"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit" An interview with Prof Gigi Foster

Gigi Foster is a Professor with the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, having received her BA from Yale (majoring in Ethics, Politics, and Economics), and her PhD in economics from the University of Maryland. Her research interests and contributions lie in the areas of education, econometric methodology, behavioural economics, and the multi-disciplinary analysis of human behaviour in groups. Professor Foster’s research has been supported by the Australian Research Council, the University of New South Wales, the University of South Australia, the University of Maryland, and the Spencer Foundation, and she has been published in a variety of academic journals including Journal of Public Economics, Quantitative Economics, Higher Education, Human Relations, and Journal of Economic Psychology. Gigi is a nationally awarded economics educator, a member of Australia’s National Economic Panel and the World Well-being Panel .

She is also the author of multiple books including “The Great Covid Panic” and “Do Lockdowns and Border closures serve the Greater Good”.

In this episode, we discuss the following:

- Gigi was on a television program in Australia called Q and A, in 2020. We played a short segment from it during our interview. Gigi was the only one on the panel speaking out against lockdown. The host was Hamish Macdonell and Adjunct Professor Bill Bowtell was present.

- Gigi tells us what was biggest economic and human cost from the Lockdown period. She also highlighted the intangible losses eg loss of trust in government and in eachother. Australia is $1 trillion in debt.

- Gigi tells us there was clearly a crowd psychology going on, and she did not predict that crowd would form.

- In August 2020, Gigi asked where is the cost benefit analysis of the government’s lockdown policy?

- Lockdowns were never part of the Westerns world pandemic preparedness plan and lockdowns do not have a good track record of working.

- Gigi said we should use data and not computer modelling. The obsession with modelling is about conceit. We think we know more then mother nature.

- We discuss a metric system to measure human life quality, qualy’s and wellby’s.

- How does our immigration rate affect the wellbies and quallies as we had 100 000 migrants enter our country just last month

- We discuss the housing problem, and Gigi mentions the book by Cameron Murray, “The Great Housing Hijack.”

- We discuss the disinformation/misinformation bill in Australia and the importance of a marketplace of ideas. With freedom comes innovation.

- Gigi explains that her efforts in the last 2 years have been toward building institutions that better suit humans. She tells us about Australians for Science and Freedom, of which she is one of the founding members. It was founded in 2023 by people who were shocked by what happened during Covid. (see website below).

- Gigi tells us about a new university called Nova Academia which is based in a castle in Belgium. She will be teaching there. Instead of trying to reform existing universities, start a new one.

Books and Websites referenced in the Interview;

- The 2020 Q and A TV episode on the ABC, in which Prof Gigi Foster spoke about the effect of lockdowns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kstSJAu-kOE

- Book: “The Great Covid Panic”, Paul Frijters, Gigi Foster and Michael Bake 2021

https://www.thegreatcovidpanic.com/

- Book: “Do lockdowns and border closures serve the greater good a cost benefit analysis of Australia’s reaction to Covid-19”, Gigi Foster 2022

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63545974-do-lockdowns-and-border-closures-serve-the-greater-good-a-cost-benefit

- Book: “The Great Housing Hijack”, Cameron Murray 2024.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202733769-the-great-housing-hijack

- Australians for Science and Freedom

https://www.scienceandfreedom.org/