TRIGGERnometry - Nicholas Gruen on Immigration, Corruption in Academia and Citizens' Assemblies

00:00:00.000 Hello, welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissinger. And this

00:00:11.200 is the show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they

00:00:15.820 know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts.

00:00:21.820 Our fantastic expert guest this week is an Australian economist, the CEO of Lateral Economics

00:00:27.360 and the self-styled general pontificator, Nicholas Gruen.

00:00:31.520 Welcome to Trigononche.

00:00:32.560 Hi, Constantine. Hi, Francis.

00:00:42.920 It's great to have you here.

00:00:44.440 Listen, for those people who don't know you,

00:00:46.420 just give us a little overview of who you are,

00:00:48.780 what's been your journey through life, how are you, where you are.

00:00:50.660 Okay, so let me just say that my father was quite a prominent economist in Australia,

00:00:56.980 and my brother and I had two...

00:00:58.600 Both of us had an ambition not to become economists.

00:01:01.880 And we both failed, not just me.

00:01:04.940 But it's an important part of my story because I knew...

00:01:08.280 I got an intuition about economics long before I studied economics

00:01:12.080 and I found...

00:01:13.620 I went and worked for our industry minister,

00:01:16.800 a guy called Senator John Button in the 1980s,

00:01:19.420 worked on car industry policy,

00:01:21.080 and I found to my dismay that economics was being used

00:01:27.460 not as a method of thinking but as a badge of tribal identity.

00:01:31.900 If you were trained as an economist,

00:01:33.920 you knew what you thought before you checked out the subject.

00:01:37.680 And I realise now that the company that I started many years later,

00:01:43.540 which I call Lateral Economics,

00:01:44.760 I actually have given a paper called Lateral Economics,

00:01:49.160 a brand or a method.

00:01:51.080 And I think it's a method and it's the way I go about things, which is to stay away from pre-cooked conclusions, whether they're in my discipline, in any other discipline or in politics or anywhere else.

00:02:04.540 And so that leads me to kind of figure stuff out for myself.

00:02:08.180 And if that sounds like a cliche, it is.

00:02:10.000 But it takes a long time to unlearn all the things that you're being taught and to kind of go through the process of actively deprogramming yourself against all these messages that are coming in.

00:02:23.740 So that's my pitch.

00:02:25.620 That's my value prop as a contributor to public debate on economics and more widely.

00:02:35.460 Well, that's fantastic. And that's why we wanted to have you on the show. And we'll talk about economics and the academia side of things as well a little bit later. But just tell us a little bit about what's happening in Australia. One of the things we talk on this show a lot about is the culture wars and all this kind of stuff. Where are you guys with that?

00:02:51.020 Well, I think we were in a very good place in the 80s and 90s where we led the world in economic policy and we had a government.

00:03:01.280 In fact, there was a bipartisan consensus on things like race, gender and so on.

00:03:08.860 And that broke down as you could if you were looking to blame the Labor Party, you would blame Paul Keating because he was who was the prime minister from 90 from 1991 to 1996.

00:03:24.260 And he was very divisive, but he was still part of the bipartisan consensus, which didn't go after culture wars.

00:03:32.800 But then on the change of baton to John Howard as Prime Minister, he famously was very insightful in revving up what seems to have been latent in the Australian psyche, which is that if white Rhodesian farmers were boat people floating off our coast, I'm sure we would have wanted to save them.

00:03:53.700 But if they're brown people from the Middle East or Asia, not so much. 0.97

00:03:57.500 And so we've slid into a pretty unpleasant state of affairs where, you know, where, well, we are keeping people out.

00:04:16.100 Now, of course, we have to keep people out.

00:04:17.720 There are 60 million refugees who not all of which could come to Australia.

00:04:22.000 but it's appropriate that we don't just say any old person can come in here,

00:04:29.120 but the lengths that we've gone to in dehumanising people

00:04:32.940 is a national shame, and most people feel it.

00:04:38.460 But there we are.

00:04:39.300 It wins elections, and neither of the major parties.

00:04:42.140 A bit like Brexit, where the elites sort of kind of appreciate it

00:04:47.860 might not be the greatest policy,

00:04:49.580 they think that the people will crucify them

00:04:52.820 if they move away from that policy.

00:04:54.680 So we've got something similar going on in Australia.

00:04:57.180 And do you think that that policy has been brought about

00:05:01.100 because of racism,

00:05:03.420 or do you think it's brought about through other things as well?

00:05:05.940 Like, we had one particular guest on who, you know,

00:05:09.020 who was saying, you know, it's because they want to keep...

00:05:11.940 The reason we voted for Brexit 0.99

00:05:13.460 is because we want to keep British culture intact.

00:05:16.380 Do you think that is what is going on in Australia,

00:05:18.920 or do you think it's more of simply the distrust of another culture?

00:05:22.460 Before you answer that, sorry, Francis,

00:05:23.900 that interview will come out after this one,

00:05:26.200 so Francis has given you a tasty preview of our interview with Eric Kaufman,

00:05:29.520 who will be out in a couple of weeks.

00:05:30.360 That's what I like about you. You're just an advertising man.

00:05:32.600 That's right. So anyway, Nicholas, go ahead.

00:05:35.240 I'm a believer in presumptive generosity.

00:05:37.800 When you're interpreting people, it makes sense to try and interpret...

00:05:42.200 You're trying to make as much sense of what they're saying and doing

00:05:47.080 and the way they're acting as possible.

00:05:48.920 And it's a perfectly legitimate thing to say that we've built a great society here,

00:05:56.840 certainly better than many societies around the world, and we want to protect that.

00:06:01.920 So I don't have any people who feel anxious that too many migrants are coming in from very different cultures.

00:06:13.040 I don't feel that way, but I don't demonise that.

00:06:16.620 I don't demonise that at all.

00:06:18.260 And then there are some racists, then there are some very small-minded, bigoted racists,

00:06:23.060 but that's not the way I look at the debate in Australia or anywhere else, really.

00:06:29.140 Do you think it's cultural, essentially?

00:06:31.340 It's cultural and it's perfectly legitimate to say we, say, as the Japanese say,

00:06:37.860 we are proud of our culture and it's not compatible with too many people coming in here

00:06:43.080 because then it'll be a different culture.

00:06:44.420 I think people underestimate that.

00:06:46.400 They underestimate the extent to which a culture can remain, can protect the best parts of it and then become more exciting.

00:06:55.060 We have a commentator in Australia called Philip Adams who I think his line is that we invited a lot of European migrants into Australia and found that it was so much fun we wanted more.

00:07:07.340 So that's my attitude to immigration.

00:07:09.980 But, you know, I'm not an open-door policy person either.

00:07:14.660 and I'm in favour of a vigorous and expansive immigration programme for Australia.

00:07:20.640 And I respect people who want to...

00:07:22.720 I don't hold up the cross and say you're a racist if people feel differently.

00:07:29.040 So your concern is how those refugees are treated, essentially?

00:07:32.340 Well, I don't want to...

00:07:34.020 One of my concerns is self-righteousness,

00:07:36.200 so it's very important for me not to be self-righteous about this

00:07:40.060 because I'm a privileged person who's going to say to a desperate person,

00:07:44.060 sorry, you're not coming.

00:07:46.180 And whether I draw that line at 200,000, 300,000, 400,000,

00:07:51.460 a million a year,

00:07:52.760 and at the moment it's something like 200-odd thousand a year, 0.99

00:07:56.880 I'm going to be just as much of a bastard as anyone else. 0.98

00:08:01.000 So let's get off our high horses. 0.99

00:08:03.700 Let's try and make ourselves as comfortable as we can be

00:08:06.760 with a policy, whatever policy we come up with,

00:08:11.260 and we will be making heartless and cruel decisions.

