Nicholas Gruen

Peyton and I start from the first heading of an article in which I first tried to summarise the attractions of random selection or 'sortition' as a means by which we might heal our beleaguered democracies. We go on to discuss an idea of mine which I've begun writing on which is this. The thing we're most proud of about democracy is its egalitarian nature. But a democracy will founder if those with...

Working away on some explainer videos, we discuss the script for an explainer video which is currently called "Knowledge and its enemies" — currently because it's not yet been produced and we might change its name.  The script begins "Meet Socrates The Delphic Oracle proclaimed him Greece’s wisest man Incredulous, he searched high and low for someone wiser. Expert craftsmen had more technical...

As part of Crikey's Democracy Lost series, Crikey's political editor Bernard Keane conducted an extended discussion with Nicholas Gruen on Christmas Eve. Nicholas is one of Australia's finest public policy intellectuals and has written on an extraordinary array of issues while working as a ministerial adviser, Productivity Commissioner, academic and investor. He is also an advocate for citize...

Another enjoyable discussion with P. Bowman in which we range over the pros and cons of the numerous terms that have come to prominence in our language over the last decade. Words like 'gaslighting' and 'microaggression'. What's distinctive about these terms is firstly their preparedness to break the 'forth wall' of a conversation. They allow one to address not just the words and arguments that ot...

In this chat we start from an essay of mine called 'needing the eggs'.* We talk about how so much of what matters takes place in all those ways in which what people say and what they do differ — in a thousand ways subtle and not so subtle. Towards the end of the discussion, we also talk about the prospect of a ' new professionalism ' in preference to the managerialism of strategies and KPIs (which...

This was a fun interview with Leon Delaney about the business of putting a dollar value on mental illness and indeed on death itself. 

I enjoyed this chat with Luke Grant on the Herald/Age Lateral Economics (HALE) Index of wellbeing and our finding that the mental health impact of lockdowns had cost around $13 billion dollars over the course of the last couple of years. But there's much more to the story than that.  Here's the story as published in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age. 

In this discussion, I discuss where my approach to economics came from, how from the beginning I'd tried to steer economic policy making away from tribal disputes to find what the parties could agree on and how I started generalising that approach much more widely than economics. 

P Bowman and Nicholas Gruen on 13th Jan 2022.  Following up on our last discussion in about the significance of paying attention to things that surprise you or deviations between the way people describe their behaviour or their situation and what one can observe we explore similar questions in the world of politics.  We begin by discussing this post on my distinction between policy ideas...

I enjoyed this conversation with P Bowman, a super thoughtful fellow with whom I've been discussing some possible collaborations. The conversation began with him asking me why I come up short when people ask me for books to read that will enable them to more fully understand things I've said. Short answer: because I didn't get my ideas out of books and I didn't get them by 'applying' some professi...

From Infinite Loops Nicholas Gruen is a widely published policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator. He has advised Cabinet Ministers, sat on Australia’s Productivity Commission and founded Lateral Economics and Peach Financial. We discuss: Fast foodification of Democracy Isegoria, or equality of speech Pros and Cons of a citizen jury How citizen juries help in nuanced policy discussions Using...

Social and marketing researchers run focus groups to find out what people are thinking. But usually they skim the surface to find out people's concerns so they can parrot them back to them. This is good for campaigning and marketing, but it skims the surface of people's thinking. It doesn't require them to deliberate and it doesn't elicit HOW MUCH they care about things. Plumbing those depths requ...

An interview on The Wire following the Greens picking up my Central banking for all . You may also be interested in my piece for the FT on central bank digital currency. 

Another podcast with Tyson Yunkaporta. Here's his introduction …  Friend of the pod, Nicholas Gruen, tries to help me get to the bottom of my theories about supply and demand. Turns out economics as a discipline is so opaque that it's turtles all the way down and there's no proof to be found - just interesting perspectives through stories about property auction smoking ceremonies and Mafia in...

Here's how Tyson describes this exchange:  Nicholas Gruen is a white Kant philosopher who keeps talking to me about Western philosophers when I'm supposed to be working. We kick this one off with a Fidelio monologue I wrote for the Opera House this season, while I try to finish a chapter on the Enlightenment and Nicholas tells me the best bits of the Age of Reason that will be worth keeping a...

A long chat prompted by the issues in this essay — " Needing the eggs: 70 years of going through the motions ". 

I talk to friend and collegue Gene Tunny who's doing a great job running an economics podcast from Brisbane. From his shownotes: David Graeber's BS jobs thesis (previously covered in EP95) lacks microeconomic foundations, according to Dr Nicholas Gruen. In EP97, Economics Explored host Gene Tunny speaks with Nicholas about BS jobs and also about Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Nicholas is a...

If we're testing a drug, we want to make sure that it works better than a placebo (like a sugar pill). But if the placebo effect is real we shouldn't ignore it. Our medicine should mobilise it to improve health and to do that it needs to understand it better. 

From Misha's website Nicholas is a prominent Australian economist and has chaired various Australian government groups and initiatives as well as Kaggle, where he was an early investor. Lindsay Tanner has described him as "Australia's foremost public intellectual". We cover: Toyota, Tech and Isegoria Problems with technological scale vs human-centred design Our inability to solve child abuse and i...

Nicholas Gruen speaks to Tom about his favourite records, including Paul Simon's "The Boy In The Bubble", how the demise of pop culture and politics began with fast food and continued with social media, his book, "Together: rethinking community and competition in the age of Facebook" and how he thinks we could fix our ailing democracies: https://tinyurl.com/36wpd255 .

In physics, we’re used to the idea that at different scales and at different stages of some process, very different things happen. We inhabit Newton’s world of medium-sized things and speeds – planets, trees, footballs and travel at walking, driving or flying speed – even space station speed. When things get very big or fast – intergalactic or close to the speed of light – very strange t...

From ABC Radio National's Science Show .  We hear people criticise the cost of the census. In Australia it happens every five years. There is also debate over the collection of medical data. Nicholas Gruen has studied the value of public information such as that provided by the census. He says there are clear cost benefits to collecting data and making it available. The Public Health Research...

In a March 2021 Financial Times article Dr Nicholas Gruen proposed an independent fiscal policy advisory body so that fiscal policy is freed from political tinkering. Economics Explored host Gene Tunny speaks with Dr Gruen about his proposal in this episode.

Nicholas Gruen is interviewed by Michael Lester for Northern Beaches Radio on this essay . 

Nicholas Gruen, economist and former chair of the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce debates the ways in which 2.0 thinking and technologies are changing economic definitions of public goods. Podcast with John Wells , June 7th, 2012