2020 was certainly a roller coaster for a social scientist, full of surprises. Let me not once again bemoan the increasingly coordinated attack on all sources of vitality in Western civilisation, but look ahead and openly wonder about what 2021 will bring in terms of 7 specifi...

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Guess which countries in Europe have had the lowest average restrictions on individual behaviour from March to December according to researchers at the Blavatnik school of government in Oxford ? Guess which countries in the world have had the most or least stringent government...

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Filed under "Studies that confirm my priors". Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land Charlotte Bartels, Simon Jäger, and Natalie Obergruber #28230 Abstract: What are the long-term economic effects of a more equal distribution of wealth? We...

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[caption id="attachment_34478" align="aligncenter" width="509"] Quite a cool mural that popped up when I searched Google Images for 'neoliberalism'.[/caption] In his powerful critique of Neo-liberalism, Nicholas Gruen draws heavily on the work of Michael Polanyi. The following...

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[caption id="attachment_34474" align="aligncenter" width="750"] Wellbeing: As you can see from the picture, everyone's a winner.[/caption] I was asked to respond to this question by the Mandarin as part of their ‘select committee’ of worthies (note: the link is behind the 'Pre...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfrDNgDL1Dk Here's a presentation to the annual Communities in Control conference run by the amazing outfit Our Community established in the 1990s by Denis Moriarty who had previously been a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian bureaucracy. (If you...

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Those interested in my article on Polanyi might be interested in the chapter of Peter Drucker's memoirs on the Polanyis. An amazing lot whom he introduces thus: The Polanyis – father and children – were the most gifted family I have ever known or heard of. They were also the m...

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[caption id="attachment_34459" align="alignright" width="220"] Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, one of central Europe's brightest and best, fresh from a stint as Einstein's research assistant arrives in Manchester in 1933.[/caption] I have now finished the second draft of an essa...

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Stock markets give us a glimpse what people with money have deduced about world events before they happen. Investors can make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes, but they are honest mistakes: you don’t buy a stock at a 100 if you actually honestly believe that same stock wi...

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The animosity between the Chinese and Australian authorities is heating up, so we Westerners need to understand some of Chinese culture and politics. I do not have all the answers, but some 10 years of working and teaching on China have taught me about three traits that I hope...

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How will Western historians in 2050 remember 2020? In scenario 1, "The Great Panic, a lost generation", I sketch my best guess. Scenario 2, "A job well done" is the one I imagine many current Western governments hope is told. Scenario 3, "The dark path of the Great Panic", is...

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Another post from John Burnheim who wrote this following up on having received some questions from some Spaniards. (Reminding me of the title of John Lennon's book, or perhaps it was just a joke of his somewhere: A Spaniard in the works) NG Demarchy is not a comprehensive plan...

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Cross-posted from The Mandarin (and written about ten days ago, so it fails to mention Adelaide's latest snafu). Lockdowns, border closures, masks, apps and eradication. Where do you stand? One can’t sensibly address any of these issues without knowing more about context. But...

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Last week I gave a masterclass lecture at University College London on the costs and benefits of lockdowns and other covid-policies in the UK. A recording is here (Passcode: f@$?y9J9 ), and the powerpoint slides are here . A key piece of evidence was the sudden 0.7 drop in lif...

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[caption id="attachment_34406" align="alignright" width="320"] Kind of a fun graphic[/caption] Well, we look like getting a vaccine! Of course managing the policy response to the virus could know of this only as a possibility. But, looking like it is coming to pass, that possi...

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[caption id="attachment_34398" align="aligncenter" width="736"] There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy[/caption] It’s a supreme finding of Hume’s clever reasoning that ought cannot be derived from is. The claim is so irrefutab...

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How are we going to escape the authoritarian nightmare and regain our liberties and zest for life? This long read is written for organisers of new Covistance initiatives, explaining the logic of what others have done and what could further be done. So I am speaking to those of...

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https://youtu.be/qHos8FlzMOE Here's a great lecture by Martin Wolf who's writing a book on capitalism and democracy. It's well worth watching I think. And, as is my custom, and despite Paul's thinking that the result is so buggy it may not be worth it, below the fold I append...

