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Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen

By Nicholas Gruen

When I remember, I try to upload media interviews and podcasts I've done here.
Currently playing episode

The competition delusion

Nicholas GruenFeb 11, 2020

00:00
11:59
Fessing up to the fudges in ESG

Fessing up to the fudges in ESG

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.

Aug 04, 202310:37
Chatting with Steve Austin about the Government's Wellbeing Framework

Chatting with Steve Austin about the Government's Wellbeing Framework

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.

Jul 21, 202313:38
Elite Capture: Christianity Wrote the Playbook!

Elite Capture: Christianity Wrote the Playbook!

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.

Jul 14, 202359:20
Changes to the RBA

Changes to the RBA

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

Jul 13, 202307:54
Why ESG is a puppet show
Jul 07, 202324:15
How did we get from "How Can I Help" to "How Can Govt Help Me?
Jun 30, 202301:24:02
Risk: protecting the children or protecting the system? CEO on Disadvantaged youth
Jun 14, 202326:06
Promoting Wellbeing or Anti-thinking?
Jun 10, 202358:58
What a wellbeing budget would look like: Hint, not like Jacinta's budgets

What a wellbeing budget would look like: Hint, not like Jacinta's budgets

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.

Jun 09, 202310:16
The $100B lying on the pavement
Jun 09, 202323:60
Four ways to fix the world
Jun 02, 202301:16:58
Engines of Oligarchy: with Hugh Pope
May 26, 202353:10
Science: How it obscures reality
May 19, 202343:46
Talking with the ABC's Steve Austin about wellbeing.

Talking with the ABC's Steve Austin about wellbeing.

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.

May 13, 202319:28
Promoting Wellbeing or Anti-thinking?
May 12, 202358:49
Wellbeing: escaping the iron law of business-as-usual
May 05, 202353:21
Walking while chewing gum: Spurring innovation and fighting recession
Apr 28, 202317:11
Bureaucracy as oppression: The case of out of home care
Apr 21, 202320:09
Who belongs on the RBA board?

Who belongs on the RBA board?

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.

Apr 18, 202309:39
How we all became competitors
Mar 27, 202301:11:25
Uncomfortable collisions with reality: Jarrod Wheatley on saving abused and neglected kids
Mar 20, 202301:06:51
Democracy: forking the project

Democracy: forking the project

This is a podcast of a discussion between me and my friend Peyton Bowman about my essay "Democracy: forking the project". Here is the abstract of the essay. 

Citizens’ juries — where a representative sample of citizens deliberate and decide on political issues — are increasingly popular. Representing constituents by sampling and deliberation rather than election and competition, they could deepen existing democracies as a check and balance to existing institutions. But the public understands their potential poorly because most juries have been one-off, single-issue exercises held by (and so, for) existing institutions.

With governance arrangements keeping funders at arm's length, progress could begin with a philanthropically and crowd-funded standing citizens' jury. Without any formal power, such a “People’s Council” could ​​nevertheless shadow other houses of parliament/congress’s decisions and pass resolutions of its own. Had such a body existed, it would have been:

  • Harder to abolish carbon pricing in Australia,
  • Harder to negotiate such a ‘hard’ and damaging Brexit in the UK,
  • Harder to demonise nuclear energy in fighting climate change,
  • Easier for the US Senate to convict President Trump for inciting insurrection.

Greater attention would have been given ‘bread and butter’ issues like health, aged care and education and less to ‘hot button’ issues like immigration and crime. And those latter issues would have been addressed in ways that were more consensual and informed by the evidence. So policy would have been more effective.

Even without formal, constitutional power, where it disagreed with public votes taken on the floor of a house, it could call for an additional secret ballot, thus bidding for more influence and modelling the role it would have as a check and balance — in an officially constituted ‘people’s branch’ of government.

To develop its own capabilities and autonomy, the people’s branch must establish its own internal governance and leadership structures. To ensure their consistency with the egalitarian spirit of sortition and to minimise its capture by the self-assertive, charismatic and power-hungry, I suggest eschewing direct competition for office. The brevia is one such mechanism. It minimised factionalism and set the stage for 500 years of stability in Venice. It involves randomly selecting some ‘electors’ from the council and getting them to identify those most worthy of internal leadership roles. A ‘council of elders’ of past participants of citizens’ juries could be chosen by such means to act as a source of advice and support to current juries and as a repository of corporate memory and evolving traditions.

