The Last Starfighter

So here’s my idea – we have all this programming talent and all these coders and video game people and stuff, just an embarrassment of ninjas and jedis.  So why can’t we get them all working on a simulator/video game version of the economy using all the data from the last few hundred years so we can see every economic force play out against every other force.  The player of the game is the Fed chairman or the SecTreas or both.  He or she must contend with inflation, global trade, congress, politics, demographics etc. And from that process of different players racking up their best scores (points awarded for periods of growth and stability as well as problem solving), we find our next Fedhead or economic advisor to the White House or whatever.

We build billions of dollars in simulators and programs for the military, isn’t the state of our economy worth it also?  And can we make it fun so that people from all over the country and from all walks of life can try their hand?  You never know where genius may lie.

Remember that movie The Last Starfighter?   Where the trailer park kid who longs for adventure racks up the highest score ever on that game and it turns out that it was just a test to find the best potential pilots in the galaxy for a big space war.  They take the kid away from earth and make him a starfighter – all because he beats the arcade game/test.  The movie sucked but it was from 1984 and the premise was pretty clever.

Where’s our Last Starfighter?  Maybe he’s a retired professor or a grad student or Khloe Kardashian.  Put the game out there and let’s see who has the chops to grow this economy with as little distrubance or bubble-blowing as possible.