Monthly Archives: 2020-02

9 published posts from 2020-02.

The Weinstein case: is #Metoo delivering justice?

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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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, History, Society, Gender, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Social Policy

Intellectual authoritarianism: The Golden Age of Female Philosophy Edition

[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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Posted in Philosophy, History, Education, Economics and public policy, Gender, Political theory

Vale Holden: I told you so edition

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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Posted in Economics and public policy, Cultural Critique, Democracy

Erwin Fabian: RIP

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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Posted in History

Honours: 2020

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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Posted in Ethics, Cultural Critique, Democracy

Trust and the competition delusion: A new frontier for political and economic reform

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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Posted in Philosophy, Economics and public policy, Political theory, Cultural Critique, Democracy, Sortition and citizens’ juries

Defending independence in the age of deep spin

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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Posted in IT and Internet, Media, Information, Cultural Critique, Democracy, Sortition and citizens’ juries

The Wage Penalty of Regional Accents

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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Posted in Economics and public policy, Gender

Brexit is not ‘Tot ziens’ (bye bye).

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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Posted in Uncategorized