If the people’s branch were developed along these lines, it would become an ideal ‘honest broker’ to preserve the basic norms of procedural fairness on which peaceful government is founded. This is already happening in some jurisdictions — for instance, with a people’s council with the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. However, over time the people’s branch could expand to be given a substantial role in the appointment of judges and officials. America’s founding fathers attempted to constitutionally entrench such procedural norms into the US constitution via Senate confirmations, but that mechanism is now under partisan siege.


Mar 17, 202342:11
NG on Economic Rockstar

NG on Economic Rockstar

The shownotes from Economic Rockstar

Nicholas Gruen is CEO of Lateral Economics and is a widely published policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator.

In this episode Professor Gruen discusses the need for reform in economics at both academic and policy level.

He also explains the importance of information and how information is poorly managed at the central planning stage but can be used effectively under the right direction if this information or data can be shareable both from the private and the public sector

Feb 03, 202301:20:30
Should we just suit ourselves?
Jan 06, 202317:53
Getting the best without competition

Getting the best without competition

In this conversation with Leon Gettler I talk about the ways we could select people on merit in a bottom-up way which dispensed with the invidiousness of competition. This kind of thing was actually prominent in the minds of the American founding fathers way back when. We should return to their concern with some of the downsides of too much competition in choosing out leaders. 

Dec 02, 202212:20
Where did you stand when the right went toxic?

Where did you stand when the right went toxic?

You know how those on the left are pilloried for not standing up during Stalin's show trials in the 1930. When the tanks rolled into Prague in 1958 or to Hungary a decade later? Well they should be piloried for it. And now the toxicity of the right has spun out of control, still most people on the right aren't too fussed. The toxic candidates might not be their cup of tea, but hey you can't make an omlette without breaking eggs. 

My recent interview with Leon Gettler.  

Oct 21, 202208:24
Four foundational principles for a flourishing organisation or society: Part One

Four foundational principles for a flourishing organisation or society: Part One

I explore a way I've come to think about society with my friend Peyton Bowman and represent in a diagram which is the first slide in these slides. (Here is the pptx, and here is the pdf.) (Note only the first two slides were used in this talk). 

The diagram illustrates the principles which should characterise communication within any kind of community — in which I include organisations like a firm or something larger like a national polity.  Isegoria — or equality of speech — is a 'horizontal' value — calling for everyone to be heard no matter their status in society. But, the ‘vertical’ concept of parrhēsia is also absent. “Parrhēsia’ is usually translated as 'freedom of speech', but it’s a richer idea infused with mutual ethical obligation. It is the importance of speaking truth to power, but it also entails the powerful's duty to listen to what they're being told. 

In our society those lower down are mostly expected to flatter those above, and so they 'gild the lily', and tell the kinds of stories the powerful want to be told. The result is lies all the way up the line.  We explore these ideas in the classroom and then in organisations. I use the example of Toyota which shows how empowering those on the line is an astoundingly more productive way to make cars efficiently than having people directed by, and fearful of, those above.   There are two other orders within which we explore these ideas. Throughout the discussion, we refer back to political life, and towards the end we also talk about science, which also enables us to discuss an additional concept in the diagram, the notion of fidelity. That leaves a fourth principle ‘merit’ to be explained in a future discussion!  Part Two of this discussion is here.

Oct 05, 202251:53
Amateurs or experts: who should you trust?

Amateurs or experts: who should you trust?

How much should we defer to expertise, and how do we know who’s an expert and who’s not? How does ‘the system’ know that? How did Kaggle revolutionise not just the way data science was done, but how we recognise expertise in data science. And why does weather forecasting offer the epitome of what I call ‘Socratic expertise’?  

As usual, this was a wide-ranging and exciting conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman

You can find the video here

Jul 22, 202251:27
The republic: a way forward (and plenty of other things)
Jul 08, 202258:55
Transparency: It's role in strangling democracy

Transparency: It's role in strangling democracy

I enjoyed this conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman and our guest James D'Angelo who has campaigned for greater secrecy in the committee stages of Congress. Why would he do that? Surely we need more, not less transparency? Turns out too much could be strangling our democracy. It’s strangling his country’s response to gun violence. 

It strangled Australia’s capacity to deal with climate change. And it brought about Brexit against the better judgement of — say — four fifths of the British Parliament. It’s a good discussion though it takes a while to get going. Start at the beginning if you wish, but I’ve set the link above about ten minutes in where we start getting down to it. From there it just gets interestinger and interestinger as Lewis Carroll might have said. 

