Social Policy Bonds and direct democracy

There aren't many examples of direct democracy whereby 'people vote on policies and laws themselves, instead of electing politicians to do it on their behalf.' In a representative democracy, we elect people to make those decisions. There used to be many practical reasons for this: canvassing opinion was technically difficult and expensive, education levels were low, governing is complicated and requires many people to set up systems and oversee them. As well, people in government genuinely believe they can do a better job of governing than ordinary people and, for that reason and others less edifying, do not want to relinquish their power. But with rising educational levels, government becoming ever more powerful and intrusive, and with the widening gap between our elected representatives and ourselves, I think it may be time to reconsider how certain decisions are made - and who makes them. 

Many of the biggest decisions that government could make, are made implicitly, reactively or without deliberation. Decisions about how much to spend on health versus defence, for example. Short-term considerations dominate. But the broad, long-term policies that fall out of the current system need not actually be made by politicians and bureaucrats. It's now feasible that they be made by those who are most affected by them: that is, ordinary citizens. 

I've written much about Social Policy Bonds and how they would direct the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of society's long-term goals. (For more, see here.) But the other main feature of a bond regime is that it would oblige us to frame policy in terms of these goals, and it reward the achievement of these goals rather than activities or bodies that are supposed to achieve them. 

Policy expressed in terms of broad outcomes, with the decisions about who shall achieve them and how they shall do so left open, could be best made by ordinary citizens. Most of us nowadays are fairly well educated and could inform ourselves about broad policy goals, and choose which of them should have higher priority. So, under a bond regime, government, in its new role as synthesiser of the public's policy priorities, could present us with a range of policy goals, with approximate costings that we could rank (see Efficient costing of objectives in Chapter 5 of my book for why they need only be approximate). 

We'd be able to choose between various goals. For instance, at the national level, we could choose to target a reduction in crime; or an increase in physical health; or reduced unemployment; or improved air quality. Approximate costs could be given, along with targeted percentage changes. We could then rank them according to which we'd like to see most. 

There would be many benefits from such an approach. Apart from the efficiency gains that would result from allowing non public-sector bodies to compete for the work, there'd be:

• a long-term approach to policymaking, with much greater stability of policy goals,
• more transparency about these goals, 
• more buy-in from ordinary citizens, and
• more widespread appreciation of the notion of trade-offs inherent in policymaking.

There are various steps along the way to moving toward this - radically different - form of democracy. Some forms of direct democracy are already in use: referenda or proposals initiated by citizens in eg Switzerland or New Zealand, subject to their being supported by a significant number of signatures. A less familiar example is: 

...Taiwan’s experiment with deliberative democracy, which has generated fast and flexible policy responses to many issues, including social media. ... Taiwan’s minister for digital affairs ... has been central to this deliberative democracy initiative. She points to the island’s success in tackling deepfakes and disinformation by inviting 447 citizens to discuss appropriate responses. These 45 citizens’ assemblies suggested community notes should be attached to suspicious posts, that social media companies should share liability for deepfake scams and that their services should be progressively “throttled” until they complied with such requests. As a result of collective efforts, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs reported a 96 per cent fall in online scam ads last year and a 94 per cent reduction in identity impersonation. Want to solve deepfakes? Ask citizens what to do, John Thornhill, 'The Business Times' (Singapore), 30 January 2026

I think we can now be entrusted with deciding on bigger issues, such as deciding on the relative importance of health versus defence but also goals that are currently not explicitly or meaningfully quantified and for that reason and others remain untargeted: one example would the numbers of people made homeless by natural disasters over a period of, say, 30 years. A bond regime would require that government take a hands-off approach to the achievement of these goals, and let all bodies, public- or private-sector compete for funding on the basis of efficiency, at all steps along the way to achievement. 

While government would relinquish some of its powers, especially over the funding of public-sector bodies, it would still have the responsibility of articulating society's wishes coherently, and in raising the revenue for their fulfilment. These are functions that our democratic governments can do well; they are not so good at efficient achievement of long-term societal outcomes. Under a bond regime, that would be done by market forces: in economic theory - and on all the evidence - the most efficient means of deploying society's scarce resources. Social Policy Bonds would represent a radical transformation from current policymaking systems; but it's one that is now practical, has huge advantages, and would close the gap between government and the people. 

