I'd do this for a friend, too!

All right, I'll allow it.

It is an assistive device. Experimental but still.

Yes it is.

And hey, if it works maybe we could patent it and see if there's a market.

Ohan could.

Yes, sure, I'd just be an early angel investor.

I guess if you frame it as an investment you can probably get some return from it.

Exactly! And it's not even out-of-caste, the government sometimes listens to economists.

I really like that about the government, the sometimes listening to economists.

Could gripe about the 'some' part but honestly it could be much worse.

I imagine people who never listen to economists just fuck things up enough to be voted out or if necessary violently overthrown.

There's a limit to how far that can go, I'm sure we're not at the optimal listening-to-economists spot and yet there don't seem to be super successful politicians getting things done by listening to more economists.

It isn't necessarily the case but seems plausible to me that we're at a point where all the low hanging economist fruit has been picked. Like, presumably econ greens are crackpots at some rate, and at a certain level of sophistication of an idea it's hard to tell, and also there are some disagreements in the field at sufficient levels of granularity, and then you can't listen to all of the economists all of the time, you have to filter the ideas somehow.

I suppose "don't actually listen to anything that isn't an overwhelming consensus and also relatively easy and non-politicised" is a filter.

That's probably what they do!

Could lower the threshold for the "overwhelming" part grumble grumble

Is there something specific that 70% of economists agree on that you want implemented?

Well, not off the top of my head, but now I'm tempted to find something.

Keep me posted!

Will do!

There is an open lecture on the adoption of electronic currency. She invites Sahde and Ohan.

Ooh that sounds cool he's coming.

Ohan is too!

The lecture is delivered by a green historian in his early thirties and it's about the effect on various industries of people ceasing to carry cash, or even if they didn't adopt a policy of not carrying cash, being easily able to forget to do so; the initial startups in the space for handling transactions and what led them to succeed or fail; and the social effects of the economy mostly moving to forms of currency that were tied to the payer's identity (though cash and loose credit persist in most modern countries, including Anitam). It is four hours long with a break in the middle long enough to nip out for lunch.