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Ramesh Thakur is one of many commentators inside the Covistance who think government public health advisers have committed crimes against humanity . His anger was raised by reports of desperate parents in India selling their children into virtual slavery, including sexual expl...

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Dr. Joffe just posted a new article on the many negative effects of lockdowns in Canada and in the world as a whole. He really has put in a fantastic effort to source the evidence on the negative effects of the covid-related policies, digging up and critically evaluating nearl...

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Sweden is a rich, spacious country famous for IKEA, ABBA, dark cold winters, and its unique covid-policies. We escaped London for a few days to see for ourselves what the deal was with this Scandinavian country of 10 million. It is as rich and well-run as the statistics say it...

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[caption id="attachment_34359" align="alignright" width="460"] Yuan Yuan (YY) Liu. Doing her bit for a better world[/caption] This June I was approached by Yuan Yuan Liu who wanted to discuss funding of scholarships for disadvantaged people with me "as you are the best economi...

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Published in and edited form in The Conversation . Martin Wolf has a crisp face-to-camera opinion piece in which he points out that populism in government hasn’t lined up neatly against relative success in keeping populations safe from COVID. Thus in the Anglosphere, Donald’s...

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Those who already in March foretold the folly of lockdowns and social distancing did not dream we'd still be in the same place after 7 months. Only slowly has it dawned that the panic would become an enduring business model . For a long time, we believed sanity would soon prev...

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[caption id="attachment_34335" align="alignright" width="378"] Dan Andrews said that his 'Road Map' for easing the lockdown is not a doctoral thesis – a proposition that's hard to argue with. Further propositions will be offered at subsequent press conferences.[/caption] Life...

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A group of senior medical scientists have gotten together to pen an open petition to governments and society, calling for a herd immunity approach to the coronavirus. Signatories already include over 3000 "Medical & Public Health Scientists", 4000 "Medical Practitioners", and...

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I have been reading The Great Persuasion Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression by Angus Burgin (ostensibly in order to write an article on Michael Polanyi) and was taken with this Chapter on Milton Friedman . I hadn’t really crystalised for myself until the chapter poi...

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[caption id="attachment_34314" align="alignleft" width="624"] How do you do a graphic for a post-COVID world? Well I guess you have an office with everyone running around with Groucho glasses facemasks on.[/caption] The Mandarin asked me to pontificate about the budget – along...

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Have a look at the graph below which summarises (excess) deaths per week in 24 European regions , roughly the EU, over the last few years. Note how the vertical axis only starts at 40,000 and that hence the fluctuations relative to baseline are smaller than they seem here. The...

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https://youtu.be/w5WsRmgqe_M Above is a recording of me presenting a session on How the competition delusion is ruining everything. It's the presentation of this essay "Trust and the Competition Delusion". Because it's easily done these days, I’ve recorded the video on my phon...

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I've mentioned Edward Broughton numerous times on this blog , a man of great humanity who responded to the plight of the Jewish internees who were at his command. A quick snippet from one of the grateful internees. So far I've read it on each occasion at the three dinners I’ve...

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One can tell many stories of how current times resemble some earlier historical period. The conflict between nationalism and internationalism, as personified by the controversies surrounding Brexit and Trump, has been seen as somewhat of a re-run of the conflict between fascis...

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Till 20 year ago, IQ scores in the West increased about 3 points per decade ever since the 1920s, a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect”. That rise in IQ test scores, which have an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, was attributed to improved schooling, improved...

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[Bottom line: the conflicting forces now being created in the UK and Australia are truly frightening.] The UK government has just announced a nationwide return of one of the most destructive elements of lock downs: mandatory social isolation. Gatherings of more than 6 people a...

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[caption id="attachment_34260" align="alignright" width="352"] Source: Sortition in the History of Democracy , Slide 3[/caption] A lottery is a defensible way of making a decision when, and to the extent that, it is important that bad reasons be kept out of the decision. Peter...

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[message: the "stay at home" firms will see their bored and lonely good young staff jump ship to the hip, drunk, snorting, and cavorting hard-work hard-play offices everyone loves to complain about.] The estimate from Transport for London is that 72% of workers are still not b...

