The current Economist writes about the militias and gangs in Brazil:
Founded by former policemen, Rio’s militias gained prominence in the 1990s by hunting down drug traffickers, winning the support of terrified residents and forging links with local politicians. Yet today they extract a security tax in areas they control and charge residents for access to gas, internet, transport services and electricity. More recently, they have started trafficking the drugs themselves. Brazil’s criminal groups are walking the militias’ path in reverse. Gangs are increasingly funding politicians, paying off local prosecutors and bureaucrats, and laundering their assets through the legal economy. Brazil's gangsters have been getting into politics, the 'Economist', 14 November 2024
At any scale above the smallest, we rely on organisations, be they public- or private-sector, to solve our social and environmental problems. However, organisations, once they've been going for a while, tend to develop priorities other than, and often in conflict with, their stated goals. Their over-arching goal becomes self perpetuation. It happens to all types: not only government bodies and Rio's militias, but also to religious organisations, trade unions, political parties etc.
Which is why I advocate a new type of organisation: ones whose structure and composition are entirely subordinated to their stated objective. Under a Social Policy Bond regime, investors in the bonds would form a protean coalition, whose every activity would be devoted to achieving verifiable outcomes. Those outcomes, at the national level, could include, reduced crime, and better physical and mental health. At the global level, we aim to improve the environment, reduce climate change (or its adverse impacts) or, more ambitiously, we could aim to bring about world peace.
There are plenty of organisations ostensibly devoted to these goals, but my contention is that they too frequently lose sight of their original intentions, despite their being staffed by, in many cases, hard-working and well-meaning employees. A case in point could be the United Nations Climate Change conferences. The current one, with 67 000 attendees, is the 29th. Much of their attention over the years has been focused on greenhouse gas emissions, chiefly carbon dioxide. This graph showing the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide over time, tells us how successful they have been:
'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?' From Riding the Climate Toboggan, John Michael Greer, 6 September