00:08:16.380 Nevertheless, let's make them as, let's minimise that

00:08:21.940 and let's feel as good as we can about it.

00:08:23.820 And locking up little kids on islands off Australia

00:08:29.560 without any judicial review, there's nothing good about that.

00:08:33.040 It doesn't make people feel good.

00:08:35.340 I mean, numerous people have died who needed medical attention

00:08:39.960 and didn't get it.

00:08:41.260 Um, I raised $10,000 for refugees at a party about a month ago,

00:08:48.140 and a great writer of ours, Christos Solkis,

00:08:51.140 read the names of those people.

00:08:52.860 So I feel very strongly about this.

00:08:54.940 I don't feel self-righteous about it, and there's a big difference.

00:08:58.540 My father was a refugee, so that's another reason I feel strongly about it.

00:09:02.300 So do you think the Australian government,

00:09:04.140 oh, I think you've just intimated,

00:09:05.460 is unnecessarily cruel in their treatment of refugees?

00:09:07.820 Totally. Well, what would you do?

00:09:09.260 If you have my view or anybody else's view and you know that there's a kid on Manus Island

00:09:14.640 who's self-harming, who has pneumonia, who needs medical attention

00:09:19.640 and you say, oh, well, they might be pulling our leg, they might be pulling a stunt.

00:09:26.120 They probably are pulling a stunt, OK?

00:09:28.560 But they need medical attention and we should be giving them medical attention and we're not.

00:09:34.600 Whenever I watch an Australian comedian at a comedy club,

00:09:37.700 the first joke they make is about Australia being a racist society

00:09:41.480 and it always gets a big laugh and everybody claps and cheers.

00:09:45.060 Is that true?

00:09:46.300 Or would you say that...

00:09:47.880 Well, we're all racist, so...

00:09:49.320 Well, of course we're all racist.

00:09:51.880 I mean, you know these tests on basketball umpires.

00:09:56.980 You know, I have a friend,

00:09:58.940 I just had a cup of tea with a friend who, he's a Dutchman

00:10:04.480 and he organised, or he was instrumental in organising an experiment on buses

00:10:10.660 where people got onto a bus and said to the bus driver,

00:10:14.280 I'm really sorry, I don't have any money, I just need to get to the next stop,

00:10:18.080 would you mind me riding to the next stop?

00:10:20.640 Now, these numbers are made up, but they're indicative,

00:10:23.160 so just assume they're right for the purposes.

00:10:26.840 The 71% or 2% of people had yes said to them.

00:10:32.400 Sorry, about 65%.

00:10:34.160 But if you were white, it was much higher. 0.55

00:10:36.880 If you were black, it was lower. 1.00

00:10:38.800 And those bus drivers, I don't think they were black-hating racists. 0.97

00:10:44.520 So let's relax about these things. 0.83

00:10:47.620 Let's not get too much on our high horses.

00:10:50.840 All right, well, it's an interesting start to our interview,

00:10:53.740 but let's move on to economics.

00:10:55.920 And you mentioned one of the things I like about you,

00:10:59.520 among many things I like about you, is something...

00:11:02.600 We'll get to the things you don't like when the cameras stop rolling.

00:11:06.480 That'll be the bulk of the interview, the rest of the interview.

00:11:07.900 That's when Constantine gets on the vodka.

00:11:10.020 He goes dark.

00:11:12.400 But is that you, I never know, I've spoken, we've spoken many times,

00:11:16.720 I never know where you're going to come out on any particular issue

00:11:19.140 because you're someone who is not ideological

00:11:22.580 and you talked at the very beginning about how you abhor most ideology

00:11:26.240 and it drives people into...

00:11:28.000 Well, I like it as a starting point, not as a concluding point.

00:11:31.100 And I know that it can hijack your emotions.

00:11:34.640 And it gets confirmation bias going too early in the process,

00:11:38.520 if that makes sense.

00:11:39.820 So tell us more about that.

00:11:41.820 What is the impact of having these ideologies

00:11:44.440 that you see out there in the world, in economics and politics?

00:11:47.760 Yeah, so I think this happens everywhere.

00:11:52.020 And what happens, this may sound like a joke,

00:11:55.060 but, well, you're comedians, so it'll be OK, won't it?

00:11:59.360 But it isn't a joke.

00:12:01.100 I don't know, you might relate to this precise story,

00:12:05.340 and if you can't, you can relate to something similar.

00:12:08.000 When you're an adolescent boy at high school,

00:12:10.900 where you wear your belt around your hips is a big deal.

00:12:14.920 If you wear it too high, you're effeminate, OK? 0.99

00:12:18.820 It's completely ridiculous. 0.85

00:12:21.120 And in the 18th century, it was different, 0.96

00:12:23.160 and next century, it'll be different again.

00:12:25.740 But something's going on there

00:12:27.820 which has got a lot of psychological power

00:12:30.140 because it's happening all around the world.

00:12:32.880 And so if you're an economist

00:12:34.300 and this idea seeps into economic policy,

00:12:40.160 which is, are you a free market guy

00:12:42.740 or are you a big government guy?

00:12:45.340 Then you're going to reach for...

00:12:47.960 You're going to be constantly aware of that.

00:12:50.440 You're going to be aware in meetings

00:12:52.320 about how you're going down.

00:12:54.420 There are going to be cliques and cabals,

00:12:57.540 unacknowledged and acknowledged, 0.98

00:12:59.160 and the whole damn thing is actually run by where you're wearing your belt. 0.99

00:13:04.840 It's all mad. 0.99

00:13:06.200 It's all completely unhinged from the merits of the situation.

00:13:12.120 So I don't say that I abhor ideology.

00:13:16.980 I think of ideology as both impossible to avoid

00:13:20.860 and a good starting point because it orients the world.

00:13:24.240 But then I do, I don't pick sides to be contrary or anything like that, but I do spend a lot of my time trying to find ways to express an idea which don't trigger, to use a word that would work on this program, that don't trigger a response from the other side which is, oh, he's just a lefty or he's just right wing.

00:13:50.700 I will actually try and work out a way, a subversive way, to make a point which tries to get under those early warning systems and trick people into thinking for themselves or at least not having all these incredibly strong mechanisms doing the thinking for them, if that makes sense.

00:14:13.440 And I've found that it's just been wonderful because I'm able to wander around and I can pick low-hanging fruit.

00:14:21.640 I can say, hang on, well, why don't we...

00:14:25.120 All right, so you're a free market person, you're an intervention person.

00:14:28.100 Forget all that. What's the problem here?

00:14:31.020 What if we did that?

00:14:32.160 And people go, you sound like you're a free market person.

00:14:36.300 I say, no, no, no, forget that.

00:14:38.260 What if we did that? Would that work better than this?

00:14:41.200 Oh, you're a bit of an interventionist, aren't you?

00:14:44.020 No, no, let's think about that.

00:14:46.000 And through that process, I've, I think,

00:14:50.920 come up with lots of really quite actionable, simple, low-cost,

00:14:57.020 very high-benefit ideas.

00:15:01.920 So there you go.

00:15:02.940 Do you want to give us an example or two?

00:15:04.600 I'll give you an example or two.

00:15:06.140 So think about the labour market.

00:15:08.760 Think about going and getting a job.