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[caption id="attachment_34242" align="aligncenter" width="2304"] I really love this design by Casey Finley, who was kind enough to allow me to publish it here. He has a very distinctive style which is really coming into its own as he works on it. For instance, see here and her...

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[micro-trigger alert: dark humour ahead] The top prize for economic winners in the covid hysteria goes to the pharmaceutical companies who were quickest to jump on the covid-vaccine business. They are already selling billions of unproven vaccines that will now clearly arrive t...

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[below the exact text (with different font/highlight) as Gigi Foster's submission to the Victorian parliamentary library in mid-August here . To see her health-related notes, including on topics like non-linearities and Sweden, see here , and to see all documents of that inqui...

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In the Age of COVID chess has been reinvented. In March (I think it was) the Candidates Tournament was dramatically ended a few rounds in and everyone wondered "what next". Enter Magnus Carlsen entrepreneur. With his star power, he has been getting himself a piece of the actio...

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For months now, demographers and other social scientists have been predicting a covid baby bust because marriages were postponed , pubs were closed, anxiety levels were up, measured fertility intentions were down, sexual activity went down (in some reports), and economic uncer...

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Below is a piece I published on the NESTA website in early 2016 which they took down in a web revamp. It's still available on archive.org , but I thought I'd also publish it here for the record. [caption id="attachment_34195" align="alignright" width="404"] Quick Troppo Quiz:...

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[caption id="attachment_34192" align="alignright" width="202"] A stupid diagram which I have made small for obvious reasons.[/caption] The Mandarin asked me to provide a summary answer to this question: What is the appropriate level of the use of consultants in the public serv...

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I've been dipping into Herbert Simon's autobiography, Models of my life . He's from an interesting time in the intellectual history of economics and the social sciences. The major contributions of his professional life began in the 1950s and, though he was part of the mainstre...

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[spoiler alert!] As a fan of the “Hunger Games”, a dystopian trilogy where teenagers are thrown into gladiatorial games to fight till the last survivor in a world that is a blend of ancient Rome and modern America, I eagerly awaited its prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Sna...

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Suppose you agree with me that containment and elimination strategies pursued regarding Covid-19 do far more harm than good. Suppose you also believe that having an open economy and a vibrant close-contact social life is vital for the long-run health of the country. You want t...

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https://youtu.be/w5WsRmgqe_M Early this year I published an essay in the Griffith Review critiquing what I called the competition delusion. I was passing by more common critiques of competition, which for instance argue that competition isn't necessarily a great idea in numero...

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Scrap attempts to reforming politics as a whole. From a practical point of view attempts to do so by legal constitutional change have no possibility of succeeding from a theoretical point of view, it is folly to assume that if we agree broadly about principle and are motivated...

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Slightly updated from its being published at the Mandarin . The catastrophe of Victoria's resurgence of COVID is a lesson in non-linearity. This reminds me of Paul Romer's recent comments to the effect that, since economists have foisted cost/benefit analysis on others as a on...

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[caption id="attachment_34150" align="alignright" width="402"] There were some pretty stupid illustrations of the post COVID economic recovery. The people in this picture are also doing something pretty stupid. But they're working for their living. They are not consultants, an...

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A couple of weeks ago, Shane Wright e-mailed me telling me that he was doing a piece for next weekend (the 18th) about the recession we're in, and how to get out of it. He was "talking to people who were at the economic policy coal face in the last recession. That means your n...

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An earlier version of this piece was published last week on the Mandarin . Because the idea I have called “the Evaluator General ” is several ideas knitted together to try to resolve a number of dilemmas, it comes with numerous implications that are often missed or misundersto...

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The UK Office of National Statistics data on the wellbeing of the British population shows a unprecedented drop of about 10% in average wellbeing in the UK since March 2020. Anxiety levels almost doubled, slowly returning to normal, but wellbeing remains low as people are prev...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3ZIC393egM Here's the transcript of my talk to Nudgestock which was held a few weeks ago. I was hoping to do it in London where it's normally held, but in the world of COVID it migrated online and acquired for itself an enormous audience. I was...

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Some of you may have noticed a Twitter account called ' Sarhanis '. In any event, Antonios Sarhanis is its proprietor and we got to talking on Twitter and discovered that we shared various maladies. He's interested in philosophy but pretty unimpressed with the way it's handled...

