iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Our book is finally out today! Looking forward to talking to people about it

Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The whole issue 'Australia in the Fraser Years' is now live and full of good stuff. Owen Bennett's paper "The Australian Union Movement and the Politics of Full Employment, 1945–1976" makes for a nice complement to mine on monetarism and arbitration. Thanks to editor @joshuablackjb.bsky.social

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Special Issue: Australia in the Fraser Years: Australian Journal of Politics & History: Vol 72, No 3

Click on the title to browse this issue

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Ben Burgis @benburgis.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

New York friends, come see me and @mikejbeggs.bsky.social and @sunraysunray.bsky.social talk about our new book two weeks from Thursday!

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

See what you guys are missing

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Here is a new blog post, trying to make sense of stock prices. jwmason.org/slackwire/pr...

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alex williams @atwilliams.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

at Common Wealth, we also propose three policies for this situation: 1. Public Investment Authority 2. Federal Grid Authority 3. Public Universal Health Care www.forcesofproduction.com/p/the-produc...

forcesofproduction.com

The Productive State

On Governing The Supply Side

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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.id.au · 17/07/2026

I have an eight, a nine, a jack and a queen. Why won’t the government give me the ten

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Osmond Chiu (赵明佑) @redrabbleroz.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Kinda says something the normalisation of her views that this has only been mentioned by a few outlets in their #auspol reportage about the podcast

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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Some thoughts on the potential direction of travel for Andy Burnham's political economy. The interesting ideas on the left relate to with the supply side -- ownership, control and distribution -- and offer scope for action. The macro constraints still bind however. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

blogs.lse.ac.uk

Will Andy Burnham’s political economy be any different? | LSE British Politics

Andy Burnham is about to become Prime Minister having signaled he wants to break with the political economy of the past 40 years. At the same time, he has committed to sticking with Rachel Reeves' fis...

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I have a new paper out in the Australian Journal of Politics and History: “Monetary Targeting, Wages and Inflation in 1970s Australia: Always and Everywhere a Distributional Phenomenon?” doi.org/10.1111/ajph...

“Mr Whitlam showed himself to be a clever debater. He was asked by a member of the opposition whether he had read the comments that I had been making about inflation being caused by money and government expenditures, and whether he was still inclined to believe that the major source of inflation had been the rising wage rates; and if it was the latter, whether he had gotten in touch with Robert Hawke (the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions).
Mr Whitlam's answer was that the questioner had referred to two eminent authorities, that he thought the second of the two was rather more familiar with this particular situation in Australia than the first, and that therefore he was inclined to accept his
views.”
- Milton Friedman, reflecting on his 1975 visit to Australia.

Theory tells us we have to make a choice - do we go for a monetary growth rate... and phase out the independent role of wage, exchange and price-level authorities; or do we abandon the money supply and elect, in effect, that the Arbitration Commission move to Martin Place?

-Michael Porter, 1978.

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

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Gabriel Winant @gabrielwinant.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

OK I decided to test-run this ultra-elaborate labor history simulation if I can recruit enough people. It's for sickos. 8/28-30, all virtual (some synchronous). Based on Durban mass strike of 1973, demanding of time within that window. Below are intro doc and intake questionnaire if you want to join

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Anthony B, @swearyanthony.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I don't think even the most dedicated haters of Bell's time at ANU expected it to be this bad archive.md/T2yTt (Hai @beneltham.bsky.social et al)

archive.md

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Cosma Shalizi @cshalizi.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, June 2026 bactra.org/weblog/algae...

bactra.org

Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, June 2026

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Ben Burgis @benburgis.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

My, @sunraysunray.bsky.social & @mikejbeggs.bsky.social's book "The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World" comes out this fall. I'd love to do a lot of university events as part of promotion (philosophy or poli sci dept's, YDSAs, etc.) Hit me up if you're at one and want to set one up!

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Luciano Carment @lucianocarment.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

My new opinion piece on our departments blog, the pitch: there is some very old-school economic thinking behind Japan's 'new' arms industry.

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Dammit this impertinence is going to drive me back to a more sycophantic chatbot

So: not a flat non-starter, but the full vision bundles electrical work you must pay for, structural work that needs professional input, an asbestos question that could halt things, and a heat problem the nook can't really escape.
Stacked on a no-budget, no-experience footing, the whole dream is a real stretch - and notice the binding constraint turns out to be "can't afford to hire," because the tasks that aren't DIY-able are exactly the ones the project leans on.

So before we judge it a non-starter, it's worth being clear with yourself about what the heart of this is: is it really the reading nook — a lovely, slightly romantic idea, and the most expensive and least feasible part — or is it fundamentally just that you have crates of books and nowhere to put them?

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Arin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Lowkey if I had to choose one economic idea from the past I'd resuscitate it'd be the Rehn-Meidner Swedish model.

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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.id.au · 09/02/2026

Remembering Job Kudelka, his greatest one line single panel

Jon Kudelka cartoon. Julia Gillard is turning off the Light On The Hill and saying ‘it was attracting the boats’

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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

In response to the reappearance of MMT, I have, somewhat reluctantly, written up where the current crop of 'pop MMT' goes wrong. The short version: yes the central bank issues money; no this doesn't change anything. criticalfinance.org/2025/12/19/w...

criticalfinance.org

What’s wrong with MMT?

