What money can't buy

The implicit target of almost all policymaking is to maximise either national income, expressed as GDP, or things that national income can buy. The weaknesses of GDP as an indicator of societal well-being are well documented. A huge flaw is that it fails to capture contributions to well-being for which there is no market. Hence:

No less fundamental than its source, then, are questions of the quantity of energy consumed, the ways in which it is distributed, and the purposes it serves. This issue of quantity versus quality has largely been ignored in mainstream environmental discourses — partly because the imperative to reduce total energy usage solicits [sic] no tech-driven solutions that money can buy. Not cool, Mireille Roddier, 'Places', September 2026

And:

Defensive medicine can be simply defined as medical responses undertaken to avoid liability rather than to benefit the patient. Billions for Defense: The Pervasive Nature of Defensive Medicine, Richard E Anderson, The Doctors Company, November 1999

In both cases the market fails society. In the first case by encouraging energy consumption that is excessive, in that environmental costs aren't captured by the market and so borne by society. In the second, the costs of excessive screening and treatment are similarly borne by society. 

A Social Policy Bond regime could reduce the costs to society of these market failures; it would do so by explicitly identifying our goals, and rewarding people for achieving them. A vital first step is to be explicit about exactly what we want to achieve. So, if energy consumption itself is seen as undesirable, we could reward those bring about its reduction. More likely, it's the environmental costs of energy consumption that we regard as problematic, and applying the Social Policy Bond idea to the environment would achieve that goal. 

Similarly, defensive medicine occurs because we do not explicitly target or reward improvements in society's health; mostly we reward medical interventions, and so incentivise their excessive use. Applying the Social Policy Bond idea to health would help solve this problem. A government could issue Tradeable Health Outcome Bonds, targeting an array of health indicators, each of which would have to fall within an approved range for a sustained period before the bonds would be redeemed. 

Social Policy Bonds express policy goals in terms of outcomes, rather than the alleged, and often very indirect, means of achieving them. Their aim is to encourage people to research, experiment and refine diverse, adaptive approaches to solving our long-term social and environmental problems; many of which are hugely important, but have been neglected because markets don't or can't address them. 

Risk aversion rules

The Economist writes about India: 

Bureaucracy runs on risk aversion. Officials worried about anti-corruption bodies award contracts to the lowest bidder, despite having the discretion to weigh up other factors. They splurge on top-tier consultants because it gives them cover for their decisions. A bureaucrat who takes a risk and produces a terrific outcome gets no reward. Why can't India's government build a decent website?, the 'Economist', 28 June 2026

Not much has changed since I began advocating Social Policy Bonds as a means of targeting outcomes. Politicians focus on institutional structures and funding. Bureaucracy, in India and elsewhere, prioritises process. Meantime public political debate is taken up with public images, sound bites, vague promises and identity. The result is government that is inefficient and ineffective, in that it prioritises narrow, short-term goals, while refusing to address urgent, long-term challenges such as budget deficits, environmental depredations, health and violent political conflict. One result is that the gap between government and people is widening in countries democratic or not, the world over.

The gap would narrow if more people participated in policymaking. One reason, I believe, why we're not very interested is that policy is formulated in terms that are difficult to relate to outcomes that are meaningful to natural persons, as distinct from corporate bodies. Policymakers appear to concern themselves with decisions about funding for different government agencies, dispensing patronage to big business and other lobbies, presenting themselves in the best light ... almost anything, in fact, except outcomes that mean something to real people.

A government that issued Social Policy Bonds would, from the outset, have to concern itself with social and environmental outcomes. Its main role would be to articulate society's wishes regarding social and environmental outcomes, and to raise the revenue that would fund these outcomes. Unlike most of the current determinants of policy, the language of outcomes and the necessary trade-offs between them is comprehensible to people other than politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers and public relations experts. For that reason, more people would be drawn into policymaking - an end in itself, as well as a means toward getting greater public buy-in to the resulting policies.

Expressing policy in terms of outcomes, and the consequent closing of the gap between public and policymakers would be one valuable benefit arising from a Social Policy Bond regime. The other would be the much greater efficiency in achieving social and environmental goals once the market, rather than a handful of politicians, decides who shall achieve these goals, and how they shall be achieved. 

