In political economist Mancur Olson's pathbreaking book, The Rise and Decline of Nations, published in 1982, he argued that a country's economic stability ultimately leads to decline as it becomes increasingly dominated by organised interest groups, each seeking to advance their interests at the expense of others.

By contrast, countries that have a collapse of the political regime, and the interest groups that have coalesced around it, can radically improve productivity and increase national income because they start with a clean slate in the aftermath of the collapse. Examples are the rapid growth of postwar Germany and Japan, as Wikipedia reminds us.

Illustration: Michael Mucci.

Professor Ross Garnaut has argued that Australia is unlikely to see another era of extensive micro-economic reform because of the growth in rent-seeking behaviour since the days of the Hawke-Keating government.

What these days passes for the political debate seems to be dominated by ''distributional coalitions'', in Olson's phrase, arguing for ''reforms'' from which the chief beneficiaries would be their good selves, or desperately opposing government reforms that would impose even the most modest sacrifice on their members.