00:15:11.260 Now, I don't know what the sort of language in your country is,

00:15:14.500 but one of the, you know,

00:15:15.540 labour market deregulation is all about flexibility,

00:15:20.160 people being able to move from one job to another.

00:15:23.060 You've got people in trenches

00:15:26.700 in which flexibility means an employer's right to hire and fire

00:15:32.600 and what do you call it, no listing or, you know...

00:15:36.400 Blacklisting?

00:15:37.060 No, no, I'm talking about always being available for a job

00:15:40.420 and not being sort of free hours.

00:15:43.340 Yeah, sorry, zero-hour contract, that's right.

00:15:45.940 So that's on one side and then you've got the union

00:15:48.460 and in Australia you've also got quite strong labour market regulation

00:15:52.040 and you would have something like that.

00:15:55.060 Now ask yourself this question.

00:15:57.340 When I go to a job,

00:15:59.780 what do I know about whether it's a good workplace or not?

00:16:03.740 The answer is you don't.

00:16:06.000 Isn't that amazing?

00:16:06.660 Isn't it amazing that you've got all these free market types running around saying we

00:16:11.220 should have more flexibility, and yet the absolute essence of a market working well,

00:16:18.120 and you don't have to have read economic theory to do this, you just have to have existed

00:16:21.960 in markets, the essence of a market working well is that everybody's got good information

00:16:26.280 so they can go where they want to go, what they value.

00:16:29.600 But is anyone paying any attention to that?

00:16:31.900 Well, not that I've noticed.

00:16:34.280 So let me ask you another rhetorical question.

00:16:39.040 In fact, we've got lots of data on this

00:16:40.980 because any company that's got more than 20, 30 employees

00:16:44.800 keeps employee engagement data.

00:16:47.220 They're constantly sending them surveys

00:16:48.880 and I like my boss, I think my boss is a waste of time.

00:16:52.600 I think I'm well trained.

00:16:55.020 It's funny in those things,

00:16:56.440 the one question which everybody says they're below average on

00:17:00.640 is they're not paid as much as they should be.

00:17:02.540 but all the others are sort of up about 70, 80%.

00:17:05.060 This one's down about 46%.

00:17:07.240 So the data's there.

00:17:10.320 And lots of women, but of course it's also true of men,

00:17:14.160 might want to prioritise a flexible workplace

00:17:17.540 over one with strong career structures

00:17:21.680 or lots of money or whatever.

00:17:23.840 Now, of course, if you go and you ask

00:17:27.380 the person you're going to work for,

00:17:29.340 is this family friendly?

00:17:30.660 Well, then if they've decided they want to market family friendliness, they will say, yes, here's our family friendliness policy.

00:17:39.560 But we all know that that's a policy and then there's the fact and that there may be a difference.

00:17:44.600 And yet we've got all this data because they'll be polling their own employees about how they're finding this.

00:17:51.340 So why don't we release the data?

00:17:53.700 Well, that leads to the next...

00:17:57.220 Let me ask you, why don't firms release the data?

00:18:01.400 Because they don't want to look bad.

00:18:03.000 They don't want to show that, you know...

00:18:04.320 Good, that's exactly what I wanted you to say.

00:18:07.920 So why don't the good firms release the data?

00:18:11.700 I enjoy these bits of the interviews the most.

00:18:13.920 Francis gets asked questions he can't answer.

00:18:15.760 Right, so why don't the good firms release the data?

00:18:18.680 Is it because even within that data there will be things that they want to hide?

00:18:22.240 Possibly.

00:18:23.180 I think there's a better answer.

00:18:25.120 This reminds me when I was in school, Constantine's got the answer.

00:18:29.100 Yeah, but I'm not telling you.

00:18:31.300 But you're the interviewee.

00:18:32.640 You're the interviewee.

00:18:33.880 And why would the good companies not want to release the data?

00:18:36.660 Well, I don't know.

00:18:38.120 Tell us.

00:18:38.300 So I'm a good company.

00:18:39.600 So let's say, well, let's not say I'm a good company.

00:18:42.520 Let's say I'm KPMG and I release some good data and you're a PwC.

00:18:46.720 Yeah.

00:18:47.500 And the data looks good.

00:18:48.600 What are you going to do as PwC?

00:18:53.180 You'll have, yeah, no, well, yes, but you'll have different data

00:18:58.560 because you'll be using a completely different system to measure it.

00:19:01.520 Right, yeah, that's true. 0.99

00:19:01.920 So you'll just go through it and you'll get your bullshit artists, 0.99

00:19:05.940 also called, you know, comms people, 0.99

00:19:08.560 to go through it and pick bits out of it that look good.

00:19:12.100 Yeah.

00:19:12.360 And so it's a zero, it's not going anywhere.

00:19:15.900 Yeah. 0.99

00:19:16.480 Because bullshit's coming out, not information. 0.99

00:19:18.840 Yeah. 0.99

00:19:19.020 So, the market failure here is that there is no standard to report to.

00:19:25.020 Yeah.

00:19:26.020 So, Theresa May could say, or Jeremy Corbyn, could say,

00:19:33.020 who wants to take the Prime Minister's challenge

00:19:37.020 to help define a standard, or a partial standard,

00:19:42.020 that we will all collect our data...

00:19:45.020 The first ten questions will all be the same,

00:19:47.020 anyone who agrees to follow the standard and it'll be auditable and then the best firms can release

00:19:53.540 that data and it's auditable and then the ones immediately under them are starting to look

00:19:58.680 like all the rest of the firms so they'll release their data even though it makes them look worse

00:20:04.640 than those people it makes them look better than all the people down there and we'll go down now

00:20:09.120 we won't get all the way to the bottom but that costs virtually nothing is largely risk-free

00:20:17.280 and is not ideological it's problem solving ah so you are an interventionist nicholas

00:20:22.600 ah well and i noticed that there was no compulsion yeah so i think if all that worked out

00:20:29.820 i might i might say oh and by the way after we've proven up this system in five years time this is

00:20:35.960 compulsory for everyone but well you know I might be wrong we'll just have to

00:20:40.520 see but but but that's that's an example of what we could be talking about but

00:20:46.160 no we're not because it doesn't rev us up because it doesn't we can't feel

00:20:49.820 self-righteousness either on behalf of the employee or the employer so it's not

00:20:54.260 good radio not good TV not good media let's go back to let's go back to the

00:21:00.680 You see, as a lay person, one of the things that I think most lay people will think about

00:21:14.560 when they think about objectivity and balance and genuine facts and the pursuit of truth

00:21:20.380 is academia and science and even social science to some extent.

00:21:25.880 Well, I know you were going to say that.

00:21:27.860 That's the one area I can predict your response on.

00:21:30.180 But maybe not exactly for why I think that.

00:21:34.860 Because, I mean, there is a fair bit of political bias

00:21:38.540 or ideological bias in the social sciences,

00:21:41.520 but there's something much worse than that,

00:21:43.060 which is that over the last 20 or 30 years,

00:21:48.480 we've gone from sort of leaving academics alone,

00:21:52.200 which gave us an inefficient but fairly effective system,

00:21:55.560 to treating academics like lab rats in a Skinner box,

00:21:59.040 and they have to produce articles in learned journals

00:22:03.040 by a certain magnitude, of a certain number, or they get sacked.

00:22:07.260 And that has them all running round and round and round

00:22:10.900 on this treadmill, producing articles.

00:22:14.620 And the articles aren't worth anything.

00:22:17.820 The articles are not...

00:22:19.080 They're articles which build disciplines

00:22:21.940 but don't build useful knowledge.