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[caption id="attachment_34097" align="aligncenter" width="900"] King Lear and Cordelia's Rejection[/caption] Welcome to Antonios Sarhani' s first post. I've got a brief post welcoming him aboard immediately above this post. Nicholas Gruen The ceremony and the circumlocutions o...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=fEHYX3J8Jm4 Note, this essay was published in three parts in the Mandarin and is published in consolidated form (complete with its footnotes) here. It is impossible to remember, until one gets in the country … that they care about th...

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Here is the second fragment on early neoliberalism. The previous post being on Hayek, this one is on Michael Polanyi. Both built their approach to the world upon their abhorrence of the Soviet Union – a position that was unfashionable among intellectuals at the time. But where...

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[caption id="attachment_34082" align="aligncenter" width="480"] The Mandarin headed this part of the essay up with a picture of a woodpecker, which seems fair enough. But such 'nuanced' imagery, as we say these days is always off-brand here at Club Pony. Where too much directn...

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Cross-posted from The Mandarin In this second instalment of his three-part series, economist and forward thinker Nicholas Gruen explains more of why it is so important to understand the 'how' of getting things done. From the commanding heights to everyday routines The big publ...

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Dear Troppodillians, please welcome Luke Slawomirski to Troppo. I first met Luke at the OECD where I gave a paper on public-private digital partnerships with a particular focus on health policy. Luke was an Australian health economist working there and he's recently returned t...

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Cross posted from The Mandarin Premium . Government leaders understanding what they need to do when faced with impending issues is one thing. But here, in the first of a three-part series, Nicholas Gruen gets into the nitty-gritty of coming to terms with the 'how' of what need...

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My essay on the Ghost of Descartes was written by cannibalising a longer, not quite finished essay entitled "Cartesian vices, Copernican moments". In writing something else, I find myself wanting to refer to another part of it, so I'm hastily topping and tailing the relevant s...

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There have long been scientists who were celebrities in their own time. Galileo, Keppler, Goodall, Linneus, Cousteau, Darwin, Smith, Leeuwenhoek, Da Vinci, Ibn Khaldhun, Curie, and many others in the last 800 years were followed and admired. They in many ways performed their s...

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Every now and again I'm asked to contribute to The Mandarin as part of their Brains Trust . Here's my latest contribution in seeking to answer this question: Where is the boundary between their designated public duty and the apparent expectation by some ministers that it’s ok...

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[caption id="attachment_34023" align="alignright" width="452"] Heydon Dyson Dyson Heydon is hard at work.[/caption] A quick follow up on my " May the farce be with you " article on how the oligarchy got George Pell off on charges of sexual molestation. One that Graham Young ra...

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Here is a new paper from Imperial College , this time by a team with David Miles, Mike Stedman, and A drian Heald, looking into the implicit cost per QALY that the UK spent via lock downs and other repression policies. They use a somewhat different methodology from mine , esti...

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There are 5 aspects of the covid-19 pandemic I really did not see coming, all pointing to a phenomenon that European sociologists of a century ago spent their whole lives describing, coming up with theories about crowds and their behaviour - theories now largely forgotten. Sch...

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[caption id="attachment_33982" align="aligncenter" width="593"] I don't know about this hierarchy, but I do like the idea that the most important foundation is self-honesty.[/caption] Below is an essay I wrote in late 2018 but it wasn't published on the Mandarin till a year ag...

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If you, like me, believe our collective hysteria is needlessly causing the world tens of millions of deaths and enormous unhappiness , you surely need a bit of humour to keep going. So let’s view the whole crisis via a different lens and share the brilliance of UK government c...

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Find below the video of a seminar for the Australian Institute for Progress done a few weeks ago detailing the basic cost-benefit view of the current pandemic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TS2DE-D1TA The slides of this presentation are here: Presentation CBA Covid May 2020...

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Herewith a weekend half-hour read. Comments and corrections appreciated. A culture survives principally, I think, by the power of its institutions to bind and loose men in the conduct of their affairs with reasons that sink so deep into the self that they become commonly and i...

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The management of the University of Queensland, and in particular Peter Hoj and Peter Varghese, stand condemned today by the international media, by both Labor and Liberal politicians, by both left-wing and right-wing Australians, by its own students, and by the powerful pro-...

