Power, understanding and knowledge
I’m wondering why the facts and ideas generated in the abstract below aren’t higher up the order of proceedings in such things as teaching the economics of industrial organisation, the economics of...
View ArticleYes Minister: hilarious, truthful, too good to be true.
Here at Troppo we have referred to the ‘Yes Minister series’ many times because of its brilliant commentary on the timeless issues of government, exemplified in the skit above. I have gone through...
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Choice, competition, markets and human services: Some thoughts
The PC has a two stage reference on increasing the application of competition, contestability and informed user choice in the provision of human services. The first stage will identify the most...
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Markets, supply chains, brains and human services
Below is an essay by me and Chris Vanstone (Chief Innovation Officer of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) published in two parts by The Mandarin. Devoutly confessing that you do not...
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IMF Researchers on Inequality on Social Capital
Growing Apart, Losing Trust? The Impact of Inequality on Social Capital There is a widespread perception that trust and social capital have declined in United States as well as other advanced...
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Truth-telling in the epistemic quagmire of the politico-infotainment complex:...
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...
View ArticleCould 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...
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Care
Part One A couple of days ago I came upon care ethics via Virginia Held’s book The Ethics of Care (2006) with some excitement. The ethics of care grew out of feminism, but I think the issues it raises...
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Care: the essay
I’m experimenting with an alternative way of presenting an essay on Troppo that I’ll present as multi-part (in the fine tradition of nineteenth-century novelists!). The concluding Part Two here is...
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On the Origins and Consequences of Racism
We use a novel method to measure racism at both the individual and the country level. We show that our measure of racism has a strong negative and significant impact on economic development, quality of...
View ArticleGovernment for the people, of the people, by people who are pretending
Choosing a Public-Spirited Leader. An experimental investigation of political selection By: Thomas Markussen (epartment of Economics, University of Copenhagen) ; Jean-Robert Tyran (Department of...
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Five ways to tell if you’re REALLY doing strategy
Cognitive biases: Choose your poison Cross posted from the Mandarin. Introduction Strategy is crucial for organisations. But as I’ve previously argued, a great deal of what passes for strategic...
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The last man in Europe: waiting to be read in a bookstore near you!
I’ve known Dennis Glover since we were both staffers in Parliament during the Hawke-Keating years (I was there in 1981, 83-4 and 1991-3 until just after the ‘sweetest victory of all’ in 1993 which with...
View ArticleSome Game of Thrones Season 8 speculation
Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me...
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Good old Collingwood forever: Speech to the Australian Evaluation Society...
In Memoriam: Bill Craven 1 Herewith my speech to the Australian Evaluation Society Annual Conference dinner last night, also published at The Mandarin. I In 2005 Peter Shergold, the country’s most...
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Down with Presidentialism: Guest post by Mike Pepperday
People disappointed with democratic outcomes often call for better education of the citizenry. But the democracies began, and flourished, in the nineteenth century, when people were quite poorly...
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Against Lakoff’s hate speech argument
There seem to be more and more claims that “hate speech” should not be entitled to the normal privileges of free speech. To my surprise, one of them is George Lakoff – famed cognitive scientist,...
View ArticleThe #MeToo moment: another disaster for the Democrats?
The #MeToo flood of stories of women who feel abused by men – ranging from lurid stares to straightforward rape – seems like a disaster to me for the Democrats. Not because of the stories themselves,...
View ArticleLet’s have another World War!
Sometimes, it feels like 1910 all over again. Then, a confident Germany was the up-and-coming industrial power house, fearing an even more up-and-coming Russia, with the UK and France desperately...
View ArticleEvidence-based policy: why is progress so slow and what can be done about it
Here’s a presentation I gave at the anniversary of Australian Policy Online which has been cunningly rebranded under its old acronym as Analysis and Policy Observatory. I gave a similar one at Kings...
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