Ryan Faulkner-Hogg asked me to join him on his long-form podcast show where, over nearly three hours, we spoke about many things.Here are his show notes:I joined the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen recently in his Melbourne home to host his first 'long-form' podcast (although I'm not sure at what hour it goes from short to long)At the core of Gruen's worldview is the “un-seriousness” he levels at Australian politics, the media landscape, institutions and in a word... bureaucracies.From his creation of the HALE Index to his decades inside Australia’s public institutions, Nicholas continuously challenges orthodox thinking.The podcast covers the (in my opinion) radical yet (Nicholas's opinion) ancient idea of citizens’ juries as a second pillar of representation, the reasons bold policy rarely survives bureaucratic reality, and how lessons from the Toyota production system could help governments actually listen to people at the bottom of the hierarchy.Along the way, Gruen takes us from Australia’s superannuation system to pokies, from the mental health crisis to the subtle erosion of public-spiritedness inside organisations. To be specific, these are all the topics covered in this chat.The HALE Index of Well-being – Why GDP misses the mark, how HALE works, and what it reveals about Australia’s progress.Measuring What Matters – The limits of subjective well-being metrics, correlations between indicators, and why faux indexes mislead policymakers.Indigenous Policy Contradictions – The tension between material “gap closing” and self-determination, and why policy rarely confronts it.Citizens’ Juries & Political Reform – Introducing random selection into governance and how it could act as a check on elected officials.Goodhart’s Law in Action – How turning measures into targets corrupts them, and the problem of gaming metrics in education and beyond.Internal vs External Goods – Alasdair MacIntyre’s framework and its relevance to public service, corporate culture, and motivation.Institutional Stagnation – Why promising initiatives stall, and how bottom-up programs could scale without being crushed by bureaucracy.Toyota Production System Lessons – Building respect for frontline workers into systems and how it transforms performance.Australia’s Superannuation System – Strengths, inefficiencies, unfair taxation, and misaligned regulation of self-managed super funds.Compulsory Voting & Preferential Systems – How they shape Australia’s political centre and guard against extreme populism.Universities Today – The shift from idea-driven discourse to metric-chasing careerism, especially in economics.Trade-offs vs Synergies – Why economics often overemphasises trade-offs, and examples of where quality and cost improve together.If you prefer to watch the video, it's here.
In this final talk at Web Directions NEXT, I explore how we might breathe new life into democracy—by giving ordinary people a permanent seat at the table.The idea is to establish a House of Citizens—a standing assembly of everyday people, chosen by lottery, deliberating on the same laws and policies as parliament or congress. No formal power at first. Just visibility to the public who get to see another way to do democracy.That other way involves building a new institution in which the considered judgement of citizens can be forged and then express itself. Imagine, how might that shift previously vexed debates on guns in the US, carbon pricing in Australia, or Brexit in the UK?I also reflect on conversations with Google’s Vint Cerf about building better online platforms for cultivating good discussion. This is a fairly visual presentation with a video played, so if you want to see the action you can find the talk on YouTube.
In the second of three talks at John Allsopp’s Web Directions Dec 2024 NEXT conference, I dig into a question modern life has taught us to overlook: how do we decide what's truly good?We’ve built a civilisation where merit is often confused with ambition, where leadership is predicated on self-promotion, and where institutions reward ambition and playing the game (instead of service) and ‘smartness’ (instead of good judgement). Enter what I call “bottom-up meritocracy”, as practised in medieval Venice and on modern Wikipedia, I explore how “bottom-up meritocracy” once thrived—and could again.We’ll look at how the American Founders tried (and failed) to build a system of bottom-up meritocracy inspired by Venice's constitution (among others), how our institutions have become increasingly hollowed out, and why Charlie Munger summed it all up when he described what we should be aiming for: a “seamless web of deserved trust”.If you prefer listening to the YouTube video, it's here:
In this freewheeling conversation with John Humphreys and Gene Tunny, we delve into what’s gone wrong with modern policymaking—and what can be done about it. We begin with the dysfunctional state of our tax system. I argue we should scrap dividend imputation and cut the company tax rate to attract foreign capital and grow the national pie. We then explore the systemic malaise of democracy: how spin, performativity, and institutional incentives have crowded out real deliberation and made difficult choices all but impossible. Politicians aren’t uniquely bad—they’re trapped in a system that punishes truth-telling and rewards evasion. All politicians are against tax and for spending and you can see that in the sea of red ink we're sailing into in Tasmania, Victoria, Australia and the US. That leads to my proposal for a deeper reform: embedding citizens’ juries into democratic life. We discuss how standing citizens’ assemblies could reorient policy debates on issues like housing, infrastructure, climate and budget repair. This is not about trusting “ordinary people” over politicians—it’s about designing a system that enables public reason to flourish again. (OK, well the AI wrote that sentence, which gives you some idea of why we can't hand over to AIs just yet.)If you prefer to watch the video (God knows why you would) it's here.
