Payoff

I've just read this book in one sitting. It's about the hidden logic and the bigger picture of motivation. it's using stuff that has been presented in Dan Ariely's other great books. But it ties them so intelligently together, that I recommend to read it even if you have experienced the other books.

After I've dived deeper into politics, especially into the co-evolution of economy and labor (in its full complexity) it became more clear, how easy it is to destroy motivation and how difficult is to build. The subject is far more complex than we ever imagined.
It's worth investigating the nature of motivation, our partial blindness to the way it works, and how we can bridge this gap.
Oh, yes.

The Workflow Of The Book

The workflow of the book in a nutshell. Incidents - Progressive Problems - Resolution in telegram style. 


A politics that fixes what it eventually broke


Politics must be agile and adaptive. It must be developed evolutionarily. In a balance of structural and behavioral change. As a system that becomes stronger under stress.

Political Engineering

Political engineering by means of paper decay can not depict the complexity. It requires new interaction patterns and technology support.


Quant Politics


Provided the complex state wants to reach its national targets, it must quantify. Supported by methods of econometrics, engineering, physics, mathematics and programming.


Once there was a fisher and a farmer


First was the exchange

A fisher and a farmer exchanged a trout for carrots. Asynchronous deliveries forced a contract between a creditor (the fisher delivered in autumn) and a debtor (the farmer delivered next spring).

Banks were established

Because there were many networked exchange contracts of that type, it was obvious to transfer the central creation, storage and settlement to clearing houses. Banks.

Money was created

Money was created by standardization of these contracts. Banks record all transactions and multilateral relationships between creditors and debtors applying double-entry bookkeeping.

Money out of nothing

A bank lending money, draws it out of nothing. This money can be put into an economical circulation. If the great-granddaughter of the fisher, a salmon breeder, buys a yellow convertible for 50,000, she creates branched income.

Central banks were established 

Provided the bank of the salmon breeder  resides in Vienna and that of the car dealer in Milan this leads to a quadrangular relationship of reciprocal claims and obligations. Interwoven money transactions between and with banks are supported by a clearing house. A central bank.

The money system is programmable

Money is solid as a storage for values and liquid as a medium for economical transactions. Consequently, it's programmable.

The money goes to?

Real investment: provided the great-grandson of the farmer borrows 200,000 to create a chili-production, he immediately generates income in a certain economy. Future income can serve the debt and interest. 

Speculative investment: provided the salmon breeder lends 200,000 and buys a house to resell it later more expensive it only generates wealth. If the house price falls, she can only pay part of the debt and interest.

Real investment hardly leads to debt crises. Speculative investment can lead to bursting bubbles. 

Main Street  and Wall Street

Real futures and real options could maximize the value of the investment project of the chili producer. The models come from Wall Street.

Once there was a profession and a job - lifelong


Complexity economy

If markets are saturated by chocolate, people buy nuts. Chocolate does not yield any more. If a coveted luxury chocolate appears on the market, this can create a new boom for the mass chocolate. This positive feedback describes the complexity economy.

The future of work

If education can't win the race with technology, human labor becomes less and polarized (super-brain or muscles?).

The big picture of work

Work satisfaction is determined by income and fulfillment. Two-dimensional working types: SLAVRY/ HOBBY / FACTORY / LAB. The type lab offers the highest income and with the greatest possible fulfillment.

Income or wealth?

Income determines the coevolution of labor and economy. Many improve their income situation by pooling, sharing and distributing income. This is regulated by law total economies.

Three rights can make a wrong


The change curve

The salmon breeder wants to reorganize her company from functional to divisional (markets-centered). The project is well prepared, the teams are trained. Nevertheless, many behave as before. Uncertain future inhibits them all.

Innovation risk

Complicated models describe a real behavior better. But they bear a higher risk of usage. The key to accepting an innovation is to optimize its risk.

Work more with artists

Artists deal with risk, insecurity, imperfection and criticism better.

Capitalism or free market?


