Nicholas Gruen

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.

A couple of months ago I read and admired this article on Palladium, a new(ish) website that “explores the future of governance and society through international journalism, long-form analysis, and social philosophy”. It seemed that there was sufficient overlap between its concerns and mine that I asked if the author, Tanner Greer, would join me on the podcast. The essay begins with this assertion: The first instinct of the nineteenth-century American was to ask, “How can we make this happen?” Those raised inside the bureaucratic maze have been trained to ask a different question: “How do I get management to take my side?” It then elaborates and explores with examples, speculates on the causes of the change and discusses the means by which we might get back to a healthier situation. Greer argues that the 19th-century institutions combined three characteristics: the aspirational ideal of public brotherhood, a commitment to formality and discipline in self-government, and organizational structures that combined decentralization with hierarchy. I hope you enjoy the discussion. If you’d rather watch the episode, it is here.

In this thought-provoking episode of Uncomfortable Collisions with Reality, Nicholas Gruen and guest Jarrod Wheatley, founder and CEO of PIC Professional Individualized Care, delve into the complex issue of risk in out-of-home care for children. As they explore the challenges faced by those involved in child protection, they discuss the delicate balance between prioritizing the child's well-being and managing organizational risk. Drawing parallels to the institutional imperative and transparent decision-making, this episode sheds light on the need for thoughtful consideration and empathy when navigating the intricacies of the out-of-home care system. 0:55 Introduction 1:23 How the system humiliates 4:07 Prioritizing the best interests of the child 7:42 How the system prioritizes its own preservation, more than the children 9:56 Risks surrounding out-of-home care 13:30 It's the interests of the kids we're after 16:45 How would you act if they were your niece or nephew? 20:10 Bernie's advice 22:35 Practical examples 25:54 The role of communication If you prefer to watch this, the video is ⁠here⁠.

This is the second part of a great discussion I had with friend and colleague Gene Tunny on wellbeing agendas, how they go wrong and how transformative they could be. We begin by exploring what I call ‘top-down thinking’ — a style of strategising that was largely (and mercifully) absent from life fifty years ago. That’s the style of thinking which begins with fine sounding apex statements — Mission, vision and values statements — and then builds plans and priorities by ‘drilling down’ from such statements. Wellbeing agendas too are tied up in pleasant-sounding objectives. However they pass over many of the important questions. They relate firstly to how trade-offs are made and secondly to how we'll acquire the knowhow to get what we're after. Planning from the top rarely addresses such questions. This doesn't just mean we won't make much progress. It can actively undermine progress, as for instance when central planners insist that the measures by which projects will be assessed must be consistent across projects. Such stipulations sound like the soul of reasonableness. But quite obviously they dictate to those running programs in the field the way they’ll be measured. And this prevents such projects from developing their own monitoring and evaluation focused on their needs to understand what they’re doing and how they can improve. If you'd prefer to watch the video, it's here.

In this interview with Leon Gettler I discuss why I think New Zealand's Wellbeing Budget was anything of the kind. It was a wellbeing themed budget, not one that will do much for wellbeing. I then discuss what it would look like if we really did want to embrace wellbeing. Will the Australian federal government manage to do better. We'll find out in the next year or so, but so far it seems to be heading down the New Zealand route.

Another great conversation with my friend, colleague and partner in podcasting crime Gene Tunny. Gene suggested we discuss various ways in which we've placed nationally independent analysis at the centre of government, only to find that it hasn't performed as well as it might. A classic example is regulatory impact statements, which were a good idea back when Australia was among the world's leaders in introducing them in 1986. However, they've not had much impact because although notionally independent, government rewards 'can do' types both at the political and bureaucratic level. So the process degrades into a box-ticking process. Something similar happens with freedom of information as bureaucrats delay and resist release in various ways and the important stuff migrates into whispered conversations in corridors and secure and self-erasing platforms like Signal. And then there's independent assessment of infrastructure. The new ALP Government has cleaned things up a little, but could go a lot further as independent Allegra Spender suggested in this intervention. But the two major parties wouldn't have it. Ultimately this takes us to the question of how firmly democratic principles are anchored in Western Democracies. They're under threat everywhere. Yet there's a simple, radical and democratic way to secure them. Build the institutions in which the people can defend them! If you'd like to watch the discussion the video is here.

