinguish between scholar contributions and - it's difficult to find a name that is not a negative like un-academic or not-scholar - applied ones.

The Venus Project looks at first sight as a science fiction work - and a dated one too. However, it's not about science fiction technologies and fantastic buildings. It contains an utopian vision that has to say something on value and on money. I quote from the introduction to the project:

An Obsolete Monetary System

The money-based system evolved centuries ago. All of the world's economic systems - socialism, communism, fascism, and even the vaunted free enterprise system - perpetuate social stratification, elitism, nationalism, and racism, primarily based on economic disparity. As long as a social system uses money or barter, people and nations will seek to maintain the economic competitive edge or, if they cannot do so by means of commerce they will by military intervention. We still utilize these same outmoded methods.

...

For example, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, whose function is presumed to be conducting research into ways of achieving higher crop yields per acre, actually pays farmers not to produce at full-capacity. The monetary system tends to hold back the application of these methods that we know would best serve the interests of people and the environment.

----

Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money and provides an equitable method of distributing these resources in the most efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

By the way, this is a good place to say that one of the main points that make me so enthusiastic about the SCIVE project is because it is utopian. In planning the world, the 20th century has relied on ideologies. Now, depending on the point of view, ideology has gone or has been unified. The problem for the 21th century is to start planning again, and with more freedom of movement. So, I do welcome science fiction.

SCIVE 2010 gets support also from ESSA

the European Social Simulation Association (ESSA) has agreed to give the SCIVE'2010 workshop €1000 under some reasonable conditions.  Along with the AssystICT funding this should mean we are able to provide some support to those young/underrepresented researchers with some of their costs.

Submission deadline extended to 12th May!

Graciously we have decided to extend the submission deadline to 12th of May in response to a couple of requests.  This has nothing to do with the fact that I am still working on my model - really!  ;-)

Domenico Parisi and Edoardo Mollona join SCIVE PC

I am very please to announce that

• Prof. Domenico Parisi (ISTC-CNR, Rome)
  
• Dr. Edoardo Mollona (Univ. of Bologna)

Have aggreed to join the PC of SCIVE'2010

Papers by the invited speaker at SCIVE 2010 on Hawala/IVTS systems

 Can be found at: http://www.casas.org.uk/papers/hawala.html

Including:

• Hawala and Hundi: vehicles for the long-distance transmission of value 
• Hawala: criminal haven or vital financial network? 
• Global Value Transfer Systems in an Era of Financial Volatility: meeting the logistical challenge
• The Principles and Practice of Hawala Banking 

These very clearly show how a trust-based system can drastically improve efficiency and flexibility. 

Some papers on "Generalised Exchange"...

...which seems to cover a lot of what we call "Informal Exchange".

• The Emergence of Generalized Exchange by Indirect Reciprocity, Anders Biel, Daniel Eek, Tommy Gärling and Mathias Gustafsson -- http://www.springerlink.com/content/qp585m5tu4404761/
• Multiplexity, generalized exchange and cooperation in organizations: a case study, Emmanuel Lazegaa and Philippa E. Pattison -- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-8733(99)00002-7
• Generalized Exchange and Social Dilemmas, Toshio Yamagishi and Karen S. Cook -- http://www.jstor.org/pss/2786661
• Towards a Theory of Large-Scale Generalized Exchange, Levine, Sheen. and Shah, Sonali -- http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/7/6/7/pages107678/p107678-1.php
• Generalized Exchange, Social Identity, and Non-Anonymity, Triplett, Jennifer. and Thye, Shane -- http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/8/3/0/5/pages183055/p183055-1.php
• Mechanisms of Generalized Exchange, Baker, Wayne E. and Levine, Sheen S -- http://ssrn.com/abstract=1352101
• Generalized Exchange, Peter Bearman -- http://www.jstor.org/stable/2782312
• The emergence of generalized exchange, Nobuyuki Takahashi -- http://www.jstor.org/stable/3003889
• Expectations of a generalized exchange system and ingroup favoritism: an experimental study of bounded reciprocity, Kiyonari T -- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12101584
• Spontaneous formation of generalized exchange system: An experimental study of discriminating altruism, Nobuyuki Takahashi, http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/199917/000019991799A0512436.php
• Building Solidarity through Generalized Exchange: A Theory of Reciprocity, Linda D. Molm, Jessica L. Collett, David R. Schaefer -- http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/517900

SCIVE 2010 publication

We have an "in principle" agreement from the editor of Real-World Economics Review to publish a selection of revised papers resulting from the SCIVE 2010 workshop in a special section.

SCIVE 2010 has sponsorship from ASSYST

This means that at least some bursaries will be able to be made to those with a full paper accepted at SCIVE 2010.  More details when we know them.

Roger Ballard of the of the Centre for Applied South Asian Studies will speak at SCIVE 2010

Roger Ballard the Director of the Centre for Applied South Asian Studies has accepted an invitation to be an invited speaker at SCIVE 2010.  He will talk on the general Informal Hawala/Hundi Systems of Value Transfer (title yet to be decided).

CfP: 1st workshop on the Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange @ ECCS 2010, Lisbon

Social Complexity of Informal Value Exchange
SCIVE 2010

 September 16^th, 2010, Lisbon

at the European Complex Systems Society Conference

 

Submission deadline:  April 30th 2010

This workshop aims to promote inquiry into social phenomena that involve value-exchange, and in particular on networks for credit and value transfer, under the effect of recent technological and societal change. Informal value transfer and credit networks involve people or institutions providing credit or value transfer services based on social trust rather than laws and contracts. Such networks constitute a complex system that have been relatively unstudied yet have a significant impact on people's lives.  This exchange often involves many social processes and mechanisms other than those usually considered by economists, including: social norms, altruism, reputation, trust, group membership, friendship, kinship, identity, status etc. Examples range from local baby-sitting circles up to the international Hawala/Hundi systems of value transfer.

Full details at: http://cfpm.org/scive/