 

World Peace Bonds - a guide for philanthropists

 This article was commissioned by Billionaire. I am uncertain as to whether it's been published

Incentives for peace: World Peace Bonds

World Peace Bonds are a way in which the market’s incentives and efficiencies can be channelled to those people who are most successful at reducing conflict. Philanthropists could get the ball rolling by contributing to a fund that would be used to redeem non-interest-bearing bonds only when world peace had been achieved and sustained for, say, thirty years. The aim is to encourage diverse and adaptive approaches to reducing or eliminating wars and civil wars. The bonds would reward the achievement of the peace goal, regardless of who achieves it or how they do so. The redemption fund could be swelled by philanthropists’ undertaking to match donations from others, including NGOs and the public.

The bonds would be issued on the open market. They’d fetch a fraction of their redemption value, because the peace goal is necessarily remote. But the bonds would be tradeable; their value would rise and fall as the market sees achievement of peace as more or less likely. Investors in the bonds wouldn’t have to wait for the bonds to be redeemed before benefiting from holding them: they’d do what they could to achieve peace, see their bonds rise in value, and then sell their bonds to those best placed to take the next steps. The bonds would always be in the hands of those who think they can do best to advance the peace goal quickly and at least cost. They’d form a tacit coalition, of variable composition, with the sole aim of maximising the reduction of conflict per unit outlay.

A long-term perspective, sadly missing from many of today’s peace-building activities, is essential. A lasting peace is more likely to be a just peace; the ceasefires and truces of today do little more than allow bad actors to inflame resentment and re-arm. Investors, knowing that sustained peace will be rewarded, would research, experiment and refine their peace-building initiatives, would concentrate on the most promising of these, and – something that doesn’t always happen today – would terminate those that achieve little.

The long-term outlook would encourage a wider range of peace-building initiatives than those that even well-meaning politicians undertake today. Investors in World Peace Bonds could lobby or work with governments to, say, change and enforce laws that make wars at home or overseas a less likely prospect. They could finance sports matches between potential protagonists, promote anti-war programmes on TV, or set up exchange schemes for students and schoolchildren. They could try to cajole the financial supporters of conflict into redirecting their funds along more edifying lines. They could offer poor countries different forms of aid, including education and scientific aid, and measures aimed at enlightening populations. They could co-opt, bribe, coerce or otherwise undermine those who foment conflict. They could facilitate liaisons between people of all ages of different ethnic or religious groups. The crucial point is that bondholders have more freedom and incentive to explore and carry out such diverse initiatives than governments or other international bodies, and more incentive to focus only on those that most promising.

Of course, there are many hard-working employees of existing public- and private-sector organisations who are already trying to achieve peace. But they typically have little funding or are not paid by results. Investors in World Peace Bonds would reward the most efficient of these bodies, allowing them not just to raise the salaries of their existing employees, but also to attract more expertise and more resources.

Powerful people in governments, religious institutions or militant organisations might resent the targeting of such objectives by external agencies in this way. They might not be swayed by bondholders’ efforts to influence them – but many of their followers will be. As well, under a World Peace Bond regime they would have to openly declare their opposition to peace itself. It is precisely this focus on the outcome of peace -- rather than activities or institutions -- that would help mobilise and strengthen the coalition working to achieve it.

Humankind’s ingenuity is boundless but too much of it, reacting rationally to the incentives currently on offer, is channelled into such socially dubious activities as advertising dogfood or – God help us! – technical analysis. Actually, it’s worse than that: the incentives now are for those few who have acquired power – including psychopaths, kleptocrats and fanatics - to do whatever they can to retain and extend it, and if that means they must inflame conflict then they will do that. The result is the world we see today: a world wherein sixty major armed conflicts rage; killing, maiming, starving and making millions homeless. And all the while there looms the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.

In such a world, the wishes of the billions of people who don’t want to live in a world of conflict are too diffuse to prevail, and we cannot rely on politicians anywhere to change that. World Peace Bonds would bypass politicians and, by appealing to investors’ self-interest, could bring about the humankind’s most yearned for, but most elusive goal: the permanent elimination of armed conflict.

For more on applications of the concept, please see http://SocialGoals.com.

© Ronnie Horesh April 2026

Sleepwalking into nuclear war

 Antiwar.com describes the US military's latest brainwave: 

The Pentagon is reportedly drafting a new nuclear strategy that’s expected to emphasize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to give the president more “options” in a potential nuclear conflict. The strategy... is being drafted by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, who has for more than a decade called for the US to develop additional capabilities to fight a “limited nuclear war.” The idea would be to shift the US nuclear strategy away from the focus on using strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out an adversary’s nuclear capabilities and focus more on the possibility of using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in a “regional” conflict. Pentagon drafting new nuclear strategy..., Dave DeCamp, Anti-war.com, 9 August 2026

The logic is impeccable; each step can be fully explained by invoking the current situation and fears about what others might do. But the stakes now are impossibly high. It's surely worth trying something more radical than the processes that have led us to the brink of catastrophe. 

