Nicholas Gruen

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 big believer in the potential of CBDC, which he has written about in the Financial Times. Links relevant to the conversation Re. BS jobs: https://queenslandeconomywatch.com/2021/07/10/people-escaping-bs-jobs-covered-in-my-latest-podcast-episode-and-going-into-business-for-themselves/#comments https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/trust-competition-delusion-gruen/ Re: CBDCs: https://clubtroppo.com.au/2021/05/19/central-banks-get-serious-on-digital-currencies-2/ https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc.asp https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy

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 indigenous disadvantage Corporate value phoniness The surreal waste of government programs Mentorship Interesting people Investment philosophy The Australian Dream and Australian identity The meaning of life and what Nicholas would do with a billion dollars New banking initiatives Plain packaging cigarettes Regrets and the long shadow of the Holocaust A Poem Advice he’d give his younger self “We need the eggs”, a joke that gets better with age https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-M3Q2zhGd4 The poem Nicholas recites is from The Fiftieth Gate: A Journey Through Memory by Mark Raphael Baker, and I extract it and its lead in sentence below: "My parents sing a Yiddish lullaby to their numerous grandchildren about what might have been: ”Sleep now child, my pretty one Close your dark eyes. A little boy who has all his teeth Still needs his mother to sing him to sleep? A little bly who has all his teeth And will soon attend cheder. There he will study Torah and Talmud But still he cries when mother rocks him to sleep. A little boy who will become a great scholar And a successful business man as well. A little boy who’ll grow to be a bridegroom Has soaked his bed as if he’s in a pool. So hush-a-bye my clever little bridegroom Meanwhile you lie wet in your cradle. Your mother will shed many a tear Before you grow to be a man. Shloft zhe mir maybe eltern, maybe sheyne Sleep my dear parents but do not dream. Tomorrow your children will shed your tears, Tuck your memories in bed and say goodnight.”

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 things happen that defy our own intuitions. And inside atoms when things get even weirder. Likewise during a ‘phase transition’ of some matter from one phase to another – from solid to liquid for instance – strange and counterintuitive things happen. Something  similar has happened on the internet where transactions costs have fallen to near zero. And strange and fascinating things are happening. Anyway, I’ve been mulling over this for a while now, and verily, along comes this compelling OECD study of the internet. So I’ve written it up in this week’s column in the Age and SMH. From: ClubTroppo, Nov 2012

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 Network generates $16 for each dollar spent on it. And the census generates $6 for each dollar spent. Originally broadcast on Sat 18 Jan 2020.

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