Pay or pray for world peace

Professor Dominic Lieven, in a letter to the editor of the Financial Times, writes about the origins of the First World War:

Far more than any other individual, it was the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, whose miscalculations led to war. These miscalculations were rooted in a deeply pessimistic analysis of the probable future European geopolitical developments, which owed something to personal anguish caused by the death of his wife shortly before the assassination of the Habsburg heir at Sarajevo. America's declining empire: more Vienna 1914 than Suez 1956, Dominic Lieven, 'Financial Times',. 27 January 2026

It's scary how much the life of every human on the planet depends on the psychological make-up and stability of the very few individuals who lead our countries. Just as scary is that it's accepted that the systems that give these people such power are rarely challenged. How far have we advanced since the days of von Bethmann Hollweg, whose state of mind and mood swings arguably caused the catastrophe of World War 1, with consequences that blighted the entire twentieth century? Not much really, except that we can now imagine that a similarly disturbed individual could cause hundreds, rather than tens of millions to die.

We need to cut out the middleman - politicians and their policies - and instead vote directly for the outcomes we wish to see. This could be done by issuing Social Policy Bonds that would reward investors for achieving these goals, and at every step along the way. At first, targeted outcomes could be modest, and set at the national level. They could include such goals as increasing the health of the population by five percentage points, or reducing crime rates by 20%. Politicians could do something useful, and translate our wishes into coherent, actionable, policy goals. They would also raise the revenue that would be used to redeem the bonds once the targeted goal had been achieved. 

But what about the possibility of war? A bond regime could target the sustained absence of conflict, supplying incentives for the people who influence those in positions of power, to avoid war or face being removed from office. This could work at the national or global level. In the long run, a carefully crafted World Peace Bond regime would see incentives cascading downwards from the goal of world peace through all levels of all political systems, reducing the likelihood that the people at the top will inflame conflict. 

Avoiding violent political conflict - war and civil war - should be our first priority. Sadly, the incentives currently on offer make such violence more likely rather than less. A bond regime, at first reading, might seem outlandish but the alternative is simply 'business as usual' ie, rely on hope, and pray that the people in power resist their instincts and those of their ideologically motivated advisors and refrain from using their military might to impose their will on others. It's a scenario judged 'alarming' by the Economist, as well as me:

To an alarming degree, war and peace now depend on the whims of a handful of vain old men. Vladimir Putin is determined to add square miles to Russia, no matter how many Russians die or are impoverished in the process. Whether or not China invades Taiwan hinges on Xi Jinping, who craves a chapter in the history books and a chance to honour his late father, who was once the official in charge of reclaiming the island. Mr Trump is the least predictable of all, wielding American firepower willy-nilly to give short-lasting dopamine shots to his own ego. A chilling but plausible scenario: What if Putin wins?, 'the Economist', 22 January 2026 

I'd rather see a system, like a bond regime, that would reward people who work for and achieve peace in ways linked to their success in doing so. This would expand the numbers of people and the range of activities directed towards the ending of war. As well, the bonds would channel market forces - in economic theory and on all the evidence, the most efficient way of allocating society's scarce resources - into achieving peace as cost-effectively as possible. The alternative means continuing to place the fate of millions of people in the hands a tiny number of people who are just as subject to frailty, delusion and instability as the rest of us. 

