The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory
$12.00
| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Pages |
262 |
| Format |
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| Published Date |
2017 |
The Blockchain Alternative offers sensible corrections to outdated and incorrect dogmas, such as the efficient markets hypothesis and rational expectations theory. You’ll also be introduced to universal basic income, the consequences of going cashless, why complexity economics needs to be understood and what kinds of tools and theories you’ll need to redefine the existing definition of capitalism.
Introduction:
The Blockchain Alternative explains how finance and economics work today, and how the convergence of various technologies related to the financial sector can help us find solutions to problems, such as excessive debt creation, banks getting too big to fail, and shadow banking. While the book does discuss technologies and methods that are primed for our future, a number of references are made to economic history and the works of great thinkers from a different era.
You’ll see how the blockchain can be used to deploy solutions that were devised in the past, but which can serve as the antidote to our current economic malaises. You’ll discover that what is required today is not an adaptation of the old theories, but a new methodology that is suited to this new era. Without undertaking such an endeavor, one will always be burdened with a definition of capitalism that is out of kilter with the evolution of our digital humanity.
What would this mean to monetary and fiscal policy, market structure and our current understanding of economics? More importantly would we need to change our current understanding of capitalism? And if we were to change our perceptions, what would the future version look like? This book answers these questions, and analyses some of the most pertinent issues of our generation.
What You’ll Learn
- Examine fractional banking, debt, and the financialization of assets
- Gain a firm understanding of the “too big to fail” theory, smart contracts, and Fintech
- Review economics and agent-based modelling
- Use the blockchain and complexity economics to rethink economics and capitalistic systems
The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory By Kariappa Bheemaiah PDF
4 reviews for The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory
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Briggs Foster (verified owner) –
‘Economists cling to past theories and attempt to rectify them to better understand the changing economy. But this approach has provided little insight to understanding the structural changes that emerge as an economy evolves.’
This is the premise of Bheemaiah’s excellent analysis of the failure of traditional economic models to deal with a technologically sophisticated, networked world, let alone one in which decentralised applications become commonplace.
When the Queen asked academics at the LSE why they had failed to see the 2008 financial crisis coming, she was articulating what most people thought. This failure exposed massive shortcomings in the way economists mathematically model the probability of different outcomes. Simply tweaking models that were relevant 40 years ago does nothing to help us understand capitalism as we know it today.
The author enumerates the benefits of blockchain technology, from simple microeconomic positives (based on Transaction Cost Theory) to macroeconomics, envisaging a world where blockchain tech could be applied at sovereign level, bringing transparency to financial networks that appear to the outsider to be systemically broken.
I found the section on complexity economics and agent based modelling especially interesting. As Bheemaiah points out, “a crucial part of complexity economics is the flow of information and how this information affects agents.”
The primary change that has happened in the last 50 years is the speed and quantity of information that economic actors have at their fingertips, and it is telling that we do not appear to have the tools available to deal with this. Ultimately, this book asks more questions than it answers, but it is a fascinating and prophetic read.
Naomi Curry (verified owner) –
The basic question that this book promises to deal with in the title is very interesting, namely: In how far does blockchain technology represent an alternative to established economic theories and the economic policy measures derived from them?
A good (!) Book on this topic would do the following:
1. Define and explain basic terms.
2. Explain blockchain technology and how it works.
3. Selected economic theories (e.g. Principal-Agent Theory, Contract-Threory, etc.) thus explain: Statements of the theory, its implications, its value for the explanation of economic reality, its shortcomings and its classical alternatives or further developments.
4. Explain how economic policy is made on the basis of economic theories, what one wants to achieve, what one actually achieves and what the difference between the goal and the outcome of economic policy is due to.
5. Explain how blockchain technology affects economic theory and why.
6. Explain how the change of economic theory through the blockchain leads to, or should, or will, change economic policy in the future.
Unfortunately, the book of Kariappa Bheemaiah is NOT a good book!
The book is a completely unstructured word mash into which really every current fashion word has been cut into: A bit of financial kriese, a bit of training kriese, a bit of “Know Your Customer”, and “Too Big to Fail”, FinTech and unconditional basic income must also not be missing and definitely blockchain at all yet so inappropriate opportunities. Everything messed up, all without a recognizable structure, order or context.
Which core statements does the author want to make? What is the current state of affairs? Where does the analysis begin or end, where does objective criticism begin, where does the assessment begin and where the author’s own opinion or his speculation? The reader of the book can not recognize it! Unfounded assertions, inadequate conceptual explanation, incomprehensible criticism, hasty valuations, unclear theory understanding, unclear hypotheses, incomprehensible conclusions, author’s own opinion, name-dropping and opinions of others pour into an endless and unstructured continuum.
I am surprised how this book has received positive references from a European Parliament Policy Advisor, an Associate Professor of ESCP European Business School and a Professor of Harvard University and a Fellow of Cambridge Judge Business School. Did these people even read this book? Or was it judged on the basis of the back text?
My conclusion: The book reads like the transcript of an extremely beerful speech about economics, theory, politics, the universe and everything in it, above and below, and even the blockchain things and everything else that has always been said. If the book was meant as a persiflage to contemporary blockchain hype books, one could at least nominate it for the alternative Nobel Prize. But unfortunately the author seems to be serious about it.
Moses Phillips (verified owner) –
This is worth the read for anyone interested in comparing current economic concepts of currency and the possibilities of distributed ledgers.
Brielle Paul (verified owner) –
I found the author to do an excellent job explaining what society has achieved as far as technological and institutional capacity is concerned and then tracing out from there where we can go. He avoided utopian speculation. Instead he offered technical understanding and evidence of progress. Essentially, the author showed the reader where our policy makers have an ability to control future outcomes using block chain technology.