Nicholas Gruen

I joined Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston on their Transitzone podcast. Here's their own description of our discussion.

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This last week of the election campaign has seen Donald Trump become even more overheated in his rhetoric. His fixation on whether Kamala Harris had a summer job working for McDonalds about 40 years ago, as she claims, has become a recurring feature of his rally rants. He has not relented an iota on the Springfield, Haitian attacks or his 2020, “rigged” election Big Lie, even as the voting machine company, Smartmatic, settles at the last minute a defamation case with far-right outlet NEWSMAX. Fox News is next in that litigation queue

But gradually, economic policies are coming into focus with Trump emphasising his across the board tariffs policy and 15% corporate tax offer to encourage manufacturing in the USA plus a grab bag of other throw it against the wall policy promises.

Kamala Harris delivered a major speech followed by a solo cable TV interview around HER economic policies. And yes, "opportunity economy" and ‘middle class” were repeated themes from her as you’d expect. There was some detail.

Peter Clarke, Margo Kingston with their guest, Nicholas Gruen, discuss the "competing" economic policies of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump (such as they are), with under 4o days to go to the USA election voting day on 5 November.

Here I discuss a speech made by Andrew Hauser, Deputy Governor of the RBA on how little forecasters know and how much humbler we should all be. I focus on what he didn't say, which is that the best way to tackle hubris and improve forecasting is to run open forecasting tournaments. Only then can you access 'superforecasters' — those people made famous by Philip Tetlock's bestselling 2015 book but whom official forecasters have never heard of or, having heard of them, try to put out of their mind.

Me and Leon Gettler discuss share our disappointment and dismay that no-one is being held accountable for the disgrace of RoboDebt and talk about unaccountability more generally.

Do we need a ‘new paradigm’ in economics? Mostly, our problems are more mundane than that. They stem from slavishly using our frameworks, and applying them as if they give us most of the answer. I think they're just a starting point, a set of clues about one way to structure one's thinking. In economics they also offer a means of adding things up into a total picture — subtracting costs from benefits. Beyond that, one of the main messages of complexity science should be how we need to start from an appreciation of how little we know and how hard it is to know more.

Yes, there are some areas where different approaches can be helpful — or more helpful than the frameworks dominant today — for instance, in finance. But mostly, it’s a matter of using the resources we have as best we can and not imagining they’re more powerful than they are.

I discuss the recent Tasmanian election and have the cheek to suggest that the Jacqi Lambie Network might have been the most serious political party on offer. We talk about the role a standing citizen assembly could play in settling down politics as usual, how it might help the politicians get back to their intended job — which is solving problems — rather than the job electoral politics tends to force them into — which is creating them. And we offer some thoughts about an orange haired clear and present danger to the world.

In this discussion with Leon Gettler I talk about the ways in which ESG (the widening of investment mandates to take into account issues to do with the Environment, Social and Governance) can be dysfunctional. For instance policies to only invest in low emissions firms are unlikely to do much good and may do harm (by starving emissions-intensive businesses with investment funds which will generally be necessary for them to reduce their emissions intensity).

I argue that investment funds should share these dilemmas with those they invest for and involve them in a process for considering the issues and deciding on an acceptable way to resolve them. How should they do it? With a jury — selected to be representative of all those they invest for.

I spoke with Steve Austin a few months ago about wellbeing frameworks and what they can (and can't) do to improve our world. So he got back in touch with me to ask what I thought of the Federal Government's recently released wellbeing framework.

Of all the podcasts we’ve done so far, this is my favourite.

We discuss Peter Heather’s marvellous book “Christendom: the triumph of a Religion”. It covers the thousand years from the time Christianity becomes embedded in the Roman Empire, via Emperor Constantine’s conversion. Heather’s book shows how much Christianity was spread not by those ‘meek’ whom Jesus would have inherit the earth, but by the powerful for whom conversion offered improved relations with the Emperor’s court. Over time, and through the period of Charlemagne it infiltrated European life via various drives for Christian piety.

By the 12th century, the Church had deeply infiltrated people’s lives through the seven sacraments — which marked the weekly rhythms and major milestones of people’s lives — they included baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, penance, and marriage. And by the 12th century, the church was in many ways more powerful than any king or emperor. It controlled Europe’s operating system — it’s systems of information and learning and its transnational legal code. The church is also the template for a specific organisational form. The church was a unitary organisation governed by a monarch supported by a skilled bureaucracy administering an elaborate and time-honoured legal code. Nation states took their form from the church. So too, later on did corporations.

If you prefer watching the video, you can find it here.

A short interview with ABC news on what I think of the Changes to the Reserve Bank announced by Philip Lowe yesterday.

There's a spectre haunting ESG, the new trend towards investment funds seeking to consider things other than their financial bottom line. ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. But there's a problem. Often firms are not well placed to improve outcomes beyond their own immediate purview. Thus divestment from high-emissions firms might seem like a good idea, but it turns out to have minimal impact on emissions. This is as one might expect because it simply passes the invest onto investors who don't care about the issue.

In fact there's a more powerful reason which is that starving emissions-intensive firms of funds is likely to depress their investment which they need to reduce emissions. And since the 20% of firms with the highest emissions emit 280 times what the least emitting 20% firms emit, reducing the emissions of the high-emissions firms is very likely to be where the biggest climate change action is going to be. These are genuine dilemmas but investment firms who seek to target ESG tend not to level with their retail investors that this is what is going on. They're much more likely to do their best and then 'sell' their members some calming PR on how their investments are making a difference. We talk about a left field way round this dilemma.

If you'd like to see the video of this discussion you can find it here.