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    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen
    You can continue your sentence here if you want, I'll pick up on it and I think @fosterlynn is taking a look too...
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    It turns out that this system has some nice game theoretic properties which encourage consumers to bid no more or less than the item is worth to them. The same credit could be used to buy another item, so it acts as a proxy for sacrificing one item for another. The highest losing bid can be used as a proxy for utility.
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn
    Hello @PlannedCanada pleased to meet you! Very interesting potential synergies in all of this, but I have no brain cells left today, and will catch up tomorrow. I've read the reddit discussion, but not joined yet. (Will do so if that is the discussion venue of choice.)
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    I'm on there lots, so that would be good. Is this the main channel where ValueFlows is organized?
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn
    This is the place to come in, and its no problem to have discussions here, but things tend to scroll off. We have a gory detail channel also, more for internal discussion to develop the vocabulary. A lot of our discussion goes on in github issues (since we're still in github). Here https://github.com/valueflows/valueflows/issues; or maybe for these discussions here https://github.com/valueflows/forum.valueflo.ws/issues, that is for discussions we don't want to close. I think the last place is probably the best.
    But I will join reddit too.
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    Alright. I suppose I should wrap up with an example. You're a consumer shopping for canned tomatoes. You really need at least one, so you put up a bid for ten credits. If they're cheaper you might as well get more, so you put up two bids for four credits and one for one. The auction ends and three and a half is the highest losing bid. You get three cans for a total of ten and a half credits. Three and a half is the gathered utility, and in combination with certain assumptions about the geometry can be used to extrapolate a whole utility curve for canned tomatoes.
    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen
    @PlannedCanada how do you see Obelisk being used? For actual economic activities? Something like ebay? Connected to the Basis project in some way, or as an alternative?
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    The basic idea was to create an alternative method to do what markets do. Integration or even a complete merge with this project or with Basis would be great, especially because I don't know what I'm doing with frontend stuff.
    Precisely, what's been written so far finds the best possible economy that fits within the constraints of the environment. New algorithms to plan out investments starting from a smaller economy (with that best economy as a target) would be where I go with Obelisk once I'm satisfied with what's built.
    That would be a harder problem, as dynamic systems are usually compared to static systems.
    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen
    How do you include environmental constraints?
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    Natural productions, which you wanted me to explain anyway, are the main factor.
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    A recipe can be preformed at many different rates. If the recipe is one sheet of aluminum to ten cans, that could also mean two sheets to twenty cans a minute, or half a sheet to five cans a minute. I've called this factor different "intensities", and it's the set of parameters that Obelisk generates as a solution. Natural productions represent processes which produce (or consume, if the value is negative) resources at a fixed rate without human involvement. For example, sun shines on every acre of the tropics about twelve hours a day, and a worker is available to work forty man-hours a week
    The space of possible solutions is those intensities where natural production + recipe productions = zero for every resource.
    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen
    Thanks, understood well enuf for now, but might need to come back to it later.
    I'm looking for some sources (that I know exist but will take me some time to locate, and I might need to ask some friends) on environmental constraints, biophysical limits, biocapacity, etc. They get fairly complex. Some factors are specific to a bioregion: for example, we live in a karst geology where ground water travels through underground channels in all directions so pollution in one place can affect large areas. So practices like fracking would be a disaster here.
    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen
    Some other factors are global. For example, lithium for batteries is globally constrained, and was the cause for the recent US-led coup in Bolivia.
    So a recipe for lithium ion batteries (or at least a plan for such production) would need to consider that global constraint.
    I'll come back to this topic after I get somewhere with my current search.
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    Obelisk can ensure that global lithium production matches lithium consumption, but I suppose it's possible as it is that it could generate a situation where there's more lithium tied up in things than actually exists. I'm going to update the SQL file to account for that now. Thanks for the input!
    That ties back to an open question, which is how sustainable is sustainable enough. On one end, eventually, the sun will expand and engulf the Earth, so nothing here is truly sustainable. On the other, you don't want to run out of phosphorus this century, that is unnacceptable.
    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen

    how sustainable is sustainable enough

    I think (subject to lots of more informed opinion) that it is an ongoing conversation between what people are doing in a given bioreqion with the other critters in their ecosystem. So if the humans kill the microbiota in the soil, their human lives will no longer be sustainable either. If they recover their senses a bit and change their practices and feed the microbiota, both might be well.

