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 is always at risk of falling into roleplay) and also in preference to the 'old professionalism' which was replaced by managerialism. We'll explore an institutional framework which might enable us to develop that kind of professionalism in a future discussion.  

*It's not been published but DM @ngruen1 at Twitter for access to it. 

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 and policy hacks, and, later in the podcast talk about James Burnham's devastating critique of political thought as wish fulfilment. Viz:

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:

Follow Nicholas on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NGruen1 and read his essays at https://clubtroppo.com.au

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 requires a different approach — for instance one in which you get people to deliberate and, even better, make difficult choices that enable you to see how much they care about things compared with others. 

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 internships.