This is the first of three talks I gave to John Allsopp's Web Directions NEXT conference held in Sydney in late 2024. The three talks introduce a new project of mine - a series of short videos called Awakening our better angels.It’s about our institutions—how they shape our behaviour, our politics, and our civilisation.How they can bring out the worst in us—or the best. And how modern institutions all start from the premise that we're self-interested. That creates misery, inefficiency and dysfunction. But what's the alternative? Some institutions bring people together to get them to solve problems. They play to our better natures. You’ll meet Chris and Finbar—two very different people chosen by lottery to help decide a polarising question in Ireland.It didn’t begin well. But it ended with friendship, insight, and a better public conversation. If you'd like to watch the presentation, you can find it on my channel on YouTube here.
As readers may know, in contrast to most folks promoting citizen assemblies, I am not too optimistic that running temporary, special purpose citizen assemblies will achieve much. They come and go, serve up some recommendations to the government and then become ‘issues management’ fodder, and in so doing rehearse the role of the people as supplicants to their government. I think we need to develop an activism of sortition. By that I mean we need to find ways to assert the legitimacy of the deliberation of a representative sample of the people as a check and balance on the government. Had a citizen assembly voted against the abolition of carbon pricing in Australia or against a hard Brexit in the UK, it would have markedly strengthened the hand of those elected politicians who were resisting bad policy within the legislature. Given the case for an activism of sortition, it seemed to me that Donald Trump’s trade war on the world offered a promising environment in which to improvise. I discuss this idea with Leon Gettler in the recording above.
From Alex's blurbTogether, we examine how the internet’s kerosene amplifies wish-casting, why monarchic fantasies seduce tech elites, and what bottom-up meritocracy - citizen juries, sortition, and ‘small-scale hacks’ - might offer a polity that feels increasingly unmoored. We grapple with Burnham, Yarvin, and the uneasy marriage between markets, monopolies, and truth-telling institutions, asking whether stability can be coaxed from competitive chaos.
Rory Sutherland suggested that the host of Simplifying Complexity have me on his podcast a while back. In that interview, I was critical of those who peddle ‘complexity’ as a new paradigm in economics. It's not. It's a bunch of new models. But the idea of 'complexity' as some new lens really runs rampant in numerous discourses around society and, for instance, new approaches to social disadvantage. The idea is constantly peddled that the current system is blinkered in its thinking. The word 'linear' will be thrown around. However, to me, this misdiagnoses the problem. The reason existing systems don't work very well is that they're not, ultimately built to work for users. They're built to address the needs of those building the system. Building them so they do work takes more than some consultants coming in with a new 'holistic' view of the problem. And if the consultants do have a better view of the problem and how to fix it, how are they going to get it to stick and to grow once it's been developed and all the forces that produced the initial dysfunction remain.
An interview that took place with me at 5.20 on the 1st April 2025 on the release of the Tasmanian Planning Commission draft integrated assessment report.
I discuss Trump's tariffs with Leon Gettler, how economists aren't telling the whole truth about those Tariffs. Trump is wrong when he says foreigners will pay them. But he's not all wrong.
I talk to Leon Gettler about the way electoral funding is manipulated by the major parties to entrench their own power. Democracy is supposed to be a competition, not a rigged game, yet we see politicians making decisions that serve their own interests rather than the public good.I argue that it's absurd to have politicians determining the terms of political competition — they should have no more to do with that than they should with setting electoral boundaries. We need a new kind of institution—one that takes key decisions like electoral out of the hands of politicians and puts them in the hands of a jury of everyday Australians. I discuss the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, a model that has helped clean up gerrymandering in the U.S., and how a similar approach could work here.