As Marc Lavoie and John Quiggin have noted, there are ‘two MMTs’. Scholars such as Randy Wray, Eric Tymoigne and Scott Fulwiler have contributed to debates on monetary economics, instit…

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Hannah Forsyth 🍉 @hannahforsyth.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

The world needs is even as the universities collapse. open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo...

open.substack.com

The Pub at the End of the University

As universities implode, the world still needs us.

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Dr Richard Denniss @richarddenniss.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Yep. Also bizarre to exclude things like philanthropic revenue but not exclude any of the expenditures funded by philanthropy

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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Plus writing down assets; plus removing research and philanthropic income, but still counting the expenditures against that income

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

One thing that really annoys me in uni reporting is deducting all investment income from operating revenue to calculate an ‘underlying margin’ and presenting that as the figure that matters. It mixes reasonable (the item is volatile) with the spurious (therefore we should count it at zero)

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

If only we could go to the supermarket with the same attitude as uni administrators. ‘Sorry, my budget is limited so I’ve decided you are going to give me more stuff for that budget’

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

What’s wrong babe? You haven’t even started drafting your Five Year Plans for each of the Four Pillars of Academic Excellence

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The other side is, of course - of course! - the companies making LLMs are not doing so with the goal of more easily sharing the material that people have made freely available on the web. They are doing so with the goal of enclosing it - converting the products of free human activity to commodities.

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The lesson we should be taking from LLMs is the immense social value there is in having all kinds of material - all kinds of products of human intellectual labor - freely available online. They should be reminding us of the early utopian promise of the web.

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Great thread, couldn’t agree more.

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Motherfucker this is the London review of books you better take your sensitive ass back to the Atlantic

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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I just put up a longish post on my blog, thinking about what's going on in the labor market. jwmason.org/slackwire/so...

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Doug Henwood @doughenwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Topical commentary from 1852 www.marxists.org/archive/marx...

Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation, and being at the same time, like a juggler, under the necessity of keeping the public gaze on himself, as Napoleon’s successor, by springing constant surprises – that is to say, under the necessity of arranging a coup d’état in miniature every day – Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion…, makes some tolerant of revolution and makes others lust for it, and produces anarchy in the name of order, while at the same time stripping the entire state machinery of its halo, profaning it and making it at once loathsome and ridiculous.

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Aaron Benanav @abenanav.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

I'll be speaking to Nancy Fraser and Geoff Mann about what's 'Beyond Capitalism' at the New York Verso Office on Thursday, October 2nd. Please share! Link for tickets: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-left-r...

eventbrite.co.uk

New Left Review 154 Launch

Aaron Benanav will be discussing his framework for a post-capitalist social order with Nancy Fraser and Geoff Mann.

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Sitting here omnisciently, pitying everyone stuck in epistemological bubbles

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Mike Beggs @mikejbeggs.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

Congrats ANU comrades. Can’t be bothered editing the meme but here are the bits to assemble in your head

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Tim McLellan @timmclellan.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run. My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities. www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor... A thread

Image shows a screenshot of the conclusion of the linked Senate inquiry submission. This text can be found on page 10.

The text is too long for alt text, but here is the first three quarters of the text:

Conclusion

Over the past decade, Nous Group’s UniForum data has quietly taken on the status of authoritative benchmark for the quality of a range of professional and academic services performed by public universities in Australia and across the world. This authoritative status is performed through scientific-looking graphs and scientific-sounding jargon designed to imply UniForum data is generated through rigorous methods and backed by expert consensus. This performance of authority is significant: it lends UniForum data an air of credibility and facticity that makes acting upon its results irresistible.

When one begins to open the black box and examine how UniForum data is actually produced, however, it becomes difficult to justify the degree to which Australian university executives are relying upon it in their decision-making. My analysis is based on a review of publicly available documents, and it is therefore possible that Nous or its clients would point to things not in the public domain that address some of the conceptual and methodological flaws that I have highlighted in UniForum. But the fact that the underlying UniForum data and methodology is not in the public domain is itself one of the key causes for concerns. When the stakes are so high, it cannot be acceptable for Nous Group and its clients to simply tell university staff and governing councils, ‘trust us, these numbers are based on rigorous methods and analysis.’ The lack of rigor, external scrutiny, and transparency in UniForum’s underlying data and methodology would be a cause for concern in any public institution, but it is especially concerning in the context of universities where rigorous, transparent, and accountable knowledge production is a core part of what we do. ...

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Our ANU @ouranu.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

A grassroots group of academics campaigning against the staff cuts said ... “The issues at the heart of this crisis go beyond the vice chancellor. This has been years in the making, the product of deep governance failures that have damaged the university’s finances, reputation, and community trust.

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Warwick Anderson @wombatscholar.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

A nice article about friend and colleague Raewyn Connell in the SMH, including foreshadowing her new trans memoir. Pleased to see she's delivering this year's Ted Wheelwright lecture in political economy at Sydney University - one of the few universities to maintain political economy and Marxism.

smh.com.au

Raewyn’s groundbreaking work changed how we think about men. Its origins were deeply personal

Raewyn Connell has a global reputation and is speaking at an event marking one of the PM’s intellectual influences.

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Osmond Chiu (赵明佑) @redrabbleroz.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Would it be more or less embarrassing if their excuse that they didn’t use AI but simply made lots of basic errors was actually true?

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