It's a billionaire's world

George Monbiot writes: 

The World Inequality Report...2026 shows that about 56,000 people – 0.001% of the global population – corral three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. ... In the UK, for example, 50 families hold more wealth than 50% of the population combined. You can watch their fortunes grow. In 2024, Oxfam’s figures show, the wealth of the world’s 2,769 billionaires grew by $2tn, or $2,000bn. The total global spending on international aid last year was projected to be, at most, $186bn, less than a tenth of the increment in their wealth. Governments tell us they “can’t afford” more. In the UK, billionaires, on average, have become more than 1,000% richer since 1990. Most of their wealth derives from property, inheritance and finance. George Monbiot, Money talks, 23 January 2026

There is, possibly, a case to be made for huge disparities in wealth in a world without poverty, where the wealth is channeled into the relief of poverty, and where the wealth is accumulated through ways that benefit society or, at least, are not destructive of society. In such a world, philosophical discussions about desirable wealth distributions would be interesting and likely to be inconclusive, with good arguments to be made on all sides. But we don't live in such a world. There is poverty (7.5% of the world's population is estimated to be living in 'extreme poverty') and other afflictions that could be alleviated with a more equal distribution of wealth. There is some philanthropy, but:

Forbes once again investigated the lifetime philanthropic giving of every member of The Forbes 400. In total, these billionaires—worth at least $3.8 billion each—have donated an aggregate $319 billion to charitable causes over their lifetimes. [H]owever, America’s richest people are still not all that generous, relatively speaking. Their collective charitable giving equals just 4.6% of their total wealth—and that’s down from 5% last year. Three-quarters of them have given less than 5% of their fortunes away, including 40% who have donated less than 1% of their riches. America’s richest billionaires keep getting richer. They’re not donating much more, Ella Malmgren, 'Forbes', 9 September 2025

What about the sources of great wealth? Inheritance is one; in many countries, it's relatively easy to minimise with legal strategies like trusts, gifts, and charitable donations to minimize inheritance taxes. Rising property prices also have much to do with rising inequality, widening the gap between those who inherit wealth and those who, in many countries, can never own their own homes, however hard they work. As well, it's relatively easy for large corporations to influence the policy environment to discriminate against small businesses and undermine competition; another source of wealth accumulation at the expense of wider society.

All this is not necessarily objectionable. I just think it unlikely that it soaring wealth inequality - its randomness, and its co-existence with rising inequality and extreme poverty - reflects society's wishes. My guess is that it conflicts with them. It's come about because we don't choose policy outcomes: even in democratic countries we choose politicians, political parties and base our choices on ideology, looks or reported and often distorted media images. Any correlation between what sort of society people actually want, and the society that arises, is almost accidental. Politicians and the elites can get away with this, because they can talk vaguely about economic growth, as if achieving that will mean that poor people will inevitably benefit. It mostly did in the past, but doesn't today:

Despite experiencing economic growth post-2020, a third of 160 countries analysed witnessed a surge in extreme poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most adversely affected region, with an average of 130,000 individuals per country moving into extreme poverty per percentage point of GDP growth each year. Growth without gains, UNDP, 16 October 2023

The implicit target of most governments is growth in GDP or GDP per capita. As we are not used to thinking in terms of coherent, explicit and verifiable policy goals, GDP has become a de facto target, though its weaknesses as an indicator of well-being are widely known. 

My suggestion, then, is that we start thinking about the sort of society we want. We could, for instance, explicitly target poverty, and reward people for achieving it. Social Policy Bonds would channel the market's incentives and efficiencies into doing just that: on a global scale, a mix of governments, supra-national bodies, philanthropists and ordinary people could all contribute to a fund that would redeem Human Development Bonds. At a national level, we could target unemployment, health, literacy and other indicators of poverty that either are themselves, or are inextricably linked to, poverty and deprivation. The very obvious benefit of applying the Social Policy Bond concept in this way is that we'd be increasing social well-being as efficiently as possible: the market for the bonds would see to that. There are other, less obvious benefits: transparency and stability of policy goals, as well as buy-in. But, even more relevant for this discussion is that a bond regime would channel wealth and wealth creation into projects that benefit the whole of society. People could still become rich - or even richer, but under a bond regime the would do so by diverting their expertise and capital into projects that benefit everybody. A further consequence of this is that other activities: those of zero or negative social benefit, could be more heavily taxed. There's much more about Social Policy Bonds and their benefits in the papers and books linked to on SocialGoals.com. All my work on the bonds can be downloaded for no charge. 