00:22:25.440 and it's a catastrophic state of affairs.

00:22:30.200 And so it's also the case that certainly in the social sciences

00:22:35.240 there's quite a bit of ideological bias, that's true.

00:22:39.920 And generally, I just think there's too much focus on the polls,

00:22:44.000 on these slogans.

00:22:45.080 Are you free market or are you intervention?

00:22:47.900 Well, actually, I think Jonathan Haidt talks about this in his work.

00:22:51.580 In the 60s, there was a ratio of conservatives to liberals.

00:22:55.440 in academia was like one to two and now it's one to 10 on average and in some departments it's like

00:23:00.500 one to 300 yeah right so politically there's a very strong uh bias as well yeah absolutely no

00:23:06.520 it's true it's true in economics it's much less true um so economics is much more uh balanced i

00:23:13.880 would think in fact i don't know it certainly i don't know about left and right which would sort

00:23:19.440 of raises questions of distribution but in terms of preferences for free market and intervention

00:23:25.540 economics is sort of biased towards free markets.

00:23:28.800 The way the discipline is constructed,

00:23:32.100 it's constructed on the presumption

00:23:33.820 that consumers will be better at getting what they want

00:23:38.420 than anyone on their behalf,

00:23:39.920 which, of course, makes perfect sense

00:23:41.280 unless you're dealing with a monopoly,

00:23:43.000 unless you're dealing with trickery,

00:23:44.920 unless you're dealing with bad behaviour

00:23:46.940 of any number of different kinds.

00:23:49.260 So it's actually more complicated than that.

00:23:51.380 But the whole way economics is built

00:23:54.340 is to be built on some kind of presumption

00:23:59.400 that, you know, do we really want to mess

00:24:02.340 with this relationship between consumer and producer?

00:24:04.940 And the answer is no.

00:24:06.760 In lots of cases, we can realise that markets will work well,

00:24:10.260 and then there are all the interesting cases

00:24:12.940 where there is something wrong with markets,

00:24:14.700 but there's also something wrong with governments,

00:24:16.380 and can we evolve institutions

00:24:19.520 that do better than what we're doing now?

00:24:22.560 And I've just given you an example of that.

00:24:24.340 we don't spend much time talking about that.

00:24:26.380 And is that the impact of this kind of way of thinking,

00:24:29.180 that real-world problems don't get solved

00:24:31.140 instead of we have these battles?

00:24:32.660 That's right.

00:24:33.260 So I couldn't...

00:24:34.440 The idea that I've presented to you,

00:24:38.960 I couldn't put that in a...

00:24:41.240 I couldn't publish that in an economic journal 1.00

00:24:43.420 without all kinds of basically idiotic modelling 0.99

00:24:46.940 because they'd go, 0.99

00:24:51.440 oh, yeah, well, that's an idea,

00:24:52.540 but it needs to be more than an idea.

00:24:57.180 So what happens is that the discipline ends up looking at things

00:25:03.420 where there's lots of data,

00:25:05.300 so that's the old business of looking for your keys under the light

00:25:08.060 even though you lost your keys down the road,

00:25:11.580 where there's lots of data,

00:25:13.260 where it's possible to build sort of toy economic models

00:25:17.340 of people interacting.

00:25:19.160 Now, in the example that I gave you, the reasons why people don't have good information about workplaces, it's sort of subtle and it's not very easily susceptible to simple modelling.

00:25:36.120 And most simple modelling just assumes that people know what they need to know and that they have the cognitive power to do whatever calculations are necessary.

00:25:45.620 and I think you would say, I would hope you would say commonsensically

00:25:49.640 that's not the case there.

00:25:50.940 So we should be able to just jump off from that piece of common sense.

00:25:53.680 If someone wants to come along and challenge it, that's fine.

00:25:55.840 We should be able to jump off from that common sense

00:25:58.040 and then start looking at this as a possibility

00:26:00.960 and oodles of other ideas.

00:26:05.300 So we were talking a little bit about how we've seen in academia

00:26:09.520 a gradual shift towards the left, not particularly in economics,

00:26:13.580 but in some departments.

00:26:14.580 Do you think that's a problem, that certain institutions are way over to the left?

00:26:20.540 Yes.

00:26:21.580 And why?

00:26:24.100 Well, because these things should be starting points, not answers.

00:26:33.060 And because, yeah, we've got a whole lot of people running around lecturing other people

00:26:39.120 about essentially nothing, about a bunch of talking points, about a bunch of slogans.

00:26:44.580 disastrous. So what do you mean by a bunch of slogans? Well, well, we've got the recent example

00:26:53.220 of fake papers being published. If you learn the techniques and it's hard work to do it,

00:26:58.100 you can get fake papers published. You can get fake papers published in a surprisingly

00:27:03.880 large number of areas. Now, I happen to have the view that there are whole fake sub-disciplines

00:27:13.020 within economics.

00:27:15.040 So real business cycles is based on the idea

00:27:17.760 that the Great Depression was a spontaneous holiday

00:27:20.260 taken by tens of millions of workers, essentially.

00:27:24.440 It is funny, isn't it?

00:27:27.140 But people have won the Nobel Prize for that work, OK?

00:27:30.360 It's not...

00:27:31.280 No-one's exposed it as a fake

00:27:33.540 because the mathematics is all correct.

00:27:35.780 But the basic assumptions are just risible.

00:27:38.880 You were laughing at them.

00:27:39.900 Yeah. This happens in economics all the time. And sometimes you should make silly assumptions because they kind of get you to somewhere which is fertile. But that's really not what's happened in economics. What happens in economics is that it's this analogy I made with where you wear your belt.

00:27:57.400 There are disciplinary protocols.

00:28:01.560 One of them, I don't think it's worthwhile boring your listeners with it too much,

00:28:06.500 but one of these protocols is that you shouldn't build a model of the macroeconomy,

00:28:13.400 the way the whole economy is working, without microfounding it.

00:28:17.360 In other words, without building an elaborate structure

00:28:20.420 which goes all the way from individual agents

00:28:23.160 and deduces from that macro responses.

00:28:27.400 Now, the problem with that is that we all know that we are members of a herd.

00:28:35.100 We all know that we are ignorant when we make an investment or when we buy a fashion item.

00:28:40.640 And we all know that there is a degree of emergent herd behaviour. 0.98

00:28:45.920 That's a fucking micro-foundation, OK, but it's not in mathematics. 0.70

00:28:50.140 That sort of micro-foundation was already there in Keynes, in John Maynard Keynes. 0.99

00:28:55.220 But it became unfashionable.

00:28:58.840 Keynes was wearing his belt too far up his waist

00:29:02.520 and he looked like a dill according to current fashions.

00:29:06.260 And so we developed this proposition

00:29:10.560 that a model is worse for not having micro-foundations

00:29:15.800 and a particular kind of micro-foundation.

00:29:19.820 Off with the fairies. 1.00

00:29:22.080 But there you are.

00:29:22.720 Those are fake papers, and people got Nobel Prizes for it.

00:29:26.380 So things are a bit more serious than a few fake papers

00:29:29.400 in some of the more left-wing social science disciplines.

00:29:34.700 And you say it's a bit more serious.

00:29:36.300 How serious are we talking about here?

00:29:38.540 Well, it's 8.1 on the Nicholas Gruen series.

00:29:42.780 I mean, I'd put it possibly 8.2.

00:29:45.580 It's possibly an 8.2.

00:29:47.180 I don't know where it is on your scale, but I'd recommend about 8.1.

00:29:50.440 That's where I'm thinking.

