9/15/14
Today in class, we enacted a simulation of the economy. A small group of the class were entrepreneurs, and the rest were regular "household" people. The regular people started with natural, human and capital resources, while the entrepreneurs started with money. The goal of the entrepreneurs was to gain more money and the goal of the people was to get as many "econos" as they could (1 econo= 1 natural, 1 human, 1 capital resource) by trading their resources into a factory. The catch was that only entrepreneurs could go to the factory to trade, and the people had to make deals with the entrepreneurs to get them to trade in their resources.
Soon into this simulation, the class came across a problem. The regular people did not have any money because they did not start with any and almost all the entrepreneurs were not willing to give the people money, or buy econos off of them for money. So, when the entrepreneurs got a fraction of the econos for trading in the resources, they had no way to sell them because the people had no money, and the other entrepreneurs did not want to buy them.
The purpose behind this simulation was to teach us about why there are economic crises and "panics." When there is not a steady flow of money in the economy, it is basically impossible to buy or sell any products.
Although this game was very frustrating at the end when no one would give me any more money, I still enjoyed it because I won....just letting everyone know!!!
Congrats on winning, Rachel!! Even though I wasn't in class for this, your recap was very helpful with understanding, at a basic level, how economic crises occur and what happens when we are in the middle of one. Good luck in future games, because I am coming for you
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