Failure can be overdetermined

Last week, on The Platform, Auckland Uni's Prof of Macroeconomics blamed my shop for the government's not adopting his proposal to completely overhaul the health, welfare, and retirement system.

Robert MacCulloch debates Oliver Hartwich from the New Zealand Initiative following the Nicola Willis interview.

Watch the full video at https://t.co/cXDdwFy9gF pic.twitter.com/HjFK0G77W1

— The Platform NZ (@theplatform_nz) September 22, 2025

About a decade ago, Prof MacCulloch and Sir Roger pitched their proposal. 

It looked like it would take considerable effort to see whether the numbers added up. 

It also seemed like something that would be difficult to convince anyone to implement. 

We declined to weigh in. We've neither endorsed the policy nor recommended against it. 

No conspiracy is needed to explain successive governments' failure to pick up the Douglas-MacCulloch proposal. Just the usual inertia. 

The default path for a good policy proposal isn't implementation. The default path is failure. 

Most proposals fail. 

And especially for large changes that are complicated to work out and that the civil service isn't likely to support and that politicians are likely to see as risky. 

I don't think that proposal could have succeeded without enormous amounts of work being put into demonstrably ensuring the numbers stacked up, public comms on explaining it to voters, work with officials so that they'd understand what the thing involved and in hope that they wouldn't wreck it, and work with MPs so they'd see the merits. 

It probably would have required hiring an actual lobbying shop to help. 

Anyway. Bottom line here: we didn't do anything to help or hinder Robert's proposal. 

And it is weird to think that the thing could only have failed due to nefarious influence. 

That isn't how anything works. 

In the video, Robert notes having had a meeting in Bill English's office in which Matt Burgess argued against Robert's compulsory savings scheme - and suggests it's part of the Initiative's push to kill his policy. 

Matt didn't work with us until after his time working in Minister English's office. I was sad when Luxon's office later stole him from us.

Success happens through weird mixtures of luck and timing and work and skill. Failure is the norm, and is generally overdetermined.

We've been successful with a couple of our policy ideas. But we work on and pitch lots of policy ideas, and have for a long time. Failure is the norm, particularly in the short term. 

Think about the number of papers that turn up in NZ Economic Papers that have a policy recommendation and that aren't obviously crazy. What fraction of those turn into actual policy change? Half a percent? Less?

And who knows. Maybe MacCulloch and Douglas's proposal will get a re-airing with long-term superannuation costs again being salient.

But failure is the norm, even for meritorious proposals. No conspiracy is needed to explain failure. It's just what happens.