00:29:51.260 It's a very serious situation and everyone, well, I can't count the number of times, the number of conversations I've had with young academics who say, yeah, yeah, I know all that and I'll play the game for a while and I'll become more influential and I'll change it.

00:30:09.040 I respect that. I mean, that's an interesting, worthwhile mission to give yourself.

00:30:15.920 But we've heard that from politicians too.

00:30:18.400 And I see this as there's something very unsatisfying about it.

00:30:24.580 Now, you could say there's something unsatisfying about what I've done,

00:30:27.260 which is to go and try and look at problems on their merits,

00:30:31.700 which is a snake oil salesman's way of saying I don't know what.

00:30:35.580 I mean, I try and be as rigorous as I can.

00:30:37.960 I talk to people who know the field better and so on.

00:30:42.080 And when people ask me, what does lateral economics,

00:30:45.880 does it focus on energy or transport or macro or labour market?

00:30:52.100 I say, yes, it does.

00:30:55.160 But we try to look at things on their merits.

00:31:00.000 And I'm sorry that sounds like, you know, that doesn't say very much,

00:31:02.420 but I haven't given you an example of the sort of thing that we try and find,

00:31:06.600 which is just something that people haven't been talking about

00:31:10.440 or thinking about which offers actionable, high-impact kind of results.

00:31:15.760 Well, that's what you've been talking about

00:31:16.960 is not attaching yourself to a particular way of thinking

00:31:19.560 but rather looking at the reality and going, what can we do with this?

00:31:22.920 And a discipline is a set of tools.

00:31:26.000 It's a set of repertoires, a set of instincts,

00:31:29.880 all of which can be useful and all of which can be questioned

00:31:34.540 and which need to be assembled carefully for any particular question

00:31:39.980 and it will be assembled differently.

00:31:42.120 So if I'm talking about a school system as opposed to a hospital system,

00:31:48.380 there will be elements of similarity

00:31:50.560 and there will always be elements of difference

00:31:52.600 and we should try to follow the merits of the situation

00:31:58.640 and use these ideas that are in our discipline

00:32:02.600 and in other disciplines to try and come up with good ways of reacting.

00:32:07.720 Well, you alluded to it.

00:32:08.860 There was a story by the time this goes out,

00:32:11.500 it'll be a couple of weeks ago,

00:32:12.500 with Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose and this other guy

00:32:16.220 who they took a section of Mein Kampf.

00:32:20.420 They threw some feminist buzzwords into it 1.00

00:32:24.020 and they got peer-reviewed and published in the journal.

00:32:27.020 Yeah.

00:32:28.980 That is incredible, isn't it?

00:32:30.700 Well, dogs and rape culture is another one. 0.99

00:32:33.040 Yeah, right, exactly. 0.73

00:32:33.480 Yeah, it's a joke.

00:32:35.160 It's a joke.

00:32:37.440 What can you say?

00:32:40.340 We should all reflect on it because if it's that prominent,

00:32:44.060 I mean, we can say, I mean, quite a few of these kinds of papers,

00:32:49.240 economists are very, there are quite a lot of economists

00:32:51.520 who are very superior about that as if, you know,

00:32:53.680 that wouldn't happen in economics.

00:32:55.060 It's true that doesn't happen in economics,

00:32:57.200 But mathematically defended nonsense happens in economics all the time. 0.98

00:33:04.660 It shows how ignorant we are and how respectful of our own 0.98

00:33:10.220 and everybody else's ignorance we ought to be. 0.91

00:33:12.880 I mean, I take a bit of an interest in business people

00:33:15.560 because they've...

00:33:20.140 Well, some of them might have just got lucky,

00:33:21.840 but it's remarkable how often...

00:33:24.080 I mean, this is true. 0.96

00:33:24.740 So Elon Musk says this and Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett say this, which is we make most of our money mostly by trying not to be stupid, not by trying to be very clever. 0.96

00:33:36.960 And that's not what academics do. 0.99

00:33:39.540 Academics don't win any prizes for not being stupid. 1.00

00:33:43.900 They win prizes for showing how incredibly clever they are, even if it's in the service of something which is ultimately stupid. 0.99

00:33:50.600 so it's an interesting little paradox 0.96

00:33:54.620 and I wouldn't want to get too self-righteous about any of it

00:33:57.420 I mean, I did a drama degree, so I know what that's about 0.99

00:34:01.600 You know a lot about bullshit 0.98

00:34:03.580 Well, let's move on to politics 0.99

00:34:14.260 I've always enjoyed listening to you talk about the political side of things

00:34:18.420 at Kilkenomics. You've often said that we've done to politics what McDonald's has done

00:34:25.520 to nutrition. What do you mean by that?

00:34:28.380 So I think our culture is besieged by fast foodism, if you like. So the paradigm example

00:34:39.840 is fast food and we evolved on the African savannah

00:34:45.920 and we evolved certain appetites and tastes

00:34:50.160 and cultural practices

00:34:52.100 and they meant that we liked food that was sweet,

00:34:56.940 that was rich, that was salty, that didn't disgust us.

00:35:00.900 And if you do that on the African savannah,

00:35:02.680 it keeps you away from poison, you know, meat that's gone bad

00:35:06.520 and it works well for you.

00:35:09.840 And it also works well for you as human beings are evolving and getting richer.

00:35:19.020 They then start to create food for themselves that is more expensive because it's richer and so on.

00:35:26.540 And then at some point, as people start to optimise to sell the food, these instincts betray us.

00:35:37.700 Don't have to tell me about that

00:35:40.320 They become poison

00:35:42.420 They become toxified

00:35:43.560 And I would argue that over our whole culture

00:35:46.800 That we are

00:35:49.880 And this is in a sense what I was saying about academia

00:35:52.500 That we had optimised certain things about it

00:35:56.320 To the point of toxicity

00:35:57.580 We'd gone from an inefficient but effective system

00:36:01.060 To an efficient but ineffective system

00:36:03.580 And, I mean, so if you take the fast food example, if you think that McDonald's is to food, what porn is to sex, and what modern politics is to what we imagine politics should be.

00:36:20.700 So modern politics has been optimised with an inch of its life.

00:36:24.940 people who are selling a political message and I was talking to somebody yesterday about Brexit

00:36:30.060 and she was saying well we know what emotional message Theresa May will go with if she gets a 0.87

00:36:38.340 deal from Europe what's our emotional message and I said to her yes well Adolf Hitler said of course 0.93

00:36:44.340 I reserve reason for the few and emotion for the many and our politics is so optimized around

00:36:53.020 emotion, around

00:36:54.840 entitlement, around

00:36:57.180 resentment. This country

00:36:59.200 is famous for having a prime minister who told people

00:37:01.340 they'd never had it so good. I think that was

00:37:03.160 in the late 50s. That didn't go

00:37:05.160 so well for him. Truth telling isn't

00:37:07.260 a great idea.

00:37:09.600 But that was the

00:37:11.260 late 50s or 60s.

00:37:13.220 And now it's got so

00:37:15.140 much more like that.

00:37:17.260 So much more trivialised,

00:37:19.500 so much more

00:37:20.080 sensationalised

00:37:22.520 And again, people blame the internet, and of course the internet's a very important part of this story, but it's also very important to realise, at least for me, I was very upset and concerned about democracy before the internet, and the best stat I can give you on that is that on American TV, the length of a soundbite went from 48 seconds to 8 seconds, from 1968 to 1988.

00:37:49.320 and we're not going to survive as a democracy

00:37:52.260 with sound bites of eight seconds.