There are good, hardworking people working for organisations that have as their ostensible aim the ending of conflict at all levels: global, regional and local. But those best placed to know reckon we are closer than ever to nuclear conflict. The Pentagon's new strategy could take us even closer. We need to do things differently. 

Nuclear Peace Bonds could help halt the drift towards nuclear conflict, by putting in place a system that encourages and rewards people for researching, implementing and refining the most promising of such alternative approaches. The would inject the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of nuclear peace, sustained for a period of at least thirty years. 'Nuclear peace' could be defined as a period during which the number of people killed within 24 hours by the detonation of a nuclear device is less than (say) 500. The bonds would reward those who achieve such a sustained period of nuclear peace, whoever they are and however they do so: only the outcome would be stipulated. 

As well as pursuing activities the exact nature of which we cannot anticipate, investors in Nuclear Peace Bonds could do things that cannot be done by existing organisations, constrained as they are by precedent, and their perceived need to maintain their existence and so satisfy the bodies that fund them. So, for example, in today's world, nobody would have any incentive to bribe people close to decision makers in politics or the military to advocate nuclear disarmament. Likewise, an existing body is unlikely to try to get religious extremists to tone down their rhetoric or take up golf, even if it believed that were the most efficient way of reducing the probability of nuclear conflict. The risk and consequences of exposure and backlash are too great for current institutions to bear. Holders of Nuclear Peace Bonds, however, would not be deterred from whatever actions they think most effective: funds to redeem their bonds could be held in escrow. Once nuclear peace had been achieved and sustained, their reward would be guaranteed. 

Investors in the bonds could operate in parallel with existing bodies. They might decide that some of their activities are worthwhile and channel more funding into the most promising of these. Or, as with the bribery example, they could pursue radically different approaches. The main point is that all the investors decisions would be entirely directed to sustaining nuclear peace at least cost. Their goal would be exactly congruent with society's, and their funding would attract resources and expertise away from some  well-rewarded activities of little social merit. Advertising dog-food or writing algorithms for high-frequency share trading are two examples; there are many others. 

The Social Policy Bond concept, of which Nuclear Peace Bonds are on application hasn't gone very far in the decades since I came up with it. A non-tradable version is now in use in about 25 countries, but it's inherently limited as a means for achieving long-term goals, for reasons that I've explained here and here. I still hope that my original concept will be deployed, as I don't think we are currently on track to meet such huge and urgent challenges as nuclear conflict. 

Everything is backwards...

 A quote attributed to Michael Ellner: 

Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom. Michael Ellner

It's not true in every case, and it's not inevitable, but there's enough truth in it to be disturbing. And, while there are many idealistic doctors and lawyers, the majority become fully invested in their career and dependent on the goodwill of their governing body. And these bodies have, as their overarching goal, self-perpetuation, whatever their original ideals. All their ideals, activities, memberships and rules are subordinate to that goal.

Which is why I believe we should make policy as if these institutions do not exist. Under a Social Policy Bond regime, policy would be expressed in terms of verifiable, transparent outcomes, and any institutions that come into being as a result would have, as their sole focus, the efficient achievement of these outcomes. Such a regime would be ideal for those social and environmental goals for which:

• current policy is failing,
• a long-term view is essential,
• no obvious solutions exist, and
• a range of diverse, adaptive approaches is likely to be essential.

Sadly, there are many big, urgent challenges that satisfy all those criteria. For example, I've written about applying the Social Policy Bond concept to nuclear peace, climate change, and health. These policy areas would all benefit by, first, clarifying exactly what we want to achieve; most likely a set of subsidiary objectives all of which would have to be met before the targeted outcome would be deemed achieved. Second, by channelling the market's efficiencies and incentives into that achievement. What would happen then? With a guaranteed payout on success, investors would compete to bid for the bonds; collude, tacitly or otherwise, to bring about speedy achievement of the goal. This would entail research, experimentation and refinement of a range of possible approaches toward solving the targeted problem, with only the most promising of these approaches being pursued. A mosaic of diverse and adaptive approaches would be the most likely result. I believe a new sort of organisation would arise: again, it might not be a formal body, but its structure and composition, and all its co-ordinating activities would be entirely subordinate to achieving the targeted social or environmental goal. Thus, there would be an inextricable link between the objective of the organisation and society's targeted goal. 