The unimportance of competence

There's a long list of criteria by which people judge for whom we'll vote, including: ideology, personality, public image (including looks), racial or religious identity, charisma, height, or simply how prominent a candidate is in the media. Way down the bottom of this list would be competence. This is partly because we rarely look back over candidates' records - nor even that of the administrations of which they were members. Admittedly, because of the large number of variables and society's complexity, it's difficult to ascribe outcomes to recent individual performance. I think we could do better.

I believe we'd all benefit if we were offered a choice of outcomes, rather than one of political parties or candidates, many of whom can get away with talking only vaguely about what they hope to achieve in office. A Social Policy Bond regime would do this; people would choose the outcomes they wish to target and their priority. This would have many benefits. First, it would change the way in which we judge administrations: competence would shoot up the list of criteria by which we judge an administration. Second, it would get us used to the notions of trade-offs and opportunity cost when choosing which goals we should target. Third, it would drastically shrink the role of government in allocating funding; not theoretically a goal in itself, but given the temptations and actual corruption scandals, even in relatively less corrupt countries, it would contribute to more efficient government. Under a bond regime, government would relinquish its role in allocating funding to public- and private-sector bodies: this would be done by investors in the bonds, whose over-arching goal would be the efficiency with which society's social and environmental goals shall be achieved. Markets, in economic theory and on all the evidence, are the best way of allocating scarce resources. But government would still have important roles doing things that only it can do: articulating society's goals and raising the revenue that would reward those who achieve them.  

There would be other benefits. Policymaking would be more transparent. And there'd be a far more direct link between stated policy objectives and the activities undertaken to achieve them. So that, say, if we collectively decide we want to do something about cleaning up the environment, an Environmental Policy Bond regime pay people to clean up the environment. If we want to reduce crime rates, we'd reward investors in crime reduction bonds only when crime rates have fallen. 

We need to target outcomes, rather than wait decades for government to agree on what's required and then make policy that might, or might not, do something to achieve it. What is important is not how our urgent social and environmental problems are solved, nor which body shall try to solve them, but that they are solved. Social Policy Bonds are one way of getting government to focus on what we as a society actually want to achieve and out of the business of identifying genuinely (or not) difficult scientific and social relationships. The first is something that democratic governments can actually do quite well. The second is something that markets do much better, because scientific and social relationships are complex and ever-changing, and because incentives are crucial. 

Videos or incentives: how best to end conflict

We often hear war correspondents say that they undertake their gruelling assignments so that others will come to realize the horror of armed conflict. I don't doubt their sincerity, nor their bravery in embedding themselves in military campaigns and recording the carnage that is the outcome of man's inhumanity to man. I do, however, doubt whether widely disseminated graphic reporting is the best way, or even an effective way, of bringing about an end to war. They may be the best we have come up with so far - but they have done nothing to end violent political conflict. Their graphic reports, pictures and (especially) videos probably inflame conflict more than they defuse it. 

Piling up weapons, unfalsifiable 'deterrence' doctrine, peace talks, talks about talks: these are roundabout methods of addressing our tendency to destroy others of our species and a big chunk of the natural environment too. They lack even the grim entertainment value of the reporters' images and commentary. Here's a question: if we are truly serious about ending armed conflict, why don't we reward the ending of armed conflict rather than the tried, tested and failed means of preventing it? Incentives matter, and the current incentives are all for arms merchants to sell more arms, for bureaucrats to engage in endless talks, for fanatics and governments to inflame aggressive religious and nationalistic passions. 

Humanity would benefit if there were countervailing financial incentives. The wish that almost everyone has, when we are not reacting to propaganda or provocation, to live in peace, has not been monetised and so, sadly, counts for very little when set against the interests of the weapons manufacturers, bureaucrats and ideological zealots. 

Which is where the Social Policy Bond concept, applied in the service of world peace, could make a contribution. Under a bond regime targeting a combination of such metrics for reduction as numbers of people killed and made homeless, people would be rewarded for the achievement of sustained periods during which wars are reduced or eliminated. 