The YouTube video is available here

Jun 30, 202258:43
Should politics be boring?

Should politics be boring?

I enjoyed this conversation with Peyton Bowman.   Can you remember the names of any Swiss Prime Ministers? Peyton couldn’t. I couldn’t, and neither, I’m guessing, can you.? The answer is a few minutes in.  More generally, what do we get and what do we lose from politics being as entertaining as it is? And why are some of the most dysfunctional social institutions of ours
highly theatrical — like politics and court cases?  What’s driving all the dysfunction and what tweaks could be made to improve the situation?   We explore these issues, and go on a couple of interesting diversions — Around ‘ground-truthing’ in arguments and the way gender plays out in the recognition of expertise.  Also available as a video here.

Jun 30, 202250:31
Once more on democracy
Jun 30, 202201:08:44
The right to be Heard: Red, green or Amber?

The right to be Heard: Red, green or Amber?

Peyton and I recorded this discussion last week with my friend Isabella Perez. It arose from my own dissatisfaction with much of the commentary I was reading. Everyone seemed preoccupied with whose side you should be on and what it all meant for #MeToo. These are of course legitimate questions, but then the commentators’ ideological preferences were no secret, nor was the way the case could be ‘spun’. If a woman is unanimously held by a jury to be lying about domestic violence, then that will set back a movement if one of its slogans is ‘always believe women’. Anyway, have a listen and let us know what you thought of what we made of it all. If you prefer video, the YouTube video is here.

Jun 17, 202258:19
Internalise and compromise or divide and rule: a chat with Leon Gettler

Internalise and compromise or divide and rule: a chat with Leon Gettler

A discussion with Leon Gettler on the election of the Albanese Government. I reprise the arguments I set in this essay which I wrote in 2008 just after Kevin Rudd had been elected for government by coalition-building and compromise around solving national problems rather than by divide and rule. The success of the independents in this election means it's very much in Labor's interest to revive that model of governance. 

Jun 11, 202213:33
Idols of the modern mind: stragisation, thematisation and theorisation

Idols of the modern mind: stragisation, thematisation and theorisation

In my essay recently published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) I outlined a strategy by which people imagine they’re doing economics, by sounding like an economist with all their talk of trade-offs. But they’re really engaged in a kind of pretend thinking. I call it ‘theorisation’ by analogy with ‘strategisation’ — a term I coined a while back to refer to those portentous ways in which some worthy words are launched upon the world with bold protestations of how they are uniquely suited to current circumstances. We are assured that this thing that’s being said (say the need for wage restraint, or more competition) has ‘never been more important when in fact it’s often been more important. They’re just thoughtful sounding words, but embodying the opposite of thought.

Anyway, this led to my writing up these ideas as idols of the modern mind and to this discussion with Peyton.   If you’d like to read the essay, drop me a line on ngruen at gmail I’ll send you access to the full draft essay.

Jun 03, 202237:19
The Iron law of business-as-usual: What is it and can we escape it?
Jun 02, 202246:01
Include and compromise — don’t divide and conquer: Tendrils of Hope from Australia.

Include and compromise — don’t divide and conquer: Tendrils of Hope from Australia.

I really enjoyed this conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman which celebrates the possibility that Australia might be able to show the world how to push back against the Trumpian madness.

We tried to turn Peyton's lack of inside knowledge of Australia's electoral system into a feature rather than a bug as I used the conversation to explain to him (and to myself!) the significance I saw in the recent election of a new Labor Government.

I think Australian culture and two specific features of our electoral system make it easier for our politicians to govern from the centre. Now the triumph of a number of independents from the wealthier, previously conservative voting suburbs of Australia’s big cities has swung the pendulum back towards the centre and opened up new opportunities, not just for the country, but for each of us.

And I explain my own plans for making a small contribution to a new and better Australia. The video of the same discussion is here.

May 28, 202249:57
Could social media drive better civic conversation?

Could social media drive better civic conversation?

This discussion with David Thunder arose from my criticism of his embrace of free speech in response to his being thrown off Twitter. As I explained, I sympathised with what had happened to him. Twitter had no business throwing off someone who was clearly in good faith and seeking to debate substantial issues in a reality-based way. But as we discuss, I still thought that the issues are far from straightforward.  The audio of this discussion can be found here.

The video is here.

May 22, 202201:15:24
Fast foodification: what is it, what's driving it, how do we stop it?

Fast foodification: what is it, what's driving it, how do we stop it?

