Solution aversion

From 'Duke Today':

A new study from Duke University finds that people will evaluate scientific evidence based on whether they view its policy implications as politically desirable. Denying Problems When We Don’t Like the Solutions, 'Duke Today', 6 November

I think this echoes a more general finding that we use reasoned arguments to justify prior beliefs, rather than base our beliefs on reason. What does this mean for policymaking? That we'd do best if (1) we are explicit and transparent about the outcomes we, as a society, want to see, and then (2) subordinate all activities, government or private sector, to those outcomes. Any other way of doing things, as in the current system, will bring about ... well, what we see now: the corruption of the policymaking process in the service of the not-always-well-hidden agendas of the rich and powerful. So 'helping small farmers' becomes corrupted into massive taxpayer-funded welfare for the very rich and agribusiness. 'Affordable transport' becomes massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industries. Misbehaving five-year olds are re-interpreted as a new market for the pharmaceutical industry. Even more wasteful, stupid and dangerous: 'being strong' becomes massive expenditure on so-called 'defence' and the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

If we want to support the very wealthiest and most powerful individuals and corporations, why don't we explicitly set out to do so? Why don't political parties promise that when they get into power they will divert resources from the relatively poor to the enormously wealthy? Could it be that such resource transfers would be unpopular?

The answer of course is 'yes', so views about issues such as climate change, or nutrition, or whether depression (for instance) is a chemical imbalance, or whether more armaments improve social well-being are the subjects not of reasoned debate based on the best available information, but means to ends that are usually sectional and mercenary. Interest groups act on what they believe are their narrow interests; their minds are made up, and they take whichever side of a genuine debate best serves their agenda.

It's a haphazard and destructive way of making policy. Social Policy Bonds offer a better approach: let society determine which broad social and environmental goals it wants to see achieved and their relative priority. Government and private-sector bodies would then be rewarded for doing what they can to achieve these goals: and they would have incentives to see and evaluate the scientific evidence in terms of how best they can serve society's interests, not their own. It might not sound revolutionary, and indeed it shouldn't be. But it is.