In this after-dinner talk to the Radix conference on Resilient Democracy at St George's House on Feb 20th, I lay out a different way of thinking about democracy — one that challenges the assumption that elections are the only legitimate form of representation. Democracies mix two approaches: representation by election and representation by sampling. But in modern politics, we’ve sidelined the latter, except in the judicial system.Elections don’t just select representatives; they shape the kind of people who rise to power. The system favours self-promotion, rewards spin, and turns politics into a competition for attention rather than a forum for governing. We assume elections will keep politicians accountable, but in practice, they reinforce a cycle where honesty is a liability and persuasion takes priority over substance.Representation by sampling works differently. When people are selected by lottery to deliberate on political issues, they tend to engage with one another in ways that cut through party lines and ideological divides. I explore examples of how this has worked, from ancient Athens to modern citizen assemblies, and outline a proposal: a standing Citizens’ Assembly to sit alongside existing institutions, providing an independent check on government.This isn’t about replacing elections, but about balancing them with another democratic principle—one we’ve neglected for too long.The Conference Website is here. The video of the talk can be found here.
In this discussion, Gene Tunny and I discuss my leading article in my Substack last week. There I agued that our political systems are built on representing people through elections whereas there’s another way to represent the people — by sampling. We can create bodies that are representative of the people because they’re chosen by lottery from the people. And here’s the thing. The systems built on these two ways of representing the people are so different they can be thought of as two different strands of DNA in our democracy. And I want that other way to represent the people — as occurs in juries — to play a much larger role in our political system. But how to bring that about? Well, it’s quite likely that Australia will have a hung parliament after the next election — that any government that forms will need the support of a growing cross-bench. So I want that cross-bench to demand as a condition of supporting one side or the other that it establish a citizen assembly. And we need a standing citizen assembly, rather than temporary, subject-specific ones. Why? For reasons discussed in the article — which is here. Please join us in the discussion below.
An interview with me on Victoria's 3AW Wide World of Sports
An interview with ABC Hobart on the release of my report on the Hobart Stadium which you can download from this link: https://tinyurl.com/GruenReport
I joined Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston on their Transitzone podcast. Here's their own description of our discussion. _________________________________________________ This last week of the election campaign has seen Donald Trump become even more overheated in his rhetoric. His fixation on whether Kamala Harris had a summer job working for McDonalds about 40 years ago, as she claims, has become a recurring feature of his rally rants. He has not relented an iota on the Springfield, Haitian attacks or his 2020, “rigged” election Big Lie, even as the voting machine company, Smartmatic, settles at the last minute a defamation case with far-right outlet NEWSMAX. Fox News is next in that litigation queue But gradually, economic policies are coming into focus with Trump emphasising his across the board tariffs policy and 15% corporate tax offer to encourage manufacturing in the USA plus a grab bag of other throw it against the wall policy promises. Kamala Harris delivered a major speech followed by a solo cable TV interview around HER economic policies. And yes, "opportunity economy" and ‘middle class” were repeated themes from her as you’d expect. There was some detail. Peter Clarke, Margo Kingston with their guest, Nicholas Gruen, discuss the "competing" economic policies of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump (such as they are), with under 4o days to go to the USA election voting day on 5 November.
Here I discuss a speech made by Andrew Hauser, Deputy Governor of the RBA on how little forecasters know and how much humbler we should all be. I focus on what he didn't say, which is that the best way to tackle hubris and improve forecasting is to run open forecasting tournaments. Only then can you access 'superforecasters' — those people made famous by Philip Tetlock's bestselling 2015 book but whom official forecasters have never heard of or, having heard of them, try to put out of their mind.
Me and Leon Gettler discuss share our disappointment and dismay that no-one is being held accountable for the disgrace of RoboDebt and talk about unaccountability more generally.
Do we need a ‘new paradigm’ in economics? Mostly, our problems are more mundane than that. They stem from slavishly using our frameworks, and applying them as if they give us most of the answer. I think they're just a starting point, a set of clues about one way to structure one's thinking. In economics they also offer a means of adding things up into a total picture — subtracting costs from benefits. Beyond that, one of the main messages of complexity science should be how we need to start from an appreciation of how little we know and how hard it is to know more. Yes, there are some areas where different approaches can be helpful — or more helpful than the frameworks dominant today — for instance, in finance. But mostly, it’s a matter of using the resources we have as best we can and not imagining they’re more powerful than they are.