The first of what may be quite a few articles I reproduce here which I wrote for The Mandarin from around 2016 to 2020 or thereabouts ( The Mandarin has put the articles I wrote for them behind its paywall so when people need them online, I reproduce them here). Picture: Getty...
Continue reading →
Many of us still venerate books. The evidence says they are not very good at what is supposed to be their primary job: putting new ideas in our heads. We are slowing developing new ways to achieve this old aim. Many of us own thousands of these. They cost too much, too many ha...
Continue reading →
The twin threats of "hidden persuasion" and artificial intelligence have now convinced most of us that Google and its ilk are almost uniquely powerful. These threats are overrated. The digital giants can do less than we fear – and we risk regulating them where we should not. 1...
Continue reading →
I. Introduction Some prefer iPhones. Others prefer Android. These are the two standards left standing for what only old guys call smartphones. 'Standards wars' like this have arisen throughout history. No doubt readers can provide examples back to the ancient world, but the sw...
Continue reading →
The essential governance problem in March 2020 in Western countries was the overwhelming demand of the vast majority of the population to do something dramatic in response to their fear. There was a clamour to be ‘led to safety’ by populations scared to death by images in the...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - international, Society, IT and Internet, Terror, Science, Health, Metablogging, Information, Innovation, Democracy, Coronavirus crisis
News Corp is telling us what Google should really pay for linking to its sites. It's telling us in code – HTML code. And the answer is ... $0.00. What is an Internet link worth to the linker? For most of the Internet's life, this question has been pointless. On the Internet, l...
Continue reading →
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...
Continue reading →
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...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, IT and Internet, Science, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Health, Law, Information, Parenting, Death and taxes, Democracy, Coronavirus crisis
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...
Continue reading →
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...
Continue reading →
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...
Continue reading →
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...
Continue reading →
https://youtu.be/IX0dt2X5d64 Here's a presentation I gave to a recent Government Economists' Conference in Canberra. Like some other reflections of my book launching years (only some of which have been preserved for posterity),[1. I know you'll be looking for book launches at...
Continue reading →
Cross-posted from John Menadue's Pearls and Irritations . The ABC has been an extraordinarily resilient organisation. It has withstood management and Board upheavals, survived remorseless budget cuts and harassment. But the current attacks on staff and on its role are as overt...
Continue reading →
Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), m...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, History, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, Economics and public policy, Science, Political theory, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Inequality, Social Policy, Democracy
In the engine room of nation states, ie the tax departments, the coming battle with platform providers is taking shape. Uber, airbnb, facebook, linkedin, ebay, jobseek, and a myriad of specialised platform providers facilitate micro-trades that are largely untaxed by the autho...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, regulation, Political theory, Law, Information, Intellectual Monopoly Privileges, Innovation, Social, Intellectual Property, Public and Private Goods, Death and taxes, Employment
A post by John Burnheim. About ten months ago, John Burnheim wrote to me in terms I've reproduced on this blog previously. John was one of the early movers in academia exploring the limitations of electoral democracy with his book Is Democracy Possible published in 1985 and th...
Continue reading →
[expanded from the post on JohnMenadue] When Bitcoin went public in 2009 it introduced to the world of finance and economics the technology of blockchain. Even the many who thought Bitcoin would never make it as a major currency were intrigued by the BlockChain technology and...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, History, IT and Internet, Science, Climate Change, Political theory, Business, Information, bubble, Innovation, Social Policy
Sometimes, it feels like 1910 all over again. Then, a confident Germany was the up-and-coming industrial power house, fearing an even more up-and-coming Russia, with the UK and France desperately holding on to their colonial empires. Now, a confident China is the up-and-coming...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Philosophy, Environment, History, Miscellaneous, Humour, Society, Religion, Sport-general, Theatre, Music, Economics and public policy, Science, regulation, Gender, Journalism, Media, Geeky Musings, Climate Change, Political theory, Business, Travel, Immigration and refugees, Information, Intellectual Monopoly Privileges, Innovation, Social, Race and indigenous, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Public and Private Goods, Death and taxes, Inequality, Social Policy, Democracy, Bullshit, Indigenous, Employment
The #MeToo flood of stories of women who feel abused by men – ranging from lurid stares to straightforward rape – seems like a disaster to me for the Democrats. Not because of the stories themselves, but because of how the progressive media and commentators have reacted to it....
