Category Archives: Political theory

What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Complete essay

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

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 their experiment … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory, Science | Leave a comment

What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Part Two

Posted on July 2, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory | Leave a comment

Markets as ‘causal spread’: How the early neoliberals anticipated embodied cognition: Fragment one – Hayek

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory | 2 Comments

6 post-Corona Institutional questions

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Paul Frijters

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 thought, and the benefit of imprisoning and … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Climate Change, Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Health, History, Life, Political theory, Politics - international, Public and Private Goods, regulation, Religion, Science, Social, Society, Terror | 20 Comments

Conservative, liberal, social democrat 2.0

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Democracy, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory, Public and Private Goods | 13 Comments

Intellectual authoritarianism: The Golden Age of Female Philosophy Edition

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

I do think that in normal times a lot of good female thinking is wasted because it simply doesn’t get heard. Mary Midgley I’ve written about the blokey intellectual authoritarianism of economics on numerous occasions, for instance writing here about how it … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics and public policy, Education, Gender, History, Philosophy, Political theory | 18 Comments

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

Posted on February 10, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Democracy, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory, Sortition and citizens’ juries | 25 Comments