The unimportance of being responsible

John Kay writes:

In politics, business and finance, as on the seas, the hero is the person who tackles a problem, rather than the person whose actions prevent the problem arising. ...If Margaret Thatcher had acted to deter Argentina from invading the Falklands, rather than ordering a taskforce to remove the occupying forces after they had landed, she would probably have been remembered as an unsuccessful one-term prime minister.

He's right: being remembered and winning elections are not as helpful as preventing problems arising in the first place but unfortunately they constitute success in our current policymaking system. As a society we'd do better to reward those of us who anticipate and avoid social and environmental problems before they become emergencies. A Social Policy Bond regime that rewarded the maintenance of the best aspects of the status quo could do this: bonds could target, for example, the absence of large-scale wars, or use of nuclear weapons; or the absence of catastrophic climatic events or large-scale disease epidemics.

Many of our social and environmental problems need long-term, unglamorous, patient, adaptive and diverse approaches to their solution. Such approaches seldom cover their practioners with glory or even recognition - still less do they win elections. There are many well-meaning people and organizations in these areas and many of them do superb, heroic jobs with few resources. A Social Policy Bond regime could both enlarge this pool of effective problem-anticipators and divert more resources their way. Incentives do matter and it would be a good idea, I think, if the people currently devising ingenious advertising campaigns for dogfood were instead given the chance to provide decently for their children by working to deter nuclear warfare or mass environmental disasters.