John Quiggin – Commentary on Australian and world events from a social...

Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here....

Robert Farley has replied to my recent post on the obsolescence of naval power. Unlike our previous exchange, a pile-on where I was (as he points out) in a minority of one, Robert’s tone is mostly civil this time, and I intend to reciprocate. Our disagreements...

In all the discussion of Leif Wenar’s critique of Effective Altruism , I haven’t seen much mention of the central premise: that development aid is generally counterproductive (unless, perhaps, it’s delivered by wealthy surfers in their spare time). Wenar...

My latest in Crikey
Peter Dutton can’t seem to take a trick on nuclear power. Any option he puts forward seems to vanish as soon as he makes a commitment.
Since Dutton became opposition leader, he’s pushed the idea of small modular reactors (SMRs). At least in their original concept, these were reactors small enough (say 50-to-70MW capacity) to be built in a factory and shipped to sites where they could...