Every society evolves unique ways for people to live together happily and productively. But they change over time. Modernity has eclipsed these four ideas. Recovering them can make us happier and more productive. If I had four words to sum up where I've got to over the last couple of decades thinking how to improve the world, they'd be these. In discussing them with friend, philosopher and school teacher Martin Turkis, I gave myself the challenge of writing them out in a summary form for him to present to his high school students. This has got to be a better test of their value than whether they can be published in a learned journal. If you'd like to check out the video, it's here: 2:13 Part 1 - Four Principles 2:54 Isegoria 6:03 Parrhesia 9:23 Fidelity 18:25 Merit 25:58 Part 2 - Question and Answer 29:14 De-Competitive Representation 1:12:53 Hate Speech

One of my favourite podcasts with journalist, scholar and gentleman Hugh Pope who has just brought to publication a book written by his father in 1990. But being well ahead of its time, the book was unpublishable. It pursued Aristotle's point that elections installed a governing class and were therefore oligarchic. The institution that democracy represented the people was selection by lot as embodied today in legal juries. If you'd rather watch the video, it's here. 1:52 Background 5:46 Aristotle's View on Elections 9:47 How Jury Service Could Work 13:06 How elections make us vulnerable to authoritarians 29:49 Bringing the shy people out 39:13 The pathway to a better system. 46:07 Sortition in Florence, Italy

I enjoyed this discussion with philosophy PhD and high school teacher from San Francisco's Bay area. I tried to articulate my own view that our understanding of science as the paradigm of all knowledge gets in the way of understanding important aspects of reality that science can't help us with. We talk about embodied cognition and various aspects of this essay. The video of our conversation is here.

I did this interview in the wake of the budget discussing what we could achieve if we took wellbeing seriously. Which no government I know of really has. And that includes Jacinta Ardern and her "Wellbeing" Budget.

This is the second part of a great discussion I had with friend and colleague Gene Tunny on wellbeing agendas, how they go wrong and how transformative they could be. We begin by exploring what I call ‘top-down thinking’ — a style of strategising that was largely (and mercifully) absent from life fifty years ago. That’s the style of thinking which begins with fine sounding apex statements — Mission, vision and values statements — and then builds plans and priorities by ‘drilling down’ from such statements. Wellbeing agendas too are tied up in pleasant-sounding objectives. However they pass over many of the important questions. They relate firstly to how trade-offs are made and secondly to how we'll acquire the knowhow to get what we're after. Planning from the top rarely addresses such questions. This doesn't just mean we won't make much progress. It can actively undermine progress, as for instance when central planners insist that the measures by which projects will be assessed must be consistent across projects. Such stipulations sound like the soul of reasonableness. But quite obviously they dictate to those running programs in the field the way they’ll be measured. And this prevents such projects from developing their own monitoring and evaluation focused on their needs to understand what they’re doing and how they can improve. If you'd prefer to watch the video, it's here.

I really enjoyed this week’s uncomfortable collision with reality with colleague Gene Tunny. We covered a lot of ground talking about the use and abuse of the wellbeing agenda. Where does it come from? Why is it taking off as an approach to policy making? How do we make the most of this as authorisation to improve our world? By avoiding the pitfalls! I argue that the main pitfall is imagining ourselves to be part of some grand new way of thinking. Bureaucrats and think tanks reach for frameworks and schematic diagrams. But if they’re the wrong kinds — if they’re schematic rather than built to aid action — those frameworks simply give us new labels with which to dress up the same old same old and the iron law of business-as-usual takes hold again. Until the next new fad, the next new vocabulary. However, done well, we could really address some big problems at the same time as improving the health and prosperity of our communities. You can find the audio file here. Here's the link to the video of our discussion.

Colleague Gene Tunny and I discuss a means by which we could improve the impact of innovation programs as well as fight recessions and booms. And the cost? Nothing! If you'd like to watch the conversation, it's here on YouTube.

Poverty used to be the principal vector of oppression, but increasingly bureaucracy is integral to the story as anyone who's watched I, Daniel Blake will realise. Or way back in the 19th-century in Australia, at the Indigenous reserve at Corranderrk in Victoria as you can see here. In any event, it's alive and well in out of home care. You can watch the video if you prefer here.

This interview with Leon Gettler arose from these two Twitter discussions I had with various economists. They think only trained economists should be welcome on the RBA board. I wasn't so sure. And the more I thought about it, the less sure I was.