    A couple of crazy researchers (whom I am also not finding now) once did an exhaustive measurement of all of their inputs and outputs in a quest to be sustainable in a local grow-all-your-own-food experiment and found that they were not recycling their own excrements, but if they did so, they would be ok.
    PlannedCanada
    @PlannedCanada
    So I've thought it over, and added element content and residency time to resources in the database. Constraints can now be added to the problem that limit the total amount of elements in use.
    Bob Haugen
    @bhaugen
    Here's a decent discussion of some of the ecosystem issues:
    https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/carrying-capacity-and-eda-we-no-longer-have-the-luxury-of-time/2017/08/21
    On a more positive note, here's http://happyplanetindex.org/about
    Florian Kleedorfer
    @fkleedorfer
    Hi, I was going to post a question here, but it turned out to be a bit longer, so I made an issue: valueflows/valueflows#613 ...I Hope that's fine!
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn
    Hi @fkleedorfer of course that is fine! I saw it, but today is pretty booked, may not get to it.... if not, it will be tomorrow. And thanks for the PR too!
    pospi
    @pospi
    Hi @elf-pavlik I'm wondering if you can add me as an admin to the Github org if I'm not already. I'm trying to also add @mayel but can't figure out how to do it- I expect I have publish access but no rights to invite others?
    pospi
    @pospi
    sorry... NPM org! Not github org
    pospi
    @pospi
    hey @elf-pavlik I heard from @fosterlynn that you had changed my access but I'm not sure it's had any effect, as far as the docs tell I should be able to see a "members" section on https://www.npmjs.com/org/valueflows but I'm not seeing it. It does look like Mayel is in the developers team, but it seems that you are still a central point of failure on this one? I may actually need to be a "superadmin" for this to work- see https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/orgs
    Florian Kleedorfer
    @fkleedorfer

    Thanks for all your help so far!

    As I am trying to make a shacl program for valueflows, little questions keep popping up. Would you prefer I post individual issues in the repo, one issue for all of those, or just ask here?

    Florian Kleedorfer
    @fkleedorfer
    For example: an event with move action has either one or two resources attached, If it has only one, it a) must not have a quantity, or b) may have no quantity, or its quantity must be equal to the resource's onhandQuantity, or c) it must have a quantity that is equal to the resource's onhand quantity?
    Florian Kleedorfer
    @fkleedorfer
    Or another: vf:primaryAccountable seems to be the relationship affected by events with vf:transfer and vf:transfer-all-rights actions.
    Is there a relationship of the resource that is affected by vf:transfer-custody?
    prairie fox
    @GCEH_twitter

    Hi all, I have a question (below). I am new to this platform but not new to the types of things being discussed. I am a master of strategic foresight and innovation student (with no programming/ minimal quant background) at OCAD University in Toronto. I am embarking on major research project on the Futures of, well, basically what you are all doing and trying to achieve. I have specified it to my interests and own synthesis of “democratic indicative participatory planning”.

    I discovered your particular effort last night via reddit research that led me to Project Basis. I find the kind of work that you are doing here to be incredible. I wrote my thesis in undergrad in philosophy of economics as "price heuristics for climate change". I have been interested in these issues for a long time.

    It is funny to me that, despite being friends and in a Collective Intelligence reading group with @Connoropolous and @Bortseb, and talking about these issues - it didn't really click with me or connect with them to suggest it. I can't remember exactly, but it seems so obvious now. I think it raises a really good point about the serendipity of finding these kinds of efforts, even if a lot of people are concerned about them. It would be interesting to think about this information finding further.

    Anyways, my question is a follow up to the quote on the intro page: "let's help a lot of alternative economic software projects that are solving different pieces of the same puzzle be able to work together".

    What are these alternative economic software projects, is there a list somewhere, or could this group help me brainstorm a list to go through? I would like to bring together a lot of existing ideas in my futures project, and this seems like a good starting point.

    Please let me know if you have any further questions about me or my work. My website with my thesis is here, and while I don't yet have a completely up to date version of the major research project, I will have one very soon.