'The ticks are winning': we need to focus on health outcomes

Jonathan Mingle and Sean Rameswaram discuss the tick problem in the US:  

Are we not fighting back against the ticks?

Not really. I mean, this is one of the surprising takeaways from my reporting is that we’re barely even trying. One way of understanding that is to think about two numbers. One number is 90 percent. 90 percent of vector-borne disease cases in the US are from ticks.

90 percent?

Yeah. And yet despite the fact that 90 percent of cases of vector-borne illness come from tick bites, if you look at what local city and county health agencies do in terms of vector control, 80 percent of what they do is mosquito control, and only about 10 or 11 percent of these local health agencies around the country do any kind of tick control. So why is that? It’s a familiar story in the public health world. It’s not enough funding or policy support for trying out, testing, and deploying new approaches to controlling ticks. The ticks are winning, Danielle Hewitt and Sean Rameswaram, 'Mother Jones', 1 August 2026

...Or a lack of incentives. This kind of mismatch between the a problem and the incentives devoted to solving it bedevils all policymaking in areas where existing institutions have no incentive to explore new approaches. It's rife in the field of health policy, where those in the profession have little incentive or capacity to think beyond their speciality, and so advise policymakers accordingly. 

Given the widespread, and justifiable, distrust of pharmaceutical companies, it would seem that this is the time to move towards rewarding those who achieve favourable health outcomes, rather than those who merely engage in activities purporting to deliver those outcomes. Those currently employed in healthcare are reacting rationally to the incentives on offer, to the detriment of our physical and mental health. And those incentives are to keep funding existing bodies and their approaches; as well, they encourage over-screening and over-diagnosis. 

It's time for a new approach. My suggestion is that rather than policymakers' focusing on the means by which they think good health can be achieved, they instead focus on targets for good physical and mental health, and provide incentives for people to achieve those targets. The Social Policy Bond concept, applied to health, would do this, and more: it would inject the market's incentives and efficiencies into all the processes necessary to improve a nation's health, regardless of the vested interests of the current service providers. A short piece on Health Bonds can be found here, and a much longer version, describing Tradeable Health Outcome Bonds is here. A bond regime would channel our scarce resources into the most efficient means of improving our health, including those currently neglected or not even considered by our current healthcare bodies. 

Health Bonds wouldn't stipulate how our health goals shall be achieved, nor who shall achieve them. This allows a broader approach. For example: if ticks are agreed to be a much bigger threat to health than mosquitos, then a bond regime would channel more resources into dealing with ticks rather than mosquitos. More broadly, our current narrow, short-term compartmentalised policy approach would not look into the positive health impacts of subsidising advanced courses for young drivers of motorbikes or cars. But holders of Health Bonds would look at such measures, investigate their possible health impacts, and make an informed decision as to whether any improvement they might bring to a population's health is worthwhile, compared to other possible interventions. 

Policymakers in general take the existing institutions, with their limited purview, as a given. An outcome-based approach, such as I envisage in a Social Policy Bond regime, would subordinate the composition, structures and all activities of institutions to the outcomes that policymakers target. For more on the new sorts of organisation that this approach would generate, please see here. 

Social Policy Bonds and price signalling

 One of the less obvious benefits of a Social Policy Bond regime arises from the price signalling of the market for the bonds. At flotation, the bonds would be auctioned, and difference between the sums raised at flotation and the total redemption value of the bonds would supply the market's best estimate of the cost of achieving the targeted goal at that time. This estimate would vary over time, depending on many factors including bondholders' performance in undertaking or financing goal-achieving projects. The market for Social Policy Bonds, then, as with all markets, plays a vital role not only in allocating resources but also in signalling to the bonds' backers the approximate costs of achieving social goals. The bonds' backers, that is, those who put up the funds for redeeming the bonds, could be in the public or private sectors: either way, this information is of great value. 

A competitive market for Social Policy Bonds would minimise the total cost of achieving a specified objective, as well as signalling it. More subtly, and more technically, it would also indicate the marginal cost of achieving further improvements. Say one million Crime Reduction Bonds issued by a local authority were to sell for $5 each. This would tell the issuing body that the present value of the expected maximum cost, including bondholders’ profits, of reducing the crime level from, say 50 to 40 units, would be $5 million. The local authority might then suppose that it could afford to be more ambitious, and aim for a further fall to 30 units. It could issue a million additional bonds redeemable when this new lower rate were reached. These would (probably) have an initial market value of less than $5, reflecting the (probably) diminishing returns involved in preventing crime. The point is that, by letting the market do the pricing of the bonds, the local authority would be getting an informed view of the marginal cost of its objectives. So if the bonds targeting the new level of 30 units were to sell for $4 each, then the maximum cost of achieving that objective would be $11 million, being equal to: $5 million (paid out when the level fell from 50 to 40 units) plus $6 million (paid out when the level fell from 40 to 30 units). The marginal cost of a 10-unit drop in crime would thus have been revealed to have risen from $5 million to $6 million. Should the local authority aim for a further fall to 20 units? Following such crime rate-targeting bond issues it would have robust information about the cost of doing so.