In this discussion, Peyton Bowman and I discuss my term ‘fast-foodification’. I coined the word trying to describe modern politics. The techniques used by politicians and their professional enablers are optimised to attract votes in the same way that McDonalds and KFC optimise their food with salt, sugar and fat to attract sales.

We also discuss other areas characterised by fast-foodification.  And we look at the question of what psychologists call ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ preferences — namely what we want as compared with what we want to want. Growing as people involves a process of schooling tastes to acquire better ones. We might want to get fit, find going to the gym a chore for a while as we get used to it, but once we’re habituated to it we don’t want to miss our session. 

Many things in human flourishing are like this as we school ourselves and habituate ourselves to better tastes and better behaviour.   Finally, having both agreed that capitalism and competition for votes tends to reinforce primary preferences — we discuss what institutions might encourage a culture in which secondary preferences might be nurtured. The video is available here

May 20, 202248:12
Death by wellbeing

Death by wellbeing

An interview with Tyson Yunkaporta on wellbeing. 

The idea of targeting government policy on wellbeing is a great opportunity to do things differently and better. Alas the way we're doing it, wellbeing means little and its presence in policy is rather like the theme at a ball. The New Zealand government tells us that it's targetting wellbeing in its budget, but if you look closely it's doing nothing of the kind. It tells us that its wellbeing budget has five 'themes' or priorities, but where did they come from. Did the literature or any other serious endeavour determine that. Not a bit of it. It was government spin. Some of the themes seem likely to correlate with wellbeing, but the wellbeing impacts of the new policy is not measured so we won't know how much they contribute to wellbeing. Others — like innovation — are a simple rebadging. They'd be in a non-wellbeing themed budget.  You can also watch the interview here. (https://youtu.be/ra4OFTl4lb8)

May 06, 202201:12:02
Building institutions for human flourishing

Building institutions for human flourishing

I really enjoyed this conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman and I explore this tantalising suggestion in Elinor Ostrom’s speech accepting the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics:

     Designing institutions to force (or nudge) entirely self-interested individuals
     to achieve better outcomes has been the major goal posited by policy analysts
     for much of the past half-century. Extensive empirical research leads me to
     argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the
     development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.  

We explore various ways in which the world we’ve built following the first strategy predicated on people’s self-interestedness has undermined the better angels of our nature. And we explore the institutions we might build to embrace the second strategy — to build the institutions of human flourishing.    

Without suggesting we can set the clock back, we look at what we’ve lost in amateur and community based sport as sport has become more professionalised and commercialised.  

We then discuss various ways in which people put boundaries around competition — for instance with rules against conflict of interest.

And we look at something I think is a big deal. I call them “de-competitive” institutions. These involve mechanisms of selection which are not competitive. This is particularly interesting where merit is selected without competition between the population from whom the most meritorious are selected.

We conclude with a quick look at something we'll explore later in greater depth. Hyper-competition produces ‘fast-foodification’ — a process whereby competitive strategies frustrate the  development of better habits of mind and body.

Though there are a few slides, you'll be able to easily follow along without looking at them. If you'd like to see them, they're here. The video can be seen here

Apr 15, 202255:26
The public goods of the 21st-century

The public goods of the 21st-century

In this conversation, Peyton Bowman and I complete the elaboration of what I’ve suggested are the four principles of a flourishing society. We do so via an extension of the economists’ notion of the complementarity of public and private goods. For economists, those goods you buy in the market are private goods. Competition is also a good thing in ensuring those private goods are the best they can be. But we also need public goods — which are goods markets won’t provide. In this schema, cars are private goods and roads are public goods.

But where economists apply this idea to goods, in this conversation we explore how they can be extended to social institutions. A line to get onto a bus, a game of tennis — even a conversation — are all what I call ‘ecologies’ of public and private goods. And that gives us a key to what’s gone wrong in our world. Because more and more the ecology of our institutions is becoming unbalanced and unhealthy, as what should be shared is colonised by powerful special interests.

The video is here.

Apr 07, 202237:08
Mark Zuckerberg or Muhammad Yunus?

Mark Zuckerberg or Muhammad Yunus?

What's your vision for success as a start-up entrepreneur. Would you rather be Mark Zuckerberg worth tens of billions of dollars or Muhammad Yunus whose development of micro-credit in poor countries has lifted millions from poverty? (Oh and he'll never want for money as he won the Nobel Peace Prize and can pick up $75,000 for a speech). Of course, he could want for more, owning billions instead of millions, but how much extra satisfaction would it buy him?   