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https://youtu.be/fI5kCr7eIJQ I recently sent a couple of emails explaining the Evaluator General and also did an extended interview explaining the ideas in the context of Matt Jones' Public Policy class at Melbourne Uni. The first email below is the one I sent him proposing th...

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Let’s talk about some of the covid policy options facing Australia in the coming months and years. It seems to me we can either grasp the nettle and accept we will get a wave of highly visible covid-19 deaths before life returns to normal, or we can try and defend ourselves ag...

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Note: This post was original published on 6 July 2015; I've updated it several times because both parties keep revisiting a decentralisation agenda. [getty src="587183652" width="509" height="339"] Once again we're hearing the argument that Australia would be a much better pla...

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The economic and social damage of lock downs in Australia is starting to get noticed so much that even academic economists are paying attention. After months of resisting actual data , some Australian economists who previously refused to even contemplate the idea that an econo...

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[in progress: will add more references, links and latest numbers when I get the time] In this note, I want to deal with three related issues: the main lessons on the corona virus from the reported deaths across countries with different policies; the feasibility of different “e...

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In a week from now, UQ student leader Drew Pavlou will face an internal hearing at the University of Queensland to decide whether or not he will be expelled for having organised rallies against various pro-China organisations on campus and generally being a pain in the *rse of...

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As part of the Government 2.0 Taskforce in 2009 I coined the term 'info-philanthropy' though someone may have coined it before me and the Taskforce proposed that it qualify as a head of philanthropy. I don't think any changes have been made, but there's reasonable scope to inc...

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Models, windows, reductionism and pluralism We’re familiar with the idea that thought creates ‘models’ of reality. So it’s easy to slip into thinking that our task is then to just make our models better and better, i.e. more accurate representations of reality. This leaves out...

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There is one hell of a recession coming for Australia. Economic activity has already reduced by 20% and actual unemployment will probably peak near 20% too , and about a million businesses have already applied for some sort of assistance. The population increase of the last 20...

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Here at Clubtroppo, we have been saying for well over a month now that a quick look at the economic damage and the health damage of the responses to the corona virus tells you they dwarf the possible benefits of suppressing the virus, anywhere in the West. This has lead to the...

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Note: Article expanded on 24 April and again on 27 April. The middle now has more meat. So you can read it again! As Paul Frijters has recently said on this site, many countries will soon ease their restrictions on social isolation. As Paul has been pointing out , we pay a hig...

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Did you know that Australia has over 13,000 IVF babies born per year, the UK over 20,000 , the West as a whole (Europe+US+offshoots) over 200,000 and the world as a whole 500,000 ? And did you know that due to the corona panic these services have been halted pretty much everyw...

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My first prediction is an easy one: many countries are going to ease their restrictions on social isolation in the coming weeks, including many countries with an ongoing corona problem. They simply have to if they want to have any economy left. You can see this happening to di...

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Well, certainly wearing a mask walking down the streets of Melbourne makes no sense at all Brendan Murphy, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, March 9 . The philosopher Mary Midgley styles her own writing as that of a critic. She means something urgent by this – not something A...

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We're constantly in team meetings here in the underground bunker at Club Troppo working out how to tweak the linkbait. An edict has already been passed down the line from the AI that runs the place that no posts will be published on anything but Coronavirus for the next six mo...

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How much unhappiness is created by the unemployment of millions of people in Western countries (mainly N-Am +Europe) caused by the corona panic? How much unhappiness has been created due to the vast expansion of loneliness and physical inactivity? And in terms of the tradeoff...

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Well, well, well. The legal system has bungled its way to releasing a guilty man. Even if George Pell were not guilty of any acts of child molesting (as it was called during most of the time he was doing it) he'd belong in jail for his criminal disregard and wilful hostility t...

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From Twitter . Till now I’ve organisd a TROPPO GROUP CRIKEY SUBSCRIPTION for around 50 I advertised I was doing renewals on Twitter and Troppo a month ago and got about 1 or 2 takers Now someone else wants a renewal If I can get some serious buy-in I’ll rinse and repeat If not...