00:37:55.020 We have to be able to...

00:37:58.000 We have to recover reason in our politics

00:38:02.000 and I wouldn't even really be going on about this

00:38:06.880 except that I think that we can do it,

00:38:09.380 except that I think I have an idea

00:38:11.940 which can powerfully detox the situation that we're in.

00:38:16.440 Otherwise, I'd just be kind of grizzling on

00:38:18.600 and I'd rather focus on things that I think I have some...

00:38:22.600 where I think I can make some kind of contribution.

00:38:25.540 Well, that's what we love to do here at Trigonometry,

00:38:27.260 solve the world's problems in one conversation.

00:38:29.500 So why don't you solve it for us?

00:38:31.060 So I think the basic idea is to understand

00:38:36.720 that there are, in fact, two ways of representing the people.

00:38:40.180 There is an old way of...

00:38:41.840 So you can have direct democracy.

00:38:44.360 We actually...

00:38:45.960 Now, in some sense, they had direct democracy in Athens

00:38:48.540 two and a half thousand years ago, but we might get back to that.

00:38:52.880 But since the internet, we actually have the technology

00:38:56.980 to go back to direct democracy.

00:38:58.700 Can you imagine getting home from work, going onto your internet

00:39:02.600 and saying, oh, OK, so we're going to change the weight

00:39:06.840 that a nurse can lift in a hospital from five kilograms

00:39:10.080 to three and a half kilograms? 0.98

00:39:13.540 Dick? I don't know. 0.91

00:39:14.780 So that's one way.

00:39:16.620 And people are enamoured of the idea

00:39:18.560 that direct democracy might be a good thing

00:39:21.340 because that plays to our vanity

00:39:24.240 because politics is all about everyone telling the people

00:39:28.280 the people are good and the politicians are just tricking them.

00:39:33.560 Well, who votes for the politicians? 0.66

00:39:35.960 As Bernard says when Prime Minister Hacker says to him, Bernard,

00:39:40.640 it seems that the civil service exists simply to prevent politicians

00:39:45.040 implementing the sacred promises they made to the people,

00:39:48.760 well, somebody has to.

00:39:50.160 So we're all part of this system.

00:39:53.760 So I don't think direct democracy is the answer.

00:39:56.860 I think direct democracy would quite possibly make things worse.

00:40:00.600 Oh, definitely.

00:40:01.360 So we've gone with a representative system,

00:40:03.400 but the representative system that we've gone for

00:40:06.340 makes us feel good and makes us feel that they're doing what we want

00:40:10.560 because they compete for our votes.

00:40:12.560 That's representation by election.

00:40:15.040 There is another way to represent the people.

00:40:17.380 You might not...

00:40:18.800 Since you haven't read my stuff, I'm going to ask you again.

00:40:21.420 What's the other way to take subsets of the community...

00:40:25.180 This is so good. I'm enjoying this.

00:40:27.440 ..subsets of the community

00:40:28.480 who will be representative of the community,

00:40:31.920 and we do it right now.

00:40:33.420 We did it in ancient Athens and we do it right now in Britain.

00:40:35.920 Look at the discomfort.

00:40:37.000 This really reminds me of...

00:40:39.360 I used to be a teacher, so this is what I did to kids

00:40:41.960 when they didn't do their homework.

00:40:43.200 Exactly.

00:40:43.920 This is karma.

00:40:44.700 I'm making it a feature, not a bug.

00:40:46.760 One of you have done your homework.

00:40:48.820 You haven't.

00:40:49.160 That's good.

00:40:49.660 That's good.

00:40:50.080 There's nothing wrong with that.

00:40:50.860 We've got to have you back.

00:40:53.200 By the way, you're wearing your belt a little hard.

00:40:55.580 Yeah, I'm wrong.

00:40:57.880 I'm getting absolutely open.

00:40:59.540 This is by far in the way the best episode of Trigonometry we will ever release.

00:41:06.140 I don't even know the question.

00:41:08.200 It doesn't matter, man.

00:41:09.560 Representing the people.

00:41:10.580 How can we represent the people?

00:41:11.880 How can we find another way of getting 300, 500 people

00:41:16.360 to represent everyone in Britain?

00:41:18.520 By the way, what Francis thinks about this,

00:41:20.040 why don't you have a think and see if you come up with the right answer?

00:41:22.100 That's right.

00:41:22.720 While we're at it.

00:41:23.500 So what is another way?

00:41:25.740 They did it in Athens, they're doing it in Britain now.

00:41:30.480 They're doing it in courts. 0.78

00:41:33.280 So the jury system. 0.52

00:41:34.200 The jury system, that's it.

00:41:36.320 So you just get ordinary people and you say, what do you think?

00:41:39.420 And that changes everything.

00:41:41.880 It changes the idea that this group is an elite.

00:41:47.880 It only becomes an elite as it learns.

00:41:50.880 So a jury is a cognitive elite for the case at hand,

00:41:54.880 because they've been sitting there for the last 12 days

00:41:56.880 and they've been learning, but they represent the people.

00:41:59.880 And if 12 people, good and true, or whatever it's supposed to be,

00:42:04.880 say that a guy's guilty, you don't feel the need to...

00:42:08.880 to, you know, we don't have lots of talkback radio about how we were ripped off by those

00:42:13.380 rotten jurors. We go, well, if it was good enough for them, they might be wrong, but

00:42:17.240 it's good enough for me because that's the best we can do. We don't do that with the

00:42:20.500 politicians because we have hooked up the idea of representation to merit. Merit has

00:42:26.560 been toxified by all the dark arts of politicking. Elections force politicians to fight each

00:42:37.600 other because they can't become a politician without beating another politician so they're

00:42:42.020 not going to say well hang on we've all got to fix this problem they're going to say well if i say

00:42:48.080 that i'll say that they'll say i'm tough on crime and it'll get me more votes because everybody's

00:42:53.740 feeling really bad about some horrible murder uh so so that toxifies our politics in a jury it's

00:43:03.000 all completely different. In a jury, people listen to each other. They're kind of keen

00:43:07.480 to compromise. So let me take you through the psychology of someone being invited onto

00:43:15.420 a political jury. So now I'm talking about what's called citizen juries.

00:43:19.400 Why don't you outline what it would look like first, Nicholas? So you're talking essentially

00:43:22.820 about a third chamber.

00:43:24.100 So that's one way of doing it. What's been done so far is... So let me give you an example

00:43:30.220 of Oregon in Oregon the state of Oregon in in the United States they have citizens initiated

00:43:35.680 referendums and in 2011 I think it was or perhaps a year or so later they had a referendum on

00:43:43.120 mandatory sentencing now who's not in favor of mandatory sentencing if if you are convicted of

00:43:50.760 a felony sex offense I'm sorry to pick on you again if you are but it's just where you're wearing

00:43:55.900 the bell if you're convicted of a felony sex offense on four occasions do you think there

00:44:02.860 should be mandatory sentencing yeah good if you are convicted it was 25 years in jail if you are

00:44:10.300 convicted of drunk driving on three occasions do you think there should be mandatory sentencing

00:44:15.920 yeah you i didn't even have even it's interesting you said yes i didn't even tell you what the

00:44:20.480 sentence was yeah but the sentence is three months in jail now i answered yes to both those things

00:44:25.420 70% of people from Oregon believed that was a good idea

00:44:31.580 and a citizen's jury was held.