World Peace Bonds would channel the market’s incentives and efficiencies into ending all violent conflict. Ideally, governments, institutions, the billionaire class and anyone else with a genuine interest in peace would contribute to a fund that would be used to redeem the bonds, which would create a coalition of interests with a powerful incentive to reduce the level of violent political conflict. Initial funding could be There would be difficulties defining peace and quantifying for targeting purposes the level of conflict. It would probably be more realistic to begin by issuing Nuclear Peace Bonds, which would entail rewarding, say, 30 years during which no nuclear device would be deployed and detonated in any sort of conflict - a more readily verifiable target than reducing the level of conflict in the world, though hopefully a stepping stone in that direction. For my recent book on World Peace Bonds, please see here, and there are more links to my work on conflict reduction here. 

Relying on metrics

In our complex, populous societies we're not going to escape the use of metrics as indicators of social well-being. Social Policy Bonds aim to target broad goals that are meaningful to ordinary people. They therefore need metrics that are carefully devised, robust, verifiable and, preferably, easy and cheap to monitor. A Social Policy Bond regime, ideally, would use reliable metrics in a considered, coherent manner. There are dangers in taking metrics as ends in themselves, in using them incoherently, and in ways that conflict with people's well-being. Unfortunately, that's the direction in which we're moving. Having read The tyranny of metrics by Jerry Muller, I've written about the limitations of metrics. 

 Our societies aren't going to return to the times when policy is made for groups of 150 (see Dunbar's number). It follows that metrics will be the means to determining how well society is doing. This has its risks, but it would seem preferable to letting ideology, emotion, personality or revenge psychology determine the direction in which societies move. 

 

One of the risks arises from Campbell's Law: 

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. Campbell's Law

Some examples of the application of this Law are given here. Another recent example is described in a study of the Trump administration's efforts to present COVID-19 statistics that would discourage restricting economic activities and encourage reopening the economy. The problem is that there is no real alternative to quantitative indicators when trying to measure and improve society's well-being. The alternatives are using no measures at all, or using those that have no bearing on well-being or may even be in conflict with it. The latter approach is the most common on western democracies. Currently our governments rely on a motley array of narrow, short-term, Mickey Mouse micro-targets, including the over-arching, de facto target of Gross Domestic Product, with its many flaws, some of great consequence. 

A Social Policy Bond regime, by contrast, would target broad meaningful outcomes with indicators inextricably linked to what we wish to see. At the national level, we'd target improvements in society's mental and physical health; at the global level we could target indicators of adverse natural or man-made disasters. One urgent, and easy-to-monitor goal would be nuclear peace. Most other goals would be less easy to quantify reliably, but we do need to ask what are the essential elements of social and environmental well-being and how can we best target them reliably. Our current political systems allow our rulers to duck these questions and distract us all with spurious arguments about ideology, personality, image and sound bites. 

Defanging the apex fanatics

James Ganesh writes about the current US administration's approach to war in Ukraine:  

Trump is a commercial animal. So is his envoy Steve Witkoff. By “commercial animal”, I don’t just mean someone from the private sector, such as Mitt Romney, but someone who views the whole world through a business lens. ... [T]he war —in fact, war itself — must baffle a commercial animal. The idea that people would fight out of principle is alien to homo economicus. A political commentator must befriend business people, for their original angle on things, for their range of international experiences, for their (often) pleasanter company. But doing so also brings home their intellectual blind spot, which is an inability to understand fanaticism. And by that I mean a literal refusal to believe that such a thing really exists. There are exceptions, but people who have to be pragmatic for a living will tend to assume that all the world is the same, and that ideology is just a cover for reasonable material interests. When business and democracy don't mix, James Ganesh, Financial Times, 18 December 2025

I will grant that there are fanatics who will not be swayed by any sort of financial inducement. But they are all supported to some degree by people who, I believe, could be encouraged to topple or defang those at the apex of the power structure. I think the fanatics who have accumulated power - including the power to start wars of aggression - did so because of the passive or active support of people who were amenable to non-ideological incentives. Such enablers may have been drawn in by the charisma of the apex fanatic, or believed that the apex fanatic could help their business; they might just have wished to be close to power, and thought that backing the apex fanatic was their best bet. Or they may even be ordinary members of the public, desperate for a change. All these enablers might sympathise with the fanatic's ideas and ideology; few of them, though would share the apex fanatics' total commitment to their cause. 

