Category Archives: Cultural Critique

John Quiggin and the Overton Gradient

(Not to mention Overton’s Elephant and Overton’s Mouse) With inflation stuck at 4%, what a terrible problem that it will probably take a deliberately engineered recession to get it back into target. If only the optimal rate of inflation were … Continue reading

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy | 6 Comments

The unbearable lightness of grey academia: note to self

Wikipedia defines ‘grey literature’ thus: Materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (annual, research, technical, project, etc.), working papers, government documents, white papers and evaluations. Organizations that produce grey literature include … Continue reading

Posted in Cultural Critique, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Four ways to fix the world

A while back I condensed a bunch of things I have been thinking about into four ideas which I explored with Peyton Bowman in these two discussions. In discussions with philosopher and school teacher Martin Turkis, it occurred to me … Continue reading

Posted in Cultural Critique, Democracy, Isegoria, Sortition and citizens’ juries | Leave a comment

What kind of Character is Sam Bankman-Fried

A friend sent me this article documenting Sam Bankman-Fried’s now well known text exchange with Vox journalist Kelsey Piper. I couldn’t help but think of Alasdair MacIntyre’s characters. As MacIntyre put it in After Virtue: What is specific to each culture … Continue reading

Posted in Cultural Critique, Philosophy, Political theory | 2 Comments

Gruen: detox democracy through representation by random selection

I use Troppo to make various notes for file as it were for reference in future. And on wanting to record something I found that I hadn’t reproduced this post — which was originally at The Mandarin — here. So … Continue reading

Posted in Cultural Critique, Democracy, Political theory, Politics - international, Politics - national, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 6 Comments

The case for greater use of secret ballots in parliament

If we want politicians to actually represent their constituents, we need to free them from the pressure of toeing the party line. A week or so ago someone tweeted this to me. It was a response to my Crikey! article … Continue reading

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The case for more secret ballots within our legislatures

This is a piece I did for Crikey I’d forgotten I’d written and hadn’t put it up here. So now I have. The article was spotted by someone who has been exposing just how much damage opening up Congressional committee … Continue reading

Posted in Cultural Critique, Democracy, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 2 Comments