    Thank you for your help,

    Geoff

    https://gceh.ca/price-heuristics-thesis/

    prairie fox
    @GCEH_twitter
    I see now that there is a list on Lynn's webpage: http://mikorizal.org/links.html
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn

    Hi @GCEH_twitter , welcome. I suppose we aren't the best at "outreach", it tends to be person-to-person. But we're glad you found us. :) I'll take a look at your work.

    In terms of active projects or groups we know about that are working with VF, besides the Basis project, which you mentioned, here are some:

    @fkleedorfer is doing some mapping with their project Web of Needs, https://researchstudio-sat.github.io/webofneeds/. Not sure where that's going, but he's in this chat.

    There are older projects that were/are input to VF and are using the REA ontology but haven't upgraded to current VF, but might be interesting to you, like:

    Hopefully that gives you a good start.

    I think it raises a really good point about the serendipity of finding these kinds of efforts, even if a lot of people are concerned about them. It would be interesting to think about this information finding further.

    Yeah, that is a very good point, worth thinking about. Your thoughts welcome!

    @fkleedorfer somehow I missed your questions from a few days ago, not sure how, but sorry! Hmmm. Maybe github is best for now, although theoretically this should be fine. I'll move your above questions there.
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn

    I see now that there is a list on Lynn's webpage

    @GCEH_twitter hopefully that helps too, but we definitely need to finish and update that (you posted while I was writing the response).

    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn
    For anyone interested, see this issue valueflows/valueflows#629 - we're moving to gitlab, here https://lab.allmende.io/. You all are welcome there, and if you sign up using the same email as you use in github, your work in VF will follow you there. (We'll keep this gitter chat as it is, so if that is what you care about, no action is necessary!)
    prairie fox
    @GCEH_twitter
    Thank you @fosterlynn , I appreciate the response. I will take a look into these things.
    khimaros
    @khimaros
    Hi all! I met a few of you at DWeb Camp last year and elated to see that some of you are involved in this project! Does VF have any scheduled phone or video chat? Are folks from the extended community welcome? I'd love to join if possible!
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn
    Welcome @khimaros ! Sorry, VF doesn't have scheduled chats or calls. We're very happy to answer questions or just have conversation here; or if at all worth keeping a record, in an issue in github (moving soon to a hosted gitlab). https://github.com/valueflows/valueflows/issues There are a handful of projects actively implementing VF now, and there tends to be a lot more conversation around those, in those project locations. We're holding VF to some relatively stable state while these projects "shake it out" a bit more. But what is going on directly with VF will show up in issues and pull requests. Hope this helps!
    khimaros
    @khimaros
    I'm endeavoring to build an educational resource for systems thinking. I want to make it easier for people to answer questions like, "how much water and energy from insolation does it take to produce a cheeseburger?", "what resources/processes are involved in composting?", "do my social media habits produce more carbon emissions than my drive to the grocery store?" -- VF seems to have the right ontology for this and shares similarity to a schema I was working on some years ago -- even using coffee production as a motivating example! The VF ontology is far more complete and structured, so I'm diving in. If I wanted to build a web frontend for editing and presenting such systems with VF, what is the recommended approach? Is there business logic I could borrow for bounding sections of a large ecosystem (recipe?) and traversing these graphs to calculate deficits/surpluses? How mature are the graphql schemas, and does anyone have experience productionizing them with a database such as dgraph? On the ontology side, how does VF deal with things like time and changes of location? Thank you!
    pospi
    @pospi
    @fkleedorfer how is work with Web of Needs progressing? Any synergies you are seeing there, or easy protocol translations we could perform between VF intents and WoN data structures?
    Lynn Foster
    @fosterlynn
    Hello @khimaros I'm not sure how, but I missed your message until now, and I'm crashing for today, very sorry. Ambitious plan! VF does seem like the right ontology, and we'll be glad to help you dive in as much as we can. There are a couple backends in progress which are using the graphql spec, but neither has been proved yet full stack. And a couple more in progress. All at various stages of completion. I can give you more details and links tomorrow. And point you to some documentation on app logic. And answer more of your questions above. And maybe ask a few questions too. :)