00:44:33.600 24 people meet for one day per weekend for four weeks, four days,

00:44:40.860 and after that process, and we have to assume the best guess

00:44:43.800 is that 70% of them were for and 30% were against

00:44:48.220 or some undecided,

00:44:49.540 and after that process, the 24 people voted 21 against and 3-4.

00:44:57.800 Wow.

00:44:58.020 So, obviously... Now, you can easily imagine...

00:45:00.540 I don't know what the difference was,

00:45:02.840 but I presume you could take someone through a possible, quote,

00:45:08.220 felony sex offence, which actually wasn't such a big deal

00:45:12.080 that you would put someone away for 25 years.

00:45:14.720 I don't know what that was.

00:45:16.280 But I do know... And I have a lot of faith in ordinary people.

00:45:19.540 If I hear that, I think, well, that was probably a dodgy bill.

00:45:23.540 So that's the idea of a citizen jury.

00:45:26.540 The psychology's different.

00:45:28.540 It's more democratic than our electors and so on.

00:45:31.540 Now, how would you... Now, I guess...

00:45:34.540 Yeah, so I want to kind of lead a movement

00:45:37.540 of demanding a citizen's chamber.

00:45:41.540 Now, a citizen's chamber would be several hundred people chosen at random. 0.72

00:45:45.540 And the one thing that it would do is it would take our eye just ever so slightly off the opinion of the people and give us another view of the considered opinion of the people, which in the case of mandatory sentencing is the difference between, you know, 15 or 16 out of 24 and 3 out of 24.

00:46:07.800 A huge difference.

00:46:09.460 And if that had been the case in Australia,

00:46:12.020 I think an overwhelming majority of a citizen's job,

00:46:16.640 of normal people,

00:46:17.560 when they learnt that we were abolishing carbon pricing,

00:46:21.120 which would now be contributing to our budget

00:46:23.960 over $10 billion a year and keeping carbon emissions low

00:46:27.780 and maintaining government services or lowering taxes elsewhere,

00:46:31.820 that was so much, so much better policy

00:46:35.640 than the policy we implemented.

00:46:37.800 that it wouldn't have even happened if we'd have had such a chamber

00:46:41.740 because the parliamentarians wouldn't have had the nerve 0.97

00:46:44.360 to put through such a shitty policy.

00:46:47.260 And I think exactly the same thing would be true of Brexit here

00:46:50.160 because the difference between the opinion of the people on Brexit,

00:46:53.600 which we know is 52-48 in favour, or at least was in June 2016,

00:47:00.560 is about 60-40 the other way

00:47:03.400 when you give people enough time to learn about the issues

00:47:07.460 and kind of decompress from the Daily Mail and The Sun's endless propaganda

00:47:12.660 about, you know, the shape of bananas and pig fat in ice cream

00:47:18.820 and various other things.

00:47:20.540 But I just... I'm a Democrat, but I'm not a Democrat on McDonald's.

00:47:24.820 I want a Democrat on... I want to be a Democrat on proper nutrition.

00:47:30.040 And one of the things you've talked about as well

00:47:32.220 is the consequence of not having this kind of thing

00:47:34.460 and having this McDonaldised politics

00:47:36.740 where it's sound by its inauthentic politicians

00:47:40.520 is that in some ways someone like Donald Trump,

00:47:43.840 who in many ways, many people would say is deceptive,

00:47:47.140 but you've talked in the past about how there's an authenticity to him.

00:47:50.860 His kind of deception is quite different.

00:47:52.640 He's not... I mean, everyone knows that he doesn't tell the truth.

00:47:57.000 Everyone knows that he's like a little kid in a playground

00:47:59.660 who makes stuff up all the time.

00:48:02.520 But he doesn't optimise what he's saying.

00:48:05.860 He doesn't get a bank of comms people and PR people

00:48:09.960 to say this is good for all Americans 1.00

00:48:13.000 or one of those kinds of things.

00:48:18.120 So that's...

00:48:19.860 So people relate to that,

00:48:21.900 because, remember, in this optimised sort of politics,

00:48:25.540 we're keeping people away from their reason

00:48:28.380 and instead, all the signals they get are emotional signals.

00:48:39.560 And it seems to me, and this is just some amateur punditry from me,

00:48:43.660 but it seems to me that people relate to Donald Trump speaking candidly,

00:48:49.600 as he does, as he does.

00:48:52.260 He tells people when he stuffed things up.

00:48:54.860 I mean, not all the time, not when he's saying he didn't stuff them up.

00:49:00.240 He could say anything.

00:49:01.500 But he's, and I don't defend the guy, I think he's a nightmare, 0.97

00:49:06.140 a complete nightmare.

00:49:07.440 But I'm addressing myself to why he is as successful as he is.

00:49:13.900 And I think people hear those talking points,

00:49:17.060 hear those focus-grouped slogans, and just, they've had enough.

00:49:21.960 It's like running your fingers down a blackboard.

00:49:24.260 People are...

00:49:25.340 Now, I may just be projecting my own frustrations

00:49:28.180 onto the great mass of the people,

00:49:31.060 but I just think people absolutely hate all that.

00:49:33.540 They get it in advertising, they get it all the time, 0.98

00:49:37.460 and they know what they're getting and they know that it's junk. 0.99

00:49:40.240 The thing they haven't owned up to is that they vote for that junk. 0.98

00:49:43.700 They wouldn't get it if it didn't work. 0.98

00:49:45.900 Also, as well, doesn't it...

00:49:47.240 Isn't the reason people voted for Trump,

00:49:49.240 people voted for Boris Johnson to be mayor,

00:49:51.380 is that they seem like a version of their authentic self.

00:49:55.300 So people go, oh, I know who this person is.

00:49:57.920 I can then make a decision.

00:49:59.780 It's why Jacob Rees-Mogg is actually quite popular.

00:50:03.240 I quite like watching him because I sort of like the way he speaks.

00:50:10.540 People tell me he's pretty batty 1.00

00:50:12.340 and I think his views on Brexit are probably batty,

00:50:15.560 but I don't really know enough about it.

00:50:17.060 But he knows what he thinks.

00:50:19.480 He's pretty straightforward about what he thinks,

00:50:22.460 certainly the things I've seen him talk about.

00:50:25.860 He's an old... This is almost extinct... 0.97

00:50:28.460 It is extinct in Australia, but he's a Burkean conservative.

00:50:32.640 That just oozes out of every pore in his being.

00:50:37.480 So, yeah, people like that, and, you know, there's lots to like about it.

00:50:42.880 And that's the thing, is that people look at him and go,

00:50:45.580 I know who Jacob Rees-Mogg is.

00:50:47.720 Yeah.

00:50:47.880 Therefore, I can make an informed decision.

00:50:50.620 Whereas before in politics, you looked at a lot of these people

00:50:53.340 and you'd go, I don't know who you are.

00:50:55.600 But for better or worse, I think I know who Donald Trump is.

00:50:59.540 Well, yeah, but that's for worse.

00:51:01.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:02.200 I mean, ultimately, we're making these very difficult decisions.

00:51:07.620 But, yeah, that's the power of this authenticity.

00:51:13.220 and, of course, you know, these people are quite skilled at it.

00:51:18.820 You know, that line that, you know, if you can fake sincerity, you've got to, you know...

00:51:23.120 George Carlin's great line.

00:51:24.160 Yeah, that's right.

00:51:25.200 The main thing in the show business is authenticity.

00:51:28.780 Once you can fake that, you can do anything.

00:51:30.180 That's right, that's right.

00:51:31.440 So they're all pros, they're all professionals

00:51:33.820 and I kind of like the really good people who know that

00:51:38.860 and then use all of that knowledge to project something of some value.