Social Policy Bonds could help (1) deal with existing fanatic-led activities, and (2) constrain the influence of political fanatics. 

(1) Take the war in Ukraine or, indeed, any areas of existing or potential conflict in the world. And assume that the goal of everyone - apart from the apex fanatics - is a lasting peace. Applying the Social Policy Bond principle to that conflict, or any other, would mean issuing bonds that become redeemable only when peace had been sustained for, say, fifty years. Such a lasting peace would be viable only if each side of the conflict came to some sort of agreement, tacit or otherwise, to end their conflict and to reduce the likelihood of future conflict. Such bonds, targeting regional conflicts, or world peace, would do little to deter the apex fanatics, but would help offset the incentives that currently encourage their enablers to support their accession to positions of power. 

(2) We shouldn't have to put up with fanatics starting wars or otherwise creating mayhem. But we can't outlaw fanaticism, nor do we need to. We should focus instead on the limiting the incentives that drive the enablers to hand power to the fanatics. Social Policy Bonds, by targeting outcomes, could shrink the role of ideology and hence fanaticism in the political process. Instead of voting on the basis of soundbites, personality or tribal loyalty, people would be presented with an array of broad social and environmental improvements, which they would prioritise. Government would then articulate voters' wishes, and raise the revenue that would fund their achievement. Apex fanatics would be marginalised and maybe divert their energies into less disruptive endeavours. Business perhaps? 

For more on how the bond principle could be applied to regional or global conflict, please follow the links on this page. 

 

Priorities

It's lamentable (to me) that so much brainpower gets channeled into lucrative, but socially useless, activities:

High-speed traders are feuding over a way to save 3.2 billionths of a second

A millisecond used to be a big deal for the world’s quickest traders. A dispute over huge trading profits at one of the world’s largest futures exchanges shows they now think a million times faster. The controversy is about an arcane technical maneuver in which high-speed traders bombard Frankfurt-based Eurex with useless data. The idea is to keep their connections to the exchange warm so they can react fractionally faster to market-moving information. Link Alexander Osipovich, 'Wall Street Journal', 15 December 2025

We shouldn't condemn these people, whatever the net results of their collective actions. They are reacting rationally to the incentives on offer; and few of us spend all our time solving the world's problems. It's the incentives that are perverse. If people can make enough cash to bring up a family by shaving off some nanoseconds per financial transaction more than the next guy, then that is what they will strive to do. It is disappointing, though, that the undoubted ingenuity that went into these traders' software isn't channeled into more socially beneficial activities. 

Social Policy Bonds could change that. A bond regime would reward people for solving society's urgent, long-term problems. It would stimulate diverse, adaptive approaches the nature of which we need not know in advance, but which are necessary given the failings of our current political systems to end the militarisation of our planet, deal with climate change or otherwise improve social and environmental well-being. 

A Social Policy Bond regime would allow us to target broad global and national goals explicitly, while channeling the market's efficiencies into the best use of our limited resources. Given that the survival of the planet itself is under threat, I think the case for such targeting is a strong one, even if we have to give up high-frequency trading to get there. Incentives aren't everything, but they do matter. 

Who would go into politics?

Who would go into politics? The obstacles and disincentives for ordinary people who consider a political career keep increasing:

• you and your immediate family will need enhanced security - even if you are not very high profile; this might apply even after your political career ends; 
• everything you said or put in writing over the past few decades will be trawled and used against you; 
• in most democratic countries, the financial rewards aren't very high.

The results are plain to see: politics has become a game for billionaires and those acting for them. We have a political caste of (mostly) mediocrities who've had little experience in productive enterprises. Some would have embarked on a political career for idealistic reasons, but many of these leave because they can achieve their goals more effectively outside the political circus, or because they aren't sufficiently thick-skinned to take all the abuse their position inevitably attracts. 