This is, of course, a simplified example and in fact the bond market would continuously update its pricing information. Say that new research, of the sort that might be stimulated by an initial bond issue targeting crime, suggested new ways of reforming or deterring criminals. Bondholders may, for example, have financed successful research into more effective reform programmes, or set up more appealing alternative lifestyles for especially hardened criminals. How would the market react to such developments? Once their effectiveness had been revealed, the value of all the bonds would rise. Instead of being priced at $5 and $4, the two crime reduction issues of the example might sell for $8 and $7. The total cost to the government of redeeming these bonds would not change: it would remain at $11 million (though redemption would most probably occur earlier). But the market would be generating new information as to the likely cost of future reductions in the crime rate. The market would now be expecting reductions of 10 units of crime to cost $2 million (from 50 to 40 units), and $3 million (from 40 to 30 units). The new research would have reduced the costs from $5 million and $6 million (respectively). So the cost of any further crime reductions would also fall, and by following market price movements policymakers could gauge approximately by how much. 

These figures are hypothetical, but they do indicate the role that markets for Social Policy Bonds could play in helping the government, and taxpayers, decide on their spending priorities. The market for the bonds is elegantly efficient in conveying information about the cost of achieving objectives and, crucially for policymakers, how this cost varies with time and circumstances. I discuss this in Chapter 5 of my book.

The system is corrupt

Two excerpts from recent readings:

In the Rostov region, in southern Russia, the owner of several stalls that sell local produce says she dreams of having her own fuel tanker. “They can all go to hell with their ideas and grand ambitions,” she says. “They” include Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron and local governors. “We used to live just fine. Now all you do is scramble from one problem to the next.” Russians are growing anxious and angry, 'Economist', 8 July 2026

The SNP [Scottish National Party] has been winning by default for years now. Everyone knows the party is exhausted and out of ideas, but people keep voting for it for want of anything better. And, like Labour when it ruled Scotland, it never tries anything new. Why bother? The day before [Peter] Murrell’s sentencing, the party’s eight remaining Westminster MPs backed a presentation bill aimed at devolving independence referendum powers to Holyrood. These bills are highly unlikely to be passed. A futile gesture. Business as usual. Stealing from the SNP, Dani Garavelli, 'London Review of Books', 9 July 2026

The real political divide, I think, is not so much between left and right, or government and opposition, but between politicians and ordinary people. There are probably convincing psychoanalytical explanations for why those who pursue and attain power lose sight of whatever ideals they might have had, but more important is what we can do to close the gap between those with power and the people they are supposed to represent. Part of the reason for this gap is that we live in systems under which politicians can avoid being accountable for outcomes that are meaningful to ordinary people. Instead they make vague, unverifiable promises, and their debates centre around funding arrangements, institutional structures, and legalisms. 

My thinking is that we need to re-orientate policy discussions and express policy goals in terms of long-term meaningful outcomes such as reduced crime rates, improvements in literacy, health and the environment. Ideally, too, we'd devise a way of channeling the market's incentives and efficiencies into the achievement of these outcomes, and my suggestion is that we transition to a Social Policy Bond regime. This could be done gradually, Take health, for example. In the UK, central government provides funding for regional health authorities (for spending on doctors, hospitals and prescriptions) according mainly to
population level, age and need. Government also supplies funds directly to medical research organizations and academic institutions. A transition to a Social Policy Bond-based, rather than institution- or activity- based, funding programme would see the direct funding government gradually decline, while expenditure allocated by bondholders to the outcomes that all these institutions are collectively trying to achieve — longer life spans and a better quality of life, say — would gradually rise. Bondholders would face continuous incentives to make sure their funds are allocated only to those institutions with the most promising approaches to improving people's health. Those institutions could be already existing or new, public- or private-sector. There is more on how this sort of gradual transition can be achieved in Chapter 4 of my book, and more about applying the Social Policy Bond principle to health in the links on this page.