00:51:47.220 But again, we are getting ourselves into a situation

00:51:51.080 where we are expecting such heroism of our politicians.

00:51:57.060 Well, how's that going then?

00:51:59.200 You've actually given the example in the past of an Australian politician

00:52:02.720 who went from being perceived as quite authentic to the...

00:52:07.120 Authentistic.

00:52:07.760 Authentistic, I made up a word there.

00:52:09.800 It's a good word.

00:52:10.300 It's a Trumpism.

00:52:11.480 Trumpism, exactly.

00:52:12.840 No, it's a Bushism. 0.57

00:52:14.100 I'm learning Donald.

00:52:14.520 It's a Bushism. 0.63

00:52:15.180 I'm learning Donald.

00:52:15.920 We want to be on TNN.

00:52:17.020 Yeah.

00:52:18.040 Yeah, so you've given that example.

00:52:19.960 Yeah, so Julia Gillard, I think, and I know Julia a bit,

00:52:23.600 and she was the last nice guy we had as Prime Minister 1.00

00:52:27.620 since John Gorton, who you will never have heard of,

00:52:29.840 but he was back in the early 70s.

00:52:32.560 But Julia went from being a feisty, forensically intelligent deputy leader with fiery red hair to being a talking point zombie. Sorry about that, Julia. 1.00

00:52:47.920 And I had this little fantasy. And the fantasy was that I'd traipse around after her as a staffer for her, because I've worked as a staffer for other politicians.

00:52:57.820 and she'd come out of an interview and she'd say,

00:53:00.840 how did I go, as they tend to, 1.00

00:53:02.780 and I'd say, shit ass Julia, here's a DVD. 0.99

00:53:06.480 When you get home, you and Tim watch this 1.00

00:53:09.160 and you'll see a real master at work.

00:53:13.180 And when she got home, she'd put it in

00:53:14.760 and who would it be but herself?

00:53:17.480 And it wasn't even going to be her former self.

00:53:19.680 It was a particular format that she continued to be very good at,

00:53:23.340 which was Q&A, which is people from the audience asking questions.

00:53:29.700 And she was tremendously, all those things, a little less feisty,

00:53:35.500 but compelling, calm, intelligent, warm, fun,

00:53:43.820 knocked it out of the park.

00:53:44.920 So here we had a kind of superstar in waiting

00:53:48.520 who possibly partly because of the woman thing,

00:53:51.540 possibly partly because she was a woman

00:53:53.340 and was feeling under some kind of pressure

00:53:56.140 to act in a certain kind of way.

00:53:59.160 I don't know.

00:53:59.580 That's pure speculation from my point of view.

00:54:03.560 She couldn't quite do it.

00:54:05.120 I think she got quite a lot better by the end,

00:54:07.840 and by the end it was too late.

00:54:10.260 But that's my bit of...

00:54:13.140 ..that's my bit of amateur explanation

00:54:17.320 for how Julia had a great honeymoon,

00:54:20.200 and made some sort of obvious political mistakes as well,

00:54:24.000 one of which was to be too honest when people said,

00:54:27.140 you've introduced a carbon tax and you promised not to,

00:54:30.320 and the correct political answer was,

00:54:32.960 well, it's not a carbon tax, it's carbon permits,

00:54:36.080 and that's the sort of answer that John Howard would have given.

00:54:38.440 And he wouldn't have got out of it.

00:54:39.780 There still would have been some pressure on him,

00:54:42.140 but it was sufficient...

00:54:43.880 But it turns out, I think, in hindsight,

00:54:46.540 that the right answer was to dissemble a bit,

00:54:49.060 And what Julia Gillard did was said, yeah, OK, you can call it a carbon tax.

00:54:54.780 I made the promise in good faith.

00:54:57.660 I had to run a government in coalition with the Greens,

00:55:00.720 and this is what we've come up with, and it's a good policy.

00:55:04.460 Anyway, so she made some actual political mistakes,

00:55:08.480 which some people could argue were the reason for her not going so well.

00:55:13.080 I think it was this inability to remain authentic

00:55:18.520 through all the spinmeisters and all the pressure

00:55:22.360 and pressure, perhaps, that she put on herself.

00:55:26.400 She has a fantastic memory as well,

00:55:28.600 and on one occasion she gave a speech,

00:55:31.280 almost word-for-word perfect with the speech sitting in front of her

00:55:34.300 without looking at her notes.

00:55:36.200 And I think she did a bit of that, well, in my opinion,

00:55:38.780 she did a great deal too much of it,

00:55:40.440 with talking points that she had in her mind

00:55:42.680 she would return to them, to ad nauseam.

00:55:45.520 And on one occasion, when she was going for election,

00:55:50.160 there was a slogan which was moving forward,

00:55:52.480 which was used 61 times in two speeches,

00:55:55.360 and then it was a joke.

00:55:56.600 Well...

00:55:57.920 I could have told her that.

00:55:59.200 Yeah.

00:56:00.640 So...so she... 1.00

00:56:03.400 She was an authentic politician

00:56:05.840 and she presented herself as a talking-point zombie,

00:56:09.880 as I've unkindly said.

00:56:13.520 Well, I'm sure she's watching.

00:56:16.300 We're fellows at King's College,

00:56:18.260 so I'm going to see you next week with any luck.

00:56:20.940 All right.

00:56:21.380 You won't have shown this by then, will you?

00:56:23.720 No.

00:56:24.020 Probably not.

00:56:24.660 Probably not.

00:56:25.300 So you'll have an opportunity for a good...

00:56:28.140 We'll send it to her anyway.

00:56:29.880 Thanks very much.

00:56:31.880 Look, the last question we always like to ask,

00:56:33.660 because it's been fascinating to have you on the show,

00:56:35.700 is what is the one thing that no-one's talking about

00:56:38.640 that we ought to be talking about?

00:56:39.940 The details.

00:56:40.820 Well, not so much the details,

00:56:42.320 but not those two things in the polls.

00:56:44.620 Not the opinion polls, the left and the right polls.

00:56:47.780 That's what we should be talking about.

00:56:49.520 If we're... Whatever we're talking about,

00:56:51.440 find something of interest,

00:56:53.160 find something you might be able to make better

00:56:55.640 and forget about all the argy-bargy

00:56:58.400 flying backwards and forwards

00:56:59.780 and see if you can think of ways to make it better

00:57:02.960 and then grow a group of people around the idea

00:57:06.660 who will agree with you.

00:57:09.300 Fantastic.

00:57:10.860 It's been great to have you on.

00:57:11.860 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:57:12.820 Thanks, Constantine.

00:57:13.820 I love the way you just announced Francis again.

00:57:16.400 Thanks, Francis.

00:57:16.940 Well, I thought Francis might say something.

00:57:18.540 I'd say thanks, Francis.

00:57:20.340 It's been great to have you on.

00:57:21.680 If you've enjoyed this week's fantastic episode,

00:57:23.660 as always, subscribe to the channel,

00:57:25.420 click that bell button,

00:57:26.540 and I'll let Francis do the social media.

00:57:28.300 Yes, follow us on TriggerPod.

00:57:30.220 We are on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook also as well.

00:57:34.320 um we're starting to get a little bit long reviews on uh the itunes so leave us a nice

00:57:39.420 review tell us what you think um yeah please do and that'll be it and uh thank you again

00:57:44.240 for watching or listening and uh we'll see you next week bye

TRIGGERnometry - October 15, 2018

Nicholas Gruen on Immigration, Corruption in Academia and Citizens' Assemblies

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