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This post is barely worked up from an email I wrote in response to a student in development studies. She'd been working on environmental this and that and the Sustainable Development Goals (about which I'd class myself a card-carrying member of the economists club as being hig...

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[caption id="attachment_33714" align="alignnone" width="1800"] Whoever is doing PR for this virus has certainly come up with a natty logo.[/caption] An argument someone put to me today which makes a lot of sense. In the GFC markets collapsed not just because there was too much...

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[caption id="attachment_36337" align="alignleft" width="939"] Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: the Toyota case [/caption] I recently reposted my old column on blogging the 2008 crisis and there's been some great blogging of this crisis. What...

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[caption id="attachment_36339" align="alignright" width="337"] Is this a bunch of black patches on a white background? It is. Of course it is. (Remember you're at Troppo now. No mucking around.) It also depicts something which you can't unsee once you've seen it. Such is the p...

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[caption id="attachment_33674" align="aligncenter" width="3840"] Not sure Winston ever said that, but it sounds like the kind of thing he might have said. Quote investigator doesn't tell me sadly. Grateful for any others' researches in comments below.[/caption] The subject of...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPHlT6LBXeo Since we're blogging the next crisis, I thought now was a good time to reheat the blogging of the last one. intriguing to think of all the changes, and in many ways how much steam has gone out of blogging, and yet how resilient it ha...

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The mass hysteria of the corona crisis is raging, with the resulting self-isolation of whole economies and populations. The loss seems greater with every new forecast on the economic collapse than I initially though t, and the benefit of imprisoning and terrorizing the populat...

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People shuffling in the street, afraid to look others in the eye, get close, and be accused. Fear as a silent ghost hovering above the city, watching us, like drones. The panic in the eye of the mother as her little toddler cycles by an older woman on the street, too close. Th...

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It’s an intimidating picture. But the weaker the freeze, the more people die in overburdened hospitals — and the longer it ultimately takes for the economy to restart. Donald G. McNeil Jr in the NYT Yes folks, I normally don't go in for all that MALARKY WITH CAPITAL LETTERS IN...

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Spare a tear for millions of poor people around the world. They will no longer have good jobs, good health, or long life. Weep for the poor, the sick, and the old in our own societies. Their hopes, dignity, and pensions are gone. Light a candle for the workers in hotels, bars,...

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I ran into Ken Henry at a function – I think it was the terrific PM's Science Prizes in late 2008 but someone may be able to look things up and falsify this claim. In any event, I squatted at his table and had a quick chat to him about the recently announced or soon to be anno...

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Consider the shown picture where you are the decision maker who can pull the lever of the train tracks to avoid the coming train from going straight. If you do not divert the train, one person, John, will get run over. He is elderly and suffering from many diseases. You know h...

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This post is a direct response and rebuttal to the recent ‘Has the coronavirus panic cost us at least 10 million lives already? ’ by Paul Fritjers. Paul’s post takes the current covid-19 crisis, and uses some haphazard multiplication to create an alarming narrative, muddying t...

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This is now the whole article. Comments have been closed on the previous post . Part One To command nature, we must obey it Francis Bacon, 1624 The commitments that bind us to the social body are obligatory only because they are mutual; and their nature is such that, in fulfil...

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I congratulate you on the great success of your performance … Oscar Wilde's improptu speech to the audience at the opening of Lady Windemere's Fan [1. probably embellished apocryphally .] The current emptying of audiences offers a teachable moment about the construction of mar...

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Hats off to Joseph Walker who's podcasting up a storm at The Jolly Swagman (Yes, the title gave me the wrong idea too.) Anyway, I often find long-form podcasts rather tedious (except where I'm being interviewed in which case I find them endlessly fascinating, but others probab...

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The number of people worldwide who have died from the coronavirus stands at 8,000 at the moment, equivalent to the death toll of two days of the world's traffic accidents. The fear is of course that millions more will follow. The panic over what the virus might do has now lead...

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Here's a potentially unpopular proposition: The bulk of government economic action over the next few months should be directed to keeping businesses alive. Specifically, we need to keep afloat the many businesses with coronavirus-related short-term cash-flow problems. The corr...

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I believe that our political leaders are still underestimating the challenge posed by coronavirus. Radical action is needed to mitigate potential catastrophe. We must accept that the costs of coronavirus will be massive – a chunk of the economy will shut down. And that’s ok –...

