Nicholas Gruen Nicholas Gruen

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.

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.