Health care in pets and humans: the more things change …

Looks quite interesting Is American Pet Health Care (Also) Uniquely Inefficient? by Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Atul Gupta - #22669 (AG HC PE) Abstract: We document four similarities between American human healthcare and American pet care: (i) rapid growth in spending as a s...

Continue reading

Posted in Economics and public policy

Would the High Court uphold sections 18C and 18D of the RDA on constitutional grounds?

Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (Cth) is a perennial favourite topic for right wing politicians, and conservative pundit Andrew Bolt has never stopped moaning about it ever since he ended up on the wrong side of a Federal Court decision Eatock v Bolt in 2011. But...

Continue reading

Posted in Law

Politics and solving problems

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqihQNBRsKc Here's a skilful pitch for government dollars. Why shouldn't online appointments with medical health people be funded under Medicare. Why indeed? It's all slickly done as you'd expect from Change.org. These guys have optimised social...

Continue reading

Posted in Economics and public policy, Medical

Open government: Such, such were the joys

A quick placeholder for something more substantial hopefully soon. Have a look at this ridiculous letter in response to a request to see a copy of the independent scoping study into future ownership options for the ASIC Registry. Judging by other experiences I'm aware of - at...

Continue reading

Posted in Information, Democracy

Could sortition help against corruption, part II

In part 1, I looked at whether it made sense to have random individuals inserted into parliament, or to let policies be decided by juries full of randomly chosen individuals. Both were argued to be unworkable and likely to lead to more corruption, rather than less: policies th...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - national, Life, Philosophy, Print media, History, Miscellaneous, Education, Society, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, regulation, Journalism, Libertarian Musings, Political theory, Law, Web and Government 2.0, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Social Policy, Democracy

Truth-telling in the epistemic quagmire of the politico-infotainment complex: Donald Trump Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWci3a0-EKM Pilate said unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and said unto them, I find in him no fault at all. The Gospel according to John 18:38 Picasso once famously opined on art and truth-tell...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Philosophy, Political theory, Democracy

Italian Film Festival

Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks Perfect Strangers (Opening Night) Fueled by a fiendishly clever screenplay and an all-star cast, Perfect Strangers gathers a group of good friends around the dining table-three thirty something couples and a bachelor-where one sugg...

Continue reading

Posted in Films and TV

Deliberative democracy: A sad story

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="447"] What do we want? Deliberative democracy! When do we want it? NOW!![/caption] This story from this larger study speaks for itself, but is illustrative of some of the themes of my previous post on deliberative democracy. In the spri...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - international, Climate Change, Political theory, Cultural Critique, Democracy

Gay marriage: Some thoughts about the politics

I haven't read any columns on the gay marriage imbroglio so maybe people have already said all this but … it seems to me that the circumstances now provide the left of centre parties with an opportunity to humiliate their opponents. There's no bigger kill in politics than to b...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - national, Political theory, Cultural Critique

Northern Territory - a tale of systemic dysfunctional governance

Like quite a few other despairing commentators, I have on occasions referred to the Northern Territory as a "failed state", most recently here : Until now, although holding grave fears about the quality of Northern Territory political governance under both the previous Labor g...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - Northern Territory, Political theory

Why is our faith in democratic politics collapsing?

[caption id="attachment_29384" align="alignleft" width="754"] Q: How satisfied are you with the way democracy works in Australia?[/caption] I With democracy now serving the interests of the 1%, the public are disenchanted and finally sending the elites packing - courtesy of th...

Continue reading

Posted in Economics and public policy, Political theory, Cultural Critique, Democracy

Anton Smirnov: Year 9 Australian kid currently playing better than all but 36 other human beings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf6z5gkv3Ls Anton Smirnov, who turned 15 this year even if he looks a fair bit younger than that, has been playing in the Australian team in the Chess Olympiad. He's been playing at a rating strength of 2710 which places him 37th in the world gi...

Continue reading

Posted in Chess

Regulatory responsiveness and industry policy

I've been arguing that our current approach to efficient regulation is blockheaded for as long as I can remember. I've even pointed out how one might possibly do quite a lot better with a less ideologically Manichean approach in which regulatory policy is a battle between Good...

Continue reading

Posted in Economics and public policy, regulation, Innovation

Judges have bad days: SHOCK!

Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles by Ozkan Eren, Naci Mocan - #22611 (CH HE LE LS) Abstract: Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a U.S. state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of footbal...

Continue reading

Posted in Law

Drug Treatment Centers and Local Crime

by Samuel R. Bondurant, Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen - #22610 (HC HE PE) Abstract: In this paper we estimate the effects of expanding access to substance-abuse treatment on local crime. We do so using an identification strategy that leverages variation driven by substance-...

Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized

Smerdon v Carlsen 1/2-1/2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=56&v=ELmoNHljCKk Australian Chess Grandmaster and one time Treasury economist David Smerdon is at the Chess Olympiad in Baku and managed to get Magnus Carlsen into a fair bit of trouble, before settling for an easy draw. Here's the g...

Continue reading

Posted in Chess

Ian Marsh: Australia’s gridlocked Parliament

A friend of mine Ian Marsh sent me this op ed which one of the papers said it would publish last week. Personally, I'm not surprised that they didn't. They're waiting for it to be validated by being put through its paces here at the Troppo Grinder first. No change there. Over...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Political theory, Best From Elsewhere

Damien Shen

I went to this opening because I know the artist's sister from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). Like sister like brother, some pretty interesting, reflective and classy stuff. If you're in Melbourne go check them out for yourself. More here .

Continue reading

Posted in Art and Architecture

Weaving professional and practical knowledge together: TACSI launches open source human services in Australia

This is a reworking of an earlier post - but reworked with Chief Innovation Officer of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), Chris Vanstone, there's quite a bit of new content for those who are interested. Cross posted at The Mandarin . There's also the intervie...

Continue reading

Posted in Economics and public policy, WOW! - Amazing, Intellectual Property, Public and Private Goods

Challenging elections for fun, profit and the public good

It appears that the newly dominant Labor Party in the Northern Territory may be contemplating a legal challenge to the validity of the election of former CLP Chief Minister Terry Mills as an Independent MLA in his former seat of Blain. Labor will likely hold 18 of the 25 Legis...

Continue reading

Posted in Politics - Northern Territory, Law