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Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks The Extraordinary (Opening Night) The Extraordinary is based on the real-life figure of Stéphane Benhamou who runs an informal shelter in Paris for autistic youth who have fallen through the cracks of a system unable to care for th...

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Dr Homer Rieth, the subject of a marvellous profile by Earshot on Radio National has died. It's an amazing story of a true philosopher, at least as suggested by the etymology of the word as a lover of wisdom. He operated on the outskirts of the institutions of intellectual res...

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Initially published as Part One. Now with the final two sections added. Minds are not for thinking, traditionally conceived, but for doing, for getting things done in the world in real time Wilson and Foglia, " Embodied Cognition ", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Part On...

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https://vimeo.com/382961887 A few weeks ago I participated in a really good panel chaired by Mark Pesce for John Allsopp's renowned Web Directions conference. The subject of the panel was bitcoin and digital money. All the panellists had something useful to say for themselves....

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OK, well that heading and graphic were linkbait. I'm a firm believer in my own and everyone else's ignorance. But here's some correspondence from someone for whom I have great respect that I received this morning you may wish to ponder and/or respond to. Using various resource...

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What might have been, had we had a crack. Herewith a piece commissioned by Sam Roggeveen and appearing previously at the Lowy Institute's blog , now for the delectation of the cognoscenti here at Troppo. https://twitter.com/donattroppo/status/1229359258468147205?s=20 Clayton C...

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They got him! It cost millions of dollars in legal fees, and involved multiple trials, settlements, and dismissal of the worst charges, but they convicted Harvey Weinstein. A bit like a buck who is taken down by a pack of wolves might receive the killing bite from a different...

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[caption id="attachment_35624" align="aligncenter" width="500"] If you put the golden age of female philosophy into Google Images you get this. It has accordingly been selected as the picture for this post by the Troppo Robot Barry.[/caption] I do think that in normal times a...

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I was sending this column to an ABC journo regarding the auto industry. It makes for sad reading today. From January 12, 2012 Herewith – somewhat late owing to my being out of the country – is my second column for the Age and the SMH in Ross Gittins’ place while he goes on hol...

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Well as economists and physicists have been known to say, something that cannot go on forever eventually ceases to go on. I learned last night that Erwin Fabian who was a good friend of my father in the camps from 1940 to 1944 (I think) when they were released into the 8th Emp...

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I wrote a piece on Australia's Honours system for Australia Day last year and decided this year to make it an annual event. So here's this year's column, which in the 'original' had a couple of hundred words edited out of it to meet the Conversation's arbitrary limit of 900 wo...

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The Griffith Review has just published a substantial essay of mine that I've been working on for some time. I reproduce the introductory section below after which you'll have to hightail it to their website to finish. But it would be good to see you back here for comments whic...

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1225553117929988097?s=20 If you know anything about the latest State of the Union Address, you know that after Donald Trump had handed Nancy Pelosi his speech as if she were his secretary when she held out her hand to him to shake han...

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The Wage Penalty of Regional Accents Jeffrey Grogger, Andreas Steinmayr, and Joachim Winter #26719 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyyT2jmVPAk Abstract: Previous work has documented that speaking one’s native language with an accent distinct from the mainstream is associated w...

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I have little economic insight to add to the various projections made by other economists in Britain about the Brexit scenario that follow under various outcomes of the negotiations with the EU. Like all of them, I think severing trade ties will not work out well in the short...

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Effects of the Minimum Wage on Child Health George Wehby, Robert Kaestner, Wei Lyu, and Dhaval M. Dave #26691 Abstract: Effects of the minimum wage on labor market outcomes have been extensively debated and analyzed. Less studied, however, are other consequences of the minimum...

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[off the cuff research idea memo] There is an uncanny analogy between China in the 19th century and the US this very moment: in both cases a large part of the general population could not be persuaded away from drugs by morality or prison. Opium in China then, opioids in the U...

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These are some quick notes on listening to a Libravox recording of Chapter Three of Keynes' Economic Consequences of the Peace the text of which can be found here . I was stunned at how good it was. It was like listening to a phone message from another planet. The overarching...

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