One idea might be to adopt the Singapore model: 

Singapore’s remarkable transformation is built on meritocratic governance, where competence, integrity, and performance drive leadership and policy decisions. In political leadership & governance, leaders are selected based on expertise rather than popularity, with rigorous recruitment, performance-based promotions, and corruption-free administration ensuring stability and long-term vision. In public administration & civil service, a highly efficient, professional bureaucracy ensures that civil servants are promoted based on performance, not tenure, with strict anti-corruption measures and ongoing training programs maintaining accountability. Meritocracy in Government Leadership: Example of Singapore, Metamatics and Jakub Zeglitz-Bares, Strategic Intelligence, 20 February 2025

And, crucially (from the same source):

Ministerial salaries in Singapore are pegged to the salaries of top earners in the private sector (such as CEOs and top executives). This ensures that talented individuals do not avoid government service due to financial reasons. 

Singapore's Prime Minister was paid $1.6 million in 2024. There are opportunities for less well-paid politicians to become wealthy from, for example, speeches or writing their memoirs, but they are less certain than official salaries, often less ethical, or the rewards usually have to be deferred until after they have left office. 

An alternative approach could involve issuing Social Policy Bonds: a bond regime would shrink the role of politicians and their ideologies; under a bond regime, political debate would focus on articulating society's goals and raising the revenue required for their achievement. Goals are less divisive than the supposed means of achieving them; and they would be expressed in ways meaningful to everybody, so that there would be greater public participation in the policymaking process, and hence more buy-in. This would be in stark contrast to policymaking today, which is difficult and tedious for people to follow unless they are paid to do so, or are lawyers. Reducing the role of politicians in this way could enlarge the circle of would-be entrants to the profession, such that it might then encompass people from more diverse backgrounds. 

It's all too complicated. I'm off to the boozer

George Monbiot writes:

Today, foreign corporations, or the oligarchs who own them, can sue governments for the laws they pass, at offshore tribunals composed of corporate lawyers. The cases are held in secret. Unlike our courts, these tribunals allow no right of appeal or judicial review. You or I cannot take a case to them, nor can our government, or even businesses based in this country. They are open only to corporations based overseas. If a tribunal determines that a law or policy may compromise the corporation’s projected profits, it can award damages of hundreds of millions, even billions. These sums represent not actual losses, but money the arbitrators decide the company might otherwise have made. The government may have to abandon its policy. It will be discouraged from passing future laws along the same lines, for fear of being sued. Record numbers of cases are being brought, as corporations learn from each other, and hedge funds finance suits in return for a share of the takings. The result? Sovereignty and democracy are becoming unaffordable. The process is known as “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS). Hello, foreign oligarchs and corporations! Please come and sue the UK for billions, George Monbiot, 'The Guardian', 1 December 2025

Most of us are unaware of ISDS, and I wonder whether even our politicians know about it and its implications. Maybe they do know, but don't care. Maybe they would care if they knew but, as with most people, are prone to the learned helplessness and demoralisation that afflicts those faced with incomprehensible processes. Perhaps ISDS and similar stratagems are purposely made incomprehensible for that reason. Complexity can be used cynically to deter scrutiny and deflect blame. 

Social Policy Bonds have two essential elements. Injecting market forces into the achievement of our social and environmental goals is one. But perhaps even more important is that the bonds express policy in terms of meaningful, explicit, verifiable outcomes. The ISDS is allowed to override domestic law and the decisions made by parliaments because it has been 'written – without public consent, and often in conditions of extreme secrecy – into trade treaties.' Under a bond regime, people would have incentives to see whether such treaties conform with society's goals, and to veto them if, like the ISDS, they obviously don't. Under the current regime, the only people who understand and participate in the drafting of these treaties are those who are paid to follow the process. Whether the treaties are consistent with society's goals or not has nothing to do with how they are renumerated. 

Expressing policy in terms of outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people would encourage greater public participation in the policymaking process: an end in itself, as well as a likely means to more effective policies. Currently, policy debates focus on institutional structures and funding arrangements; the people who make policy are often chosen on the basis of the campaigning skills of their sponsors; and the policies themselves have only vague ostensible goals, and real goals that can be easily obscured by their  tedium and complexity of policymaking process. The gap between politicians, officials and the wealthy on one side; and ordinary people on the other, grows ever wider.