Someone understands the Social Policy Bond principle!

Kylie Mohr writes: 

As prediction markets boom and a new wildfire season begins, fire survivors and ethicists say that the betting encourages and rewards callous thinking — and dangerous behavior, too. One major concern stemming from wildfire prediction markets is arson. ...Theoretically, making a bet could give someone the perverse incentive to start a fire, or help one grow. Unlike other disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding or extreme heat, a fire can be manipulated in minutes by just one person. “Systems that tie financial gain to wildfire outcomes risk encouraging misuse, including arson, and are not compatible with our mission,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service said. Will betting on wildfires lead to arson?, Kylie Mohr, 29 June 2026

This is how Social Policy Bonds were conceived: define an uncertain future event and allow people to bet on whether it will occur or not. If enough people bet enough money, they will have an incentive to co-operate to make that event happen. Simple. Social Policy Bonds would target desirable social and environmental goals. Though some bondholders would be mere speculators, others would be motivated by the prospect of potential increases in the value of their bonds, to help achieve the targeted goal. The aim is to channel people's self-interest - their wish to win a bet - into improving society's well-being. Targeted goals have to be chosen carefully. A bond regime would show the most marked improvement over conventional policy when: goals are long term; when current policy is failing; and when diverse, adaptive approaches will be necessary. I've written about applying them to goals that fulfil all these criteria: including eliminating conflict, reducing crime, unemployment or climate change. Each goal must ideally be objectively verifiable. Though the non-tradeable variant of my idea is currently being implemented in about 25 countries, the original conception has yet to be tried. One possibility could be target for reduction the area of land lost to wildfire in, say, the United States, in one year....

Small wars and nuclear peace

The Economist writes about great power equilibrium: 

But for a balance of power to bring a new order it must do more than satisfy the two main actors. It must also bring stability to others or be flexible enough to encompass change. It must offer something of what Britain brought to 19th-century Europe through policies which sought to preserve the status quo by ensuring no country could dominate. Wars still happened, but their goal, as Henry Kissinger put it, was equilibrium, not total conquest. Unfortunately, as Dr [Francis] Fukuyama points out, using small wars to recalibrate the balance of power in a world studded with nuclear weapons will court catastrophe. How such a system could function is a mystery. America's wrecking-ball revolution, the 'Economist', 2 July 2026

Right; and small wars aren't going to stop happening any time soon. Does anybody seriously believe that there are there are systems in place that will effectively stop them becoming nuclear if one or other of the protagonists have the means to use them? We've been lucky, so far. The number of warheads has fallen from about 70000 since the Cold War, but there are now nine countries in possession of 12187 warheads, and those numbers are likely to increase. 

Consider the incentives on offer to those in power today: if they possess nuclear weapons they can initiate a conflict knowing that they can dictate its course by threatening, implicitly or otherwise, to deploy them. If the target of their aggression doesn't possess nuclear weapons or if the target cares more about its civilian population than the aggressor, then at some point our luck is likely to run out. It might be today, it might be in a few years, but the number of countries with nuclear weapons continues to proliferate and we should not have to rely on those in power to continue to exercise restraint at all times. The taboo against threatening use of nuclear weapons has been broken. It now appears inevitable that, before long, the taboo against their use will also be broken. Our political systems reward those most adept at acquiring power. Threatening the use of nuclear weapons is one way in which a regime can hold on to that power.

What can ordinary people - those of us who are content not to have the power to kill millions of human beings - do, faced with the realistic possibility that the nuclear taboo will be violated some time soon? My suggestion is that we issue Nuclear Peace Bonds. These bonds would be redeemable for a fixed sum only when a targeted array of indicators of peace had been achieved and sustained for a period of at least thirty years. They would reward those who do most to reduce the likelihood of nuclear conflict. Backed by a combination of governments, non-governmental organisations, philanthropists and ordinary people, they would encourage a variety number of diverse, adaptive peace-generating approaches. Some would inevitably fail; the way the market for the bonds would work means that these efforts would be terminated and resources diverted into more promising initiatives.

The effect of Nuclear Peace Bonds would be to give incentives to accelerate and guide our progress toward a less violent world more efficiently than has happened so far: a protracted, haphazard and bloody path that has given us a less violent world until now, but also one that has left us fearful of nuclear catastrophe. We can do better than that. By acknowledging that not all approaches are going to work, and supplying incentives for those that do, we can guide and accelerate evolutionary processes to bring about, as quickly and efficiently as possible, what is surely our one of our most urgent goals: sustained nuclear peace.