Continue reading →
Posted in Life, Philosophy, Miscellaneous, Humour, Religion, IT and Internet, Gender, Media, Libertarian Musings, Health, Law, Information, bubble, Social, Cultural Critique, Bullshit
Fredrick Hayek was onto something fundamental in stressing the centrality of information flow to economic functioning. But because his consuming passion was on the (undoubted) evils of Soviet-style central planning, 'the market' always figured as the deus ex machina, a kind of...
Continue reading →
Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...
Continue reading →
Posted in Uncategorized, Uncategorised, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Print media, Environment, History, Miscellaneous, Humour, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, Films and TV, Sport-general, Theatre, Music, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Food, Terror, Science, Art and Architecture, regulation, Gender, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Health, Climate Change, Political theory, Metablogging, Law, Dance, Space, Review, Startup, Products, Travel, Immigration and refugees, Information, bubble, WOW! - Amazing, Social, Parenting, Race and indigenous, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Medical, Public and Private Goods, Death and taxes, Inequality, Personal, Social Policy, Democracy, Bullshit, Indigenous, Employment
Well I've been going on and on about it , but here's an academic paper contrasting the free rider problem and opportunity. Knowledge Properties and Economic Policy: A New Look By Antonelli, Cristiano (University of Turin) This paper explores the full range of effects of knowle...
Continue reading →
One of the central contemporary critiques of the industrial revolution was its undermining of crafts and craftsmanship. Today this is happening within the world of ideas. And at least right now, it's looking like this is not a very happy development. This was brought home to m...
Continue reading →
A quick placeholder for something more substantial hopefully soon. Have a look at this ridiculous letter in response to a request to see a copy of the independent scoping study into future ownership options for the ASIC Registry. Judging by other experiences I'm aware of - at...
Continue reading →
In part 1, I looked at whether it made sense to have random individuals inserted into parliament, or to let policies be decided by juries full of randomly chosen individuals. Both were argued to be unworkable and likely to lead to more corruption, rather than less: policies th...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, Life, Philosophy, Print media, History, Miscellaneous, Education, Society, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, regulation, Journalism, Libertarian Musings, Political theory, Law, Web and Government 2.0, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Social Policy, Democracy
Family Descent as a Signal of Managerial Quality: Evidence from Mutual Funds by Oleg Chuprinin, Denis Sosyura - #22517 (LS) We study the relation between mutual fund managers' family backgrounds and their professional performance. Using hand-collected data from individual Cens...
Continue reading →
Below is an essay by me and Chris Vanstone (Chief Innovation Officer of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) published in two parts by The Mandarin. Devoutly confessing that you do not know is better than prematurely claiming that you do Augustine “Mark well tha...
Continue reading →
I'm wondering why the facts and ideas generated in the abstract below aren't higher up the order of proceedings in such things as teaching the economics of industrial organisation, the economics of information. What Hayekian has focused on this? Pathetic that I've not seen thi...
Continue reading →
Part Two of my essay on the way of looking at the world I've worked out over the last few years and published on Evonomics can be found here . So many years, so few words :( Part one of this essay showed how two dimensions of free riding define what we call “public goods” – th...
Continue reading →
Political parties and institutions in Australia and the US are increasingly dominated by interest groups representing the few, leading to a large policy-induced increase in inequality in recent decades and a long raft of new policies favouring the few by giving them the tax re...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - national, Life, Philosophy, History, Society, Economics and public policy, regulation, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Political theory, Law, Information, bubble, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Public and Private Goods, Social Policy
Cross posted at The Mandarin In the first part of this essay , I elaborated on evidence-based policymaking and service delivery, pointing to all manner of pathologies that must be dealt with to deliver something effective. The way in which KPIs distort reporting and can perver...
Continue reading →
Here's the first of a two part essay on evidence based policy published today in the Mandarin . This part is a slightly gussied up version of a Troppo post from a month ago . The long-awaited second part will follow. Calling for policy to be more ‘‘evidence-based” rolls off th...
Continue reading →
I was at a PC function yesterday on 'disruptive technology' and said, in a rather crabby way, that I'd been talking about the significance of informing consumers about the quality of products for a long, long time and now, it's only when people can actually see Uber and Airbnb...
Continue reading →
Queensland boy Julian Assange seems set to walk out of the Ecuadorian embassy soon, hoping that the announcement by the UN human rights panel on the arbitrariness of his detention will protect him from being arrested. The baseline scenario is that he walks out, is quickly arre...
Continue reading →
Posted in Politics - international, Life, History, Society, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Law, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique
The office of intelligence in every problem that either a person or a community meets is to effect a working connection between old habits, customs, institutions, beliefs, and new conditions. John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action , 1935 As I've argued before , our engagemen...
