Club Troppo

"One of the best public intellectuals on the conservative side of politics" says ANU's Andrew Leigh . "A very thoughtful writer on the liberal side" says Mark Bahnisch at LP . A "radical neoliberal" says the University of Wollongong's Damien Cahill . Earlier this week Andrew N...

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I was setting up to deliver my talk on open source software at the Fabian Society. I decided to throw caution to the winds and the switch to Vaudeville by staring off with the same scene from Witness - 'raising a barn' - that i began my original essay for policy with. I'll ind...

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It's a question I hope to learn more about. These kinds of debates always take on heavy ideological overtones. There was the 'what made the Asian Tigers roar' debate of the 1980s in which free traders spoke past protectionists and didn't get very far. There was the 'Why can't...

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Economists have long been challenged by the question: how does one decide if a particular social program is in the national interest (to use the Prime Minister's favourite expression)? We economists talk a great deal about cost-benefit evaluations but it is never clear what go...

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More on Collingwood . Review of a collection of Collingwood's essays on political philosophy. Chapter 1 BENT OF A TWIG UNTIL I was thirteen years old I lived at home and was taught by my father. Lessons occupied only two or three hours each morning; otherwise he left me to my...

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Cedric Emanuel (1906-1995) was one of the most productive and versatile of Australian artists. He has major importance as a visual historian. For almost seventy years he sketched and painted the rapidly changing scenes of Australia from the outback to the inner suburbs of Sydn...

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Fear gripped the pulsing metropolis of Melbourne on this meaningful Monday the 11th. Fear and dread. Fear, and dread, and doubt (no doubt). We'd been warned just this weekend passed that we were on the top of the list of targets, and so on this day of symbolism and portent, we...

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Surely we cannot let 11/9 pass without a single relevant post? After all, the world changed forever five years ago today. For a start, folks the globe over ( sans moi ) have now begun quoting dates backwards, like the Americans. SBS recently aired a bizarre documentary allegin...

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Late night live sounds like it might be interesting tonight. I don't have time to read even this link , right now, but it all sounds interesting. World Bank economist Branko Milanovic says globalisation is in trouble. He shifts the focus from the economic effects of globalisat...

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Invited by the indefatigable impresario of ideas Race Mathews to talk to the Fabian Society I'll be doing so this Wednesday evening. The topic is the economic and social significance of open source software as a new mode of production, and I'm still working on the slides. Plea...

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In Jason Soon's capitalist utopia you can hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon , rear cattle in the evening and criticise after dinner . It's a world where the welfare state has withered away and in its place is an unconditional basic income paid to each adult citizen to...

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A woman was riding a bike and was shot in the chest with a .22 bullet. It almost hit her heart, but it didn't and she was OK. It transpired that the accused person was cleaning their .22 rifle on their front porch and the gun accidentally discharged. The accused was charted wi...

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Charles Murray and Peter Saunders both want to dismantle the welfare state -- they just have different strategies for doing it. Murray's plan is to convert current welfare state spending into cash grants for every adult American (except those in prison) while Saunders' plan is...

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Nicholas has very kindly invited me to contribute to Club Troppo. This is my first post. So it's virgin territory for me. Please be gentle. And, of course, I hope you will enjoy it"¦ I was driving to the shops last night listening to this PM story about workers in Melbourne no...

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Jason Soon thinks welfare payments should be replaced by a guaranteed minimum income scheme . Rather than subjecting welfare recipients to a regime of case management and workfare, Soon thinks they should be free to make their own decisions about work and lifestyle. ' Bad ' Pe...

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Here's the text of a letter of mine published in the Australian today. In the last five years, Australia has enjoyed a windfall gain of nearly 50 per cent in its terms of trade. This has added tens of billions to the coffers of the Federal Budget. Here was a great opportunity...

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It wouldn't be at all surprising if politicians and other commentators who have never seen an increase in interest rates that they thought was warranted seized on yesterday's June quarter national accounts as grounds for criticizing the Reserve Bank's decisions to lift interes...

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