Altruistic Economics

Altruistic Economics is an as yet, untested, branch of economics set out by Robin Upton in 2004 in a presentation to the autonomous European Social Forum at the London School of Economics. Its starting point is the assumption that it is useful to allow independent actors to express altruism for others (e.g. their friends). These expressions can also be seen as trust, but are in an uncommon format. Upton expresses trust in terms of exchange rates, in which users state their readiness to forego personal benefit in order to save their friends from loss. These 'exchange rates' can be non-linear, allowing expression users to declare a range of trust patterns in different currencies. The distinguishing feature is the concrete expression of what 'trust' means in material terms.

Concept
By allowing mathematical expression of altruism, Altuistic Economics (AE) generalises the neoclassical neoclassical economic model, which is founded on the selfish homo economicus. Like the neoclassical model, AE assumes people are maximisers, but it rejects the assumption that their welfare is independent of one another. It also abandons the assumption that everyone is identical. Individual human relationships are modelled, so that everyone can specify how they feel about anyone else. Sympathy for someone is defined as a willingness to forego benefit so that they may benefit instead. The altruistic model allows people to explicitly declare sympathy for their friends so that other users can be aware of their feelings and behave accordingly.

Evidence
The majority of the AE theory was developmented in 2005, but no working system has yet been produced, due to the complexity of implementing a Friend-to-friend computer infrastructure of personal servers to do the calculations.