Uncomfortable Collisions with Reality

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 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.

In this episode of uncomfortable collisions with reality, Peyton and I talk to Jonathan Hearn who has just published "The Domestication of Competition" a history of the way in which competition became increasingly significant through history. Increasingly competition came to be seen as a worthwhile way to distribute power, align interests and serve the common interest. This was true in politics as modern electoral democracy developed, in science, in business and of course in sport. And as competition grew in significance, more attention was paid attending to building the institutions necessary to both compete and to govern competition for the common good. In this discussion we discuss his book and also explore differences in his own approach to these things as an historian, anthropologist and sociologist and my own. I'm particularly interested in the ways we could shape competition to improve its functioning in the social interest. If you'd like to watch the conversation, the video is here.

In this episode I speak with Jarrod Wheatley about how he took a model of out of home care from Germany and brought it to Australia, the obstacles he faced and the successes he's had with it. We swap notes, me from the perspective I've got in the gods thinking about how policy systems work from the offices of the central agencies, he from the work he does every day with the kids and their carers. If you prefer to watch the discussion, you can find the video here.