This is the way I crystalised a choice lots of modern start-ups need to make, and certainly, one that the company I've invested in — Speedlancer — may find itself making. Because any builder of a platform is a builder of a public good. And one can build it to maximise profit or one can build it to maximise the value it creates. But here's the thing. Because of the extraordinary productivity of platforms, certainly early on in their lives, the most successful platforms are often the ones that focus most on maxing out the value they create with monetising that value thought of as the next stage of the plan. As Paul Graham suggests the first, hardest problem is to build something great. He argues that that's why so many of the most successful start ups look like not for profits for the early part of their existence — they're just focused on their customers, their suppliers, their tech and how it all fits together. That's hard. 

Anyway, that's my vision for Speedlancer. I can't say it's official policy, but it's how I think it might change the world. So enjoy the interview, which was conducted for Speedlancer to give me an opportunity to convey these ideas. And if you want to watch the video of the interview, it's here

Apr 07, 202201:02:16
Four foundational principles for a flourishing organisation or society: Part Two

Four foundational principles for a flourishing organisation or society: Part Two

This was a second discussion of my framework of four principles needed for a healthy organisation or political system. We began the discussion considering Elon Musk's recent complaint about censorship on social media. We reprised the basic principles we discussed last week and showed how they helped us understand Musk’s claim and why any ‘free speech’ alternative to existing dominant social media platforms is likely to run into similar dilemmas to them — even if it can get enough subscribers to become a force. I also refer to my comments on this post which elaborate these ideas further.

I also explain the fourth principle in the framework — merit — using the example of Wikipedia and open-source software. While we're in love with how 'democratic' and open these production methods are, while this is beneficial, the real 'secret sauce' of these extraordinary new production methods is not their radical openness and connectedness but that they have found a new and very effective way of building meritocracies. Anyone can contribute and, by doing so can work their way into a position of greater respect, standing and authority. If this was not in place, opening up their production process to all comers would lead to chaos, not the miracles to which it has. If you prefer the video, you can find it here.

Apr 01, 202237:46
What are we missing? Foundational principles from the deep

What are we missing? Foundational principles from the deep

I explore a way I've come to think about society with my friend Peyton Bowman (https://www.protoclassic.com/paying-attention/) and represent in a diagram which is the first slide in these slides. (pptx, pdf.) (Note only the first two slides were used in this talk). The diagram illustrates the principles which should characterise communication within any kind of community — in which I include organisations like a firm or something larger like a national polity.

Isegoria — or equality of speech — is a 'horizontal' value — calling for everyone to be heard no matter their status in society. But, the ‘vertical’ concept of parrhēsia is also absent. “Parrhēsia’ is usually translated as 'freedom of speech', but it’s a richer idea infused with mutual ethical obligation. It is the importance of speaking truth to power, but it also entails the powerful's duty to listen to what they're being told. In our society those lower down are mostly expected to flatter those above, and so they 'gild the lily', and tell the kinds of stories the powerful want to be told. The result is lies all the way up the line.

We explore these ideas in the classroom and then in organisations. I use the example of Toyota which shows how empowering those on the line is an astoundingly more productive way to make cars efficiently than having people directed by, and fearful of, those above.   There are two other orders within which we explore these ideas. Throughout the discussion, we refer back to political life, and towards the end we also talk about science, which also enables us to discuss an additional concept in the diagram, the notion of fidelity. That leaves a fourth principle ‘merit’ to be explained in a future discussion!

Mar 25, 202251:53
Will you join me in the alt-centre?

Will you join me in the alt-centre?

In this video Peyton Bowman and I explore aspects of my blog post "Will you join me in the alt-centre?". I initially coined the term “alt-centre” light-heartedly, but, like many such things, having put it up there, I think it might be about something real. 

An earlier iteration of my centrism is here.  But that was then. 

Now I’d say, how about a fusion of Alasdair MacIntyre, James Burnham and George Orwell together with the idea that outputs from modern academia are mostly useless?  

And, in this discussion, as I do in my post, we explore James Burnham's argument that over nine-tenths of political discussion — from the heights of political theory right down to discussions in the street is fatally infected with wish fulfilment, rather than a proper engagement with the problems of the world and what we can practically do about them.   

I illustrate this by referring to the much relied on the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome noting that neither actually exists in the world. They're abstractions. More to the point, if you give one generation equality of opportunity, its children will not have equality of opportunity because the children of people who've not done well will start disadvantaged. And yet the concept is bandied about in political discussion as if it were far more determinative than it is.

