In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin argued that the “Tragedy of the Commons” is commonplace. If you wanted to deliberately engineer a commons problem, the management of the Conservation Estate would make for a pretty decent guidebook. Read more

It’s hard not to marvel at Silicon Valley’s technological innovations. But I’m dumbfounded by the social science experiment they’ve been working on. Read more

The government’s draft Emissions Budget gets a few important things right. It abandons measures like subsidies for electric vehicles that, perhaps counterintuitively, cannot reduce net national emissions. Read more

Policy problems should be dealt with by the level and part of government best placed to deal with them. Good public policy should recognise subsidiarity. Read more

I wonder whether Media Minister Paul Goldsmith appreciates the problem that he has caused for the tech sector, for media companies, for himself, and for his government. Before the election, National Party spokesperson Melissa Lee condemned Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. Read more

If philosophy students remember one thing from their lectures on Immanuel Kant in undergraduate classes, it is his categorical imperative. It’s easy to remember because it’s an awful lot like the old Christian ‘Golden Rule’. Read more

There’s a style of conference talk that I loathe. A self-described visionary will spend twenty minutes, or worse - even longer, stringing together clichés about how change is happening faster than ever before, how it will take soft skills to navigate it, and how we need to be ready. Read more

Sometimes, only truly committed localists can see the polished diamond hiding inside the very rough stone. We can remind ourselves that decades of poor incentives facing councils don’t build strong organisations. Read more

Alcohol policy is always contentious – but let’s start with something that should be uncontroversial: If the government wants to reduce alcohol-related harm, it should aim for measures that do more good than harm overall. If a harm-reducing policy stacks up, it does so whether the overall social cost of alcohol is $10 billion, $1 billion, or $100 million. Read more

When Guyon Espiner reported on a police estimate of ‘$7.8b harm from booze’, I was curious whether the figure was the old BERL alcohol cost zombie back again from the dead to torment the living. The BERL number included drinkers’ spending on their own alcohol – not a ‘social cost’ by any reasonable standard. Read more