Several weeks ago I said that at some point I was going to start spending more time writing essays that might eventually form the basis of book chapters, and less time covering topical events.
Today is that day.
From now on, I’m going to write considerably less about the day’s news. For example, Albo pressing ahead with one of the dumbest housing policies in Australia’s history? Read about it in the AFR.
Byron Bay’s Airbnb cap? That one was so obviously stupid that even the ABC’s coverage was able to capture some of the inevitable unintended consequences.
Premier Rockliff’s pig-headed decision to proceed with Tasmania’s new footy stadium, which will be one of the world’s most expensive on a per-seat basis? Read the government’s own review, which said building it would cause “a substantial net social cost to the Tasmanian community”—or just watch the 2014 episode of Utopia that predicted the politically-appealing but economically-idiotic decision.
Anyway, the next post will be a write-up of a recent weekend trip I took to Tokyo, for which I’m still paying by way of a Scoot-related respiratory illness. Beyond that, all posts on Aussienomics will be on important, slow-moving issues – e.g., the renewable energy transition – but may not contain anything that you’ve seen in the news that week, month, or even year. Posts will also be more in-depth, but considerably less frequent, than the roughly 4 to 5 posts a week that I’ve been pumping out lately.
Finally, note that future Aussienomics posts will not be related to the essays I mentioned at the start. Those will be posted elsewhere (TBD) and are going to dive into what I’m calling ‘popular confusions’, i.e., politically popular ideas that can and do go very wrong, with lessons for the future. Rest assured that when I do eventually churn one of those out, I’ll most certainly cross-post a summary here!