We go on to discuss a range of questions such as the role that our values — and our wishes — should play in political discussion and the way in which various practices associated with wokedom, often have more to do with organisations protecting themselves from risk than they do with helping address difficult issues. As such, when organisations regulate conduct to take these ideas into account, they often do so to make them disappear rather than to engage with them. These ideas are explored further in this blog post.

Mar 18, 202236:48
How come stoicism is suddenly a thing?

How come stoicism is suddenly a thing?

A quick browse of the self-help section of your local bookstore will show you that Stoicism has become popular in the last decade or so with a strong surge during the pandemic. Peyton Bowman and I discuss this phenomenon alongside of my own interest in the ethics of the ancient world and my dissatisfaction with contemporary moral systems — something I discussed in this essay which we discuss.

Peyton suggests that Stoicism is appealing because it speaks to our need to take what ends we're required to achieve in our jobs and our life and to make the most of our situation. Modern Stoicism seems to emphasize what’s sometimes called the dichotomy of control, an idea traced back to the 1st-2nd century philosopher, Epictetus. 

People, he believed, can’t be held responsible for things beyond their control — it’s essentially pointless, then, to worry about anything except that which one can control. In the modern context, Peyton contends that this makes the philosophy extremely compatible with people inside organizations or bureaucracies which dictate the ends to which people's work will be directed — those people being the means of achieving those given ends.   Of course, as a system of ethics, modern Stoicism is not blind to the worth or otherwise of our labour — and has its own ideas about how virtue works in the modern world — but this along with other aspects of ancient Stoicism seem to receive less emphasis.

Towards the end of the discussion I talk about Effective Altruism, what a great thing it is, and also how much it bugs me and why :) The video of the discussion is on YouTube here.

Mar 11, 202246:03
How Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent courage viral

How Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent courage viral

From 2GB's website

Luke Grants chats to Dr Nicholas Gruen, the CEO of Lateral Economics, who argues that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is playing the role Winston Churchill played in 1940.  In a world bathed in BS, Zelenskyy’s physical courage actually makes a greater contribution today than it did in Churchill’s time.

He says Zelinsky cuts through the BS, he means what he says and it’s as simple as just his actions move us because he’s doing his job, like the captain of an old ship that has foundered committing themself to save all or go down with the ship.

He says we’re now in a different world to that, where politicians never say quite what they mean.

Mar 10, 202216:13
How Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent courage viral

How Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent courage viral

Another great discussion with my friend Peyton Bowman. We began with a passage from William James on faith. Though the essay does discuss religious faith, it starts more mundanely, speaking of the way faith makes community life possible by knitting people together in bonds of mutual rights and obligations. 

One implication is that social life is necessarily a network phenomenon. Further, even without this, it is 'kaleidic'. That is, an apparently small change can make all the difference between the way the whole scene looks — and can for instance throw the switch from pessimism to optimism. This kind of thing often happens in the economy. People's pessimism is mutually reinforcing and depresses the economy generally, until one day when things change and their optimism becomes reinforcing. 

We then talk about the different metaphors for society and community. In ancient and early modern thinking, society is often conceived of as being like a human body with government being the brain. Peyton then discusses a speech by the Roman statesman Agrippa which references the stomach as the 'social body'. I think this switch helps us spot some of our modern hubris. 

I argue that Zelenskyy is playing the role Winston Churchill played in 1940, but that in a world bathed in bullshit, Zelenskyy's physical courage makes a greater contribution today than it did in Churchill's time. It cuts through the bullshit, it demonstrates that he's not just another bullshit artist. He means what he says. And I cavil at the cliché that he's is 'inspirational'. He is, but the word is so bandied about that we're dead to it. 

I focus on something closer to home, more humdrum and, because of it more profound. Zelenskyy's actions move us because he did his job, like the captain of a ship that has foundered committing themself to save all it or go down with the ship. And we're in a different world to that. Where politicians never say quite what they mean (why — because if they did we wouldn't vote for them!), and where our own job may not make that much sense, and whether it does or not everyone's keeping their eye on their next career move. In any event, the contrast Zelenskyy's actions made with all this were enough to set a cascade of effects going, as we have seen in the last week. 

As much as we buy into the magnificence of these actions and the courage they showed, we end on the note of prudence. We are talking about heightened conflict between nations that can with the press of a button — including as a result of miscalculation, misunderstanding or more mundane cockup — annihilate all that we value. 

Mar 04, 202246:33
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