Category Archives: Public and Private Goods

The ongoing wellbeing loss from covid-policies. Sign the protest letter!

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Paul Frijters

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Coronavirus crisis, Death and taxes, Health, Life, Politics - international, Politics - national, Public and Private Goods, Science, Social | 56 Comments

Culture and language as public goods

Posted on May 30, 2020 by Nicholas Gruen

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, Public and Private Goods | 6 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

The Corona Dilemma.

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Paul Frijters

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Death and taxes, Democracy, Economics and public policy, Employment, Health, History, Libertarian Musings, Life, Philosophy, Politics - international, Public and Private Goods, Science, Society | 105 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

Blogging another inquiry: Valuing the Australian Census

Posted on June 12, 2019 by Nicholas Gruen

Lateral Economics has been commissioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to estimate the value of the Australian Census to the Australian community. As part of that exercise we’ve got the go-ahead from ABS to do something that, it seems to … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics and public policy, IT and Internet, Metablogging, Public and Private Goods, Web and Government 2.0 | 25 Comments

What economic reform thinking might have looked like – if we’d bothered to do it. Me and Martin Wolf

Posted on February 6, 2019 by Nicholas Gruen

I have posted this talk previously, but can now post the transcript, worked up from a YouTube transcript with thanks to Shruti Sekar for editing it. You can download the slides to which I was speaking from this link. There’s also a written … Continue reading →

Posted in Best From Elsewhere, Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory, Politics - international, Public and Private Goods | 1 Comment