Continue reading →
With the Internet being a regular feature of our lives for about 20 years now, what have been the related developments that were hard to pick at the outset? What are the lessons? Five thoughts: Communication and personal expression is the main business of the Internet. That wa...
Continue reading →
Posted in Philosophy, History, Miscellaneous, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Science, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Political theory, Business, Information, Innovation, Best From Elsewhere, Cultural Critique, Public and Private Goods
Last week I participated in a panel discussion that kicked off Melbourne Knowledge Week. MKW is a Good Thing that has been running for a few years. It was initiated by Melbourne City Council against the background thought that knowledge is becoming progressively more important...
Continue reading →
Vint Cerf is a serious guy or so I thought I was entitled to believe - he's one of the early architects of the internet. Anyway, with David Nordfors he's disrupting unemployment . How? He's got this amazing idea for an internet platform to match people who want to work with pe...
Continue reading →
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="336"] This is the framework all Troppo authors use in their online reputation management (ORM). KPIs are reported monthly. If you notice any Troppo authors going off track, please shoot an email to reputationnaughties@clubtroppo.com.au[/...
Continue reading →
[caption id="attachment_26524" align="alignright" width="140"] IPKats love a tweet[/caption] The lecture will be delivered (in Melbourne Sydney and Brisbane) by Jeremy Phillips. Jeremy (or more exactly a fictional and " notorious " cat: the IPKat) has three times, been named a...
Continue reading →
In the words of Ronald Reagan, here we go again.* Sandy Pentland rehearses something that's made it's way from heresy to platitudinal commonplace with breakneck speed. Asked "what, specifically, is the New Deal on Data?" Sandy tells us this: It’s a rebalancing of the ownership...
Continue reading →
Book Translations as Idea Flows: The Effects of the Collapse of Communism on the Diffusion of Knowledge by Ran Abramitzky, Isabelle Sin Abstract: We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism's collapse in Eastern Euro...
Continue reading →
Something I picked up recently in San Francisco. OK I don't own it, but got to play with one waiting in a queue and talking to a developer waiting to get into a function at the conference I was attending. I was impressed. It looks a bit weird, but you ignore it until you want...
Continue reading →
Get a load of the UK Cabinet Office Minister's delivery. http://youtu.be/o-m6l4keQc8 It's fabulously low key, informal, indeed intimate compared with the formal bullshitting mode of almost all political utterance, and straightforward. It is of course 'spin', as it couldn't be...
Continue reading →
Interesting piece by well-known IT figure Jeff Atwood: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/09/computer-crime-then-and-now.html On one level, this piece is a terrific summary of how hacking is done. It's mostly not about messing with computers; it's about messing with people....
Continue reading →
"The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date" was released a last week. It's dedicated to the idea that knowledge not only changes, but changes in a systematic way. From the blurb: Just as we know that a chunk of uranium can break down in a measurable...
Continue reading →
This NYT article highlights something I've long gone on about - the serendipity of information. Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan stared at a printout of gene sequences from a man with cancer , a subject in one of his studies. There, along with the man’s cancer genes, was something unexpect...
Continue reading →
I couldn’t resist buying a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s best-seller when returning from holidays. Several friends and colleagues told me it was a great book; it got great reviews; and Kahneman’s journal articles are invariably a good read, so I was curious. Its general message is...
Continue reading →
Posted in Life, Philosophy, Education, Literature, Society, Economics and public policy, Science, Geeky Musings, Methodology, Information, Social
It's a pity Twitter doesn't allow slightly longer threads. Otherwise I'd post this there. I just ran across it in a John Kay book and I think it's delightful. It's the introduction to a section on Advertising. My uncle was a Scottish pharmacist of scrupulous integrity. When as...
Continue reading →
Right now Ray Finkelstein and Matthew Ricketson, the two members of the federal government's Independent Media Inquiry , are trying to finish off their report to the government. It's due by 28 February. Writing these reports is frequently difficult, but Finkelstein and Rickets...
Continue reading →
[Cross-posted to Online Opinion ] I spend my working life running an online media firm - WorkDay Media, publisher of Banking Day - with its owner and editor-in-chief, Ian Rogers. Last month, Ian and I wrote a submission to the federal government’s Independent Media Inquiry. Yo...
Continue reading →
Reading Tim Harford's excellent Adapt: Why success always starts with failure an idea occurred to me. He talks of the curse of the playpump - a photogenic aid strategy that appeals to celebrities and millionaires but which doesn't work. It's obvious that information about what...
Continue reading →
