Society as an interest group

Clive James writes:

[W]e tend to believe that there is some natural state of justice to which political life would revert if only the conflicts between interest groups could be resolved. but whatever justice we enjoy arose from the conflicts between interest groups, and no such natural state of justice has ever existed. The only natural state is unjust.... The Meaning of Recognition, 2005, page 4

I'm not so gloomy. When it comes to how things shall be done, and who shall do them then, yes, interest groups - those motivated to follow the policymaking process and so to benefit from it - are the only protaganists that really matter. But it doesn't have to be that way. Or rather, by targeting outcomes rather than the alleged means of achieving them, we can enlarge the interest group such that it includes all citizens.

Targeting broad outcomes, such as better health or reduced adverse environmental impacts, that are meaningful to all of us can bring about greater public engagement in the policymaking process. Yes, there will be disagreements over priorities, but we shall have been able to follow the process and contribute to it - unlike under today's regime, where policymaking is strictly for devotees or their paid employees.

The world is too small now for the solution of social and environmental problems to be left to exclusive interest groups to sort out. Social Policy Bonds could represent a middle way between the happenstance of a free market approach to solving our problems, and the coercive, and (often) ham-fisted, inefficient way of central planning. Government, influenced as it is by interest groups, usually does a terrible job in actually achieving our complex social goals. A Social Policy Bond regime, on the other hand, would play to government's strengths: articulating society's goals and raising the revenue to achieve them. But then it would, in effect, contract out the achievement of those goals, letting market forces do what they are best at: ensuring the optimum allocation of society's scarce resources in order to achieve society's goals - not those of interest groups, be they private- or public-sector.


Social Policy Bonds would, I believe, achieve our social and environmental goals more efficiently and less randomly than the current system. The planet as a whole cannot afford either the time for conflicts between interest groups to be resolved or the collateral damage that such conflicts are inflicting on our ever smaller planet.