Benjamin Stubbing
Born at a very young age in Auckland, New Zealand, nowadays you’ll find me in Wellington where I work for the Treasury in the Analytics and Insights team. A&I undertake research and analysis on social and economic issues, looking for new and better ways for the public service to improve outcomes for New Zealanders.
I’m enthusiastic about creating a future of abundance: building a materially healthy society that nourishes welfare, ameliorating places where bad rules impede the common good, and growing the things that make a nation great and the world a better place. ie, in Ezra Klein's words, the “stupidly simple” thesis that “to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of the things that we need.”
I'm curious about almost everything! Take a look at my Bookshelf and Writing, e.g. here are the coolest things I learned last year.
More about me
- Ko te rarawa, ko ngai takoto, ko Ngati-Awa-Nui-a-Rangi aku iwi. Kei Pōneke ahau e noho ana. Kei Tamaki Makaurau taku kāinga.
- Previously I’ve worked as a management consultant for PwC and as a research assistant at Victoria University, the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), and the Ministry of Education.
- To let off steam, I regularly have it handed to me in full-contact Origami and I play tennis with mildly more success. I dabble in violin and guitar after a fashion and on occasion I’ve been known to act and emcee.
- I studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Victoria University of Wellington, focusing on econometrics, quantitative comparative politics, and symbolic systems.
- On weekends, I circulate an old-school links blast and I read very slowly.
- Some of my favourite books are: Dracula, Anna Karenina, Reasons and Persons, and The Man Who Was Thursday. These aren't books in the traditional sense of the word but to help you get a sense of me, I also love: In Defense of Sanity, a collection of Chesterton's essays, and The Fixation of Belief, by Peirce.
- Here are some principles I try keep in mind.
My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits.
—F. P. Ramsey, “Epilogue,” in Philosophical Papers (ed. D. H. Mellor)
N.B., web-design is a bootleg imitation of Patrick Collison
.