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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

As a side note, is there a compelling reason why interest rates aren't set algorithmically? I assume human intuition isn't really a factor in setting them. This would eliminate concerns about political motivation.

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Economic models are complex and far from perfect, and we're still waiting for Hari Seldon's psychohistory models to be created to tie together macroeconomics and macropsychology.

Are you saying that human intuition does play a role? I assumed it was all pretty mathematic and deterministic already.

But who sets the algorithm? Whichever department of branch of govt was in charge of that would become have the enormous power, and political motivation would then fall to that.

Equally the same for data that goes into the algorithm - if you can control that you control interest rates.

Agreed, but we're already living that reality. Moving to an algorithmic approach provides a layer of transparency that makes manipulation easier to detect.

There's some slippery feedback loops involved, even if the models were very good, the reflexive nature of doing something like this would be very hard to get around

The design of the algorithm, and the control over what data is fed into it, would be subject to political motivations.

> is there a compelling reason why interest rates aren't set algorithmically?

Can’t believe you are saying that!! Then anyone can manipulate it like they manipulate stocks by writing hit pieces one day and gushing articles a few days after,

Would that make it easier or more difficult to guide, I wonder?

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