The market is the exchange itself. It is innocent - but rarely free. In order to accumulate capital, dominant market players exclude market mechanisms by means of a planned economy. Isn't this paradox?

Management of the wealth pool


In the complex interplay of individual and total interests, the state must manage a positive development. This needs quantification.

It's our turn


Stop indirection

Indirect (representative) democracy is a detour. It leads to alienation of the political cadres from the people. We have to co-determine. We do not have the detailed knowledge?

Explorative learning

But we can learn from turbulences. Every form of school must empower learners to explore thought principles, insights, and skills enabling them to live freely in an open-minded society... able to innovate...

Technology

Better decision-support systems by technology guarantees an effective direct democracy.

Unconditional basic income

We all have values. A useful basic income serves as a social net and economical trampoline in one.

The no-problem problem


The continuous looking after dangers does not allow any no-problem phases and the soporific we-are-great often leads directly into a crisis.

The Payoff



What's the controlling idea of a new political engineering, based on quantitative politics?

Politics of sharing

A quantitative politics that strives for human emancipation. It's goal should be freedom - not equality. Its basis: to write new contexts into the socioeconomic systems. It requires adaptive models.
Quant politics surfs on the waves of reality and changes them with their navigation
A new evolutionary, left-oriented, quant politics thinks internationally, develops bottom up and promotes decentralized decision-making structures. It's not fighting free markets but capitalism-without-adjectives. it's not protectionist. It merges, shares and distributes.

I've a dream

I don't understand left-oriented politics as a moral principle, but as a calculus of intelligent selfishness. It means putting action into a higher context. Not an anti-business movement, but a free-markets movement. A movement of open innovation and sharing.
It's our world, our coexistence, our control, our responsibility, our learning, our development, it's our methods, our tools - it's our evolution
It's possible with existing instruments by just adapting and codevelop them with quantitative systems.

I've worked hard for over a year, explained complicated things, went into details, introduced examples and little stories and worked out project ideas for immediate realization.

This is a compilation. But I'm offering presentations an workouts providing full explanations... for free (if time allows for... ).

A New Physics of Politics

I've continued working on the Unser platform. I added Background information and a Summary.

A New Political Engineering

I got freed back from readers and focus groups and not so surprisingly it turns out that business people are interested. Probably more than politicians? Because it touches a new Physics of Politics … in the century of complexity. A new politics that enables a new political engineering based on more quantification.
Will the last decade be remembered as the time of the revolt of the underclass? With a strong political bite? Fed by deep insecurity? With a cry for change? But which one? Do we have any answers? Can we explain the geopolitical, socio-economic system without understanding the underlying new "physics"? The physics of complexity?
Indeed, the physics of geopolitics, economics, social systems ... striving for equilibriums is superseded by the physics of complexity. Never before did we have smart connected things and processes. Never before did we have smarter methods and tools. Never before have we lived in multipolar, multi-civilizational orders. Never before has so much of what is "us" been made of "them" and vice versa. And all this without a regime. The biggest system change is shifting state-centered orders into an arena of multiagents. To understand this, we need to understand evolution, coevolution, positive feedback, also called "butterfly effect".

Don't predict future - write it

Politicians, economists, and sociologists feel less comfortable with the notion of complexity, such as physicists, biologists, computer scientists, or mathematicians, who are more likely to tolerate all forms of life only at the narrow phase boundary of chaos and order. Without stable equilibriums.

Complexity politics requires a different way of thinking about politics itself. As a politics that is constantly being redesigned and adapted. A politics that is less thinking in concrete goals and structural principles, but in their patterns. The usual forms of political expressions are to be replaces by making and renewing. Don't predict future, but write it. Empowered by models, simulation, adaptation …

A Herculean task. The book provides insights, ideas, and political directions ... but I hope it will be much more: a living platform ... serving a Quantitative Politics community.

To get it running, I offer free individual presentations and workouts. For business people, who will be touched by the changes and better influence them rather than react.